Madison and Jefferson (131 page)

34.
JM to James Madison, Sr., March 12, 1797,
PJM
, 16:500;
JMB
, 2:956.

35.
Ketcham, 365, 370–72, 386–87; TJ to JM, January 3, 1798,
RL
, 2:1012.

36.
“Address to the Senate,” March 4, 1797,
PTJ
, 29:310–11.

37.
By Paine’s accounting, Washington had failed as president. “How America will scuffle through I know not,” he opined, persuaded that “John Adams has not Character to do any good.” He repeated himself later in the same letter: “Your Executive, John Adams, can do nothing but harm.” Even if the much-admired Madison were dispatched to Paris, as was still being rumored, he could expect to accomplish nothing of substance,
just because Adams had sent him. Paine to TJ, April 1 and May 14, 1797,
PTJ
, 29:340–44, 366–67.

38.
TJ to Giles, March 19, 1796,
PTJ
, 29:35.

39.
“Jefferson’s Letter to Mazzei,” April 24, 1796; “A Native American” to TJ, May 19, 1797,
PTJ
, 29:73–87, 382–84.

40.
To take the allegory further, Samson was blinded by the Philistines as a result of having his head shaved while he slept; Solomon, idolatrous and undependable, had his kingdom divided after he turned against the God of Israel. Regarding Jefferson’s explanation of the Mazzei letter to Martin Van Buren many years later, see Andrew Burstein,
The Inner Jefferson: Portrait of a Grieving Optimist
(Charlottesville, Va., 1995), 222–23; also Henry S. Randall,
The Life of Thomas Jefferson
(New York, 1858), 2:371–73; Malone, 3:308–11.

41.
TJ to JM, August 3, 1797; JM to TJ, August 5, 1797,
RL
, 2:985–86, 990–91, 996–97; Monroe to TJ, July 12, 1797,
PTJ
, 29:478. It is meaningful that as part of his effort to convince Jefferson to stay out of the papers, Madison invoked the example of Washington, who (from Madison’s direct knowledge) had not responded to the publication of forged Revolution-era letters attributed to him.

42.
TJ to Mrs. Church, May 24, 1797,
PTJ
, 29:396–97.

43.
“David Gelston’s Account of an Interview between Alexander Hamilton and James Monroe,” July 11, 1797; John Barker Church to Hamilton, July 13, 1797; “Printed Version of the ‘Reynolds Pamphlet,’ ”
PAH
, 21:159–63, 238ff, quotes at 238, 239, 243; JM to TJ, October 29, 1797,
RL
, 2:993; Malone, 3:327–31. Months after their shouting match, Monroe was still inquiring of his friend Madison: “You will be so good as to tell me frankly yr. opinion of the footing upon wh. my correspondence with that Scondrel stands, and whether it becomes me to pursue him further.” Monroe to JM, October 15, 1797,
PJM
, 17:50.

44.
JMB
, 2:963, 972; Malone, 3:239–40. Jefferson gave the couple the estate of Pantops, in Albemarle, and thirty-one slaves, but Maria and Jack chose to spend most of their time at the Eppeses’ ancestral home.

45.
“Notes on a Conversation with John Adams,”
PTJ
, 30:113.

46.
JM to TJ, February 12 and February 18, 1798; TJ to JM, February 15 and March 2, 1798,
RL
, 2:1018–21, 1024.

47.
“Geoffrey Touchstone,”
The House of Wisdom in a Bustle
(Philadelphia, 1798), quote at 21; see also
The Spunkiad, or Heroism Improved. A Congressional Display of Spirit and Cudgel
(Newburgh, N.Y., 1798); TJ to JM, February 15, 1798; JM to TJ, February 18, 1798,
RL
, 2:1019–22.

48.
JM to Monroe, December 17, 1797; Monroe to JM, June 8, 1798,
PJM
, 17:61–62, 145–46.

49.
Joanne B. Freeman,
Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic
(New Haven, Conn., 2001), 10.

50.
TJ to JM, March 21–22, April 6, and April 12, 1798; JM to TJ, April 2, 1798,
RL
, 2:1028–36; TJ to Pendleton, April 2, 1798,
PTJ
, 30:242; Alexander DeConde,
The Quasi-War: The Politics and Diplomacy of the Undeclared War with France, 1797–1801
(New York,
1966); Sharp,
American Politics in Early Republic
, 171–73. Curiously, Jefferson’s most adoring modern biographer considered Jefferson’s position on the XYZ Affair to be “labored and injudicious” and his expectations from the Adams administration unrealistic. See Malone, 3:374.

