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The 1804 Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail Adams

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The 1804 Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail Adams . ..I I "A Storm in the Atmosphere" The 1804 Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail Adams By Brendan Lindsay Senior Thesis in History California State Polytechnic University, Pomona 3 Jline'.2002 <·:_; . ··A . Aqy{§or: Dr: Amanda Podany ·~ _;,_ '.-,."t- ' .I In Memory of Charles Hill Lindsay (1937-1990) I I I' I I I I Even in one of the freest and happiest governments in the world, restless I spirits will aim at disturbing it. Abigail Adams I,, The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but :1 better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the Atmosphere. I Thomas Jefferson ,f I { 6 /\ (., On May 20, 1804, Abigail Adams sat doVIII and wrote a letter to an old, albeit estranged, friend, Thomas Jefferson. 1 Ostensibly, the briefletter was to be one of condolence on the death of Jefferson's daughter, Mary Jefferson Eppes, who, as a child almost twenty years before, she had loved and cared for as the girl had passed through England to join her father in France. However, by the time Abigail Adams ascribed her name to letter, it was much more than a note of sympathy. Under the veil of sorrow, she infused the letter with a reticent indication of anger over the perceived injustices heaped on her husband, former President John Adams, at the hands of the bereaved father, Thomas Jefferson, and his Republican supporters. 2 This short letter was the beginning of an exchange of letters between the pair, four from Abigail Adams and three from Jefferson, that became an expression of each writer's .I political ideology in a debate about Federalism versus Republicanism, and the direction that each party wanted the nascent republic to move toward. The words ofeach writer articulated .I several common themes: the perceived failings of the other's political dogma and the I strength of his or her OVIII political ideology; their views on partisan, party politics; their interpretations of the Constitution and governmental power; and discussions of the personal injuries in a public forum that each felt had been at the hands of the opposition party. 1 Abigail Adams to Thomas Jefferson, May 20, 1804, Quincy, in Lester J. Cappon, ed., The Adams­ Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Benveen Thomas Jefferson andAbigail and John Adams (Williamsburg: University ofNorth Carolina Press, 1988), 268. 2 The terms Republican and Federalist are used to describe the tv.ro growing factions in the late­ eighteenth and early-nineteenth century American political arena. Each ofthese groups, undoubtedly, was not a homogenous entity. The term Republican encompasses Anti-Federalists, Democrat-Republicans, Jeffersonian Republicans, and other names used to describe the supporters ofThomas Jefferson and/or the opponents ofthe Federalists. On the Federalist side, Hamiltonian Federalists and Adams Federalists are included under this rubric. By 1804, each term was used to describe the two competing interests. As Gordon S. Wood states in his Radicalism ofthe American Revolution, "The Federalists and the Republicans ... were not modem political I parties...Neither...accepted the legitimacy ofthe other, and neither was designed to be permanent. Both of them were formed by notables, who continued to decry the existence ofparty spirit. .. u See Gordon S. Wood, I The Radicalism ofthe American R<Nolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 298. I However, the story of the discourse begins not with the death of an adult Mary Jefferson I Eppes, but with her journey as an eight-year-old girl called Polly, as her family had dubbed her, from America to France by way ofEngland.3 Abigail Adams had met Polly, and her teenage slave companion Sally Hemings, when the pair landed in England in June of 1787. Jefferson's daughter, who she described as intelligent and a "fine spirit", immediately enchanted her.4 She was soon dismayed by Jefferson's plans to house the girl in a Catholic convent in France. 5 Indeed, when it came time to send Polly onward to France after several weeks under her care, Mrs. Adams I protested to Jefferson in a letter, saying, "In short she is the favorite of every creature in the House, and I cannot but feel Sir, how many pleasures you must lose by committing her to a convent."6 In her letter of July 10, 1787, Abigail Adams informed Jefferson that Polly was on her way to Paris in the care of one ofJefferson's servants after a tearful goodbye from "so lovely a child."7 This brief encounter with Jefferson's daughter, and her correspondence on this and other matters with the widower Jefferson, were unusual by eighteenth century I standards ofcorrectness, yet routine in the friendship ofAbigail Adams and Jefferson. Abigail Adams and Thomas Jefferson had met in Boston in the summer of 1784, as I each was preparing to embark on a sea voyage to France. Mrs. Adams was already well I acquainted with Jefferson through her husband, John Adams's, long correspondence and friendship with the Virginian, as was Jefferson with her by virtue ofthe same. Jefferson was 3 Abigail Adams to Lucy Crancb, July 16, 1787, London, in Charles Francis Adams, ed., Letters of Mrs. Adams, The Wife ofJohn Adams (St. Clair Shores: Scholarly Press, Inc., 1977), 377. 