Joseph Jefferson

“ The mass of Americans had become democratic in thought as well as act; not even another political revolution could undo what had been done. As a democrat, Jefferson's social success was sweeping and final; but he was more than a democrat,—and in his other character, as a Virginia republican of the State-rights school, he was not equally successful. ”

“ They still make as much noise as if they were the whole nation." Such success might have turned the head of any philosopher that ever sat on a throne. Easily elated, unwilling to forebode trouble, devoid of humor, and unable to see himself in any but the heroic light, President Jefferson basked in the sunshine of popularity and power as though it were no passing warmth such as had led scores of kings into disaster, but shone by virtue of some democratic law which rested on truth that could never change. ”

“ There are ages that are creative. At such times two classes of men are prominent and needed—one shackled to traditions, the other guided by visions. Thomas Jefferson belonged to the latter. In 1776 the American people not only broke the bonds binding them to old England, but forged other bonds which would bind them to a new political, social and industrial order, and of those who hammered these new ties into harmony with the longing and aspirations of men, Thomas Jefferson stands among the foremost Fathers. ”

“ When Chancellor Livingston, the new minister to Paris, sailed for France, Jefferson wrote him a private letter [11] in regard to the appointment of a new French minister at Washington. Two names had been suggest,—La Forest and Otto. Neither of these was quite satisfactory; some man would be preferred whose sympathies should be so entire as to make reticences and restraints unnecessary. The idea that Jefferson could put himself in Bonaparte's hands without reticence or restraint belonged to old theories of opposition,—a few months dispelled it ”

“ The letter prepared for him to the Council, began thus: "The Citizen Ternant has delivered to me the letter wherein you inform me, that yielding, &c., you had determined to recall him from his mission, as your Minister Plenipotentiary to our republic." He had underscored the words, our republic. He said that certainly ours was a republican government, but yet we had not used that style in this way; that if any body wanted to change its form into a monarchy, he was sure it was only a few individuals, and that no man in the United States would set his face against it more than himself ”

“ Unless the President of the United States were raised above the rank of a citizen, and endowed with more than royal prerogatives, no duty could be more imperative upon him than that of lending every aid in his power to the Judiciary in a case which involved the foundations of civil society and government. No Judiciary could assume at the outset that Executive duties would necessarily be interrupted by breaking Jefferson's long visits to Monticello in order to bring him for a day to Richmond. ”

“ In regard to the labors and services of Jefferson in the Department of State, he was cautious, conciliatory, and peace-loving, "neither a fanatic nor an enthusiast," enlightened by twenty-five years of discussion on the principles of law and government, and a practical business man. It required all his tact to prevent entangling foreign alliances, and getting into hot water with both France and England; for neither power had any respect for the new commonwealth, and each seemed inclined to take all the advantage it could of American weakness and inexperience. ”

“ Again he had the chance of becoming Jefferson's successor, when the latter resigned as secretary of State, but refused through fear of causing differences in Washington's cabinet. He was a Federalist at first, but changed his views and became an earnest Republican. Jefferson made him his secretary of State, and he served throughout both administrations. He was a cultured gentleman, an ardent friend of Jefferson, and carried out his policy when he became President. ”

“ Had Jefferson known that a British emissary was secretly waiting at Boston to profit by the result of eight years' Republican policy, he could not but have felt deep personal mortification mingled with his sense of wrong. Of all Jefferson's hopes, perhaps the warmest had been that of overthrowing the power of his New England enemies,—those whom he had once called the monarchical Federalists,—the clergy and the Essex Junto. Instead of overthrowing them he had given them, for the first time in their lives, unlimited power for mischief ”

“ But now, Jefferson was thinking, how early the fires of patriotism had cooled in Patrick Henry. Patrick had been successful at Red Hill, his plantation. He had made some money, grown old before his time, and been content the last time Jefferson had seen him to sit under a green tree with a jug of cool spring water near by and his grandchildren playing around. Ease and security—were they the drugs that abated the eternal challenge in the minds of men? And did nations like men grow sluggish and apathetic when they were well fed and bodily comfortable, Jefferson wondered? ”

“ He is a good man too, but so much out of his element, that he has the air of one huskanoyed. The Garde des Sceaux is considered as the Principal’s bull-dog, braving danger like the animal. His talents do not pass mediocrity. The Archbishop’s brother, and the new minister Villedeuil, and Lambert, have no will of their own. They cannot raise money for the peace establishment the next year, without the States General; much less if there be war; and their administration will probably end with the States General. ”

“ It placed Jefferson in an unpleasant dilemma, yet he had such faith in Washington's confidence in him, that he conceived that that great and good man would not construe any portion of his remarks as aimed at the president, and, by the advice of his friends, he kept silent, neither avowing or disavowing the letter as his. It became the subject of fierce attacks for a long time, even through the canvass in 1800, which resulted in the election of Mr. Jefferson to the presidency of the United States. ”

“ He has asseverated to me a thousand times his determination that the existing government should have a fair trial, and that in support of it he would spend the last drop of his blood. He did this the more repeatedly, because he knew General Hamilton's political bias, and my apprehensions from it. It is a mere calumny, therefore, in the monarchists, to associate General Washington with their principles. But that may have happened in this case which has been often seen in ordinary cases, that, by oft repeating an untruth, men come to believe it themselves. ”