51.
JM to TJ, April 15, 22, and 29, 1798,
RL
, 2:1037, 1041, 1043.

52.
TJ to JM, June 21, 1798,
RL
, 2:1008–10, 1060–61; Jean Edward Smith,
John Marshall: Definer of a Nation
(New York, 1996), 234–36. Marshall may have refused to pay the French agents X, Y, and Z; but he himself was paid handsomely by the Adams administration for his time abroad, netting $18,000 after expenses. He owed interest on his Virginia estate at this time, so it is no wonder that he should have been in good spirits and eager to perform more public service. Jefferson’s annual income as vice president was only $5,000. Ibid., 238.

On the very same weekend as Marshall docked, Jefferson’s Philadelphia Quaker friend George Logan left for Paris on an ostensibly selfless personal mission to make peace with France; the
Aurora
published a secret letter from Talleyrand, and Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Wolcott, a Hamilton ally, rushed to New York to interview an American returning from France, in the hope of uncovering a damning letter showing Jefferson’s connection to a French plot. He, of course, failed to find anything. See Malone, 4:377–78.

53.
Leonard Baker,
John Marshall: A Life in Law
(New York, 1974), 303–4; [John Thomson],
The Letters of Curtius
(Richmond, 1798), 3–7, 26–27, 32–35. Addressing the Adams administration’s aggressiveness, Thomson sharply challenged the abuse of language that went along with a perverse policy. The word
France
, he charged, was “the
cabalistic
word” by which the Federalists had “silenced all opposition.” Rancor was extreme, moderation mocked. “This delusion cannot last,” he vowed. On Thomson’s brief career, see Edward A. Wyatt IV, “John Thomson, Author of the ‘Letters of Curtius,’ and a Petersburg Contemporary of George Keith Taylor,”
William and Mary Quarterly Historical Magazine
16 (January 1936): 19–25. Thomson died in 1799, but he was memorialized by his admirer John Randolph of Roanoke in the next decade.

54.
TJ to JM, August 3, 1797; JM to TJ, August 5, 1797,
RL
, 2:973–75, 985–91. Jefferson’s contention was that the federal grand jury had no “sanctuary,” no separate standing in the state, and was under the jurisdiction of the Virginia Assembly.

55.
For the logic regarding Hamilton and Gallatin, see for example the
Republican Star
(Easton, Md.), October 19, 1802.

56.
TJ to John Taylor of Caroline, June 4, 1798,
PTJ
, 30:389.

57.
JM to TJ, May 20 and June 3, 1798,
RL
, 2:1051, 1056; John Ferling,
A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic
(New York, 2003), 424–25.

58.
Cunningham,
Jeffersonian Republicans
, 125. A New Jersey Republican versified his resentment in the face of Federalists’ accusations that the party’s political opposition was unpatriotic because of its reluctance to challenge France:

Embracing the Union, the poet mentioned Jefferson, Madison, Livingston, and Burr by name, wishing success to their efforts on behalf of liberty. See
Centinel of Freedom
(Newark, N.J.), September 25, 1798.

59.
Carey’s United States’ Recorder
, June 7 and June 28, 1798;
Columbian Centinel
, June 20, 1798.

60.
Sharp,
American Politics in the Early Republic
, 181–82; John E. Ferling,
The First of Men: A Life of George Washington
(Knoxville, Tenn., 1988), 497–99; Ferling,
Leap in the Dark
, 436–41. The widow of publisher Thomas Greenleaf was indicted under the federal Sedition Law, after which Hamilton initiated a state libel prosecution so as to put her paper out of business. See Smith,
Freedom’s Fetters
, 400; Isenberg,
Fallen Founder
, 172. For a somewhat sympathetic look at Hamilton’s behavior relative to Adams’s diplomatic posture and arguments suggesting a moderating desire on Hamilton’s part, see Aaron N. Coleman, “ ‘A Second Bounaparty?’: A Reexamination of Alexander Hamilton during the Franco-American Crisis, 1796–1801,”
Journal of the Early Republic
28 (Summer 2008): 183–214.

61.
DeConde,
Quasi-War
, 90–95; JM to TJ, May 13, 1798,
RL
, 2:1048.

62.
Tazewell to JM, June 28, 1798,
PJM
, 17:159.

63.
“Notes on an American Dinner,” “Toasts for an American Dinner,” ca. July 4, 1798,
PJM
, 17:160–61. Madison inadvertently reversed the order of “former” and “latter.” Part of the list was copied at an unknown time in Dolley Madison’s handwriting.

