Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (79 page)

GATHERED
INTELLIGENC
E
ON
THE
COMMERCE
Ibid., 323–55.

“
MIGHT
IN
SOME
DEGREE
”
Ibid., 358.

FOUR
O
'
CLOCK
ON
TH
E
M
ONDAY
MORNING
MB,
I, 554.

EIGHTEEN
·
THE VAUNTED SCENE OF EUROPE

“
H
E
IS
FULL
OF
HON
OR
AND
SINCERITY
”
William Howard Adams,
The Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson
(New Haven, Conn., 2000), 184.

“
A
COWARD
IS
MUCH
MORE
”
PTJ,
VII, 640.

REMEMBERED
THE
“
GOOD
COMPANY
”
TDLTJ,
73.

“T
HE
WINDS
WERE
SO
FAV
ORABLE
”
MB,
I, 555.

H
E
WAS
DETE
RMINED
Lawrence S. Kaplan,
Jefferson and France: An Essay on Politics and Political Ideas
(Westport, Conn., 1980), 19–20.

J
EFFERSON
VIEWED
F
RANCE
IN
THE
CONTEXT
Ibid. I agree with Kaplan's argument, one supported by the more astute of contemporary players. For the case against Jefferson on the French question, see Conor Cruise O'Brien,
The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, 1785–1800
(Chicago, 1996). Iain McLean, “The Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson,” in Cogliano, ed.,
A Companion to Thomas Jefferson,
110–27, is a fine survey of the period.

HARES
,
R
ABBITS
,
AND
PARTRIDGE
S
PTJ,
VII, 383–84.

S
TILTON
CHEESES
Ibid., 384. In the end, he could not send the cheeses. (Ibid., 429.)

“
VERY
THICK
WEATHER
”
Ibid., 508.

A
FEVER
STRUCK
P
ATSY
Ibid.

“
THROUGH
A
COUNTRY
”
Ibid.

“
THE
MOST
AGREEABLE
COUNTRY
”
Roy and Alma Moore,
Thomas Jefferson's Journey to the South of France,
(New York, 1999) 16.

J
EFFERSON
NEGOTIATED
TREATIES
ON
WHALE
OIL
Kaplan,
Jefferson and France,
30. See also
JHT,
II, 196–97, and Merrill D. Peterson, “Thomas Jefferson and Commercial Policy, 1783–1793,”
William and Mary Quarterly,
3d ser., 22, no. 4 (October 1965): 599–600.

H
E
KEPT
A
WARY
EYE
Ibid., 33. I am indebted to Kaplan for these points. See also
PTJ,
VIII, 339 and 373–74.

THE
PURCHASE
OF
A
MER
ICAN
EXPORTS
Ibid. See also
PTJ,
XIV, 304–5; Ibid., XV, 502.

TO
T
HE
OPENING
OF
S
T
. D
OMIN
GUE
Ibid. See also
PTJ,
XV, 502.

“I
BEG
YOU
'
D
PU
T
”
PTJ,
VII, 376.

A
CHATTY
,
DETAILE
D
MEMORANDUM
Ibid., 386–91.

THE
M
AR
QUIS
DE
C
ONDORCET
William Howard Adams,
Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson,
7.

J
EFFERSON
TOOK
UP
RESIDENCE
Ibid., 47–48.

“F
OR
THE
ARTICLES
OF
HOUSE
HOLD
FURNITURE
”
PTJ,
VIII, 230.

“
A
MOST
AGREEABLE
MAN
”
McCullough,
John Adams,
312.

“
AS
MUCH
YOUR
BOY
”
Ibid., 311.

“
EVERY
DAY
ENLARGIN
G
”
William Howard Adams,
Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson,
41.

HOUSES
,
THEATERS
,
THE
WALL
OF
THE
FAR
MERS
-
GENERAL
Ibid., 43–45.

T
HE
P
AL
AIS
R
OYAL
Ibid., 59.

THIS
“
GREAT
AND
GOOD
”
COUNTRY
Jefferson,
Writings,
98.

“S
O
ASK
THE
TRAVELLED
INHABITANT
”
Ibid.

T
HE
B
ARBARY
S
TATES
EOL,
633–39. See also Robert W. Tucker and David C. Hendrickson,
Empire of Liberty: The Statecraft of Thomas Jefferson,
294–99; Frank Lambert,
The Barbary Wars: American Independence in the Atlantic World
(New York, 2005); and Joseph Wheelan,
Jefferson's War: America's First War on Terror, 1801–1805
(New York, 2003).

“T
HESE
S
TATES
ARE
NOTED
”
David Adams,
Geography; Or, A Description of the World
(Boston, 1820), 306.

“
TO
PURCHASE
THEIR
PE
ACE
”
PTJ,
VII, 511.

“
YET
FROM
SOME
GLIMMERINGS
”
Ibid.

“S
URELY
OUR
PEOPLE
”
Ibid., 511–12.