“ On this point, we have to object that Jefferson—a man of remarkable powers, and whose spirit has more intimately transferred itself into the heart and hereditary sentiment of the American people than that of perhaps any other American, not perhaps excepting even Washington—does not seem to have received a full enough measure of that appreciation which even Mr. Hildreth might have been able to give him. Jefferson we regard as the type and father of much that is now most characteristic in the American mind; and in any history of the United States he ought to figure largely. ”

“ The Spaniard's enmity was already a peril to Madison's ambition, and one which became more threatening every day; but the Englishman's steady resentment was perhaps more mischievous, if less noisy. The first effect of Jefferson's tactics was to ally the British minister with Yrujo; the second bound him to Senator Pickering and Representative Griswold; the third united his fortunes with those of Aaron Burr. Merry entered the path of secret conspiracy; he became the confidant of all the intriguers in Washington, and gave to their intrigues the support of his official influence. ”

“ Nothing tended so directly to make respectability conservative, and conservatism a fetich of respectability, as this union of bench and pulpit. The democrat had no caste; he was not respecta­ble; he was a Jacobin,—and no such character was admitted into a Federalist house. Every dissolute intriguer, loose-liver, forger, false-coiner, and prison­bird; every hair-brained, loud-talking demagogue; every speculator, scoffer, and atheist,—was a fol­lower of Jefferson; and Jefferson was himself the incarnation of their theories. ”

“ It is easy to know what would be Jefferson's position if by some miracle of nature he were living in these times. If at the South, he would be a man of brave words—showing it to be a natural right of the white man to own and to chastise his negro—and proving, from elementary principles, that slavery is the result of the supremacy of reason and the corner stone of civilized society. ”

“ Jefferson found himself drumming his fingers on his chest in time to the music. There had been so much martial music in his life. He thought of Patrick Henry riding into Williamsburg on that cloudy morning at the head of his 13 militia. Gallant, shabby Patrick, who had stood so tall in his run-down boots and worn leather breeches, his coat out at the elbows, who had twice sent great words ringing on the air of America, words that were so trumpet-strong and stirring that they still echoed in the ears of men and made a small thrill quiver in the breast of Thomas Jefferson himself. ”

“ Every foreigner and Federalist agreed that he was a man of illusions, dangerous to society and unbounded in power of evil; but if this view of his character was right, the same visionary qualities seemed also to be a national trait, for every one admitted that Jefferson’s opinions, in one form or another, were shared by a majority of the American people. ”

“ In no party sense was it true that all were Republicans or all Federalists. As will appear, Jefferson himself was far from meaning what he seemed to say. He wished to soothe the great body of his opponents, and if possible to win them over; but he had no idea of harmony or affection other than that which was to spring from his own further triumph; and in representing that he was in any sense a Federalist, he did himself a wrong.
"I know, indeed," he continued, "that some honest men fear that a republican government cannot be strong; that this government is not strong enough. ”

“ Let us, then, with the courage of Andrew Jackson, apply to present conditions the principles taught by Thomas Jefferson—Thomas Jefferson, the greatest constructive statesman whom the world has ever known; the greatest warrior who ever battled for human liberty. He quarried from the mountain of eternal truth the four pillars upon whose strength all popular government must rest. ”

“ The state of political opinion continues to return steadily towards republicanism. To judge from the opposition papers, a stranger would suppose that a considerable check to it had been produced by certain removals of public officers. But this is not the case. All offices were in the hands of the federalists. The injustice of having totally excluded republicans was acknowledged by every man. To have removed one half, and to have placed republicans in their stead, would have been rigorously just, when it was known that these composed a very great majority of the nation. ”

“ During his six years' residence in France, as American minister, Jefferson had become indoctrinated with the principles of French democracy. His main service and that of his party—the Democratic, or, as it was then called, the Republican party—to the young republic was in its insistence upon toleration of all beliefs and upon the freedom of the individual from all forms of governmental restraint. Jefferson has some claims to rank as an author in general literature. ”

“ To the mind of the Federalists the success of the Republicans, and particularly the elevation of Jefferson, meant a complete change in the government which they had been laboring to establish. Jefferson was to them the type of dangerous liberality in thought, in religion, and in government. In his tastes and his habits, his reading and investigation, Jefferson was half a century in advance of his contemporaries. Books and letters from learned men constantly came to him from Europe; he experimented in agriculture and science. ”

“ The government had been, for eight years, in the hands of Federalist partisans. If, as Jefferson declared in his Inaugural Address, "we are all Republicans, we are all Federalists;" if differences of opinion were not differences of principle; if he seriously wished all Americans to "restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things,"—he could afford to make few removals for party reasons. ”

“ From the 4th of July, 1776, Thomas Jefferson became one of the most prominent figures identified with American Independence, by reason of his patriotism, his abilities, and advanced views of political principles, though as inferior to Hamilton in original and comprehensive genius as he was superior to him in the arts and foresight of a political leader. He better understood the people than did his great political rival, and more warmly sympathized with their conditions and aspirations. ”

“ That the government, the world's best hope, had hitherto kept the country free and firm, in the full tide of successful experiment, was a startling compliment to the Federalist party, coming as it did from a man who had not been used to compliment his political opponents; but Federalists, on the other hand, might doubt whether this government would continue to answer the same purpose when administered for no other avowed object than to curtail its powers. Clearly, Jefferson credited government with strength which belonged to society ”