The USA in Thomas Jefferson’s Time
1801-1809
by Mike Donovan
The Revolution of 1800 - Planter with 200 slaves- The only red-haired president - Democratic Republican – William and Mary - Inventor of the “Dumbargo” – Nickname “Big Red” - Signed on for the Louisiana Purchase – Authorized the Lewis, Clark, and Sacajawea expedition – Stood up to the Barbary Pirates (sort of) - Nail Factory – The Anas - Kept two grizzly bear cubs in a pit in the White House lawn.
Jefferson defeated John Adams in a three-way race in 1800. TJ had 73 E-votes to 65 for the incumbent Adams. In the election of 1804 Jefferson took Pinckney down 162-14.
“I would rather have newspapers without government, than government without newspapers.”
I guess he wasn’t much of a sports fan if he could make a statement like that.
“The greatest of all talents is never using two words when one will do.”
That fascinating dazzling interesting statement, that wise aphorism, those sparkling sagacious words of infinite wisdom, are, irrefutably, indubitably, indisputably, without any conceivable doubt whatsoever, very very very true.
Thomas Jefferson has come down to history as a pure and idealistic democrat who fought for the common man and the slave who hated both the Federalist Party and the rich class that supported it. He was the Robin Hood of the USA’s early years, while Hamilton was the black knight.
In reality Jefferson’s time was a continuation of Federalist philosophy by a different means. That means was the farm. As long as the farmers were central, Jefferson was perfectly willing to see a country dominated by the rich. He was the 1800 Maoist libertarian, favoring agrarian revolution, with his antagonist Hamilton playing the role of Leninist revolutionary from the cities guy. But both were really federalists. It just so happened that the rival Federalist party favored the city merchants and rich bankers over the interests of the farmers. This is why Jefferson was an 'anti-Federalist.' Not because he was against their philosophy of big government, he was simply against the current choice of special interest groups.
The Jeff versus Ham argument dominated the first two decades of American history. Hamilton and Jefferson were personal and political opponents. The wisdom of their philosophies in theory and in practice is still debated today. Most historians take Jefferson’s side and a few take Hamilton’s. They were both snobs in their own corners. If Hamilton had ben a little more down to earth he would have been one of the greats.
I don't buy the practical political greatness of Jefferson, mainly because of his “Dumbargo” an insane decision late in his Presidency to forbid all export and import trade in order to punish France and England. TJ was a fabulous and progressive individual person, but this 1807 tying of both our hands behind our back was a national disaster. TJ also weakened the country by reductions in military spending which of course translated into military weakness. Worse, he was not reducing the military budget merely for financial savings. He was doing it because he was against our nation even having a strong national military force. Jefferson thought that a strong national army and navy was an evil thing. He made Neville Chamberlain seem like a lunatic war-hawk.
Jefferson was leftist relative to the time, but he was no pure democrat. He feared the dominance of the elected legislatures as much as he feared the tyranny of the individual ruler. That is why Tom favored several ideas designed to protect the nation from democratic tyranny. He favored a dominant upper house of aristocrats elected by the lower house. He favored an independent judiciary. And he favored a strong President.
“An elective despotism is not the government we fought for,” he wrote. In other words, one of the things checked by the system of checks and balances, is the fickle and sometimes immature free will of the electorate. Jefferson was closer to the classic conservative views of men like John Adams and James Madison than many historians care to admit. TJ’s famous rebel streak was cautious, qualified and generally reduced to statements, not actions.
When Jefferson became president he decided that the Federalist economic system was already so firmly entrenched, that he would do the country more harm than good in trying to overthrow it. So he pulled an Obama. He continued on with the Federalist policies he had campaigned against. It is many times easier to condemn than it is to build. His successors in the Virginia dynasty, Madison and Monroe, so completely fell in line with Federalist economics that it became a travesty that they have come down to history with an image of opposition to big central government.
The Federalists as a party faded from power while their ideas skyrocketed under new management. Fed ideas were co-opted, thus rendering the party useless, much like the story of the American Socialist Party in the early part of the 20th Century.
CABINET
Secretary of State ---------James Madison -1801-1809
Secretary of War -----------Henry Dearborn- 1801-1809
Sec. of the Treasury--------Samuel Dexter (F) 1801
Albert Gallatin 1801-1809
Attorney General ---------- Levi Lincoln - 1801-1804
Robert Smith -1804-1805
John Breckinridge- (F) 1805-1806
C.A. Rodney ---- 1806-1809
Sec of Navy------------------ Ben Stoddert (F) --1801
Robert Smith ---1801-1804
Jacob Crowinshield-1804-1809
BIO
TJ was born on April 13, 1743 in Shadwell, Albemarle County, Virginia. Like Washington and Madison he came from a moderately well to do family name. These three men gave more to the grandeur of their name than the name gave to them.
Peter Jefferson, Tom’s dad, was a wheat farmer and a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses. Peter died suddenly at the age of 50 leaving the farm to young Tom who was only 14 years old.
TJ grew up to be a sturdy physical man, not big in the chest but strong and agile. Tom is often called “wiry.” He was six feet two inches tall and had reddish hair. Some called it blondish, some called it red, but mostly it was called ‘reddish.’ He was not particularly handsome young man but became better looking with age, as his wisdom and success brought him a highly confident demeanor. He had an engaging conversational style with a notable undertone of pleasantness.
The farm that Peter left to Tom was named Shadwell, but there was a hill on the property called Monticello (pronounced ‘chello’ not ‘sello’) on which Thomas would later build his famous house which still stands today as a monument to his greatness and functions as a profitable tourist trap (they charged me an outrageous 25 dollars to visit the house in 2005.)
On 1760 Jefferson entered William and Mary. Perhaps I should make that more clear. He enrolled in a Virginia University named William and Mary. He studied hard, fifteen hours a day as a matter of fact if his boast is to be believed. Thomas Jefferson certainly did not lack conceit and later recounted his college days in self-praising terms. I say this with no disdain. In a world (today’s) where every manual laborer and office worker has an insufferable ego, it is refreshing to study a guy who actually backed it up.
Jefferson read extensively and had fine eclectic taste, enjoying all but moral philosophy, which he detested. He was particularly drawn to mathematics and science. Jefferson enjoyed novels but made it a point to avoid them because they soaked up too much badly needed time. (A majority of our Presidents were readers who did not care much for novels. Kennedy liked novels but few others did and generally it is people who study history that end up making it, present company excluded of course.)
After William and Mary, TJ studied law under the tutelage of George Wythe (a later pal of John Marshall and Henry Clay). He later claimed that here too he was studying 15 hours a day, but since he was known to chase pretty women like any other healthy 21 year old male in 1764, and was not immune to a game of cards, it is hard to believe. The only boast we could surely believe would be if he claimed to have been the biggest braggart in Virginia. No wonder historian Harry Truman loved him so, since Harry was an insufferable braggart as well.
It was a testimony to his overt talent that great men at William & Mary befriended Jefferson. With Wythe, Governor Farquier, and other college professors, Jefferson was part of a gang of intellectuals far above his own age group. He spent little time in the company of his mere mortal fellow students. (Washington’s life tells the same story.)
In 1767 Tom passed the bar. He would remain a lawyer until 1774. In his second year of private practice he tried 115 cases in the general court, and probably saw action with lower courts too. He was making money hand over fist. Later he would deliberately try not to get rich while in public office and in the end would succeed. He died almost broke. Thomas Jefferson was a generous man.
In 1768 Jefferson ran for the local seat in the Virginia House of Burgesses. During the campaign he kept open house with free booze (‘punch’) and was cordial and polite with all. Courtesy was his natural way. He rose so very high in politics largely because he had an enviable skill of being able to win respect without making enemies. He won his Burgess campaign in 1768 and took a seat in politics for the first time on May 11, 1769.
On January 1, 1772 'Red' finally married a Miss Martha Wales Skelton, (after almost marrying a young lady named Belinda whom he promised to marry after he came back from Europe – she didn’t take him up on this offer). It was the ‘Red-Skelton’ wedding.
Martha was nice (the most important), clever, pretty and rich. But he didn’t need her dough. He had more than enough, although her family money admittedly didn’t hurt the kitty. By New Years Day 1772 Tom had already recently increased his slave total to 52 souls and the land he owned to 5,000 acres.
When trouble with England led to the creation of the first American Congress, Virginia chose him as its representative. When this Congress met a year later it was Jefferson again. A year later it was Thomas again. And when it was time for Independence the nation through its chosen representatives, chose Thomas Jefferson to write the Declaration. And as the world knows, he nailed it.
