The Man Who Loved to Legislate—But Hated to Govern
JAMES MADISON’S FRIENDSHIP WITH George Washington never achieved the intimacy of the congressman’s relationship with Thomas Jefferson. The twenty-eight-year-old Madison had already served a year as councillor to Governor Patrick Henry when the thirty-six-year-old Jefferson was elected to succeed the famous orator in June 1779. Madison was undoubtedly aware of Jefferson’s role in drafting the Declaration of Independence and other noteworthy revolutionary documents, such as his defiant 1774 essay, A Summary View of the Rights of America.
In 1777–78, Jefferson had been chairman of a committee in Virginia’s legislature that submitted a staggering 126 bills aimed at eliminating “every trace…of ancient or future aristocracy.” One wonders how he thought that the delegates, absorbed in the challenge of fighting a war for survival, could be expected to overhaul the structure of their government at the same time. It was a glimpse of a streak of unrealism in Jefferson’s personality—an inclination to put words—especially his own words—ahead of practical considerations.
One bill, abolishing the Anglican faith as an established church, engulfed the legislature in angry debate for weeks, without reaching a decision. Another, calling for universal education, was much too expensive for the cash-strapped state to undertake. Only the law abolishing “entail”—making the eldest son the sole inheritor of a father’s wealth—won swift passage. The lawmakers failed to act on almost all of Jefferson’s other proposals. But the magnitude of the effort made it clear that he saw himself as a man ready to break new ground in the art and science of government.
In 1776, Jefferson had been placed on a five-man committee of the Continental Congress that was charged with producing a Declaration of Independence as soon as possible. A huge British fleet and army was heading for New York and the embryo American nation badly needed a rallying cry. The committee chose Jefferson to write the draft because he was a Virginian—the same reason Congress had chosen George Washington to lead the Continental Army. It was vital to give leadership tasks to the largest state in the rebellious confederation lest the brewing revolution seem like a New England uproar that could be dismissed as all too typical of the argumentative ex-Puritans.
Jefferson worked extremely hard on his appointed task. In 1943, a fragment of one of his early drafts was found in his papers. No less than 43 of the 156 words were additions or substitutions for words and phrases he had deleted. The opening paragraphs throb with a deeper, richer emotion than any other public document Jefferson ever wrote. Best among these sentences was one he never had to change: “We hold these truths to be self evident; that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Jefferson’s fellow committee members, who included John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, made several word changes in his draft. But their editing was mild compared to the going-over that Congress gave the document. They threw out whole paragraphs and totally revised the ending. Jefferson was outraged—a little known fact that one distinguished historian has wryly mocked. Drafters of documents were not expected to take such a personal interest in their hastily prepared words.
“This was no hack editing job,” the same historian acidly added. “The delegates who labored over the draft…had a splendid ear for language.” Along with a vastly improved ending, the editors twice added the word “God”—a player in the drama that Jefferson seemed inclined to ignore, if not dismiss. Rather than accept the judgment of his editor-peers, Jefferson laboriously made copies of his original draft and sent them to several friends as proof that his version was far superior. He, of course, got sympathetic replies. Most later readers have concluded that Congress’s version was both more powerful—and more eloquent.1
All in all, the lanky (6’ 2”) Virginian from Albermarle County, who lived in a spectacular mansion on the summit of a mountain, probably had an intimidating aura of superiority for slight James Madison. At this point in his life, his public accomplishments had not extended beyond his readiness to serve when summoned. As the oldest son of James Madison, Sr., proprietor of Montpelier, and the most prominent landowner in Orange County, Madison had been elected to the Virginia legislature in 1776. But he was much too self-effacing to make an impression on Jefferson or anyone else at that time.
The long hours the two men spent together as governor and councillor, discussing with the other seven councillors the problems and perils of wartime Virginia, soon created an intimacy that deepened steadily throughout the next six months. Jefferson soon regarded Madison as his most valuable advisor. As Jefferson put it in later years, he learned to rely on “the rich resources of his luminous and discriminating mind and of his extensive information.”2
The diffident Madison’s thinking on government was probably stimulated by the limitations of Virginia’s constitution. In their fear of executive tyranny, the Old Dominion’s framers had given the governor a minimum of executive power. Madison told one friend the office really consisted of “eight governors and a councillor.” Even then, the legislature retained 98 percent of the power. It is interesting and perhaps significant that Thomas Jefferson’s 126 proposed new laws made no effort to change this aspect of Virginia’s government. He apparently shared the framers’ fear of executive tyranny.
