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Washington, Jefferson, Madison: Family Experience and Personality in the Politics of Three Virginian Founding Fathers

Elizabeth Wirth Marvick

Contents

Preface: The Virginia Founders: Toward a Psychopolitical Approach to an Early American Political Elite …………………………………………… 6

Chapter 1: A Special Place? Virginia in the Eighteenth Century………. 12 Virginian exceptionalism Third World Virginia Defensive Virginians A Man‟s World Economic decline Politics Virginia Style Unruly Virginia A Shadow Society Violent Virginia Always on Stage: Sociable Virginia Striving to be Free: Dependency as a Virginian Them

Chapter 2: A Special Breed? America‟s Virginian Founders………………66 A political and psychological anomaly Parallel Beginnings, Linked Family settings National leaders from the Virginia cradle Patriots, Pragmatists, Republicans, Secularists

Chapter 3:The Prototype: Family imagery and revolutionary spirit in ‟s creative leadership …………………………………..… . 100 2

Washington into Washington: Looking for clues Family History: The Washingtons Family experience: Captain of the “B” Team Mary Ball Washington Rival myths: Mother and Father Fatherless in Virginia: Righting the Wrongs Toward political perspectives

Chapter 4: Jefferson: Star Pupil… ………………………………………144 Prototype and apprentice: Washington and Jefferson Parallels and variations in Family experience Jefferson‟s developmental history Emerging psychodynamic patterns Political consequences Constructing the world to fit a self-image The renaissance man Jefferson and women Generations to come

Chapter 5: Madison: ―A peculiarly artificial and complicated character‖? …..217 The Political Man: An overview of Madison‟s career The Mind and the Man: Madison‟s personality and politics

Chapter 6: : Virginia Gentleman?…………………………..… 256

Chapter 7: Interrelations: : Attachment and Alliance, Aversion and Enmity…. 279 Pairs:……With GW & TJ & Jmad reserve increased as confidence diminished: They in turn began to circulate the view that he was getting slow and senile On the other hand he turned to physical, material representations of national ideals. 3

GW‘s ―moral character‖ much extolled (Gordon Wood:‖ but also put body and soul into his self-modeling and his leadership. Physical symbols of the republic essential features of his institution-building. (Article on him and WDC /Latrobe and TJ in Tjpsych?) Body and Soul: The physical side of George Washington. On GW‘s ―aloofness.‖ (e.S. Morgan.) His sexuality evident—advice to niece, scandal, reaction of women. But GW to DH, MV 12/26/86 On learning invited to be delegate to Phila next May "I immediately wrote to my particular friend Mr. Madison." Fitz 29:127] "Should this matter be further pressed...what had I best do?" id. (copied to 05interel.)

1.Attachment and alliance; aversion & enmity a. Washington‘s favorites: First of all there was the sun king around whom all the planets revolved. b. Humphreys and Randolph c. Jefferson and Madison Parallel between (and liking as well, vide Marshall note above) Marshall and Monroe.

Marshall attached himself to GW, Monroe to TJ; expressed (as in the 1788 Va convention) openly views that TJ shared but diplomatically kept quiet. d. : Mad: GW to TJ; Did JMad know he was making a choice?; Did his betrayal rub off on Randolph? Fear and enmity Satellites & protégés: : The political divorced from the personal? ER wrote JMad, "I feel happy at my emancipation from an attachment to a man who has practiced upon me the profound hypocracy of Tiberius and the injustice of an assassin."11/1/95Reardon 331.] A tin ear for politics. and James Monroe: Loser and winner in the political game

Chapter 8: Personality and Decision Making. Substance and MO ……………..291

GW decisions: to attend the convention Veto choices The break w Randolph ikoT The sublimation was not stable in either TJ or JMad. Tendency to break down: TJ‘s migraine, JMad‘s fits, incapacity for work. Using Others: Friends, deputies 4

Older & younger Changing alignments of favorites ER wrote JMad, "I feel happy at my emancipation from an attachment to a man who has practiced upon me the profound hypocracy of Tiberius and the injustice of an assassin."11/1/95Reardon 331.] Edmund Randolph: odd man out. TJ‘s deprecation of ER to JMad: probably tried to sabotage him, certainly first to GW (re secretary of stateship); by his own report simulated friendship to ER himself (GW88) Actually thought ER held balance of power in govt. Unfit for many reasons including ―circumstances‖! McKitrick on how hard TJ was on him (for doing what he did, ERNTs) Marbury v. Madison a coup in that respect; but even more so was the one he said TJ hated more.

[Chapter 9: Values and Methods: ] Washington: Acting Out; Working the Crowd b: Warding off or neutralizing enemies. Anticipating the other Jefferson and Marshall: Two forms of indirection TJ‘s operation on GW Using agents to assassinate

Marshall single-minded in adapting tactics to achieve ends; Context put him between a rock and a hard place: In hearing on Chase showed how far he was willing to go to save the game (keep from being impeached.) Virginian leadership in national decisions Reversals and consistencies Imperial dreams: [*04Parallel:GWTJ] GW took tour of NW wilderness, enthralled (to Chastellux) with "new Empire."278 [This is Humphreys letter refs. I think; find in papers or Fitz.] Idem: GW To DH[Desire for peace, "First wish is to see this plague ...banished...,& the sons and Daughters of this World employed in more pleasing and innocent amusements than in preparing implements, & exercising them for the destruction of the human race & the "poor, needy & oppressed of the Earth...resort to the fertile plains of our Western Country, to the second Land of promise, & there dwell in peace." Confed:3:149, 7/25/85.] 5

Jefferson and Washington at opposite poles in post hoc rationalization. A national university vs Mr. Jefferson‘s college; a national metropolis uniting a country by commerce . How TJ preempted it vs. a Utopian dream of Greek society. Madison adept in rationalizing actions….

[Chapter 10]: Lessons from the Past? Populist pragmatism and republican realism in modern democratic politics…………………………………………..…….298 Political correctness: eighteenth-century style. The Politics of Imagination vs. the Politics of Realism:

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Preface

On an evening in the late 1920s, in New Orleans, a social psychologist addressed a meeting of American sociologists. He reported on his research into the social origins of the new Russian revolutionary elite. When he finished, his findings were challenged from the floor by an indignant Russian sociologist, a recent refugee from the Bolshevik revolution. The White Russian angrily charged that the speaker‘s results were flawed because they overlooked the ―fact‖ that the mothers and fathers of the Bolshevik leaders were all prostitutes or sons of prostitutes. According to witnesses of this encounter, the two scholars attempted to settle the argument by non-verbal means before being separated by colleagues. Although I first heard this story from one who claimed to have been present on that occasion, I cannot vouch for its accuracy, having been unable, despite efforts, to determine the time and place of the event described. But even if it is apocryphal, it is a story worth retelling. What a providential opportunity it would be for the psychological study of a group of political leaders if their parents could be shown to have the kind of common histories that the refugee sociologist reportedly claimed for the first generation of Bolshevik rulers! How greatly it would simplify the task of distinguishing between the influence of social and cultural variations on political behavior, on the one hand, and differences attributable to idiosyncratic factors arising from individual predispositions and unique childhood experiences. The rationale for this book, therefore, is the extraordinary fact that a handful of Virginians, all born near the mid-eighteenth century, presents such near-experimental conditions for studying developing political patterns in early American history. While these Virginians may not have exhibited a commonality of origins quite to the extent allegedly attributed by the Russian sociologist to the Bolshevik revolutionaries, they were a sufficiently homogeneous cohort to promise insight into developmental and psychodynamic patterns that produced an exceptional leadership cadre. This is a study of some of the opportunities these Virginia ―founders‖ offer for better psychological understanding of an important series of political events in American history. History presents few opportunities for the systematic study of groups of highly placed leaders who display similar career patterns of innovative, constructive political activity in the 7 context of a republican political culture. Modern European bureaucratic elites, like ancient Asian ones, have sometimes been formed along common patterns, and their members have often been self-perpetuating at the apex of the political pyramid but such successions to office are usually similar to hereditary patterns in monarchies: studying them is little help in understanding major transformations in the political life of states committed to popular principles. At the other end of the spectrum, the small groups that typically lead revolutions—innovators by definition—have sometimes been shown to share like ―peripheral‖ social positions, and to demonstrate evidence of common psychodynamic traits that help explain their high revolutionary ambitions. But except for the , no other modern popular regimes come to mind that were largely conceived, created, and shaped in their early years by a group as narrow and homogeneous as the Virginians who are the subject of the present study. A remarkably diverse and scattered population repeatedly gave implicit consent to be ruled by a very few interrelated men who shared experiences distinctive to a milieu that was highly restricted—spatially, socially and culturally. I began to think about writing this book in 1976, when I was a Fulbright Lecturer in American Civilization at the University of Bordeaux. Thanks to an invitation to address a group devoted to studying Anglophonic civilizations, I put together a short paper that restated the often-asked question, ―What made eighteenth-century American revolutionary leaders so different from their counterparts in Europe, the French revolutionary leaders of the 1790s?‖ Even then I was aware that in my own country it would have seemed foolhardy to raise such a question casually, when the many complex problems it posed had been fruitfully investigated for two centuries by one generation after another of original and diligent students of America and France. Like a missionary venturing into an alien culture, however, I was fortified by the possession of Scripture: that is, by a conviction that political behavior is influenced by early family experience and can be better understood by identifying the psychodynamic patterns shaped by that experience. Acquaintance with the psychoanalytic literature on revolutionaries of other lands and different eras led me to conjecture that those American revolutionaries who presided lawfully over the new nation they created must have had early experiences in common (and/or have shared the lack of others) that distinguished them from their many predecessors and counterparts who exemplified the contrasting pattern of rebel-into-tyrant—a pattern familiar to historians and psychoanalysts alike. 8

The motives and behavior of political revolutionaries have seemed particularly apt for psychoanalytic exploration from early years of the discipline. One of the few models of psychopolitical behavior to be found in Freud‘s work hypothesized motives of revolutionists in prehistoric society, and related them to patterns of political change.1 Later, Ernest Jones would apply Freud‘s ideas to explain the mechanisms at work in the souls of so many liberators turned tyrants: The ―tragic feature of revolutions‖ was that their leaders ―tend to reproduce just the attributes of their predecessors against which they had most vehemently inveighed.‖ The overturned authority represents, he speculated, the father whom one wishes to replace ―with the object of reigning in his stead in the same fashion...and with his same attributes.‖2 Once rage against the ―father‖ has succeeded in destroying him, the angry son rules in his place. Thus it often happens, as Charles Brenner explains, that ―yesterday‘s foe of tyranny becomes today‘s tyrant.‖ Usually, in this interpretation, revolutionists ―are motivated by an unconscious wish to become like the very rulers they consciously detest.‖3 Some scholars have actually tried to apply the classical model of tyranny-revolution- parricide-tyranny to the American experience, adapting Freud‘s ideas to interpret the motives and behavior of American revolutionists in the last quarter of the eighteenth century.4 Yet this model, which postulates the likely transformation of revolutionary leaders into tyrants, confronts a serious challenge in the American case. One of the bases for claims of American ―exceptionalism‖ is that our revolutionary history turned out differently than the model predicts. Brenner therefore argues that the course of early American political history presents a psychological anomaly as well as an historical one. And while students of the Constitution of 1787 may argue with his contention that the revolution ―did not give rise to a new regime which repeated the essentials of the old one,‖ it is certainly a noteworthy fact that its leaders did not transform themselves from champions of the people into insatiable power seekers or brutal autocrats. Not Washington or Adams, Jefferson or bore much resemblance to Robespierre or Napoleon. As Brenner saw it, in the light of psychoanalytic theory, the American

1 Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo. (1912). 2 Ernest Jones, "Evolution and Revolution," in Essays in Applied Psychoanalysis 1 (: Hogarth, 1951), 261; 3 Charles Brenner, Introduction to Psychoanalysis? ( 1974), 225?g 4 For example, Burrows, Edwin G., and Michael Wallace, "The : the Ideology and Psychology of National Liberation,‖ Perspectives in American History 6 (1972): 167-306. 9 revolution was ―something out of the ordinary that deserves special study.‖5 This ―special study,‖ however, is still largely lacking. Broadly speaking, it is the object of this book. What first seemed to me to need explaining, as I approached this American anomaly, was the apparently low level of rage exhibited by those revolutionary leaders when they later came to rule the early American republic. With this in mind I was further emboldened by realizing that in the political developments I was considering, a small group of Virginian neighbors had played a part out of all proportion to their numbers. A mere half-dozen men from Virginia were preeminent not only in the independence movement that led up to, and animated, the American revolution, but also in the first three decades of the national government that was established under the constitution of 1787, the founding law that was also largely the work of the Virginian nucleus. As a political elite this Virginian sub-group of "young men of the Revolution" as Elkins and McKitrick have named them,6 not only represented the avant-garde of the revolutionary movement, and a most influential faction of the organizers, framers and propagandists of the new constitution, but also the holders of a preponderant share of authoritative positions in the new government. To name only six Virginian leaders who were preeminent in the revolutionary movement—George Washington, , , John Marshall, Edmund Randolph and James Monroe7—is also to identify a major portion of those who were to be preeminent in institutionalizing the national republican government during its first critical decades. These six filled four presidencies and a vice presidency of the United States, as well as three Virginian governorships. Four were secretaries of state, two of war, one an attorney general (and another declined nomination to the office). Four filled terms in Congress; one of these was also a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Of the first six United States presidents the only two non-Virginians were John and John Quincy Adams, father and first-born son, quintessential puritan New Englanders: high-minded, virtuous, guilt-ridden, unconvivial—and unpopular. Unlike the four Virginians, both Adamses lacked whatever was necessary—whether will or talent, personality or political context—to extend their presidencies.

5Brenner, 1974: 225-26; 228. 6 Elkins & McKindrick, ―Young men of the revolution.‖ 7Monroe, born in 1758, took an active, though obviously not a leading part in the war. Like Randolph he served mostly under the command of Washington. In John Quincy Adams‘s eulogy of him in 1831 he said, ―Had he been born ten years before...heÛwould have [been]...among signers of decl." . George Morgan, The Life of James Monroe. NY:AMS 10

This concentration of power in Virginians prompted Edmund S. Morgan‘s question, ―Could the new United States have made a go of it in the world of nations without Virginia?‖ He answered, ―Northern republicans… thought not…. They allowed Virginians to compose the documents that founded their republic, and they chose Virginians to chart its course for a generation.‖8 In fact, the span covered by domination of the ―‖ over the course of the new republic encompassed at least two full generations—from the appointment of George Washington as military commander in 1775 to the end of Monroe‘s second term in 1825. In the words of Albert Beveridge, all six of the Virginian leaders mentioned were born ―within thirty years" of one another and "within a radius of a hundred miles."9 Furthermore, they were related to one another by ties of kinship and affiliation dating back to like ancestry in mid-seventeenth century immigration to Virginian shores. The opportunity to link common family histories to comparable political histories seemed to me so obvious that I was slow to conclude that the kind of study I envisioned had not yet been made. The Virginian milieu that cradled so many of our first political leaders was perceived as exceptional, even by contemporaries. Early on, unique aspects of mid-eighteenth century Virginia plantation life prompted speculation and analysis by natives as well as by outside observers. With the passage of more than two centuries, interest in studying the social life of that time and place has, if anything, increased. Moreover, broader and deeper documentary research and better analytical techniques have actually served to reinforce and refine the concept of Virginian ―exceptionalism‖ in the details of intimate private life as well as in the broader social structure and dynamics. Yet rarely have attempts been made to relate the fruits of this deep research to the details of that distinctive political behavior that Virginian national leaders exhibited. Once I had become aware of the remarkable predominance of Virginians in what was known to be an exceptional course of political events, the psychopolitical anachronism that had first attracted my attention to this subject seemed at once more exciting and more daunting.

?1969 (1st ed. 1921), 95. 8 Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery American Freedom:The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia. (New York: Norton, 1975), 386f.

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Exciting because of the opportunity it offered to explore the relationship between diverse personality and political decision making patterns as they emerged from backgrounds that had so many common qualities. Daunting both because of the immense quantity of data that generations of research continues to produce on the Virginian elite, and because of its unevenness in the clues it provides on the personal development of its members. My objective, however, was made more approachable by largely narrowing its scope to Washington, Jefferson and Madison whose vast correspondence, together with contemporary testimony, offers the most abundant evidence on psychopolitical issues. * * * * * Today, I would defend few of the arguments that I advanced in the paper I produced for the Bordeaux seminar.10 Yet I am grateful to Professors Jean Béranger and Jean Cazemajou whose scholarly zeal, knowledge and curiosity concerning American issues was the cue to my setting off on the track that I have followed here. Along the way I had the help of outstanding scholars in early American history, much of it indispensable for avoiding terrible mistakes. Among the most generous and erudite of these were Bruce Ragsdale, Dorothy Twohig and Lucia C. Stanton. The last two opened to me the incomparable resources, respectively, of the George Washington Papers and the Foundation Research Center. I also owe thanks for practical support to the American Political Science Association, the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy, and the Virginia Historical Society. Later, James Gilreath, William Pederson and Larry Shiner helped make it possible for me to develop my ideas by presenting my results in media where they could be read and criticized by others. Especially helpful also was the encouragement of two friends, the late Professor Lewis Feuer, then of the , and Professor Betty Glad, of the University of South Carolina.

9 Beveridge included George Mason and Patrick Henry who rejected the constitution and any part in the Federal government. He omitted Edmund Randolph.and James Monroe (born 1753 and 1758 respectively) The Life of John Marshall, 1 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1916), 31-2. 10 E. W. Marvick, ―Character and Political Culture: Notes on 18th-Century Rearing Patterns and Distinctive Features of American Leadership,‖ Annales du Centre de Recherches sur l'Amérique Anglophone 6 (1977): 31-43.

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Chapter 1: A Special Place? Virginia in the Eighteenth-Century

Virginian Exceptionalism In 1750, Virginia, the first American colony chartered by the British Crown, was also the most populous, the largest, and the richest. Pride in "their country," as inhabitants called the colony, was ingrained in the Virginian gentry—the social, political and economic elite—from childhood. A biographer of Edmund Randolph writes, typically, that his subject was born at a time (in 1758) when Virginia was ―proud, urbane, self-confident and eminently successful as a colony.‖11 From its earliest promotion by the Virginia Company, Virginia had been depicted as a ―paradise much like the Garden of Eden.‖12 As one of its most eloquent boosters, Thomas Jefferson extolled Virginia‘s natural advantages over all other places on earth in his Notes on the State of Virginia. A central theme of this work is the superiority of the natural assets of Virginia: the vigor, size and quality of its flora and fauna (including its exotic Native Americans) and the distinctiveness and attraction of its geographical features. During his stay in Europe Jefferson was always on the alert for species inferior to their Virginian equivalents. Having listened to a nightingale in the garden of a friend he wrote that at home, ―It would be deemed a bird of the third rank only." To Madison he frequently reported his invidious judgments on French fruits to the advantage of Virginian varieties.13 The superiority of Virginia‘s natural endowments and man-made achievements was still asserted by its more privileged citizens when the state ratified the Constitution that established the new republic in 1788. To many observers in the North, the slavery interest often seemed to brand all the states south of Pennsylvania as "the South." Toward the end of his career, Madison himself acquiesced in this perspective although after his death his last disciple, William Cabell Rives, struggled, according to Drew McCoy, to revive the idea of Virginia as being equally close to the North and

11 Reardon, Edmond Randolph Virginia Pride. 12 Edward L. Bond, ―Source of Knowledge, Source of Power: The Supernatural World of English Virginia, 1607- 1624,‖ VMHB 108 (2000): 113. 13 Notes on the State of Virginia, was largely prepared in the United States, but published in London and Paris in 1784 (5?). To , June 21, 1785. (Vol? 435. ?) Gilbert Chinard, Les Amitiés américaines de Madame d'Houdetot, d'après sa correspondance inédite avec Benjamin Franklin et Thomas Jefferson. (Paris: Champion, 1924), 32 .TJ on the inferior nightingale; to Jmad on fruits 13 the states below.14 But throughout the century Virginians did not always group themselves with Georgia and the Carolinas; they were more inclined to view themselves as distinct from their more southerly neighboring states. At the time of the Revolution, Jack Greene writes, ―many Virginians...regarded Virginia more as a 'central' than as a southern state. George Washington...referred to the Carolinas and Georgia as the ‗Southern states' and classified Virginia as one of the 'middle states.'"15 As the largest and most powerful state in the early years of the republic, some expected that the rest of the South would be dominated by Virginia.16 There were important objective bases for distinguishing Virginia from the lower South as well as from the middle Atlantic and New England states. Basic aspects of demography and social organization in Virginia were unlike those in Georgia and the Carolinas. While much territory in the more southerly regions was still wilderness,17 the patterns of settlement and agriculture near their coast bore as much resemblance to the plantation system of the Caribbean islands as to the vast state to the north.18 White planters there were a smaller minority among a slave population that was, on the average, more recently transplanted to American shores, hence more culturally alien to its masters. The ethnic origins of African slaves in Georgia and South Carolina, typically in West Central Africa, contrasted with the predominantly Biafran ancestry of Virginia and Maryland slaves19 In the deeper south, too, control of the slave work force was more impersonal and work patterns more rationalized.20 The perspectives of these white inhabitants of the southernmost states exhibited behavior patterns that better fitted the pattern set by the "colonist" in contrast with the ―settler,‖ who was better represented by the Virginians. Settlers were a relatively larger planter class more firmly planted in a social milieu at least partially shared, both socially and culturally, with their more frequently native-born slaves. Correlates of these contrasting patterns further contributed to Virginians‘ feelings of their state as distinctive and themselves as more closely linked to their surroundings and to their slaves. For example, the "genteel" Virginian was apparently less likely to vacation outside the

14 Madison admitting that slavery distinguished North from South.Drew McCoy, The Last of the Fathers 334f. 15 . Greene Imperatives, 341, citing John R. Alden, The First South (Baton Rouge: 1961), 9-10 16 Cometti, 199. 17 Thornton Ms on trip to the south. 18 Cite article comparing Caribbean, SC & Va. slavery. Richard S. Dunn.Characteristics of Caribbean: A Tale of 2 plntns: Slave life at Mesopotamia in Jamaica and Mount Airy in Va., 1799-1828. WMQ Seies 3:34, 32-65 (1977)(Vantes89) Anna Thornton‘s description of going to NC—―wilderness.‖ 19 Gomez, Michael A. Exchanging our country Marks: the transformation of African idenntities in the colonial anad antebellum south. Chapel Hill: UNC 1998, 150. 20 Philip Morgan on SC/VA work organization 14

"country" than his Carolinian counterpart. Many affluent white Charlestonites fled the locality during the steamy summers for long sojourns in Northern resorts, where the Virginian elite was rarely to be found.21 More cosmopolitan orientations help to account for a greater neglect of the local milieu observed farther to the south. In 1757 a Virginian aide to the young officer, George Washington, sent a touristic report to his commander from Charleston, South Carolina, which, ―from accounts,‖ had been reported to be a great city of the South, of which "place and its inhabitants" he knew Washington would want a description. He wrote, "I never was so much disappointed in my expectations. The town...is little larger than Williamsburg, no public buildings in it to compare with our[s],...far inferior to Philadelphia, New York, Boston or even New Port...The town is indifferently improved, many very bad low clapboard Houses upon their principal streets which are in general narrow and confined." The culture of the inhabitants was no more impressive. Though "esteemed the politest genteelest people on the continent" he found them "egregiously misrepresented."22 Years later, when Washington himself made a famous tour of the deep South during the first term of his presidency, it was for him much like a visit to a foreign, albeit a friendly, country.23 Virginia‘s political interests, too, diverged from those of the rising plantation economies farther south. As Old Dominion productivity began to decline in the second half of the eighteenth century, with its consequent decline in the value of land, slaves constituted a larger and larger proportion of their proprietors‘ assets. The Carolinas and Georgia were the chief markets for these laborers, and their Virginian owners thus had a heavy interest in sustaining their market price. Ending new slave importations from abroad, still an important source of the most southerly states‘ labor force, promised to protect, if not to increase, the value of this capital. Under these circumstances, Jefferson early joined his senior colleagues in the Virginia legislature in condemning the importation of slaves. As it happened, he was at the same time aware that he was condemning a practice that was abhorrent to Enlightenment thinking.24 He inserted the demand for a ban on slave imports in drafting the Virginia Constitution of 1776, in

21 Barbara Carson, in TH Breen, Early American tourists and the commercialization of leisure, in consuming interests, 373-405. 380], 22 GW Col. 4:370, 8/17/57] 23 GW southern tour, 1790? 24 Boyd 1: 30, non importation resolution of House of 1769] 15 one version reproaching the king for having rejected an earlier petition for such a ban.25 This reproach was repeated in a draft of the Declaration of Independence that Jefferson prepared, and the Federal constitution ratified by the states in 1788 protected slave importation from federal authority only until 1808. This compromise had been reached in the constitutional convention through an historic compromise partly negotiated by Virginians. A Charleston editor pointed out Virginians‘ interests in banning imports from Africa in order to promote the sale of their own slaves farther south at higher prices.26 Into his second term as President, indeed, Jefferson— whose ever-growing holdings in slaves constituted by far the largest ―liquid‖ part of his capital—continued to strive for a ban on further importation. Virginia‘s politics was further differentiated from its southern neighbors‘ in that Georgia and South Carolina remained ―significant exceptions among the states to at least a modestly antislavery posture.‖27 Compared with Maryland, as well as with the states to the south, Virginia was also early seen as distinctive. In this comparison, however, Virginia was the more devoted to tobacco culture and slave labor, less commercial and less urban.28 While the Chesapeake region—including, often, the whole coastal area extending downward from the Pennsylvania border, inland to the Blue Ridge and down the Carolina coast—is sometimes studied as a social and cultural whole, the separateness of Maryland was determined from Charles the First‘s establishment of that province under Lord Baltimore in 1632. The 1649 grant of lands that would eventually become the great Fairfax estate of Virginia confirmed the contrast, setting the pattern of divergent political and economic development. A historian of the early Maryland elite concludes, ―Maryland falls midway between oligarchical Virginia and the faction-ridden Middle Colonies. It never quite developed the unity and power of the Virginia elite, in part because the existence of a proprietor in Maryland allowed for a variety of allegiances impossible in Virginia.‖29 Virginians of the governing class sometimes claimed superiority over Marylanders in political virtue. A cousin of James Madison‘s father, displaced to

25 Boyd 1:338] 26 Matthew E. Mason, ―Slavery Overshadowed: Congress debates Prohibiting the Atlantic Slave Trade to the u…States, 1806-1807,‖ Journal of the Early Republic , 20 (2000): 76.[Cite earlier book on TJ & importation too] 27 Mason, ―Slavery Overshadowed,‖ 62. 28 John Richard Alden, The South in Revolution 1763-1789. (New Orleans: Louisiana State University Press, date?), p. ? 16

Maryland from Orange County, Virginia, deplored the lack of civic responsibility that his new neighbors demonstrated.30 Trevor Burnard, analyzing the distinctiveness of Maryland, groups Virginia‘s political class with those of South Carolina and Barbados on the deference dimension. According to him, compared with Maryland the Virginia elite was more self-confident in its superiority to the ordinary populace. Although a third of elections were competitive in Virginia, the competitors were strictly limited to a small group of elite men.31 Thus, by the mid-eighteenth-century a contrasting political culture distinguished Virginia from its closest neighbor. Other social and cultural norms further differentiated the two Chesapeake colonies. Maryland‘s large Roman Catholic population had colored its social and cultural life in a distinctive way from its earliest time. Virginians, on the other hand, gave short shrift to all but Church of Englanders. However, religious mores of the two colonies differed even for Anglicans like Jonathan Boucher, who had been a clergyman in both. He reported that in Maryland, appointments to the ministry came down directly from the temporal head of the local Church of England, Lord Baltimore, while in Virginia clerical livings were awarded by twelve vestrymen—representatives of a community of elite laity that was already more demanding of being heard than its counterparts in neighboring colonies.32 Maryland had become more urban and more cosmopolitan than the vast Chesapeake colony to its south and west, while Virginians prided themselves on their more dignified style of life. A 1754 traveler in both colonies was shocked at the lack of seemliness and decorum at a ball in Frederickstown, Maryland: ―The attendance was ―compos‘d of Romans, Jews and Hereticks who in this Town flock together…Ladys danced without Stays or hoops and it ended with a jig from each lady.‖33 The legal systems of Maryland and Virginia also showed notable differences. Less sensitive to local claims for patriarchal authority, Maryland‘s ruling powers gave more protection to women. Feminine literacy was higher there and the property rights of women were better guarded. According to Kathleen Brown, ―Maryland had perhaps the most liberal dower law of all the mainland colonies, allowing the widow to renounce her husband‘s will and claim thirds of personal as well as real property.‖ If the rising status of women is one

29 Trevor Burnard, Creole Gentlemen: The Maryland Elite, 1691-1776. New York: Routledge, 2002. 30 Joe Chew to JM Sr, 46f. Brant, 46f. ) 31 Burnard, , Trevor. Creole Gentlemen: The Maryland Elite, 1691-1776. New York, Routledge, 2002. VA:‖ 254. 32 . "Letters of Jonathan Boucher," Md Historical Mag 7 (1912): 1-26; 337-356 17 measure of the cultural level of a community, the fact that the laws regarding women were ―less liberal in Virginia‖34 was only one element among distinctive aspects of Virginia that meant that its claims to preeminence and seemingly self-confident pride did not rest on entirely firm foundations.

„Third World‟ Virginia Some of the special conditions of social and material life in Virginia seemed to invite derogatory contrasts with the North. To many, for example, the physical attributes of the Virginian countryside were less than impressive. Making their way back from Jefferson‘s Piedmont house to Williamsburg in 1781 an officer of the French corps commented, ―All this country is entirely wooded and very mountainous, with rather bad roads and no houses.‖ The few settlements of the very rich— Carters, Harrisons, Byrds—along the James River, were isolated enclaves in a generally depressed surround. Von Closen found Westover, the Georgian-style mansion of the Byrds, so luxurious that it ―would be worthy of Paris.‖ He thought the inhabitants of this and the other great plantations in the neighborhood abandoned themselves too much to society, ―thinking only of amusing themselves and scarcely concerning themselves with their estates,‖ robbed by their overseers, their ―large number of Negro slaves…treated very harshly…left to run around almost naked and are not considered much better than animals.‖35 Most of the contrasts between Virginian and English Society were also differences between the American South and the North. Even as late as 1839 a visitor to Charlottesville remarked that travelling in the South was inferior ―in every respect to that in the North,‖ and in Virginia he found ―bad horses, bad vehicles, … roads,… public houses, bad bedding, dirty miserably clothed negroes…nothing wearing the appearance of comfort or neatness; even in the little villages…every thing bears the aspect of want of comfort and tidiness and finish, the houses unpainted, no glass in the windows.‖36 The economy of Virginia remained backward through the last half of the eighteenth century. Almost nothing was manufactured there except in one or two iron works. In mid-

33 Mrs. Browne‘s Diary in Va and Maryland‖ VMBH 32 (1924) 305-20. P. 319.. 34 Walsh…protection of women‘s rights 35 Acomb, von Closen Journal 221. 18 century the only printing press in the colony was in Williamsburg. There was no bank. In contrast with bustling Baltimore, which an English visitor at the end of the revolutionary war predicted would soon be "one of the first towns in America," Richmond, "the famous capital of Virginia...is one of the dirtiest holes of a place I ever was in." Trade there, he found, was "very dull" and there was "little or no business." Proceeding southward, he found Petersburg "unhealthy," Suffolk "miserable.‖37 A generation later Augustus Foster, the English diplomat who lived in the new national capital in the years 1804-12, observed that hopes for that "Infant City's becoming a great Mart for the productions of the upper country, and thereby increasing very rapidly in population and wealth" were disappointed. Instead, commerce continued its "old course through Baltimore where it meets with capital to support it...not a single great mercantile house having yet been established within the boundaries of the Metropolis [Washington].‖38 In contrast with Maryland and states to the north, the plantation system that shaped Virginia's human landscape determined that the colony had few towns and no urban center or metropolis. Coming toward Virginia from the north, Baltimore was the last outpost of metropolitan culture. Even a teen-aged Massachusetts girl traveling southward for the first time around 1800 was amazed to find in Baltimore a city ―larger than Boston,‖ with fine accommodations for the traveler, while Washington was ―a very dull place.‖39 Similarly, the Federalist, John Cotton Smith, coming into Maryland for the first time from Massachusetts to take up his congressional seat in the new national capital, saw all around him signs of ―bad husbandry—usual concomitant of slave labor,‖ but then was impressed by the beauty of Baltimore, rising, so to speak from its backward surround, with all the amenities of the most modern metropolis, and with ―hotel accommodations in the city unequalled anywhere in the United States.‖40 No such experience awaited travelers in Virginia.

36 J. Bayard Smith to his mother, July 29, 1839. Margaret Bayard Smith, First Forty Years of Washington Society, ed Gaillard Hunt (New York: Scribner‘s, 1906), 382-3. 37 Robt. Hunter, Quebec to Carolina. 236; 260-62.] 38 Foster, p.? 39 pCaleb Bingham, Juvenile Letters, Being a Correspondence between Children fro 8 to 15 years of age. Boston 180324f.. 40 John Cotton Smith, Correspondence and Miscellanies. ed. Wm w. Andrews, NY:Harper & bros. 1847, 203-6. 19

In 1804 the British minister to the United States felt at home in Maryland when he traveled there. The affinity, he explained, was due to the fact that ―so many Europeans, particularly English,‖ had married Baltimore ladies—―belles‖ who were an ―ornament to society‖—whose education separated the two colonial systems on many points. and whose manners were ―most exemplary.‖ It was because of these links, he wrote, that ―we know more…of Baltimore than of any other town in the United States…‖41 Virginian planters in the Tidewater traded directly with English or Scottish merchants, typically consigning their crops to these brokers for shipment, coupled with orders for the English household, personal, and production goods to be shipped in return from the mother country. This pattern determined that in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Virginia, individual plantations, the most prosperous of which were located near waterways, remained distant and isolated from one another in everyday life. "Trade was utterly decentralized; there was no central market place anywhere in the Chesapeake.‖42 As significantly, physical isolation promoted social isolation and public facilities for social intercourse between settlements were few and meager. Well into the nineteenth century investment was wanting in playhouses, race tracks, assembly rooms, baths and resorts.43 In many localities, the Anglican parish church provided the only regular community meeting place. Yet with the beginning of the Revolution the divestiture of the church‘s pre- separation property and the progressive removal of its financial support by taxation diminished the ranks of the Episcopalian clergy. The trend accelerated further after the revolution. Adoption of Jefferson‘s Statute of Religious Liberty in 1785 ―buried the establishment‖: clergy could not be recruited and parish churches fell into ruins, were abandoned, turned to secular use or were taken over by new evangelical sects. Soon afterward, only a few Anglican churches lingered in the Piedmont. In Orange County, site of Montpelier, James Madison‘s estate, Risjord tells us "all four Anglican ministers departed." In 1786, Madison's father, head vestryman for his parish

41 Jeffersonian America, 66]

42 Risjord, Ches. politics 4.]

43 Cary Carson, "The Consumer Revolution in Colonial British America, Why Demand" in T.H. Breen, Consuming interest, 507. 20 church, was forced to recruit a Presbyterian minister to replace the defected priest.44 John Marshall, approached by Episcopalian Bishop Meade for political and pecuniary support, considered the situation hopeless although he was ready with a personal contribution.45 Thus even the most significant common meeting ground for sociability (not to mention worship) tended to disappear by the end of the century.46 Even in the cities such resources dwindled. Forced to leave Williamsburg with the British incursions of 1780, the Ambler family repaired upstream to the new capital of Richmond, where they found the facilities for worship pitifully deficient.47 In the Virginia tidewater region, cultural center of the colony and locale of the pre- revolutionary capital, the summer climate annually declined from oppressive to dangerously unhealthy. As July progressed toward September more affluent inhabitants sought refuge from its menace and discomfort. But in their flight to healthier places inhabitants of Williamsburg and Yorktown showed more restricted mobility than Charlestonites who often sought relief and social contacts in resort towns of the North, traveling by sea up to Newport in summer for a more benign climate, and sometimes in winter as well in order to take advantage of better schools. Theodorick Bland, an unapologetic Virginian slavemaster, nevertheless delighted in his assignment as a member of the continental Congress in Philadelphia. In mid-September—the period regarded as most deadly in the Tidewater—he had progressed only as far as Baltimore when he wrote home to his wife ―The farther north I advance the more I find my constitution invigorated. I fear I was not calculated for the meridian of Virginia, where fortune has cast my lot.‖ He was to find he liked New York even better than Philadelphia.48 A New England woman transported to Newport experienced the heat as threatening and the climate inimical after the end of May. A popular Presbyterian minister of her acquaintance negotiated a contract that allowed him "liberty to be absent during two of the sickly months, viz. August and Sept." The narrator and Mrs. Harris were to return to Massachusetts. but Mr. Harris "hir'd a house for the summer" to keep his wife, "on the east shore of Ches. bay, 3/4 of a mile from the boro" on condition that

44 Risjord, Ches politics 51]. 45 Meade, Old Churches….on Jn Mrshll and the bad situation—vol 1? 46 Nelson, John K. A Blessed company: Parishes, Parsons, and Parishioners in Anglican Virginia, 1690-1776. UNC, 2002 296-302. 47 E. Ambler on lack of churches in Richmond 48 Theodorick Bland to his wife, Baltimore, September 12, 1778. Bland Family papers, Virginia Historical Society; Margaret C. S. Christian, The First Federal Congress, 1789-1791. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989. 178.. 21 she would have his company in New England in the following year.49 Even Thomas Jefferson, the inveterate Virginia enthusiast, could occasionally admit that the Virginian climate "unnerves and unmans both body and mind.‖50 Attempts to develop local recreational centers in Virginia were unsuccessful. A project to establish Berkeley Springs as a watering place failed in 1776. Blodget‘s, a hotel venture in the new city of Washington anticipating the Federal government‘s move there from Philadelphia, failed in 1793, even while new hotels were opening in New York and elsewhere. Jefferson‘s happy experiences in the Palais Royal in Paris—a combination shopping and amusement center—inspired him to suggest a comparable structure on the capitol hill of Richmond.51 The architect Benjamin Latrobe drew up a plan that included a hotel but the whole project ―remained unrealized‖ for lack of funds.52 As for domestic architecture, Virginia‘s buildings had been characterized as trivial in size and "overwhelmingly poor in quality‖ since the seventeenth century. ―The Chesapeake may represent the low end of the spectrum for all but the rich both before and after the Revolution‖ writes Edward Chappell.53 The scarcity of respectable private dwellings in Virginia was noted by almost every visitor. A Scottish woman who landed in Chesapeake bay in 1758 traveled overland to join Braddock and his camp followers and found decent houses few and far between.54 Even the dwellings of the rich, like George Washington‘s, were by no means universally admired. Latrobe, arriving in Virginia in 1795, called its most distinguished citizen‘s mansion ―of no striking appearance.‖ Mount Vernon, he said, was no more than ―what would be expected‖ in a middle-level ―English country gentleman‘s house.‖ Moreover, inadequate upkeep produced a ―shabbiness‖ in such isolated country estates only partly accounted for by the decline of the tidewater economy after 1750.55 French visitors to Monticello who had been introduced to Jefferson abroad were mostly laudatory about the scene presented by his famous Virginia house. The tribute of Chastellux, who visited first in 1782, is a notable, but somewhat ambiguous example. Though the early

49 A.G. Roeber, 1801. 50 ." uotedÛfrom Ford, 12. Sept 2, 85.by AJBI,22. 51 Letter of TJ for Richmond mall like the palais-royal. 52 Barbara Carson, ―Early American tourists and the Commercialization of Leisure,‖ in Consuming Interests, 389. 53 Edward A. Chappell, Housing a Nation: The Transformation of Living Standards in Early America, in Consuming interests 171, 207. 54 Mrs Brown‘s [?] journey to join Braddock. 22 version of Jefferson‘s dwelling, partly only on the drawing board, was ―not without fault,‖ the Frenchman noted, Jefferson was certainly ―the first American who has consulted the fine arts to know how he should shelter himself.‖56 But some other cultivated, and perhaps more disinterested, guests looked upon the structure less favorably. Anna Boudreau Thornton was such a critic of the later version of Monticello (still under construction), which she visited in 1802. This sophisticated wife of one of America‘s leading architects found both the site selected for Monticello and its interior arrangements bizarre and somewhat distasteful, and was by no means impressed by its architecture.57 Latrobe found the intellectual ambience in Virginia no more edifying than the architectural, according to his editor, Lee Formwalt, who also notes that the depiction of Virginia‘s intelligentsia as a coherent, interesting elite by Richard B. Davis refers mostly to developments after 1820.58 In the late eighteenth century the colony's single institution of higher education, the College of William and Mary, had a reputation that was little distinguished in the outside world. When James Madison, exceptional among leading Virginian politicians to be sent to college out of the colony, arrived at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton), he found himself disadvantaged in his literary preparation, diligent as he had been at home in Virginia under the tutelage of Donald Robertson, his greatly admired Scottish teacher.59 Secondary schools barely existed. Looking for a suitable Virginia school for one of Jefferson‘s young nephews in 1784, Madison wrote, ―I find a greater deficiency of proper schools than I could have supposed, low as my expectations were on the subject.‖60 Indeed, Albert Beveridge observes that as late as 1789, a year after the founding of the republic, "there were very few schools of any kind in Virginia." Primary schools were small, scarce, scattered and confined almost entirely to boys.61 When Madison was finally obliged to return to his father‘s Virginia plantation after an exciting three years at Princeton, he envied his former schoolmate who was able to live ―at the

55 Lee W. Formwalt, ―An English Immigrant views American Society: Benjamin Henry Latrobe‘s Virginia Years,‖ VMBH 85 (1977): 387-410 56 Chastellux‘s complemnt to Monticello & TJ Travels in North America [1787] 57 Anna Boudreau Thornton on Monticello. LC ms for September 18, 1812, 1802. 58 Formwalt, p.?, citing, Richard B. Davis, Intellectual Life in Jefferson‘s Virginia, 1790-1830 (Chapel Hill, 1964). 59 Jmad‘s disadvantage on arriving at Princeton 60 Jmad to TJ April 3, 1784. PJM 8: 95. 61 Beveridge, ―schools very existed‖ ; scarcity of primary schoools 23