CAPTURE
OF
A
V
IRGINIA
SHIP
Ibid., 639–40.

PRESSED
AGAIN
FOR
A
WARLIKE
RES
PONSE
Ibid. John Jay had other, more conventional ideas, transmitting instructions from the Congress directing Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams to treat with the Barbary States, and even raising the possibility that American funds might be used to bribe the right people in order to make peace. A deal was necessary, Jay wrote, “because the continuance of … hostilities must constantly expose our free citizens to captivity and slavery.” (Ibid., VIII, 20.) If the diplomats found it wise to buy influence, then so be it. “At courts where favoritism as well as corruption prevails, it is necessary that attention be paid even to men who may have no other recommendation than their influence with their superiors.” (Ibid., 21.)

“T
HESE
ARE
FRAMED
”
Ibid., 644. He was soon confronted with a conflict with Spain over the American West. On Thursday, July 22, 1784, at New Orleans, Spain closed the Mississippi to navigation. Madrid's offer to Americans—to allow some maritime traffic down the river, but to prohibit American exportation from New Orleans—was a poor one, and Jefferson needed to know how hard he should push the matter. “I would wish you to sound your acquaintances on the subject and to let me know what they think of it; and whether if nothing more can be obtained, this or no treaty, that is to say, this or war would be preferred.” (Ibid., 510.)

From home Charles Thomson had disagreeable news about the Committee of the States, the quasi-executive body Jefferson had helped bring into being. The committee had adjourned without “the harmony and good humor that could have been wished,” Thomson reported on October 1, 1784. (Ibid., 432.) The price to be paid was not limited to the domestic scene. “I am apprehensive it will have an ill aspect in the eyes of European nations and give them unfavorable impressions, which will require all your address and abilities to remove,” he wrote Jefferson. (Ibid.) The Congress had a difficult time even choosing a home. “If Congress should not be able to make a majority
 … 
to determine on any one place of fixed residence (a case very likely to happen),” Francis Hopkinson wrote Jefferson, “will they not be in a situation like that of Mahomet's Tomb—suspended between Heaven and Earth and belonging to neither!” (Ibid., 535.)

By November Jefferson's fears about America's loss of face because of the weak Confederacy were confirmed. “All respect for our government is annihilated on this side [of] the water, from an idea of its want of tone and energy,” Jefferson wrote Elbridge Gerry. “It is a dangerous opinion to us, and possibly will bring on insults which will force us into war.” (Ibid., 502.)

“H
E
HAS
A
PRINCIPLE
”
William Howard Adams,
Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson,
184–85. English policy on trade was so stringent, Jefferson believed it “a nation so totally absorbed in self interest that nothing will force them to be just but rigorous retaliation.” (
PTJ,
VII, 516; also see ibid., 509–10.)

Jefferson always maintained a tough line with Britain. “Nothing will bring them to reason but physical obstruction applied to their bodily senses,” he told Madison on March 18, 1785. “We must show that we are capable of foregoing commerce with them before they will be capable of consenting to an equal commerce.” Tobacco was America's ally in this case: “Our tobacco they must have from whatever place we make its deposit, because they can get no other whose quality so well suits the habits of their people.” (
PTJ,
VIII, 40.)

INVENTED
A
FICTITIOU
S
F
RENCH
OFFICER
PTJ,
VII, 540–45. The “officer lately returned” allowed that there had been a few incidents: the Philadelphia Mutiny (“Yet in this mutiny there neither was blood shed nor a blow struck”); a riot in Charleston; the passage of some resolutions in town meetings protesting various articles of the Treaty of Paris; and, in Virginia, the call to halt payment of the British debts until there was restitution for the confiscated slaves.

Yet the disturbances in America, Jefferson's officer wrote, were nothing compared to the recent violence in London under Lord Gordon. “Where is there any country of equal extent with the U.S. in which fewer disturbances have happened in the same space of time? … With respect to the people their confidence in their rulers in general is what common sense will tell us it must be, where they are of their own choice annually, unbribed by money, undebauched by feasting, and drunkenness. It would be difficult to find one man among them who would not consider a return under the dominion of Great Britain as the greatest of all possible miseries.” (Ibid., 540–42.)

The difficulty facing Jefferson in answering widely distributed attacks was formidable. “The views and designs, the intrigues and projects, of courts are let out by insensible degrees and with infinite art and delicacy in the gazettes,” said John Adams. “The English papers are an engine by which everything is scattered all over the world.… Of these papers, the French emissaries in London, even in time of war—but especially in time of peace, make a very great use; they insert in them things which they wish to have circulated far and wide.” (Ibid., 544.)

“N
OTHING
IS
KNOWN
”
Ibid., 540.

HE
WAS
DISPATCHING
B
ARRELS
OF
BRANDY
Ibid., 500–501.

L
U
CY
,
AGE
TWO
,
WAS
DEAD
Ibid., 441.