Jefferson from early on had been one of the Rebels. He befriended Patrick Henry. TJ was standing at the back of the hall in awe as that Virginia firebrand delivered some of his most violent speeches.
Many of the political men had mixed feelings on separation and on loyalty to England. Not him. Jefferson didn’t care much for the English island 3,000 miles across the sea. He wrote that he would help sink it to the bottom of the sea before he would accept its unfair policies. He, like his predecessor Adams, was an Independence man long before there were very many at all.
But Jefferson and his fellow radicals consistently held back on their demands in order to let the undecided catch up with the rest of the group. Then, as the sentiment for Independence grew towards unanimity with each month and each incident, Jefferson and the radicals became bolder in their defiance of England. But they had been itching for separation long before.
As a member of the House of Burgesses Jefferson rarely gave floor speeches. One of the most prominent features of Jefferson’s personality was his shyness about public speaking. He had a weak speaking voice. He couldn't out-shout Dick Cavett. As a writer or in small workgroups he was an ace, but TJ had a deep fear of public speaking. As President he was so unwilling to give speeches that he had his inaugural address and state of the Union message delivered in writing only.
When in 1775 Lord North sent over the famous ‘conciliatory proposition,’ from England, Jefferson was chosen by the Virginia legislature to write the response.
The fourth of July 1776 was a great day for Jefferson. He had drafted the Declaration of Independence. John Adams and Ben Franklin made a few changes, and their handwritten notations are on the original document now on display in Philadelphia. Among the changes was the excising of a passage condemning King George III for his promotion of the slave trade. Those who wanted the passage taken out argued that the colonies were hypocrites on that score. The northern colonies were shipping the ‘black cargoes’ (especially Newport, Rhode Island) and the southern colonies were buying them.
Jefferson owned slaves and yet fought to stop the slave trade. His friend George Wythe freed his slaves and Jefferson could have but chose not to. So he was more talk than action. But on the other hand when Jefferson later drafted the Northwest Territory Ordinance he personally included a clause to outlaw slavery there. Why he kept his slaves anyway is another question.
Uncle Tom was known to have been tapping a couple of his female slaves. What is extra sad is that everyone who knows absolutely nothing about American History knows this fact. One of the burden’s of studying history is that every base-brain that sees you with a history book has to tell you some awful and usually apocryphal fact about history instead of letting you read.
The Declaration of Independence has been criticized as a rip-off of ideas that had been expressed previously by various thinkers and writers over the previous two centuries. Adams and Pickering called Jefferson a ‘hack’ for getting so much praise for it. But it is a stupid criticism. The revolution had been coming to a boil for years. Every scholar and politician on both sides of the ocean had long debated all existing ideas of good versus bad government. Jefferson never claimed to be writing original thoughts, nor did anyone want or expect him to. He was assigned to put into words with his fine pen, the feelings of all the people of the colonies. And these people through their representatives in Congress were definitely now for independence. TJ was not asked to think for America, he was asked to speak for it, to find the right words for what was already felt. He did a great job.
Jefferson always believed that if not for the extreme heat in Philly that summer, the men debating Independence would have gone on arguing till all in the room had passed away and their sons had to continue the battle. There was also a horse stable nearby and swarms of horseflies were bothering and biting everyone. Franklin let out such a yelp when one of them stung him that everyone in the room jumped and then laughed. The guys wanted out of the heat and to get away from the flies. They all were eager by the late hours of July 4 to find agreement on the crux and let smaller differences rest. They finally did, about a half hour short of the fifth of July.
There is a book waiting to be written called “Weather History”. The annals of history can be scoured to find examples of the weather changing and affecting history. The great storm that destroyed the Spanish Armada in 1588 would be an obvious example to start with. Then we can add the summer heat wave of 1776.
Thomas was elected again to the Congress in 1776 but declined to serve, citing personal affairs at the time but changing his story later to a feeling that his services were no longer needed since the Royal oppressors were now disconnected.
Thirteen states were now fully independent, not one nation. But this was preferable to thirteen provinces under the hell heel of England. As the newly freed colonies began to organize, it was a rare chance in history for change, political experiment and growth. As Jack Morse put it in 1883
“The people were like a ploughed field in
which the political sower might scatter
broadcast new ideas and innovating
doctrines with fair hope of an early harvest.”
Jefferson next became governor of Virginia, a post he held from 1779 to 1781.
It was not an easy time to have this particular job. Not only was he a war governor, but worse, his state was the soil for much of the fighting. There was no money in the state treasury and the British were invading from time to time. It's hard enough to be a governor in times of peace. Jefferson resigned the job of Governor of Virginia after two years and freely admitted that he was not the right man for the position.
In 83 and 84 Tom was a Virginia delegate to the Congress of the Confederation. Then he became a roving free agent in Europe, representing the USA in several countries from 1784 to 1786.
Jefferson was Minister to France from 1785 to 1787, so he was shopping for postcards along the Seine while the rest of the Founding Fathers were writing the Constitution. He missed out on that one.
When his buddy George Washington became President, Jefferson was appointed Secretary of State (resigning in 1793). Then he became the hostile sitting Vice President under John Adams (the two men became good friends after they both left the Presidency.)
TJ was, “the first leader of an opposition political party to wrest control of the national government from the party in power.”
True, but Jefferson had the unfair advantage of being able to operate from within. Jefferson used his position as Vice President to strengthen his Democratic-Republican Party and his upcoming candidacy for president. He was a Trojan Horse VP
Thomas Jefferson was also a well-respected inventor. For example he thought that switching several big books around his desk was slowing down his work so he invented a three-stage swivel so that all his source books could be readily available (where can I buy one?). Jefferson also invented the English muffin, and was a fine musician, his favorite instrument being the fiddle. He also invented baseball (no, it wasn't Abner Doubleday.)
EVENTS
ELECTION OF 1800
LOUISIANA PURCHASE
ELECTION OF 1804
CLERMONT 1807
BURR CONSPIRACY 1807
LEOPARD ATTACK
THE BARBARY WAR
HAMILTON DUELS BURR
BURR’S CONSPIRACY
EMBARGO ACT
THE ANAS
ELECTION/REVOLUTION OF 1800
Jefferson declared his election to be ‘the Revolution of 1800,’ a pretentious assertion but one that the historians still agree with; well, most of them anyway. Paul Boller says that Adams had changed so much in the direction of the Republicans by the end of his term that the transition of 1800 was no big shock to the national system, and that Jefferson's declaration of a Revolution was just puffs of wind to dramatize the victory.
Hamilton and the Federalists were unhappy with Adams as the new century came around. Mostly they were angry because he had supposedly appeased France in order to avoid war. The greatest thing Adams ever did, avoiding war with France when the bloodthirsty Feds were clamoring for it, was twisted at election time into the worst thing he ever did. Hamilton and his clique were angry with John Adams because he had taken the leadership of the Federalist Party by the horns when Hamilton thought he should still sort of be regent, calling the shots with Adams as his obedient Party puppet. He complained that, “if we are going to have an enemy at the head fo the government, at least let us have one we can oppose.” A lot of lefties feel the same way about President Obama today (2011.)
So when Adams stood for re-election, Hamilton looked to the Federalist Vice Presidential candidate as the man he would rather see in power. The ticket was Adams and Pinckney. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney was from South Carolina, and balanced the ticket nicely. Pinckney's brother was the VP nominee for President in 1796. If Adams had won in 1800, the nation would have the Pinckney brothers as back-to-back Vice-Presidents.
Hamitlon had a scheme to get C. Cotesworth Pinckney into the President's chair by sly manipulation of the system. The Electors voted for two names as President and Vice President. There was no distinction between which vote went to President and which to VP. The entire controversial Election of 1800 was based around this issue.
Hamilton thought that he could persuade a few Southern electors to leave Adams off the ballot, while they still voted for Pinckney and someone else, or Pinckney only. The New England ballots would split between the two, and then Pinckney would end up with more votes and would become President.
It might have worked, but Hamilton's plan leaked. Alexander wrote a vicious letter saying that Adams did not “have the talent” to be President, and that there were “great defects in his character which makes him unsuitable for high office.” Material like this was supposed to cleverly undermine national confidence in Adams, but Burr got his greedy mitts on the letter and sent it right over to a Republican newspaper which printed it along with an editorial explaining exactly what Hamilton was up to. That ruined the scheme.
On the first ballot in the Electoral College President John Adams won 65 Electoral Votes, while Jefferson tallied 73. Adams, the Feds, Pinckney, and Hamilton, were all now out of power, but there was a new problem. But, as we know, there was no distinction on the ballot between President and Vice President.