Fountain-Head of Political and Literary Intelligence‖ in Philadelphia, while Madison was in ―isolation ‗in an obscure corner‘ of the land.‖62 Philadelphia, New York, and the cities of New England abounded in cultivated writers for the more popular journals, but the cultural status of Virginia was also low in this respect. This helps account for the attention and qualified success of James T. Callender, an expatriated Scottish journalist who had been one of Jefferson‘s most effective propagandists in Philadelphia, reviled by Federalists for his rashness and—as they claimed—mendacity. Imprisoned in Richmond under the Sedition act, he emerged at the end of his sentence, to see Jefferson‘s election as President. Outraged by the failure of the Republicans to reward him for what he considered martyrdom on their behalf, he would become the administration‘s severest critic as coeditor of a new Richmond newspaper. The Richmond Recorder rapidly acquired a wide readership on account of its intrepid muckraking and its eloquent and flamboyant style. The demand for Callender‘s services, despite the anathema in which he was held by both parties, and his continuation in his editorial position in spite of his increasingly reckless, errratic behavior, are testimony to a mastery of a classical education, an intelligence and a journalistic skill that were in short supply in Virginia, and made him highly valued by his provincial readers.63 Although measures of the diffusion of literacy in eighteenth-century Virginia are inadequate, David B. Hall points to indirect evidence that the literacy level was low and interest in reading comparatively limited. Only half of the household inventories in Virginia between 1790 and 1840 showed book ownership, nor was there an increase in this ratio over the period. Sales of almanacs by printer-booksellers in the state were trivial compared with the North. Hall suggests that this contrast is partly explained by the association of Puritanism with a high premium on being able to read. Virginia‘s Cavalier tradition as well as the dominance of its more ritualized, hierarchical Church of England combined to put less emphasis on ―book- learning‖ among Virginian planters who were mostly Anglican parishioners.64 As for the literacy of women, one measure of the level of a region's culture, Virginia ranked far down on the scale. Standards of education for women in Virginia were low even compared with neighboring Maryland.65 "Sometimes the daughters of prominent and wealthy

62 Rakove, Madison, 4] 63 High skill of Callender 64 byDavid D. Hall, Books and Reading in 18th-century America, in Consuming Interest, 354-372 65 Va low standards compared w/ Md. Kierner/ valst ]. 24 families could not read or write,‖ notes Beveridge.66 Knollenberg finds it noteworthy that George Washington's mother, who may have been schooled in England, was, exceptionally for her generation of Virginian women, confidently literate. This is despite the rudimentary nature of her orthography and grammar.67 On the other hand, the writing skills of Mary Washington‘s Virginia-raised daughter-in-law, Martha Custis Washington, born a quarter of a century later into a more affluent family than the Washingtons‘, were no better. George Washington‘s wife was a double heiress, her natal family‘s considerable fortune exceeded by her first husband‘s. Yet her education had been such that her second husband, or one of his secretaries, had to take care to edit her letters for her primitive spelling and embarrassing infelicities when she was addressing erudite female correspondents, like the New England bluestocking, Mercy Otis Warren.68 The fact that no letter exists from Jefferson's mother, Jane , and only one from his wife is usually attributed to destruction of this correspondence, either accidentally, by fire, or intentionally, due to his desire for privacy. But it is a fact that is also consistent with literary incompetence of the women in question. No letter from the mother and only one from Martha Wayles Jefferson survives. It is a formal one, written stiffly, in large letters, that may have been copied, word by word, from a model given her by her husband, then revolutionary .69 Jefferson‘s jaundiced view of educating women (including his daughters) for other than domestic functions is well known. Nevertheless, in some matters of genteel accomplishments he deferred to his elder daughter Martha, who had acquired, through her five years‘ convent schooling in Paris, linguistic and artistic skills that far exceeded her mother‘s.70 Judith Randolph, a supposedly more socially advantaged distant female cousin of Jefferson‘s daughters, had seen her brothers sent to Edinburgh and Europe for the traditional educational experience. She wrote to lamenting ―her own bleak prospects for

66 ," Beveridge remarks., Life of Marshall 1:18n 67Knollenberg on MBW‘s literacy. Moncure Conway presents the evidence that some of Mary Ball Washington‘s early years were spent in England. Moncure Danl., Barons of the Potomack & the Rappahannock [NY: Grolier club, 1892), Pp 3-75. . a 68 Daniels reproduction of MCW letter to Mercy O Warren 69 Copy of MW Jefferson‘s letter in Boyd? Not in 1-5. 70 Jefferson‘s comment that all Martha needs is knldge of domestic economy; advises [??] to consult Martha for French lessons? advice? 25 securing ‗a tolerable education.‘ This she deemed ‗one of the greatest disadvantages which the Virginia Girls are attended with.‘‖71 No letter of Madison‘s mother is known to exist, for whatever reason (as will be discussed below), but illiteracy would seem a possibility. The absence of surviving written communications from John Marshall‘s mother does not depend, we have been assured, on the state of her literacy, since, as a parson‘s daughter she has been assumed to have received a respectable education.72 There exists a ―Dear Polly‖ correspondence, consisting of letters from Marshall to his wife, but includes none of her replies. What are we to think, however, when her husband writes a grown son a virtual letter on her behalf, viz ―Your mother is very much gratified with the account you give…of all your affairs & especially of your children, and hopes for its continuance. She looks with some impatience for similar information from John. She desires me to send her love to all the family including Miss Maria and to tell you that this hot weather distresses her very much. She wishes you also to give her love to John & Elizabeth & their children‖73? Apparently ―Polly‖ herself was not expected to put pen to paper, for whatever reason. The Chief Justice reported that they shared certain literary tastes, but as the youngest of a family of several daughters, married at a very early age, whatever were Mary Ambler Marshall‘s native endowments, her education must have been very limited despite the affluence of her family. According to ?? Cash, the shortcomings of Virginian society and culture had changed very little by the end of the Revolution: ―Most of the Virginians who counted themselves gentlemen were still, in reality, hardly more than superior farmers. Many great property-holders were still almost, if not quite, illiterate. Life in the greater part of the country was still more crude than not. The frontier still lent its tang to the manners of even the most advanced‖74 George Washington was one of those aware of the drawbacks of the isolated life of the plantation and the cultural deficiencies of genteel Virginia. He himself never set foot in the imperial metropolis, unlike his older half brothers. With the elder of these, however, young George briefly glimpsed the cosmopolitan scene of Barbados and found it exciting. During their

71Cynthia A. Kierner, ―‘ .,‖‘The dark and dense cloud perpetually lowering over us‘‖ Gender and the decline of the gentry in postrevolutionary virginia.Jrnl of the Early Republic, 20(2000), 185-217, citing . Judith Randolph to Martha Jefferson, June 5, 1784m and february 12, 1785,. 72 Everyone says Marshall‘s mother was literate (cite) but evidence? 73 JnM to Jas. K. Marshall, Richmond, July 3, 1827. Papers 11: 27f. ` 74 Cash, Mind of the South, 8. 26 few weeks of sojourn in the island he and Lawrence Washington were housed near the chief port ―with a beautiful prospect both of sea and of land‖ and enjoyed a bustling and varied social life much more active than that available at home. Washington was ―genteelly received‖ and ―agreeably entertained‖ everywhere, and ―delighted in his surroundings.‖ He was introduced to the Barbados version of London club life, and wined and dined daily by the leading officials and planters of the colony. He learned that a group of his hosts ―have a meeting every Saturday‖— apparently only for the purpose of socializing—and one of them ‖treated‖ him with ―a play ticket‖ to a production that had recently opened in London. This first attendance at a professional theatrical performance was the beginning of what would be Washington‘s enduring passion for the theater.75 Fiercely identified with their own territory, often more isolated from outside contacts, the defensive pride of some Virginian leaders sometimes gave them delusions of greatness with respect to the influence on others of their state. During the campaign for ratification after the constitutional convention adjourned in September, 1787, Edward Carrington undertook a statewide campaign to enlist supporters of the new constitution among delegates to the Virginia convention of 1788. Although all agreed that the Old Dominion‘s concurrence was essential to the establishment of the new government, Carrington feared that Patrick Henry, one of the most influential of the state‘s politicians, was "determined to amend and leave the fate of the measure to depend on all the other States conforming to the Will of Virginia, ..[saying]...that the other states cannot do without us, and therefore we can dictate to them what terms we please [& even]...enter into foreign alliances…[and that] the Value of our Staple [tobacco] is such that any Nation will be ready to treat with us separately.‖ Carrington added hopefully, ―I think...few will be found so mad." But he knew that other Virginians shared Henry‘s ―madness‖ in overestimating the political weight of Virginia. He warned of grandiosity in Virginian politicians‘ self-estimation, writing to Madison of St George Tucker, a candidate for the convention who opposed the Constitution's adoption, ―He is unfortunately one of those who overrate the importance of Virg[ini]a and think she may dictate to the whole union.‖ 76

75 GW Diaries 1: 78; 33, 81. 76 E Carrington to JMad, 1/18/88; Mad papers 10:382-3." Edw. Crrngtn to JMad 2/10/88, Manchester Va. Mad papers 10: 492-494]. E Carrington to JMad, 1/18/88; Mad papers 10:382-3]]

27

To some degree this grandiosity overlay a suspicion of inadequacy that was less often expressed. @ Defensive Virginians However ―central‖ early Virginia might have seemed to many of its citizens, however superior its attributes, there was nevertheless ambiguity in its reputation. Evidently, many of its leaders became aware, at an early age, of another side to Virginian preeminence. Young white "masters" growing up in the eighteenth century sometimes sensed that the Old Dominion was in important ways inferior to that English society which furnished the ideals for their concepts of social organization and supplied most of the manufactured products that sustained their way of life. Comparing themselves to the English counterparts that they were given as models, future gentlemen of Virginia could hardly have remained unaware that the civilization surrounding them fell short. Kathleen Brown has discussed the defensive element in the elite Virginian‘s typical stance during the colonial period 1690-1750: ―Being a self-proclaimed colonial also carried with it the burden of English aspersions about life in Virginia, including crudeness and a lack of civility...Anglo-Virginian men internalized parts of this derogatory colonial portrait of themselves, accepting a feminized posture of subordination when necessary…and investing large portions of their fortunes in the effort to mimic English gentility. At other times, however, they rejected this colonial persona in bold assertions of a potent colonial virility that drew strength from its appropriations of Indian masculinity.‖77 Greene sees the sense of cultural shortcomings as part of a general ex-colonial search for identity: "What did concern [the colonial provincial] and what was an important cause of anxiety and a dark blot upon his own self-image was his and his society's failure to measure up to the cultural standards imposed upon them by the metropolis."78 The rare excursions of Virginia gentlemen to Philadelphia or New York evoked sensations of cultural and material deficiency in Virginians like those chronically felt toward the English hub.79 As a young army officer, George Washington had managed to be sent on a

77Kathleen M. Brown, Good wives, nasty wenches and anxious patriarchs. UNC 1996, 6.. 78 Jack Greene, Ambition to overcome.Imperataives 171] 79 Lois Carr in Hoffman book. 28 mission to Philadelphia, the fulcrum of America's highest culture. Of American cities, Philadelphia was particularly admired by Virginians and foreigners alike. A visiting young merchant of London had found it "pleasing beyond description" and destined to be "the first city in the world."80 Thomas Jefferson claimed that its architectural beauty was superior to the capitals that he saw in Europe: ―The city of London, tho‘ handsomer than Paris[!],is not so handsome as Philadelphia.‖81 The English architect Latrobe resettled in Philadelphia as soon as possible after his disappointment with the Virginian elite in the new Federal capital.82 For many Virginians, as Ellen Randolph wrote to her grandfather Thomas Jefferson, the ―real‖ capital of the country—as it had been from 1790 [?] to 1798[?]—continued, in the 1820s [?]to be Philadelphia.83 Washington's initiative made him one of the few Virginian planters to visit major northern cities in the mid-eighteenth century. A few years after his Barbados sojourn the young colonel, accompanied by George Mercer, a youthful Virginian aide, encompassed Philadelphia, New York, Boston and Newport, enjoying and buying up, as far as his resources permitted, all the useful and attractive products that a more advanced economy put on display. Richard Henry Lee, a neighbor of Washington‘s and born in the same year, (who, like him, detested slavery), especially admired the moral superiority of Massachchusetts, where ―the people, he thought, were ‗wise, attentive, sober dilligent and frugal.‘‖84 Virginians traveling abroad usually tried to keep their defensiveness about their own rural culture under wraps, but it can be inferred from their open admiration of the ordinary arrangements they encountered while visiting the North. Freeman speculates that, had it not been winter when George Washington first traveled to Philadelphia as a young man, he would then have noticed that ―farming was not of the wasteful abuse-it-and-move-on sort that prevailed in large parts of Virginia.‖85 Toward the start of the revolution however, the commander would write his brother Samuel from camp in Cambridge Massachusetts: "The village I am in is situated in the midst of a very delightful Country, and is a very beautiful place itself.‖ His judgment was soon echoed by the report of his wife when she joined him in New England during

80 Hunter, 169] 81 TJ to John Page, May 4, 1786. Boyd 9:445. 82 Formwalt, 410. 83 Ellen Randolph to TJ on the real capital Phila. 84 Pauline Maier, The Old Revolutionaries, 165. 85 Freeman, GW 2: 157.I 29 the campaign. Looking out from Prospect Hill she admired the "fine buildings" of Boston. "This is a beautyful country," she wrote a friend. Even in the depth of winter this untravelled Virginian lady had enjoyed the "pleasant journey through New England."86 The discretion of the responsible and influential Washington couple may have ensured that the comparison with home remained tacitly invidious; It was left to others to describe the dismal aspects of George Washington‘s Mount Vernon, dotted with ―small dilapidated wooden buildings, scattered about amid dreary pine forests,‖ filled with the ―awful ruins‖ of amputated limbs, where pigs cows and sheep were allowed to ―forage randomly.‖87 Only a year after Washington‘s death, Abigail Adams, lured to Mount Vernon by the pleas of his lonely widow, found the House ―going to decay‖ and remarked of the whole neighborhood: ―If any person wishes to see the banefull affects of Slavery as it creates a torper[sic] and indolence and a Spirit of domination—let them come and take a view of the cultivation on this part of the United States.‖88 At about the same time a young visitor regarded the ―solitary grounds‖ of Washington‘s home with some dread: ―Whatever nature may have wrought in its favor, to me it appeared gloomy in the extreme.‖89 George Washington showed awareness that comparisons of his own "country" with more advanced societies were likely to be unfavorable for the former when he warned Virginians not to spread abroad an unrealistic or idealized expectation of the New World. Even though his own foreign travel extended only to Barbados, the greater depth and refinement of English culture and the superiority of the English level of living were early made evident to him through the example of his more affluent English-educated half brothers, his neighbors and patrons among the Fairfax family, and his mother‘s English-bred kin. In 1786 he told one of his amanuenses, David Humphreys, of the need to warn more cultivated prospective settlers of the disappointments Virginia could hold for them: Would-be immigrants should learn of the rusticity they would encounter, ―that none who come be scandalised or deceived.‖ Lest those who would ―expect to play the gentleman‖ be horrified by the primitivity of their surroundings,

86 .Gw to Samuel Washington, on beauty of cambridge surround" Fitz. 37: 513. July 20, 1775.; Martha on ditto: Letter to Elizabeth Ramsay, 12/30/75. 87 Dalzell, Robt F. Jr. and Lee Baldwin, ―Interpreting George Washington‘s Mount Vernon, in Higginbotham, GW Reconsidered 97-8.

88 AA on Mount Vernon, c. 1800. 89 Bingham, Juvenile Letters, 30 care should be taken to ―allure none by giving an artificial colouring to the natural advantages of the country.‖90 Washington may already have seen, by that date, a copy of Jefferson‘s Notes on the State of Virginia, a work that had been published abroad the year before. Jefferson, from Paris, had put the book‘s American distribution into the hands of James Madison, who was at the time becoming closely associated with the country‘s leading general.91 The Notes included an elegeaic depiction of Virginia‘s physical aspect. Indeed at least one European traveler to the state would later find his high expectations, aroused by that work, disappointed by the sight of Harpers Ferry which he visited in 1825, attracted by the ―notoriety‖ given it by Jefferson in his Notes. There, at the confluence of the Potomac & Shenandoah, the Italian visitor, Carlo Vidua, found that Jefferson had given ―a very exaggerated description of the beauty of the view,‖ explainable by the fact that the third President ―never saw Switzerland or Italy,‖–true, of course, at the time the Notes were drafted—―& generally speaking the Americans have a habit of exalting their own things."92 When Jefferson did have his first sight of Europe, in 1785, he remained silent on its wonders for some time, stressing instead the supposed misery of its people. His fourteen-year old daughter was franker in a letter to a friend: her initiation to France revealed it as ―the most beautiful country I ever saw in my life…a perfect garden.‖ Later, Jefferson admitted to Monroe that he had seen in France farming country ―than which nothing can be more fertile, better cultivated or more elegantly improved.‖93 The defensiveness about Virginia's shortcomings was moral as well as material. Jefferson himself, in certain moods, could describe holes in the idealized picture of Virginia that he usually strove to present to the world. During the debates over independence he had his first encounters with representatives of northern colonies. From Philadelphia he wrote home to a

90 Zagarri, 86f. 91 Madison was put in charge of the distribution of Jefferson‘s work in 1785. The only record of Washington‘s relation to it, however, is his purchase of a copy of the second, 1794, edition in Philadelphia in February, 1796, long after he had come to detest Jefferson. ―Washington‘s Household Account Books, 1793-1797,‖ in Penna Mag of Histry & Biography 31: 79. The new edition was the only version in his library at the time of his death. A Catalogue of the Washington Collection in the Boston Athenaeum, ed, Appleton P. C. Griffin. Boston: The Boston Athenaeum, 1897, 521. 92 Carlo Vidua, VMBH 77 (1969). 93 [Monroe letter] PTJ 7:508; [Martha to E. Trist], Edgehill-Randolph Papers, Alderman Library. 31 friend that he found the "enterprising genius and intrepidity‖ of New Englanders ―amazing."94 The same contrast is implicit in the complaint he made to the French champion of republicanism a few years later: his fellow-Virginians, he told Chastellux, tended to be ―voluptuary, indolent, unsteady.‖95 As a young college student in New Jersey James Madison was struck with the superiority of thinking on politics and religion that he encountered. The ruling class of Virginia was too rigid "to hear of the Toleration of Dissentients." To a fellow student of Philadelphian origins he wrote, "Our people of fortune and fashion...are vastly different from what you have been used to," e.g., the "liberal catholic and equitable way of thinking as to the rights of conscience,... one of the characteristics of a free people,..strongly marks the People of your province… but [is] little known among [us]." ...."You are happy in dwelling in a land‖ where "foreigners...[are] encouraged to settle...Industry and Virtue...promoted...commerce and the arts have florished...Genius...among you [is due to] liberty & love of knowledge."96 Madison's consciousness of this moral and political backwardness of his home state persisted throughout his long career97

A Man‟s World Of the gentry, those most limited in the scope of their activity by the backwardness of Virginian society and culture were women. The disadvantaged position of planter-class eighteenth-century Virginian women is shown by Catherine Clinton‘s contrast of their demographic patterns with a sample of Hudson Valley Dutch elite women. Her findings disclose a so-called "early modern" pattern of family structure among the southerners: low female marriage age, very high birth rates coupled with high infant mortality rates. Advances in gynecology and obstetrics that made child-bearing less hazardous (and perhaps less frequent) in the North were slow to reach southern women, thus the greater likelihood that these would die in childbirth than their northern sisters.98 As their diaries and letters reveal, ―nearly all [southern] women entered each

94 TJ to George Gilmer, July 5, 1775, Boyd 1: 186. 95 Boyd8:468. 9/2/85; 233 (To Monroe 8:233, 10/15/85 These date attributions must be wrong. Look at the page order.Which does TJ attribute to southerners? Virginians? to Chastellux.?] Letters to Chast. in index 6:203-4; 8:184- 6; 467-70. 96 JMad papers 1:112.To wm Bradfrd 4/1/74. 97 . Drew R. McCoy, The last of the Fathers:Jas. Mad and the Republican Legacy (NY: 1989) 226-233. 98 Martineau, Society,2:193. 32 confinement expecting it to be their last moment on earth.‖99 Plural marriages were more common for the southerners, a function both of lower female age at marriage and overall shorter life expectancy. Infertility and spinsterhood were also more frequent among southern than among northern females. Nevertheless, one measure shows that the ratio of children under five to mothers was higher on the southeastern seaboard as a whole in 1790 than anywhere in the United States except the northwest.100 Thus, if childlessness and early infant and maternal death were more common experiences for southerners, a higher birth rate among fertile women more than compensated numerically. Eighteenth-century Virginian women had far fewer opportunities to socialize freely than their menfolk. The isolation of plantation life greatly reinforced the usual limitations on mobility that are imposed on women by the primacy of their domestic responsibilities. When Jefferson wrote from Paris to his sister-in-law in rural Virginia, he asked her to respond by reporting interesting local news and gossip. Elizabeth Eppes replied ruefully to his notion that she might have something of real interest to convey, given the restrictions of her situation. She would be happy to oblige him, she wrote, "was there any thing I could suppose would entertain you in the smallest degree. You did not recollect I am sure the neighbourhood we live in, or you would not expect sheets of paper fill‘d." 101 Reflecting these restricted opportunities for sociability in the plantation world was the greater frequency of inbreeding. Marriage among cousins was fairly common in the southern group, absent in the Dutch planter elite of the Hudson valley.102 In the rather rare examples of correspondence among young females of the period, one notes a passion for country-house visits and for dancing—the chief respectable sociable recreation for girls in eighteenth-century Virginia.103 Yet limitations on mobility made travel even to neighboring plantations especially difficult for women who were usually restricted by the necessity for transport beyond the simple back of a horse that sufficed for masculine travel. Even more restricted were opportunities to attend the infrequent balls and other such festivities that took place in Williamsburg—and few other Virginian towns. The greater dependency of women on personal service during travel contributed to keeping them homebound and made them still

99 Mcmillen, southern women 56] 100 Catherine Clinton, Plantation Mistress: Woman's World in thes SouthMDNM (New York: Pantheon, 1982), Appendix.. Virginian women comprise half of her sourthern sample. 101 Eliz. Wayles Eppes to TJ, Eppington, 7/30/86: Boyd 15: 629. 102 Clinton on intermarriage? 103 Female correspondence (Burwell? MCW niece? ) on love of housevisits and dancing. 33 more intensely affected by the isolation imposed by the plantation system. When a French visitor observed that women in America desired carriages to the point of "delirium" it was surely women of the American South to whom he referred.104 So special did the need for this kind of transport seem to the southern gentry that proposed federal taxes on carriages came to be seen by planters like John Taylor of Caroline as an assault on the region: ―States which impose [them]…are masters,‖ he wrote; ―Those which pay them slaves.‖105 Feminine ventures northward to cultural centers were drastically limited by primitive conditions of travel and wayside lodging. Both men and women were under constraints in bringing servants along with them: slaves were more likely to make a break for freedom in the North. Local authorities in Philadelphia, New York or New England, often unsympathetic to the "peculiar institution," could not be counted on to retrieve them for their owners. We have already considered the exaggerated effect on women of the limited educational opportunities in Virginia. This alone would largely explain why, as McMillen observed, ―few antebellum southern white heroines matched the achievements of northern activists…Women from the South who attracted public notice…were rare.‖ In the period of the founding generation virtually all writing published by women in America came from outside the South. Virginian women confined their literary efforts almost entirely to private correspondence and—very occasionally—diaries. Even in these they rarely ventured opinions on subjects concerned with public affairs, and never—even in letters to husbands—without apologies or demurrers. By contrast, Northern female letter-writers, most famously, of course, the New Englanders, Mercy Otis Warren and Abigail Adams, but also the Philadelphia-reared Willingses,—Mary Byrd, Anne Bingham and Elizabeth Powel—the New Yorker Henrietta Bethune Colden, not to mention many European visitors and spectators from afar, felt free to comment on the state of American politics.106 Although all these women were known to Thomas Jefferson, and several were his correspondents, his own views of a woman‘s place better represented Virginian cultural provincialism than it did the Enlightenment. In a letter from Paris to Washington he deplored the political influence of women in pre-revolutionary France, rejoicing that feminine influence ―in

104 Kevin Sweeney citing St. Méry--(p.38) 105 Gutzman, KYVa resolutions, 480. 106 Mary Willing Byrd’s eloquence and militance on behalf of her interests evokes the style of Abigail Adams in herletters to Baron von Steuben and others during the revolutionary war. TJP 5:671-705.

34 our country‖ (by which he probably meant, specifically, Virginia), ―fortunately for the happiness of the sex itself, does not endeavor to extend itself…beyond the domestic line.‖107 Anticipating returning, with his family, to his homeland he deprecated the usefulness of the exceptional French education his elder daughter had received.108 Added to the deficiency of educational opportunity from which Virginian women suffered and the restriction on their opportunities for travel and wider social contacts were the permeating effects of slavery that further constricted the autonomy afforded to the mistress of the house and sometimes diminished her status. A host of taboos attributable to the presence of a large servant caste of doubtful loyalty left many Virginian planters‘ wives subject to anxieties arising from what they felt to be their vulnerable situation at home. Benjamin Rush, the Philadelphia doctor who was an amateur of politics, admired and courted the new political stars sent to represent Virginia. He noted with interest, however, that few of these gentlemen were accompanied by their womenfolk, who were often left at home to fall ill or die in the absence of their husbands. He thought these wives were ―less necessary to the happiness of their husbands,‖ and attributed the cause indirectly to ―negro slavery‖ which left to the white southern woman only a ―small share…in the management of their families.‖ Feelings of exclusion, isolation, and ennui, as well as actual sorrow or depression, are especially pervasive in the correspondence of Virginian women of the period. There are frequent allusions to the taking of laudanum in southern feminine correspondence, although it seems impossible to estimate the extent of its use among planters‘ wives. Sally G. McMillen notes the ready availability of opiates, and the prevalence of drug addictions sometimes ―innocently‖ initiated ―to get through a bad day,‖ sometimes precipitated by the death of a child,. a comparatively frequent event in the South.109 Notable among those who expressed such depressive moods is Martha Washington who often complained, in her husband‘s frequent absences, of ―dullness.‖110 Typical is her confession, "I never expect to be well as long as I live in this world.‖ Lonely and anxious as she was in her husband‘s absence, she warded off visits from her mother—who apparently had

107 : TJ to GW contd. 12/4/88; Twohig Pres. series I: 155.) 108 TJ papers, 17:658? (uselssness of Martha‘s education? ) 109 Mentions of laudanum in letters; Sally G. McMillen, Southern Women: Black and White in the Old South. Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, In, 1992, 74-5; 108. , 110 Longing for company…Martha talking of how dull they were at home.[This can‘t be right citation?] Gentleman's Progress: The Itinerarium of Dr. Alexander Hamilton, 1744. UNC 1948 35 similar complaints—as more likely to depress her further than to lift her spirits. Even when her husband was at home with her, her state of mind tended to reflect a chronic malaise:111 ―The general,‖ she writes her niece[?], ―tho‘ with a cold, is very well; As to myself I am as usual-- neither sick nor well.‖ George Washington was aware of the dismay inspired in his wife by his absence when he wrote her in 1775 to announce that he had accepted appointment as commander in chief of the continental army: ―I shall feel no pain from the toil or the danger of the campaign; my unhappiness will flow from the uneasiness I know you will feel from being left alone. I therefore beg that you will summon your whole fortitude...It must add greatly to my uneasy feelings to hear that you are dissatisfied or complaining at what I really could not avoid."112 Whatever Martha‘s proneness to anxiety may have been, Washington knew that even his very strong—and apparently independent—mother had freely expressed her dissatisfaction at his earlier wartime absences and had complained regularly to all who would listen. Martha Washington and, later, Dolley Madison, were exceptional in being able to participate in some of their husbands‘ travels. In Thomas Jefferson‘s ten-year marriage his wife, who had given birth to six children, apparently never accompanied him in his journeys to the North. Year after year Jefferson had to turn aside offers of hospitality to Martha Wayles Jefferson issued by Philadelphia householders. Over and over again he explained that his wife was unable to join him--sometimes on the grounds of health and sometimes for unstated reasons. The same was true of John Marshall's wife, who had suffered all her life from undefined nervous complaints that certainly included severe depression. Like Martha Wayles Jefferson, ―Polly‖ Marshall had borne her husband many children, several of whom died in infancy—apparently triggering a complete nervous breakdown on at least one occasion.113 Marshall‘s tone to her, in his letters, is similar to Washington‘s to Martha: ―Your general health is so delicate, your spirits so liable to depression that I cannot controul my uneasiness.‖114 When Marshall was at home in Richmond, free of his judicial duties, he shared Mary Ambler Marshall‘s highly restricted (and restricting) life. He writes in 1817 to his brother, ―My poor

111 Martha To Fanny Bassett Washington. MV 2/25/88 112 152n Letter of GW to MCW 6/18/75. 113 Mary Ambler Marshall‘s nervous breakdowns. 114 JnM to Mary W. A. M. Washington, February 28, 1829. Pappers 11: 204f. . 36 wife is in wretched health. I am entirely excluded from society by her situation.‖ 115 A few years later, writing to Bushrod Washington from the same place, the Chief Justice again sounds somewhat restive at the inconvenience caused by his wife‘s neurasthenia: ―I am just returned from an excursion I am regularly under the necessity of making into the country with Mrs. Marshall to avoid the noisy festivities of the 4th of July.‖116 Mary Marshall‘s mother also had been afflicted, during most of the years her children were growing up, by what was apparently chronic, sometimes intense, depression.117 As a young man James Madison, too, continually expressed his anxious concerns about his mother‘s health, which was often reported by his father to be seriously impaired in some usually unspecified way. Here, however, assessment of the facts of her case is obscured by the fact that Nelly Conway Madison died just three years short of her hundredth year.118 Benjamin Rush's judgment that southern women were ―less necessary‖ to their husbands is supported by testimony from other witnesses who, like Rush, attributed such devaluation to the South‘s ―peculiar institution.‖ This attribution was central to the interpretation of Harriet Martineau, the British social observer, in her analysis of southern society during her travels in the early nineteenth century. To her, sexual mores endemic to southern slavery were the central cause of the degraded status of planters‘ wives in Virginia. She credited Dolley Madison, Quaker-raised in Philadelphia, as remarking that the southern wife was ―‗the chief slave of the master‘s harem.‘‖ Other contemporaries related stories of deliberate humiliation of white wives by adulterous husbands and more than one observer commented that the presence among the houseslaves of mixed-race children bearing a clear resemblance to the master of the house was mute, inescapable testimony to the devaluation of the plantation mistress.119 The relations of our leading Virginians with the women around them, if not notably exceptional for their class and milieu, deviated in some respects from the degraded plantation mistress that Harriet Martineau depicted as typical of the South of her time. Jefferson seems superficially to have conformed with this model, in contrast with Washington and Marshall, who explicitly extolled the capacities of women and their moral and intellectual superiority, and

115 iJohn Marshall from Richmond to bro. Louis, 12/7/17, Papers 8:160. 116 John Marshall to Bushrod Washington, richmond July 6, 1822. Marshall Papers 9: 238

117 Eliza Carrington letters on condition of Mom. 118 Nellie Conway Madison was born January 9, 1731 and died on February 11, 1829. 37 with Madison who, as Finkelman Oakes(?) points out, never derogated the qualifications of the female sex.120 Marshall has left a memoir that suggests he consulted his wife on many important issues in the political arena with which he was confronted. Martha Washington, always the model of Virginian female decorum and domesticity in the public eye, expressed herself freely on political matters in private letters, and even more after her husband‘s death in such a way as to give substance to the view that she shared fully in George Washington‘s concerns while he lived, although the part she played was apparently exclusively supportive, rather than participatory in decision making. Dolley Madison‘s political influence on her husband‘s career is legendary and will be discussed in a later chapter. Edmund Randolph reports himself as deeply influenced morally by his wife, who, exceptionally, had been his grammar school classmate. Jefferson, unlike these others, expressed in general terms the stereotyped ideal of the pure and genteel Virginian lady. He often expressed disapproval of the exercise of political influence by women, deprecated their intellectual powers, and wrote condescending letters to them praising their supposedly ―feminine‖ charms. Yet in practice he adapted easily to the very different position he found women to hold in French society. Despite his avowed ideology of male superiority his elder daughter—his most regular and devoted companion—was also his political ally and confidante throughout his life and received her due of his respect. All these Virginians had women of strong character in their family histories. Washington‘s mother is the first for whom we have evidence of maternal activism: it was spontaneous and unselfconscious. Little is known of Jane Randolph, Jefferson‘s mother, except that she seems to have kept the reins of family control firmly in her own hands until her death in her son‘s early adulthood. Madison and Marshall had active and authoritative fathers and, apparently, mothers who had minds of their own. Nelly Conway Madison took the initiative of a re-baptism at an advanced age, while Marshall represented his mother and his only sister as possessing powerful moral influence. Ongoing research discloses ever more clearly how sexuality played a central role in the maintenance of the Virginia planter‘s dominance over subordinates, dependents and possessions. In particular, the right to exploit women in subordinate status to gratify male desires played an important role in the self-image of Virginian gentlemen. Their claim to sexual self-indulgence

119Harriet Martineau (Society in America, London 1837) quotes Dolley M. as referring 2: 237-]; Chastellux? on resemblance of houseslaves to masters. Clinton, Caught in the Web>). 120 Finkelman? on Jmad‘s attitudes toward women. (Not in LC book—that‘s Oakes.]I 38 required continual imposition of controls, and the demand for self-control on the white female members of the household was onerous indeed, as Martineau perceived it, and as many earlier observers of and participants in plantation life described it.121 Beyond issues of sexuality, the managerial tasks of the plantation mistress were made significantly more unrewarding by the same requirement that made rationalization of agriculture a constantly receding goal: slave labor had to be the principal factor of production. Such a system was inherently inefficient and difficult to manage. Again, Harriet Martineau perceived this problem: ―Saddest slavery of all was that of conscientious southern women…[who] cannot trust their slaves…[and yet]…have to personally see that their own orders are executed.‖ Correspondence of Virginia women of the time contains frequent complaints of their heavy responsibilities in micro-managing an enslaved staff with severely limited capabilities and deliberately stunted understanding. No plantation mistress could have had better support in these duties than Martha Washington, yet her letters are full of her difficulties as executive officer of the Mount Vernon household.122 The institution of slavery placed a strict limit on the sort of amenities in which the master class could indulge, and the consequences of this limit fell more heavily on the plantation housewife than on her husband. For example, Jefferson, as a single man in Paris, lived in a modern mansion that was luxurious, as his daughter wrote, even for a city that was highly advanced in the arts of everyday life. His elegant Hôtel Langeac even featured a state-of-the-art ―lieu anglais‖—a room containing a flushing toilet.123 But when Jefferson returned to rebuild Monticello, equipped with vast stores of supplies imported from the old world and under the influence of what he had learned to enjoy there, he did not include this facility in his reconstruction plans. Elaborate indoor plumbing was an asset that required capital investment beyond the reach of most planters, and skills unavailable in rural Virginia. The necessity for frequent removal and emptying of chamber pots took advantage of abundant unpaid, unskilled labor, including that of the white mistress of a house who supervised such operations. Hence, as Carr and Greene remark, the growth, over the eighteenth century, of availability of "things that

121 The right to sexual self-indulgence claimed by the Virginia planter also required continual imposition of controls, and the demand for self-control, on the white female members of the household (Fithian, Byrd, Jefferson. Martineau ―harem‖ observation). 122 Martha Washington‘s difficulties as slave manager. 123 Indoor toilet in the Hotel de Langeac—Howard Rice 39 made life more comfortable" in the Colonial Chesapeake "did not include...items for cleanliness or sanitation124 An additional influence of slavery on the Virginian planter‘s quality of life that fell most heavily on women was a pervasive anxiety evoked by tension inherent in the slave-master relationship. On the plantation of Belvedera near Fredericksburg the ratio of whites to slaves was about 1 to 5. The mistress was obliged to sleep in the nursery with the children in the absence of the white housekeeper as the great house was thought to require the oversight of an adult white person just as much as did the field workers. George Washington thought it necessary to remove a young female relation from Mount Vernon when there were no older whites in residence. Fithian discusses the onerous obligation of Mrs. Carter to sleep with the children in the nursery when Lucy, a white nurse, is absent.125 Among planters‘ wives, the longing for company and the depression often aggravated by feelings of isolation were also colored by fear and anxiety—―a background noise‖ to the peculiar character of everyday social relations that were, ultimately, based on a system only legitimated by possession of a preponderance of violence. For women who could not escape, as Martha Washington and Dolley Madison could, into the larger society, welcome respite from the sense of being imprisoned in one‘s dwelling could be gained by long visits to the shelter of a mother‘s home, or to the ―springs‖—resorts that offered refuge and recuperation from the housewife‘s difficult responsibilities. These were the favorite escapes for example, of Mary Ambler Marshall. Insecure aspects of the white woman‘s domestic situation in Virginia contributed to making it a somewhat unenviable one. The young Virginian men who, before the Revolution, often ventured abroad for their education, might have been expected to return with English brides. Instead, such marriages seem to have been quite rare. Stories are found of Virginian scholars seeking the hands of young ladies of London or elsewhere in Britain, but these courtships seem often to have ended in the kind of rejection that embittered William Byrd, II[?] after his failed courtship of a [titled?] young Englishwoman.126 Robert Beverley, born in 1762 of a notable Virginian family, "had spent some years in England acquiring an education, but his

124 Carr and Greene." 60 "Changing Lifestyles..."

125 .Mrs. D. "obliged to sleep in the nursery with Johnnie when Lucy, maiden hsekpr. not there.139]"lucy can now sleep in the great house with the children by herself, that is without any [other] white person." 147[Fithian, vanotes]] 40 decision to marry a local heiress meant...that he would probably spend the rest of his life in Virginia.‖127 The low rating of Virginia as a destination for genteel English girls implied a further downgrading of Virginia-born ladies. Without a strong motive for emigration to Virginia, such as an already existent family stake in the colony, few upper-class English fathers were willing to see their daughters venture so far abroad. Nor, apparently, were many Virginian youths inclined to issue the invitation: taking a bride from high English society would expose her to unforseeable disappointments. A disappointment it seems to have been for the Baltimore-born mother of Edmund Randolph, wife of the loyalist John, who, left a widow with her daughter in London whence her husband had retreated at the start of the Revolution, rejected the urging of her only son to return to the Virginia where she had started her family and where he had earned so much local distinction. George Washington himself was similarly disappointed when the love of his youth, Sally Cary Fairfax, remained in England after the death of her husband there. Years before, Washington had shown Humphreys that he was aware that America was not for everyone; yet his letter to Sarah Fairfax spoke with pride of the bright future ahead for the new republic. He wrote her rather sadly that he had ―wondered often (your nearest relatives being in this Country) that you should not prefer spending the evening of your life among them….rather than in a foreign Country.‖128 The isolation of life on the plantation typically denied its mistress opportunities to make a good impression among connoisseurs from the fashionable world. At a ball in Alexandria in 1785 [6?] one visiting English merchant remarked, "I cannot say much either for the elegance in dress or appearance of the Virginian girls. They have not the least notion of setting themselves off to advantage."129] When Martha Washington joined her husband as the focus of national attention in the revolutionary war she felt greatly disadvantaged in the more cosmopolitan setting of the North. She was thin-skinned and unprepared for the free-wheeling give and take

126 Wm Byrd‘s rejection by a ?noble English girl. 127 Robt V. to [John Bland],12/2/7/62 & to Saml. Athawes, 4/15, 7/16/ 71 . Robt. Beverley Letterbook, 1761-93, lc.quoted by Lois Green Carr anad Lorena S. Walsh, "Changing lifestyles and consumer bheavior in the colonial chesapeake," in Of Consuming Interest, 67f]Necessity to marrry at home--i.e. Robt beverley (b. 1762) Carr & Walsh, 67f] 128 MV 5/16/98, Ret. 2: 273. 41 that some northern politicians‘ wives were familiar with. This first first lady was contrasted with the newly arrived wife of the second American president by Henrietta Liston, the observant wife of the British ambassador. She greatly admired Abigail Adams who could laugh at the public ―abuse of her husband,‖ while ―poor Mrs. Washington,‖ had been ill-prepared by the sequestered life of a Virginia planter‘s wife to see humor in such criticism of George Washington.130 Martha Washington‘s situation had forced her, until the Revolution, to rely entirely on an English agent to supply her with things in the "present Fashion" for "this remote region.‖ Possibly she was the first new acquaintance of the plainly-dressed Abigail Adams to admire that New England matron for cutting a stylish figure.131 To many Virginians, questions of style seemed to be resolved by emulation rather than by taste and judgment. Show, rather than standards of value or taste, determined consumer choices in such matters as dress, tea services and other decorative objects, and a low value was (necessarily) put upon privacy and other attributes of the inner life. A visiting Londoner, regarding the careful dress he saw around him, commented that the Virginians ―look more at a man‘s southside than his inside.‖132 Values like comfort and cleanliness chiefly required the efficient use of slave labor. But such effective productivity, planters‘ wives were always complaining, was unattainable. Rather, the better-off planters of Chesapeake society seem to have valued, as more easily grasped, tangible signs of their status, and the more frivolous forms of recreation. Gatherings for the enjoyment of music, for example, were restricted by the limited skills of the female participants. A visitor from France ridiculed the quality of the singing that constituted genteel Virginian home entertainment.133 Economic decline Despite its preeminence among the other states in size, population, wealth and influence, in 1790 Virginia still had no town as large as 5000, while six states to the North, including

129 visiting English merchant deprecating Virginian women, ?199 130 Perkins, ―Letters of Henrietta Liston,‖ WMQ 3d series, 11(1954): 608. 131 MCW‘s letter to agent on fashion; 67f ??? And comments on Aadams‘s stylishness??] 132, data of LCGreen & others suggest(144) , They cite William Eddis commenting on it. [(inappropriate of English styles in the Chesapeake). T. H. Breen, ―Horses and Gentlemen: the Cultural Significance of Gambling among the gentry of Virginia,‖ 246. 133 Robert E. Desrochers, Jr., reviewing Alex Bontemps, The Punished Self: Surviving Slavery in the Colonial South. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001. In ….Southern History [?] …2003, p. 611. .c 42

Maryland, had that distinction.134 Although the census of that year showed that Virginia was still the most populous state, this assessment was misleading, for it was calculated on the largely unskilled, powerless and inarticulate slave population. 1790, the year Virginia peaked in political eminence, also marked the beginning of a decline in its position as the state with the largest population. While its actual rate of population growth slowed over the next two decades, a surge in such growth in the more urban, commercial North meant that New York surpassed the Old Dominion and by 1810 was the largest state in the Union.135 As a largely agricultural state, on the other hand, Virginia found it difficult to claim preeminence. The Virginian system, wrote an observer from Scotland(?), "produced the Slovenliest husbandry imaginable." Ebenezer Hazard observed "They do not seem to know the use of a meadow." A [northern?] traveler in western Virginia and Kentucky remarked that the farmers were "indifferent ploughmen." 136 All the Virginian leaders considered here felt the disappointing rewards of this secular decline of agriculture in Virginia. While their aspirations to a continually improving level of living continued to rise, the failure of the value of their cash crops to keep pace constantly threatened them with rising debts. This discrepancy between earned income and expenditures was often attributed to inefficient farming methods. The Virginian founders themselves were variously rated for their agricultural skills. The British diplomat, Augustus Foster, faulted Thomas Jefferson as an incompetent farmer. He was also appalled, on his first sight of Jefferson‘s neighborhood around Monticello, at the miserable aspect of the country.137 Jefferson himself disparaged his own skills in agriculture and credited Madison and Washington with being excellent farmers. Washington was universally esteemed for his diligence and wisdom in managing his large and far-flung estates. Sometimes he was cited as the single exception to the poor performance generally seen among white farmers in Virginia. The Englishman, Samuel Vaughan, who had settled in Philadelphia, reported, after a

134 Charles A. Paullin, Atlas of the Historical Geography of the Unived States (Baltiimore: Carnegie Institution, 1932): Plate 61E. 135 . 48n [but I don’t know from what. Histcl atlas?)