At the close of 1779, the Virginia House of Delegates elected Madison to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, and he began a correspondence with Thomas Jefferson that would eventually number 1,250 letters over the next forty years. Madison was soon signing many of his letters “your friend,” an expression that Jefferson quickly reciprocated. In one of his first letters, the new congressman told the governor “our public situation…continues equally perplexed and alarming.” It was the first of a series of grim truths about the struggle for independence that intensified Jefferson’s already mounting anxiety about Virginia’s and the nation’s survival.3
Six days after Governor Jefferson took office in 1779, he had written to his friend William Fleming (no relation to the author), who was a Virginia delegate in Congress. The new governor asked if there was any truth to the rumor that the British were willing to make peace but Congress was dragging its collective feet on a negotiation. “It would surely be better to carry on a war ten years hence,” Jefferson wrote, “than to continue the present [one] an unnecessary moment.”4
If the British had gotten their hands on that letter, their propagandists would have had a field day chortling about how the drafter of the Declaration of Independence wanted to drop out of the war. The letter again suggests a surprising strain of impracticality in Jefferson’s political judgment. No nation can “drop out” of a war and resume it ten years later.
The impulsive words were triggered by Governor Jefferson’s discovery of Virginia’s daunting problems. Inflation was making the paper money printed by the Continental Congress a bitter joke. The same thing was happening to paper dollars printed by Virginia. Governor Jefferson had no authority to curtail this debilitating flood, which was destroying patriot morale everywhere.
The governor had even less control over defending Virginia from attack. The state’s weak militia law enabled men to avoid service for the most trivial excuses, and Jefferson, a stickler about exact obedience to the will of the legislature, was loath to stretch the government’s authority, even in a looming crisis. In the spring of 1779, a British fleet had dropped anchor in Chesapeake Bay and sent ashore two thousand men. They captured a supposedly strong seacoast fort, burned the town of Suffolk, and cut a swath of fiery destruction across several dozen square miles of Virginia’s Tidewater district, without losing a man.
This foray was the first glimpse of a change in British strategy. After four frustrating years of trying to subdue the Revolution in the North, George III’s generals had decided to make the southern states their main target. Governor Jefferson could only watch helplessly while other British troops surged from Florida to conquer Georgia with dismaying ease. Next a redcoated army and fleet descended from New York to besiege Charleston, South Carolina, trapping a five thousand-man American army inside the city.
Congress did nothing but wring its collective hands. Madison reported a vague hope that the defenders could hold out until a French fleet forced the British to retreat. Jefferson wrote urgent letters to General Washington, asking him for help. But Washington, facing a British army in New York that outnumbered his Continentals, 3-1, could do nothing for him.
Other Madison letters from Congress reinforced the harsh limitations that General Washington confronted. The public treasury was empty and the private credit of men trying to buy food for the army was equally exhausted. More and more, the leadership of the war was in Washington’s hands. He even began publishing a newspaper to refute the propaganda pouring from British headquarters in New York. As Madison told Governor Jefferson in one of his gloomiest letters, Congress’s role had undergone “a total change” since 1776. In those glorious days, the solons printed paper money by the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The cash gave them the power to issue orders to the states. Now, with the money depreciated to wastepaper, Madison wrote that Congress was “as…dependent on the states as the King of England on the Parliament.”
Worse, the states exhibited little or no inclination to respond to Congress’s pleas to send food and fresh men to the Continental Army. Madison feared they were approaching a moment when “every thing must inevitably go wrong or come to a total stop.”5
While Madison and a few others tried to rouse the floundering Congress, Charleston’s five thousand defenders surrendered on May 12, 1780. The British army promptly invaded the rest of prostrate South Carolina. The Charleston captives included most of Virginia’s Continental regiments. A few weeks later, British cavalry destroyed another Virginia regiment that had been fleeing the doomed city. On August 16, 1780, at Camden, South Carolina, bayonet-wielding redcoats routed an army sent south under the command of Congress’s favorite general, Horatio Gates. Their ranks included seven hundred Virginia militia that Governor Jefferson had mustered with not a little difficulty. General Gates fled the battlefield and did not stop galloping rearward for 160 miles. His reputation never recovered.