4 William Howard Adams, The Paris Years ofThomas Jefferson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 219-21. 5 Ibid., 220-21. 6 Abigail Adams to Thomas Jefferson, July 6, 1787, London, C.F. Adams, ed., Letters of Mrs. Adams, 183. In all cases ofspelling, grammar, and capitalization, this author has remained true to these elements as portrayed in the quoted letters, diaries, and statements ofthe individuals in question. In cases where the spelling is near enough to the true spelling to suggest a possible typographical error, [sic] has been added. 2 I to serve as a minister to France along with John Adams who was already overseas attending I to his diplomatic posting. 8 According to historian Edith B. Gelles, after the two arrived separately in Paris, "Abigail and he immediately formed a warm friendship based not just upon alienation [from home] and empathy, but upon compatibility of interests and the love of intelligent conversation." 9 Jefferson, ever the Francophile, helped Abigail Adams adjust to the shock of both being away from home for the first time and the dislocation of France and its foreign ways. 10 For her part, Mrs. Adams proved a woman unlike any other that Jefferson had known, even when compared with his own, now deceased, wife, Martha. Abigail Adams, as I described by historian Joseph Ellis, impressed Jefferson with her marvelous intellect and "the traditional virtues of a wife and mother," and as "a fully empowered accomplice in her husband's career." 11 It was through this empowerment that Abigail Adams provided constant support to her husband and a tonic for his weaknesses. Self-doubt, low self-esteem, and lack of confidence plagued him, but Mrs. Adams provided a surfeit of strength to him as she had an abundance of these qualities. 12 She was thinking of her husband even in considering their growing relationship with Jefferson when she wrote in 1785, "In Mr. Jefferson he [her husband] has a firm and faithful friend, with whom he can consult and advise and, as each of them has no object but the good of their country in view, they have an unlimited confidence 7 Abigail Adams to Thomas Jefferson, July 10, 1787, London, ibid., 185. s W. H. Adams, Paris Years, 172. 9 Edith B. Gelles, Portia: The World ofAbigail Adams (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 86-87. 10 Ibid., 86. 11 Joseph J. Ellis, American Sphinx: The Character ofThomas Jefferson (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), 84-85. 12 Rosemary Skinner Keller, "Abigail Adams and the American Revolution: A Personal History" (Ph.D. diss., University ofIllinois at Chicago Circle, 1977), 62. 3 I in each other."13 She understood the benefits of her husband's partnership with Jefferson, already ten years in the making from their days in the First Continental Congress in 1774, and she understood how this benefited her family as well. Women with ambitions toward public service could only achieve these ambitions in partnership with their husbands because of the limitations of women's rights in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in America. By devoting her considerable emotional and intellectual strengths to his success, Abigail Adams' s life was eclipsed by her spouse's yet I was an integral part of their family's success. 14 During the Adamses' nine months together with Jefferson in France, during which time Jefferson was a fixture in their home, Abigail I Adams and Jefferson became close :friends. 15 So close, in fact, that when the Adamses moved to London in order for John Adams to take up his new posting as American Ambassador to Great Britain, Mrs. Adams commented on the parting, saying, "I shall regret to leave Mr. Jefferson. He is one of the choice ones of the earth."16 Soon after, Abigail Adams began a correspondence with Jefferson, who remained behind as an ambassador to France. Acting on a remark by Jefferson at their parting, that he enjoyed hearing from :friends, she wrote to him after arriving in London. 17 Knowing that married ladies did not write to single gentlemen, she apologized for not making prior arrangements with him before writing, telling him that she took his remark as an invitation to correspond.
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