136Grove, E. Hazard, vants89)Quoted in Hirschfeld from the MHS ms., GW and Slavery, 214; Toulmin, 122 . 137 See "Caviar" 43 sojourn at Mount Vernon in 1787, that Washington was "the best, if not the only, good farmer in the state.‖138 For a short time Washington and Jefferson, each resident on his plantation, carried on a correspondence about farming methods that roused Jefferson‘s defensiveness, a result that Washington may covertly have intended. According to a letter from Washington to Jefferson, Arthur Young, an English writer and scholar admired by Jefferson, and a supposed agricultural expert, had questioned some of the Sage of Monticello‘s calculations about farm productivity. As reported by Washington, there were two grounds for Young‘s skepticism. The first was that Jefferson had not properly calculated the costs of slave labor. Second, Young doubted that such a level of output as Jefferson had reported could be reached without a much higher ratio of manure to crops than Jefferson had provided for. Jefferson replied through Washington, but, according to that intermediary, Young found the reply inadequate. With Washington prodding him for further explanations, Jefferson, perhaps out of embarrassment, first stalled for time, and then tergiversated. In fact, Jefferson had very little livestock in Virginia; thus this source of organic fertilization was scarcely an important part of the farming techniques he employed.139 As both he and Washington knew, Jefferson‘s heavy, and proportionately growing, investment in slave ―capital‖ precluded the rationalization of his farming methods. Jefferson‘s position of continually increasing indebtedness made him less able every year to modernize his farming methods. Jefferson was ever eager to import seeds and other objects from Europe that would enhance the productivity of his slaves. On the cultivation of capers in the south of France, for example, Jefferson observed that this valuable product was harvested at a level allowing for useful employment of children. He invested in culinary courses for the one male slave, James Hemings, who accompanied him to France, and apparently also in some kind of training for James‘s young sister Sally. But he was quick to recognize that tools and machines requiring cash for purchase promised no economic advantage for his domestic economy if they merely displaced working hands.140 At the root of the lag in southern levels of living was the unavailability of capital for investment: next to the southern planter's stake in land, his assets were irretrievably tied up in

138 Quoted from the manuscript Journals of Samuel Vaughn in the collection of Mount Vernon. I owe the facts on Vaughan and this citation to the courtesy of Philander Chase, Editor of the Papers of George Washington. [Rasmussen?] 139 Arthur Young/ GW/TJ correspondence. 44 slaves. His ability to manipulate his resources was so strictly limited that he could rarely take advantage of the smallest technical advances. The rapid growth of the slave population in Virginia increasingly confined ambitions for raising incomes to methods for utilizing surplus labor to greater advantage or to mortgaging it, hiring it out, or selling it off. Improvements that required higher ratios of capital investment to workers and promised greater per capita productivity were effectively ruled out. Jefferson's evasiveness and procrastination in responding to Arthur Young's inquiries about his agricultural methods, relayed by Washington, show his defensiveness. Washington seems to have been engaged in a rather sly baiting of his former Secretary of State. He was undoubtedly aware of the chronically desperate state of Jefferson's indebtedness, and knew full well the financial considerations that obviated rationalizing of farm management practices for Jefferson, as they had impeded his own although to a much lesser degree. He was probably also aware of the psychological strategies Jefferson used to defend himself against acknowledging the realities of his situation. Washington himself was, exceptionally among the planters of his milieu, avidly entrepreneurial, a position that helped animate his ultimate aim to be free of the slave system. Indeed awareness of Jefferson‘s defensiveness on this score reflected Washington‘s sensitivity to the delicate position of certain Virginia gentlemen among his opponents who professed themselves to be republicans—even egalitarians—as far as human rights were concerned. The vision of the first president was fixed upon reducing his dependency on slave labor. Like some others, he perceived that the diminishing productivity of Virginia‘s farms was not only due to a rapid decline in the fertility of land used to produce tobacco, the state‘s main cash crop, but also to basic drawbacks in production methods. In a system in which slaves constituted a predominant proportion of the personal assets of planters and in which only a small proportion of those assets was liquid, it was necessary to substitute labor for every other kind of investment. Whenever possible the Virginian landowner had to resist any innovation that might require financial outlay, no matter how much it might promise to increase productivity. This was a system universally acknowledged to produce slipshod agricultural methods, ill-kempt fields, and inadequate connecting roads. While Jefferson, for example, might at least aspire to rationalizing farming methods, rotating crops and diversifying them in a struggle for

140 TJ wanting to plant capers; Hemings training in Paris (Memo books) 45 self-sufficiency, and studying other changes in cultivation such as a design to improve the angle of the plow, such measures were minor. He, like the other Virginian founders, knew that the institution of slavery was critical in holding back the state‘s development. When Ellen Wayles Randolph, his favorite granddaughter, toured ―the fairest and most flourishing portion of New England‖ for the first time after her marriage to the Bostonian, Joseph Coolidge, she saw ―prosperity and improvement, such as I fear our Southern States cannot hope for, whilst the canker of slavery eats into their hearts and diseases the whole body.‖ This surely echoed the explanation she had heard since she was a child listening to the conversation at Monticello. Now, Jefferson replied with an acquiescent, but more equivocal appraisal: Although the ―rustic scenes‖ that she has left behind in Virginia ―do not want their points of endearment,‖ says he, yet she is right that ―one single circumstance changed, and their scale would hardly be lightest. One fatal stain deforms what nature had bestowed on us of her fairest gifts.‖ Having touched so elliptically on the evils of slavery, he recalls a similar trip he made in 1791 and attributes New England‘s progress since then to what ―the labor of man‖ can accomplish with ―free and good government‖ unoppressed, as he adds somewhat irrelevantly, by ―kings, nobles and priests.‖141 Madison, who had accompanied Jefferson on that trip, although it was not his first journey north, had at the time taken note of one sort of freedom that his older friend does not mention: On the eastern shore of Lake George he encountered a sole settler—a free Negro who, with the help of ―6 white hirelings,‖ had made a thriving enterprise of a small farm ―by his industry & good management.‖ Madison‘s entry on this man‘s success is admiring—almost rueful—of an example that he thought inconceivable for Virginia.142 Politics, Virginia style Partly as a result of regular contacts with New Englanders through the early revolutionary committees of correspondence, Virginians became aware of the higher sense of civic (as opposed to parochial) duty of their northern collaborators. The contrast was most striking when Virginians compared themselves to New Englanders on the score of preparation for republican citizenship. Awareness of Virginia‘s deficiencies as a republican model, even for white men, was expressed by Thomas Jefferson during the war preparations of 1774-5. From Philadelphia he wrote home to a Virginia friend marveling at the "enterprising genius and

141ERC to TJ, August 1, 1825; TJ to ERC, August 27, 1825. Betts, Family letters, 454-458. 142 PJM, 14:27.June 1, 1791. 46 intrepidity‖ of the New Englanders. He found it ―amazing‖ that "their rage [against Britain] has got the better of every interested principle.‖143 John Adams recalled a conversation with William Langborne, a well-connected, world- travelled revolutionary veteran of Virginia: "Maj. Langbourne ...was lamenting the difference of character between Virginia and N. England.‖ Adams‘s "receipt‖ for making a New England in Virginia was ―Town meetings, Training Days, Town Schools, and Ministers...The meeting house, and schoolhouse and training field are the Scenes where New England men were formed.‖144 Such impressions may have led Jefferson, after his retirement, to toy with the notion of emulating New England institutions in Virginia. He proposed self-governing wards, ―called townships in New England,‖ as ―the wisest invention…for the perfect exercise of self- government.‖ To John Adams he claimed to have proposed such an organization to the Virginia legislature after the Revolution to ―divide every county into wards of 5 or 6 miles square, like your townships,‖ whose simultaneous meetings ―would enable the state to act in mass, as your people have so often done, and with so much effect, by their town meetings.‖145 Establishing these institutions was never a real project of Jefferson‘s, yet the fact that he cast about such thoughts, if only in private correspondence of his later years, is evidence of his awareness of Virginia‘s deficiencies in preparing most of its citizens to take part in public life. Even a dyed-in-the wool Ur-Virginian like Richard Henry Lee ―came to visualize New England society as the prototypical ideal for a republican America.‖146 In such criticisms of the institutions and customs of their native state, and in articulating (however circumspectly) the dire moral and social effects of Virginia‘s slave system, Washington, Jefferson and Madison strengthened their bids for national leadership. Their positions were made possible, however, by Virginia‘s general practice of avoiding rationalizing slavery. As Jack Greene has noted, no one came forward from the Virginia delegation to the constitutional convention "with a positive defense of slavery," suggesting a greater sensitivity to

143 7/4//75 and 7/5/75 to Francis eppes and Geo. Gilmer respectively. Boyd 1(?) 184-6. 144 (r) Diary and Autogiobraphy of John Adams(r)MDNM, vol. 3. [Diary 1782- 1804]' Autobiography, Part 1. To October 1776.ed. L. H. Butterfield. HUP 1961"Maj. Langbourne 3:195. 145 Cited by Suzanne W. Morse, ―Ward Republics: The Wisest Invention for Self-Government. ‖ In Gilreath, ed., TJ and the Education of a Citizen, 267; TJ to JA, Cappon, 10/28/13, Cappon. 390. 146 . Higginbotham , in GW Reconsidered‖ 156-7. Cites Chas Roy 47 cosmopolitan opinion than that possessed by citizens of Georgia and the Carolinas who openly praised the institution on which their economy depended.147 In this manner Virginia became a more likely milieu for the flowering of national political leadership. In other ways, too, Virginia‘s distinctive political culture shaped the development of its most notable cadre of politicians. One such positive connection is offered by W. C. Rives. For this early, knowledgeable biographer of Madison the characteristic isolation of the Virginian planter-exporter becomes a ―school for statesmanship.‖ He describes the role of Madison's father, later to be assumed by James Madison Jr.: "A large landed estate in Virginia, consisting of distinct and sometimes distant plantations, with the general supervision of the agents and laborers employed on each, and the negotiations incident to the periodical sale of their produce and purchase of their supplies in remote markets, was a mimic commonwealth, with its foreign and domestic relations, and its regular administrative hierarchy."148 Carl Bridenbaugh echoes this concept of the Virginia tobacco plantation as a ―primer of politics‖ for Virginia‘s eighteenth-century ―galaxy of statesmen.‖ Not the least of the lessons in this primer, he notes, was practice in the ―habit of command,‖ aimed at enabling the ―tobacco planter‘s club‖ to rule ―over their own acres‖ and commencing, significantly, with each member‘s ―control over his own personal servant as a little boy.‖149 Charles Sydnor also believes that the Virginian setting was an apt training ground for political ability. He credits the Virginian gentry with acquiring the skills of self-government by everyday experience at the grass roots in local political institutions. Unruly Virginia Another aspect of this experience had yet more distinctive effects on the Virginia breed of politicians. It helps to account for how the Old Dominion, in so many ways conservative of British forms, manners and values, bred a nucleus of revolutionary republicans as ardently inspired as those from Puritan New England with its anti-

ster, Light-Horse Harry Lee and the Legacy of the Amer. Revolution (NY: 1981), n. p. [(1977): 387-410. what is this?] 147 J. Greene Imperatives 339] 148Rives Madison biography. 1:4. On Rives familiarity with Madison’s thought and his own conflicts over the slavery issues, see Drew McCoy, The Last of the Fathers., pp. .

149 Cited by Wiencek, 153. 48 establishmentarian tradition of independent thinking. Sydnor cites a long-standing tendency of these ―gentlemen freeholders‖ to a posture of diffuse insubordination. Dominating the Council and the representative assembly of the colony, and later, of the State, they had been rebellious against the governor‘s authority at least since the 1760s.150 What Louis B. Wright has called the first ―self-consciously American‖ literary work was in fact a Virginian work of 1705, in which avoidance of Virginia by possible Roundhead settlers was attributed to the ―obstinacy‖ of the inhabitants of the colony in ―holding out the longest for the royal family.‖151 By 1754 this obstinacy served a different objective when Governor Dinwiddie complained to a compatriot of "these obstinate people" who refused to act collectively by accepting a tax that would contribute to their self-protection.152 In 1774 the last royal governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, observed the "sentiments and habits" of Americans—by which he meant the Virginians he knew—to be very different from those of "persons of a similar condition in England.‖ The immediate target of his exasperation was the anarchic exploitation of Indian country to the West that left the colonies defenseless before the French: The Virginians ―do not conceive that government had any right to forbid‖ their seizing the land from its few Indian inhabitants, having no regard for the ―permanent obligations of treaties.‖ Attitudes that had been "impressed from their earliest infancy," he argued, led to ―avidity and restlessness.‖ ―Wandering about" seemed "engrafted in their nature." Anti-authoritarianism and heedlessness of political and legal rules were among the consequences of these attitudes so that ―established authority‖ was ―insufficient to restrict‖ their unruliness.153 Compounding the British-appointed executives‘ feelings of helplessness was the fact that their legal powers were so circumscribed that they had few means to command obedience, much less esteem. This weakness was "most extreme" in the Virginia

150 Sydnor, Virginian gentry‘s rebelliousness. 151 Robert Beverley, b. 1673 d. 1722. The history & present state of Va., ed. by Louis B. Wright. Institute for early american history & Culture, UNC 1947. 287. 152 Dinwiddie to Lord Granville, 7/24/54 [Dinwid. 1: 250, q in Freeman 1:422] 153 Isaac Samuel Harrell, Loyalism in Va: chapters in the ec. history of the revolution Durham: Duke, 1926, 12-13. 49 legislature where, by 1740, the governor―was virtually without power to grant on his own either offices or favors.‖154 The prestige of the legislature was little greater than that of the executive. While Virginia had the oldest colonial assembly on the continent, and membership in the under the old regime was evidence of elite status and an object of aspiration for the Virginian gentry, the legislature of the colony was dependent on the crown for the exercise of any authority.155 Even after the success of the revolution, the political arrangements of Virginia did not inspire much more respect. The successor to the royally-anointed governor fared little better in the new republican state. Under the Virginia constitution adopted in 1776 the governor was a ―mere figurehead, deprived of any substantial powers.‖156 As the war-time governor in 1779, Thomas Jefferson was notoriously incompetent at rallying and organizing resources for the Revolutionary leaders, and he became a laughing stock in some circles when he fled from the hastily established seat of Virginian government in 1781 and was subsequently treated by some in the legislature with a contempt that he deeply resented, the more so, perhaps, because it was an attitude toward formal authority that he himself had been accustomed to strike since his early youth.157 Elkins and McKitrick point out that most of the revolutionary Virginian elite (except for "Washington, Marshall, certain of the Lees, and not many others") turned against the federal system (in words, at least, if not in deeds) early in the history of the republic. They call attention to the fact that "the only high officials of the first administration to become disaffected from it...were Virginians." Today‘s readers might well be surprised at the anti-authoritarian stance taken by populist candidates and writers of Virginia around the turn of the eighteenth century. As President, Thomas Jefferson, who had downgraded the authority of the central government and stimulated the elaboration of the doctrine of states rights, notably in inspiring the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of 1798, now found himself defending Federal powers against Virginian chauvinists like John Randolph of Roanoke, and those allied with him like James Callender. The transplanted Scottish journalist had become a militant Virginian—hostile to all politicians he

154 ." (Unpubd diss. David A. Williams, "Political alignments in colonial va. politics, 1698-1750,"Nwestrn, 1959, 249; 265. Bailyn, Dadfiles.old 59 on weakness of authority in prerevolutionry Va.] 155 New History of Va. legislature reviewed in AHR April 2005.???? 156 Risjord, Chesapeake Politics, 86. 50 suspected of sacrificing Virginia‘s claims for the sake of the Union, and opposed to new taxes for any purpose whatever. In only a few months his leadership of the Richmond Recorder had evoked a response that demonstrated the persistent wide popularity of these views in his adopted state, even as the Old Dominion lost its preeminence and began to decline in national influence compared with its neighboring states to the north, east, and west. Meredith Jones, Callender‘s former benefactor and now editor of a rival weekly in Richmond which had been called ―Jefferson‘s organ,‖ tried to hold back the tide of readers attracted by Callender‘s anti- government position by condemning his policies. Keeping salaries down, despite services rendered, wrote Jones, and opposing taxes and any promotion of manufactures, were responsible for Virginia‘s continued decline. ―The treasury of New York is said to be full,‖ he claimed, because ‖they probably have taxes to fill it. Ours is empty.‖158 Such a contrast implied a higher level of civic minded spirit among New Yorkers than among Virginians. Indeed, the monopoly of Virginian governance by the landholding class was not conducive to popular participation or to the diffusion of political experience, organizational capacity, or civic responsibility. Even compared with other Chesapeake states, Virginia was politically backward, ―slowest of all to develop a party system," asserts Risjord. Instead, its state assembly "was a kaleidoscope of shifting alliances among a small group of acknowledged leaders whose behavior seemed to be dictated by prejudice" rather than principle or political issues.159 Yet among our small group of Virginia-bred national leaders are to be found not only the credenda of what was to become the language for national partisan debate between Federalists and Republicans, but also the language and symbols that debate would assume. Had power and deference been more widely diffused in Virginia, literacy rates higher, organizational skills more equally distributed, the state might have produced a quite different coterie of aspiring national leaders. Arguably, however, it would have been a group with less power to inspire national admiration and less ability to sustain a precarious political balance through the many hazards that beset the early republic A Shadow Society

157 By the time Eliza Ambler wrote….[when?] she could not remember a ― respectable governor ― since Botetourt? 158 Richmond Examiner , July 23, 1803. 159 risjord 72]

51

The child of the Virginian planter grew up amidst black servants of all ages whose constant attendance is only occasionally mentioned in the correspondence of the times. Sometimes its salience is revealed in diaries, as that kept by the widow, Martha Dangerfield Bland Blodget, in charge of Cawson plantation, in which ―almost every second item relates to the slaves, indicating how intertwined their lives were.‖160 The important contention of Alex Bontemps that ―subjectivity‖ was denied the blacks by their masters does not seem entirely accurate: States of mind, wishes, (but rarely judgments) are sometimes attributed to these servants by their owners, but quotations or even paraphrases of actual remarks rarely appear. The pervasive slave presence is easy to minimize because it is largely silent.161 Of Jefferson, for example, Lucia Stanton says, slaves ―were a constant presence…listening and watching.‖162 Although the slaves‘ speech is rarely reported by their masters conversation between them must have been continuous. One of Jefferson‘s skilled slaves, the cabinet maker John Hemings, was literate and a letter from him to Jefferson‘s daughters, in an intimate and affectionate tone, has survived, but Jefferson himself seems never to have acknowledged such communication.163 Only Madison was given to reporting observations made by some of the black people who surrounded him. The usual voicelessness of these servants is analogous to that of most Virginian wives, mothers and sisters whose spoken and written record was also often ignored, discarded or suppressed by husbands, sons or brothers. This denial of a voice is not a negation of the subjective life of the individual slave. Rather it is a denial of the affectivity that linked the white owner to him. Ignored the slaves may often have been, yet among our group of political leaders, judging from the average proportions on plantations in their respective counties, whites were outnumbered by slaves in a ratio that varied between 3 and 15 to one.164 In 1776, Dunn tells us, "over half the blacks in the United States lived in Virginia or Maryland, the center of black life in America since the 17th century.‖165 The progress in acculturation made by Virginia‘s slaves helps account for their tendency to merge with their background in the written record. The infancies of our political leaders, born

160 Sobel, 146. 161 Danl Smith [? Inside the big house] iss an example of minimization. 162 Stanton, ―Those who labor,‖ in Onuf, 169. 163 John Hemings letter to the Jefferson girls [?] Susan Steinberg? 164 Citation needed on white/slave ratio in founders‘ counties. P. 6? 165 Dunn, 49 52 between 1732 and 1758, coincided with a demographic revolution in the population of those who served them: Virginia-born slaves had become the vast majority by 1750; the native born predominated among black women considerably earlier.166 In the Chesapeake, toward the end of the century, ―black life,‖ as Philip Morgan tells us, had already lost many features of its ancestral origins in African culture. By the time of the revolution, about ninety-five per cent of Virginian slaves were at least two generations distant from immigration. This contrasted with South Carolina, for example, where more than a third of the black population was imported from Africa.167 Thus, as the expected outcome of several generations‘ close contact, many Virginian slaves seemed wholly infused with the mores of their white masters in contrast with their counterparts farther south, and in the Caribbean. This impression may have reflected a frequent adaptation by Virginia‘s blacks that was self-protective and largely superficial. Still it is certain that in the milieu of the Virginia plantation, as African memories faded, interaction between slaves and owners became ever more constant and intense. Symbiosis of the two groups—black and white—was so extensive, that the owners‘ children‘s sense of themselves, as they grew up, was deeply influenced by the constant presence of their black companions and caretakers. Significant evidence of the importance of black presence in the formation of white identity is discovered in scattered contexts, for, as each generation of the master class neared adulthood, its members had obvious public reasons as well as unconscious private motives to deny or conceal the significance of their early intimacy with the group they dominated and upon whose services they depended. One form of such evidence is the occasional demonstration of feelings of ―us‖ versus ―them‖ towards an outside world–white or black—that was felt as alien, peculiar, and sometimes hostile. For the many—possibly the majority—of plantation owners‘ children raised from infancy with the help of a black nurse or nurses, such identification was deep as well as extensive. The profound nature of this link is supported by childhood recollections of longing for a lost ―mammy‖ or of solidarity with such a person in the face of abuse from parents or others.168 The Virginian Colonel William

166 Walsh, From Carter‘s Grove, 136. 167 Philip Morgan, Slave Counterpoint:Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake & Lowcountry, 60-62. 168MC Washington’s granddaughter who was separated; [report of white child attacking father [?] who was whipping mammy. 53

Heth, for example, commissioned a member of the Sully family to paint a stirring portrayal of his ―beloved slave,‖ ―Mammy Sally Brown,‖ as a soberly-dressed, distinguished and sapient black woman.169 ―One‘s own‖ nurses and personal servants were most often thought by the dominant group to share its culture and interests. This identification sometimes emerged on occasions of encountering slaves from outside. Liza Ambler of Williamsburg, for example, expressed mistrust of the alien black Caribbean woman who was servant to a young woman of her acquaintance. In doing so she also gave evidence of the solidarity she felt with her own domestic servants. These glimpses of private feelings contrasted with the public position of superior distance that the white woman assumed. Thus the indignation felt by Virginian ladies toward a visiting Frenchwoman who adopted certain fashions of dress worn by the slave women, as though to taunt their mistresses with her own independence of the conventions that bound them.170 Violent Virginia Although mutual dependence and intimacy typically characterized the relations between masters and slaves in Virginia, and even though considerable cultural assimilation of blacks had taken place by the end of the eighteenth century, Philip Morgan perceives that ―fear always lurked beneath the surface.‖171 Underlying the apparent confidence that white masters put in their personal slaves was the pervasive fear that the underclass would retaliate violently against its oppressors. With his usual eloquence Jefferson exactly expressed an apprehension that many of the dominant class must have nurtured: The "ten thousand recollections...of injuries they have sustained," he reflected, was likely to inspire a lust for vengeance.172 Guilt engenders fear and stories abounded of furtive murders of white infants by their black attendants, or poisonings of masters by domestics.173 Everyone seems to have known tales of such retaliatory attacks-- ―clusters of conspiracy scares‖ appeared in times of ―acute social tensions‖—and the need to

169 Reproduced in Suzanne Lebsock, “A Share of Honour,” Virginia Women 1600-1945. Richmond: Virginia Women’s Cultural History Project, 1984., xii-xiii. 170 Liza Ambler and the Caribbean slave‘ Mme Brehan and the kerchief of the slaves (Jmad to TJ.) 171 P. Morgan, Point Counterpoint, 398. 172 TJ ―10k recollections‖ in Notes. 173 Secret murders of infants, poisonings. 54 guard against them permeated everyday arrangements. 174 As many Virginians moved westward, the isolation of white settlements increased apprehension.175 Whether a white master's child growing up under such conditions would become aware of the fear inspired by the prospect of slave violence is indeterminable and probably varied greatly. But one common experience of childhood in plantation Virginia was certainly the witnessing of white violence against blacks. Recently Alex Bontemps has reviewed the extensive circumstantial evidence that severe, everyday physical abuse of slaves was pervasive.176 The sense of injury and thirst for revenge that Jefferson attributed to slaves may reflect his own early recollections of witnessing abuse as much as insight into the resentment of the victims. Taking up the individual histories of revolutionary statesmen as they approach adulthood shows them already mostly empowered to delegate infliction of violence to others and to avoid any personal part in punishments. Yet almost all of them must have witnessed such infliction from their early childhood, if not within their own plantation "families" then in neighboring settings. There is scant evidence that our principal Virginian leaders personally wielded violence against those under their control. All the ―founders‖ had the power to delegate any disciplinary tasks and probably usually preferred to do so.177 However, although a slave on Jefferson‘s estates testifies that his master never raised a hand in anger, an incident cited by Philip Schwarz tells of his ―exercising his prerogative to rule in accordance with the customary law of slavery.‖ The occasion for this was the recapture of a twice-escaped slave. Jefferson wrote, ‗I had him severely flogged in the presence of his old companions and committed to jail.‘‖ It is not clear whether the ―jail‖ was on the plantation or in town, but Jefferson reports that the offender has been put in irons.178 It is possible that Jefferson‘s grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, was a witness to this flogging. That he followed Jefferson‘s example, however, is attested by a great grandson of Jefferson‘s who visited Monticello as a child, and remembered his horror at watching this uncle savagely whip a slave before a summoned audience of other plantation hands. Young Coolidge remembered too the rage and humiliation

175 Short correspondence w/ sister in Greensville [??] 176 Alex Bontemps, The Punished Self, 103-119. 177 Isaac Jefferson on TJ‘s non-violence. 178 PhilipJ. Schwartz, Slave Laws in Virginia. Athens, Ga., University of Georgia Press, 1996, 188n. 55 of his own beloved black nanny who had accompanied him to Virginia and was also an unwilling witness of this spectacle.179 While ―honor,‖ which, according to Wyatt-Brown, ―glorifies the warrior spirit,‖180 was said to be high in the rank of values cherished by Virginia gentlemen, of the six most prominent political leaders in our period Washington alone exemplified the military life and repeatedly distinguished himself in battle. Nevertheless, the hallmark of his reputation, the imagery of Cincinnatus, attached to the personal priority he was believed to give to civilian values. Marshall, Edmund Randolph and Monroe served only briefly in the Revolutionary War, although both Marshall and Monroe gained reputations for valor in that short time and were later usually attributed military titles.181 Madison and Jefferson took no direct part in the hostilities. It is not clear that in the days of revolution and the early republic, in contrast with the reputations of contending parties in the American civil war, that Virginia or the South were distinguished from the northern sectors by placing a higher value on military valor. Revolutionary Massachusetts and New England were the first to think of armed resistance and, as Hamilton pointed out in an observation he thought would reach Jefferson, contributed and sacrificed much more to the revolutionary effort than the southern states.182 Typically, in Virginia, bellicose predispositions were demonstrated spontaneously, rather than in an organized manner, and tended to be evoked more in personal than in community affairs. Again, when the Scottish Callender denounces Meredith Jones for participating in his younger brother‘s murder of an intimate friend on the occasion of an interview arranged to accommodate their differences, the elder Jones, editor of a rival newspaper, defends the younger by claiming that all parties to the ―duel‖ were honorable, though ―obstinate,‖ and that ―we are not to be surprised when ardent young men pursue the custom as the least of evils.‖183: While duels were fought by such ―ardent‖ young men, the assault of one aggrieved Virginian upon another, usually with bare hands or a weapon like a cane, whip or baton was more common than the ritual of formal challenge, followed by appointments of venue and

179 own early recollections of witnessing abuse. Archie [?] coolidge memoir. 180 Wyatt-Brown, 297. 181 Marshall‘s military reputation claimed in letter to story, vol. 11. 182 (AH 12: 228-58) 183 4/30/03Richmond examiner 56 seconds culminating in an actual ritualized exchange of fire with lethal weapons.184 Instead more primitive forms of violence, such as biting, scratching and eye-gouging, have been described as routine by Gorn.185 When Callender‘s exposures of Jefferson‘s alleged sexual adventures got under full swing in the Recorder, the first thought of the President‘s son-in-law was to administer a thrashing to the offending journalist. Reassured for the moment that few would give credit to allegations of the Recorder, Thomas Mann Randolph II was persuaded to desist, at least temporarily.186 A sampling of several Richmond newspapers in the years 1802-1803 discloses frequent encounters—threatened and actual—of this kind. In one of the former, young Lewis Harvie has proclaimed that he will ―instantly put to death‖ anyone publishing an attack on his father, the eminent Colonel John Harvie, then mayor of the city.[??] Callender, the object of a like menace, comments, ―Thus Richmond is sent back to the situation of the aboriginal Indians, among whom every dispute runs the chance of being decided by the hardest club or the sharpest arrow.‖ The journalist mused on this tendency of Virginians to take matters into their own hands: ―It signifies nothing, to speak either of the enacting or the repeal of Judiciary establishments, if personal differences are to be decided by personal violence;‖ yet the laws of Virginia were so ―lax with regard to breaches of the peace,” he observed, that the Virginian attitude could be characterized as ―What the law cannot, or will not do for us, we shall endeavour to do for ourselves, and we shall not flinch from the consequences.‖187 In this characterization of Virginian lawlessness the British expatriate was expressing an age-old, perhaps universal, apprehension of Southerners by Northerners as hot-headed: In France, for example, a Parisian scholar sent South as a government official, observed, "they do not reason here, they raise their fists.‖188 Against such a background of volatility the non-confrontational inclinations of the national political figures from Virginia is noteworthy. While violence seemed a natural first resort to many native leaders like Thomas Mann Randolph, as well as the generality of the

184 Virginia mentions in Joanne B. Freeman, Affairs of Honor, National Politics in the New Republic. New Haven: Yale University Press , 2001.,?? 185 Gorn, in Bite scratch and gouge[?]AHA 85, vol 74? or vv? 186 .[Edgehill/Randolph papers, UVA]the assault of one aggrieved Virginian upon another, usually with a more primitive weapon—a cane, whip or baton--rather than with a pistol. 187 Richmond Recorder, Extra Edition of April 24, 1802. 57 planter class, apparently it had little attraction for those few whose ambitions were fixed on national distinction and influence. Jefferson and Madison, as will be discussed later, actually laid themselves open to being thought pusillanimous. At the other extreme Washington, whose personal courage was the subject of fable and whose temper was known to prompt occasional outbursts, seems to have had no taste for provoking personal encounters in defense of his honor. Sociable Virginia: Always on Stage The obverse of many Virginians‘ readiness to assault one another was their sociability. The typical planter‘s love of society was shown by an expansive hospitality, the openness of his home, and the high premium put on constant readiness to make a public appearance. Mount Vernon, Monticello and Montpelier were stages for a continual succession of scores of visitors, both before and after the retirement of each of their proprietors. Sometimes the hosts complained mildly of the traffic, but in fact, ―Visitors were the lifeblood of Virginia society.‖189 Pleasure was to be sought in society: the Virginians under consideration here early formed the habit of seeking comfort in the company of a considerable number of others, replicating childhood experiences of living amidst an extended ―family‖ of siblings and servants. The eighteenth-century planter of Virginia valued sociability for its own sake. Traveling in the neighborhood of Mount Vernon, for example, the young George Washington felt disappointed when he found that his host, one Colonel Champes, was the only one at dinner with him and his traveling companion. He comments rather plaintively that the night before, when they had stopped at Colonel Carter‘s, ―several gentlemen dined with us‖—neighbors invited in by the host—―but we spent a very lonesome evening at Colo. Champes, not anybody favoring us with their company but himself.‖190 Certainly the fact that, as revolutionary commander, he was continually surrounded by aides-de-camp was an attraction of the military life for Washington. He wrote to one aide, "It has been happy for me, always, to have Gentlemen about me willing to share my troubles and help me out of difficulties."191 Jefferson, though often inclined to escape political difficulties by flight from wherever he might be

188 [4] Quoted by Malcolm Crook, Review of Michael Broers, The Politics of Religion in Napoleonic Italy: The War agaiinst God, 1801-1814 (London: Rooutledge, 2002) in H-France, May 2003.

189 Rutland Madison the Founder 247. 190 GW Diaries, 1:224 (1/15/60). 58 located, counseled sociability as a prime defense against depression. To his daughter Maria he wrote: ??.192 Even the good-humored John Marshall, by reputation an exemplarily devoted husband to his often invalid wife, articulated his suffering at being excluded from company while attending to her needs.193 The mode of appropriate self-presentation in company was a prime object of study for our Virginians. The stress on ―extrospection‖ as a basis for cues to conduct is evident in the early self-teaching of George Washington. Shortly after his father‘s death the eleven-year old Washington copied out an adaptation of a Renaissance text on the rules of genteel behavior in company (with what editing of his own we do not know).194 The extracts he selected show his eagerness for social acceptability: prescriptions for careful, though modest dressing, keeping the ―nails clean and short‖ and ―hands and teeth clean,‖ yet without giving the impression of undue concern with one‘s appearance. Later he would repeat these standards to members of his family. For example, he feared his mother might not rise to the required norm should she come to live with her eldest son at the very public Mount Vernon.195 Erasures and corrections in young George‘s workbook suggest that he had some difficulty writing out one exhortation—―Do not laugh too loud.‖ The sociable youth may have had a problem controlling his ebullience in company. In later years Washington became the prototype of mastery over the art of physical self- presentation. His dress at public appearances—often described in detail by participants--was

191 To Tench Tilghman, cited in Emily Stone Whiteley, Washington and his Aides-de-Camp (New York: Macmillan, 1936), 182 192 ?? I haven‘t been able to find this letter in Boyd, vols. 28-30

s 193 .‖: ; even Jn Mrshll [letter—to Story?] talking of dullness of having to stay with wife without company. when she was sick. Carl Bridenbaugh. 194. Moncure D. Conway. George Washington's Rules of Civility traced to their sources and restored. New York, Hurst & Co. 1880, 69th Rule, 164. A later editor suggests that these "Maxims," traceable to Erasmus, through a French Jesuit version and then to an English one of 1640, had been further simplified and modified in some unknown version used by George Washington, perhaps by an early schoolmaster. See Washington's Rules of civility and decent behavior in company and conversaytion. [written 1744-8] Ed Charles Moore. Wmsbrg: 1926. [E312.78 195 Letter to MBW: don‘t come live at Mt. V. 59 usually impeccable, and well thought-out for its aesthetic effect. Most significant, however, was its conscious adaptation to the occasion. Every costume made a statement: conspicuously homegrown and homespun suit fabric to set an example for boycott of British goods at the start of the war, self-conscious accessorizing, as by the donning of spectacles to dramatize his self- sacrifice when addressing angry veterans. For his first inauguration and subsequent great formal landmarks in his administration,he moved with ―natural unaffected dignity‖ in soberly magnificent black velvet. With sword at the side he cut ―so noble a figure,‖ costumed in the buff and blue ―American uniform‖ for his birthday ball in 1797, where he ―moved as a monarch,‖ the diamond cross of the Order of Cincinnatus sparkling on his breast.‖196 In preparing an exhibit in which Washington was to be seen as a ―Figure upon the Stage,‖ Margaret Klapthor writes that she ―came to understand Washington‘s own appreciation of the importance of style in creating a public image. Much of his success can be traced to his…skill in adopting the style proper to a particular occasion.‖ She extrapolates the orientation of Washington, who was, as we have seen, a theater lover from his first Barbados experience: ―He saw the great events …taking place in the new world as ‗theater.‘‖197 Like Washington, Jefferson prescribed rules to be followed by their families in order to avoid missteps and to be viewed with approval in company. Jefferson showed his concern with the physical impression made on others in polite society when he first arrived in Paris with his daughter. Martha Jefferson relates that he decreed their confinement to quarters until the ―dressmaker, wig maker, coiffeur etc.‖ had been called in and done the work necessary to present the American emissaries in packaging suitable to their new milieu. As President, his studied assumption of casual dress to receive the British ambassador was interpreted by the latter as a distasteful affectation and was almost certainly intended as a populist statement.198 After final retirement from his long career in public office and so deeply in debt that bankruptcy loomed, he still warns a daughter that the practice of economy must not extend to stinting on the care and presentation of one‘s person.199 Madison‘s dress was studiously self-effacing, an almost clerically ascetic black costume with white ruffled shirt that came to be regarded as old- fashioned. His correspondence shows, however, that he had minute and exacting standards for

196 Bradford Perkins, ed. ―Letters of Henrietta Liston, 1796-1800,‖ WMQ 3d series, 11 (1954): 605-6. 197 Margaret B. Klapthor and Howard A. Morrison, George Washington: A Figure upon the Stage. Washington: Smithsonian Institution , 1982, 8. 198 Jefferson and the coiffeur in Paris; Gw letters on modest dress; TJ‘s to Martha on how she should look 60 the fashioning of the shirts. At the same time, any repressed desire he may have had to manipulate the political world by a more conspcuous personal style was amply acted out through his wife who became renowned for her flamboyant and fashionable garments worn at public gatherings which she skillfully managed for the Madisons‘ political advantage.200 Marshall, too, seems to have created for himself a persona of unaffected simplicity using understatement in dress—even shabbiness—for its social effect. His supposed disdain for fashion and finery was so well circulated that a grandniece felt she had to deny that he was deficient in the personal grooming of a gentleman.201 This orientation to society complemented a general disinclination to look inward. The editors of the diary of William Byrd,II—a wholly England-formed Virginia magnate—note the rarity of self-searching diaries in Virginia-produced literature of the period. In general, they find southern colonists ―less introspective‖ than their New England contemporaries.202 Wyatt-Brown has connected this extroversion with the the political ambition of for ―’the esteem of wise and good men,‘‖ an ethic relying on ―external appearances…but not on the inner life, an area usually unexamined.‖203 This does not necessarily imply ―other-directedness,‖ that is, a weakness of internal moral controls, but rather a habit of sharing experience, an exceptional alertness to the practices of others and a sensitive capacity to adapt to them. ―A primary insight underlying this collaborative thought-and-experience-based republican institution-making was a sober wisdom….about the conduct of human beings…in the great matters of collective life.‖204 Kevin Butterfield describes what he calls ―a struggle for the soul of the colony‖ of Virginia in the seventeenth century between Puritans and Anglicans in Virginia. The Puritans lost. The colony, as he remarks, had never been a ―likely wellspring of Puritanism,‖ in contrast with ―the solemn way of life in New England."205 Self-indulgence, including indolence, ill- controlled violence and financial irresponsibility came to characterize a society that accounted

199 TJ letter to Maria, Boyd 29 or 30—spend money on clothes [mots] 200 Allgor, Dolley‘s dress. 201 Hardy, Great granddaughter‘s denial that Mrshl was a slob 202 Wm Byrd, 2. The Commonplace Book of William Byrd of Westover. Eds. Kevin Berland et al. UNC, Omohundro, 2001 F229 . Lockridge, Kenneth, The Diary and Life of William Byrd, II. Albemarle County [?] F232 A3 M78 (?)