All good Democratic Republican electors voted for their favorite two Democratic-Republicans, Jefferson and his running mate Aaron Burr. As a result the final tally placed Jefferson and Burr in a tie for President at 73 points each, with Adams in third with 65. The election would by law now have to be sent over to the House of Representatives for resolution.
The balloting there was deadlocked for 35 rounds. Burr obviously should have backed off and let Jefferson take office as Prez but he was too selfish for that. No one had ever told Burr that he was running for President, but now that he could smell it he turned into a real squid and tried to steal the chair from his own running mate.
The Federalists finally helped break the stalemate. They began to support Jefferson because they disliked Burr much more than they disliked 'Long Tom' Jefferson. Hamilton particularly disliked the rascal Burr. The House, with a nudge from the Feds, chose Jefferson.
So Jefferson became president in spite of his obstructionist running-mate and only through the decisive support of his opponents! Jefferson’s election ignited a feud between Burr and Hamilton that would continue on for many years, a feud that only ended via trial by combat. TR got a taste of his own medicine with an unfriendly VP in the White House in Burr.
The Federalists incidentally were under the impression that Jefferson had agreed to compromise on policy in a Federalist direction in exchange for their support in making him president. He later denied that such an understanding was ever reached, creating a bit of a squabble.
1800 - Liberal Slaveowner Defeats the Incumbent Conservative
The Founding Fathers had been naïve enough to think that the child USA would not grow up to form political parties. Jefferson wrote that he’d rather go to hell without a political party than to heaven with one. The New World Yanks thought they were not going to engage in any Euro-style party bickering. That’s why the Founding Fathers did not separate the President and Vice President on the Electoral College ballots. They thought that each elector would simply choose the two men most qualified to be president without regard to parties and pairings. But that dream was over by 1800. The 1800 Election was saddled with yesterday's naiveté.
To make sure this bad situation never arose again, the 12th Amendment to the Constitution was soon proposed, adopted and ratified, making the selection of President and Vice-President a separate electoral vote count.
CONFLICT IN THE MEDITERRANEAN
Early in his administration, Jefferson sent the US Navy into the Mediterranean to show the Barbary States, especially the Bey of Algiers, that he was not going to put with any more of their ship seizures.
I've heard pundits both left and right in the current era cite this as proof that Thomas Jefferson was just as tough as any other President when it came to national defense. The left tell the story to show that their liberal slant does not necessarily mean a tradition of military weakness. The right tell the story to show a current Democratic leader that even their patron saint drew the line on liberalism when it came to foreign policy.
Both sides are wrong. Yes, Jefferson did get tough with the Barbary States of Morocco, Algiers Tunis and Tripoli. But this was done only after he had first reduced United States military capabilities to the breaking point. By the time Jefferson realized he needed to get tough, he was too far short on military resources to do it. Nice goin, John Lennon. One of the first things Jefferson did when he took office was to strip the United States Navy by 75%. The Navy had more than 50 decent or better fighting ships of various sized when Tom took over. After three months on office the Navy had only 13 ships left. Jefferson had the rest sold off to foreign countries or put into mothballs at home. Yamamoto did not do as much damage to the United States Navy as Thomas Jefferson did.
The Federalists couldn't believe it was happening. They had worked so hard under Washington and Adams to get the Navy off the ground and into deep water. Every Congressional naval appropriation had been won only with a tough fight. It had taken the Barbary aggressions to get Washington to move, and it took French depredations to get Adams to move, but move they both did, and the Navy was just beginning to emerge as “first rate” (a naval term for classification of warships that has been adopted into the language for all occasions.) Then Mr. Mellow took over and sunk it to third rate in three lousy months - ten years of growth keel-hauled almost overnight by dopey leftist extremism. Thousands of sailors and Naval officers were dismissed from the service. The historians who worship Jefferson and brag on the back cover that they spent a lifetime studying him make it a point to omit the part about him stripping the U.S. Navy of 85% of its fighting strength before he sent it out to do a job. Which proves that these historians are biased and untrustworthy.
The Marine ballad goes, “From the Halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli.” It is the Tripoli part of the song that Jefferson was CIC for. The King of Tripoli (or the Bey or the Pasha or the Sultan, they have so many titles that I'll just round them all off with 'King') decided that the United States was not paying enough tribute to the blackmailers of Islam in the Middle East of 1801, so he ordered the flag of the United States torn down from the American consulate. For good measure it wasn't even hauled down gracefully. The flagpole itself was chopped down like an annoying dead tree and the flag crashed to the ground while a crowd of holy men cheered on the street like 1979 Iranian students.
Captain Ed Preble went to Tripoli with what was left of Tommy's Navy. The mission floundered when the valuable frigate Philadelphia got stuck in the sand near Tripoli. The Libyans captured the prize ship and clapped the crew in irons in a land prison with a view of Tripoli harbor through the bars. They would soon get a caged-bird's eye view of a spectacular fire. An American officer named Steve Decatur took a small crew in a small boat (a ketch, whatever that is) and in the middle of the night they boarded the ship like pirates and set it on fire. The Philly burned and exploded in Tripoli harbor, the scuttle mission a complete success. The men in the prison watched the blaze and cheered like football fans after a touchdown, as the Arab guards threatened them in Arabic to “marahaba shukron de zeelan” (“pipe down or else.”)
Preble's frigates then took on the Tripoli forts in an off-and-on artillery duel of several days that was as inconclusive as the first half of a professional soccer match. All right, I'm exaggerating. It wasn't that inconclusive.
Then a certain Captain Elko Somers approached Preble with an intrepid plan. Somers proposed to take a small schooner named Intrepid with a skeleton crew of 14 (from lack of food, not the number of men) fill it with high explosives, and take it into Tripoli Harbor in the middle of the night. Then Somers would light the fuse and hop into a rowboat with his crew. If it worked, the explosion would decimate the fleet of little pirate corsairs in Tripoli as efficiently as Jefferson decimated the US Navy.
The mission was a rip-roaring success, .... for Tripoli. The Intrepid self-destructed before it reached the bay or the Bey. It went up sky high in a rip-roaring fireball, killing the crew. The men in the Tripoli Hilton woke up and saw yet another Fourth of July fireworks display. They cheered again and got yelled at again to “pipe down” in Arabic. But they later realized they were as mistaken as the crowd of 250,000 at the Watkin's Glenn Music Festival of July 1971 who cheered wildly as a stunt parachutist landed at 10:03 P.M. with flames consuming his parachute. The baked hippies celebrated, thinking it was part of the act, when in fact the guy died. You can look it up.
The Intrepid gave back all the prestige gains of the Philadelphia. For two weeks the United States Navy was on a roll, then gave it all back.
In spite of the set-back of the Intrepid, the USA at least did gain a hero. Stephen Decatur became overnight as famous as a later David Farragut or Douglas MacArthur, or Bea Arthur. America needed a military naval hero of its own (John Paul Jones was born and died a Frenchman) and it finally had one in Stevie D.
LOUISIANA PURCHASE 1803
The greatest achievement of the Jefferson presidency was the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the size of the Unites States without bloodshed and at relatively little cost financially.
In 1795 by the Treaty of San Lorenzo the Spaniards had at last allowed American westerners to use the port of New Orleans. But on October 1, 1800 Spain as part of the Treaty of San Ildefonso had secretly handed over New Orleans and Louisiana to France. The Jefferson government understood the important implications when it heard about Ildefonso. The presence of a weak power like Spain at New Orleans was problematic enough. The possession of New Orleans by a great power like France was simply unacceptable.
Jefferson for all his leftism was an ardent expansionist. He did not want to treat the Indians unfairly but he believed in ‘manifest destiny’ before the term was coined. He wanted an ‘empire for liberty’ to stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific and down to South America. Not only was the presence of foreign European powers in the west a roadblock to this dream of expansion, it also was a threat to Jefferson (and Washington’s) cherished goal of avoiding European entanglements.
Things took a further step downhill when New Orleans was once again closed to American river shipping. Because it was technically French, Americans presumed that the order had originated in Paris. In fact, the Spanish were still administering what was nominally French territory and the order had originated in Madrid. The re-closing of New Orleans made the westerners furious and there was the usual demand for war (in 1800, no one knew that ‘war is bad’ - that only dawned on the human race for the first time after the First World War.)
