Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (77 page)

HAD
TO
LAY
THEIR
“
SHOULDERS
”
Ibid., 249.

“I
HAV
E
LONG
THOUGHT
”
PTJ,
X, 272. Jay made such points often. “An uneasiness prevails through the country and may produce untoward events,” he wrote on July 14, 1786. “Time alone can decide this and many other doubts, for nations, like individuals, are more frequently guided by circumstances than circumstances by them.” (Ibid., 135.) Through the years, they got along, but only just. In Madison's view, expressed in 1785, the Congress had thus far “kept the vessel from sinking, but it has been by standing constantly at the pump, not by stopping the leaks which have endangered her.” (Ibid., VIII, 579.)

“T
HE
RE
NEVER
WILL
BE
MON
EY
”
Ibid., X, 225.

“T
HE
STATES
WILL
GO
”
Ibid., VI, 248.

“W
HAT
,
THEN
,
IS
THE
A
MERICAN
”
J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur,
Letters from an American Farmer; and, Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America,
ed. Albert E. Stone (New York, 1986), 69.

I
N
1780,
THE
M
A
RQUIS
DE
B
ARBÉ
-M
ARBOIS
PTJ,
IV, 166–67.

N
OTES
ON
THE
S
TATE
OF
V
IRGINIA
Jefferson
, Writings,
123–325. See also David Tucker,
Enlightened Republicanism: A Study of Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia
(Lanham, Md., 2008), and “ ‘I have known': Thomas Jefferson, Experience, and ‘Notes on the State of Virginia,' ” in Cogliano, ed.,
A Companion to Thomas Jefferson,
60–74.

“A
N
EXACT
DESCRIPTION
”
Jefferson,
Writings,
127.

“T
HE
particular
customs”
Ibid., 288. When John Adams read the
Notes,
he praised them highly. “It is our meditation all the day long,” Adams wrote to Jefferson. “I cannot now say much about it, but I think it will do its author and his country great honor.” (
PTJ,
VIII, 160.) Adams added that the passages on slavery were “worth diamonds.” (Ibid.)

I
N
AN
EVENI
NG
'
S
CONVERSATION
PTJ,
VI, 377.

TWO
LARGELY
NEGLECTED
PIECES
Irving Brant, “Two Neglected Madison Letters,”
William and Mary Quarterly,
3d ser., 3, no. 4 (October 1946): 569–87.

K
ITTY
F
LOYD
BROKE
OFF
PTJ,
VI, 333. Writing obliquely to Jefferson, Madison said that “the object I was … pursuing has been brought [to an end] by one of those incidents to which such affairs are liable.” (Ibid.)

“I
SINCERELY
LAME
NT
”
Ibid., 335–36.

“P
ARLIAMENTARY
NE
WS
IS
INTERESTING
”
PTJ,
VI, 317.

SIXTEEN
·
A STRUGGLE FOR RESPECT

“
F
OREIGN
CIVIL
ARRANGE
MENT
”
PTJ,
VI, 470.

FOUR
HUNDRED
C
ONTINENTAL
SOLDIERS
PTJ,
VI, 318–19. It was only after the legislature's departure, Madison told Jefferson, that “the mutineers surrendered their arms and impeached some of their officers, the two principal of whom have escaped to sea.” (Ibid., 318.)

P
ENNSYLVANIA
OFFIC
IALS
Peter S. Onuf, ed.,
Congress and the Confederation
(New York, 1991), 70–71.

TO
“
PREVENT
A
NY
INFERENCES
”
PTJ,
VI, 319.

REMA
INED
AT
P
RINCETON
See Varnum Lansing Collins,
The Continental Congress at Princeton
(Whitefish, Mont., 2005).

MOVED
TO
A
NNAPOLIS
Edith Rossiter Bevan, “Thomas Jefferson in Annapolis, November 25, 1783–May 11, 1784,”
Maryland Historical Magazine
41, no. 2 (1946): 115–24, offers some commentary and an accounting of daily expenditures.

TO
SECURE
HIM
A
R
OOM
PTJ,
VI, 336.

LEFT
M
ONTICELLO
ON
T
HURSDAY
, O
CTOBER
16, 1783
MB,
I, 536.

OFFERED
“
SCANTY
ACC
OMMODATIONS
”
PTJ,
VI, 319.

A
“
VILL
AGE
WHERE
THE
PUBLIC
BUSINESS
”
Ibid., 337.

A
S
“
THE
U
NI
TED
S
TATES
”
Ibid., 369.

“I
T
IS
NOW
ABOVE
A
FORTNIGHT
”
Ibid., 381.

“
THE
RIOT
OF
P
HILADELP
HIA
”
Ibid.

THE
T
REATY
OF
P
AR
IS
JHT,
II, 414–17.

STILL
NO
QUORUM
IN
THE
C
ONGRESS
PTJ,
VI, 388. “I am sorry to say that I see no immediate prospect of making up nine states, so careless are either the states or their delegates to their particular interests as well as the general good which would require that they be all constantly and fully represented in Congress,” Jefferson told Benjamin Harrison on December 17, 1783. (Ibid.)