203 Wyatt-Brown, Bertram .The Shaping of Southern Culture: 49. 204 Miller, William Lee. The Business of May Next xii. 205 Butterfield, Kevin ,Puritans and Religious Strife in the Early Chesapeake,‖ VMBH 109 (2001), 5- 61 honor a prime value, and deprecated labor. As C. Vann Woodward has observed, the softer constraints of Anglican religious tradition, the wider toleration of sins of the flesh, meant that ambitious Virginians, like our ―founders,‖ had to tap resources within themselves if they were to stave off surrender to self-indulgence and sloth. When Jefferson complained to the maarquis de Chastellux about the tendency of southerners to be ―voluptuary, indolent, unsteady,‖ and of the Virginian character as ―aristocratical, pompous, clannish, indolent, hospitable, and…thoughtless in their expences,‖ he was speaking of tendencies he recognized in himself against which he sometimes struggled mightily in the name of a certain ideal. His acknowledgment of Virginia‘s vices to Chastellux, a foreigner, was less characteristic than the messages he sent to his fellow Virginians. Most often these contrasted ―European luxury and dissipation‖ with the virtuous ―simplicity of his own country.‖206 Both the self-deprecation and the self-congratulation expressed the same aspiration: this was the ideal of the upright, independent, plain-living farmer. Striving to be Free: Dependency as a Virginian Theme ―Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition,‖ wrote Jefferson, warning against encouragement of manufactures and commerce in the new republic.207 For him, the autonomous husbandman was the essential building-block of citizenship in a free society. But his own life-style was very distant from this ideal. Even before he finished college he was indebted beyond the loans that were supposed to finance his education. Only upon the death of his mother, years afterward, was he able to repay this debt out of his credit on her estate. His marriage to a woman who had inherited a fortune nominally superior to his brought only temporary relief from the consequences of his consistent overspending. The problem of debt was endemic to the Virginian planter class: Even George Washington, renowned for his management skills, had to struggle to restore his prosperity each time he returned home after filling long public assignments. No doubt the problem of borrowing against future income was also acute farther south. John Rutledge's father, in whom two of the largest fortunes in South Carolina were united, probably had to borrow money to pay for his

206 Woodward, ―The Southern Ethic in a Puritan World,‖ WMQ 25 (1968): 343-70.; Boyd8:468. 9/2/85; 233 (To Monroe 8:233, 10/15/85 These date attributions must be wrong. Look at the page order.Which does TJ attribute to southerners? Virginians? to Chastellux.?] 207 Notes on the State of Virginia ed. William Peden. NY: Norton, 1972, 165. 62 son's English legal education. ―There is a hint that the Rutledges, for all their property, were short of cash," their biographer surmises.208 The dependency of Virginia‘s planters on credit was common to many agricultural societies. In contrast with most American farmers outside the South, however, their chief source of income, at least until after the Revolution, was a single cash crop, unusable for subsistence, whose price was set in a world market. With most of their capital invested in land and slaves, with each harvest mortgaged in return for the next year‘s supplies, Virginian ―gentlemen farmers‖ were continually embarrassed by a cash shortage while they attempted to sustain an elevated life-style. The aristocratic consumption patterns to which these planters aspired were set by forces beyond their control: throughout the whole course of the revolutionary and federal era they were mostly dependent on British merchants to select as well as to supply the luxury goods that contributed to defining their status.209 Only the ultra-rich could employ agents abroad to act exclusively in their interests. Others, like George and Martha Washington, were obliged painstakingly to describe the goods desired, plead that obsolete fashions not be foisted upon them, and minutely scrutinize invoices to detect all-too-frequent overcharging. If a stylish phaeton was received many months after the order was submitted, there was little recourse if its axle proved defective.210 Thus, while the dream of independence animated the political aspirations of the Virginian founders, the facts of dependency were gallingly imprinted on everyday experience. Although chronic, sometimes acute, indebtedness was the general condition of Virginia planters, it is less obvious that certain defenses against acknowledging its causes were common as well. Virginian society and culture owed a considerable part of their structure to the practices and rationalizations that were developed to cope with and explain the continuous shortage of money. Over many years Jefferson was the ―poster boy‖ among Virginians of his generation for repeated excuses for mismanagement, self-indulgence at the expense of friends and family, and projection of blame onto others outside his family circle. Even his sympathetic biographer, Dumas Malone, refers to the ―characteristic‖ attributions by the ―patriarch‖ of his son-in-law‘s

208 Haw, John & Edwd. Rutledge of SC, 9; 240-278. 209 Ragsdale, also VHS Custis papers 210 Invoice to John custis, eq from cooper & Lyde, Bristorl, 2/46: Charged twice on one page for Spanish drab broadcloth (―mistake‖ on p. 2. and deducted) VHS52] Bruce Ragsdale on GW‘s defective phaeton? 63 financial distress to unforseeable circumstances ―by no means unusual in their region,‖ such as ―speculators, usurers, and the uncertain state of the circulating medium.‖211 This pattern of self- exculpation was strikingly regular throughout Jefferson‘s life, but many of his fellow planters also displayed all or part of it at one time or another. This includes George Washington, Edmund Randolph, James Monroe and James Madison. Randolph‘s hopeless indebtedness threatened his career and lifestyle more than Jefferson‘s did his chiefly because, holding lesser offices and hence wielding less influence, his creditors faced a lower risk of retaliation in pursuing him. Only John Marshall, apparently, did not join the chorus. Its habitual refrains (and their leit-motifs) were: We are a hospitable people. [People take advantage and overcrowd our tables]; We are generous [We open our pockets to our friends and they betray our trust or call in their loans]; We are civic-minded and leave our cherished home to serve the public. [We are ruined by the expenses of office-holding while incompetent people mismanage our estates in our absence]; We are upright farmers used to straight dealing. [Greedy plutocrats, unscrupulous speculators and British jobbers conspire to take advantage of our innocence.] While even Washington occasionally joined the self-rationalizing chorus, for him the practical solution to chronic economic dependency was a political one. It followed the Federalist program, encouraging domestic investment in manufactures through protection, national banking institutions and enhanced federal control of the legal framework of commerce. This was a nationalizing, industrializing, commercial vision of the American future that Marshall shared but that Jefferson, and eventually Madison, rejected, basing their rejection on ideological grounds. Thus the two founders of the anti-Federalist movement were exposed to more personal conflict than their Federalist brothers in choosing between policies that actively strove toward national autonomy and those that enjoined self-limitation that kept their region in dependency. For Federalist and Republican Virginian political leaders alike, however, the most onerous aspect of Virginian dependency was imposed by the institution of slavery. So far we have barely touched on the myriad ways in which this system in Virginia constrained and shaped the material, social and psychic life of the white planters. Edmund Burke, in defending the American Revolution and its leaders, named a certain effect of slavery as the single best explanation for the revolutionary spirit that the Virginian aristocrats so surprisingly demonstrated in 1776. To Burke, it was the ―vast multitude of slaves‖ in Virginia and the

211 Malone, 6:455. TJ to TMR 6/5/25. 64

Carolinas that explained why the American ―spirit of liberty‖ was even ―more high and haughty‖ in the ―southern colonies‖ than in the rest of the country. This was because, under the slave system, ―those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom.‖ To them, freedom is ―a kind of rank and privilege.‖ Where so many toil in servitude ―liberty looks…like something that is more noble and liberal.‖ Thus southerners ―are much more strongly, and with a higher and more stubborn spirit, attached to liberty, than those to the northward.‖212 But this contrast between the masters and ―those who labored for their happiness,‖213 had also the power to create a moral dilemma. Specifically, the conflict between the slave system and the egalitarian ideals of the Declaration of Independence was obvious to many at the time. Northerners who traveled in Virginia often described this conflict in plain terms. Ebenezer Hazard, a Philadelphia Princeton graduate who had his first sight of the system when he ventured into the Chesapeake region found it ―astonishing that Men who feel the Value and importance of Liberty as much as the Inhabitants of the southern States do that of their own, should keep such Numbers of the human species in a state of so absolute Vassalage. Every argument which can be urged in favor of our own liberties will certainly operate with force in favor of that of the negroes: nor can we with any propriety contend for the one while we withhold the other.‖214 This theme was also often repeated in Virginian culture of the time, well-expressed in the frank and simple terms used by Robert Pleasants, a Quaker planter of Henrico County. Preparing to manumit his slaves in 1777, Pleasants addressed Governor Patrick Henry stressing that "the Representatives of the people have nobly declared all men equally free." Kettner finds Pleasants "adept at drawing...on the principles of liberty at the core of the political ideology of the American Revolution," as well as those of Christian brotherhood.215 The leading figures of the colony with whom we are concerned here rarely expressed, on the public stage, how they felt the conflict between their ideals and their everyday patterns of life. Washington, however, experienced it with increasing force as he matured, and privately

212 Rev. in America, Everyman ed. 94; Burke‘s Politics: Selected Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke on Reform, Revolution, and War. Ross J. S. Hoffman & Paul Levack. New York: Knopf, 1949 71-71. , 213 I paraphrase Jefferson‘s description as discussed by Lucia C. Stanton, ―‘Those who labor for my happiness,‘Thomas Jefferson and his Slaves,‖ in Peter Onuf, ed. Jeffersonian Legacies, (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1993): 147-180. 214 Ebener Hazard's travels thru Md. in 1777. Fred Shelley, ed. MHM 46 (1951) 44-54. 215 . Kettner, "Persons or Property? The Pleasants Slaves in the Virginia Courts, 1792-1799," in Hoffman and Albert, Extended Republic, 141, 154.] 65 strove as well as he could to end his proprietorship of slaves. Jefferson wrote eloquently of the iniquities of the system, yet without seeming to suffer from the inconsistency of his expressed Enlightenment ideals with his practices. Madison, too,though more articulate than any of the founders about the centrality of slavery as an issue in national politics, was usually silent about how he experienced it personally. One notable exception is directly expressed in a letter written as the Revolution ended. Reporting that his lifelong servant Billey is unwilling to return to Montpelier after living in Philadelphia he informs his father that he feels obliged to relinquish him through his sale. He writes, ―I do not expect to get near the worth of him; but cannot think of punishing him by transportation merely for coveting that liberty for which we have paid the price of so much blood, and have proclaimed so often to be the right, & worthy the pursuit, of every human being.‖216 On the other hand, even less than Jefferson did Madison take steps to renounce his title to suppress those rights.217 To explain such diversity in modes of coping with common problems among the three principal subjects of the present study is one of the many challenges to deeper investigation of the personality patterns of each. To identify distinctive patterns it is necessary to examine aspects of individual development as they emerge from the same broad Virginia setting uniquely shaped by each man‘s particular experience.

216 To Jmad Sr. 9/8/83) JMP 7:304 217 McCoy, Last of the fathers…??? 66

Chapter 2: A Special Breed? America‟s Virginian Founders

A Political and Psychological anomaly As he observed the new republic‘s struggle to take hold after the peace treaty with Britain, the French liberal visitor, Joseph Mandrillon, concluded that the American revolution had ―nothing in common with all those that had preceded it.‖ It was not only different in causes, purpose and consequences, but ―still more, in men.‖ The leaders were a special breed: their ―manner of thinking was different.‖ For Mandrillon, reflecting upon the destructive European civil wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, the difference was that ―fanaticism,‖ which had inspired the religious and civil strife in the past, ―was entirely absent in America.‖218 The founders of the new republic were also aware of the unusual role they were playing. They were familiar with the tendency of leaders of revolutionary wars to impose authoritarian controls on those who had helped put them in power, once the battle for liberation was won. They had studied the history of ancient Greek and Roman republics ―with sensations of horror...at the rapid succession of revolutions by which they were kept in a state of perpetual vibration between the extremes of tyranny and anarchy.‖219 Noting this awareness, two modern scholars remark, ―The entire literature of the Revolution was permeated with the imagery of Republican Rome menaced by the approaching shadow of the Caesars.‖220 Some Virginians were, like George Washington, especially mindful of the more recent experience of Oliver Cromwell‘s conversion to authoritarian rule in seventeenth-century England.221 From 1789 on a similar pattern would unfold in France, as former ―champions of the people‖ became their oppressors, a sequence of events that reenacted the ―classical‖ scenario in so many details that it provided a prototype for the model for generations to come, from Edmund Burke to Freud to Lynn Hunt.

218 absence of fanaticism. Mandrillon, Jean. (1784). Le Spectateur américain, ou Remarques générales sur.l‘Amérique septentrionale et sur.la république des treize états-unis. Amsterdam : 1784. 219 ."(Hamilton The Federalist, #9 (1788). 220 Elkins & McKitrick, 48. 67

Thus the ―out of the ordinary‖ feature of the American revolution lies in its unexpected sequelae. Belying the lessons of so many historical examples, some of those who led the successful violent struggle to overturn British rule not only proposed a national, republican form of government under effective constitutional-judicial restraints but also led the movement to establish comparable regimes in the states that comprised the new republic. Further, they proceeded to participate, at both levels, as principal officials enacting and administering the measures necessary to institutionalize rules that would make the new governments energetic, responsible, self-limiting and durable. The personal characteristics of the group who led this remarkable transformation are not only puzzling to today‘s psychologists; they also impressed observers of the time as original and unique—a ―special breed.‖ Those few American statesmen who took the lead in playing both national roles—tearing down the old regime and building a new nation—often shared a distinctive attribute: a large proportion of the most ardent champions of independence were Virginian planters raised to rule over a slave economy.222 The difficult demands which they managed to satisfy by adapting to norms required for enduring national leadership were made doubly difficult by the need to maintain their recognizable character as Virginia gentlemen that was the basis of their claims for deference. The political achievements of our founding Virginians represented exceptional success in what Jack P. Greene has described as the task of reconciling character—those traits that ―give distinctive configuration to each individual personality‖—with the political roles they assumed— both as national and Virginian leaders—and the personae and styles these roles called for.223 What needs explaining that psychological methods seem especially suited to help explain is how the personal experience of these particular Virginians led to a leadership cadre distinguished by what Mandrillon described as an absence of ―fanaticism.‖224 This ―lack‖ may be converted to a positive characterization: members of this group possessed temperaments that can

221 (Swiggett, 1973:1-2) 222 Burke, Reflections on the American Revolution. 178? 223 Jack P. Greene, "Character, Persona, and Authority: A study of alternative styles of Political Leadership in Revolutionary Virginia,"[I have copy] in Thad W. Tate and David Ammerman, eds., The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century: Essays on its Euramerican Society and Politics . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina,3- 42. 1978. 224 absence of fanaticism. Mandrillon, Jean. (1784). Le Spectateur américain, ou Remarques générales sur.l‘Amérique septentrionale et sur.la république des treize états-unis. Amsterdam : 1784. 68 be described as ―flexible‖ and ―moderate,‖ terms actually offered by Carl Binger, describing what he calls Thomas Jefferson‘s ―well-tempered mind.‖225 To Binger, this well-tempered mind reflected ―a significant absence of irrational and unconscious guilt and...of...neurotic, masochistic traits that lead to self-damaging behavior.‖226 In more specific terms, this ―absence‖ suggests a low level of unconscious rage against the father. It also raises the possibility of a low residue of exclusive, passionate attachment to the primitive mother. Our contention is that this characterization of Jefferson would apply at least as well to the other Virginian leaders we consider here. And while some non-Virginian ideologists of the American Revolution, notably Thomas Paine or Samuel Adams, may readily be seen through the ―classic‖ Freudian lens—as a band of angry brothers inciting revolt against the father, animated by jealousy of the paternal monopoly of the mother—the language in which the movement toward separation was conducted was very different, at least in manifest content. It was, to a large extent, a language that reflected the outlook of certain leading Virginians. The text of the Declaration of Independence, for example, does not express violent antagonisms nor, for the most part, does it defend high ideals. It does not even denounce the British monarchy as such. Instead, it presents a legalistic indictment of the crown for failing to extend to the colonists protection that was the legitimate right of Englishmen. In this document, as one student of American intellectual history put it, "Jefferson was expressing native conclusions drawn from American experience." Monarchy, aristocracy, and British rule were not indicted for being "sinful," but because they were "irrational."227 The Declaration reproaches the king and his ministers with inducing their British subjects and constituents to betray and demean their loyal and loving brothers across the sea.228 Among the most heinous sins of the ―father‖ with which the formerly well-meaning king is charged is his toleration of leaders who have attempted to disrupt the fraternal bonds that united the colonists with their British counterparts. Moreover the penultimate, and by far the most emotionally charged paragraphs of the Declaration, as Jefferson drafted it, refer to ―our British brethren,‖

225 Binger, Jefferson: A Well-Tempered Mind, 19??] 226 Binger, Butterfield dialog….. 227 Parrington, 1927:189-90) 228 While eighteen of the 23 pars. in the D of I ―commence accusingly with the word ‗He‘,‖ this does not prove that George III was the enemy as Benedict Anderson suggests ―To What can Late 18th-century French, British and American Anxieeties be compared?‖ AHR 106 2001): 1281-1289. 69

who have allowed these ministers to be reestablished, thus disturbing the Americans‘ original ―harmony‖ with them (His Majesty‘s subjects in Britain),turning brother against brother and giving ―the last stab to agonizing affection‖ and forcing us ―to forget our former love for them.‖229 In fact a good case may be made that issues around the loyalty or betrayal of brothers230—figure more prominently than the father‘s tyranny in ―revolutionary mode‖ Virginian themes.231 The tone of the Declaration owed much not only to Jefferson‘s skill with words, but to sentiments he shared with other Virginians. Sachse points out that the ties of the planters to Britain were stronger than those of the northerners, and attributes to Lord Adam Gordon the pre-revolutionary observation that Virginians "had always a much greater connection with, and dependence on the Mother Country" than those from other provinces.232 In any case, in many of the complaints against British authorities and British brethren alike, the tone is more aggrieved than outraged. Although some have interpreted Jefferson‘s passion for independence and denunciations of authority as evidence of parricidal thoughts,233 he did not, any more than our other revolutionary leaders, express very murderous feelings toward the leading examples of monarchical rule. In a notable passage he tells how he "often amused himself," while in Europe, in contemplating the characters of the then reigning monarchs. One by one he calls each a "fool," an "idiot," "really crazy," a "mere hog," or "in a straight waistcoat" (George III)--except for "old Catherine [the Great], who had been too lately picked up to have lost her common sense." In his view, these derelicts of old regimes are scarcely worthy of our contempt.234

229 See the discussion of these passages excised by Congress in Garry Wills, Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. Garden City: Doubleday, 1978. 311-14. Both versions of the Declaration are presented 374-79. 230 Mazlish perceives a recurrent theme that stresses abandonment by the mother in American patriotic rhetoric of the time. GW article? 231 The title ―Founding Brothers‖ suggested itself to me for this study when I began it more than a decade ago. The choice of it by Joseph Ellis (…Pub…2001), to apply to Hamilton and John Adams as well as Washington Jefferson and Madison, was doubtless meant to suggest less literal attributes of commonality. 232 William L. Sachse, The Colonial American in Britain. Madison, U of W, 1956, 7;Travels in the American Colonies, ed. Newton D. Merness (NY 1916, p. 403-4. 233 Spivak on TJ "refusing to believe that more than a small % of the people (the ill tempered and rascally part," "Fedlst Parracides [sic]" suggests that his own rejection of the law had uncs. parricidal meaning. [Resistance to tyrants is obedience to law, used as a coat of arms, as well as an actual coat of arms.] 234 (Jefferson, 1853, V:514-15)[folly of princes] 70

In the case of George Washington, who played the largest part of any Virginian both in organizing and administering violent American resistance to the crown, the level of rage toward the British monarch and kings in general appears to be among the very lowest demonstrated by American leaders, both during the Revolution and afterward.235 During the revolution he showed considerable sympathy on reports of the illness of George the Third.236 An eyewitness reports his stunned dejection at news of the capture of Louis XVI.237 By contrast, James Madison, who had remained most remote from actual hostilities during the Revolution, proved to be the most suspicious of British intentions, the most hostile to the trappings of divine or other extra-legal claims to authority, and the most adamant to reconciliation with Britain. Significantly, in view of these antipathies, Madison‘s contribution to the creation of the republic and the broad structure of its constitution which owed so much to the British form showed him to be the most acculturated to English political styles and tactics of any of our actors. In debating and writing skills, too, the British model was compelling for him. He was called ―the equal to Addison,‖ the preeminently fashionable English essayist of the era, whose emulation he encouraged in a younger disciple.238 Despite a wide divergence of views and styles in this small Virginian group, the thinking of all its members seems early to have been orientated to the public arena and highly politicized. Jack Greene calls attention to the primacy of "personal and noncivic" conceptions of virtue in American colonial values and asks, "When and to what extent the republican conception of civic virtue became an important concept in American public life....The crucial place to look is in 1774-76" which "generated an extent and intensity of public activity...that was unprecedented in colonial history....increasing both the risks for public activity and the scope for fame....an imperative of participation...[and] the adoption of republicanism."239 The Virginian leadership was in the vanguard of this revolution in perspectives. The increased scope for fame came with the extension of activity to the national arena. Washington, Jefferson, Madison were leaders in a very small group that had, as early as 1773, clear

235 When Washington was informed, in 17??, of George III‘s illness, his sympathy is notable. 236 Washington, 1931, XXVI: 18; 118), 237 (Jefferson, 1853-54, IX, 110)

238 J. T. Callender comparing Jmad to Addison in the Recorder. But Rutland [?] Shaedler? thought it mistaken. Jmad letter to nephew [?] encouraging reading Addison and praising his style. 239 Greene, Imperatives 233.

71 revolutionary, nationalistic and republican aims that they endeavored to influence others to share. They possessed as well, for the most part atypically of the larger Virginian landed elite to which they belonged, ambitions, skills and temperaments that effectively served these aims. These attributes depended upon an exceptional capacity to identify and adapt to fluctuating political conditions and a predisposition to flexibility in technique. Such a compound may be contrasted not only by attributes of the Virginian elite of landed gentlemen who viewed politics with some distaste—represented, for example, by George Mason—but also by a faction on the "left," so to speak, of Virginian leaders with more plebeian histories, or at least pretensions, exemplified by Patrick Henry. In the sense that Henry rejected federal norms for Virginia he was a precursor of the ―old Virginians,‖ like Spencer Roane, John Randolph and William Giles, of the post- revolutionary generation. On the ―right‖ were a few Virginians who became assimilated to the whiggish norms of northern federalists. An example is Edward Carrington, distinguished in the revolutionary war, intimate of Washington and of James Madison‘s father. Hamilton called Carrington ―a man totally to count on….one gentleman in the South...of whose fitness...[it was] impossible to entertain a doubt," who had proved himself by trial in ―different public situations.‖240 Carrington differed from our founders on almost every demographic dimension: although a fourth (?) generation Virginian, he was a middle child of his parents. Thus disadvantaged, he was a self-made man and a loyal, observant member of the Anglican church. Not plantation- oriented like more influential members of his cohort, he became commercially successful in the state‘s only urban center, Richmond. What Beeman calls the ―style of political life in Virginia‖ was the style of the larger planter class.241 It was different in important respects from the ―style‖ of the chief subjects of this study, especially the first three Virginian presidents and John Marshall. During the independence movement the manifold grievances against the mother country had led many Virginian planters into the revolutionary, republican posture that swept through the colonies. But with success of the cause, the leading Virginia founders emerged from this politicized but locally focused class, distinguishing themselves from the others by actively seeking and winning national leadership

240 Hamilton papers? Jan, 1795? 51-2. 241 Beeman reference 72

The aspirations and skills of the George Masons, Arthur and Richard Henry Lees, Carters, Byrds and Nicolases who dominated state politics for generations did not lead to national preeminence. When John Taylor had to choose between his plantation and politics, says McColley, the choice of the former was obligatory.242] Up to 1787 the career of Richard Henry Lee, an age-mate of George Washington, resembled the future president‘s in many respects. Like Washington, Lee was highly politicized. The strictures of Cato in Addison‘s play ―struck deep resonances‖ in both these eighteenth century Virginians: ―When vice prevails and impious men bear sway, the post of honor is a private station.‖ For both, however, the call of public duty took precedence over private honor in most cases. Yet Lee‘s career remained the career of the parliamentary orator and committee worker: He ―lacked the inclination or the necessary…appeal to secure a broad following among the public at large or to become a demagogue. His…forum was the legislative chamber; his audience, his fellow legislators.‖243 As much, if not more, of a nationalist than the national leaders from Virginia, he lacked the flexibility that would have enabled him to approve adoption of the 1787 constitution in the Virginia convention. Instead, he stood by the demand for a bill of rights before acceding to ratification, a position that put in doubt the final outcome of the constitutional convention. In identifying with a nationalist ideal the smaller group of Virginian founders became exceptionally sensitive to main currents in the budding democracy. They adjusted to these currents ingeniously and flexibly—though not always successfully—and at the same time showed exceptional boldness in conceiving and adopting untested policies to promote new goals.244 Edmund S. Morgan has remarked that Washington was ―unafraid to use power‖ to implement his decisions—a characteristic that could also be attributed, in varying contexts, to his two Virginian successors in the presidency.245 Max Weber‘s insight that the vocation of politics requires a willingness to bore ―hard boards‖ applies to the Virginian founders: none showed particular squeamishness in implementing policies that would affect the lives of others in

242 . .McColley, John Taylor [valst 243 Jack P. Greene, "Character, Persona, and Authority: A study of alternative styles of Political Leadership in Revolutionary Virginia,"[I have copy] in Thad W. Tate and David Ammerman, eds., The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century: Essays on its Euramerican Society and Politics . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina,3- 42. 1978. 244 Elkins & McKitrick, Virginian temperament. 245 Edmund S. Morgan The Genius of George Washington . New York, Norton, 1980. 73 profound ways. Yet their methods for advancing their goals were anything but confrontational. Their tactics of choice were indirect and could even be devious. Of the first three Virginian leaders, none was known as an orator, much less as a fiery agitator. In contrast with Patrick Henry and Edmund Pendleton, who seem to have gained the largest shares of deference from fellow Virginians of the era, all of our ―founders‖ preferred written to oral communication, in camera persuasion to exhortation of crowds. Only Washington was especially successful in addressing large groups directly, even though he usually kept his distance from the public he sought to influence. A sophisticated British witness noticed that he ―hesitates when speaking‖ and that ―he writes better than he reads,‖246 an observation that could have been made of any of our founders. In exerting their influence these Virginians who came to lead the nation preferred manipulation to domination. A further, specifically Virginian political blend distinguished our founders from some of the larger class they surpassed in influence. The perspectives of the first group not only included pragmatic, republican patriotism but also—at least nominally—the liberal ideals of the European enlightenment: opposition to slavery, support for freedom of beliefs and expression, skepticism of religious dogma. In contrast with the bulk of the Virginian political class, which was largely conventionally pious, their outlook was profoundly secular. In fact all the other Virginian founders (except the latterly-converted to orthodoxy, Edmund Randolph) were also religious free-thinkers, if not agnostics, but their public expressions of their private convictions were more circumspect. Jefferson‘s critics and political opponents made an issue of his religious non-belief at every point in his career—from his retreat, as governor, from Cornwallis‘s army in 1780 down to his last election as President. [Liza Burwell and TJ‘s church-going pattern], while public speculation tended, where religious fidelity was concerned, to give the benefit of the doubt to Washington, Madison and Marshall alike. Typical was a distant cousin‘s firm assertion that Washington had ―got religion‖ after the death of his admittedly deist father, and the uncollaborated rumor that John Marshall had expressed a desire to convert to orthodoxy on his death bed.247

______. 246 Bradford Perkins, ed. ―Letters of Henrietta Liston, 1796-1800,‖ WMQ 3d series, 11 (1954),:606. 247 Mrs. Throckmorton on George‘s religion; rumor of Marshall‘s conversion and Meade‘s (?) reiteration of same. 74

This is not say to that Virginian leaders who eschewed national prominence were necessarily less ―enlightened‖ on vital issues than those who sought it. George Mason and George Wythe, for example, who never seem to have aspired to a prominent national public role, were ethically and politically opposed to legal ownership of human beings, as also was the British-educated Richard Henry Lee. Most impressive of the ―could-have-been‖ national leaders was Edmund Pendleton, ―the most respected political figure in Virginia‖ for the three decades encompassing the American Revolution. Not only did he hold almost every Virginian judicial and political post of high prestige that he consented to fill; he also was first choice of his peers as the state‘s representative in a succession of national revolutionary and legislative forums from 1775 to 1788. Moreover, his political value system was consistent with that of his ―Enlightened‖ friends. Like them, he was not an ideological defender of the slave system. Further, he was Madison‘s strongest ally in the 1788 Virginia ratifying convention in the struggle for adoption of the Federal Constitution. Yet he never demonstrated an interest in seeking the national leadership that seemingly would have been within his grasp.248 By contrast, Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Marshall felt the powerful lure of politics early in life and began, almost as soon, to adapt their ambitions to exigencies of the national arena. Most distinctive in this orientation to the larger world beyond their ―Country‖ of Virginia was the habitual imagery each showed of a general public opinion that observed and criticized the actions of figures on the public stage. This imagery appears suddenly in nineteen-year old George Washington‘s writing when he is transplanted, as his older half brother‘s companion, to Barbados. It seems quite natural to him to judge, not only the colonial governor's performance but also the public‘s reaction to it: "The governor of Barbado's [Henry Grenville] seeks to keep a proper State: lives very retired and at little expence. It is said he is a Gentleman of good sence. As he avoids the errors of his predecessor, he gives no handle for complaint, but at the same time, by declining much familiarity, is not overzealously loved and [is]…deprived of power.‖ 249 Despite the fluctuating differences in policy between Washington and Marshall, on the one hand, and the variably ―disaffected‖ Jefferson, Madison and Monroe on the other, the ambitions of all were for national reputation. Their most cherished culture was worldly, they

248 E. Pendleton; see vabiog.). 249 12/22/51: GW Diaries 1: 86. 75 measured themselves by cosmopolitan standards as citizens of a new republican empire, not merely as representatives of their state. Unlike so many of the prominent Virginian elite that had been their mentors and provided their proving grounds, the political strategy of these Virginia founders was pragmatic and adaptable, their ideological formulations flexible. Certainly, their successful adaptation to the conditions for leadership was made possible by their intimate familiarity with the Virginian culture, but as a group their performance marked them as a ―special breed‖ of the particular planter elite whence they issued. That wider group of Virginia ―gentlemen freeholders‖ who dominated Virginia politics for decades before and after the revolution is described by Sydnor as exercising their authority virtually without regard for public opinion.250The smaller group--the focus of our study—that came to preside over the national scene was, by contrast, constantly seeking to divine public opinion—both local and national, present and future. Their sensitivity on this score was distinctive of the group. It made them alert to the possible conflicts between their desires and political possibilities, and adept in reconciling these in such a way as to preserve their political influence. Their nationalistic identifications caused Madison and Marshall to face like problems in attempting to get themselves nominated, much less elected in their home constituencies. Ex- Governor Jefferson, too, feared alienating prospective constituents when he proposed, from France, to circulate, his Notes on the State of Virginia to all the students at William and Mary College. Aware of the negative reaction that his condemnation of slavery might elicit, he adopted Madison‘s advice to restrict the dissemination of the work in order not to alienate influential persons who were parents of the collegians. The differences between the Founders and their cohort were thus more temperamental than intellectual and pertained more to modes of relating to ideas and facts than to ideology itself. Jefferson, for example, often counted an ideologue because of his evocative rhetoric, is nevertheless an object lesson in expediential adaptation to opportunity or, in the more indulgent words of a student of his administration, "his preferences were frustrated by circumstances that compelled him to abandon his own theories."251 His enemies were to call him a ―Trimmer,‖ as his successful career in politics unfolded in the following years, so adept was he in adapting his words to his hearers or readers of the moment.

250 Sydnor: no restraints on elite; McColley: ignored p.o.? see valst. 251 (White, 1951:5). See also (Small, 1932:19-27), 76

Madison‘s efforts to achieve electoral success required him to adopt a different, but equally flexible style and persona. Rather than contradict himself as Jefferson did repeatedly, depending on his audience and other aspects of the political context, he was ―tenacious of his opinions ‖but ―ready to waive for the present, their application to existing circumstances.‖ What seemed to be obstinate uncompromisingness turned out to be something else: ―If you agreed with him, in the abstract, he would not contend much with you about particulars.‖252 John Marshall, the only one of the group besides Washington who did not join the Republicans, was nevertheless as adept in adapting to uncongenial political possibilities. Marshall demonstrated political agility in remaining a federalist in 1790s Virginia, even maanaging to get himself elected to Congress in 1798. Subsequently, without Washington‘s enormous charisma and commanding reputation he found a niche, as a judge, from which he could be a powerful influence for the central government and the national ideals that were important to him. By his creative ratiocination in Marbury vs. Madison, McCulloch vs. Maryland and other critical cases, he was able to invent new roles for an as-yet unformed supreme court and to assert the supremacy of the central government and the capitalist ideals of the rising elite. Thus he succeeded in enhancing the power of the court without directly confronting a hostile executive, alternating between ―strict‖ and ―loose‖ construction as he saw the situation to require it.253 All were nationalists whose identity was linked to the idea of the nation they were so important in creating. The firm and clear sense of America as a nation and the high degree to which the founders endowed that idea with emotion is characteristic of all three of America's first Virginian presidents as well as of John Marshall. This nationalism is particularly notable because, before independence was achieved and for years thereafter, a unified, autonomous nation was more a matter for the imagination rather than a reality, a novelty, rather than, as in Europe, the product of ageold tradition and centuries of cohabitation.254 One experience that engendered nationalistic feelings in each of these founders. was that of associating with other patriots from states to the North. George Washington, the first to travel northward, was the first to feel himself increasingly a citizen of the United States, with less

252 Wm Plumer quoted by Ketcham, 472.

253 .-Marshall in 1790s- (Ellis, Jefferson crisis56.) 254 Brant, vol. 2 (Jas Mad, the Nationalist 80-87)Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis. Brant, The Nationalist 77 particularistic obligation to the peculiarities of Virginia. Wills suggests a link at a deep level between Washington's feelings of self-respect and his concern for national respect by his "obsessive care to protect his personal reputation and the nation's."255 Whether or not the first adjective is justified, the importance of the link is evident in Washington‘s writings of the period. For example, when he lectures against provincial chauvinism he declares, "America, sir, is our country." Characteristically imagining the attitude of the outsiders who are watching he seems to be admonishing his more chauvinistic fellow Virginians when he warns them,, "We are known by no other character among nations than as the United States. Massachusetts or Virginia is no better defined nor any more thought of by foreign powers than the county of Worcester in Massachusetts is by Virginia, or Gloucester county in Virginia is by Massachusetts."256 The quality of Washington‘s patriotism personified America, Mandrillon thought: ―With the salvation of his country always in view he sought no glory but hers alone.‖257 Like Washington, John Marshall became a national patriot through military experience. Marshall reports that he discovered his American identity in the continental army. As he fought alongside his fellow Americans from New England, he realized that ―Patriotism and a strong fellow feeling with our suffering fellow citizens of Boston were identical.‖258 The source of what Onuf has called Jefferson‘s ―sentimental nationalism‖ is distinct from Washington‘s, more complex and more variable. It seems. however, to have depended on his ideal of a close and increasingly far-flung association of equals—a band of brothers without ―aristocrats‖ or hereditary titles of any kind.259 His most steadfast ally, Madison, eight years younger, began his political career as Beeman contends, ―free from attachments to local interests and more likely to give priority to national rather than local concerns.‖ Moreover, ―until 1788 his political experience, and the range of his concerns remained primarily continental.‖260 More marginal to the group was the career of Edmund Randolph also cast his lot with the nationalists when he rejected his own loyalist father in favor of military service under George Washington.

255 (Wills, 1984,:92 256 Irving Brant's evidence on the nationalism of the founders:p. 453-458. (vol 2?) 7/8/83) 453]; Feb.11, 1783. 387. Have checked in Brant; Must be in Fitzpatrick 25.? 257 Mandrillon, Spectateur 49. 258 Marshall‘s autobiog (to Story) on patriotism. 259 .‖ Onuf, Peter S., Jefferson‘s Empire: The language of American Nationhood, UVA 2000.142. 78

This alliance remained relatively stable for the early years of the republic but ultimately showed itself to be based more on personal than principled allegiance. It dissolved when the affective tie with Washington was abruptly severed in 1794 (5?) If these political orientations were common to the Virginia founders, and distinctive for their time and place, a search for sources of such attributes directs us to commonalities in their family histories. Parallel Beginnings, Linked Family settings The social and cultural characteristics that our founders shared were manifested in like perspectives and behavior patterns in private and in public life. Looking backward, these perspectives and patterns were traceable to commonalities in origins and family histories. Looking forward, the homogeneity of their origins makes more discernible the individual variations among the fourth- and fifth-generation political figures with whom we are concerned In seeking to understand the political performances of these founders we proceed from the more distant similarities to the more immediate family influences that they shared. The ties of kinship and affiliation that linked our Virginian leaders to one another extended back to similar origins. Like Bailyn's 18th-century Virginia magnates, our political leaders' ancestors arrived within ten years more or less, of 1655.261 But unlike those great holders of land and other property, all our founders were of what was called ―middling‖ status—descended from ―gentlemen of a sort—minor squires, younger sons of minor squires, or adventurers who had got themselves a crest.‖262 James Madison, describing, exceptionally, himself, commented that his "ancestors on both sides were not among the most wealthy of the country, but in independent and comfortable circumstances."263 A somewhat more deprecatory estimation, to the same effect, was made by a disappointed suitor of Madison‘s wife. A certain Wilkins pronounced his successful rival to be a man of "genteel though not large property."264 In fact the description was extended to most of our

260 Beeman, 4] 261 Bernard Bailyn, Politics & social structure in Virginia. In Shaping sousthern society: the colonial experience. T. H. Breen, ed.,OUP, NY, 1976.193-214

262 w. J. Cash, The Mind of the South (New York: Knopf, 1941) , 6. 263 Quoted in Dictionary of American Biography, ―James Madison.‖ 264Wilkins letter 8/22/94, sorMad papers,15:351-353 79 subjects in this editor‘s comment on what he calls the founding Virginian ―Giants‖: ―Not one of the great Virginians—Jefferson, Henry, Madison, Monroe, nor Washington—belonged to the so- called exclusive set of families of the Old Dominion,‖265 None belonged to the highest-ranking strata of mid-eighteenth century Virginian society—the great proprietors with noble English connections who set the social norms and dominated the economy of the colony. In fact, most were socially peripheral to the great families: a kind of feudal allegiance attached the Washingtons to the Fairfax interest, as it did to the Randolphs. John Marshall‘s father‘s status was similar. Edmund Randolph‘s father and uncle were distinguished lawyers but, as in his case, their living required them to be for hire. Madison was perhaps the the only one who was not raised feeling his dependence on patronage of others than his own family. They could all have been said to be, as Jonathan Boucher said of George Washington and his brothers, ―sons of parents distinguished neither for their rank nor fortune,‖266 Their peripheral linkage to that small group of great plantation families included, increasingly, marriage and kinship ties. All managed to improve their economic standing (at least temporarily), by marriages that brought them considerable additional property. Thomas Jefferson‘s paternal grandfather, for example, has been described as the son of ―an obscure yeoman who ran afoul of William Byrd I,‖ yet had assumed perquisites of the ‗gentry,‘ enabling his son, Peter Jefferson, to marry upward on the social scale, to one of the less advantaged members of a distinguished but declining family, the Randolphs. Thus he entered, as Cynthia Kierner puts it, ―the second rank of the colonial gentry.‖267 Hypergamy, indeed, was also characteristic of the marriages of Augustine Washington and Thomas Marshall, fathers of George Washington and John Marshall. Ambrose Madison, too, James Madison‘s grandfather, improved his social status by his marriage. Unlike the children of the ―exclusive set,‖ the ―middlingness‖ of our founders was reflected in their education. In contrast with the Virginian grandees, not one of our leaders was

265 Public Papers of George Clinton, ed Hugh Hastings. [Clinton V.p. 1805-1812 [Dates? Pub?…] Intro: 3-189: vol 1: 88.

266 Boucher, belittling GW‘s status. 267 ―their son…[TJ]…would be advanced to and groomed in the General Assembly by the Oligarchy.‖Dowdey 338; Kierner ―‖‘The Dark and Dense Cloud.‖187. 80 sent to England for any part of his schooling.268 Two received their introduction to letters from family members—Madison‘s grandmother, Marshall‘s father—the first of unknown, the second of very limited formal education. For all of them, primary education was continued by tutors or local schoolmasters with little experience of the wider world of learning. Only Madison and Jefferson completed a course of higher education, both at young American institutions. One consequence of this schooling was that all four of these founders were acculturated to Great Britain in a different way than their more privileged Virginian predecessors and peers. While their homespun education followed the English template in form and content, and was usually administered by British-educated teachers, it nevertheless meant initiation into a distant culture whose dimensions had to be apprehended through the imagination rather than the senses, just as the fantasy of nationhood preceded its reality. Such ―imagining‖ seems important for their conception of the world and America‘s place in it. When, later, these particular Virginian leaders felt the powerful lure of politics, they began to adapt their ambitions to exigencies of the national arena. Bred on the periphery of the cultural-social center of Virginia, their experience had forced them to construct, in their imaginations, the wider world in which decisions affecting their lives were made. Most distinctive in this orientation to the larger world beyond their ―country‖ of Virginia was the habitual imagery each showed of a general public opinion that observed their actions and judged them—as though each were on stage.

Some of the Scottish or English Cavalier ancestors of these Virginian founders had been prompted by the Commonwealth regime to flee their homeland for America. These migrants had left a cultural legacy to their descendants. Family tradition, for example, must have made it perfunctory for George Washington to refer to "the usurpation of Oliver Cromwell,‖269 expressing a natural hostility to populist authoritarianism. The common Old Country origins of these Virginian families had a further effect on their cultural orientation. In contrast with many of the New England revolutionary leaders who were descended from Puritan stock, and unlike

268 In this Richard Lee, whose career and reputation were largely confined to Virginian notability, differed from our founders, another fact that may help explain his rather puzzling failure to to play a role or adopt a persona that would give him visibility on the national political stage, or advance him to preeminence in Virginian. 269 GW to Sir Isaac Heard, May 2, 1792. Fitzpatrick, 32: 31-33 81 those descendants of Huguenot migrants in many of whose breasts resentment of royal excesses still smoldered, all these Virginian founders were raised in the Church of England. Not one could point to an important dissenting tradition in his family history. And for none of our six Virginians do the credenda and practices of the church in which they were raised seem to have held a salient place in their perspectives on the world. In fact, all, including Edmund Randolph, were profoundly secular in spirit and doctrine, although Randolph recanted his deistic values in his later years. If, as Greene suggests, the time of the American Revolution was a time when a new civic religion inspired American leaders and called them to national public service,270 for these Virginians it was the first ―religion‖ that claimed their ardent devotion: Forebears of all four of our principals had pioneering histories and were raised at some distance from the center of the Old Dominion, on the periphery of the middle tidewater region around the mouth of the James River. Despite the ―comfortable‖ status Madison claimed for his ancestors, the family in which he and the other three principal founders lived as infants and children was remote from urban settlements of any size; indeed the fathers of Washington, Jefferson, John Marshall and Madison were continually attempting to enlarge their domains by acquiring as yet unsettled lands and several of them habitually pushed into the wilderness in furtherance of their professions or in pursuit of gain.All grew up amidst reports of family contacts with Native Americans.. Washington's father had preceded his son in exploration upriver and an important patron of the family, Lord Fairfax, settled in the Shenandoah valley, later followed by several of Washington‘s brothers. Jefferson's father ventured farther on the Continent, both west and south, than his son would ever do, Jefferson claimed, in his Notes on the State of Virginia, that during his boyhood a certain legendary Indian chief was a familiar of his father.. James Madison‘s paternal great uncle had made his home, in 1753, near the then- remote community of Winchester. His daughter, Madison‘s aunt, had been kidnapped and killed by Indians. 271 Marshall's parents, together with several of his brothers, migrated to Kentucky while the future Chief Justice was still a young man. For three of these, this mode of life meant periodic change of domicile for the whole family. Washington‘s childhood and early youth, spent surrounded by forest land in what he felt as a remote backwater of a distant empire, was characterized by several household moves.