Jefferson knew that France simply could not be allowed to stay in New Orleans. He had to get them out of there. As long as France sat on Louisiana the USA was hemmed in permanently. The man famed as a Francophile warned his Secretary of State that if France keeps New Orleans than “we will have to marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation.” Jefferson wrote a delicate and confidential letter to an old friend named Pete Du Pont, a Frenchman about to go back to France on business and asked him to deliver the letter the the US minister in France Mr. Livingston. But the content of the letter was more for Du Pont to understand than Livingston. Maybe Du Pont would pass it on informally to French officials. Jefferson could then threaten France with war without the diplomatic consequences of the threat itself. The USA was also demanding Florida. New Orleans alone would not do. Jeff was not asking for Louisiana territory.
Du Pont got mad at Jefferson and made it clear he didn't appreciate being threatened. Jefferson wrote back that, “Pete! You read it wrong, I'm not threatening you. I like you and everyone knows I like France. I'm just warning you what will happen like a pal warns a friend about the stormy weather report before he goes out deep sea fishing. As soon as war breaks out again with you and England, my country will force me to ally itself with England and expel you guys from the continent. Then the US and Britian will rule the high seas together and the Franco-American things will be dead forever.”
Meanwhile there were rumors of an impending deal between France and England whereby France would get a free hand in the New World in exchange for French noninterference with British designs in the Middle East.
Napoleon meanwhile had landed a huge army in Haiti to suppress a rebellion there. The US wondered where these troops would go next after they wrapped up business there. Probably to New Orleans to consolidate their hold on the territory and the US would be that much more securely bottled up there.
So for the United States, it was either war or a diplomatic solution, but either way as far as New Orleans was concerned, France had to get out of town. France dropped a couple of hints that it might b willing to sell New Orleans for a lot of money plus America would have to drop all claims to compensations for US ships seized by France in recent times. These hints were very weak and very unofficial, but it was exactly what a man like Jefferson liked to work with as he had no intention of initiating hostilities with anyone over anything, let alone with his beloved France over New Orleans.
Jeff sent James Monroe to France to help Minister Livingston negotiate. They had a bankroll of 2 million dollars to buy New Orleans and hopefully some of the surrounding area as well. It looked like it was going to be a tough sell to get Louis to sell.
Just then the Haitians and yellow fever saved the day.
100,000 Haitians under their leader Toussaint L' Ouverture began to win their mass rebellion against French rule. Among other acts of violence they destroyed 12,000 coffee plantations, an unthinkable thought for a coffee drinker like myself. The attempt by France to repress was in the balance when yellow fever decimated the French occupation forces. The Rebs had won. The whole affair was ironic because it was the French Revolution that had very much inspired the Haitians. In rebelling they had thrown the French revolution back in the French face.
Their loss to L'Ouverture led to French overtures to the United States of a dramatic and surprising new nature. With the loss of Haiti the entire strategic position of the French in the New World had suddenly changed. Haiti was in the center of the French line of supply and communication from the North American mainland to the old continent. The French empire in the New World was suddenly untenable. At the same time King Lou needed money and, more importantly, war with Britain was looming as usual. Without the Haitian naval base, in a war with England Louisiana would probably be lost. France would not be paid a single franc and the arch-enemy Britain would gain the most.
France was not thrilled at the idea of American expansion, but English expansion at French expense could not be tolerated. France did not want to lose their all-star colony to a team from their own division. France decided to sell.
Napoleon’s Super-Sale - The Bargain of the 19th Century
Livingston and Monroe did not even get a chance to make their proposals. In short order a French diplomat approached them with an incredible offer. France not only wanted to sell New Orleans and the immediate area around it, but also proposed to sell to the United States an area larger than the United States itself! Of course, the price was going to be higher than 2 million. After some haggling, the price was settled at $15 million for an area of about 27 trillion square miles.
But there was a problem. Livingston/Monroe were not authorized to buy anything more than New Orleans and they had a budget of only two million. Two mil was lot of money back then, but not quite enough to buy a continent.
The American ambassadors could have written home for further instructions. But they chose to act without instructions. They felt that delay might be a diplomatic blunder. The mail took months to go back and forth across the Atlantic. There also would have been delays from Congressional debates and procedures. By then the offer might not be on the table anymore. The two men felt that they did not have the time to secure Jeffersonian and the Congressional approval. The only way they could buy Louisiana was to run up Tom’s credit card without his permission, and make an unauthorized decision. In one of the heroic deeds of American history they made the Louisiana Purchase.
When news of the transaction made it back to the USA there was another problem. Jefferson was the strictest constructionist of the Constitution. Madison's sacred document did not authorize the President, nor the Congress for that matter to buy territory. Jefferson wanted to get a constitutional amendment passed making such a purchase legal. Fortunately his advisors told him not to be insane. The delay could kill the deal. Tommy saw the light and he went along with the Purchase. TJ sent it to the Senate, which ratified it quickly.
THE VICE PRESIDENT SHOOTS HIS RIVAL 7 11 04
The heights at Weehauken New Jersey were a traditional site for the custom of dueling. The heights hosted the height of folly in 1804, the Vice President having a pistol fight with the Secretary of the Treasury.
Nowadays, when we are insulted we can fire back with a stock line from a stand-up about your bad sweater, and there the matter ends. But back in Jefferson's time an insult often meant an immediate challenge to a duel. To decline the invitation to a duel would brand one a coward. To accept would be to risk death over a mere insult. Bad choices.
Vice President Aaron Burr knew he was going to be dropped from the top ticket in 1804 so he decided to run for governor of New York. Alexander Hamilton was so against Burr that he made sure that an unflattering letter he had written about Burr became public knowledge. As a result (as far as Burr was concerned), Burr lost a close New York election to a fellow Democratic-Republican. Burr then challenged Hamilton to a duel.
The VP met the former Secretary of the Treasury on the morning of July 11, 1804. They marched off their paces and turned. Hamilton missed on purpose and then Burr took careful aim and gunned Hamilton down. At least that’s how the story goes. Some say that Hamilton missed a close shot and may have been shooting in earnest and just happened to miss.
Even if 'Hammie' did miss on purpose, one has to say in Burr’s defense that if he threw his shot away, Hamilton would have the next shot and could have changed his mind and killed Burr. There was an element of self-defense in the picture. But history has seen it otherwise and so did the states of New Jersey and New York. They issued indictments against Burr for the murder of Alexander Hamilton. The Vice President had to lam it!
Yes folks, fact is stranger than fiction. The sitting Vice-President of the United States, was a fugitive. His next move was even more insane than his situation. He entered into a conspiracy with some frontier adventurers, headed by a General Wilkinson, the Governor of Louisiana. They were going to detach a section of the western US and form a new nation!
Wilkinson was the governor of Louisiana. Their new nation's first order of business would be to conquer Mexico and possibly West Florida as well. It would compete with the USA for the gobbling up of the continent.
Wow, eh?
To be continued...
LEWIS AND CLARK AND SACAJAWEA EXPEDITION 1804-1805
Sacajawea is the native-American woman who’s help was crucial to the success of the Lewis and Clark expedition, which had been sent out on 1803 to explore the region of the Louisiana Purchase. Most of the Purchase was uncharted and unexplored territory. The Purchase was ‘both a bargain and a surprise package.’
As long as her biography and heroism are given equal (or more) attention than the work of Lewis and Clark, as it is in the new PC atmosphere in education than I think it’s about time we change the name to 'The Lewis, Clark and Sacajawea Expedition.' The ‘Lewis and Clark Expedition’ is something for antiquated history books. Sacajawea is now on the one-dollar coin, and Lewis and Clark are on a plaque in a Montana truck stop.
Jefferson hired his own private Secretary, Mr. Meriwether Lewis to head the exploratory mission. Clark was number two.
There were only rivers for roads. There was danger both geographical and from hostile Indians.
The party of just over 40 men left St. Louis in May of 1805. Jefferson wanted them to find the source of Might Mo, the Missouri River, and to try to find and somehow cross the western mountains, and if possible, reach the Pacific by river. They did. It was exiting and educational for all. But it was not easy.
Sacajawea was a Shoshone Indian. She was 16 years old with an infant son. Lewis and Clark had hired her husband, a fur trader named Jay Charbonneau as a guide. Sacajawea was just along for the ride but showed the men how to forage for artichokes and dove into the water to save some scientific equipment when a boat sank. More important she knew the Indian language and the English and served as a translator. Her presence in the group was also a sign of reassurance to other tribes the expedition encountered along the way. The whites appeared less threatening with a pleasant Indian woman and her newborn baby on board. At one point the expedition became lost. Sacajawea talked them out of taking bad route that might have caused the expedition to end tragically.