Jefferson’s reputation also suffered a dent with some Virginians, who thought he should have accompanied the militia to the battlefield and rallied them with words as stirring as those he wrote in the Declaration of Independence. Joseph Jones, the senior member of Virginia’s congressional delegation, went so far as to hope Jefferson would lead these men in the battle. Under Virginia’s constitution, the governor was the commander in chief of the militia. The idea had not even occurred to Governor Jefferson. He had no pretensions to expertise—and not much interest—in military matters.6
In June of 1780, at the end of his first year as governor, Jefferson tried to resign. Shocked letters from close friends warned him that his reputation would never recover if he abandoned the leadership of the state in the midst of a crisis. It is a first glimpse of Jefferson’s reluctance to wield executive power—and his puzzling lack of enthusiasm for playing the role of an effective leader. Wearily, with no uplifting words about patriotism and duty, Jefferson agreed to serve another year.
If Congressman Madison heard about his friend’s attempted resignation, he did not mention it in his letters. Madison had more distressing news to report—“the sudden defection of Major General Benedict Arnold and his flight to the enemy.” Madison told how Arnold had almost succeeded in surrendering the Hudson River fortress of West Point to the British, trapping General Washington, the French ambassador, and the Marquis de Lafayette in the snare.7
Three months later, an agitated messenger galloped into Richmond to warn Governor Jefferson that another enemy fleet and army were in the Chesapeake. The commander was newly minted British Brigadier Benedict Arnold, and he soon headed up the James River with fifteen hundred men. Governor Jefferson had refused to believe the warning and had waited two days to summon the militia in the three counties around Richmond. A paltry two hundred men turned out. Meanwhile, the Governor had to get his terrified wife and three daughters out of the menaced capital to a nearby plantation. Martha Jefferson had given birth to a baby girl only two months earlier and was still far from well.
Riding back to Richmond along the opposite side of the James River, Jefferson arrived to find Arnold burning tobacco warehouses and other property in the capital. A redcoated detachment marched up the river to Westham, where they destroyed the foundry and shops that made Virginia’s muskets. With scarcely a hostile shot fired at him, Brigadier Arnold returned to the coast and set up a permanent base at Portsmouth, where he was soon reinforced by another two thousand men.
Although Virginia had at least fifty thousand men on her militia rolls, Governor Jefferson could not raise enough soldiers to dislodge the British, who repeatedly ravaged the countryside, burning shipyards, ships, and huge quantities of tobacco. In the midst of this public ordeal came a wrenching personal loss—five-month-old Lucy Elizabeth Jefferson died in Richmond, leaving her mother prostrate with grief.
Two weeks later, Brigadier Arnold came up the James River again, once more forcing Governor Jefferson to flee into the countryside with his family. The climax to this ordeal was the invasion of Virginia by Charles, General Lord Cornwallis, the British commander in the Carolinas. He had decided that the rest of the South would not be pacified until Virginia was knocked out of the war. Combined with the garrison in Portsmouth, he had eighty-two hundred men.
Governor Jefferson, his councillors, and the legislature fled west to Charlottesville. Cornwallis rumbled through the countryside, burning and looting at will. The state’s morale sank to the vanishing point. One of Jefferson’s closest friends, John Page, wailed: “I am ashamed and ever shall be to call myself a Virginian.”8
At this political nadir, Jefferson informed the legislature that June 2, 1781, would mark the end of his second year as governor, and he did not intend to serve another term. The state’s desperate situation made his decision even more incredible to people who had witnessed George Washington’s refusal to quit after shattering defeats in 1776 and 1777, capped by the ordeal at Valley Forge. It was even more unnerving evidence that Jefferson seemed to place little or no value on his role as the revolutionary leader of Virginia.
Some months earlier, on March 23, 1781, the Governor had told James Madison in a personal letter that he intended to step down. But he seems never to have revealed his intentions to anyone else. Madison had replied, on April 3, that he could not “forbear lamenting that the state in its present crisis is to lose the benefit of your administration.” But he was sure that Jefferson had “weighed well the reasons” for the decision, and Madison would lament it henceforth “in silence.” This was an extremely polite way of saying Jefferson was making a mistake—and an almost pathetic glimpse of Madison’s deference to his friend.9
The Governor’s political timing could not have been worse. Early on June 4, two days after his resignation, an agitated horseman came pounding up the steep road to Monticello’s summit, shouting: “Tarleton is coming!” Redhaired Colonel Banastre Tarleton was the most feared cavalry leader in the British army. In a bid to demolish the last shreds of Virginia’s resistance, General Cornwallis had sent Tarleton and 250 of his green-coated horsemen on a hundred-mile dash west to scatter the legislature and capture Governor Jefferson. They had thudded through the Virginia countryside without a shot fired at them—more evidence of the almost total collapse of Virginia’s will to resist the royal invaders.