270 G reene, Imperatives, 233. 271 .[ Rives 1:5;] 82

Thomas Jefferson‘s native was to the West in Goochland County; for his family the early transfer to plantation on the James river was a move back from the periphery, while John Marshall‘s father repeatedly pushed the family dwelling farther west while his children were growing up. Since Virginian law and practice usually determined that slaves remained attached to specific real property, it is likely that these changes of place also brought changes in the personnel who helped to care for the children, suggesting that the moves meant not only childhood loss of homes but also of persons. As will be seen in later chapters, this mobility seems to have had varying effects in the development of Washington, Jefferson and Marshall.272.Only Madison had little mobility in his early youth, fixed in his family‘s house to the west in Orange County, as he felt, far distant from the center of civilization. By contrast with these few founders, the great families of the old dominion, the Lees, Carters, Randolphs, Byrds and Harrisons, were closely associated, through several generations, with their family seats--Stratford, Sabine Hall, Tuckahoe, Westover, and Berkeley—tied to their dwellings by historic associations that conferred self esteem as well as preeminence in their neighborhoods. Although most of our special group also eventually became vitally attached to their homesteads, these lacked the deep ancestral meaning held by the family estates of the more anciently grounded group. Washington and Jefferson both created their own homes on land that had first been acquired by their fathers, Washington transforming the house that his half brother‘s widow inherited and Jefferson building and rebuilding—from the ground up—his own ideal of a suitable family seat. Madison was given, as a young man, a house built for him by his father on newly settled land the senior Madison had acquired. John Marshall was an exception, even in this group of short ancestral associations, in his lack of deep identification with his home. Marshall‘s father was indeed comparable to Washington‘s, Jefferson‘s and Madison‘s, regarding land as ―a site for a…farm, or as an investment for later,‖ except that, more than the fathers of the first three, Thomas Marshall ―was a wanderer, restlessly moving on.‖ Of all the Virginia founders, moreover, his son John invested the least emotional capital in his habitation and its site. He ―felt about the land as his father did: Home was never more than a simple brick building in Richmond or a plain farmhouse, not the the self-contained center of his world‖ that Mount

272 In an interesting negation of this principle, Eliza Custis bitterly regretted that the influence of her aunt [grandma?] Martha Washington resulted in her own beloved Mammy being ―stolen away‖ to Mount Vernon, leaving Eliza to console herself with an uncongenial natural mother. 83

Vernon came to be for Washington, or ―the cultural achievement of his career‖ that Monticello represented for Jefferson.273 The fathers of the four principal Virginia founders were primarily tobacco farmers, dependent on slave labor for the cultivation of their crops. All speculated in land, looking to augment their capital. Rather atypically of the uppermost Virginian class of gentlemen, however, all but Madison‘s father had an auxiliary vocation. Augustine Washington managed an ironworks, the fathers of Jefferson and Marshall were surveyors. Edmund Randolph was the son of a professional—an attorney—and only he and Monroe continued to practice law much of their lives, out of economic necessity. Jefferson speedily abandoned the profession as soon as the death of his mother and his marriage made it seem economically feasible to do so. Besides many connections with the highest status planters, complex threads of kinship, friendship, marriage and commerce linked the families of our leaders to one another. Beginning with those among the progenitive families, Washington‘s father, Augustine, had business dealings connected with survey operations to the south, and, through these, with Jefferson‘s father, Peter. Washington, himself,separated by a generation from Madison and Marshall, collaborated with Thomas Marshall, John Marshall‘s father, in surveying expeditions including those of the Fairfax holdings. They remained friends and occasionally corresponded long after John Marshall had become a political and personal mainstay for the general. Washington also had longstanding connections with Madison‘s family: Mary Ball Washington, George‘s mother, had a half sister who married James Madison‘s maternal grandfather‘s uncle, Edwin Conway. Washington was also probably acquainted with James Madison, Sr., Madison‘s father, who was less than nine years younger than himself, before he met young James in the course of their simultaneous service in the Virginia legislature. In 1756 Washington had visited with Joseph Chew, a Madison family relation who had made his fortune in the North and was a close friend of James, Senior. Washington also knew Jacob Hite, the husband of Madison‘s aunt, as early as 1769.274 Both Thomas Jefferson and John Marshall were descended, on their mothers‘ side, from the immigrant (1650-1711) of Turkey Island. Jefferson‘s mother, Jane Randolph Jefferson, was a granddaughter of this founding Randolph and a daughter of Isham

273 Baker, JNMrshll, 7. 274 GW earliest correspondence with J. Hite.. {Freeman 1:532 ? ]

84

Randolph, his third son. She was a first cousin of Mary Isham Randolph, John Marshall‘s maternal grandmother, descended from the second son of the original William Randolph. Thus Jefferson himself and Mary Keith Marshall, John‘s mother, were first cousins once removed. Edmund Randolph was a descendant of the eldest son of the immigrant William Randolph. His uncle and surrogate father was , said to be George Washington‘s "dearest friend.‖275 All the Virginian founders further multiplied ties of kinship with one another as they married and extended their connections through their wives and their children or stepchildren. Dolley Payne Madison, whom James married in 1794, had a younger sister Lucy who had married a nephew of George Washington two years before. Thomas Jefferson‘s younger brother, Randolph, married another Randolph descendant, Anna J. Lewis, whose great aunt was Jefferson‘s and Randolph‘s mother. Jefferson‘s older daughter, Martha, married the son of Thomas Mann Randolph, Sr., Jefferson‘s distant cousin. John Marshall‘s only daughter married Jacquelin Burwell Harvie, brother to the second wife of Martha Jefferson Randolph‘s father in law. The many children of the junior Thomas Mann Randolphs extended these affinal ties still farther through their marriages. One of these children, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, became the head of the family and manager of Monticello. His wife, Jane Hollins Nicholas, was the daughter of Wilson Cary Nicholas, whose sister, Elizabeth Carter Nicholas was the wife of Edmund Randolph. Parallel Family settings and structures. Turning from the broader socio-cultural setting, what were the basic dimensions of rearing conditions these Virginian ―founders‖ had in common? Further parallels emerge in features of family status and structure. Looking first at the fathers of our protagonists, we find them exemplifying, for the most part, the designation of ‖younger sons of minor squires‖276in the sense that they were either descended from younger sons of the immigrant founder of their family, or were themselves younger sons of their fathers. Thus the Virginia founders‘ fathers were not preeminent in the families that generated them. Further, each one of all six Virginian leaders under scrutiny was raised in a family in which the mother‘s social position was as high as, or in most cases, higher than, the father‘s—that is, their fathers had mostly married up

275 ."[whitely], (Peyton Randolph GW‘s dearest friend.) 276 Cash, loc cit. Augustine Washington descended from the elder of the original settlers, but was himself a younger son; 85 on the social scale. This is, of course, more characteristic of a society in which class restrictions are weak and social mobility high.277 Yet it is a noteworthy common feature which formed part of all these founders‘ experience. Further, it is notable that all six of our principals were the eldest sons of their mothers; all but Washington were also the first-born sons of both parents. All were at the head of a procession of younger siblings; only Edmund Randolph did not have a brother. As eldest sons, it is likely that a relatively heavy weight of responsibility and a high expectation of achievement fell earlier upon each of our founders. George Washington‘s mother was to give birth five more times in the eleven years of marriage that remained after her first son‘s birth. Jefferson‘s mother delivered seven children within fourteen years. Madison‘s and Marshall‘s mothers, both of whom married very young and whose husbands survived to advanced age, were even more prolific: Nellie Conway Madison bore her tenth and last child when her eldest was twenty-three; Marshall and his young wife visited Marshall‘s mother when his youngest sibling was barely beginning to walk. Given this level of fertility and the status of the parents, it seems probable that primary child care tasks were assigned to more than one person. In cases like Washington‘s and Jefferson‘s an older sister (or half sister) was also available. Both men testified to the importance of this relationship in their childhood. For Madison, aunts and grandmothers from both sides of the family were often present. In view of the plantation familial situation in which all six of these Virginian leaders were raised, it is highly probable that black slave women participated in their early intimate care. Looking even farther back, into earliest childhood, the question arises as to the extent that the mothers of our Virginians shared nursing functions with slave women. Ample evidence confirms that white Virginian planter families, even of the very highest status, often assigned their newborn children to slave wetnurses. Philip Fithian, appointed, fresh from Princeton, as tutor of Landon? Carter‘s boys at the magnate‘s estate of Sabine Hall?? was amazed at this practice: ‖I find it is common here for people of Fortune to have their young Children suckled by the Negrows! Dr Jones told us his first and only Child is now with such a Nurse; & Mrs. Carter said that Wenches have suckled several of hers-Mrs. Carter has had thirteen Children she told us to

277 Class boundaries weak: take Bailyn from 518c

86 night and she has nine now living.‖278 Considerable evidence also survives that, even when such a woman might be assigned to an infant, several other slave women, as well as the progenitive mother and other women in the extended family, could have shared nursing tasks. While the practice of assigning black women as wetnurses to the master‘s infants was widespread on Virginia plantations of the time, the extent of its use in any particular family can only rarely be documented. It is never, so far as I have discovered, represented pictorially. One reason for this avoidance is that Virginians were sensitive to external, particularly English and European, negative views of the suckling of white children by slaves. A common belief abroad— in France for example—was that infants took on the characteristics of their wetnurses.279 Visiting foreigners of the time who quizzed southern mothers about the feeding of their infants sometimes expressed horror when they were informed about the practice.280 An alienated English friend of George Washington, the Tory clergyman Jonathan Boucher, claimed he had resolved to return to his homeland, despite poor prospects there, because ―I cannot be reconcil‘d to having my bairns nursed by a Negro Wench…a monstrous fault with the people here.‖281 Perhaps partly as a result of their awareness of such disgust, there are few explicit references to infant nursing in the correspondence of our Virginian leaders. Among these few, however, is the advice of Jefferson to a daughter to have her infant given an extra ―breast of milk,‖ but ―not your own.‖ Michal Sobel [?] assumes that this meant a slave service. 282 For the childhood familial situations of our political leaders, general social and cultural factors were favorable to auxiliary nursing by slave women. The availability of eligible young black women was continually expanding: Philip Morgan has established that by the 1780s, ―on larger Virginia plantations, as many as one in three slave women were...employed in housewifery", making it more than likely that each of our founding Virginians was accustomed to being surrounded by such helpers in his early childhood.283 Available circumstantial evidence on nursing practices in the families with which we are concerned consists of data on inter-birth intervals among the siblings of the Virginian founders.

278 On slave wetnursing see Fithian, p 52. 279 E.W. Marvick Child Rearing in early modern France, in Childhood in History. ed. Lloyd Demause (New York: 1984), ???. 280 .[Spruill, English visitor‘s horror at nursing.] 281 Boucher, nursing his bairns 282 Jefferson advises his daughter to [Sarah Randolph ed., Family letters. p.? MJR‘s first-born? But this daughter, educated in France and possibly influenced by Rousseau, may have been engaging in a practice her own mother, or grandmother, mght not have considered. 87

As will be seen when the Virginians are considered individually, this data is ambiguous enough to be considered inconclusive. It is notable that high fertility was characteristic of the natal families of Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Marshall, a variable—of which early termination of maternal lactation due to a new pregnancy may be a component—that suggests auxiliary infant nursing.284 The probability of such termination would be suggested by short inter-birth intervals among the siblings of the Virginian founders. This appears to be quite variable, and hence largely inconclusive for these particular Virginian infants. Moreover it mostly leaves open the question of whether they were wet-nursed by slave household help exclusively, or whether this function was shared with the biological mothers or other female members of the white family. In the cases of Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Marshall, only the short birth intervals between the many children of Marshall‘s mother (in every case less than fifteen months), makes such nurture highly likely. In the cases of Washington and Jefferson the evidence (between sixteen and eighteen months), is ambiguous,285 but according to the criteria proposed by Jan Lewis and Kenneth Lockridge, a relatively short interval for the time, suggestive of early termination of maternal nursing—if indeed it was ever begun. In Madison‘s case the average interval of twenty-four months between his and his eleven siblings‘ births—the norm for the Virginia gentry of the period—makes it seem possible that his mother personally nursed all her children for as much as fifteen months, however many other women may have participated in their ancillary care.286 In the Virginian plantation settings of our protagonists, the larger ―family‖ in which slaves outnumbered their owners, young white boys typically lived in symbiosis with their black counterparts. George Washington, as we have seen, told his amanuensis, David Humphreys, of the practice of assigning slightly older slave boys to attend ―young masters‖ from their early childhood.287 Iconography of children of like (or higher) status often shows the young master as an infant or toddler, respectfully attended by a young black boy or girl. Significantly, those pictures that have survived usually show the slave in position that is

283 Philip Morgan, Don‘t Grieve after Me….25. 284 Two of Jefferson‘s sisters died before reaching child-bearing age and two brothers died in early infancy.. Four sisters and one brother survived to adulthood. 285 The record of miscarriages, stillbirths and short-lived infants is incomplete, even for the mothers of such well- known persons as the Virginia Founders, and thus the intergenesic periods between their siblings is somewhat uncertain and more likely to be over- than under-estimated. 286 I have thus qualified the probability because inter-birth intervals may always have been marked by miscarriages that are not recorded. Jan Lewis & Ken Lockridge, ―‘Sally has been sick‘: :Pregnancy and Family Limitation among Va Gentry Women, 1780-1830,‖ Jnl of Soc History 22 (1988),Page nos. missing ?? 287 GW on assignment of slave child to young master. 88 physically inferior to that of his white charge—either obscured in the background or actually on a lower level. 288 Nevertheless, these slave children were playmates as well as servants of their white masters—in most cases, probably, their chief playmates. For both white boys and girls in late eighteenth-century Virginia the ―shadowing‖ young black companion with whom they were supplied from early childhood often shaped the form taken by their social lives. These servants were often children themselves—sometimes younger than their charges. A well-known end-of-the-century painting of two white children in the Payne family of Virginia shows a handsome black nurse who may be no more than early adolescent, helping the younger child who is just beginning to walk, while the older one, of about eleven, shows off to her a bird he has just felled with his arrow.289 When the slave was assigned to accompany Jefferson‘s nine-year old daughter to Europe she was herself only fourteen. Abigail Adams, believing her to be fifteen or sixteen, was shocked enough as she perceived her to be ―quite a child‖ as much in need of caretaking as her charge.290 Sally continued to wait upon the Jefferson girls when they attended Panthémont, the Catholic boarding school in Paris. Former schoolmates writing to the very popular Martha Jefferson, sent greetings to ―Salli‖—suggesting she was included in their group in a way that a French young lady‘s maid might not have been.291 Certainly, one consequence of assigning youths or children of a subordinate caste to ―mind‖ their master‘s children was considerable freedom from discipline for the latter. William Byrd {? ? deplored the cultural degradation that he saw resulting from exclusive association of his children with the ―negrows‖—for him a motive to send them away early to boarding school. George Washington considered the practice in its larger context as discouraging independence and a taste for hard work among Virginian youth. He disapproved the rearing pattern of Virginia‘s ―opulent class‖ who were given a horse and ―a servant to attend them, as soon as they could ride.‖292 Thomas Jefferson‘s slave, Jupiter, was born in the same year as his master and became his body servant not long afterward.293 Accompanying Jefferson to college in Williamsburg, the importance of his constant presence is affirmed when Jefferson is obliged to conclude a letter to a friend with, "My head aches, my candle is just going out, and my boy asleep, so must bid you adieu." 294 James Madison, too, acquired such a servant, in this case through a legacy from his

288 Children of Spottiswoode; 2 pics in Baltimore Museum 289 Alexander Spotswood Payne and His Brother, John Robert Dandridge Payne, with their Nurse.. Artist Unknown, 1790-1800. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.. 290 Cappon, AA to TJ, London, June 26, 27, 1787. 178-9. 291 Randolph UVA correspondence of MJR‘s schoolmates on ―Salli.‖ 292 Zagarri, 6. 293 CinderStanton on TJ‘s Jupiter. Onuf1993 294 ―TJ to John Page, 1/19/64 1:13-17. 89 maternal grandmother. She bequeathed ―Billey‖ to him when the slave was an infant and Madison eight years older; thirty years later Billey was still with the man who had inherited him.295 National leaders from the Virginia cradle What generalizations may be made about how the family situation in which the planter‘s child was reared set the conditions for personal development? Significant evidence of the importance of black presence in the formation of white identity is discovered in scattered contexts, for, as each generation of the master class neared adulthood, its members had obvious public reasons as well as unconscious motives to deny or conceal their infantile relations with the group they dominated and upon whose services they were dependent. Absence or ambiguity of allusions on such points does not rule out the possibility that all the Virginia ―founders‖ themselves had more than one mothering figure in infancy, or that slave women had a part in their early nurture with potentially profound effects on their development. Direct evidence of such attachment of the white infant to black nurses is scattered through the correspondence and diaries of the time. Very occasionally, these testify to the loyalty of a white child to his black nurse to the disadvantage of his mother.296 One record, closer to home, is a letter after Jefferson‘s death in 1826, addressed by a neighbor, Robert Dunglison, to Jefferson‘s grandson who was organizing an auction that was to dispose of all the President‘s possessions. For years, one of Jefferson‘s strategies for earning income was to rent his ―superfluous‖ slaves out to those willing to hire them. One of these was a certain Maria, whose services as a nurse to his child Dr. Dunglison was vitally interested in retaining. His wife, he wrote, ―is anxious I should communicate with you on the subject,‖ but because he cannot attend the auction ―I may run the risk of losing her.‖ To minimize her monetary value to others he asserts, that ―Maria…altho' a faithful nurse is not possessed of any other important qualities.‖ But "still as my child is attached to her I should be glad to purchase her for ready money or otherwise.‖ If young Randolph cannot strike a deal, says Dunglison, his agent will represent him at the auction and

295 slave b. 1759, deeded to JasMadSr. in trust for Jr. by Rebecca Catlett Conway Moore in her will.Jane Moore Hagan. "The family of John Moore of Caroline and King George Counties, by VMBH 52 (1944): 62-67. 296 White child takes mammy‘s side against mom. 90

―go as far as he considers himself justified.‖ The pressure on Dunglison to secure the nurse for his family is evident.297. The probable important association of such nurses in the rearing of the Virginian

―Founders,‖ like other childrearing practices, would seem significant in the development of these

Virginians, especially for insight it may contribute into patterns of affective ties they formed in early life. Research on the effects of ―multiple mothering‖ has suggested that such relationships may contribute to diffusing and attenuating early exclusive attachment to the mother. The significance of such relationships, as Ainsworth (1967) reported of certain African communities, is that the infant‘s primary cathexis of the biological mother, commonly so exclusive in today‘s middle-class, Western society, may be diffused among ―multiple mothers.‖ Ruth Benedict (1949) also observed that in Russia, where ―there is constant use of wet nurses and nyanyas, older women who…care for the baby, there is consequently a much more diffuse relationship during the first year of life [with a nurturing figure] than in societies where the child‘s contact is more limited to that with its own mother.‖

If it was an aspect of our founders‘ early experience, it may have influenced this attachment. Except for the complicated and largely obscure long relationship of Madison with his mother, easy, conflict-free separation from their mothers seems to have been characteristic of the Virginia Founders.298 Philip Morgan comments, ―the intimacy of black nurse and white child had far-reaching effects.‖299 He does not attempt to suggest what was the exact nature of such effects. Lorena Walsh is more pointed on the importance of increasing melding of the white elite‘s children with their slave caretakers: ―All entered into the altered relationships with a much more intimate knowledge of each other‘s individual character and ways of daily living.‖

297 Robert Danglison [Dunglison] of Dunglison Dr. Dec., 1826.Randolph family papers, alderman. Box 2.[ 8937-b] 298 Mary K. Ainsworth, ―Infant…..‖ Ruth Benedict, ―Child Rearing in Certain European Countries,‖ American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 19 (1949), 342-350. ur 91

Significantly, however, she remarks ―Modes of interaction changed drastically once putative masters and mistresses became aware of their future position.‖300

Here Walsh points to an adaptation problem imposed on the mid-eighteenth century

Virginia planter‘s child. Besides the familiar one of progressive separation from the nurturing figure, a developmental challenge for every maturing child, each one raised in the setting just described was assigned a distinctive psychic task in the course of growing up. Maturing individuals who wished to assume certain adult, masculine roles were under the necessity of transforming attitudes and affects toward those with whom they had lived in symbiosis and upon whom they had been emotionally dependent into attitudes and affects allowing them to treat the former nurses and companions as chattel, at least for the purposes of everyday life.

By ―certain adult, masculine roles,‖ of course, is meant the aspirations for national political leadership that so conspicuously marked all of the leaders with whom we are here concerned. Obviously, not every Virginia planter‘s son had national political ambitions. The varying ways in which those who did not coped with the psychic demands that the slave system imposed is a matter of interest for comparison purposes. Some remained impervious to the demands to transform childhood experience of living in intimacy with slave caretakers into an adult state of mind in which conscious affective involvement in slave affairs was repressed. Such imperviousness characterizes, for example, Randolph, the younger brother of Thomas Jefferson, who according to the slave Isaac Jefferson never felt the need to separate himself from the sociable setting in which he grew up. Of two nephews persistently sponsored by Thomas

Jefferson, the younger, Samuel Carr, may have followed the example set by Randolph Jefferson.

299 Philip Morgan, 1998, 325. 300 Walsh, Calabar to Carter‘s Grove146-7. 92

His elder brother, Peter, reported his delinquency in a letter to their mother.[?]301 Washington,

Madison and Marshall all had younger brothers who seemed ―feckless‖ to their more disciplined, achieving senior siblings.

The temptation to boys and youths to preserve the intimacies of their childhood as they matured is described poignantly by Philip Fithian, as he observed Bob, the incorrigible son of

Landon[?] Carter, who, as he became adolescent, would not separate himself from the consolation afforded by the congenial slave society in which he was reared. His tutor was bemused by Bob‘s uncontrollable behavior--a ―poor untoward, unfortunate Boy‖—who gave the tutor ―great Trouble." Bob is "pleased with the society of persons much below his family and estate," that is, with slaves and other workers around the plantation. With his schoolmate cousin,

Harry, he is ―always around artisans on plantation.‖Together they enjoy rough outdoor sports, riding, hunting, and brawling, and a ―passion for horses.‖ One night, Bob brot a fire & mat to the school room & went to bed between a visiting drunk "& a negro fellow, his papas postilion.‖

This was a ― particular taste of this boy!‖ The tutor and his wayward pupil discussed the poetry of Phyllis Wheatley with sympathy.302

Resisting such sympathetic feelings and assuming the adult attitudes and affects that sustained the slave system meant denial of an early sustaining intimacy and affirmation of a gulf so great between the planter‘s child and the slave that the latter became virtually invisible to the former. Visitors from the North were often struck by the incongruous effects of such denial. In

1732 a visiting Englishman contrasted the Virginia gentry‘s affectation of the dress of London in winter with the immodesty of a planter‘s lady who was unshocked by the spectacle of nakedness

301 Peter Carr, Ms. reporting Saml C.‘s chasing women. 302 Philip Fithian, 73, 65, 49 93 on a slave ship and examined its cargo unselfconsciously with a view to possible purchase.303 A traveler from the North was shocked that "the Virginians, even in the City, do not pay proper

Attention to decency in the appearance of their Negroes; I have seen boys of ten and 22 going through the streets quite naked, and others with only part of a shirt hanging part of the way down their backs. This is so common a sight that even the ladies do not appear to be shocked at it."304

Ability to ignore the humanity of the laboring slaves was a psychological achievement demanded of all who managed them. The progress of a planter‘s child toward a mature independence must have been highly colored by such a psychic demand. The personal adjustments and transformations adopted varied widely among individuals. Henry Wiencek has traced the outward signs given by Washington that suggest that the adaptation he had made to being a slave owner underwent a radical change as he grew older. He does not speculate on the changing psychodynamics that might explain this ―failure‖ in adaptation.305 The defensive system adopted by Jefferson has been extensively studied. Breitweiser, for example, characterizes the elaborate care that the third president took to mask the signs of his dependency on slave service, ―projecting a spressatura that denies the labor that permits Monticello to be."306

Chastellux was struck by Jefferson‘s manifest detachment while being served at table by a strapping young slave with great physical resemblance to himself. If the relationship between

Jefferson and this man was as Chastellux assumed, the scene is an example of one such adjustment.307

A certain political predisposition shared by all of our Virginian founders may be a correlate of the forced detachment that transformed relationships as the white child grew

303 . [Grove, vants89) 304 410 (Fredericksburg, Hazard) 305 Henry Wiencek, passim [also cited later.] 306 Mitchell Breitweiser, "Jefferson's Prospect," Prospects, 10 (1985), 315-52 307 Chastellux on TJ‘s supposed slave son. 94 up. In contrast with many social activists and political leaders of their time, none seems to have been motivated chiefly by compassion for the suffering. All lacked a trait whose absence a biographer has described in John Marshall—: ―There was nothing in him of the humanitarian reformer.‖ Instead, Albert Beveridge sees in Marshall the single-minded Statesman: ―He never had but one vision…The American Nation.‖308 But this vision was closely tied to practical politics, and did not include direct public measures to alleviate human misery. The fact that his biographer makes no allusion to slavery until he is well into his work, accurately reflects the customary scope and focus of Marshall‘s political concerns.309 Nor was Jefferson‘s vision of an ―‖ a humanitarian one. Julian Boyd, for example, is interested to observe that La Fayette‘s concern to provide bread to starving Parisians at the start of the apparently evoked little interest from his friend Jefferson.310 Rather than empathic and humane, the soaring political aspirations of all the founders usually showed a somewhat detached view of the immediate human effects of policy. It focused rather on goals embodying their diverse ideals for the development of a strong republic.311 .The detachment that made this more distant focus possible may owe something to the suppression of strong childhood identifications that had been required of all of them. In his appreciation of Madison‘s role in the shaping of the republic William Lee Miller remarks of the ―founders‖ that ―a primary insight underlying this collaborative thought-and-experience-based republican institution-making was a sober wisdom…about the conduct of human beings in the large and across time in the great matters of collective life.‖ It is this ―sober wisdom‖ that is here called pragmatism.312 As the rising rate of natural increase of the Virginia slave population began to raise the ratio of household slaves to their white masters in the mid-eighteenth century, one effect for some children of Virginia planters was that their earliest experience took place in the presence of a varied and growing audience of spectators. Coupled with this, moreover, each of the Virginia founders studied here was the first in a line of

308 Beveridge, JnMrshall 1v: 472f] 309 No slavery till Beveridge 1:144. 310 Boyd, Laf and the bread in Paris. 311 Discussions of the sterile ―virtue‖ in TJ & Madison 312 Miller, May Next, xii. 95 siblings to whom he was supposed to set an example. Thus, from the beginning, our putative leaders were, so to speak, ―always on stage.‖ As they grew older they early developed an image of America as a nation being watched—and evaluated—by other nations. This unusual perspective, a sense of performing in the presence of others who are observing oneself, ―listening and watching,‖313 may have owed something to early experiences in which the young ―master‖ was actually the focus of observations by a considerable group of mostly slave attendants, reinforced by a retinue of younger white children for whom he was encouraged to feel responsible.

"Genteel people throughout the colonies were alike in many ways, but so different in others,‖ writes Philip Greven. This was the result, he thought, of ―different attitudes toward discipline and different experiences in childhood that remain to be explored."314.Greven is especially concerned with personality distortions that result from physical abuse of children, a phenomenon he finds important among New England evangelicals. From this point of view Virginian child-rearing patterns were considerably less restrictive. Even from birth, it has been observed, the clothing of southern planter‘s children was much looser than that of their northern counterparts. Apparently infant swaddling, or tight wrapping, the practice in New England, was unknown in Virginia. While it is impossible to make a valid comparison of the extent to which physical punishment was used in the two regions, the cultural differences between them suggest a contrast in mental discipline: In Virginia, burdens of guilt seem to have been laid lightly on the child‘s consciousness. Not only was the predominant Church of England much softer than its northern counterparts in its demands for moral discipline and bodily extirpation of children's sins, but reliance of the planter class upon black caretakers insured that disciplinary measures would be less consistent and less severe. As a white indentured tutor to the children of William Daingerfield, John found the young scion of the house carried away by his indignant mother when he took it upon himself to whip him "for crying for nothing." But Harrower later found himself reproached by his master for not correcting little Billie and explained "how Mrs. D. had behaved when I did correct him. At that he was angry with her." The mother was overruled, but the authority of the adult slave over his or her master's growing children was less than

313 Stannton ―Those who labor‖ in Onuf, 169 [aAlso quoted above] 314 Greven, "The self shaped and misshaped: he Protestant Temperamen reconisdered Hoffman et al, thru a glass, 348-369 96

Harrower‘s and certainly than hers.315 With the day-by-day supervision of white children often even in the hands of a very young slave, the result could be not only loose discipline but indulgence—hence the reputation of the Virginian gentry for voluptuary indolence and sloth. In contrast with this reputation, all of our notable Virginians were exceptionally self- disciplined where the advancement of their careers was concerned, and capable of unremitting hard and productive work. On the larger canvas, however, all (except possibly Edmund Randolph in his later years) were notably lacking in prudishness, and seemingly comfortable with prevailing Virginian standards of sexuality and other gender relations, whether or not they took advantage of them personally. That Washington did so has been generally assumed, in Wyatt-Brown‘s view, who concludes that the general ―practiced all the licit male vices— gambling, wenching, money-grubbing.‖ Such vices, he notes, ―took nothing from his status,‖316 a conclusion certainly supported by evidence of public indifference to circulated reports of ―scandal.‖317 The planter‘s droit de seigneur, so to speak, has been most studied and emphasized in its application to the sexual exploitation of black slave women. A recent study of the ―fetishistic use‖ of such women has been interpreted in terms of its meaning for the white mistress of the household. Edward Baptist considers the ―commodification of human bodies‖ as a ―hostile satire of the parlor ideal, a rebuke of and a recourse against uppity white women.‖ Thus men ―recast‖ themselves ―as still in control of both economic household and cultural home.‖318 Specialists in linguistic aspects of culture have noticed, in the sexual imagery used by some of the Virginia planter class, distinctive language in characterizing women that exemplifies such ―commodification.‖ Berland‘s lexicography of William Byrd II‘s diary, for example, notes three such characteristic references to ―a full-bodied, lusty girl,‖ ―plump, succulent and satisfying.‖ ―Full-bodied girls are enraptured by love.‖319 Similar language was used by George Mercer, young colonel George Washington‘s comrade-in-arms. In 1757 Mercer wrote from Charleston, which his commander had never visited, "You'll be surprised I have not yet mentioned the fair ones...far inferior to the Beauties of [Virginia]...and as much on the reserve as in any Place I

315 Harrower 103]

316 Wyatt-Brown, Bertram .The Shaping of Southern Culture:, 49, 317 See my ―George Washington and Scandal,‖ forthcoming. 318 Edward E. Baptist, ―‘Cuffy,‘ ‗Fancy Maids,‘ and ‗One-Eyed Men‘: Rape, Commodification, and the Domestic Slave Trade in the United States,‖ AHR 106 (2001): 1619-1650. 1646. 97 ever was...A great Imperfection" is their "bad shape...many of them are crooked & have a very bad Air & not those enticing heaving throbbing alluring lech-exciting plump breasts common with our Northern Belles. I doubt not but you are as much disappointed at reading this as I was.320 Such a passage suggests that the underlying premises supporting distinctively southern male-female relationships were typically acquiesced in by the father of his country, as well as by lesser Virginian politicians. Even John Marshall, the reputed paragon of marital loyalty, has left ambiguous evidence suggesting that if he did not succumb to extra-marital hetero-sexual attraction, he was not inhibited in acknowledging its operation. This is not to suggest that everyday relations of our founders with females were ordinarily marked by prurience. In fact, such relations were highly complex, differentiated by objects and situations, and immensely varied among the political actors with whom we are concerned. It is rather to point to an aspect of Virginian planter culture that seems to distinguish it from cultural norms of comparable groups elsewhere in the country. These differences did not, evidently, impede the selection of Virginians to launch the nation on its course and guide it for three decades. It did, however affect the perspectives of many northerners on the moral status of some of these leaders. William Maclay, a Pennsylvania farmer and merchant who surveyed the whole world of politics with a jaundiced eye, commented on the impression made by the Virginian, William Branch Giles, on his first appearance in Congress. ―He delivers himself handsomely…but the frothy manners of Virginia were ever uppermost. Canvas-back ducks, ham and chickens, old Madeira, the glories of the Ancient Dominion, all fine, were his constant themes,…fast but fine living in his country. 321 Here Maclay joins other northerners, like the puritan John Adams, who looked with distaste on Virginian sexual mores, and the non-Puritan Alexander Hamilton, who called Jefferson a ―sybarite‖ on account of his refined self- indulgence, in viewing Virginians as soft and pleasure loving.322

Patriots, Pragmatists, Republicans, Secularists Personal characteristics seem easily attributed to early experience. Their transformation into those broader perspectives associated with politics, however, is more problematic. Yet

319 Berlanad‘s lexicography of Byrd. 320 Aug. 57: Geo. Mercer [see GWNts] to GW,. 8/17/57. Col. series 4:371 321 M.‖ Maclay, William, Journal of w. m., United States Senator from Penna, 1789-1791. New York: Albert & Charles Boni, 1927, 363. 98 certain generalizations may be made. Notwithstanding the variations in partisan alignment on policy among the four leading Virginian founders, one can nevertheless perceive a commonality in broad political attitudes and styles that made them, as a group, distinctive. They shared an early nationalistic predisposition and conceptualized a future for the nation that pressed them urgently toward American independence and republican forms and repudiated supranatural claims to political authority. The course of their careers later disclosed a high degree of adaptability, a pragmatic willingness to trim ideas and aims to make them acceptable to the dominant view. And, although these adaptations varied considerably within the group, and among the many challenges each one met in the course of his political life, they were all consistently marked by a pervasively secular perspective that no amount of conventional religious observance or studied textual construction could obscure. The individual sources of these common perspectives, however, present patterns that are complex and diverse. Just as different policy decisions may be based on common values and experiences, like patterns of political action may derive from greatly varying motivations and personal histories. Jack Rakove has aptly pointed to the chief business of the political historian. Writing of Gordon Wood‘s analyses of the ―primarily intellectual developments‖ in American revolutionary politics, he affirms that the challenge is ―to tie them more directly to…the real world of political life, where values and ideology mingle with personal ambitions, imperfect knowledge, and even more imperfect resources to define the choices and produce the decisions that politics is finally about.‖323 A deeper understanding of leader behavior, therefore, requires continual exchange between knowledge of adult patterns of action, early experience, and particular political contexts in a progressively widening spiral of analysis. Thus clues from an unexpected performance of an actor-in-political context lead back to elaborating and refining understanding of his ―personal ambitions,‖ on the one hand, or to approaching his developmental history with new questions and hypotheses. These in turn lead forward again with corrected or expanded understanding of the personality behind the political conduct that helps to explain further how it is evoked by particular contexts. Comparisons may fruitfully be made at any stage of such analysis. For

322 Hamilton on TJ as sybarite 323 Rakove, on Gordon Wood, WMQ 3d series 44:(1987) 99 example, apparent commonalities in developmental histories may be reexamined in the light of variations in the psychodynamic patterns they produce in different individuals. Or observation of such variations may provoke further inquiry into possibly variable meanings of seemingly like political actions.

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Chapter 3: The Prototype: Family Imagery and Revolutionary Spirit in Washington‟s Creative Leadership

The Virginian founders of the late eighteenth century shared, I have suggested, certain perspectives and skills that distinguished them from other Virginia leaders among their contemporaries who had careers that were largely confined within the limits of their state. The oldest member of our group, George Washington, possessed that distinctive combination of qualities to a preeminent degree: ambition animated by nationalism, imagination that allowed conceptualization of scenarios beyond personal experience, flexibility that allowed adaptation to unfamiliar challenges, and devotion to republican, secular principles. Above all, Washington exemplified a quality possessed to some extent by all the Virginian founders: a pragmatic approach to decision making that consistently sstrove to assess realistically the probable consequences of political action. Washington‘s preeminence was not entirely a question of degree. In some important ways Washington‘s qualities impressed those of his own time as unique. Later historians have tended to agree, joining in the judgment, presented to young Henry Adams by his father, that George Washington ―stands alone.‖324 Of the several characteristics of Washington‘s performance to which Charles Francis Adams may have been referring, one seems outstanding: his transformation into practice of policy ideals. In a memoir, François-René de Chateaubriand,the noted French author and politician, claims he visited Washington in his Philadelphia home in July of 1791. He reports that he told the president, "It is less difficult to discover the Northwest passage than to create a people, as you have done.‖ Although this conversation, and the encounter itself, seem to be part of the imaginative writer‘s invention, the fiction nevertheless points to Washington‘s great part in forming and guiding American political institutions and practices in their beginning years.325 The signal of Washington‘s achievement is that the very important differences he intended to make are the ones he actually did make. This leader of the American Revolution, creator of a new nation, founder and first president of the American republic under its Federal

324 Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, Chapter 3. 325 F.-R. Chateaubriand, Oeuvres complètes, 6 (Paris: Garnier, 1861): 55-6A letter of Sepptembeer 5, 1791 from GW to the friend of Chateaubriand who had sent a letter of introduction for the writer shows that the latter was turned 101

Constitution, had dreamed of a newly independent nation whose people had in common a sense of themselves as Americans. He actively strove to transform that dream into reality. Intending to see liberty, justice, and mutual respect established for his fellow citizens, he helped to give the new nation its laws, and then, hoping it would set an example of civic virtue to the Old World, he presided over it. From the time he entered national politics, in 1774, until he died, at the very end of his century, his influence on the course of history tended in the direction of his aims. The rarity of this performance was noted by the wife of the British ambassador. When Washington died she declared him ―more favourit of Fortune than any man in the world,‖ because he had ―lived to see accomplished every wish he had formed.‖326 By this and almost any standard Washington must he counted as a highly creative, or transforming leader.327 It is not necessary to minimize the importance of social conditions and political context to argue that personality played a part in Washington‘s performance. Since Chateaubriand wrote his appreciation, so few modern Western leaders have fit the pattern he describes as to make obvious the distinctiveness of Washington‘s personal traits.328 By illustration, however, it is illuminating to contrast the first president with another American hero, Abraham Lincoln. David Donald stresses Lincoln's rejection of the great man theory of history as far as it applied to himself: "I claim not to have controlled events," Lincoln wrote, toward the end of the Civil War, "but confess plainly that events have controlled me." Such a thing could not be said about Washington's influence on events. Nor would anyone have said of Washington, as Donald says of Lincoln, that he had an "essentially passive personality.‖329 Indeed, activity not passivity, was one of Washington's most conspicuous characteristics. Gouverneur Morris, a close friend of the first president, wrote of him, "Few men of such steady persevering industry ever existed...He could at the dictate of reason control his

away on the day he called on the President, and Washington‘s surviving diaries show no evidence of Chateaubriand‘s visit. Papers, Presdtl. Series 8: 327, 492f. 326 Liston, Letters, 628. December 19, 1999. 327 Some of the literature on "transformational" or "creative" political leadership is reviewed in Betty Glad, "Passing the Baton: Transformational Political Leadership from Gorbachev to Yeltsin; from de Klerk to Mandela," Political Psychology, 17 (1996): 1-28. 328 Of the few who come to mind, notable are Charles de Gaulle of France, creator first of "Free France" and then of the Fifth Republic, Mustapha Kemal, the founder of modern Turkey, and Nelson Mandela of South Africa. A comparison of Mandela‘s family history with that of Washington is suggestive. See also Vamik Volkan and Itzkowitz, The Immortal Ataturk, and E. W. Marvick ―Beyond the Narcissistic Leader, Toward a Psychopolitical Comparison of Leaders,‖ ? Mind and Human Interaction (1998?).

102 will and command himself to act...Who [else] could like Washington completely, at any moment, command the energies of his mind to a cheerful exertion?"330 Morris‘s words point to features of Washington‘s personality that seemed truly distinctive, and would be just as notable now. In today‘s terms such a leader would be said to be one whose impulses, in choosing policies, were completely under the control of his rational judgment (he controlled ―his will‖ at the ―dictate of reason‖), and whose ego and superego worked in harmony to direct those impulses toward the tireless execution of those policies (hence with ―cheerful exertion‖).331 The command over the ―energies of his mind‖ was a sign that the conflicts so evident in the personalities of many un-―steady,‖ non-―persevering‖ politicians had been resolved in Washington by the time he undertook to lead the nation.332 Edmund Morgan found it notable that Washington seemed unafraid, once decided on a policy, to exercise the power necessary to implement it. This confidence denoted a guiltless political ambition that seems to have taken root early in Washington‘s life. As a nineteen-year old, he could already imagine himself in a position of power. In the critical stance toward the governor of Barbados that we have seen him record in his diary he shows himself able to put himself in the place of this high officer of the colony—at center stage. 333 Recent students of Washington‘s character have stressed, none more convincingly than W. W. Abbot, the care with which Washington built his image in order to gain support for his ambitions. His self-construction did not merely serve to gratify unconscious, pressing narcissistic needs so pronounced among many of those whose careers are devoted to winning public approval. Rather, it seemed consciously fashioned to implement Washington‘s design for American progress toward his conception of the ideal republic. In this progress his own role became uniquely influential. Our first glimpse of George Washington‘s intellectual and moral development—his boyhood workbooks--bespeaks the intelligence, will and energy which he applied to mastery of material. From the awkward, and orthographically faulty early writings he shaped himself into

329 David H. Donald, Lincoln, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 14f., 514. 330 Gouverneur Morris to John Marshall, June 26, 1807. The Papers of John Marshall . Ed. Herbert A. Johnson. Vols. 1-[8]. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1974--) 5: 174.. 331 ―Cheerful exertion‖ suggests the behavioral pattern identified by J. David Barber as ―active positive.‖ See Presidential Character ??? 332 A strong Jefferson supporter used strikingly similar words to describe Washington [bkntspr] in later years]...a man of remarkable strong Judgement capable of deciding accurately when the whole evidence...presented...strong passions, but...able...to do Justice to his enemies. 103

―one of the great penmen of the Revolution.‖334 From his earliest youthful application to lessons to his long and careful study, as president, of issues requiring his attention, we see him fashioning himself for success in a political context. Perhaps it is because Washington‘s tall frame and upright posture was modelled so often in formal portraiture and cold white marble that the first President acquired a mistaken reputation for aloofness, if not actual coldness. Even in his own time an anecdote circulated that he had rebuffed Gouverneur Morris himself for presuming too familiarly on his intimacy by clapping the general on the shoulder.335 Yet it is Morris who describes Washington‘s ―exertion‖ as ―cheerful,‖ certainly not that of one likely to snub a friendly companion of long standing. ―Cheerfulness‖—indeed, even exuberance—was more plausibly credited to the young Washington than dignity and standoffishness. Many who crossed his path testify to his enjoyment of good jokes at his own table. His sociable tastes for company and conversation, discussed earlier, as well as for dancing and entertainment, were noted.by his friends and evident from his behavior. When Rochambeau descended the Delaware to rendezvous with the American forces before proceeding southward to meet the British enemy, he ―discerned in the distance General Washington, standing on the shore and waving his hat and a white handkerchief joyfully.‖ He had just received news of Admiral de Grasse‘s arrival with the French fleet in in Chesapeake bay. Once the French officers disembarked, reported Von Closen, the two rejoicing generals embraced warmly on the shore.‖336 Washington into Washington: Looking for clues Leaders who seem to stand higher than most, and from their high places even to shape the destinies of nations, may in their own time be idols of the crowd, but their god-like qualities discourage us from seeking an understanding of what is at work in their personalities that allowed them to play their roles. Since about 1920 the searchlight of depth psychology has been turned upon most notable presidents from John Adams to Bill Clinton. Americans have seen the intimate histories of many of their most admired leaders subjected to close investigation in attempts to explain the personal dynamics that animated and shaped their political performances.