When the LCS expedition returned in 1805 many in the party began telling President Jefferson ridiculous exaggerations about what they had seen. They told him, of a mountain made of salt and of Indians 8 feet tall. Jefferson bought some of these fairy tales. Federalists mocked him, saying soon he will be writing to the Congress about a lake of molasses. One newspaper editor called Lewis a ‘Lying Sacajawea.’
ELECTION OF 1804 Jefferson in a Squeaker
Back in 1787 when Jefferson was minister to France a copy of the new Constitution was shown to him. He objected to having the U.S. President eligible for re-election. In 1804 he forgot all about those objections and gladly ran again.
The Federalist opponent in the Battle of 1804 was Charlie Pincney of South Carolina. Pinckney was a hero of the Revolutionary War and a had represented South Carolina at the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
The Republicans decided to drop their troublemaker Vice-President Aaron Burr from the re-election ticket. Governor George Clinton of New York replaced him.
The Jefferson/Clinton team won in a landslide, carrying every state except Idaho. Pinckney won only Delaware and Connecticut.
This was the first election where the 20th Amendment was in working order. The Electors at the EC would vote for President and Vice President in separate balloting. There would be no repeat of the fiasco of 1800.
BURR CONSPIRACY AND WILKINSON’S SWORD 1806-1807
Aaron Burr was on the run for shooting the Hamster at Weehauken. He fled west. Aaron was an engaging and charismatic man who made friends easily. While traveling west he managed to convince some influential people that it would be a good idea to separate the southwest from the United States with Spanish or French connivance, and then take the new nation and build it up by taking new territory in the south and west direction from a home base of New Orleans.
His chief co-conspirator was a US Army General named James ‘Claude’ Wilkinson. In fact Wilkinson was technically at the time the commanding general of the depleted US Army under the antimilitary President Jefferson. Burr met Wilkinson while in the western Ohio River valley and Wilkinson went along with the plan. But soon James Wilkinson changed his mind. He got cold feet and instead of betraying his country, he betrayed the plan to the authorities in exchange for amnesty. Wilkinson cut a deal.
Now Burr was on the run from the west as well as the east. He headed southeast towards the Georgia/Florida shore where he hoped to catch a slow boat to Europe and safety.
The authorities arrested Aaron Burr on February 2 1807 and he was shipped back east for trial. Burr was charged with conspiring to overthrow the very government he had served as Vice President.
Thomas Jefferson took the lead in prosecuting his arch-enemy Aaron Burr. As much as Jefferson disliked Hamilton, it is safe to say that he would marry Hamilton before he would shake hands with Burr. Jefferson was very unpleasantly surprised when several of the most important political leaders in the country came to Burr’s defense.
It is almost certain that Burr was indeed conspiring to disunite the United States, but is just as certain that there was no hard evidence to prove it. He was guilty of treason in spirit but not in actual fact. The prosecution needed some sort of document, some letter, some receipt for a bribe, to prove their case. Without a script, you must acquit. Burr walked. The state charges for manslaughter in the Jersey shooting of Hamilton were never pressed.
Aaron Burr is the most fascinating life in all of American History.
As a result of Burr’s Conspiracy (and a few other schemes of a similar nature in the same era) the US took on a new attitude on the admission of new states. From now on any state seeking admission would not longer have to prove their worthiness to join the new nation. They would be welcomed in the front door as soon as technically possible. America did not want any more conspiracies to slice off territories that had not yet reached statehood. When it came to new lands, the USA wasn’t always going to be the only suitor.
THE JUDICIARY
Jefferson always believed that the Federal judiciary had become too powerful, and repeatedly opposed decisions of the Supreme Court.
He named John Marshall to the Supreme Court in 1801 and this man would dominate that body for the next three decades, changing the entire course of U.S. history. Jefferson and Marshall would be at odds for Tom's entire two terms. Jefferson felt that the Federalists were using the judicial branch to make up for their defeat at the polls and that many of the decisions of the Supreme Court were designed to undermine if not overthrow Jefferson’s ‘Revolution of 1800.’
The number one controversy centered on the issue of ‘judicial review.’ This was the right of the judicial branch of the government to rule on the legality on laws made and enforced by other branches of government. There was nothing in the Constitution to determine which branch of the three checks and balances divisions (executive, legislative, judicial) were entitled to have the final say in controversies over the Constitution and assorted legal disputes. Today we know it is the Supreme Court’s job to rule on the legality of laws. But back in Jefferson’s day there was no reason not to argue that Congress or the President had the right to rule on difficult questions on the Constitution and on state laws as well.
It became a test of wills. Jefferson and Marshall were both strong leaders and were each determined to win. In the end Marshall won, but it was a long hard fight.
Marshall through his personal stubbornness established the principle that the judicial branch was the arbiter in legislative and legal controversies.
John wisely first established that the Federal judicial branch could rule on the constitutionality of state laws. From there it was a shorter leap to test the power of the Supreme Court in a dispute involving the broader executive and the legislative branches.
The famous test case was Marbury v. Madison (1803). Marbury was one of the midnight judges appointed by Adams as John went out the door. Jefferson and his Secretary of State Madison wanted Marbury removed from office. Marshall ruled that on principle Marbury was entitled to stay on the job, but he conceded that he could not order the President to do his bidding. So Marshall ruled on the principle but not its enforcement for now. He knew that if Jefferson defied him, he could do little and Jefferson would have won the day and negated both the decision and the power of the judicial branch to arbitrate.
But by conceding enforcement he could win the principle. Jefferson had nothing to defy because Marshall conceded the particular case while ruling otherwise. Very clever. Marshall knew that by establishing the legal precedent, he was setting the nation up to put the law into stronger force down the road.
ECONOMICS IN JEFFERSON’S DAY
The national debt was 80 million dollars when Jefferson took office. Thomas reduced it by almost half by the time he left. Jefferson wanted to eliminate the debt because he believed that it was just an evil plot by Hamilton and his ilk to tie up the country in a Federalist economic control string.
Jefferson reduced the debt and reduced taxes. He put an end to 'internal taxes' entirely.
Jefferson was opposed to the Bank of the United States and tried to reduce its power, but did not actively try and shut it down.
Land speculation was the national craze in these days, but the bubble burst a bit on Jefferson’s watch. Not as bad as 2010, but it the collapse was bad.
The profitability of this game was based on settlers staying put on new lands they settled on, thus increasing the value. Unfortunately for land gamblers who bought and resold land in the west from their offices on the eastern seaboard, the settlers were moving too fast. Most settlers that went west, moved two or three times in a lifetime. Just when they couldn’t be happier to be on a new farm in western Virginia, they packed up and moved on to Kentucky or Tennessee. Each move west seemed more attractive than the last one. The profit in this game was dependent on a settled pattern of small towns building up on their land.
In was a miniature preview of the stock market crash of 1929. Greed plus overconfidence equals disaster. Many of the Founding Father died broke because of the bubble that burst in the land speculation market in the early 19th century.
COMMERCE WARS AND THE DUMBARGO 1807
The Republicans of the Jefferson era were against a standing army and navy. But that did not mean they were in favor of isolationism without any aggressive foreign policy. They simply thought they could achieve the same things with commercial coercion that could be achieved by a strong military.
The Revolution of 1800 also included a belief that a new day had dawned in international diplomacy. The old fashioned system of diplomatic missions was an anachronism as far as the Jeffersonians were concerned. US Funds were denied for overseas embassies with the exception of a skeleton mission to Paris and London. Who needs diplomats when we have our agricultural trade to make all our moves for us? Thinking the USA was 100 years ahead of the times placed th USA 100 years behind it.
Once England and France re-booted their endless war in 1803, American merchant ships saw their business skyrocket. France closed continental trade to England, and England closed sea commerce to France. Into the void sailed the US merchant fleet, shipping goods to and from places they had previously been barred from by French or English mercantilism.
Both France and England became angry with the Americans for trading with the enemy, and the party came to an end with new laws in both nations aimed specifically at the American shipping trade. This trade controversy would eventually lead to the War of 1812, but for now we'll look at Jefferson’s inept handling of the embargo crisis.
Britain was the first to crack down. It invoked the Rule of 1756, which said that a neutral could not take advantage of a war situation to engage in trade that had been closed to it in time of peace. American ships trading between the West Indies and Europe tried to skirt this rule by unloading the stuff in a US port and then re-shipping it to Europe. But in 1805 in the Essex case, a British court ruled that this in fact constituted a ‘continuous voyage’ and was just as illegal as direct trading with the enemy. England began seizing American merchant ships bound to and from Europe regardless of an intermittent stop in a middle-man seaport.