The ex-governor’s only option was another flight with his terrified wife, Martha, and their two daughters, to a nearby plantation. Returning to Monticello to order silver and other valuables hidden, Jefferson had the unpleasant experience of looking down on the main street of Charlottesville through his spyglass and seeing Tarleton’s horsemen riding down fleeing members of the legislature. The beat of hooves on Monticello’s winding road warned him that a detachment of dragoons was heading his way, making it wise for him to retire from the vicinity as rapidly as possible.
In July, a rump group of legislators assembled at Staunton, Virginia, on the other side of the Blue Ridge Mountains, to affirm that the demoralized state still had a government. They elected a new governor and, at the suggestion of one member, resolved that an inquiry be made “into the conduct of the Executive of this state for the past twelve months.” The man behind this nasty proposal was Patrick Henry. He was disgusted with Governor Jefferson’s performance and had decided it was time to get rid of him as one of Virginia’s leaders.
Nothing in Thomas Jefferson’s political career would ever wound him so deeply. He did not write a letter to James Madison for the next five months, nor did Madison write to him. They did not even exchange comments on the extraordinary transformation of the war. In mid-September 1781, General Washington and America’s French allies marched to Virginia to cooperate with the French West Indies fleet and trap General Lord Cornwallis and his army in the port of Yorktown. After a bombardment that lasted little more than a week, the British surrendered, rescuing Virginia and the rest of the crumbling American confederacy from imminent collapse.
Although Jefferson wrote a letter congratulating Washington, he was not the same man who, as governor, had exchanged crisp, detailed communications with the general about the war in Virginia. Instead, he humbly explained that he would have come in person to thank him for Yorktown. But he was sure Washington had better things to do than exchange small talk with a mere “private individual.” The draft of the letter was crossed out and interlined to an extraordinary degree, suggesting Jefferson’s emotional turmoil. It is sad evidence of the deep depression into which Jefferson had plunged after the humiliating close of his governorship.10
Neither the assembly nor the man who proposed the inquiry into Governor Jefferson’s conduct had made any specific charges. But Jefferson magnified the proposal into a grievance that gave him an excuse to withdraw from politics permanently. He told his friend, Edmund Randolph: “I have returned to my farm, my family, and my books, from which I think nothing ever more will separate me.” The astounded Randolph replied: “If you can justify this resolution to yourself, I am confident you cannot to the world.”11
It is more than a little significant that Jefferson said nothing to James Madison about his withdrawal from public life—nor did his younger friend say a word to him, although there is no doubt that Randolph, who was also serving in Congress, had informed Madison of Jefferson’s letter. Similarly, neither Jefferson nor Madison mentioned the Virginia Assembly’s decision when they considered charges against him, two months after Yorktown. The legislators, their mood transformed by Washington’s victory, dismissed the indictment and declared their unwaveringly high opinion of Jefferson’s “ability, rectitude, and integrity as chief magistrate of this commonwealth.” By this time, not even Patrick Henry saw any point in condemning the drafter of the Declaration of Independence when hopes of ultimate victory were dawning.12
The legislature’s exoneration did not alter Jefferson’s determination to quit public life. He reiterated to several friends that he had no plans to leave Monticello for the rest of his days. He declined to serve when his county’s voters chose him for the state legislature and ignored a warning from the Speaker of the House of Delegates that he was risking arrest.