333 See above, re the governor of Barbados. 12/22/51: GW Diaries 1: 86. 334 Knollenberg, 1964, vi. 335 The story is uncorroborated by first-hand testimony. Philander Chase, Editor of the Papers of George Washington , has confirmed me, in a personal communication, in my doubts of the authenticity of this report. My suspicion of it was aroused by an analogous story told of Cardinal Richelieu of France, another legendary figure of ―marble.‖ (Young Richelieu…..p. ). 104

Yet Washington, preeminent in every role that distinguished American political history in the last quarter of the 18th century, has largely eluded such scrutiny.337 Up until quite recently, Washington was largely treated as an icon rather than a dynamic figure of flesh and blood, prone to ordinary human passions and weaknesses. He was represented as moulded all of one piece, without the seams and cracks endemic to ordinary people, and certainly without their internal struggles and unconscious conflicts. Jefferson, who knew of Lafayette‘s worshipful view of Washington, wrote to the marquis that the general‘s ―national and private ethics were.the same."338 Chief Justice John Marshall, too, who knew Washington well, declared that "his real and avowed motives were the same.‖ The implication of this is that since what you saw was what there was, there could be no purpose in probing more deeply.339 Beginnning in the 1930s, with the publication of John C. Fitzpatrick's edition of Washington's writings, ever-better documented biographies began to appear that were far less reverential than their predecessors. Some of these pointed to Washington's early limitations as a military leader, and to his occasional failures of insight and skill as a politician. As a result of new information and an anti-heroic trend in American culture, many of what might be deemed Washington's character flaws began to be exposed. In the years since, the young Washington's passionate ambition for glory has been stressed, as has his lust for real estate and other wealth. It has been shown that he did not always tell the truth. It has been pointed out that he had a taste for women and for gambling, and possibly indulged both tastes somewhat promiscuously. Evidence has been produced that his suspicion of plots against his authority in the Revolution were so ill- founded as to border on the paranoid. He has been charged with tolerating, if not actively initiating, cruel and unusual punishment of delinquent soldiers. It has been suggested that, as a Virginia planter, his management of slaves was at best apologetically businesslike, and at worst

336 Evelyn M. Acomb,. ―The Journal of Baron Von Closen,‖ WMQ, Seres 3, 10 (1953): 210.

337 One rare exception—though avowedly a tentative and very restricted one—is Mazlish, Bruce, ―Leadership in the American Revolution: The Psychological Dimension,‖in Leadership in the American Revolution, (: Washington, 1974), 113-133. 338 TJ to LaFayette, NY April 2, 1790. Boyd 16: 293. 339 John Marshall, The Life of George Washington, 2 (Philadelphia: Crissy & Markley, 1850 [1804-7]):447. 105 little better than average for his milieu.340 The further allegation has been made that as Commander-in-Chief during the revolutionary war he habitually padded his expense accounts.341 Yet, even if all these imputations were justified, they would fail, just as the idealized picture fails, to connect Washington the man with Washington the historical figure. How did either the devalued or the idealized Washington become the Washington who led the vanguard of the independence movement, helped to steer the revolution to a successful outcome, and personally symbolized the new nation? How did he become the military leader who refused to extend his powers beyond the laws, who rejected opportunities to gather political authority into his own hands, and who instead helped to sponsor and shape a new political system that would be responsible to public opinion? How were his personal resources brought to bear in winning the steadfast support of that opinion while he formed a new administration under new laws into an institution that was authoritative yet strictly limited in powers? To these questions Henry Wiencek has recently sought to add another: he suggest that a Washington who originally adopted without conflict typical views of the Virginian master class towards slavery was transformed, through some kind of not-yet understood epiphany, into a principled abolitionist who laid secret plans to free all his slaves.342 Devalued or idealized, there also seems to be a baffling inconsistency between the personality of the man and the roles he played. Perhaps there never has been a less likely revolutionist nor a more unusual republican politician than Washington. His extreme concern to preserve his good reputation coexisted with an adventurous readiness to take great risks; his profoundly conservative respect for tradition, order, and, specifically, for English culture and institutions dwelt next to a near-populist dream of a vast New World society, whose ―sons and Daughters‖ would engage ―in more pleasing and innocent amusements than in preparing

340 Two recent excellent summaries of Washington‘s relations to slaves and slavery are Dorothy Twohig, "‘That Species of Property‘":Washington's Role in the Controversy Over Slavery,‖Washington: Electronic files created by Frank E. Grizzard, Jr., 1997, and Kenneth Morgan, ―George Washington and the Problem of Slavery,‖ Journal of American Studies 34 (2000): 279-301. 341 The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick. 39 vols. (Washington: U.S. Govt. Printing Office, 1931-44); Douglas S. Freeman et. al., George Washington. 7 vols. (New York: Scribner's, 1948-1957). Bernhard Knollenberg, Washington and the Revolution: A Reappraisal (New York: Macmillan, 1940), 30-77; Marvin Kitman, George Washington's Expense Account (New York: Ballantine, 1976 [1970])

342 Henry Wiencek, An Imperfect God. Washington, his Slaves, and the Creation of america. New York: Farrar Strous giroux, 20003. 106 implements, & exercising them for the destruction of the human race;‖ where the "poor, needy & oppressed of the Earth‖ would ―resort to the fertile plains of our Western Country, to the second Land of promise, & there dwell in peace." [this occurs earlier—search] 343give few clues to the personal sources of the innovative part he would take in forging the "first new nation." His dislike of self-exposure and his expressed preference for domestic over public life seem to belie the self-dramatizing flair, the high energy, keen perception, singleminded concentration on goals, and consummate skill with which he helped to guide the American state through its perilous first few years. Thus, there is much to explain about Washington. Whence came the extraordinary ambition and energy to shape himself into the leader of his country.? How did his developmental history result in the personality dynamics that characterized the mature leader? The modern scholar does not accept Marshall's picture of Washington's seamless personality. Today's historian is aware that the most serene equilibrium is likely to have been won through resolving intense conflicts. Behind any "finished" character are traces of inner struggles that date to the earliest stages of life. As any child meets obstacles to gratification and develops means of coping with them, patterns are laid down in the unconscious as well as the conscious mind that will later characterize the mature personality. When we are able to retrace to their sources some of these inner conflicts and to understand how they were resolved, it becomes possible to identify the dynamic patterns that underlie the adult‘s political behavior. Therefore a biographer seeks insight into a public character's performance by looking for evidence on the experience of the child in forming links to the outside world. Such links, in the first instance, are to family members, and it is to George Washington's early family relationships that one turns in search of information on how his experience of childhood may be related to his development as a politician. Primary among sources of such information are the words and actions of Washington himself. Fortunately for our inquiry, the definitive new edition, now in progress, of Washington's writings, together with much other recent scholarly research, improve the possibility of discovering patterns in his reactions to events 344With the help of insights from depth psychology, close attention to the details of such evidence promises to disclose latent meanings

343To DH 7/25/85.Confed:3:149. 107 in his imagery. Oversights, inconsistencies, errors of fact, repetitions or unexpected emphases may hint at unconscious tendencies to deny or repress motives that are felt as unacceptable. When direct evidence on personal experience is scarce, it becomes a "question of paying attention to each phrase, of following out each faint clue.‖345 This is a slow and laborious process, however, and within this space only a little progress can be expected. The first place to look for sources of the clues we need are the widely scattered occasional passages from Washington's correspondence and diaries that contain allusions to his early, intimate experience or that seem, unguardedly, to express his deeper emotions. Among the more interesting of these is a short group of written comments the general himself made on a draft of what was to have been an authorized biography by his friend and former aide-de-camp, David Humphreys, a pleasant, highly-mannered poet-diplomat who lived with Washington at Mount Vernon from 1786 to 1788. Fragmentary as they are, the various manuscripts that comprise Humphreys's unfinished "Life of General Washington," together with Washington's annotations, are a good point of departure to illustrate the kind of careful analysis that seems necessary. The biographical sketch that Humphreys began to prepare while he was Washington's guest profited not only from prolonged and intimate daily contact with the national hero, but also from "copy-editing" by its subject. Washington himself made corrections and elaborations of the narrative as Humphreys composed it. Because the short sketch depends heavily on Washington's own communications it has important autobiographical value. Its significance is enhanced by the fact that Washington himself seems to have feared that his written comments revealed too much, since he enjoined Humphreys to return or burn them after reading them. Fortunately, Humphreys did neither; hence we can study his text together with the annotations by its subject for hints on what Washington inadvertently may have disclosed. Held in three separate collections and only recently integrally published, the manuscripts in question have, until now, only been accessible to a few readers. Although Rosemary Zagarri‘s edition of the newly synthesized documents deals

344 The Papers of George Washington. Vol. 1- . W.W. Abbot, Dorothy Twohig et al. , eds. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983--). 345 Geoffrey Gorer, The Danger of Equality (New York: Weybright & Talley, 1966), 249. 108 most vividly with Washington's feelings about experiences in the French and Indian Wars, it is Washington's references to his much earlier experience that are in question here.346 Family History: The Washingtons Humphreys' account begins with Washington's paternal ancestry and refers to the brothers John and Lawrence as the first family members to settle in Virginia, in 1657. At this point Washington appends the remark that they "transferred a considerable inheritance...to their adoptive country." In fact, however, the English father of these two immigrants, the reverend Lawrence Washington, had been driven out of his comfortable church living in 1643 by the influence of those Puritans who later sponsored what Washington would call "the usurpation of Oliver Cromwell.‖347 This unfortunate ancestor had been accused of being a "common frequenter of Ale-houses," of "daily tippling," and of having "oft been drunk." He had been forced to take a living so "poor and miserable" that it was difficult to persuade anyone to accept it. 348"Financially," one historian concludes, "he must have been a ruined man."349 The impovershed reverend Washington died in 1652, a few years before his two sons found their way to the New World. What seems significant in George Washington's version of this history is that, whatever these first Washington immigrants brought to the American mainland, it was not likely to have been a "considerable inheritance," unless by a lucky stroke they had since benefitted from the death of some other family connection. Furthermore, their father, the rector, had been disadvantaged from the start: he had descended from the modest junior branch of a family whose more prosperous lines included titled members intermarried with persons bearing such distinguished names as Guise, Pargiter and Villiers. John Washington, George Washington's immigrant ancestor, may have benefitted, as a poorer relation, from such connections: he was in Barbados as early as 1654, possibly as an agent for his cousin, Thomas Pargiter, who obtained a license to export goods there in 1653.350 Another noteworthy feature of George Washington's account of his American origins is that he implies that it was "pull" rather than "push" that brought his great grandfather and great-

346 David Humphreys, 'Life of General Washington' with George Washington's 'Remarks,' ed. Rosemarie Zagarri (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1991), 37-39. 347 GW to Sir Isaac Heard, May 2, 1792. Fitzpatrick, 32: 31-33. 348 Writings of George Washington . ed. Worthington C. Ford. (New York; Putnam's., 1893) 14: 372-373; 378- 379. 349 Freeman, 1: 528. 109 grand uncle from across the sea. According to him, these first American Washingtons were not constrained to come to our shores in search of a fortune which they lacked in their native land, nor even to flee religious discrimination. Instead, he wants us to understand, America was their freely chosen destination and they brought, along with high social status, sizable inherited resources to invest in the country of their choice. Humphreys continues, without his hero's demurral, "almost every branch of their offspring still possesses a considerable portion of property and respectability."351 The expectations of the two brothers who were the original migrants, it seems, were validated: the Washingtons multiplied and prospered in the New World. The fact was, however, that not all of the Washington issue throve in America. The line of the younger immigrant brother, (Lawrence Washington, d. 1677), could not have been especially affluent. One of his grandsons, a John Washington, remembers his own plight as a youth. In a 1699 letter to his sister he recalls: "I had not the value of twenty shillings of my Father's estate, I being the youngest & therefore the weakest, which generally comes off short.‖352 And as for multiplying, George Washington‘s half brother Lawrence, eldest son of his father to survive to adulthood (the first-born had died in infancy), had only two children, both of whom also died in childhood, and of course, George Washington himself had no descendants. Thus far the emphases and omissions that Washington induced his biographer to make give an interesting twist to the myth of the hero-founder of a new nation. Then, as now, the picture of America as the land of opportunity for dispossessed and persecuted victims of old world injustice had its charm. Washington could certainly have represented his own forbears as driven by intolerance to a new land, there to achieve success despite obstacles. His preference for depicting them as continuously superior in affluence and respectability hints at defensiveness. This quintessentially achieving hero did not wish to be known as a self-made man. He preferred to represent fortune as smiling upon his ancestors before as well as after they were called to the scene of the hero's later distinction. He chooses to stress his membership in a privileged group. Even given prosperous ancestors, the American myth requires that the hero fulfill his personal destiny by dint of his own efforts, against the odds. In this respect, George

350 Ford, 14: 386-387 351 Life, 5. Ford, 14: 386-387 [?] 352 ." ford 14 , 407]

110

Washington's actual history conforms. The death of his father, Augustine Washington, while George was still a child is one event that forced early self-reliance and striving for achievement upon the future leader. As a boy, George Washington had little experience with his father. He was to say ―he knew little of his father, other than a remembrance of his person‖ (Augustine was a tall, powerful man), ―and of his parental fondness,‖ for Augustine‘s regular occupation was managing an iron works more than a day‘s travel from home. When George was in his fifth year, moreover, his father was entirely absent for more than six months, visiting his older sons in England. Other prolonged absences are suggested by the fact that the succession of George‘s younger siblings, whose births were marked from 1732 to 1739 by less than two-year intervals, seems to have been terminated in the latter year.four years before Augustine‘s death. The interruption, whatever its cause, suggests a further diminished presence of his father in George Washington‘s young life. Augustine died suddenly in 1743, while his young son George was away visiting cousins. George‘s mother, Mary, already the primary caretaker of the family, became responsible for the support and rearing of the five surviving children of six that she had born Augustine in twelve years of marriage.353 His death drastically changed the family constellation for her eldest son: George was now the oldest male in his widowed mother‘s family. It therefore seems important to notice that, real as Washington's deprivation was, he exaggerates the loss imposed on him by his father's death. He changes an important fact about it by telling Humphreys, "My father died when I was only ten years old."354 The truth is that when his father died on April 12, 1743, George had already passed his eleventh birthday. Family experience: Captain of the “B” Team

The loss of a parent, by death or other cause, is apt to arouse anger (among other emotions) in a child. The fact that George Washington backdated by a year the handicap placed on himself by his father's death may suggest unexpressed resentment at the disadvantage he had suffered. It also serves to emphasize his extraordinary achievement in overcoming this disadvantage. Another clue exists to how the eleven-year old Washington experienced this sudden change in his situation through the disappearance of his father. Many years later George‘s own youngest brother, Charles, died. Washington describes the event as producing ―awful, and affecting emotions,‖ and reflects, ―I was the first and am now the last of my father‘s Children by the second marriage who remain.‖355 Samuel Washington, this brother‘s only surviving son, had

353 Mildred,the last sibling, was born in 1739 and died the following year. It is possibleof course, that later pregancies of Mary Ball Washington went unrecorded. 354 Zagarri, page? ). 355 …‖ To Burgess Ball, MV 9/22/99. Ret. 6:318 111 been ―struggling to rescue his father‘s property which was heavily burdened with debt.‖356 In Washington‘s letter of condolence to young Samuel he seems to re-experience his own father‘s death: ―By this event, you have become the Guardian of your mother; and as it were, the father, of your father‘s family; and by care, industry & sobriety will merit the appellation of one.‖357 These were the duties George had been called upon to assume after the death of his father, and the qualities he had been called upon to exhibit—onerous demands indeed. From a psychological point of view, moreover, they are demands that are likely to arouse mixed feelings that derive from earlier conflicts. To identify childhood deprivations, conflicts, and resolutions is one thing; to determine the feelings about them of the one who experienced them is another. In order to make the attempt it is first in order to recapitulate some of the established facts concerning the family situation of George Washington from the time of his birth to his father's death. Like a disproportionate number of ambitious, successful leaders, George Washington was the first-born son of his mother.358 Yet Mary Ball Washington also conferred a handicap on Washington. Her husband had another, older, family by his first wife, Jane Butler. Thus, as the widow of her husband‘s second marriage, Mary may be said to have made her eldest son the head of the "B team." comprised of Augustine‘s last five children. Furthermore, while the first Mrs. Washington,as the daughter of a prosperous Virginia landowner, had brought a considerable fortune to her marriage, Mary Ball, like her son George, was a child of her father's second family. This father, Joseph Ball, had settled his most substantial assets on the children of his first marriage before he married Mary Johnson, Mary Ball's mother. Furthermore, like George‘s father, he then proceeded to die very early in the life of the first child born to his second marriage. When George Washington was born, in February, 1732, he was subordinate in rank, as his father's third son, to two older half brothers, Augustine (Austin) and Lawrence. Interestingly, while Humphreys does mention (undoubtedly because Washington himself did) that his subject‘s

356 Retirrement series 4: 511. 357 (To Saml Washington, .): 9/22/99: 358 Dean K. Simonton (1984). Genius, Creativity and Leadership, Historiometric Inquiries . Cambridge, Harvard University Press. A recent review of the literature on birth order and political eminence is Blema S. Steinberg,‖ The Making of Female Presidents and Prime Ministers: The Impact of Birth Order, Sex of Siblings, and Father-Daughter Dynamics,‖ Political Psychology 22 (2001): 89-110. Freud, of course, was the first to offer hypotheses concerning the connection of this birth-order feature with ambition. 112 father was descended from the elder of the two immigrant brothers,359 he does not point out that Augustine senior was himself a younger son of his father and had suffered serious disadvantages as the result of the early death of his father, who had not made provisions for his education and support. Augustine‘s mother, upon remarrying, returned to England with her sons. Her death there have forced the early termination of Augustine‘s education and his eventual return, still a youth, to Virginia.360 This experience of relative deprivation may have inspired an ambition that enabled him to accumulate enough property to leave all of his children a legacy in land that was not to be jeopardized by the possibillity of his widow remarrying.361 George Washington's father Augustine had not been a typical Virginia plantation- dwelling patriarch. Beginning life with very limited assets, his main occupation had become that of manager and part owner of an iron works.362 This occupation is perhaps significant in George Washington‘s later orientation, for none of the other Virginia founders had such a close connection with commerce and manufacturing as he. Such connections seem, moreover, to have had a long history in the family: one of the original Washington emigrants, George‘s ancestor John, broke with the reverend Lawrence‘s lifestyle to serve an apprenticeship in a London commercial enterprise. His migration to America was in the service of commerce, which determined his social status until his advantageous marriage to the daughter of his rich Virginia patron: ―[John] Washington

359 Zagarri, Life , 5. 360 Augustine's schooling cut short in England (Appleby) by death of Mom; John of Chotank became his, his bro. John's, and Mildred's guardian on the death of his mom. (married to Geo. Gale) in England c 1701.Her will in Ford, 14, 402f.(Died in childbirth of dotter by Gale) .

361 will of gus alluded to in Hinchcliffe, "The Washingtons at Whitehaven & Appleby," Transactions of the Cumberland & Westmorland Antiquarian & Archeological Society. [vmbh?]New Series 71 (1971): 151-198 in providing for kids’ interests in case of MBW remarriage as was not done for him.

362 In contrast with Conway who describes George Washington‘s father as ―iron poor‖ because of his heavy investment in the iron works which was ultimately unsuccessful, Rasmussen and Tilton stress his success in building the family fortunes and proclaim the iron mining operation ―a sound investment.‖ 7f, 290. 113 was not an heir to a country estate and had no conspicuous association with gentility in England. In fact he is identified…in Virginia records as a merchant, not a gentleman.‖363 For Washington, as we have seen, allusion to his father called up a memory of an imposing though affectionate figure whose qualities were nevertheless quite ill-defined. It would be George‘s mental task, so to speak, to fill in the blurred outline of his father‘s persona in a manner that was meaningful and emotionally satisfying. More than for most of those boys whose fathers survive into the early adulthood of their sons, George Washington‘s task called for a powerful ego unhampered by restrictions of excessive guilt. Washington‘s apparent success in assuming this role of ―father of his father‘s family‖ at the age of eleven speaks not only for such an ego, but also for a previous developmental pattern that was relatively free of rage toward or fear of a threatening father figure. The frequent prolonged absences of his father may help account for such early freedom; the independence and strength of his mother‘s personality may have contributed to it as well. The early death of George Washington‘s father also had important material consequences for the eldest son of his second family. A study of Augustine Washington‘s will shows that while he intended to provide for all his sons from both marriages, he divided his estate among them roughly on the basis of priority of birth. Thus Lawrence, the eldest, who had already received the Mount Vernon estate, was also bequeathed his father's share in the Principio Iron works (which Lawrence later bequeathed to his brother Austin or Austin‘s heirs). Most of the remaining tracts of real property were allocated, in descending order of size, choiceness, and certainty of title, among the six sons of both marriages, giving the eldest the right of refusing his legacy in exchange for one of his brothers' should he prefer it, a similar right of choice being given to each of the younger brothers in turn—again, in order of birth. References are also made in this will to property belonging to the three older children through their mother, in which the younger children had no share. Thus, George received only the best legacy of the "second team." The few modifications he made in Humphrey's recounting of this allocation suggest that he felt this disadvantage keenly. George Washington does not, in Humphreys' account, express directly any sentiments about his relatively low position in the family order. That he was sensitive to such matters,

363 This break with the gentlemanly profession of rector is stressed by Quitt. ―The English cleric and the Virginia Adventurer: The Washingtons, Father and Son,‖ VMBH & quote from Higginbotham reprint, 27. 114 however, is suggested by a letter that he wrote in 1783 to his nephew and principal heir, Bushrod Washington. In it, he admonishes this elder son of his younger brother to moderate his financial demands on his father, John Augustine Washington, whom he was pushing into debt. "Prudence," wrote George Washington, "and every other consideration is opposed to your requiring more than his conveniency and a regard to his other children will enable him to pay 364 Certainly, George was attuned to the rights of younger siblings among whom he probably counted not only his own younger brothers, and his nephews, but himself as well. This sensitivity to possible slighting of the younger family may explain what is surely an unconscious mistake in George Washington's own will. Ford, an early editor of his papers, thinks "not a little remarkable" a bequest in which Washington calls the younger son of a nephew ―Lawrence Augustine‖ instead of ―Charles Augustine‖ Washington. Charles Augustine Washington was the grandson and namesake of Washington's youngest brother. The effect of the mistake in terms of George Washington's own sibling array was to give the name of the elder, favored half-brothers to the youngest descendant of George‘s own youngest full brother. Moreover, as Ford remarks, the bequest made is of a piece of land that, by terms of George‘s father‘s will, should have gone to descendants of Augustine (Austin) Washington, second son of Augustine Senior, not to the more disadvantaged grandchildren of the elder Augustine‘s second family.365 Another feature of George Washington‘s will redistributes property that his half-brother Lawrence had designated in his own will to go to Austin and his heirs in case George were to have no issue. This was property belonging to the original estate of Mount Vernon. George of course had no descendants but instead of observing Lawrence‘s intentions that the property revert to Austin‘s children, he bequeathes it to his own most favored nephew, Bushrod Washington, son of John Augustine, who had been his favorite younger brother.366 His bequest is

364 January 15, 1783. Fitzpatrick, 26: 39-40. . Ford, 14: 292.GW‘s will is reproduced in Papers, Retirement series 477-492. Here the editors have substituted the correct ―Charles‖ for GW‘s ―Lawrence.‖ Philander Chase, present editor in chief of the Papers affirms, however, that Ford‘s point correctly represents the manuscript: ―On page 488 Washington is in error when he refers to the,grandson of his brother Charles Washington as, "Lawrence Augustine Washington." He should have written "Charles Augustine Washington," [Personal communication, December 12,2000.]

366 Papers, Ret. Series 4: 487f, 507f. This ignoring of Lawrence‘s intentions was noticed by Moncure D. Conway, Barons of the Potomack and the Rappahannock (New York: The Grolier Club, 1892), 88-91, who speculates that 115 all the more notable since, in 1769 his lawyer, Edmund Pendleton, had explained in a letter to him how the terms of Lawrence‘s will made Austin‘s son the legatee of Mount Vernon.367 Priorities of inheritance and a heavy burden of responsibility were not the only causes of George Washington‘s disadvantage resulting from his relatively low birth order and the early death of his father. Deficiencies in his education could also be attributed to these handicaps—and Washington did so attribute them, showing himself to be very aware of having got the short end of the stick on this point. Augustine, the father, compensated for his own schooling deficiencies by providing his first two sons with the education of English gentlemen. Both of George‘s elder half brothers had benefitted from being sent to a rather distinguished English college, and Lawrence seems to have pursued advanced studies in England. Though he left the Appleby preparatory school in December, 1632 he remained abroad until 1643. It seems likely that the study of law was one of his pursuits. 368 George Washington suggests that it was his father's premature death that prevented him from receiving a similar advantage. Referring to himself he tells Humphreys, "his father and two oldest brothers had received their education in England, whither he would have been sent for the same purpose had it not been for the death of the former.‖369 Belying this, however, is the fact that when Augustine Washington died George was already eleven years old, the age at which both his half-brothers had been enrolled at the Appleby school in Britain. Thus, contrary to George‘s claim to Humphreys, his father had made no plans to send George abroad in the wake of his half brothers. Nor was any fund designated in Augustine‘s will for such an educational purpose, as had been done in the wills of some of his contemporaries, not only for sons, but also, in at least one case, for a daughter. Indeed George‘s older half-brother Austin would make such provisions for his children in his own will, striving,

GW ―disregarded Larry‘s will‖ because of the great wealth of Austin and his son to whom the property would otherwise have gone. Knollenberg cites an earlier work of Conway reporting that William Augustine Washington, the son of Austin who was entitled to 367 Worthington Chauncey Ford, ed. Wills of George Washington and his Immediate Ancestors. Brooklin: Historical Printing Club, 189153. all his father‘s real estate, complained in a letter to George Washington‘s widow of the ―wrong‖ that ―had been done‖ to him. (George Washington: The Virginia Period, 1964, p. 27 citing Conway, George Washington and Mount Vernon, 1889, xcii. ) ; 368 (See "From 'Transactions of the Cumberland & Westmoreland Antiquarian & Archeological Society,'" Virginia Magazine of History and Biography , 11 (1903-4): 215. 369 ."Zagarri, Life , 6. 116 doubtlessly, to assure them of those same advantages he had enjoyed—advantages denied to George and the later children.370 How keenly Washington felt his educational disadvantage is shown by one of his letters. Humphreys had written him that he thought it would better for the general himself to write an autobiography than for Humphreys to undertake a biography. Washington demurs that he has neither the leisure nor the talents for it: "I am conscious of a defective education and want of capacity to fit me for such an undertaking.‖371 372Nor was such self-consciousness mere modesty. For while Washington was certainly gifted with an unusual talent for writing, his schoolbooks and earliest letters show the many hours of laborious, apparently solitary, practice he had to put in to develop to the point that he ultimately reached as an adroit and expressive correspondent. Humphreys' "life" goes on to claim that Washington was educated by "a domestic tutor." This, too, may put a gloss on reality. Jonathan Boucher, who knew Washington well, reports that Augustine Washington hired a "convict servant bought as a schoolmaster" to educate the first born of his second family. 373 This practice was common, entailing only a small expense. Indeed Augustine is reported to have returned in 1737 from one of his visits to England on a ship ―loaded with convicts.‖374 The correspondence of the Lees, a family of wealth and standing superior to Washington‘s, shows the contempt in which the hire of such persons as ―tutors‖ was held by some. Philip Lee writes his brother, ―As [for]... poor scotch school masters...I can have a ship load now from Glasgow, Aberdeen or St. Andrews for 20£ to teach 8 scholars.‖375 George may eventually have attended the Fredericksburg classes of the Huguenot minister, James Marye, sharing his teacher's services with several schoolmates.376 For the effects

370 Auugustine‘s will, sWilliam L. Sachse, The Colonial American in Britain. Madison, U of W, 1956. 48-53.

371 Humphreys to GW, July 17, 1785; GW to Humphreys, July 25, 1785. Papers , Confederate Series 3 [Fitzp. 28: 202-4 inexact, from letterbook.]? 372 Basis of comfortable happiness w/Humphreys: partook of his erudition, amiable adoration, New Englandness, cosmopolitan, gossipyness. Goes on to say "consciousness of a defective education, and... want of time, unfit me for ["commentaries"] " but you are aabsolutely fitted, & "I shld with great pleausre, not only give you the perusal of all my papers, but any oral info or circs which cannot be obtained from the former...My house would not only be at your service during the period of your preparing this work...but I shld be exceedingly happy if you would make it your home. ...Apartment to yourself, in which you could command your own time...considered and treated as one of the family; & meet with that cordial reception and entertainment which are characteristic of the sincerest friendship." 373 Jonathan Boucher,Reminiscences of an American Loyalist, 1738-1789 . Ed. Jonathan Boucher[?]. (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1925), 49. 374 Conway, Barons, 375 Phillip L. Lee to William Lee, July 20, 1773. Lee Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society. 376 Freeman, 1: 61. 117 of his educational experience, consider an observation that he made in a later letter concerning the education of a young nephew: Consulted on whether the youth should be sent to a certain college Washington advises with somewhat unusual emphasis that this depends in part "upon the number of Boys; for I lay it down as a maxim, that if the number of the pupils is too great for the tutors, justice cannot be done, be the abilities of the latter what they will." What the minimal proportion is cannot be told, he continues, but "an extreme must be obvious to all.‖377 It is plausible that he speaks from experience of such an extreme, and that he had felt his own high abilities neglected in crowded classrooms he attended as a boy.378 Whatever the details of George Washington‘s early educational experience, one of its outcomes was to help shape a personality that compensated for feelings of personal disadvantage by arduous application to the tasks at hand, by habits of canvassing a wide array of opinions on policy problems, and by exercising caution and delay while meditating on decisions to be made. Washington‘s success in keeping his own counsel while such processes were going on made him seem especially reserved to some. In a "thumbnail characterization" that Humphreys gives at the beginning of his biography he describes his subject as ―rather pensive,379 & reserved in his appearance,‖ though Humphreys, with whom Washington especially enjoyed hours of sociability, knew him also to be ―frequently animated & fluent in conversation.‖ Washington‘s extreme reserve in untested company was a self-imposed restraint on a taste for jokes and other mundane pleasures. Among trusted friends, ―the general, with a few glasses of champagne got quite merry and…laughed and talked a good deal,‖ writes Robert Hunter, Jr. who visited Mount Vernon in ;1785.380c Washington‘s self-restraint was surely reinforced by the example of the increasingly refined company that he found himself among as his career rose. With intimate friends—not only certain fellow Virginians like Basset and Benjamin Harrison, and LaFayette as well, he even allowed himself a few bawdy allusions that bespeak his experiences with barnyards.381

377 GW To Tobias Lear, November 7, 1790. Fitzpatrick 31:149. 378 Knollenberg has noted that Washington‘s later reference to a ―school fellow shows that he had a classroom experience and Washington‘s editors identify the classmate. Knollenberg, 1964, 5; GWP , Colonial. 202. (George Mason to GW June 12¸1756.) Bow.

379 FN1.úúYale MS, 3. Zagarri‘s transcription of this word as "unsure," is, I believe, a misreading.P. ? 380 Hunter, from Quebec to Caroline…eds. Wright and Tinling. 381 GWnts on mounting Fanny Basset, Fitz. 28:152; 181. 118

The intensity that Washington brought to his wartime responsibilities was felt by him as a strain on his powers of concentrated thought. At the conclusion of the Revolution he wrote to a friend of his youth that his service to ―that country…for whose sake I have consumed so many anxious days and watchfull nights,‖382 had been eight long years of ―a Mind always on the stretch.‖383 With the mental energy and concern that he had invested in this service, it is no wonder that he rejoiced at the prospect of freedom from heavy responsibility. With his retirement from the presidency in 1797, he felt the same sense of liberation from a stress that had been self- imposed. Mary Ball Washington If there are indications that George Washington suffered from his position of comparative disadvantage as a child, such feelings could have been augmented by certain features of his mother's family. Mary Ball Washington's elder half brother, Joseph Ball,II, had the advantage of an English education that made him eligible for a prestigious professional career in the mother country. Judging from surviving portions of Mary Washington's correspondence with this half brother, an English barrister, her son George must early have been made aware that he and his widowed mother were "poor relations" in her family--deferential petitioners not only for advice but also for gifts from their superior connections abroad. Like George‘s father and older half- brothers, his maternal uncle‘s presence was intermittent, since he appeared irregularly in Virginia to tend to his property, in between visits to England. Joseph Ball did not definitively migrate to England until 1743, the year of Augustine's death. It is even possible that the departure of this affluent, powerful relative may have augmented a sense of paternal abandonment on the part of George Washington himself. Moreover George does not seem to have been the most favored nephew of this uncle: the latter‘s correspondence shows that he selected the son of another (full) sister to manage his American estate—a nephew from the first, more privileged, family of his father.384 Nevertheless, Washington‘s mother, unlike his father, had benefited from a rather privileged upbringing. Although her father, the first Joseph Ball died when she was three, settling most of his estate upon his first family before marrying her mother, Mary inherited some

382 Fitz. 26: 484,‖Circular to the States,‖ June 8, 1783. 383 [to Bryan Fairfax, Inter. 447 [Confed?] ]1783 ?? I haven‘t found this; 119 property—land, slaves and cattle—from him and considerably more at the age of twelve when her mother died. As a girl she had possessed ―sufficient income for her needs‖ and ―several riding horses‖ and, by the terms of her mother‘s will, a ―‗good silk plush riding saddle,‘‖ inheritances that suggest a more aristocratic life-style than the one enjoyed by Augustine Washington at the same stage of life. Thus, like many American heroes including, arguably, all of the Virginian founders considered here, George Washington‘s mother enjoyed somewhat higher social status than his father. To such a difference, more conspicuous in the case of Thomas Jefferson than any of the others, as will be seen, Erik Erikson has attributed certain distinctive features of mother-son relationships typical in American life, often spurring young boys to emulate models of idealized maternal grandfathers in preference to their own fathers.385 Following this pattern it is interesting to find that the guardian designated by Mary Ball‘s widowed mother for her daughter was George Eskridge, a distinguished lawyer and burgess in the colony and a family connection in whose home Mary grew to the age of 23, at which she married George Washington‘s father. Significantly her first-born son was named after this notable figure, rather than after any member of the Washington family.386 The death of Augustine left Mary Washington in charge of the fate of her family, and her eldest son, the eleven-year old George as her chief executive. Officially, he made his home with her until he was twenty-three, although he spent much time visiting the nearby, more luxurious establishments of his older half brothers, and the even more opulent estate of the Fairfax family, one of whose members Lawrence, his next-eldest half brother, had married. It is usual for a very young boy to dream of replacing his father vis à-vis his mother. By the time he finishes adolescence, however, such inclinations have usually been repressed and transformed. The father‘s image has been internalized, and romantic aspirations toward the mother redirected toward feminine objects outside the family. To be left, at the early age of eleven, conscious of the demand to be the ―father of your father‘s family,‖ therefore, might be

384 Joseph Ball correspondence, Library of Congress. Joseph Ball b. 3/11 89 (Va.) returned to England 1708; = Frances Ravenscroft. there 12/3/09. Returned to Va. 1722 for ??; In England for 18 mos. betw. 1730 & 38; Va. 1738-43/4 (winter) 385 Erikson, Childhood and Society. 386 Freeman, 1:43-45.Jane Taylor Duke, Kenmore and the Lewises. Garden City: Doubleday, 1949, 157-58 MDNM. Her early fondness for fine horses is indicated by the fact that she herself was bequeathed a mare by her step[??]father who died when she was an eleven-year old 120 seen to pose a danger to the more usual pattern of development. That this danger was overcome successfully is evident by Washington‘s later history. Rival myths: Mother and Father Historians have often seemed overdisposed to give short shrift to the influence of George Washington's mother. They are readier to credit him with being a chip off the paternal block. Setting the model for this emphasis on paternal influence was "Parson" Mason Weems, the literary entrepreneur whose greatly elaborated third edition of The History of the Life and Death, Virtues and Exploits of General George Washington appeared in 1808. In it Weems waxes eloquent about George Washington's father's supposed efforts to shape his son's moral education: "Never did the wise Ulysses take more pains with his beloved Telemachus, than did Mr. Washington with George, to inspire him with an early love of truth." This from the inventor of the axed cherry-tree legend. In fact, Augustine Washington, George's father, was away from home during much of George's childhood. Having already sired three sons and one daughter by his first wife, he was rarely on hand to provide guidance to the first-born son of his second marriage, much less to the next five children that would flesh out the "second team" of this Washington family. Yet there are some clues as to what may have been an indirect influence of the father‘s culture on his son George‘s early years. We seem to be led to one such clue in the religious perspectives that George Washington was soon to demonstrate. When he first appeared in a national venue, John Adams, the shrewd and pious New Englander, quickly perceived that the Virginian leader made no pretense of professing conventional Christian beliefs. Unlike Jefferson, Washington avoided, publicly as well as privately, associating his ethical beliefs with the Christian god. Jefferson remarks in his reminiscences that ―the old fox… [was] too cunning‖ for the clergy when it tried, on one of many occasions, to force him to declare publicly ―whether he was a Christian or not.‖ Indeed, Paul Bolling, who has searched Washington‘s writings thoroughly for evidence on his spiritual beliefs finds in them a ―massive silence regarding Christ.‖387 Washington may well have owed some of his heterodoxy to his parents. A distant cousin of George‘s age, who could have known Augustine as well as Mary Ball Washington, calls the

387 . John Adams letter on GW‘s religion; [a quote?]?; TJ‖The ― Anas‖ p. 80?; Bolling, 74. 121 former a ―deist.‖388 Moncure Conway observes that the will of Washington‘s father is the ―first of his line that omits a profession of Christian faith.‖389 As for Mary herself, the several letters that survive of those she wrote to her son show no reversion to the routinely pious references that were characteristic of contemporaries of her sex and milieu. One recent writer on the religious perspectives of the founding fathers characterizes ―contemporary historiographic scholarship‖ as addressing the ―contrasting influences of liberalism, classical republicanism and Christianity.‖390 If these were the chief groundings of the ideology of Virginian leaders, Washington‘s perspective must be cast decisively into the second framework: he was, quite consciously, a student of ancient Roman republican culture. He had a decisive bent toward Epicureanism and stoic philosophy that he manifested in his early workbooks and that stayed with him throughout his life.391 Aside from the fragmentary memory of his son George, there is no testimony about the personal side of Augustine Washington. But what can be said of the famous story of the boy Washington's cherry-tree axing and subsequent confession? Was it made up out of whole cloth by the hagiographic Parson Weems? Weems himself is said later to have teased an inquirer by suggesting this possibility.392 Or does the durability of this American legend lie in some important connection with reality that gives it interest? In the story, as Weems presents it, we find the six-year old George, delighted with the possession of a new hatchet, "in the garden amusing himself hacking his mother's pea-sticks," when, "unluckily," he "tried the edge of his hatchet on the body of a beautiful young English cherry-tree," a great favorite of his father. The next day "the old gentleman" (Augustine would have been only 42 at this time) "with much warmth asked for the mischievous" tree murderer. ―‘George,‘ said his father, 'do you know who killed that beautiful little cherry tree yonder in the garden?' This was a tough question...but [George] quickly recovered himself, and looking at his father with the sweet face of youth...bravely cried out, 'I can't tell a lie, Pa; you know I can't tell a

388 Mrs. Throckmorton. Intensely protective of the Washington name she claims that George himself became more religious after his father‘s death but there is no direct evidence whatever of this. 389 Moncure Conway, Barons of the Ptommack etc. 75. 390 Garrett Ward Sheldon,. The Political Philosophy of James Madison, Johns Hopkins University Press,2001. xi. 391 Flexner 4:498 says GW early impressed with Addison’s Cato & stoicism— lay fallow during French and Indian War—but returned to it after [first] retirement. 499]

122 lie. I did cut it with my hatchet.'--'Run to my arms, you dearest boy,' cried his father in transports,...'Glad am I, George that you killed my tree, for you have paid me for it a thousand fold!'‖ Thus goes Parson Weems's account, as related to him, he claims, by an "excellent lady" who knew the Washington family well. He gives no information on Washington‘s relations with his mother during his childhood, nor does any direct report seem to have survived. Certain surmises are possible, however, on the basis of circumstantial evidence and later accounts. As to such later accounts, Mary Ball Washington lived well past her eightieth birthday, into her eldest son‘s advanced years. Exceptionally, among the first four ―founders,‖ there is ample evidence of Washington‘s frequent and fairly informal communication with and about his mother until her death in 1789. He did not destroy his surviving correspondence with her; it shows a strong-willed and capable woman. Her letters also show her to be often anxious about his well-being, sometimes complaining of her material situation, clearly demanding help from him as her primary source of support and protection. They are those of a woman who feels it necessary fiercely to protect her situation against forces that tend to drag her and her family down. Those who have reviewed this record most sensitively agree that Washington felt deep appreciation for his mother‘s protection of himself and his younger siblings in his childhood, and showed easy, firm, but sympathetic resistance to her unreasonable complaints in her old age.393 Whatever may have been his conflicts in separating from her—or any other nurturing figure— they left no discernible trace in any of his writings or secondary reports. As George and other descendants acquired fame and fortune, Mary Washington‘s complaints and anxieties seem less and less realistic. George sometimes complained to other members of the family about her excessive demands, and usually stressed, in the language of stoicism, his dutifulness towards her. Aware that she was probably terminally ill in March of 1789, he plans to visit her ―to discharge the last act of personal duty I may…ever have it in my power to pay my mother.‖394 To Mary herself he seems almost always to have been equable, considerate, and indulgent. He would show easy, firm, but sympathetic resistance to her

392 Biography of Weems: teasing on cherry tree. 393 Marvick, ― Family Imagery and Revolutionary Spirit: Washington‘s Creative Leadership,‖ in Mark J. Rozell et al. eds., George Washington and the Origins of the American Presidency (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2000), 77-91. 394 GW to Richard Conway, MV March 6, 1789. Presdtl. series 3: 537 123 unreasonable complaints in her old age and assure others that there ―is not one of us children who would not share our last farthing with her.‖ And indeed, in her later years she asked for and took more from her eldest son than he thought was justified ―She has had a great deal of money from me at times….I conceived it to be a duty whenever she asked for money, and I had it, to furnish her notwithstanding…she took everything she wanted from the plantation for the support of her family, horses etc.‖395 It is probable here that Washington is not referring to the ―family‖ that included his younger siblings and their offspring, by then grown, but to Mary‘s household in her later years. This consisted of her slave retainers who were mentioned in her will, in keeping with Virginia policy, just before the horses signifying their status as personal chattel. It seems that Washington‘s protégé, the young marquis de La Fayette, was among those impressed by Mary Ball Washington‘s reputation. On his way back from Yorktown in 1781 he wrote his commander, ―I confess that I couldn‘t resist the ardent desire that I had had for a long time to see your relations, and above all, your mother at Fredericksburg.‖ Thus, he had taken a ―a few miles detour‖ to call on her, and, in order to ―reconcile this personal pleasure‖ with his duty, had made up the time afterwards by riding all night.396 Custis relayed a hearsay report about this meeting: he claimed that Mary Washington had responded to the adulatory La Fayette‘s compliments to her son with,‖ 'I am not surprised at what George has done, for he was always a very good boy.'‖ Without direct evidence the words may be invented, but they may yet correctly describe her feelings, for as far as his mother was concerned George Washington seems always to have been a very good boy. There is little doubt that he appreciated her strong character: after her death a letter to his sister expresses his happiness that she kept her faculties up to the end. That he respected her memory is perhaps shown by his reaction to her will. Aside from leaving him the largest share of her property ―and also my negro boy George‖—possibly an embarrassing legacy—she designated ―my said Son General George Washington,‖ executor of the document and bequeathed him, ―my best bed, bedstead and Virginia Cloth Curtains…my quilted blue and white

395GW to Betty Lewis, NY 9/13/89 Presdtl series 4: 32-35. 396 Laf to GW , Elk, Md. 4/8/81. “J’avoue que je ne pus résister à l’ardent désir que javais depuis longtemps de voir vos parens et par dessus tout votre mère à Fredicksburg, je me détournai donc de quelques milles & pour concilier mon bonheur personnel avec mes devoirs publics……….”