To make things much worse they stepped up the practice of impressment, the ‘kidnapping on the ocean’ of American seamen, on the pretext that they were British subjects in disguise.
Napoleon countered with the Berlin Decree of 1806 forbidding any ships that even stopped at an English port to trade with any of his dominions. Britain then ruled that any ship that wanted to trade anywhere in the western hemisphere had to stop at an English port to sign up for a license to do so.
Napoleon countered with the Milan Decree of 1807, which said that the France would confiscate any ship that stopped in a British port and obtained such a license.
Clearly the United States merchant marine was getting slapped around like a pinball between the flippers of England and France. The glow from the French alliance of 1778 was history, and what little momentum in the direction of friendship between the USA and Great Britain created by the Jay Treaty was toast.
Both France and England were trying to seize our ships, but there was more anger here towards the British. England, unlike France, had the frigates to enforce it’s decrees. The British Navy were soon capturing one out of every eight American ships that left the US shore.
Also, while the French were seizing our ships, the Royal Navy was seizing our ships and our sailors. The lives of a few sailors did not have as much material value as the ships taken by France. But psychologically, the British were hitting harder. Ships can be replaced. Lives and honor can never be replaced like some broken part. The mood of the United States was decidedly anti-British, even though the French were taking more money.
Jefferson’s first useless retaliatory move was the Non-Importation Act of 1806. This was simply a warning to Britain that if an understanding could not be reached between the two countries, then the US would begin forbidding the importation of some British items.
Jefferson really put his foot down in early 1807 when he declined to send a treaty of commerce between the US and GB to the US Senate to be ratified because it did not include a settlement of the impressment question.
THE SNOW LEOPARD AND THE CHESAPEAKE 1807
When the British frigate HMS Snow Leopard fired 7 sucker-punch broadsides into the virtually unarmed USS Chesapeake in 1807 it was the most humiliating defeat ever inflicted on the United States Navy. Yes, even more than Pearl Harbor. I didn't say the most decisive defeat, I said the most humiliating. The incident created an international crisis and was a key step leading up to the War of 1812.
The issue was impressment. The British Navy ruled the waves with total arrogance and was in the middle of its war with France. Being a sailor in the huge British Navy was hell on water for most men. There was always a shortage of sailors who wanted to sign on for a six year beating. The British boors solved the problem by kidnapping thousands of men from shore towns and ships at sea and forcing them to serve on board HMS 30 Lashes. During the American Revolution, the Royal Navy could just go into Boston or Charleston and kidnap anyone wandering the streets drunk. They woke up with a hangover and a ten pound chain on their ankle as they watched their home city fade from the shore.
When the USA became the USA the Brits had to apply some convoluted justification to go around doing such low work. The new plan was to declare that anyone born before 1783 was still a British subject. 'Once an Englishman, always an Englishmen' became an actual law. American merchant ship were routinely stopped an boarded at sea and anyone who couldn't prove that he was a 'native American' was kidnapped and “pressed” into the Royal hell that was the life in the King's navy (The punishment for giving an officer a dirty look was 900 lashes - the sailor had no rights, might die from battle or storm, and the food was not fit for a Somalian leper.) It was quite a slick coincidence that whenever the British boarded a US ship and looked for “deserters” it was always the strongest youngest sailors that were deemed to be British subjects. It was just a kidnapping holocaust, an absolute criminal activity.
The United States protested the crude rude arrogance of these continuous kidnappings (a crime today that would carry the death penalty for one offense,) but the British answered these protests by saying “Oh, we're scared now! Watch us do it some more real soon.”
Early in 1807 two French warships were damaged and knocked off course and damaged in a severe storm and went into Chesapeake Bay for safety. A squadron of British frigates stood off the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay and blocked the French ships. It was a siege of blockade that lasted several months. US ships, both war and merchant came in and out of the bay and got used to the sight of the British warships. Sometimes even exchanging salutes of single cannon shot as they passed each other.
Sometimes the British had a legitimate complaint. British sailors frequently did jump ship and leave a US port on the ship of another nation. Anything to get away from his Majesty's floating prison. Sometimes the British boarded an American ship and collared a genuine jack-tar deserter. But for every one of these genuine miscreants they kidnapped ten innocent men. Not a good ration of justice to crime, and rendering their entire game untenable at the table on judgement day.
Enter on the stage the USS Chesapeake. The ship was commanded by Mr. Gordon, but the executive officer in charge of operations was a Mr. Barron who would later face a courts-martial for the events of 1807.
The Chesapeake was preparing to sail from the US to the Mediterranean and was filled to the rim with non-military people and stores. The American ships involved in the problems with the Barbary Pirates could not find victuals anywhere and they either had to be resupplied, or would have to return home to the states and weaken the military situation for Jefferson's team. Chesapeake was essentially a Barbary Pirate crisis supply ship on its voyage across the sea. When it dropped off its supplies it would re-organize as the 40 gun fighting frigate it was built to be. So even though it was a powerful warship, all of the cannon were inoperable. Every spot on the ship was packed with non-lethal supplies. Most of the cannon were stored away somewhere deep below decks. The United States was not at war with anyone and Commander Barron did not see any need for alarm about taking an unarmed warship across the Atlantic one-way.
Chesapeake stopped over in Norfolk before leaving for North Africa and here is where trouble started brewing. A British officer walking about Norfolk town spotted a man named Ratford whom he recognized as a legitimate British Naval deserter. He called him a “Dirty Rat!” and then Ratford called him something much worse, something I'd rather not print.
This upped the ante as far as the Briton was concerned. Ironically, under English naval law, the punishment for insulting an officer was far worse than the punishment for desertion. The punishment for insulting an officer was death by hanging, while desertion was 80,000 lashes. So now all of a sudden English honor was stupidly at stake.
The British Minister made a formal protest to Washington over Ratford plus several other alleged deserters from the HMS Mylampus. The United States admitted that four of these men were deserters indeed, but that they were Americans who had been kidnapped years earlier by the British and had every right to desert. Besides, the others had already fled to the interior and were not going to be leaving on the Chesapeake anyway and there was little to be done to track them down.
If not for the rank-fight on the streets of Norfolk between the British officer and Ratford the entire international incident would probably never have happened. Sticks and stones will break your bones because of words that really hurt me.
The British were determined to capture the Rat, and set a trap. They knew from reports on shore that Chesapeake was approaching Lynnhaven Roads at the gates of Chesapeake Bay completely defenseless, its guns plugged up or stashed below. The 'Peakster,' a it was known by its sailors, was at the moment a 44-gun unarmed ship. To demonstrate how helpless Chesapeake was, consider the Mt. Vernon salute. It was naval tradition to fire a single cannon shot when passing the grave of George Washington at Mt. Vernon. This was one rare occasion when a US frigate passed by and did not fire. Barron's Chesapeake might as well have been commanded by Jeanette Rankin, or Howard Zinn for all of its fighting spirit at the moment.
The squadron of British warships had been sitting outside the gates of Chesapeake Bay for almost a year so the Chesapeake was not alarmed when it saw them. But as the American ship passed it noticed it was getting an ominous shadow in the form of HMS Snow Leopard escorting Chesapeake into international waters at a discourteous close distance. Critics would later charge Barron with irresponsible negligence for not at least waking up to the danger at this moment. But he was so unarmed, his guns so filled with flowers and being used for clothes hangers, that it probably wouldn't have made any difference.
As soon as the Chesapeake was outside the three mile limit of US national waters, the carnivorous Leopard came up close and requested that an officer delegation be allowed to come on board the US frigate to discuss something important. Barron bull-horned back three fateful words, “no can do.” Then Snow Leopard fired a shot across the American bow. This was shocking in itself, an insult according to military protocol. Only unarmed merchants were supposed to be ever subjected to that humiliation. Barron stopped and allowed a ketch to bring the British officers aboard to talk thing over.
The English brass told Barron that they wanted to search his ship for British deserters, especially four known individuals who had jumped off the Mylampus at Norfolk. Barron said that he regretfully had to say no. That was not within acceptable limits of naval protocol. He said he was sorry.
Sorry was not enough. A few minutes after the British were all back on board the Leopard, the Americans got the shock of their life. The Snow Leopard fired a full broadside straight into the defenseless Chesapeake. Men died. Men screamed. Masts fell. Wood shattered. Everyone aboard the American ship was in a complete state of shock.
That one broadside would have been enough. Surely the Chesapeake would have agreed now to allow the inspection and search for deserters. But the scum-bag commanding the Snow Leopard ordered a second broadside. 22 24-pound cannon ripped into the passive Chesapeake again. More wounds. More blood. More death.
