Madison and Jefferson (142 page)

15.
Robert Pierce Forbes,
The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath: Slavery and the Meaning of America
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 2007), 35–38, 144–46. The widely anticipated end of the Virginia Dynasty may have been one catalyst of the Missouri debate. If not, then it was one derivative of it. Everyone saved face, but no one was truly happy. Illustrative of this disruptive moment, Martin Van Buren was elected U.S. senator from New York. As he took his seat, he made it known that he was a northern man of southern principles, a neo-Jeffersonian. An erstwhile ally of antislavery New Yorker Rufus King in their shared opposition to Governor DeWitt Clinton, Van Buren was supported at home by some outspoken racists. Largely unfazed by the existence of slavery, he was interested in reversing the old order by advancing to the presidency one day with Virginia’s help. See ibid., 85–88, 126–29; and Mason,
Slavery and Politics in Early American Republic
, 210–11.

16.
Peter S. Onuf,
Jefferson’s Empire: The Language of American Nationhood
(Charlottesville, Va., 2000), 110–11; background on Holmes in
Biographical Dictionary of the American Congress, 1774–1949
(Washington, D.C., 1950), 1325.

17.
“Mr. Holmes’ Letter to the People of Maine,” enclosure in Holmes to TJ, April 12, 1820,
TJP-LC.
On Holmes’s detractors, see Forbes,
Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath
, 66–67.

18.
Francis D. Cogliano,
Thomas Jefferson: Reputation and Legacy
(Charlottesville, Va., 2006), 204.

19.
TJ to Holmes, April 22, 1820,
TJP-LC;
on the fertility of slaves, see Mary Beth Norton,
Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750–1800
(Boston, 1980), 72–73; also Marie Jenkins Schwartz,
Birthing a Slave: Motherhood and Medicine in the Antebellum South
(Cambridge, Mass., 2006), esp. chap. 3. Jan Lewis and Kenneth A. Lockridge offer evidence that Virginia wives, anxious about the dangers attending childbirth, largely accepted the eventuality, resisting only to the extent of devising ways to space (delay) their pregnancies. The increasingly common description of pregnancy in terms of disease (e.g., as “indisposition”) by the early nineteenth century did not result in smaller families. See Lewis and Lockridge, “ ‘Sally Has Been Sick’: Pregnancy and Family Limitation among Virginia Gentry Women, 1780–1830,”
Journal of Social History
22 (Autumn 1988): 5–19.

20.
TJ to Holmes, July 8, 1820; Holmes to TJ, June 19, 1820,
TJP-LC.

21.
See Robert J. Allison, “ ‘From the Covenant of Peace, a Simile of Sorrow’: James Madison’s American Allegory,”
Virginia Magazine of History and Biography
99 (July 1991): 327–50.

22.
Draft in Madison’s hand, 1821,
JMP-LC.
In addition to Allison’s study, see the analysis of Drew R. McCoy,
The Last of the Fathers: James Madison and the Republican Legacy
(New York, 1989), 274–77. As McCoy observes, we never find out what is done about
Mary’s black arm, even as the couple reconcile. “The humanity of the slaves,” he notes, “is utterly lost in the allegory.”

23.
Onuf,
Jefferson’s Empire
, 144–46; Roane to Monroe, February 16, 1820, cited in McCoy,
Last of the Fathers
, 273; TJ to Short, April 13, 1820,
TJP-LC.

24.
On Madison’s plight, see Ketcham, 629.

25.
Charles H. Ambler,
Thomas Ritchie: A Study in Virginia Politics
(Richmond, Va., 1913), 80–83; Jean Edward Smith,
John Marshall: Definer of a Nation
(New York, 1996), 450–53.

26.
Roane to JM, April 17, 1821,
JMP-LC;
Smith,
John Marshall
, 456–63; Susan Dunn,
Dominion of Memories: Jefferson, Madison, and the Decline of Virginia
(New York, 2007), 145–48.

27.
Roane to JM, April 17, 1821; JM to Roane, May 6 and June 29, 1821,
JMP-LC.
Madison’s remarks at this time were consistent with those he made when he answered Roane’s complaints about
McCulloch v. Maryland
in 1819. See JM to Roane, September 2, 1819,
JMP-LC.
President Monroe’s support of Marshall’s decision in
McCullough v. Maryland
angered many Virginians; but his son-in-law’s attempts to oppose northern efforts at restriction of slavery in Missouri, presumed to have been undertaken with Monroe’s approval, won back support, though Monroe’s actual position was not quite as Virginians imagined. See Forbes,
Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath
, 64–65.