124 quilt and my best dressing glass,‖ entreating her devisees to accept their bequests ―as all the token I now have to give them of my Love for them.‖397 In the same spirit Washington receives them ―as mementos of parental affection in the last solemn act of life;‖ setting a ―value on them much beyond their intrinsic worth.‖398 When Mary Ball married the thirty-eight year old widower Augustine in 1731 she was a well-bred lady of twenty-five with helpful connections and a good education compared with most of her counterparts. "Unlike a great many Virginia women of her day,‖ Knollenberg notes, ―she was able to write and did so. 399 She also enjoyed dancing and had a reputation for horsemanship—as well as a not-negligible amount of property. Since George was only seven months old when his mother became pregnant with her second child, it seems highly likely that if she nursed him personally at all she shared this task with another-or other—female figures during his infancy. Given her fecundity and her class, Mary's other motherly relations with George as an infant may perforce have been largely left to hired or slave nurses. Or they may have been intimate and "hands-on." In either case, it is clear that she interested herself early and constantly in the education and career of the future president. As for George‘s development under these auspices, whatever may have been his conflicts in separating from his mother—or any other nurturing figure—they were so thoroughly resolved that they left no discernible trace in any of his writings, behavior or secondary reports. Among such reports are many that attest to his physical grace and fortitude. Like his mother, he was known as a skillful horseman and excellent dancer—characteristics that speak for a completely successful acquisition of physical autonomy at the age when gross motor skills are perfected. They also speak for a triumphant victory over the impulsive self-indulgences and unsatisfied cravings of earliest childhood. In Washington‘s case this would become the powerful ego that would allow him to ―completely, at any moment, command the energies of his mind to a cheerful exertion.‖ Weems‘s mythological construction deals not only with the boy George Washington‘s wilfulness in the service of his impulses ego (hacking down the cherry tree) but also his strong conscience that obliged him to confess the deed to his father. At the same time, in the story,

397 Presidential Series 3: 537n. 398 Presdtl series 4:33. 399 Knollenberg, 4. 125

Father rewards the youthful miscreant with his wholesale approval—no lingering guilt here— rather an easy accommodation between ego and a flexible, non-punitive superego. It is unremarkable that hagiographical works about male heroes exalt the role of the father. Even in this case, where Augustine‘s depicted part in George‘s formation is implausible, seeking a powerful ego support and moral mentor elsewhere seems less plausible still. Curiously enough, however, there is an alternative anecdote to Weems‘s, almost a mirror image of the cherry-tree drama, related by one who lived at Mount Vernon from the time of his birth in 1781.and was an intimate of the Washington family. In this ―counter-Weems‖ tale, not George‘s father, but his mother plays the edifying role opposite the hero. George Washington Parke Custis, author of this rival story, was the last of the children of Jack Custis, only son of Martha Washington, and beloved namesake of Martha's husband who made the child his ward after the early death of his father. Whether or not Custis could remember Mary Ball Washington in the last years of her life, he was certainly familiar with friends and relations who had known her as a younger woman. He quotes Lawrence Washington of Chotank, a cousin and lifelong friend of the first president, who described the "awe-inspiring air and manner"—described by a traveler of the 1780s as ―majestic and venerable‖400—of the woman who presided over the "well-ordered household" that was George Washington's childhood home. It was apparently this Lawrence who related the fate of a certain thoroughbred horse, one of "several young horses of superior promise" possessed by Mary Washington "at the time of our story." Among these was a sorrel "of a fierce and ungovernable nature" that no one had yet succeeded in breaking. One day, unbeknown to Mary, George succeeded, with the help of young friends, in getting a bit into the mouth of this animal and mounting it. "Long was the conflict" between man and steed "until the rider preserved his seat, and with unyielding force controlled the courser's rage." George's triumph was dashed, however, when the horse reared, and plunging "with tremendous violence, burst his noble heart, and died in an instant." The "youthful culprits" were apprehensive when summoned to breakfast by the matriarch, and became moreso when she asked after her blooded colts, especially ―‗My favorite...as large as his sire‘‖:

400 Conway: Moncure Danl., Barons of the Potomack & the Rappahannock [NY: Grolier club, 1892, 15, citing Elkannah Watson. 126

―Considerable embarrassment being observable, the lady repeated her question when George Washington replied, 'Your favorite, the sorrel, is dead, madam.' 'Dead!' exclaimed the lady; 'why, how has this happened?' Nothing dismayed," Custis continues, ―George calmly explained how the horse's reputation for ungovernability had inspired him to his mischief: 'I backed him, I rode him, and in a desperate struggle for the mastery he fell under me and died upon the spot.' ―The hectic of a moment was observed to flush on the matron's cheek [writes Custis], but like a summer cloud, it soon passed away, and all was serene and tranquil, when she remarked: 'It is well, but while I regret the loss of my favorite, I rejoice in my son, who always speaks the truth.'‖ Custis seems to have started his memoirs a few years before Washington died at the end of 1799, although they were not published until 1821. The Weems cherry-tree story first appeared in an edition of the parson's work in 1806. Either author could have known of the other's anecdote. Custis's horse tale may have been embroidered, or even invented, to counter what he considered Weems's misrepresentation of early family relations of the American republic's father, whom he himself could not have known personally. Only Weems's tale entirely lacks evidence. Custis certainly wanted to give credit where he believed it was due, to "this remarkable woman" who gave "the tone and character of real greatness to her child." In his story George Washington‘s ego is just as strong as in Weems‘s concoction, but more purposeful: Mary, his mother, is the moral arbiter, feared, but just and benevolent. Only one direct piece of evidence exists on Washington‘s actual feelings toward his mother in childhood and the intense team spirit he felt on behalf of the family she led. It is an interesting relic of his boyhood that shows him striving to ―merit the appellation‖ of father, as he later urged his nephew to do, and also to stand as ―guardian‖ of his mother‘s title. Apparently, at the age of thirteen, he took in hand a book that had belonged to his father in the days of his marriage to the affluent Jane Butler Washington. The elder Washington had inscribed the work, a popular set of ―discourses‖ upon the common book of prayer, ‖Augustine Washington, his Book, 1727.‖ George‘s mother had seemingly asserted her rights to succession sometime after her marriage by writing in ―and Mary Washington.‖ Augustine had written his name once more on the title page. On the same page, George has inscribed his own name below, and, as if to reaffirm his mother‘s rights as well, added ―Mary Washington.‖ On the end fly-leaves, moreover, George 127 has practiced Augustine‘s signature twice401 Nothing could indicate more tellingly the early adolescent‘s sense of responsibility for taking his father‘s place and the feeling of solidarity with his mother, nor better foretell the responsibility he would feel for leading the ―team‖ left in their joint care—its chief executive officer once he came of age—over which his mother continued to preside, at least as honorary chairman. The same relative who remembered George's faint impression of his father relates, "Of the mother, that distinguished woman, her illustrious son himself ascribed the origin of his fortunes and his fame." This is based on fact. In 1784, when the future president returned to Fredericksburg, where Mary Washington lived, he publicly attributed his preeminence to his mother's good judgment and perseverance. There he addressed the assembled "inhabitants of the place of my growing Infancy," among them his "revered Mother, by whose Maternal hand (early deprived of a Father) I was led to Manhood." Washington himself had changed the phrase originally recorded as ―led from Childhood‖ to the published official version which gave his mother more credit in producing the mature leader.402 Evidence that his mother‘s guidance was indeed highly important during his youth is shown by a correction Washington makes in a description of a career choice he made at the age of fourteen: he prepared to join the navy. When Humphreys notes that this decision was a "design of his father," Washington corrects him with, "It was rather the wish of my eldest brother." 403 The brother was Lawrence, son of Augustine's first marriage. Indeed, the correspondence between Lawrence and William Fairfax, confirms that it was entirely upon the former‘s recommendation that this project of putting George in the navy was pushed, and, rather interestingly, ardently supported by Fairfax himself, who was not only Larry‘s father in law but also that of Sarah Cary Fairfax, the love of Washington‘s youth, who was married to William‘s son George. 404 Fairfax seems to have enlisted a friend of the Washington family in Fredericksburg, one Robert Jackson, to help to bring pressure on Mary Washington. The friend reports to Larry that ―Colonel Fairfax seems desirous he [George] should go [to sea],‖ although

401 ." Athenaeum Catalogue 52]

402 February 14, 1784. GWP confederate series 1: 123-4/ 403 Zagarri, Life , 8.

128 he knows Mary herself dislikes the idea and ―several Persons have told her it‘s a very bad scheme.‖ Seconding Fairfax‘s efforts, this mutual friend judges Mary Washington‘s objections ―trifling‖ ones, ―such as fond and unthinking mothers naturally suggest,‖ and promises to try to influence her against her predeliction.‖405 Mary had been skeptical from the first about a naval career for George. She consulted her own worldly half brother, Joseph Ball, a prestigious London barrister, on this project. He confirmed Mary Washington‘s fears by warning her that if George went to sea he would be treated little better than a "Negro," lacking as he did any influence or connections that would give him preferment (another belittlement of the value of Lawrence‘s recommendation in ―helping‖ his young half brother). In the event, Humphreys adds, "it was by his mother's "earnest entreaties" as well as "tears" that her son was led to desist from boarding the ship to which his baggage had already been dispatched.‖406 As Washington later became the foremost figure in his country largely by dint of his military leadership, George‘s correction of Humphreys may imply that he felt he had received bad advice from his half-brother nearly forty years before. Lawrence‘s counsel could have landed him at sea as a petty officer in the defeated royal navy. Instead,he became supreme commander of his newly independent country's forces. In this light the intervention by his mother seems rather better judged than some have considered it. Curiously, modern historians have shown little sympathy with Mary Washington‘s advice, even though Washington himself followed it, with ultimately great success. Moreover, in his report to Humphreys, he seems to deprecate Lawrence‘s judgment in these early years. He not only credits the aborted plan for sending him to sea to his half brother, but downgrades the status Humphreys attributes to Larry in the British military—―Adjutant General of the Militia of Virginia‖ and ―commander of ―the Colonial troops in the expedition against Carthagena.‖ George corrects: ―He was not appointed Adjutant General of the Militia of Virginia until after his return from the expedition to Carthagena—nor did he command the Colonial troops…He was no

404 See Moncure D. Conway, Barons of the Potomack and the Rappahannock (New York: The Grolier Club, 1892),239-40. On Sarah Cary Fairfax see Freeman, ?? 405 Conway, Barons, 239-40. 406 I am at a loss to understand why Zagarri, Freeman and others express disbelief in Washington's clear assertion to this effect. See Freeman? , 102. 129 more than the Senior Officer of…what was called the American Brigade—under [the lieutenant governor of Virginia]…he was scarcely of age.‖407 The last-minute abandonment of the plan to go to sea is not the only instance in which George Washington acted contrary to the advice of his older half-brother. For example he appears to have been completely impervious to an enduring, almost murderous grudge that Lawrence bore against a neighbor, to whom George had what seems to have been an equally persistent, lifelong attachment408 Later, when Washington was just about to join Braddock's army over his mother's objections, he wrote a letter to the commander‘s aide that spells out a condition of his future service: he is to be allowed leave to attend to business at home. It also seems to issue a caveat, by calling up these objections of his mother: he reports the "arrival of ...company (among whom is my Mother, alarmd [with] at the report of my ^intentions^ to attend [ing] your fortunes).409 Once he had joined Braddock he hastens to reassure Mary Washington that he is treated as one of the family in the general‘s entourage. In an early letter home he writes that he is "very happy in the General's Family.‖ He explains that ―I am treated with a complaisant Freedom which is quite agreeable,"410 implying further that he had shared his mother's worries that he might be socially denigrated and bereft of protection. These are scarcely the self-interested concerns that have sometimes been attributed to Mary Washington. They are, rather, the very concerns that Joseph Ball urged on her that caused her to prevent George from joining the British Navy. Moreover they foretell the serious discrimination against American colonial officers that was later to inspire such outrage on Washington‘s part, with such momentous consequences. That this report to Humphreys of his mother's role in retrieving him from the navy is meant to describe a timely rescue rather than unwelcome interference is further confirmed by his public tribute to Mary Ball Washington, quoted above, as the "revered Mother by whose Maternal hand (early deprived of a Father) I was led to Manhood." In the light of his youthful experience it seems significant that in the final version of this speech, the last phrase has been

407 Zagarri, Life , 8.

408 . See Peter R. Henriques, "Major Lawrence Washington versus the Reverend Charles Green, A Case Study of the Squire and the Parson," Virginia Magazine of Biography and History , 100 (1992): 233-245. 409 : GW to Robt. Orme (aide to Braddock) MV 4/2/55: col. 1:246

410 Fitzpatrick, vol. 1 (1745-1756) To mom, 5/6/55, 120.

130 changed by Washington himself from "led from Childhood" to the official version in which the first American President purposefully credits his mother with guiding him through the period during which he made the choice of a career.411 Fatherless in Virginia: Righting the Wrongs In addition to the financial and educational disadvantages George Washington saw as imposed upon him by the too-early death of his father, the sense of a moral handicap is revealed by Humphreys' text. By being kept at home instead of sent to England the youthful Washington was exposed to temptation in Virginia. Humphreys explains, apparently echoing his subject's recollections, that most of the "opulent class" who were brought up at home were in danger of becoming "indolent and helpless from the usual indulgence of giving a horse and a servant to attend them as soon as they could ride, if not imperious and dissipated from the habit of commanding slaves and living in a measure without control.‖412 Prominent among the temptations to which the young slavemaster felt himself exposed was that of sloth. As recent scholarship has elaborated, the ambitious planter's son had constantly to struggle against the opportunities for laziness presented by his situation. A man was "expected to be sober, courageous and hardworking...[but] received advice that subtly stressed his unique opportunities for self-ruin...idleness...extravagance and dissipation.‖413 Humphreys, a New Englander, may be paraphrasing his southern informant when he generalizes: "Those Virginians educated in a domestic manner who had fortitude enough to resist the temptations to which they were exposed in their youth have commonly been distinguished by success in their various professions." Washington's behavior, in the light of this characterization of his milieu, is a clue to possible early struggles against such temptations. For example, Washington's lifelong, zealous efforts to account for the way he spent his time, money, and other resources may well have been enhanced by his awareness of the temptation to do otherwise. That they were, indeed, in part such a defense against slothful impulses is suggested by his occasional lapses in the struggle. Freeman remarks that Washington's "bookkeeping never had been as good as it should have

411 FN1Fredericksburg, February 14, 1784. Papers , Confederation Series, 1:123-124. 412 Zagarri, Life, 6.

413 Steven M. Stowe, Intimacy & Power in the Old South: Ritual in the Lives of the Planters (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1987), 131.

131 been...never as informative as he thought it was...Often there was confusion."414 Wiencek claims that Washington kept a ―careful, almost obsessive accounting of his activities‖ in his diaries.415 Actually, the diary that Washington kept sporadically throughout his life varies greatly from day to day and year to year in the care of the account it gives of his activities. During his youthful military adventures and other travels it is often colorful and expressive. After his assumption of the life of a country gentleman in 1758, and his marriage in 1759, its entries are usually very brief and only rarely show the evocative descriptive power of his literary style. During the first decade of his married life Washington was living a much more constricted life than before, and endeavoring, day by day, to manage and make profitable his growing estate. At the start of 1768 he began to head most months‘ entries with ―When and How my Time is Spent.‖ The change hints at a sense that time is being wasted—a wish to gain control over disorder—although the actual character of the daily notes themselves does not show any greater success in organizing his record of events and the entries are no more systematic than before .416 The dangerous temptation to indolence and self-indulgence to which Washington thought the Virginia gentleman was exposed contrasts with his own habitual self-discipline. In fact, due to the early death of his father, as he tells Humphreys, he was denied the opportunity to enjoy most of the advantages offered to his elder half brothers. Instead, he had been left with family responsibilities heavier that most of those they had encountered at such an early age. What seems to be significant is that Washington felt a sense of grievance--of having been deprived of his "birthright." Such a dynamic pattern of loss and resentment, combined with the pressures of an ambitious mother who may have felt herself similarly disadvantaged and deserted, could have stimulated the aspirations of this Second Team captain and concentrated his energies on achievements that would redress the balance. George Washington's ability to focus on the goals he set himself with a singlemindedness that excluded all diversion was a characteristic that began to be noted by many witnesses early in his career as a military leader. How did such a pattern translate into the political legacy of George Washington, the creative leader? In following the transformation, we first approach the conversion of the enthusiastic, ambitious servant of the British King into the ardent revolutionary.

414 Freeman, Washington,3: 244-5. 415 Wiencek, 94. 416 Diaries, 2: 30 et seq. 132

From the beginning, Washington's experience in the army under British rule seemed to recapitulate earlier familial experience. He was to find that as an officer in the Virginia military contingent he and his cohorts would, by law, be systematically subordinated to their British counterparts. Moreover they were to be paid far less at comparable ranks. This was the initial and compelling spur to his entry into the arena of political action. In letters to Governor Dinwiddie the 22-year old Washington described this discrimination as "ignoble," a "cancer that will grate some officers of this regiment beyond all measure to serve upon such different terms when their lives, their fortunes and their characters are equally, and I dare say as effectually exposed as those who are happy enough to have King's Commissions.‖417 The reiteration of royal orders that confirmed this preference repeatedly disappointed Washington's hopes that his military superiors would rectify the injustice. Older readers of Washington‘s youthful remonstrances to Dinwiddie cannot help but recognize the fondness this colonial executive had for his young subordinate. Washington himself occasionally seemed to be amazed at his own impudence. Moreover, although Dinwiddie reproached the young officer for his importunities he was undisturbed enough by them to give in to such a highly irregular request as Washington‘s to go to Philadelphia in 1756. Even so, Washington seems to have been singularly unappreciative of the extent of Dinwiddie‘s indulgence of him. The actual weakness of the Virginian governor‘s powers under the colonial system was felt acutely by the youthful officer as he tried to negotiate his own advancement in the colony's military establishment. Deference to Dinwiddie turned to contempt when he discovered the unrealism of his superior‘s plans to go back to Wills Creek in August of 1754. Furthermore, Washington wrote, the governor 'was the champion of all his co-patriots,' the Scots—possibly an intolerable preference.418 After all, the young man had experienced ―paternal fondness‖ before, and it had proved to be disappointing. Still yearning for justice from the King of England, Washington received yet another rejection from one of the king‘s appointed rulers in the New World in his experience with General John Forbes, his commander in 1758. When this general favored Pennsylvania over Virginia in his decision to build a new road for troops from Bedford Pennsylvania, rather than to use the old Braddock road from Winchester, Virginia, Washington decided his commander had

417 ,."GW to Dinwiddie, May 18, June 10, 1754. Papers , Colonial Series 1: 99; 130 418Freeman 1:428-30. 133 been ―duped‖ by Pennsylvania men striving to serve their expansionist interests. He again went to the ―brink of insubordination‖ to ―thwart‖ him. What is most significant in the growing political ambitions of the young soldier is that he appealed the decision to the speaker of the Virginia House of Burgesses, hinting broadly, as William Abbot notes, that he himself ―should be sent to London to reveal to George III the wrongheadedness…of the King‘s general.‖ In this development we see all the grievances that combined to make Washington a revolutionary: the unjust advantage gained by the competing team—―poor Virginia‖ has suffered a ―luckless Fate‖ as ―Victim‖ of ―her Crafty Neighbours.‖ The instrument of this wrong is a possibly duplicitous intermediary, the general, who must have acted without the knowledge of royal authority.419 That the king was also soon to be perceived by the young officer to repeat the part that his own father had played in favoring the ―A‖ team is conveyed by a letter Washington wrote to a friendly British officer: "I hope Captn McKay will have more sense than to insist upon any unreasonable distinction, though he and His [officers] have commissions from His Majesty. Let him consider that, though we are greatly inferior in respect to profitable advantages, yet we have the same Spirit to serve our Gracious King as they have."420 To his seniors Washington was guarded in his remonstrances, emphasizing rather the positive—the loyalty of the colonial officers to their Crown. But years later, to David Humphreys, he spoke plainly of his outrage at the discrimination against him and his colleagues: "Advice was received ....[that] no officer who did not..derive his Commission from the King could command one who did—This was too degrading for George Washington to submit to; accordingly, he resigned his Military employment."421 It is hard to recognize in the importunate, youthful officer the later revolutionary commander who would studiously defer to the civilian leadership of congress. But we can understand the change that took place if we connect the succession of attachments and disappointments encountered by the young man with the widening scope of his identifications and the growing autonomy engendered by his military experiences. Ever since his father‘s death and his uncle‘s departure when he was eleven years old, George Washington seems to have experienced a series of slights, disappointments or

419 WW. Abbot, ―George Washington, the West, and the Union,‖ In Higginbotham, GW Reconsidered, [from Indiana Mag of History 84 (1988): 3-14, ]: 200-01.PGW col. 5: 432f. 420 GW to McKay, June 10, 1754. Ibid ., 129f. 421 Zagarri, Life , 14. 134 disappearances from the men who might have protected him. Despite his own loyal accompaniment of Lawrence to Barbados to recover from his tuberculosis, his half brother found his health unimproved, and once again sought refuge in England, where George had never been able to follow him. Lawrence died soon after his return to Virginia, leaving George without some of the high connections Lawrence had provided. At the same time he found himself, at the age of twenty, with considerable responsibility for a large family in straitened circumstances, headed by his widowed, increasingly cranky and demanding mother. As has been noted, George entered the colonial army of Virginia despite his mother‘s anxieties, in time to play an ardent, though unsuccessful part in the campaigns of 1754-58 against the French on the American continent. Time after time young Washington, after risking his life, would make demands upon royally-appointed father figures with disillusioning results. After the fatherly Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia lost Washington's confidence and respect, Governor Shirley of Massachusetts whom George had originally called a "fine gentleman and great politician" with "more enthusiasm than he ever had shown for a public official" also proved disappointing to his ambitions.422 The death of Braddock and the flight of his soldiers was experienced as a different, no less important, abandonment. Young Washington‘s hopes were again aroused by a new commander, Lord Loudoun, sent from Britain. In a letter to this officer, Washington claimed that if Braddock had survived "I should have met with preferment equal to my wishes"--but he had not survived. Soon Washington was again disappointed: "General Shirley was not unkind in His Promises," he admitted, "but--he is gone to England."423 The betrayals—mostly through deaths and absences—of his patrons, like those of his father, older brothers and uncle, resulted in an unfairly meagre share of recognition and recompense for their deserving young officer and his military brothers--his "family" as he always would call them. Notably, George Washington‘s experience of his father‘s death seems to have helped to inspire him, as a very young adult, with a strong impulse to reckless self-exposure in daring exploits. In Washington‘s youthful military career he repeatedly rode into danger to urge on his troops to resist a more powerful enemy as though he were challenging the gods to strike him down. Again and again he escaped unscathed from one after another life-threatening encounter.

422 Freeman, 2: 23.

423 GW To Lord Loudoun, January 10, 1757. Idem, 4: 89. 135

No letter about these hair‘s-breadth personal escapes is more animated than one to his mother in which he exults that ―I luckily escapd with a wound tho‘ I had four bullets through my coat, and two horses shot under me.‖ As significantly, he assigns responsibility for the rout of Braddock‘s forces (in which the general incurred his fatal wound) to the ―English soldiers‖— those privileged superiors who had been favored by the royal authorities—who were struck with a ―Panick‖ and ―behavd with more cowardice than it is possible to conceive.‖ It was these ―regulars‖ whose ―dastardly behaviour‖ exposed his Virginian brothers ―to almost certain death.‖424 In most of these letters written after close calls with death Washington reported the ―miraculous‖ aspects of his survival, attributing it to the benevolence of ―providence.‖ Risking his person and tempting fate in this way he acted like the gambler who ―dares to compel the gods to make a decision about him, hoping for their forgiveness,‖ seeming to ask for ―compensation or approval from the father‖ who had abandoned him.425 During the 1760s and ‗70s, with no war to risk his life for, his passion for riding to hounds was expressed by a recklessness in pursuit ―‘at which modern huntsmen would stand aghast,‘ writes Garry Wills, quoting fred Anderson. He concludes, ―He liked to take chances.‖ 426Bolling has gathered Washington‘s various descriptions of how he conceived this Providence that cleared his path against seemingly overwhelming odds. It was benign, ―inscrutable‖ but ―orderly‖ and demanding submission. Providence was an ―invisible hand‖ that yet was ―a great searcher of human hearts‖ as whose ―instrument‖ George himself acted.427 In the dark days at Valley Forge the leader of the revolutionary forces shows his complete confidence that Providence has been on his side in repudiating British domination and taking up arms against it: ―The determinations of Providence are always wise,‖ he writes to a friend who still hopes to conciliate the British, ―and tho‘ its decrees appear to bear hard upon us at times, is, nevertheless meant for gracious purposes.‖428

424 GW to MBW, Fort Cumberland, Md, 7/18/55. His first description of the soldieers who fled as ―English‖ was changed to ―Regular.‖PGW colonial 1: 336-7. 425 Fenichel, 372. 426 Quotation from Fred Anderson, ed., George Washington Remembers: Reflections on the French and Indian War NY: Rowman Littlefield, 2005 ?; Garry Wills ―The Wise Warrior,‖ New York Review of Books, 3/10/05, 15.Garry will 427 Bolling 105-115., New Haven 9/16/87 428 GW to Bryan Fairfax, Rev. 14: 9. 136

Another version of this protective figure is given by David Humphreys, who spent many hours in intimate communication with Washington and who was a diligent protector of his reputation. More risk-averse than his chief, he counseled the general not to join the convention that met in Philadelphia in May of 1787. After the constitutional text was made public, however, Humphreys wrote his friend. that he was "highly pleased" and "glad my apprehensions were not verified." The risk Wshington had taken was justified: "Your good Angel, I am persuaded, will not desert you.‖ These terms suggest that they had mused together on this providential figure that seemed to have guided Washington through many perils. 429 It seems obvious that this image of a protective power was connected to Washington‘s idea of his absent father. As this very personal Providence abundantly gave evidence of approval, the son became more and more confident of the paternal blessing. Each renewed success validated the risk taken, serving to enhance his confidence that he was deserving, progressively enabling him to assume for himself a paternal role for his soldiers and his country.430 Toward political perspectives The ambition to exercise a calculated influence on the course of political events appears as an important and persistent trait in Washington from his very early years. Some of the ―rules of civility‖ he transcribed at the age of eleven are particularly geared to effective political strategy. Emblematic of the pragmatic advice he seems to have absorbed from this primer is the warning that if ―two contend‖ it is wise not to take the ―part of either unconstrained,‖ nor to be ―obstinate in your Opinion,‖ and in ―things indifferent‖ to be of the ―Major side‖—a remarkably succinct maxim for one who is destined to lead an increasingly democratic republic requiring compromise."431 Although Washington had traveled on the American continent more widely than almost anyone else of his time and place, his only venture abroad was confined to his brief visit to Barbados. Sojourning there as a nineteen-year old, as we have already noted, he applied the political lessons he had taught himself in order to evaluate the performance of the West Indian governor. Observing the behavior of others and imagining what was going on in their heads in reaction to oneself was demonstrated in the care with which he observed the cultural practices of

429 DH to GW, New Haven 9/16/87 430 Rules of Civility 431] Garry Wills, ―Power Gained by Surrender,‖ in American Models of Revolutionary Leadership , ed. Daniel J. Elazar and Ellis Katz (Lanham MD: University Press of America, 1992), 29-42. 137 alien groups, as shown by his remarkable accounts of Indian cultural patterns in his diaries of his youthful military expeditions.432 Such attentiveness and acuity sharpened his diplomatic skill with French officers as well as Indian leaders. They enhanced his ability to protect his officers and men in the field as well. But a deep and wide-ranging curiosity was also a conspicuous characteristic in George Washington—curiosity especially where the political attitudes of others were concerned. Typical is a request to his intimate, Joseph Reed, early in the revolution. Reed has just left him in Cambridge on his way to the center of the government in Philadelphia: Let me know by the Post or &ca what the World says of Men and things‖433 This intense curiosity had obvious utility for the political objectives he had constantly in mind, As early as 1755, when he was still a very young Virginian colonial officer, he rather impetuously allowed himself to be put forward as a last-minute candidate for Burgess from Frederick County. The strategy was not successful and the young man returned to his post at Camp Cumberland. Three years later Washington, now a colonel and supported by numbers of influential local notables, led the ticket of four candidates and was elected to public office for the first time at the age of twenty-six.434 Resigning his commission he prepared to marry in early 1759 and to assume the role of a full-time planter, adding responsibility for his bride‘s large estate to his own. Switching his candidacy to Fairfax County in 1765, he was elected easily and took his seat representing his own neighborhood at the end of the following year. This interval, beginning in 1758 and extending to the start of actively revolutionary activity in 1774, was the first of several in Washington‘s life in which he endeavored to make his major occupation that of a farmer, and his chief ambition to enjoy the delights of a bucolic life under his own ―vine and fig-tree‖—an aspiration that he would repeat on numberless occasions. In fact, during this as in each of his later periods of ―lying fallow‖—that is, engaging in minimal political activity—his enormous energy, his insatiable curiosity about world politics, and his intense political ambition that focused on constructing the ideal of America that inhabited his imagination, belied the model (which he as well as others would invoke) of Cincinnatus retiring after the battle to devote himself to plowing his own fields.

432 Weinecke? on the anthropological quality of his observations 174-50s. 433 .GW to Joseph Reed, Rev. ser.2: 262f. October 30, 1775.

434 Freeman, II: 140; 147;317-321. 138

After Washington‘s retirement, in 1783, as successful commander of the revolutionary army he again made his way back to Mount Vernon, announcing his intention to devote himself to minding his estates. But a sentence in a letter to Thomas Jefferson in 1784 shows his restiveness in finding himself excluded from government affairs. Jefferson, as a member of the Continental Congress, is in Annapolis where the government is temporarily lodged. Washington complains, half facetiously, ―If you have any News that you are at liberty to impart, it would be charity to communicate a little of it, to a body.‖435 Jefferson, eager to oblige the general and keenly sensitive to his passion for political information, responded appropriately with a succinct report on all the news, foreign and domestic, that had come into his ken.436 Washington‘s studied insights into the perspectives of others were not confined to his home ―country‖ of Virginia. Instead they show the development of a precocious American nationalism, a consciousness of "us" as viewed by "them"--that is, by outside persons and foreign powers.437 During his military service he became more nationalist in sentiment—perhaps more than any other Virginian—and as a revolutionist, more disposed than any to talk of "America" as a unity. Washington‘s curiosity is for its sense of the immediacy of worlds abroad. Despite his limited personal contact with those worlds, he frequently expressed a keen regret at being unable to visit them and at his incapacity in their languages. He was intensely interested in receiving direct reports from his European correspondents. When one of his favorite companions, David Humphreys, was sent abroad to France and England on diplomatic assignment by the Confederation, Washington is impatient for his highly personal, gossipy letters. Having received only two letters from his friend in the last nine months he writes with plaintive humor, "I should think if amusements would spare you, business could not so much absorb your time, as to prevent your writing more frequently, especially as there is a regular conveyance once a month by the packet." In one letter Humphreys had discussed the danger of war. Washington responds pointedly, referring foreign news he has learned "from letters I have received from ...LaFayette…Chastellux... [and] La Luzerne.‖ suggesting that they are more faithful correspondents than his American friend.438

435 GW to TJ, 3/3/84, Boyd 7: 7. 436 TJ to GW, March 6, 1784. Boyd,7: 7-8. This should be 327????by foreign powers.(Washington, 1931, XXVI:402-486 438 Has had only letters of MV, 7/25/85 ]11/11/84 & 1/15/85. 329] 139

During his brief retirement after the war Washington initiated broad plans for opening major riverways of Virginia to navigation, and increasingly took upon himself the task of specifying details of the project, negotiating between Virginia and Maryland for promoting it, and winning support for its organization and financing from the Virginia legislature by diplomacy, hard committee work and personal appearances. Madison wrote of Washington to Jefferson, after taking part in these proceedings, "The earnestness with which he espouses the undertaking is hardly to be described, and shows that a mind like his, capable of great views, and which has long been occupied with them, cannot bear a vacancy."439 The ―great views‖ were directed toward nation-building and the ―earnestness‖ with which Wahington pursued them was the ―cheerful energy‖ Morris credited him with. Some have stressed Washington‘s deep attachment to Mount Vernon, the home he had longed for as a youth, acquired through persistent effort and labored all his life to enhance and perfect. Yet unlike Thomas Jefferson, whose lifelong construction of Monticello was inextricably meshed with his own conception of himself, Washington‘s sense of identity depended little on his dwelling. Dalzells contrasts the two in pointing out that the first President specifically decided against making Mount Vernon ―a monument of himself,‖ providing in his will that it be divided up equitably among his heirs, without a major beneficiary, perhaps even meaning that it be eventually dissolved. He chose ―unequivocally not to project forward into the future his personal world.‖440 The monuments that became objects of his efforts were those intended to develop a popular sense of national identity and common citizenship: a continental system of waterways, a national university, a strong federal system of laws and administration. As revolutionary leader his studiedly ceremonial deference to civilian leadership was intended to set an example for his troops and the population at large. At the end of the war he preached to his disbanding army their civic duty as guardians of the new republic.441 As President, in a whole series of decisions without historical precedent he took the same self- conscious care to model subordination to constitutional intent, with the same regard to the practical effect of his policies on his aspirations for the union. Contributing to the national consensus that his leadership was for so long able to inspire was the fact that his rootedness in his native locale was comparatively weak—certainly much

439 JMad to TJ, Richmond, 1/9/85:. Smith, Reppublic of Letters, 359. 440 111 in Higginbotham, GW reconsidered. 441 GW speech to troops on community responsibility.?? 140 weaker than that of many leading Virginian politicians of his time, such as Patrick Henry or George Mason—and weak even compared with Jefferson‘s. In taking command of the revolutionary forces, indeed, he consciously cut himself free from many of the ties of localism. Manasseh Cutler reports that in the dark days of military adversity Washington did not hesitate to put national goals before any provincial loyalty. When asked to consider the possibility of being ―driven from the Atlantic border,‖ he declared that in such a case, ―We will retire to the valley of the Ohio…and there be free.‖442 Freeman notes that even as he was contemplating a return to Mount Vernon on the conclusion of the peace, he wrote to Chastellux that he would ―not rest contented‖ until he should have ―explored the western country and traversed those lines…which have given bounds to a New Empire.‖443 Washington, always eager for travel, aspired to embrace a whole vast nation in his ken An aspect of the conversion of the British king's loyal young servant into a still more ardent champion of the revolutionary cause seems directly relevant to the style of governing that he would later assume. As Washington reentered national public life in 1774 it was no longer only the military forces, but the American colonial nation that was experiencing a "denial of its inherited rights, surrender of which, without a struggle, was unworthy of self-respecting men."444 Later this sense of betrayal by authorities he had supposed to be benevolent was occasionally expressed in outbursts like the following to David Humphreys: "From the former infatuation, duplicity, and perverse system of British policy I confess I am induced to doubt everything, to suspect everything."445 An effect of this disillusion of the young Washington was a governing style that usually showed exceptionally realistic skepticism, most often unspoken, of the motives of those around him. As Treasury secretary Hamilton gave his chief credit for being ―a good judge of men‖— assuring a British representation that Washington would make no mistake in nominating anyone to be sent to Britain for negotiations.446 And while this insight into character had no doubt been honed by disappointments when Washington was a young man, his discretion in giving voice to it was the product of arduous self-discipline in the years that followed.

442Mannasseh cutler 1: 142.] 443 Freeman, 5: 454. Fitz 27: 190. 444 Douglas S. Freeman, Washington . (New York: Scribner's, 1968), 513. 445 Suspicions expressed to Humphreys 446 [Syrett 5:488], 141

Washington‘s efficiency in keeping his own counsel was often deceptive to others. Throughout his public life a variety of colleagues would attempt to manipulate him. Those with ambitions of their own, like Jefferson, would devise means to undermine him covertly. Others, open detractors, fired public criticisms at him that were sometimes as baseless as any known in modern American political campaigns. For their era, moreover, such discourse was completely novel, and shocking, in the legal arena of politics. Nevertheless, few of such strategies seem to have had much power to divert him from objectives he had chosen or to induce him to act impulsively. His cultivated immunity to such influence accounts for the ―steadiness‖ and ―perseverance‖ that Morris stressed in his sketch of his character.447 It is likely that Washington‘s cosmopolitan consciousness and patriotic feelings had wellsprings in his early experience. One form that they took seems to have expressed his sense of being surrounded by others who watched his conduct critically, and threatened him with humiliation should he give a poor performance, as suggested when he writes, at the conclusion of the war, that the United States is on ―political probation…The eyes of the whole World are turned upon them… exposing us to become the sport of European politics.‖448 He felt himself to be the focus of all the great monarchical powers who were following the behavior of the fledgling nation closely and skeptically. During the 1786 rebellion of Shays in Massachusetts, for example, Washington expressed shame that the predictions of enemies abroad of the Americans' inability to govern themselves were proving justified: "I am mortified beyond expression that in the moment of our acknowledged independence we should by our conduct verify the predictions of our transatlantic foe, and render ourselves ridiculous and contemptible in the eyes of all Europe.449 Washington‘s fear of national humiliation arose from his identification of his own reputation with that of the new republic. It had a still more personal side: at each step of his career he seems vividly to have imagined the possible costs of failure. Thus, arriving in New York after his election as the first President, the uproarious popular welcome that greets him

447 See above, p. ??? 448 Washington’a “Circular to the States,” New burgh, June 8, 1783. Fitzpatrick 26: 486 (Also the future: “the destiny of unborn millions”)(Leibiger, FFrndshp 30].

449 GW to DH, 10/22/86. Landon Humphreys, Life., 374-376. 142 inspires him with dread of the possibility of being hounded out of the city in disgrace. The wild acclaim "filled my mind with sensations as painful (contemplating the reverse of this scene, which may be the case after all my labours to do good) as they are pleasing."450 And after the end of the revolutionary war he has become a perceptive critic of the political system under the Articles of Confederation, pleading the necessity of "giving adequate powers to congress for national purposes." At this time a letter to his beloved protégé, La Fayette, testifies to his realistic political insight as well as his optimism: "It is one of the evils of democratical governments that the people, not always seeing, and frequently misled, must often feel before they can act right.‖ Declaring ―evils of such nature‖ to be self-curing, he nevertheless laments ―that the remedies are so slow that those who may wish to apply them seasonably [like himself!] are not attended to before they suffer in person, in interest & in reputation."451 Washington seems here to show his acute awareness that his own powerful ambition for achievement on behalf of his idea of a self-governing America was likely to outdistance the capacities of those he sought to lead. When Washington accepted command of the revolutionary forces in 1775 he showed that he had expanded his feelings of solidarity with his colonial brothers-in-arms to the cause of winning the birthright of a far more extended family. During the long conflict that followed, Freeman believes, the strengthening of Washington‘s sense of nationhood was signaled by a sudden disappearance of all signs of provincialism from his correspondence. "The better genius of America has prevailed," he wrote to Philip Schuyler, as the Patriots took steps to resist the British power.452 By the conclusion of the peace, his identification with the United States seems to have been complete. Brissot noted that Washington's ―sang-froid ‖in a conversation was disturbed only upon one point, the "present state of his country" [under the Articles of Confederation] which "rends his soul."453 In the first years after Independence had been won Washington would often describe the new nation that he had helped create in terms that evoked the family he had experienced in early

450 diaries 5: 447. 4/23/89. Tcmdreaded ,pr 451 MV 5/10/86:Confed.4:[42] 452 G. W. to Philip Schuyler, July 1775. Freeman, 3: 502.

