Madison and Jefferson (119 page)

72.
Note that in lowercasing “united,” the parchment copy signed by the members of Congress denoted the primacy of the states over the nation at their moment of joining together.
PTJ
, 1:432. Compare Jefferson’s “Original Rough Draft,” which capitalizes “United,” ibid., 1:427.

73.
Pendleton to TJ, November 16, 1775,
PTJ
, 1:261. For an incisive discussion, see Sidney Kaplan, “The ‘Domestic Insurrections’ of the Declaration of Independence,”
Journal of Negro History
61 (July 1976): 243–55. Charles A. Miller shows that Jefferson fell short of calling chattel slavery a violation of natural law, in
Jefferson and Nature: An Interpretation
(Baltimore, 1988), chap. 3. Carl Becker diminishes the power of Jefferson’s so-called philippic against slavery in the Declaration, writing: “It is indeed vehement; but it is not moving.” Becker,
Declaration of Independence
, 220.

We should be careful not to generalize too much on this subject. For instance, some northern figures associated with an antislavery mentality were in fact much slower to become active critics than history imagines. Benjamin Franklin assumed black inferiority and is shown by the historian David Waldstreicher to have been extremely cautious, even ambivalent, in addressing the slavery issue. Franklin did not register disagreement with the slavery passage in Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of Independence that overdramatized both London’s complicity in the colonial slave trade and Americans’ desire to put an end to it. He had made the same argument himself four years earlier, in response to the
Somerset
case. “To free slaves,” as Waldstreicher reminds us, “would infringe on the property rights of Britons—and thus effectively enslave the slaveholders.” See Waldstreicher,
Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the American Revolution
(New York, 2004), quote at 180.

74.
PTJ
, 1:426–27.

75.
See, for instance, the
Newport
[R.I.]
Mercury
, July 22, 1776.

76.
Pennsylvania Packet
, June 24, 1776, reprinted in the
New-York Journal
, July 4, 1776.

77.
New-York Journal
, July 11, 1776;
Virginia Gazette
, July 27 and August 10, 1776.

78.
Freeman’s Journal
, July 6, 1776.

79.
Michal J. Rozbicki,
The Complete Colonial Gentleman: Cultural Legitimacy in Plantation America
(Charlottesville, Va., 1998); Dunn,
Dominion of Memories;
Haztenbuehler, “
I Tremble for My Country.
”

80.
Pauline Maier contends that Congress’s editing distinctly improved Jefferson’s text. See Maier,
American Scripture
, chap. 3.

81.
Pendleton to TJ, August 10, 1776,
PTJ
, 1:488–89.

82.
David A. McCants,
Patrick Henry, Orator
(New York, 1990), chap. 1; Becker,
Declaration of Independence
, 218.

1.
Charles Crowe, “The Reverend James Madison in Williamsburg and London, 1768–1771,”
West Virginia History
25 (1964): 270–78; Rhys Isaac,
The Transformation of Virginia, 1740–1790
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 1982), 203–5; Malone, 1:42. As a young lawyer, Jefferson traveled to Augusta County and had extensive dealings with Reverend Madison’s father and brother (both named John). See numerous entries in
JMB
for the years 1767–69.

2.
Brant, 1:251–71; Pendleton to TJ, August 10, 1776,
PTJ
, 1:489.

3.
Henry S. Randall,
Life of Thomas Jefferson
(New York, 1858), 1:62–63;
JMB
, 1:424–26; Malone, 1:245–46.

4.
Pendleton to TJ, August 10, 1776,
PTJ
, 1:489.

5.
In this context, Peter Gay has written that Hume’s view of politics was “realistic in its awareness of conflict, hard-headed in its call for order, but at the same time, liberal in its insistence on a domain of freedom, and above all, flexible in its very generality.” He effectively sums up Madisonian political theory with these words. See Gay,
The Enlightenment: The Science of Freedom
(New York, 1969), 460–61.

6.
Jefferson’s “Autobiography,”
TJP-LC.

7.
Holly Brewer, “Entailing Aristocracy in Colonial Virginia: ‘Ancient Feudal Restraints’ and Revolutionary Reform,”
William and Mary Quarterly
54 (April 1997): 313.

8.
Ibid., 311, 315–18, 338.

9.
On Jefferson’s failed attempt to circumvent entail, see ibid., 327–28; Carter Braxton to Landon Carter, December 19, 1776, cited in John E. Selby,
The Revolution in Virginia, 1775–1783
(Williamsburg, Va., 1988), 140; Malone, 1:252ff.