James Monroe, nephew of Congressman Joseph Jones, had been elected to the Virginia legislature from another county. Monroe warned the ex-governor that many members were criticizing him. Jefferson replied with an emotional letter. He declared that the threat of censure had inflicted injuries on his feelings that could only be cured by “the all healing grave.” He reinforced this pronouncement by refusing an attempt to elect him to Congress.13
An obviously troubled Madison admitted to Edmund Randolph that he was partial to Jefferson. But “the mode in which he seems determined to revenge the wrong inflicted by his country does not appear to me to be dictated either by philosophy or patriotism.” Madison was much kinder when he wrote to Jefferson. He explained his long silence by saying he was so certain the legislature would exonerate his friend, their decision had made “little impression” on him. But he confessed to personal disappointment because Jefferson had refused the attempt to elect him to Congress. To work with him again would have given Madison “both unexpected and personal satisfaction.” The country would also have probably derived “important aid” from his presence.14
At the close of his letter to James Monroe, Jefferson revealed an additional reason for his inner turmoil: “Mrs. Jefferson has added another daughter to our family. She has been ever since and still continues very dangerously ill.” Six months later, Martha Jefferson died, inflicting a terrific blow to this emotionally fragile man’s stability. For a while there was fear Jefferson would commit suicide—he later admitted he had considered it. His sense of responsibility for his three young daughters forced him to cling to a life he no longer valued. But he did little except wander his mansion or ride aimlessly around the countryside in a stupor of grief, sometimes accompanied by his distraught oldest daughter, Martha.
Jefferson did not write a word about this tragic ordeal to Madison. But the younger man soon heard about it from their mutual friend, Edmund Randolph, who described Jefferson as “inconsolable.” Madison knew how totally a plantation could become a world in itself, enveloping a man. He decided Jefferson’s only hope of recovery was a swift return to public life.
By this time, Madison had become one of the most influential members of Congress. He had no trouble persuading his fellow legislators to appoint Jefferson a commissioner in the peace negotiations that were about to begin in France. A confidential letter whizzed from Madison to Edmund Randolph in Virginia, telling him to let Jefferson know as quickly as possible. “An official notification will follow,” Madison added. Showing how well he understood that Jefferson’s wounded feelings needed balm, Madison urged Randolph to tell the ex-governor that the resolution “passed unanimously, without a single remark adverse to it.”
This long-range psychology worked perfectly. Jefferson accepted the appointment and was soon ready to leave Monticello for France. Accompanied by young Martha, he went first to Philadelphia to get the background he needed for his peace negotiator’s role. A smiling Madison greeted him at Virginia’s favorite boarding house, run by a genial widow named Mrs. Mary House and her lively daughter, Mrs. Elizabeth Trist. After three years of separation, the two men quickly regained their old intimacy.
Another sign of their renewed friendship was a confession from Madison that he was in love. The young lady was a pretty teenager named Kitty Floyd, daughter of a New York congressman and his wife—also residents of Mrs. House’s hostelry. Young women did not go to college or pursue careers in 1782. Kitty, who would soon be sixteen, was considered more than eligible for marriage. Jefferson and his daughter headed for Baltimore, where a French frigate was to take them to France. Winter weather and a British blockade of the Chesapeake delayed his departure.
As he waited in Baltimore, Jefferson exchanged wry letters in cipher with Madison about the foibles of some of their fellow revolutionists. Madison described a stream of imprudent diatribes from John Adams, who was in Europe serving as one of the peace commissioners. These angry screeds exposed his vanity, his prejudice against France, and his “venom” against America’s ambassador, Benjamin Franklin. Jefferson tried to defend his colleague from the heroic days of 1776, who had stoutly supported his draft of the Declaration of Independence against congressional editing. He assured Madison that the volatile Yankee had a “sound head” and “integrity.”
As Jefferson began to complain of boredom in Baltimore, word arrived from France that the American negotiators had signed a “provisional” treaty of peace. Congress cancelled Jefferson’s appointment, but he did not return to Monticello. Instead, he headed for Philadelphia and participated in the celebrations when a copy of the peace treaty arrived from Europe on the ship Washington.
Early in the new year (1783), Jefferson proved that he had regained his equilibrium by writing a letter to George Washington in which he expressed his “individual tribute” for all the general “had effected for us.” He hesitated to indulge in “warm effusions” because “even the appearance of adulation” was “foreign” to his nature. Washington replied in equally warm terms. He wrote that winning the approval of men like Jefferson was all the reward he sought for his long service in pursuit of the victory that now seemed certain.15
Back in Virginia, Jefferson received a letter that exploded his hope that James Madison and Kitty Floyd would happily marry. On her return to New York, Miss Floyd had had second thoughts and written Madison a curt, dismissive letter. Struggling to be philosophical, Madison confided to Jefferson that it was “one of those incidents to which such affairs are liable.”
Jefferson tried to console his younger friend, exclaiming that “no event has been more contrary to my expectations.” He reminded him that “the world still presents the same and many other resources for happiness,” and assured Madison that “firmness of mind and unremitting occupation [hard work]” were the best remedies for his pain.