Like a sadist murderer who stabs the dead man till his arm tires out, the Leopard methodically fired five more broadsides into the Chesapeake. It was a crime, pure and simple on many levels. Four Americans were dead, and 32 were badly wounded. The Chesapeake was barely seaworthy.
Needless to say Barron got on the horn and said, “By all means, you are welcome to come on board and search us.”
The British made it aboard the smoking bloody Chesapeake and searched for Ratford. They found him below decks hiding in an apple barrel like Jim Hawkins in Treasure Island. The prisoner was brought before the British officer he had insulted in Norfolk.
He asked Ratford, “Now, what was that you said about my mother?”
and then slapped him twice very hard.
Ratford was dragged off the ship with violent extra shoving and kicking like LAPD bullies escorting a passive wino from MacArthur Park (I saw that one myself). The English later hanged in Bristol while the officer he had insulted watched in person. Jesus was not present.
As you can imagine, America was in a rage over the Chesapeake. I'm in a rage studying the incident 204 years later. The war-hawks demanded war, even though the term war-hawks hadn’t been invented yet.
DUMBARGO
President Jefferson now responded with one of the stupidest moves of all time anywhere by anyone about anything.
Thomas decided to answer the assaults on American shipping by England and France with a complete American embargo of all overseas imports! No exceptions. This would also kill the export trade because no merchant ship could profit without two-way commercial voyages. No sea captain with a brain would come to Philly empty from Europe. (Many history books say that Jefferson forbade all imports and exports with Europe but that is not quite so, but the effect worked out so that he might as well have.)
Tommy thought that without our trade, these two intercontinental giants would overnight become repentant supplicants, begging our forgiveness and pleading for our trade. He was wrong. The markets solved themselves, as they have to. South America and other places made up for the lost U.S. destinations for European goods, and American ships rotted in ports all up and down the east coast. People went hungry. Unemployment and runaway inflation swept the land. The jails became filled with debtors who wanted nothing so much as a Jefferson dartboard. It was a total disaster for our country in every way. Jimmy Carter couldn’t have done a more foolish job!
In effect Jefferson was standing up to the bullies by saying, “Oh yeah? Oh yeah? Is that right? I’ll show you. I’m gonna punch me right in the nose!”
The northeast, especially Massachusetts, took the worst of the Embargo Act. No less than one third of the entire national overseas trade sailed in and out of Boston and Salem. These cities became ghost towns, at least along the waterfront. Some wiseacre reversed the letters and called the embargo ‘O Grab Me’ (groan). They began referring to the third President as “Mad Tom.”
The Embargo Act of 1807 was pure insanity. A British newspaper described it as “secession from the civilized world.” It was. They saw it as a manifestation of Jefferson’s personal naiveté, which it also was.
The people began to commonly refer to it as the “Dumbargo.” The Jefferson foot-licker historians usually manage to overlook the nickname “Dumbargo.” Some Jefferson contemporaries went even further, referring to it to it as the ‘Dambargo.’ By whatever nickname, it was one damn dumb catastrophe in foreign policy.
Jefferson himself later admitted that the country would not have suffered as much economic damage if it had lost a war. At the very least it helped to cause the outbreak of the War of 1812 in Madison’s time.
It is interesting how many historians can't admit what Jefferson himself admitted, - that it was dumb.
The Confederate States of America, by the way, made the exact same dumb mistake in 1861 when it thought is could intimidate Europe by withholding its cotton export trade if it did not get the diplomatic recognition it wanted. The result was exactly the same. The cotton sat on Southern wharves and spoiled while Europe found other places to plant, grow or buy cotton, and the South spun out of control off a cliff financially.
CLERMONT STEAMED 1807
At almost the exact same time that the Snow Leopard was ripping the Chesapeake were slugging it out, a less violent but just as significant naval event was taking place in New York State. Robert Fulton had perfected (not invented) the steamboat, and in that year the first self-powered commercial watercraft, the Clermont was taking passengers upriver to Albany from NYC for seven dollars per person.
The age of sail was not over yet but the Clermont put the steam writing on the wall. The age of sail was a setting sun on the horizon. More important than excitements of the 90 passengers traveling against the flow to Albany were the implications for the West. The Mississippi River as well as the Ohio would soon increase dramatically in commercial importance. No longer would transport boats that landed in New Orleans have to be destroyed and sold for firewood. The vessels of tomorrow could make the return trip with almost as much ease and speed as the trip downriver to the Gulf.
CONCLUSION
Jefferson’s time marked a change in the direction of more democracy and less government. Congress increased in power while the US presidency weakened in power.
It was so-long Feds. The Federalist dream of a government run by snob bankers was at an end. Many Federalists went over to the Democratic-Republican camp after 1800. Everybody loves a winner. The Federalist Party was a dying candle.
Jefferson deserves his place among the hallowed halls of the Founding Fathers. He is certainly a greater figure than that overrated egoist Tory Ben Franklin, for example. Tom was the author of the Declaration of Independence, performed great work as Secretary of State, and had many fabulous talents and personal qualities. He also seems to be a man that anyone would be proud to call a friend.
But in sum, Thomas was fallible. He was a hypocrite on slavery and only freed five of his own when he passed on, while many of his well to do contemporaries freed them in their lifetimes. TJ alone thought up the Dumbargo, arguably the worst and most foolish chess move in US foreign policy history. Jefferson could never rid himself of the notion that everyone in America should be a farmer, and carried this prejudice to such extremes as to hurt the natural progress of the age and hinder the national economy. He thought that cities, and commerce, and banks, and industry were all evil and that only farming was noble. The man who wrote that all men are created equal drew the line on city slickers versus country people. He preached that city people are bad and farmer people are good.
“Let our workshops remain in Europe,” he said. Maybe this had something to do with the sad fact that Thomas Jefferson had never even seen a town (let alone lived in one or seen a city,) until he was 18 years old! He was simply a chauvinist when it came to farmers. He never once travelled more than 50 miles west of the place of his birth.
Finally, Jefferson had a boorish Michael Moorish fear and hatred of all things military. He powered down our army and navy as much as Congress would allow him to. Then when the country began getting slapped around by France, England, and the Islamic Barbary States of the Mediterranean, he suddenly wished we had more armor to work with. It was the classic case of the liberal who learns the lesson only after making the damaging mistake. It is no wonder that Jefferson is the patron saint of the Democratic Party of Carter, Kerry, and George McGovern.
There is a trend among historians to explain away as harmless, Jefferson’s blunders and to maximize his achievements. It is the opposite of how they treat Grant, Harding, Coolidge, and Reagan. The historian community is about 96% Democrat and while they feign objectivity, they are in actuality virtual lawyers advocating for the Democrats and against the Republicans at 950 pages per textbook. It would be better, and in fact delightful, if they came out and presented their polemic tastes honestly. It they are partisan fans of Jefferson and the party he founded, they should say so.
Jefferson was never consistent. This was the man who preached that good government is less government, yet when he wrote the Virginia Constitution in 1776, he proposed that any white male with less than 50 acres to his name should be given the difference up to 50 acres by the Commonwealth. Is this less government?
Jefferson was a man of high principles and a genius. But he was a mixed blessing as President. He may well have been right when he later said that his service as president was only the fourth most important contribution he made in life to the nation. The first was the declaration of Independence, the second was the Virginia Resolves on religious freedom, and the third was his establishment of the University of Virginia. He may have just been trying to be modest, but it's probably sadly so.
All farmers are superior to everyone else. Oh, by the way, I happen to be a farmer. He grew up on a farm, Shadwell, the family Tara. He didn’t grow up in a vacuum and then chose to farm. The farming profession was his accident of birth. The point being that his lifelong conceit of the superiority of farmers over persons of every other occupation is as selfish as it is foolish.
He thought that cities are innately evil – the bad parts of any nation, he stated, are an exact parallel with the amount of non-farming parts The USA should do away with business and trade, and just farm. This insanity deserves a precise quote;
“I should wish the states to practice neither commerce nor navigation, but to stand with respect to Europe precisely on the footing of China.”
This kind of position makes the historically scorned isolationist Republicans of the 1920’s look like internationalist visionaries. In Tokugawa Japan it was forbidden to build ships large enough to cross the seas. Jeff was a Tokugawa fellow-traveller.
In Jefferson’s life and work there are many qualities and deeds that obviously counterbalance his faults and mistakes. This is not intended as a hatchet-job, but the historians tend to write of him like he is the infallible God of American history.