10.
On this subject, see esp. Eva Sheppard Wolf,
Race and Liberty in the New Nation: Emancipation in Virginia from the Revolution to Nat Turner’s Rebellion
(Baton Rouge, La., 2006). In 1782 Madison willingly became involved in helping Pendleton’s nephew recover an escaped slave and appears not to have been averse to promoting a fugitive slave law. Pendleton to JM, September 9, 1782; JM to Pendleton, September 24, 1782,
PJM
, 5:109–10, 157–58.

11.
It is uncertain precisely how much original thought belongs to Jefferson in Bill no. 51, “A Bill concerning Slaves,” prepared (but not introduced into the Assembly) prior to June 1779. See
PTJ
, 2:470–73. Virginia’s General Assembly may have voted to end the state’s participation in the international slave trade in 1778, but it continued to permit slave owners from outside the state to settle there without having to free their slaves. The Continental Congress had voted to stop the slave trade in 1774 (mainly to harm British merchants), but it may be that the states did not consider this vote as
binding after 1776, and several, individually, passed more decisive legislation to this effect. Virginia was the first to do so.

Jefferson’s role in the process is not entirely clear. In June 1777 a bill was prepared in the Assembly for the purpose of ending the importation of slaves into Virginia. “Hereafter,” it read, all persons “imported into this Commonwealth” would be “absolutely exempted” from bondage. Jefferson may or may not have been involved in its drafting—documentation is lacking—though he believed, when he was in his seventies, that he had been a principal in this legislation. The important points to make are, first, that he was associated with a push to curtail the slave trade from at least the time of his draft of the Declaration of Independence; and second, that his colleagues were well aware of his discomfort with slave trafficking. He took pride in his opposition, whether or not he misremembered his authorship of this particular bill.
PTJ
, 2:22–24; Selby,
Revolution in Virginia
, 158–61; John Chester Miller,
The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
(New York, 1977), 20–21.

12.
On the neurophysiological attributes inherent in Jefferson’s political medicine, and its particular vocabulary, see Andrew Burstein,
Jefferson’s Secrets: Death and Desire at Monticello
(New York, 2005); and for further contextualization, see Sarah Knott,
Sensibility and the American Revolution
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 2009).

13.
Jefferson was not alone in his thoughts on education. At the very time the new state constitution was being drafted, one interested citizen sent an urgent appeal to the Virginia Assembly. “Academicus” wrote for the
Virginia Gazette
that “learning alone” stood to ensure the stability of the new state government. Relying on England for education was no longer possible and would perhaps even be detrimental—the writer expressed suspicion of those who “drank deep of the fountain of corruption.” See “To the Honorable Convention of Virginia,”
Virginia Gazette
, May 31, 1776.

14.
Brant, 1:296–300; Malone, 1:274–77; Randall,
Life of Thomas Jefferson
, 1:203–5.

15.
JMB
, 1:70, 428–29. That same month Jefferson was repaid by Reverend Madison for a sum of cash he had loaned. The notation Jefferson made with respect to the purchase of books reads “Recd. of James Madison”; for the return of cash lent, “Recd. of Rev. Madison.” The notations were made only days apart. The distinction suggests that the first transaction was indeed made with James Madison, Jr.

16.
James M. Elson, comp.,
Patrick Henry in His Speeches and Writings and in the Words of His Contemporaries
(Lynchburg, Va., 2007), 91.

17.
John J. Reardon,
Edmund Randolph: A Biography
(New York, 1974), 35–37.

18.
Selby,
Revolution in Virginia
, 124–27; John E. Ferling,
The First of Men: A Life of George Washington
(Knoxville, Tenn., 1988), chap. 7 and 199–200;
Patrick Henry in His Speeches and Writings
, comp. Elson, 92; Stephen to TJ, [ca. 20] December 1776,
PTJ
, 1:659; Paul K. Longmore,
The Invention of George Washington
(Berkeley, Calif., 1988), 64, 250n30. General Stephen was drummed out of the service a year later, and blamed for the American defeat at Germantown; Washington was glad to be rid of him. See John Ferling,
The Ascent of George Washington: The Hidden Political Genius of an American Icon
(New York, 2009), 136–37.