Madison stayed in Philadelphia until his term in Congress expired in November 1783, trying to take Jefferson’s advice about hard work. But circumstances beyond his control made legislative labors difficult. Not long after General Washington persuaded the infuriated officers of the Continental Army at New Windsor to abandon plans to march on the bankrupt Congress to demand their back pay, the nation’s legislators found themselves surrounded by a surly regiment of bayonet wielding soldiers who had been stationed in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. They wanted their long unpaid back salaries immediately, if not sooner.
Congress fled to Princeton, New Jersey, a little village with few of the creature comforts of Philadelphia. Madison found himself sharing a bed with six-foot-tall Joseph Jones, which added sleeplessness to his woes. He told one correspondent that he scarcely had room “to move my limbs.” Far more distressing was Congress’s descent to a new low in the eyes of the nation. One Philadelphia newspaper issued a summary judgment that was soon echoed by editors and readers everywhere. The legislators’ decision to cut and run “exhibited neither dignity, fortitude, nor perseverance.” In Europe, one American traveler reported, the story had been inflated into “the annihilation of Congress and the utter destruction of the commonwealth.”16
The American peace commissioners, waiting for a final version of the provisional treaty, warned that the news had “diminished the admiration in which the people of America were held by the nations of Europe.” This was James Madison’s reward for three years of toil, trying to create a legislature worthy of an independent nation. There can be little doubt that the experience made him begin thinking about a drastic cure for Congress’s futility.
In June 1783, the Virginia legislature nominated Thomas Jefferson to replace Madison as the leader of the state’s congressional delegation. Congress had moved to Annapolis, the capital of Maryland. There, Jefferson found a pathetic ghost of the legislature he had known in 1776. Only twenty delegates were present from seven states, which meant it was impossible to make any important decisions.
Staring at the delegates was the most significant document that Congress had considered since the Declaration of Independence—the definitive treaty of peace. With it came a letter from Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay, the American negotiators, telling them that the “riot in Philadelphia”—the attack by the bayonet-wielding soldiers—had given the British hopes that the United States was about to collapse, making a peace treaty dead on arrival.
The treaty stipulated that the Americans would sign it within six months of its acceptance by the British and the French. On January 1, 1784, an anxious Jefferson was telling Madison that one of the current congressmen had gone home, leaving only six states represented instead of the nine that were required to ratify the treaty. March 3 was the deadline for the signed treaty to be delivered to the British. What to do?
Arthur Lee, a Virginia delegate who specialized in being cantankerous, told Jefferson that seven states would be enough, and soon convinced two other Virginia delegates to join him in “violent” insistence on this solution. They vowed to put the idea to a vote when and if they had seven states represented.
Jefferson demurred. Too much was at stake to risk an accusation of deception from the truculent British. He sought Madison’s opinion, and he strongly agreed on the need for nine states. Signing with only seven present might deceive the British, but it would be “immediately detected at home” and the deception would “dishonor…Federal Councils everywhere.” This turmoil did not improve the depression that continued to trouble Jefferson. “I have had very ill health since I have been here, and am getting lower rather than otherwise,” he told Madison.17
Meanwhile, the president of Congress rushed frantic messages to absent members, and they trickled into Annapolis. On January 14, Congress had twenty-three delegates from nine states. To Jefferson’s vast relief, the peace treaty was ratified and returned to Europe. Not until May did the British sign it, making peace permanent.
This achievement was to be Jefferson’s only legislative satisfaction. Congress continued to behave like a pack of ill-bred adolescents. They came and went at will, repeatedly leaving those still in their seats without a quorum. Even when they managed to muster that minimum requirement, the delegates were so contentious, there was no hope of agreement on anything. An exasperated Jefferson—a lawyer himself—blamed the impasse on the fact that most of the delegates were attorneys, “whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour.”
Jefferson’s frustrations renewed his wish for the peace and quiet of private life. He urged Madison to buy land near Monticello. He had persuaded James Monroe and another young admirer, William Short, both of whom had studied law under his guidance, to agree with this idea. “In such a society,” Jefferson saw himself quitting politics and its contentions once and for all. “Life is of no value but as it brings us gratifications,” he avowed, and he saw no hope of pleasure in the “insupportable” arguments that harried him in Congress.
