Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (89 page)

“
DA
ILY
PITTED
IN
THE
C
AB
INET
LIKE
TWO
COCKS
”
PTJRS,
II, 272.

J
EFFERSON
NOTICED
THAT
PTJ,
XXIII, 259.

“H
E
S
AID
THAT
HE
DID
NOT
LIKE
”
Ibid., 263. “He stopped here,” Jefferson continued, “and I kept silence to see whether he would say anything more in the same line, or add any qualifying expression to soften what he had said. But he did neither.” (Ibid.)

T
HE
PUBLIC
DEB
T
,
PAPER
MONEY
Ibid., 535–41. On first hearing Washington raise the possibility of retiring after a single term, Jefferson had chosen to remain silent on the question. He knew, he said, “we were some day to try to walk alone, and if the essay should be made while you should be alive and looking on, we should derive confidence from that circumstance, and resource if it failed.” (Ibid., 536.) In May, Jefferson used a letter urging Washington to reconsider stepping down to marshal his case against Hamilton. Washington's possible retirement after a single term, Jefferson said, was “a subject of inquietude to my mind.” (Ibid., 535.)

T
HE
“
U
LTIMATE
OBJECT
”
Ibid., 537.

“T
HAT
THIS
WAS
CONTEMPLAT
ED
”
Ibid.

I
T
“
WILL
BE
THE
I
NSTRUMENT
”
Ibid.

THE
“M
ONARC
HIAL
F
EDERALISTS
”
Ibid., 538. Jefferson was practical about what could be rescued. A new Congress, he said, “will not be able to undo all which the two preceding legislatures, and especially the first, have done.… But some parts of the system may be rightfully reformed; a liberation from the rest unremittingly pursued as fast as right will permit, and the door shut in future against similar commitments of the nation.” (Ibid.) Such a moderate approach, however, depended on a Republican Congress. If the majority of the next legislature “be still in the same principles with the present,” Jefferson said, “it is not easy to conjecture what would be the result, nor what means would be resorted to for correction of the evil.” (Ibid.)

“I
CAN
SCARCELY
CONTEMPLATE
”
Ibid.

“T
HE
CONFIDENCE
OF
THE
W
HOLE
UNION
”
Ibid., 539. Jefferson continued: “If the first corrective of a numerous representation should fail in its effect, your presence will give time for trying others not inconsistent with the union and peace of the states.” (Ibid.)

G
IVE
US
A
FEW
YEARS
Ibid.

J
EFFERS
ON
DINED
AT
W
ASHINGTO
N
'
S
Ibid., XXIV, 50. Two days later, at what Jefferson described as a “dinner of Jay-ites,” the financier Robert Morris raised the prospect of a challenge to John Adams in the 1792 election for vice president. “R.M. mentioned to the company that [George] Clinton was to be vice-president, that the Antis intended to set him up.” (Ibid.)

“I
WAS
NOT
DISPLE
ASED
”
Ibid.

“T
OO
MANY
OF
TH
ESE
”
Ibid., 85.

W
ASHINGTON
GENT
LY
TRIED
TO
CALM
Ibid., 210–12. Washington added: “That there might be a few who wished [a monarchy] in the higher walks of life, particularly in the great cities. But that the main body of the people in the Eastern states were as steadily for republicanism as in the Southern.” (Ibid., 210.) Washington also claimed to have been always ambivalent about the ceremonial pomp of the presidency.

According to an account of the administration's first days in New York that passed from Washington's personal secretary Tobias Lear to Attorney General Edmund Randolph to Jefferson, Washington “resisted for 3 weeks the efforts to introduce
levees
” before agreeing to them, and he left the details to his aide David Humphreys and others. After “an Antichamber and Presence room were provided, and those who were to pay their court were assembled, the President set out, preceded by Humphreys.” They walked through the outer room, entered the second, and Humphreys preceded Washington, “first calling out with a loud voice ‘the President of the US.' The President was so much disconcerted with it that he did not recover it the whole time of the levee, and when the company was gone he said to Humphreys, ‘Well, you have taken me in once, but by God you shall never take me in a second time.' ” (Ibid., XXV, 208.)

“H
OW
UNFORTUNATE
”
Ibid., 317.

J
EFFERSON
REPLIED
WITH
PASSION
Ibid., 351–60.

“T
HAT
I
HAVE
UTTERLY
”
Ibid., 353.

“
FLOWED
FROM
PRINCI
PLES
ADVERSE
TO
LIBE
RTY
”
Ibid.

“H
E
UNDERTOOK
”
Ibid., 354. Jefferson added: “These views thus made to prevail, their execution fell of course to me; and I can safely appeal to you, who have seen all my letters and proceedings, whether I have not carried them into execution as sincerely as if they had been my own, though I ever considered them as inconsistent with the honor and interest of our country.” (Ibid.)

