Francis Samuel Philbrick

“ The two men and the fate of the parties they led are understandable only by regarding one as the leader of reaction, the other as in line with the American tendencies. The educated classes characteristically furnished Federalism with a remarkable body of alarmist leaders; and thus it happened that Jefferson, because, with only a few of his great contemporaries, he had a thorough trust and confidence in the people, became the idol of American democracy. ”

“ Party feeling in America has probably never been more dangerously impassioned than in the three years preceding this election; discount as one will the contrary obsessions of men like Fisher Ames, Hamilton and Jefferson, the time was fateful. Unable to induce Burr to avow Federalist principles, influential Federalists, in defiance of the constitution, contemplated the desperate alternative of preventing an election, and appointing an extra-constitutional (Federalist) president pro tempore. ”

“ Events soon appraised the ultra-Federalist judgment of American democracy, so tersely expressed by Fisher Ames as “like death . . . only the dismal passport to a more dismal hereafter”; and, with it, appraised Jefferson’s word in his first inaugural for those who, “in the full tide of successful experiment,” were ready to abandon a government that had so far kept them “free and firm, on the visionary fear that it might by possibility lack energy to preserve itself.” Time soon tested, too, his principle that that government must prove the strongest on earth “where every man . ”

“ At first the reign of terror and the X. Y. Z. disclosures strengthened the Federalists, until these, mistaking the popular resentment against France for a reaction against democracy—an equivalence in their own minds—passed the alien and sedition laws. In answer to those odious measures Jefferson and Madison prepared and procured the passage of the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions. These resolutions later acquired extraordinary and pernicious prominence in the historical elaboration of the states’-rights doctrine. ”

“ Full explanations do not remove from some important transactions in his political life an impression of indirectness. But reasonable judgment must find very unjust the stigma of duplicity put upon him by the Federalists. Measured by the records of other men equally successful as political leaders, there seems little of this nature to criticize severely. Jefferson had the full courage of his convictions. Extreme as were his principles, his pertinacity in adhering to them and his independence of expression were quite as extreme. ”

“ A national policy of “growling before fighting”—later practised successfully enough by the United States—was not then possible; and one writer has very justly said that what chiefly affects one in the whole matter is the pathos of it—“a philosopher and a friend of peace struggling with a despot of superhuman genius, and a Tory cabinet of superhuman insolence and stolidity” (Trent) . It is possible to regard the embargo policy dispassionately as an interesting illustration of Jefferson’s love of peace. The idea—a very old one with Jefferson—was not entirely original ”

“ Jefferson is of course not entitled to the sole credit for all these services: Wythe, George Mason and James Madison, in particular, were his devoted lieutenants, and—after his departure for France—the principals in the struggle; moreover, an approving public opinion must receive large credit. But Jefferson was throughout the chief inspirer and foremost worker.
In 1779, at almost the gloomiest stage of the war in the southern states, Jefferson succeeded Patrick Henry as the governor of Virginia, being the second to hold that office after the organization of the state government. ”

“ In the direct language of reproach and advice, with no disingenuous loading of the Crown’s policy upon its agents, these resolutions attacked the errors of the king, and maintained that “the relation between Great Britain and these colonies was exactly the same as that of England and Scotland after the accession of James and until the Union; and that our emigration to this country gave England no more rights over us than the emigration of the Danes and Saxons gave to the present authorities of their mother country over England.” ”

“ It is the key to an understanding of the times to remember that the War of Independence had disjointed society; and democracy—which Jefferson had proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, and enthroned in Virginia—after strengthening its rights by the sword, had run to excesses, particularly in the Shays’ rebellion, that produced a conservative reaction. To this reaction Hamilton explicitly appealed in the convention of 1787 ”

“ With a liberal Scotsman, Dr William Small, then of the faculty of William and Mary and later a friend of Erasmus Darwin, and George Wythe (1726–1806) , a very accomplished scholar and leader of the Virginia bar, Jefferson was an habitual member, while still in college, of a partie carrée at the table of Francis Fauquier (c. 1720–1768) , the accomplished lieutenant-governor of Virginia. Jefferson was an expert violinist, a good singer and dancer, proficient in outdoor sports, and an excellent horseman. Thorough-bred horses always remained to him a necessary luxury. ”

“ Though the commercial principles of the United States were far too liberal for acceptance, as such, by powers holding colonies in America, Jefferson won some specific concessions to American trade. He was exceedingly popular as a minister. The criticism is even to-day current with the uninformed that Jefferson took his manners, [8] morals, “irreligion” and political philosophy from his French residence ”

“ Again he says: “Societies exist under three forms— (1) without government, as among our Indians; (2) under governments wherein the will of every one has a just influence. . . . (3) under governments of force. . . . It is a problem not clear in my mind that the first condition is not the best.” (Ibid. iv. 362.) ↑ He turned law students from Blackstone’s toryism to Coke on Littleton; and he would not read Walter Scott, so strong was his aversion to that writer’s predilection for class and feudalism. ↑ Hamilton wrote for the papers himself; Jefferson never did. ”

“ Here he remained improving his estate (having refused a foreign mission) until elected vice-president in 1796. Jefferson was never truly happy except in the country. He loved gardening, experimented enthusiastically in varieties and rotations of crops and kept meteorological tables with diligence. For eight years he tabulated with painful accuracy the earliest and latest appearance of thirty-seven vegetables in the Washington market. ”

“ Jefferson was prominent in all; was a signer of the Virginia agreement of non-importation and economy (1769) ; and was elected in 1774 to the first Virginia convention, called to consider the state of the colony and advance inter-colonial union. Prevented by illness from attending, Jefferson sent to the convention elaborate resolutions, which he proposed as instructions to the Virginia delegates to the Continental Congress that was to meet at Philadelphia in September. ”

“ He was already particularly associated with the great territory north-west of the Ohio; for Virginia had tendered to Congress in 1781, while Jefferson was governor, a cession of her claims to it, and now in 1784 formally transferred the territory by act of Jefferson and his fellow delegates in congress: a consummation for which he had laboured from the beginning. His anti-slavery opinions grew in strength with years (though he was somewhat inconsistent in his attitude on the Missouri question in 1820–1821) . ”

“ It was formally agreed in cabinet meeting that “when brought together in society, all are perfectly equal, whether foreign or domestic, titled or untitled, in or out of office.” Thus diplomatic grades were ignored in social precedence and foreign relations were seriously compromised by dinner-table complications. ”

“ Hamilton to J. Dayton, 1799 (Works, x. 329) . ↑ In 1786 he suggested to James Monroe that the society of friends he hoped to gather in Albemarle might, in sumptuary matters, “set a good example” to a country (i.e. Virginia) that “needed” it. ↑ See C. R. Fish, The Civil Service and the Patronage (Harvard Historical Studies, New York, 1905) , ch. 2. ↑ Jefferson’s dislike of a navy was due to his desire for an economical administration and for peace. ”