19.
Selby,
Revolution in Virginia
, 131; Brant, 1:211, 323–26; Michael A. McDonnell,
The Politics of War: Race, Class, and Conflict in Revolutionary Virginia
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 2008), 247, 257, 265–76. Aware of the difficulty in recruitment, meaningful numbers of
slaves expressed a willingness to join the army, which legislators refused to allow; however, free blacks were enlisted, a practice sanctioned in Virginia but in no other southern state and many slaves pretended to be free and were aided by recruiters, who received ten dollars for each “free” person they brought into service. As of mid-1777, white indentured servants and apprentices could legally leave their masters without consent in order to serve in the military. Ibid., 261, 337–38.

20.
David C. Hendrickson, “The First Union: Nationalism versus Internationalism in the American Revolution,” in Eliga H. Gould and Peter S. Onuf, eds.,
Empire and Nation: The Revolution in the Atlantic World
(Baltimore, 2005), 48–50; John Adams to Henry Knox, September 29, 1776, in
Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774–1789
, ed. Paul L. Smith (Washington, D.C., 1976–2000), 5:260.

21.
“Resolutions Urging Recruitment and Conferring Emergency Powers on the Governor and Council,” December 21, 1776,
Papers of George Mason
, ed. Robert A. Rutland (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1970), 1:325–27; TJ to Adams, May 16, 1777,
PTJ
, 2:19.

22.
PJM
, 1:192–93; Mark W. Brewin,
Celebrating Democracy: The Mass-Mediated Ritual of Election Day
(New York, 2008), chap. 2.

23.
PJM
, 1:214–15; Brant, 1:316.

24.
PTJ
, 2:119, 122–24, 139–47. Characterization of Wythe is from TJ to Ralph Izard, July 17, 1788,
PTJ
, 13:372.

25.
On the debates, see esp. Merrill Jensen,
The Articles of Confederation: An Interpretation of the Social-Constitutional History of the American Revolution, 1774–1781
(Madison, Wisc., 1940).

26.
JM to JM, Sr., January 23, 1778,
PJM
, 1:222–23; Malone, 1:284–85; Brant, 1:292–93.

27.
“Session of Virginia Council of State, April 7, 1778,”
PJM
, 1:236–37. Henry was forced to admit his personal ineffectiveness in a letter to Congress: “no Efforts of the Executive have been sufficient,” he wrote.

28.
JM to Bradford, March 23, 1778; “Election to Virginia House of Delegates Voided,” May 27, 1778,
PJM
, 1:235, 242–43; Brant, 1:337–38.

29.
JMB
, 1:468–69; Andrew Burstein,
The Inner Jefferson: Portrait of a Grieving Optimist
(Charlottesville, Va., 1995), chap 1; Malone, 1:287, 435–46; Jack McLaughlin,
Jefferson and Monticello: The Biography of a Builder
(New York, 1988), 143–45. The additional acreage was spread about Amherst, Cumberland, Goochland, Rockbridge, and Henrico counties, plus a small lot in Richmond.

30.
Lee to TJ, May 2, 1778; “Bill for Raising a Battalion for Garrison Duty,” May 16, 1778; TJ to Lee, June 5, 1778; to Fabbroni, June 8, 1778,
PTJ
, 2:174, 179–80, 194–96.

31.
Frederick Doveton Nichols and Ralph E. Griswold,
Thomas Jefferson: Landscape Architect
(Charlottesville, Va., 1978), 139–42; Malone, 1:164–65.

32.
TJ to Hancock, October 19, 1778,
PTJ
, 2:225. It is curious that Pendleton, these days Virginia’s chief advocate for the established church, detested Philip Mazzei and suspected him of being an agent of the pope. It is interesting, too, that Richard Henry Lee proposed that Madison go with Mazzei on the mission to Italy. Madison, who in consideration of his inferior physical stamina would at no time agree to leave America’s
shores, expressed confidence in Mazzei but refused to accompany him. See David John Mays,
Edmund Pendleton, 1721–1803: A Biography
(Richmond, 1984), 2:136–37; Ketcham, 85.

33.
Richard R. Beeman,
Patrick Henry: A Biography
(New York, 1974), 109–10.

34.
Lee to TJ, March 15 and May 3, 1779; Fleming to TJ, May 22, 1779,
PTJ
, 2:236, 262, 267.

35.
Fleming to TJ, May 22, 1779,
PTJ
, 2:269.

36.
JM to Samuel Harrison Smith, November 4, 1826,
JMP-LC;
Mason to Lee, June 4, 1779,
Papers of George Mason
, ed. Rutland, 2:506–7.