“
NEWSPAPER
CONTESTS
”
Randall,
Jefferson,
II, 82.

“I
WILL
NOT
SUFFER
”
PTJ,
XXIV, 358.

“
THOUGHT
IT
IMPORTANT
”
Ibid., 434.

“
DID
NOT
BELIEV
E
”
Ibid., 435.

“
THERE
WERE
MANY
MORE
”
Ibid.

“F
OR
I
WILL
FRANK
LY
”
Ibid., 499. Washington also found the congressional corruption charge overwrought. “He said that as to that interested spirit in the legislature, it was what could not be avoided in any government, unless we were to exclude particular descriptions of men, such as the holders of the funds, from all office. I told him there was a great difference between the little accidental schemes of self interest which would take place in every body of men and influence their votes, and a regular system for forming a corps of interested persons who should be steadily at the orders of the Treasury.” (Ibid., 435.)

“W
HY
,
THEN
,”
Ibid.

WORRIE
D
ABOUT
REBELLION
Ibid., 383–85.

T
HE
SECRETARY
OF
STAT
E
'
S
SIGNATURE
Ibid., 385.

“S
HOUL
D
C
ONGRESS
ADOPT
”
Dunbar,
Study o
f
“Monarchical” Tendencies,
105.

“
THERE
WAS
NO
STABILITY
”
PTJ,
XXIV, 607.

REVELATIONS
OF
AN
AFFAIR
Ibid., 751. See also notes to
PTJ,
XVIII, 611–88.

G
ILES
O
F
V
IRGINIA
INTRODUCED
RESOLUTIONS
Ibid., XXV, 311–12. As the
editors of the
PTJ
write: “Nevertheless, Jefferson's covert support of the House Republican drive against Hamilton in 1793 remains a highly significant benchmark in his public career, marking a crucial stage in his gradual shift from the role of a statesman standing above the clash of conflicting political parties to the more partisan role that eventually propelled him to the presidency, that of chief leader of the Republican party.” (Ibid., 292.) See also Todd Estes, “Jefferson as Party Leader,” in Cogliano, ed.,
A Companion to Thomas Jefferson,
128–
44.

G
ILES
“
AND
ONE
OR
TWO
OTHERS
”
PTJ,
XXV, 311.

“1.
O
F
BANK
DIRECTORS
”
Ibid.

“T
H
E
PUBLIC
WILL
SEE
”
Ibid., 314.

U
NTIL
“
THOSE
WHO
TROUB
LED
”
Ibid., 137.

“W
HEN
THEY
SUFFE
R
”
Ibid.

R
EPORTS
OF
RISING
VIOLENCE
IN
F
RANCE
Neely,
Concise History of the French Revolution,
189–220.

THE
S
EPTEMBER
1793
DECLA
RATION
OF
THE
R
EIGN
O
F
T
ERROR
Ibid., 191–97; 254–55.

“W
E
WERE
ALL
STRONGLY
ATTACHED
T
O
F
RANCE
”
EOL,
174–75.

F
ROM
THE
A
UTUMN
OF
1792
FORWARD
Ibid., 176–77. As Wood wrote:

Now some Federalists began to see in France the terrifying possibilities of what might happen in America if popular power were allowed to run free. The rioting in Paris and elsewhere, the horrific massacres in September 1792 of over fourteen hundred prisoners charged with being enemies of the Revolution, the news that Lafayette had been deserted by his troops and his allies in the Assembly and had fled France—all these events convinced the Federalists that the French Revolution was sliding into popular anarchy.… When Americans learned that the thirty-eight-year-old king Louis XVI, the ruler who had helped them win their independence from the British a decade earlier, had been executed for treason on January 21, 1793, and that the French Republic had declared war on England on February 1, 1793, their division into Federalists and Republicans intensified. The meaning of the French Revolution now became entwined in the quarrel that Americans were having among themselves over the direction of their own revolution. (Ibid.)

H
E
LOST
FRIENDS
TO
THE
GUILLOTINE
William Howard Adams,
Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson,
295–97. See also O'Brien,
Long Affair
.

L
AFAYETTE
SPENT
FIVE
YEARS
Paul S. Spalding,
Lafayette: Prisoner of State
(Columbia, S.C., 2012).

“I
N
THE
STRUGGLE
WHICH
W
AS
NECESSARY
”
PTJ,
XXV, 14.

PRO
-F
R
ENCH
ORGANIZERS
IN
B
O
STON
Charles Warren,
Jacobin and Junto; or, Early American Politics as Viewed in the Diary of Dr. Nathaniel Ames, 1758–1822
(New York, 1968), 46.