In the great debate between Hamiltonian politics and Jeffersonian politics, I am not exactly thrilled with Hamilton either. But Jefferson gets his halo kissed by so many historians that I am delighted to disagree. A lot of historians (though a clear minority) take a debunking tone against President Jefferson’s job performance, but they are always delicate about it, walking on eggshells daring not to offend the historical reading community. I on the other hand, have handled drunken hecklers for 30 years as a stand-up comic so I have less concern for proprieties.
Like Jimmy Carter, Jefferson did open his eyes near the end and finally got it right, but as Dem-usual, only after the damage had been done.
“A little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.”
AFTER OFFICE
Thomas Jefferson made $25,000 a year as President. Today, any former president makes that at one speaking engagement, and that's not counting doubling-up. Tommy had tobacco and slaves and a nail factory for extra dough, but his generosity, plus the way he loved to pump money into home improvements at Monticello left him tight for cash when left office.
When Jefferson left the presidency he went south to help found the University of Virginia where he was Rector from 1816 to 1825. I don't even know what a rector is. He died on July 4, 1826, a few hours before John Adams.
Thomas Jefferson’s holiday death opened the door for the publication of Anas. In this collection of Jefferson writings, he rips Al Hamilton to shreds with facts, fables, innuendos, distortions and arguments, all disguised as facts.
OK, fine. Who hasn’t done that to someone? But Jefferson wrote these attacks under the condition that they be published only after both he and Hamilton were dead. Wow. That is some seriously mean-spirited work. The editor who first published Jefferson’s complete works was a big fan, and even he could not bring himself to say a word of praise for anything in the Anas, nor could he defend the criticism that work has received. Jefferson’s Anas was a bad thing to do and inspiration to not do that to others. We should write our praise in stone and our condemnations in sand. I'm adopting an aphorism I saw on the wall at an Elks Club.
SOURCES
America and its Peoples, A Mosaic in the Making - 5th Edition by Randy Roberts, Steve Mintz, Linda O. MrMurray, James Kirby Martin and Jim Jones - c) 2004 - Politically correct textbook for college freshmen. A B. U. student gave me his copy. Great maps, but left wing biased.
The American Pageant, A History of the Republic, by Thomas A. Bailey of Stanford University – c) 1961 D.C. Heath
In the debate between Hamilton and Jefferson and their ideas as well, Bailey is over-the-top in the Jefferson camp. He is a Jefferson apologist.
This is a fabulous book, in spite of his biases, or maybe party because of them. TB is always lively.
The American Political Tradition, and the Men Who Made It, by Richard Hofstadter c)1948 with revised edition c)1973 –Hofstadter in his essay ‘Jefferson, The Aristocrat as Democrat’ stresses that Jefferson was not so much a hypocrite as he was a practical man. His powerhouse philosophical statements were just that, statements and most of them expressed in private letters. In practice he was always a man of concrete and essentially conservative action. His great thinking was his view of the hopes and goals for future days, not a strategy to put into actual practice now. That is how he could own slaves and preach against slavery.
At least this is the way Hofstadter explains it.
Bulwark of the Republic, A Biography of the Constitution, by Burton J. Hendrick, c) 1937 – Burt is one fine writer.
A Diplomatic History of the United States, by Samuel Flagg Bemis – c) 1934 – Dry genius from Yale. 'The Beemer' is very readable, but you have to bear down.
The Enduring Vision, by Paul S. Boyer, University of Wisconsin, - Clifford E. Clark, Jr., Carleton College - Joseph F. Kett University of Virginia, - Thomas L. Purvis, - Harvard Sitkoff, University of New Hampshire, - Nancy Woloch, Barnard College – c) 1990 -
The first three named have a ph. d. in history from Harvard, and one of the others had Harvard for a first name.
This is a very biased left-slanted modern textbook. It's fairly kind to Jefferson.
The Great Republic, Bernard Bailyn and a cast of big wigs
History of a Free People, by Bragdon/McCutchen c) 1954 MacMillan
Very conservative high school textbook, (conservative as in 'right wing.')
Jefferson was such a music man that during the revolutionary War he “organized an orchestra among Hessian prisoners.” This book taught me that. It is riddled with infantile history cartoons. Really bad art, and I have seen well drawn history cartoon in other books. Its not the concept that is infantile, it is the really bad art. I've read 499 pages of the 680 so far. The book is more edifying about the state of the art of the 1954 US History textbook than it is about US history.
History of the People of the United States, by McMaster, c)1895 - Vol III – I like
Jefferson the Virginian, by Dumas Malone
The March of Democracy, The Rise of the Union, by James Truslow Adams, c)1932 – An intellectually violent book. Adams hates New England and conducts a historical vendetta against it, especially Massachusetts throughout his highly successful two-volume general history. Adams is biased for the South and worships Jefferson the infallible.
Out of Many, A History of the American People, by John Mack Faragher (Yale); Mary Jo Buhle (Brown), Daniel Czitrom (Mount Holyoke); and Susan Armitage (Washington State), c)1994 – This is the Bible of PC outrageous liberal pseudo-history, although they don’t really turn up the lefty heat until the chapters covering the 20th century.
A Patriot’s History of the United States, by Allen and Schweikart - It’s a book by 2 historians with a conservative slant and it is protesting the political correctness in the historical craft. (They don’t use the term ‘political correctness’) As they put it on the jacket, “There is something wrong when Harriet Tubman gets more coverage in our college textbooks than George Washington.”
Thank you. HT was a fine person and an important figure, but their comment is well taken.
The Oxford History of the American People, by Samuel Eliot Morison – c) 1965 Oxford University Press
Most historians side with Jefferson in the Tom Jefferson vs. Al Hamilton dispute. Almost none even feign neutrality. Morison is such a conservative (who thinks he's a liberal) that he clearly sides with Hamilton. If Sam Morison had been alive in Jefferson's time, he would have been a Federalist.
A Short History of the American Nation, by John A. Garraty of Columbia – c) 1974 Harper & Row
Garraty likes Jefferson but he doesn't foolishly worship him as so many historians do.
Jack writes well and summarized the confused state of Jefferso era politics in this way.
“What determined a man's party allegiance in the 1790's is hard to pin down. ... In short, no clear-cut social or economic alignments appeared. ... The parties stood for their leaders rather than for principles.” pg 99
He quotes Jefferson as saying that lions and tigers are lambs compared to humans. Good one, Tom.
Thomas Jefferson, by John T. Morse, Jr. c)1883, Riverside Press, Cambridge Ma – I have the revised edition of 1898. Morse admires his subject but becomes exasperated with Jefferson when reading his works and shares his displeasure with the reader,
Morse felt that Jefferson was paranoid about conspiracies to overthrow the new government and restore a new King,
“If gentlemen, flushed with wine after dinner, made
statements outrunning their sober beliefs, their
extravagant words were borne in exaggerated form
to Jefferson’s ears, were magnified by his exited
mind, and were stored away by him as conclusive
evidence … Indeed if he began with a faith like a
grain of mustard seed, he must soon have caused it
to expand into a vigorous tree, so liberally did he
water it with the ceaseless iteration and reiteration
of his own assertions. Frequent repetition of a
statement assumes in time the aspect of evidence.”
Thomas Jefferson Passionate Pilgrim – The Presidency, The Founding of the University, and the Private Battle – by Alf J. Mapp, Jr. - c) 1991 – Dry insufferable account by a lifelong TJ groupie who feigns a moment of objectivity once every 30 pages or so.
The United States to 1865, by Michael Kraus of The City College of New York– c) 1959 University of Michigan Press
Any guy who also wrote 'A History of American History' can't be bad. This is a better than average general history book.
As far as Jefferson is concerned, Kraus is so biased that I am offended. He deliberately ignores any facts unfavorable to Jefferson. Many historians mention criticisms of Jefferson and then answer them with an apologist explanation. This Kraus guy just ignores anything bad that Jeff ever did and ignores anything bad anyone else ever thought or said. I'm always prepared for the standard historian nose up Jefferson's wig, but I've got my limits too.
The United States, From Colony to World Power – c) 1959
The United States: The History of a Republic, by the great Richard Hofstadter (Columbia), William Miller, and Daniel Aaron (Smith) – c) 1957 Prentice-Hall
I have meticulously read the first 612 pages. Only 140 to go. Huge hardcover. There's only a few photos but the choices are superb. Miller wrote The Age of Enterprise. That's his big credit, but I had never heard of that book.
Why I Hate Thomas Jefferson, by Pat Buchanan, c)1962
|
|