64.
The Boston story was reprinted in the Salem, N.Y.,
Northern Centinel
, July 23, 1798. A bit earlier, Benjamin Franklin Bache made the same observation in the context of berating the Federalist press for its “party fanaticism” (
Aurora
, May 30, 1798).

65.
Some months before, rival editor William Cobbett (“Peter Porcupine”) had crudely urged that Bache be dealt with as “a T
URK, A
J
EW, A
J
ACOBIN, OR A DOG.
” At any rate, Bache’s death did not immediately kill the
Aurora.
His handpicked successor married his widow, adding another layer of scandal to an already scandalous paper. See Jeffrey L. Pasley, “
The Tyranny of Printers”: Newspaper Politics in the Early Republic
(Charlottesville, Va., 2001), 100–103; Malone, 3:384, 387, 390–92.

66.
Randall,
Life of Thomas Jefferson
, 2:417–19; Malone, 3:431; for sources on Callender’s Richmond trial, see
RL
, 2:1137–38; Pasley, “
Tyranny of Printers
,” 125. John Daly Burk was editor of the
Time-Piece
, which he had taken over from Madison’s Princeton friend Philip Freneau;
JMB
, 2:997; on the history and tone of the
Time-Piece
, see Frank Smith, “Philip Freneau and the
Time-Piece and Literary Companion
,”
American Literature
4 (November 1932): 270–87. The British had their counterpart in the cross-eyed outlaw John Wilkes, supporter of universal male suffrage, defender of the American Revolution, hero of the working class, and noted libertine and duelist, whose writings were suppressed and who was reelected to the House of Commons from prison. See Arthur H. Cash,
John Wilkes: The Scandalous Father of Civil Liberty
(New Haven, Conn., 2006).

The absurdity of some of the prosecutions under the Sedition Law of 1798 makes it hard to believe that they actually went forward. A New London, Connecticut, newspaper publisher was incarcerated for agitating against enlistment in the army. An inveterate drinker in Newark, New Jersey, was fined and jailed for suggesting as a target John Adams’s posterior, when the president passed by in his stately carriage to the accompaniment of ceremonial cannon fire. Edward Livingston wrote trenchantly: “We have … 
nothing to do but to make the law precise, and then we may forbid a newspaper to be printed, and make it death for any man to attempt it!” From his perch at the front of the Senate chamber, Vice President Jefferson had seen the onslaught coming in April, when he prophesied all of this in a letter to Madison. As he made out the rumblings of a newspaper suppression campaign, he had learned that Bache’s paper would be the first condemned. See Smith,
Freedom’s Fetters
, 116–30, 180–81, 270–73; TJ to JM, April 26, 1798,
RL
, 2:1042. James Roger Sharp notes Jefferson’s return to use of the term
whig
in 1798, symbolizing the ever-increasing division between the parties and akin to the desperate situation of 1776. See Sharp,
American Politics in Early Republic
, 174.

67.
James Morton Smith, “The Grass Roots Origins of the Kentucky Resolutions,”
William and Mary Quarterly
27 (April 1970): 221–45; Adrienne Koch and Harry Ammon, “The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions: An Episode in Jefferson’s and Madison’s Defense of Civil Liberties,”
William and Mary Quarterly
5 (April 1948): 155–56; Breckinridge entry in
Biographical Directory of the American Congress
(Washington, D.C., 1950), 884.

68.
It is not far-fetched to suggest, as Dumas Malone did in 1962, that in the frenzied political climate of 1798–99, the vice president himself could have been brought up on sedition charges and impeached for authoring the Kentucky Resolutions; Malone, 3:400. Madison’s authorship of the Virginia Resolutions became known in 1809; Jefferson finally acknowledged his authorship of the Kentucky Resolutions in 1821.

69.
Columbia Centinel
, January 5, 1799. Another Boston paper reported that Breckinridge had made a journey to Virginia, and brought back with him the nine resolutions; it identified Jefferson as the individual behind them. See
Russell’s Gazette
, December 24, 1798.

70.
“Jefferson Draft of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798,”
RL
, 2:1080–81; for the three different versions of the Kentucky Resolutions, see “The Kentucky Resolutions 1798,”
PTJ
, 30:529–56.

71.
What made Jefferson’s premise radical was his claim that each state had an “equal right” to nullify a law, and that state law had created a distinct boundary around Virginia that superseded the authority of the federal government. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and laws pertaining to aliens belonged under the state’s purview. Jefferson was thus creating two spheres of law with severely proscribed boundaries: the states claimed responsibility for most domestic regulations, leaving the national government with a limited range of powers.