“I
C
ANNOT
HELP
”
Ibid., 419.

“A
LL
THAT
CAN
BE
SAID
”
Ibid. With France distracted by a continental war, America would be in a weakened bargaining position—a fact Jefferson understood and feared. (Ibid.) Jefferson was determined that Congress abide by its own rules and hold off on ratification until what he called “the danger of not having nine states” was overcome. (Ibid., 420.) The making of treaties was “an act of so much energy and substance” that to settle for seven states only would be “a breach of faith in us a prostitution of our seal, and a future ground … of denying the validity of a ratification.” (Ibid., 424–25.)

“I
HAVE
HAD
VERY
ILL
HEALTH
”
Ibid., 438.

J
EFFERSON
SOUGHT
A
COMPROMISE
Ibid., 441–42. In Jefferson's words, those members of the “opinion that 9 having ratified the Provisional treaty and instructed their ministers to enter into a definitive one conformable thereto, which is accordingly done, seven may under these particular circumstances ratify what has been so declared by 9 to have their approbation.” (Ibid., 441.)

C
ONNECTICUT
AND
N
EW
J
ERSEY
AT
LENGTH
ARRI
VED
Ibid., 461.

HE
CALLED
ON
“
AL
L
THE
GOOD
”
Ibid., 463.

“
THAT
WE
RE
IT
CERTAIN
”
Ibid., 386–87.

“I
HAVE
BEEN
JUST
ABLE
”
Ibid., 466.

“
TH
E
DIFFERENT
SPECIES
OF
BONES
”
Ibid., 371.

THE
C
OMTE
D
E
B
UFFON
MB,
I, 549.

“
UNCOMMONL
Y
LARGE
PANTHER
SKIN
”
Ibid.

“I
FIND
THEY
HAVE
SUBSC
RIBED
”
PTJ,
VI, 371.

A
MECHANICAL
COPYING
DEVICE
Ibid., 373.

SEVENTEEN
·
LOST CITIES AND LIFE COUNSEL

T
HE
G
OVERNOR
IS
PTJ,
VII, 303.

ALL
THE
TALK
WAS
OF
BAL
LOONS
Ibid., 57.

GRAND
BALLOON
ING
EXPERIMENTS
Jefferson and Hopkinson are referring to a series of experimental balloon flights that were conducted in Paris in late 1783. In June 1783, the brothers Montgolfier—Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne, who had developed the first hot-air balloons—conducted the first public launching of a balloon in Paris. Then, on November 21, 1783, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier made the first free manned flight in a balloon in Paris. Pilâtre de Rozier was killed on June 15, 1785, when he and a companion, Pierre-Ange Romain, “plummeted over 1,000 feet to their deaths near Bologne when the double balloon in which they were attempting to cross the English Channel caught fire and partially collapsed.” (L. H. Butterfield, Wendell D. Garrett, and Marjorie E. Sprague, eds.,
Adams Family Correspondence,
VI, 181.) Jefferson refers to the Pilâtre de Rozier crash in a letter of June 19, 1785. (
PTJ,
VIII, 237.) Jefferson also mentioned the crash in a letter to Abigail Adams on June 21, 1785. “This will damp for a while the ardor of the Phaetons of our race who are endeavoring to learn us the way to heaven on wings of our own,” he wrote. (Ibid., 241.)

THE
REVOLUTIONARY
POSSIBILITIES
PTJ,
VI, 542.

T
EN
YEARS
LATER
MB,
I, 548–49.

“I
WI
SH
YOU
HAD
”
PTJ,
VI, 545.

“
A
SUBT
ERRANEOUS
CITY
”
Ibid., VII, 123.

“
THE
B
RITISH
ROBBED
ME
”
Ibid., VI, 507.

“Y
OU
HAVE
NO
DOUBT
”
Ibid., 508.

“
I
N
SOME
OF
THE
REMOTE
ST
SETTLEMENTS
”
Ibid., 509.

B
UFF
ON
'
S
THEORY
OF
HEAT
Ibid., 436–37.

“I
HAVE
ALWAYS
THOUGHT
”
Ibid., XVIII, 98.

H
E
WROTE
THE
M
AR
QUIS
DE
B
ARBÉ
-M
ARBOIS
Ibid., VI, 373–74. “The plan of reading which I have formed for her is considerably different from what I think would be most proper for her sex in any other country than America,” he wrote Marbois. “I am obliged in it to extend my views beyond herself, and consider her as possibly at the head of a little family of her own. The chance that in marriage she will draw a blockhead I calculate at about fourteen to one, and of course that the education of her family will probably rest on her own ideas and direction without assistance.” He was thus pressing her harder than he otherwise would have. “With the best poets and prosewriters I shall therefore combine a certain extent of reading in the graver sciences. However I scarcely expect to enter her on this till she returns to me. Her time in Philadelphia will be chiefly occupied in acquiring a little taste and execution in such of the fine arts as she could not prosecute to equal advantage in a more retired situation.” (Ibid., 374.)