In the light of future years, perhaps the most important topic Jefferson addressed during this sojourn in Congress arrived on his desk in a letter from George Washington. When the Continental Army of the Revolution disbanded in 1783, the officers formed a “Society of the Cincinnati,” a name that honored the Roman general, Cincinnatus, who surrendered his military power after he successfully defended Rome, and returned to his farm. It was no accident that the Society elected Washington as their first president. In their eyes, he was a veritable model of this peaceful relinquishment of the honors and privileges of war.
The Society’s chief purpose was to offer help to officers who needed aid to reestablish their civilian lives. Another principle was a hereditary right for sons and grandsons of the founders to inherit their membership. This idea stirred violent antipathy among the civilians who had not served in the army. They accused the Cincinnati of conspiring to undermine America’s republican principles by creating a new aristocracy. Washington was disturbed by this rancor and asked Jefferson’s opinion of the Society, and how he might best deal with its political problems without undermining its commitment to help ex-officers in need of help.
Ex-Governor Jefferson wrote a masterful reply to the retired general. He told Washington the hereditary idea violated the American principle of “the natural equality of man…particularly the idea of preeminence by birth.” Most people, including almost all the current members of Congress, disapproved of it. Washington was not immortal, and they feared that future leaders of the Cincinnati would forget that “the moderation of a single character has probably prevented this revolution from being closed as most others have been, by a subversion of that liberty it was intended to establish.” The only solution, it seemed to Jefferson, was the abandonment of the hereditary principle. Even better might be the disbandment of the Society.
Jefferson closed his extraordinarily frank reply by assuring Washington that he would mention their discussion to no one. He saw himself as temporarily “thrown back by events on a stage where I had never more thought to appear.” He did not think he would stay very long in this role, but “while I remain…I shall be gratified by all occasions of rendering you service & of convincing you there is no one to whom your reputation & happiness are dearer.”18
Washington was so impressed, he stopped in Annapolis on his way to a meeting of the Cincinnati in Philadelphia. He spent an evening with Jefferson, discussing the best way to preserve the Society. He agreed with Jefferson about the need to eliminate the hereditary idea. But the ex-general felt too committed to the Society’s desire to offer mutual aid and brotherhood to urge the harsh final step of disbanding.19
After Washington departed, the quarrels of Congress must have seemed even more trivial to the still depressed Jefferson. Suddenly, rescue appeared in the guise of a message from Europe. Peace commissioner John Jay had announced his resignation, and the southern states demanded that someone from their region replace him. Congress had asked the commissioners (Jay, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin) to remain in Europe and negotiate commercial treaties with several nations. Southerners felt their interests should be represented by one of their own.
To no one’s surprise, Congress nominated Jefferson for the post. He accepted without even a moment’s hesitation—evidence that he dreaded a return to Monticello and its tragic aura, which would only worsen his depression. At least as influential was his eagerness to visit Europe and explore nations and societies that he had read and thought about since his student days.
“I am now to take leave of the justlings (sic) of the states,” Jefferson informed Madison with visible delight. In this new field, “the divisions will be fewer but on a larger scale.” He hoped Madison would continue their correspondence. He was especially desirous of hearing from him “at the close of every session” of the Virginia legislature, and of Congress, so Jefferson could remain up-to-date on “general measures and dispositions.”20
With almost incoherent haste, Jefferson returned to Philadelphia, where he had left his thirteen-year-old daughter, Martha, in the care of poet Francis Hopkinson and his wife. The new diplomat invited William Short to join him as his secretary. In early May 1784, Jefferson and his entourage headed north to Boston, where a ship awaited them. Now and then, he paused to discuss politics with various friends in New England. In a farewell note to Madison, he reported “the conviction growing strongly that nothing can preserve our confederacy unless the band of Union, their common council [Congress], be strengthened.”21
Those words underscore a significant fact. Thomas Jefferson was out of touch with George Washington’s and James Madison’s approach to strengthening the federal government. The man from Monticello was thinking about Congress; the man from Mount Vernon and his scholarly young advisor would soon be thinking about a new political entity: the American presidency. This divide in their approach to the nation’s government would grow deeper in the years to come.
Simultaneously, the new envoy was sailing toward another divide. France, the nation whose soldiers and warships and money had made a crucial difference in winning the struggle for independence, was almost as bankrupt as the United States. It was a condition that was hard for King Louis XVI in his splendid palace at Versailles and the noblemen in their sumptuous mansions in Paris to understand. But in the winding alleys and backstreets of Paris were people who would soon propose a future for France that would change the way Thomas Jefferson thought about politics forever.