28.
TJ to Roane, March 9, 1821,
TJP-LC.

29.
“Autobiography,” initially dated January 6, 1821,
TJP-LC.

30.
Ibid.

31.
Our interpretation of the relationship between the
Anas
and Autobiography is also that of Cogliano,
Thomas Jefferson
, 54–57.

32.
JM to TJ, February 8, 1825,
RL
, 3:1924–25.

33.
TJ to JM, August 30, 1823; JM to TJ, September 6, 1823,
RL
, 3:1875–77; Burstein,
Jefferson’s Secrets
, 193.

34.
JM to TJ, February 8, 1825,
RL
, 3:1925–26.

35.
TJ to Gallatin, October 29, 1822,
TJP-LC.

36.
TJ to Lafayette, November 4, 1823,
Letters of Lafayette and Jefferson
, 414–16.

37.
JM to Lafayette, November 25, 1820,
JMP-LC.

38.
The rest of Jefferson’s commentary on Napoleon was: “a lion in the field only. In civil life a cold-blooded, calculating unprincipled Ursurper [
sic
], without a virtue, no statesman, knowing nothing of commerce, political economy, or civil government, and supplying ignorance by bold presumption.” See TJ to John Adams, July 5, 1814,
Adams-Jefferson Letters
, 431; Burstein,
Passions of Andrew Jackson
, 217–28; Merrill D. Peterson,
The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun
(New York, 1987), 129; Ketcham, 642–44.

39.
Crawford to JM, April 8, 1824; JM to Crawford, April 13, 1824; JM to Clay, draft letter, April 1824,
PJM-LC;
Ammon,
James Monroe
, 501, 543–47.

40.
TJ to Albert Gallatin, October 29, 1822,
TJP-LC.

41.
Portland Advertiser
, January 12, 1825.

42.
For a good rundown of the key personalities in the election and their interactions, see Peterson,
Great Triumvirate
, 116–31. On the first and decisive ballot in the
House runoff, Adams received the votes of thirteen state delegations, Jackson seven, and Crawford four. On the “corrupt bargain” and how it haunted Adams through this presidency, see also Andrew Burstein,
America’s Jubilee
(New York, 2001), 146–47, 182–85.

43.
JM to TJ, February 17, 1825,
RL
, 3:1927–28. In his exposition of the national debate over federal versus state funding of infrastructure, John L. Larson writes of the “negative rhetoric of watchfulness” that increasingly absorbed southern elites; as sectionalism intensified, distinctions between northern and southern developmental models became more obvious. See Larson,
Internal Improvement: National Public Works and the Promise of Popular Government in the United States
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 2001), chap. 4, quote at 136. North Carolina Republican Nathaniel Macon made Madison’s point bluntly: “If Congress can make canals, they can with more propriety emancipate.” See Forbes,
Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath
, 7. On Tucker, see Burstein,
Jefferson’s Secrets
, 84–85; Marie Tyler-McGraw,
An African Republic: Black and White Virginians in the Making of Liberia
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 2007), 108–9; and Merrill D. Peterson,
The Jefferson Image in the American Mind
(New York, 1960), 122–27, on Tucker’s 1837 biography.

44.
JM to TJ, February 17, 1825,
RL
, 3:1927–28.

45.
TJ to JM, December 24, 1825, with enclosure,
RL
, 3:1943–46.

46.
JM to TJ, December 28, 1825, enclosing letter to Ritchie dated December 18, 1825,
RL
, 3:1947–51;
National Intelligencer
, January 2, 1826, in support of federal improvements. A contributor to the
Richmond Enquirer
at the same time drew distinctions: the Constitution allowed for the establishment of post offices and post roads, but, he complained, “the word ‘canal’ is not seen in the constitution at all. Yet there are [congressional] committees on roads and canals … What was the use of inserting one power in the constitution and excluding another; if Congress can legitimately exercise jurisdiction equally over both?” See
Enquirer
, January 5, 1826.

Federalism, in the constitutional sense, established limits on the states as well as the central government; for Madison, where sovereignty was divided between the general government and the states, “one sovereignty loses what the other gains.” The mechanism was in place and had to be allowed to work. If the federal government resolved that it had a right to go ahead with canal legislation, and popular support was broad, Congress would move on it and the Virginians’ hands would remain tied. See discussion in McCoy,
Last of the Fathers
, 114–17.

47.
JM to Lafayette, November 20, 1820,
JMP-LC.

48.
A. Levasseur,
Lafayette in America in 1824 and 1825, or Journal of a Voyage to the United States
(Philadelphia, 1829), quote at 1:168; see also Burstein,
America’s Jubilee
, chap. 1.

49.
Levasseur,
Lafayette in America
, 1:212–25.

50.
Ibid., 2:245–46.

51.
TJ to JM, September 10, 1825,
RL
, 3:1941. On the state of the university in 1825–26, see Frank Edgar Grizzard, “Documentary History of the Construction of the Buildings at the University of Virginia, 1817–1828,” Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1996, chaps. 9–11.

52.
Malone, 6:425, 465–68; Brant, 6:455; TJ to JM, October 18, 1825,
RL
, 3:1942.

53.
TJ to JM, February 17, 1826,
RL
, 3:1964–67. Regarding the obelisk, see Burstein,
Jefferson’s Secrets
, 11–12, 281.

54.
JM to TJ, February 24, 1826,
RL
, 3:1967–68.

55.
TJ to JM, May 3, 1826; JM to TJ, May 6, 1826,
RL
, 3:1970–71.

56.
Samuel X. Radbill, “The Autobiographical Ana of Robley Dunglison, M.D.,”
Transactions of the American Philosophical Society
53 (1963); also John M. Dorsey, ed.,
The Jefferson-Dunglison Letters
(Charlottesville, Va., 1960), which contains biographical information.

57.
George Green Shackelford,
Jefferson’s Adoptive Son: The Life of William Short, 1759–1848
(Lexington, Ky., 1993), chap. 14.

58.
On Jefferson’s personal financial troubles and public positions on matters of economy, see Herbert E. Sloan,
Principle and Interest: Thomas Jefferson and the Problem of Debt
(New York, 1995), esp. 137–39, 218–23; on the slave auction, see Lucia Stanton,
Free Some Day: The African-American Families of Monticello
(Charlottesville, Va., 2000), 141–45.

59.
JMB
, 1:245–46.

60.
Burstein,
Jefferson’s Secrets
, 274–76.

61.
Dunglison to JM, July 1, 1826; Trist to JM, July 4, 1826; JM to Trist, July 6, 1826,
JMP-LC.

62.
Henry S. Randall,
Life of Thomas Jefferson
(New York, 1858), 3:666; Randolph to JM, July 8, 1826; JM to Randolph, July 14, 1826,
JMP-LC;
Ralph Ketcham,
The Madisons of Montpelier: Reflections on the Founding Couple
(Charlottesville, Va., 2009), 130.

63.
JM to Lafayette, November [?] 1826,
JMP-LC;
Ketcham,
Madisons of Montpelier
, 95–97.

64.
Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies from the Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, ed. Thomas Jefferson Randolph (Charlottesville, Va., 1829); JM to Thomas Jefferson Randolph, December 22, 1828, and February 28, 1829,
JMP-LC;
Peterson,
Jefferson Image in American Mind
, 29–36. If Randolph proved less than wholly up to the sensitive task of editing his grandfather’s papers, Madison cultivated the more discerning Nicholas Trist during this period. One of the favors he did was to introduce Trist to Albert Gallatin, suggesting that the former treasury secretary “ought to discharge his quota of historical debt to truth & posterity.” See JM to Gallatin, December 1, 1828; to Trist, December 17, 1828,
JMP-LC.
The letters Randolph opted to include in the four-volume work begin in May 1775, though Jefferson’s extant correspondence dates to 1760.

65.
Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies
, ed. Randolph, 4:421–23; JM to Nicholas P. Trist, May 15, 1832, cited in Malone, 6:359.

66.
Drew R. McCoy,
The Last of the Fathers: James Madison and the Republican Legacy
(New York, 1989), 124–30, 134. McCoy writes: “Perhaps it was best for Madison that the disconsolate and impetuous Jefferson was no longer around to define the precise terms of his own legacy.” Ritchie came to feel that while Jefferson opposed the tariff, he would not have considered it an issue warranting nullification; the Richmond editor was increasingly comfortable with Jackson and Van Buren and disagreed with Calhoun’s drift. See Charles Henry Ambler,
Thomas Ritchie: A Study in Virginia Politics
(Richmond, 1913), 141–43.

67.
Peterson,
Great Triumvirate
, 159–61, 169; Peterson,
Jefferson Image in American Mind
, 51–59; McCoy,
Last of the Fathers
, 131–56.