453 . (Freeman, 1968:16-17); (Brissot, 1791, II, 186-193) 143 years. Bemoaning disorder under the Articles of Confederation he describes the situation in terms that evoke those he used to depict the his and his brothers‘ situation when they were "early deprived of a father." He fears that his newly fatherless country will, "like a young heir, come a little prematurely to a large inheritance...wanton and run riot until we have brought our reputation to the brink of ruin."454 This may express an apprehension he had once had in observing his more prosperous older half brothers. He could have seen, too, in the rebelliousness of his fellow Americans passionate tendencies that he felt in himself and that he had learned, with great effort, to control. In one of his farewell addresses to his army he evokes the transformation of men ―strongly disposed, by the habits of education, to despise and quarrel with each other,‖ who became, under his leadership ―one patriotic band of brothers.‖ He exhorts them, in effect, to follow his paternal example in civilian life, ―by the wise and manly conduct which shall be adopted by them when they are mingled with the great body of the community.‖ 455 Thus, by the end of the revolution, he had long put aside expectations of finding a benevolent and powerful leader who would render compassion and justice, and rectify the wrongs of the past. The almost miraculous luck that allowed his country to emerge victorious from its revolution had persuaded him that the hand of Providence had repeatedly intervened on its behalf, just as he thought Providence had brought him, personally, safely through his earlier military travails: ―The singular interpositions of Providence in our feeble condition were such as could scarcely escape the attention of the most unobserving...little short of a standing miracle."456. The war for independence of the new nation that he had helped to conceive and to bring into being had been validated by that unseen hand, surely putting to rest any misgivings that he might earlier have had about assuming leadership himself. Now the former commander of the B-Team was more than entitled to play the paternal role: he was already widely depicted as the Father of his Country.

454 GW to Benjamin Harrison, January 18, 1784. Papers , Confederation Series 1: 54-56. 455 ―Farewell Orders to Armies,‖ Rock Hill, November 2, 1783. ETC 456 ―Farewell Orders to Armies,‖ Rock Hill, November 2, 1783. ETC 144

Chapter 4: Thomas Jefferson, Star Pupil

Contrasting types: The prototype and the apprentice Called the―central politician of his age‖ by Stuart Leibiger,457 the public persona of George Washington was the prototype for the distinctive political qualities of our small group of Virginian founders. In some respects Washington can be seen as the ―father‖ of them all, and, on one or another occasion, was acknowledged to be such by each one of them. As Joseph Ellis has written, ―If there was a Mount Olympus in the new American Republic, all the lesser gods were gathered farther down the slope.‖458 In Washington, patriotic ardor and faith in liberal principles combined with confident assumption of mastery in a new political system to present a seamless whole to his public and an example to his successors. As to Douglas Freeman, so also to the American people he seemed ―all of one piece.‖ By contrast, the second Virginian to assume the presidency, Thomas Jefferson, appeared anything but ―all of one piece‖ from the time he first stepped onto the public stage. The marked duality shown by his thought and behavior has continued over the years to make his personality puzzling to colleagues, rivals, and scholars alike. Gilbert Chinard called it a "partitioning" between theory and practice: "Far from being a single-track mind, his was decidedly a double- track intellect, with two lines of thought running parallel without any apparent contradiction."459 While the professed values of both leaders took their form from the European Enlightenment and Jefferson would never separate himself publicly from any of Washington‘s professed ideals, the consistency and steadiness of the latter could scarcely have contrasted more with Jefferson‘s volatile complexity.

457 Leibiger, Founding Friendship 224. 458Joseph J. Ellis, ―The Farewell: Washington‘s Wisdom at the End,‖ in Higginbotham, GW Reconsidered, 23. 459 Gilbert Chinard, Thomas Jefferson , the Apostle of Americanism, Second ed. (Boston: Little Brown, 1939), 212. , Second ed. (Boston: Little Brown, 1939), 212. 145

Bailyn, for example, has remarked on the ―apparent contradictions and inconsistencies in Jefferson‘s his policies, if not his character."460 Indeed, Jefferson's character was at issue from the first: hostile critics regularly attributed the inconsistencies in his policies and pronouncements to moral deficiencies in the man himself. In almost every one of the many fields of endeavor in which Jefferson engaged, "contradiction" appears: in official policies that he championed, between private and public standards that he upheld, among his proclaimed personal morals. Jefferson‘s first inaugural address emulated Washington in upholding the aims of national unity and bipartisan politics. Yet in the six years before he became President, he had conducted a covert slash and burn campaign against his political opponents, setting an example for unbridled partisanship that would be unequalled until the Civil War. Moreover his administration‘s appointment policies were to exemplify partisan vengeance and patronage on an unprecedented, wholesale scale. Before attaining the highest political office Jefferson wrote the Kentucky resolution of 1798 which called into question the very legal foundations of national government. Yet as President, on behalf of that same government, he allowed the purchase of the vast Louisiana territory without constitutional authorization and imposed restrictions on peacetime trade beyond anything conceived by an American president before or since. Jefferson the civil libertarian sought to suppress and impeach his political enemies and exclude the works of Hume from the University of Virginia library.461 The Jefferson who wished to see an abolition of the "condition of slavery" and was willing to "encounter every sacrifice for that object" took not only first but second mortages on at least 150 of his slaves to meet his personal needs.462 The Jefferson who said he feared the vengeance of a just God on slaveholders extolled the advantages in capital accretion

460 Bernard Bailyn, "Jefferson and the Ambiguities of Freedom,‖ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 137 (1993): 498-515. 461 Leonard H. Levy, Jefferson and Civil Liberties: The Darker Side (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), 145-150. 462 TJ to Brissot, February 10, 1788, in Millicent E. Sowerby, Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson. 5 vols. (Washington: Library of Congress, 1952-1959) 3: 374. The new personal loan of $2000 was made on November 21, 1796 by the Dutch bankers Nicholas & Jacob Van Staphorst & Hubbard. The earlier lenders were two friends and two commercial lenders, including William Short, Philip Mazzei and the Van Staphorsts. Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress (LC). A historian of Jefferson's personal finances describes the loan but does not identify the collateral, although he mentions that Jefferson had already mortgaged 150 of his slaves. He was to mortgage more, although I know of no record of foreclosures as a result. Steven H. Hochman, Thomas Jefferson, a Personal Financial Biography. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Virginia 1987, 200-1, 214. Transactions traced in Boyd, vol. 29 146 from breeding slave women, justified the extension of slavery westward, freed almost none of his own slaves and sold many others to sustain his luxurious lifestyle.463 On the personal side, the Jefferson who pictured himself as an affectionate and indulgent father exhorted his motherless, eleven-year old daughter to spell correctly and acquire other accomplishments with such menacing words as, "No distress which this world can now bring on me could equal that of your disappointing my hopes." And Jefferson, who invented the dogma that "the earth belongs to the living," and denounced the notion that one generation should incur debt for the next, left his estate so heavily indebted that even after most of its assets had been sold, his heirs were encumbered by his profligacy for decades after his death. Chinard suggests that Jefferson's political behavior gave expression to a felicitous synthesis of potentially dissonant perspectives in what he calls "practical idealism," but the psychological mechanism that might have produced this result is not identified by this insightful biographer. For every Jefferson scholar who assessed the "duality" of Jefferson's character as benign, there have been others who have charged him with more or less conscious hypocrisy. Robert Tucker and David Hendrickson see Jefferson as having lived a "life of paradox," characterized by "ambivalence and contradiction" and reject Chinard's solution as a "marrying of apparent opposites." The terms "Multiple Jeffersons," "Janus-faced," "double vision," are other recent characterizations cited by Herbert Sloan.464 In contrasting the characters of Washington and Jefferson, nothing is more conspicuous than the ―straight arrow‖ appraisal of the first, the ―ambiguity‖ ―duality‖ and ―polarity‖ of the second. We have already noted that the apparently seamless consistency of George Washington‘s character, and his steady, energetic persistence in well-defined, though highly imaginative, public aims were the outcome of youthful struggles to gain control over passions and fashion himself to an ideal that would validate his leadership.

463 Thomas Jefferson's Farm Book , ed. Edwin M. Betts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), 43; TJ to Lafayette, Monticello, Dec. 26, 1820, The Letters of Lafayette and Jefferson , ed. Gilbert Chinard (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1929), 402; Paul Finkelman, Slavery and the founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson, Armonk, NY: M.e. Sharpe, 1996. 464 Robert W. Tucker and David C. Hendrickson, Empire of Liberty The Statecraft of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 4; Herbert Sloan Principle and Interest: Thomas Jefferson and the Problem of Debt (New York: Oxford, 1995), 5. 147

Yet while differences between the two leaders are striking, it is the similarities between them—in cultural orientation, in social status, and in actual personal experience—that makes the influence of the Virginian milieu in which they were raised a unifying backdrop to understanding the individuality of each. Clearly Jefferson benefitted from intensive study of the model that Washington presented. Throughout his life he would liken his political experience to his Virginian predecessor‘s, drawing around himself the protective mantle that such association provided. Jefferson often sought to identify himself and his role with that of the first president. In bemoaning the attacks of the press on himself, for example, he depicts his martyrdom as worse even than Washington had to endure, and suggests that Washington‘s tolerance of it was no better than his own.465 Most conspicuous, however, was his evident intention to emulate Washington‘s political methods. Jefferson‘s eloquent declarations are often redundant of the first president‘s. For example, in Jefferson‘s first inaugural address he struck several of the same central themes to make similar points to those stressed in Washington‘s [―no entangling alliances, we are all patriots???]466 In one notable instance he discusses Washington as his model for controlling the government in order that it may be an effective instrument of his aims. Here he shows how carefully he studied Washington‘s tactics when he himself was part of his cabinet. em renowned for his repeated renunciation of powers that were offered to him. He was widely admired as a modern Cincinnatus, called from plowing his fields to lead a patriotic mission, always longing for his ―vine and figtree‖ and finally returning to it once his onerous duty was discharged.467 Each of the many times that he was convinced that his renewed service was necessary to the fragile new republic, he responded with stoical compliance. In 1774, for example, called to command the new revolutionary army, he writes his wife a firm explanation of why he cannot decline the seemingly thankless—and possibly hopeless—appointment: he assumes that his duty to serve the ideal of an independent new nation precludes any personal preferences. His agreement to preside at the constitutional convention of 1787 was made in resigned anticipation of a risk to his future influence and his peace of mind. Later, in his

465 TJ comparing his martyrdom to GW‘s. Malone and letter? 466 Compare points of similarity in TJ‘s 1st inaugural and GW‘s speech on….? 467 Ben Atar on GW‘s renunciations of power. 148 agreement to accept the Presidency, commitment to the same ideals was decisive although in private correspondence he speaks of the years ahead with weariness and dread. Similar evocations of civic duty were decisive for him in agreeing to serve a second term as President.468 By contrast Jefferson rarely counterposes a sense of public duty to his frequent expressions of desire to escape from the world of politics and retreat to his beloved refuge. Unlike Washington, Jefferson seems not keenly to have felt the pressure of duty to his country. His manifest inadequacy, as governor, to rally Virginia‘s human and material resources to resist British incursions in 1780 and 1781 led to a plea, on May 28, 1781, to Washington to come to the rescue. He wrote the general ―the presence of their beloved countryman,‖ would ―restore full confidence to our citizens.‖ To Washington‘s presence in person, Jefferson claimed, Virginians have ―flattered themselves they retained some right.‖ This ―hint‖ as he called it, was a not-so subtle appeal to Washington‘s sense of duty. With an unintended irony which may have been noticed by Washington, he ended the letter by reporting his own intention to relinquish all responsibility for the fate of his countrymen, and by withdrawing from government when his term was to expire four days later to find ―that relief which the constitution has prepared for those oppressed with the labors of office.‖ He told Washington that, ―as an individual,‖ he would feel the ―comfortable effects of your presence.‖469 A few days later, as the British neared Charlottesville, Jefferson took refuge in Monticello instead of proceeding to Staunton, over the Blue Ridge, where the legislature had retreated. Thus he further testified to his intention to dissociate himself from the government. Malone points out that on his last day in office he wrote three official letters. Typically, all three were concerned with the long-run issue of the boundaries of Virginia, an issue remote from the urgency of impending threats.470 A few days later, warned of the approach of Tarleton‘s forces, Jefferson left Monticello on horseback. soon to rejoin his family on another Jefferson plantation a hundred miles away. When the Virginia legislature reassembled in Staunton it passed a motion, proposed by a local notable well-known to Jefferson, to conduct an investigation into the ―conduct of the

468duty in CW letter to Martha 1774 (?5), fear of constl. convention presidency, dread of presidency, 2d term reluctance 469 TJ to GW May 28, 1781 470 Malone 1: 355. 149

Executive for the last twelve months‖ 471—apparently on account of the ―fatal want of preparation…and of system‖ shown under Jefferson‘s leadership.472 In Malone‘s appraisal, ―few things that ever happened to him as a public man gave him greater pain.‖473 Peden, too, thought nothing ―ever wounded Jefferson‘s feelings so much.‖474 Self-exculpation became a major goal of Jefferson‘s. Defending his war efforts as governor to LaFayette, Jefferson claimed that ―public poverty and private disobedience to the laws‖ rather than ―misconduct of public servants‖ explained the defenseless of Virginian forces against British incursions.475 During the summer of 1781 Jefferson declined a much-coveted offer from Congress to send him to France in order to confront the Virginia assembly when it reconvened in the fall. But as he prepared to defend himself that body, including George Nicholas who had initiated the sanction against Jefferson, effectively retracted their request for an enquiry, thereby intending to remove ―all unmerited Censure‖ of the former governor.476 Thereafter, Jefferson gave way to his desire to end any commitment or obligation he may have felt to serve the public. He declined to accept its selection of him as a delegate to the congress in Philadelphia and was adamant in refusing to reenter politics. As he would many times subsequently, he compared the rewards of public office to slavery: ―The independence of private life…will, I hope, yield me the happiness from which no slave is so remote as the minister of a commonwealth.‖477 In justifying his resignation from Washington‘s cabinet in 1793 he again denied the obligation to renounce personal happiness in favor of public duty, ―for that would be to be born a slave.‖478 Madison, usually complaisant where Jefferson was concerned, seems to have been irked, and somewhat shocked, by his first encounter with his friend‘s imperviousness to the call of duty. When Jefferson had told him, in 1781, of his intention, in the middle of the revolutionary war, to end his tenure as governor, Madison expressed sympathy for his wish to have ―the

471 Republic: 1: 178; 472 This was the view of General ―Light Horse Harry‖ Henry Lee, a military leader and member of the Virginia assembly at the time. Henry Lee, Memoirs,U 303. 473 I: 362 474 Peden Notes284f.n. 475 TJ to Lafayette, August 4, 1781. The Letters of Lafayette and Jefferson, ed. Gilbert Chinard. Baltimre: Johns Hopkins Press, 1929, p. 49.. 476 Republic: 1: 178. (December 12, 1781). 477 TJ to Lafayette, August 4, 1781 49. 478 TJ to Jmad, June 9, 1793. Boyd 26: 240. 150 personal advantages‖ that ―an emancipation from your present labours‖ would bring. But he referred tactfully to the state‘s need for his service ―in the present crisis,‖ for this was the time when British forces, sailing up the James river, were threatening Richmond, the capital.479 The sequel to this, of course, was the flight of the Virginian government up country to Charlottesville and Jefferson‘s own retreat to the mountains behind, having, according to him, renounced any further responsibillity as governor. When Jefferson declined the appointment to Congress that the Virginia legislature tendered to him at the same time that they rescinded his ―impeachment,‖ Madison was already serving in that capacity in Philadelphia. Writing to Jefferson he referred to public responsibility only obliquely, expressing his regret for the loss of ―the important aid which the interests of the state would probably have derived‖ from his friend‘s service.480 In the spring of 1782 Jefferson was elected a delegate to the state assembly by the voters of his own Albemarle County. Madison seems to have assumed he would take up this seat;481 yet he declined to do so despite legal disputes as to the legitimacy of resigning such a post, disputes on which he apparently had previously taken the negative position.482 He justified his action to James Monroe in words expressive of resentment and vengefulness that he probably would not have used to the more critical Madison. Edmund Randolph, who saw this letter and passed it on to Madison, thought that Jefferson evoked ―pathos‖ by citing the ―wound‖ that had been inflicted on his spirit that would not heal until the ―all-healing grave.‖483 Madison, again, did not react directly to Jefferson but wrote strongly to Randolph that this decision does ―not appear to me to be dictated either by philosophy or patriotism.‖ and that it unjustly visited the faults of the legislature on Jefferson‘s constituents.484 Thus he evoked an obligation to the public interest that contrasted strongly with the values Jefferson had cited: superiority of personal gratification over duty; the right to withdraw service if it is unappreciated—in short, the concept that his public service was a gift, bestowed only on condition that it be properly appreciated by the recipients. The suggestion that Jefferon‘s gift to the citizens of Virginia was not motivated by a sense of duty to the commonwealth—or, in the case of his declination of appointment to

479 JM to TJ April 3, 1781, 3:46. 480 JM to TJ, January 15, 1782. Republic, 1: 209f. 481 JM to JM Sr., May 20, 1782 4: 306 482 E. Randolph to Jmad, May 16, 1782, PJM 4:M246; 248n. 483 E. Randolph to J.M., June 1, 1782, 4: 306. 484 JM to E. Randolph, June 11, 1782. PJM 4:M 333. 151

Congress, to the new republic—was expressed clearly by his bitter complaint to Monroe that his personal ―sacrifice‖ had failed to gain the ―affection of my countrymen which was the only reward I ever asked or could have felt.‖ 485 What Jefferson sought from the public was admiring, affectionate feedback. Without the certainty of this gratification he feared to risk exposure. This pattern of demands on and expectations of the public, followed by withdrawal upon any sign of rejection contrasts interestingly with Washington‘s usual reactions. The first president also felt keen apprehension of the self-deprivation and risk of popularity that assuming public office would cause, but rarely questioned that duty overrode such personal considerations. Indeed, on only one notable occasion does he articulate his reluctance to expose himself at the expense of duty. It concerned a question of his attendance at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Washington was being urged from both sides—to attend, or not to attend--and Freeman comments on the "amazingly self-serving‖ letter in which he finally accepted the invitation to head Virginia‘s delegation "with...patent regard for himself, as distinguished from his country," fearing that it might reflect on his judgment should the meeting fail. Freeman is clearly disappointed that the hero is ―equivocal‖ and ―overcautious…lest the failure of that body be construed as a reflection on his judgment."486 However, Washington‘s reluctance also reflects a well-founded concern that his future influence might be compromised, while in Jefferson‘s rejection of his appointments he explicitly washes his hands of any further responsibility to serve the public. Similar patterns reappeared throughout Jefferson‘s long career. Having collaborated with others in persuading a reluctant Washington that it was his public duty to serve a second term as President, Jefferson himself promptly planned his withdrawal from Washington‘s cabinet soon after the General‘s reelection. This time Madison was shocked and expressed himself with unaccustomed authority: ―I feel for your situation,‖ he wrote, ―but you must bear it.‖ ―You must not make your final exit from public office‖ in this manner, he continued, ―undertaking,‖ as Elkins and McKitrick comment, ―to lecture him about his public duty.‖487 In his response to Madison Jefferson rejected, even more definitively than before, any claims the public might have on his service. Admitting that a citizen might owe the public ―a tour of duty,‖ lifetime service ―would be to have been born a slave.‖ He claimed that he himself had given twenty-four years

485TJ to J. Monroe, May 20, 1782. Boyd 6: 184-7. 486 Freeman 83 84. 487 JM to TJ, May 27, 1793. Boyd, 26 :23.McKitrick 359-63] 152

(half of it full-time) and concluded, ―I have served my tour.‖ Insisting that he had relinquished all worldly ambition in favor of seeking ―tranquility,‖ he returns to his disappointment that he failed to get the loving appreciation for the gift he had bestowed. ―With anguish and self-pity,‖ as Elkins and McKitrick put it, he complains that he has sacrificed his free time to the ―society of persons…of whose hatred I am conscious…giving every thing I love, in exchange for every thing I hate…without a single gratification in possession or prospect, in present enjoyment or future wish.‖ In fact, his service in France had not only been generously compensated by the government, but he had also benefited by loans and subsidies that enabled him to equal the highest French aristocracy in his way of life abroad and to indulge his personal taste by purchases far beyond anything he could have afforded as a Virginia planter of modest means. As Secretary of State, his salary had been, along with Treasury, highest in the cabinet.488 Always in need of copious supplies of money, Jefferson would never find any of his other activities as remunerative as the public service that he claimed failed to give him ―a single gratification.‖ 489 Jefferson recounts, in notes made contemporaneously, a conversation that he had with George Washington in 1792 in which he seems to preserve a picture of himself as driven by the same motives as the President. The older man was reluctant to agree to a second term of office. Jefferson reports that he told the president that ―no man had ever less desire of entering into public offices than myself,‖ that his acceptance of appointment as wartime governor of Virginia in 1780 had been due only to patriotic motives, and that a desire to return to private life determined that ―at the end of two years I resigned the government of Virginia.‖ In fact, his term in the governor‘s office had expired before he left it, and his tenure ended in his near-disgrace for having abandoned his post and in a move by the state legislature to investigate his executive performance that he only later succeeded in having retracted. Washington, who had been commander at the time, would have been aware of these circumstances of Jefferson‘s governorship. Therefore one doubts that Jefferson actually uttered the words he attributes to himself. The purpose of these ―Memoranda of Conversations with the

488 TJ to Jmad, June 9, 1793. Boyd:239-241.; LD White, The Federalists, A Study in Administrative Histosry, 1789- 1801. NY Free Press, 1948 294]af 489 Madison was apprehensive that Jefferson might decline to assume the vice-Presidency when he came in second, after John Adams, in the Presidential election of 1796. Curiously, however, Jefferson seems to have accepted the post without caviling, although he wrote ―It is the only office in the world about which I am unable to decide…whether I had rather have it or not have it.‖ Clearly, accepting caused him little conflict, perhaps because the post was undemanding and allowed him to remain in relative obscurity while operating behind the scenes. 153

President‖ must have been less to provide an accurate account of their conversation than to represent Jefferson‘s own role as governor in a light that, by identifying his own history with Washington‘s, was satisfying to himself. His need is revealed by this writing which may also have been intended to be seen by others, as indeed it was, in much later years.490 Barbara Oberg offers the interpretation of Jefferson‘s final resignation from Washington‘s cabinet, when it took place a year later than he initially planned it, (p. 10) as a principled one in the manner of a British cabinet member who can no longer be a party to the tendency of the government‘s policies.491 Yet Jefferson had suffered not only from Hamilton‘s success in becoming the predominant member of the cabinet, but also in going to work under the leadership of Washington himself. Submitting to the authority of any person was distasteful to Jefferson; his ambition was to be in entire control of his environment in order to fashion it to his needs. Hamilton reflected in 1792 that ―he came here probably with a too partial idea of his own powers and with the expectation of a greater share in the direction of our councils than he has in reality enjoyed….I read him [as]…‘A man of profound ambition and violent passions.‘‖492 although he knew Jefferson only slightly at the time, when he perceived in him the desire to be president.493 Washington, too, seems early to have sensed the distaste—with distaste. After having received Jefferson‘s grudging agreement to act as secretary of state, the older man writes Madison with what may be irony: ―I am glad he has resolved to accept the Appointment of Secretary of State, but sorry it is so repugnant to his own inclinations that it is done.‖494 His report of his conversation with Washington was by no means the only effort of Jefferson to recast his role in history into a mould that resembled Washington‘s. Famously, the epitaph Jefferson composed for himself presents the same picture of a leader above everyday politics. It takes credit for founding the University of Virginia, for writing the Declaration of Independence and the Virginian bill that guaranteed freedom of religion. It mentions no public office that he held. And yet, Jefferson‘s place in history lies less in the many activities and achievements that he sought credit for than in the role that he claimed to play unwillingly--as a

Furthermore, after more than three years of increasing debt accumulation, the vice-President‘s salary may not have seemed a negligible attraction. TJ to JM, Jan 1, 1797. Republic 2: 953. 490 TJ, ―Memoranda of Conversations with the President,‖ March 1, 1792. Boyd 23: 185. 491 Barbara Oberg, ―A New Republican Order, Letter by Letter,‖ JEH 25 (2005), 1-20. p. 10. 492 AH to Carrington 5/26/92, 439-42. 493 Hamilton suspects TJ of wanting to be president. 494GW to JM 2/28/90.JMP 13, 70. 154 tremendously talented professional American politician of high aspirations for power, great skill and lasting influence. Taking note of the manifold similarities in Washington‘s and Jefferson‘s careers, as well as the manifest dissimilarities in their personalities, we turn first to the personal histories of each in search of the points at which their development diverged. Parallels and variations in Family experience Jefferson‘s father was only eleven years older than the first president and may actually have met him. As a surveyor and intimate of the Fairfax family Washington certainly would have known of the expeditions Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson conducted, first to establish the boundaries of the Fairfax proprietorship and later to extend the survey along the Virginia- Carolina border. The second resulted in a notable map of the region, two copies of which were found in Washington‘s library, although we cannot tell on what date they were acquired. After the later expedition George Washington served under Fry on the Western frontier.495 In any case, Jefferson himself knew Washington personally at least since both had had overlapping terms as Burgesses in the Colonial government. At that time, when Jefferson was a young man of twenty- seven or twenty-eight, the two may even have been familiar enough to have enjoyed evenings of theater in each other‘s company in Williamsburg.496 Superficially at least, Washington‘s and Jefferson‘s youthful experience of their fathers was similar. Both Augustine Washington and Peter Jefferson were descended from a less advantaged side of their family—a fact that may have pressed them to higher personal achievement. The wives chosen by both (including Augustine Washington‘s first wife) held somewhat higher social status than theirs. Both family heads moved their households more than once when their children were very young. George Washington was a toddler when his father, ―in a surprising move,‖ installed the family in a house on Hunting Creek, the future site of Mount Vernon.497 The fathers of both were absent from home frequently in their sons‘ early

495 Dumas Malone, Jefferson, the Virginian, 21-27; Appleton P. C. Griffin, ed., A Catalogue of the Washington Collection in the Boston Athenaeum (Boston: The Bosston Athenaeum, 1897): 562, 565. 496 Johnson,Odai , “Thomas Jefferson and the American Stage,” VMBH 108 (000): 139-154. Notes GW & J affinity on theater and “proclivity for record-keeping.” May have gone together on May 2 & June June 16-20 1770; May 2,3 71 & 30 Oct. 71. Brits taken prisoner to Cville; invited TJ to performance in letter 8/12/79 “at the barraacks.. 154] 497 Dalzell, Robt F. Jr. and Lee Baldwin, ―Interpreting George Washington‘s Mount Vernon, in Higginbotham, GW Reconsidered, 96. 155 years--sometimes for long periods. Both sons experienced a childhood milieu in which they were ―outranked‖ by somewhat older boys: in Washington‘s case his half brothers; in Jefferson‘s the Randolph clan into which he was inserted before he was three. Both fathers died when their sons were still youths. We know that George Washington had little experience with his father and constructing an image of him was a highly motivated psychic task for him. We are virtually in the dark about any personal relations between Jefferson and his father; family legends about Peter Jefferson have nothing to tell about these. J. R. Randall, Jefferson‘s family-connected biographer, gives no evidence for his report of the elder Jefferson‘s rustic efforts to educate his little son. 498 Jefferson, however, contrasts with Washington in his effort to present his father‘s history to the public. Washington, as we have noted, tended to upgrade the social status and prosperity of his paternal ancestors, including his father. Jefferson tended to minimize these, insisting rather on the natural endowments of a self-made man. Peter Jefferson‘s education, his son reports, was ―quite neglected;‖ but his ―strong mind, sound judgment‖ and eagerness for information, improved by wide reading, enabled him to join with the prestigious Joshua Fry of William and Mary College to make the explorations that resulted in the then-definitive map of the inhabited parts of Virginia. Recent research has confirmed that Peter Jefferson‘s local social status, property and store of books were greater than the picture of gifted rusticity his son conveys.499 Another aspect of the rusticity Jefferson alleged is his claim that his father was the ―third or fourth settler, about the year 1737,‖ of what later became the family‘s own county of Albemarle. As Malone remarks, this role of pioneer was ―a matter of pride,‖ to the future president, but apparently it was not justified by the facts.500 As for the boy Jefferson‘s contacts with his father, the most that can be said is circumstantial: Peter Jefferson was often away from home on his business as a surveyor, and left

.

498 Randall, 1:13-15. No evidential basis is provided by Randall for the rustic efforts to educate his son that he attributes to Peter Jefferson. 499 Article on PJ‘s higher status. 500. TJ, “Autobiography,”from TJ Writings, H.A.W.,ed. 1: 1-2. Malone cites Edgar Woods’ testimony that early settlers dated from at least 1734. Malone, 1:18n.

156 the new family residence at Tuckahoe for an expedition of several months when his son was in his fourth year. Like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson exaggerated, perhaps unconsciously, the conditions of helplessness in which the early death of his father had left him. As noted earlier, Washington reported to a friend, ―My father died when I was only ten years old,‖ while in fact his father had died after he had already passed his eleventh birthday. In Jefferson‘s autobiography, written in his old age, he pictures himself as left utterly dependent upon himself at the age of fourteen, when his father died, whereas he actally was under the protection of his mother and had been assigned a set of influential male guardians. In both cases, however, the early loss of their fathers was a powerful stimulus to ambition and achievement, although the psychodynamic mechanisms that marked this successful striving and self-formation were different for each one. Most conspicuously, George Washington‘s experience of his father‘s death seems to have helped to inspire him, as a very young adult, with a strong impulse to reckless self-exposure in daring exploits, while the mode Jefferson early adopted to cope with hazards to life or limb was anything but impulsive and confrontational; rather it called for denial and avoidance. In contrast with Washington‘s experience, Jefferson‘s memory of his father seems to have included a considerable residue of fear. An early psychological study of the third president attributed his habitual rejection of authority to ―recoil of the pallid youth…from his gigantic and formidable father.‖ Indeed, among those few descriptions of his father that Jefferson passed on to his family was a report of Peter Jefferson‘s great physical strength. It describes a feat, of which Jefferson himself does not claim to have been a witnesss, that has a legendary character. Peter Jefferson is said to have lifted, simultaneously, ―two hogsheads of tobacco, weighing nearly a thousand pounds apiece,‖ and singlehandely pulling down with a rope a dilapidated shed that three ―able-bodied slaves‖ together had been unable to move.501 However accurate this story may be, it is interesting that it has a counterpart in one of Washington‘s recollections--not of his father, but of himself as a youth. The first president related to David Humphreys accounts of his own youthful prowess—as in throwing a stone all the way to the top of the Natural Bridge of western Virginia. Jefferson also reports a youthful experience with the Natural Bridge. Rather than a memory of personal power, however, he

501 Autobiography: Powerful father 157 recalls feelings of giddiness in contemplating the same storied natural monument.502 Certainly, in Jefferson‘s encounters, as a young man, with Washington, the already-notable general might have seemed ―gigantic and formidable.‖ Jefferson probably had also heard some reports of this hero‘s feats of strength. The equivalence of his father with this Father of his Country may have held, perhaps unconsciously, some place in Jefferson‘s mind—perhaps helping to explain the ambivalence toward Washington that he was so often to show toward the older man. Noting the similarities in the family histories of Washington and Jefferson, we turn to clues to divergences in their development that bear on how the unique personal experience of each may have contributed to the differences in personalities, beliefs and careers that the two exhibited. As before, in the case of Washington, we review Jefferson‘s developmental history to help understand his distinctive psychodynamic patterns. Jefferson‟s developmental history Psychobiographers have not been immune to the powerful partisan miasma that is a legacy of Jefferson's history. The first psychoanalytically- inclined historian to interest himself in Jefferson's political role, Harry Elmer Barnes, did not disguise his strong preference for Alexander Hamilton, the third president's arch enemy. The psychoanalyst Carl Binger, by contrast, is as enthusiastic as any 1800 campaigner for Jefferson when he remarks on his hero's "nobility and sense of justice," his "mind distinguished by its inner harmony," a mind "normal...in the Platonic sense of normal as ideal." "This great mind," according to Binger, was "mathematical and precise." Jefferson, was, simply, "a genius.‖503 Even Erik Erikson, the most noted psychoanalyst so far to contemplate the Sage of Monticello, feels obliged to preface his study by quoting John Kennedy's "famous remark"--perhaps scripted?-- that until he assembled a group of Nobel Prize winners in the "no equally 'extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge' had been gathered there since President Jefferson dined alone.‖504 To the extent that psychobiographical studies of Thomas Jefferson, viewed as a group, are consensual on Jefferson's developmental history and psychodynamic constitution, they have also contributed to insight into the connection between his personality

502GW to Humphreys on throwing stone; TJ Fear at natural bridge. 503 .Carl Binger, Thomas Jefferson, A Well-tempered Mind (New York: Norton, 1970), 133, 15-20. 504 Erik H. Erikson, Dimensions of a New Identity: the 1973 Jefferson Lectures in the Humanities (New York: Norton, 1974), 11.

158 and his politics. Yet, on many important questions of Jefferson's personality, consensus is as much lacking among the psychohistorians as it is among Jefferson's earlier partisans and foes. Some of this diversity of views arises from reliance on different facts, known or guessed at, about Jefferson's life. It is proposed here to identify some of the psychological assessments and the factual underpinnings that have contributed to interpretations of Jefferson's political behavior, and, where possible, to synthesize and extend them. By "spiralling" between impressions of Jefferson's "core personality," the facts of his childhood experience that contribute to explaining his development, and the patterns of his behavior towards persons and events as an adult political actor, there is a prospect of extending insight into this complex personality. The first task is to review what is known about Jefferson‘s development beginning with his first months and years. What knowledge do we actually have, with high probability of being right, concerning the experiences Jefferson had as an infant and developing child? Thomas Jefferson was born in 1743 to a somewhat ill-assorted couple in a rustic dwelling near the perimeter of recently settled Western Virginia. He was the namesake of his paternal grandfather, a second-generation Virginian of undistinguished ancestry who figures ―somewhat servilely,‖ as Dumas Malone puts it, in the diary of William Byrd II. Jefferson‘s father, Peter Jefferson, like so many pioneers, was the youngest of his father‘s three sons. He possessed tobacco-growing land and a few slaves and books, some of them perhaps acquired through his marriage. He became a sufficiently prominent figure in the remote community of what would become present-day Albemarle County to be elected to local office.505 We do not know whether his plantation was adequate to support his growing family, but it is certain that he supplemented his farming revenue by taking jobs as a surveyor and in other ways facilitating the commercial and land-acquisitive aims he shared with many Virginians. In Jefferson‘s autobiographical sketch, written when he was seventy-seven, he describes his father as a man of little education but great natural ability, ―of a strong mind, sound judgment, and eager after information‖ who ―read much and improved himself‖ so that he qualified to collaborate with Joshua Fry,‖Professor of Mathematics in William and Mary College‖ to complete the survey of the boundary line between Virginia and North Carolina.506

505 Dumas Malone on PJ‘s servility re Byrd; Article on PJ‘s status (higher than thought) 506 Article showing how important PJ was. 159

Randall notes the interesting fact that Peter Jefferson‘s ―beautiful penmanship‖ markedly resembled the handwriting that his son finally adopted, as Boyd has shown, after much experimentation and deliberate effort.507 The weapon Jefferson chose to wield his intellectual superiority was, of course, the pen. No major statesman in history has been a more ardent, persistent, and prolific writer of letters and all kinds of documents over so long a period. Wielding the power of the pen had clear aggressive importance for Jefferson, as when he exhorts Madison to refute an article of Hamilton‘s with the words, ‖For God‘s sake take up your pen and slay him.‖508 Jane Randolph Jefferson, Peter Jefferson‘s wife and Thomas‘s mother, was twelve years younger than her husband, daughter of an Englishwoman and a younger son of a junior branch of one of the leading families of the colony. Born near London where her father, Isham Randolph, was a merchant and slavetrader, she was the couple‘s second child, an older brother having died in infancy. The family resettled in Williamsburg Virginia when Jane Randolph was about five; she married Peter Jefferson when she was eighteen or nineteen years old509 The Peter Jeffersons‘ first two children, both girls, were born within fourteen months of each other. The first was named after her mother. Thomas, the third child, was born on April 13, 1743, and was followed nineteen months later by another sister, Elizabeth. If Thomas had been nursed by his mother, his relationship with her probably changed with her pregnancy when he was not yet ten months old. It was certainly further disturbed by the birth of a rival who, apparently, suffered from some kind of congenital disabilities on account of which she may have been exceptionally demanding of attention.510 At the very least this sister must have produced changes in the behavior of his mother, and perhaps some other caretakers, toward himself. In later years, when he was responsible for the allocation of family resources among his younger siblings, the necessity of providing for this sister is obviously irksome, and the circumstances of her apparently sudden death are kept mysterious in his matter-of-fact, brief and belated report.511 As for Jane Randolph Jefferson, his mother, there survives in Jefferson's papers no shred of evidence of personal attachment to her, either upon her death, or before, while there are many references in his writings that may be interpreted as hostile to her. For example, his

507 Randall 1:14n; Boyd on TJ‘s handwriting. 508 TJ to JM ―take up your pen and slay im.‖ 509 .[This is UVA reel 3] 510 Malone calls her ―subnormal‖ and suggests that her disability was congenital. The Virginian, 38. 160 correspondence after his mother‘s death frequently mentions debts left by her which were charged to the family estate that her older son administered. These sums were small in comparison with some others (notably his own); yet his repeated mention of them suggests resentment. Although Jane Jefferson died in 1776, by 1808 her son had still paid nothing on the principal of her indebtedness to a Glasgow merchant.512 Jack McLaughlin calls attention to the powerful and independent role played by Jefferson's widowed mother ruling over a sizeable family and estate. He conjectures, plausibly, that Jefferson resented Jane Jefferson's control, into his young adulthood, of property destined for him that he thought would have given him the independence he craved.513 As for the affective dimension of Jefferson‘s association with his mother, Erik Erikson interprets Jefferson‘s words as suggesting that for him, the building of Monticello reproduced the mother's embrace. Erected on a mountaintop (Jefferson's autobiography writes that his father's ancestors supposedly inhabited the "highest mountain in Wales"), Erikson sees Monticello's façade--with its imposing pillars--as expressive of male strength. Yet the dwelling also represented something different to Jefferson: "His ethos of self-made masculinity permitted and enabled him to plan his own maternal shrine, and to 'fold himself into its arms,'" as he described his final retirement to Monticello. The octagonal dome with which "he crowned the building" added "an equally dominant maternal element to the strong façade." Add to this Jefferson's lifelong passion for designing, building, remodeling and rebuilding every dwelling he inhabited as well as the cupola of the University of Virginia's principal building "symbolizing an Alma Mater," and it seems indisputable that Jefferson tried to provide for himself maternal supplies of which he had felt himself deprived in childhood.514 That Jefferson sought to recreate such a warm embrace in buildings he had constructed for himself is given even more weight by the fact that he named Monticello, the dwelling in which he invested lifelong emotions, the ―little

511 Account book March 1, 1774. 512 Sloan, Principle, 19-20.

513 McLaughlin, Jack, Jefferson and Monticello:The Biography of a Builder , (New York: Henry Holt, 1988), 47513.

514 Dimensions , 56-7. 161 mountain,‖ after Shadwell, his first home, which, during his childhood and youth was called ―The Mountain.‖515 Barnes‘s early study of Jefferson stresses his supposed childhood experience of his father. He conjectures that Peter Jefferson helped form the son's later intolerance of all forms of paternal authority. A powerful, threatening, and resented father, Barnes submitted, resulted in an "abnormal anti-authority complex" in his son. The death of Peter Jefferson when Thomas was fourteen, Barnes thought, prevented the reconciliation that might have occurred had the son been able to work through his conflicts in later adolescence. Thus, " can be regarded as an elaborate disguise and secondary rationalization of his innate revolt against authority and....traced back to the recoil of the pallid youth of Shadwell from his gigantic and formidable father." To this fear of and rage against his father Barnes traces an "inferiority complex" in the son that made him incompetent as a public speaker, unwilling to face a crowd in person. Barnes‘s interpretation is suggestive for explaining a distinctive feature of Jefferson's political technique: he shunned addressing audiences--indeed facing the public directly in any way. Rather, he ―turned to ―letter writing and party organization by intrigue and instigation," avoiding the personal confrontation that would have been necessary to effect direct domination. As a result, writes Barnes, Jefferson became "a master of intrigue and shrewd insinuation, of subtle flattery and compelling powers of suggestion.‖516 The most compelling demonstration of these powers was Jefferson‘s authorship of the Declaration of Independence, one of the achievements in which he took the most pride. This document was crafted, in Robert MacDonald‘s words, as an ―emotionally- evocative appeal,‖ to be ―uttered aloud‖—but not by himself!517 Jefferson‘s own reluctance to address large groups was demonstrated most dramatically when, after his accession to the Presidency, he broke with the tradition established by Washington and sent his first address to congress by messenger rather than delivering it himself. His inaugural speeches required direct delivery, but were presented in such a low voice that

515 Letter of ??? "as long as I stay at the Mountain[Shadwell], the loss of one fourth of my Time is inevitable, by Company's coming here...."11 (Sarah Randolph) 516 Harry Elmer Barnes, ―Some Reflections on the Possible Service of Analytical Psychology to History,‖ Psychoanalytic Review 8 (1921): 22-37 517 Robert M. S. McDonald, ―Thomas Jefferson‘s Changing Reputation as Author of the Declaration of Independence: The first fifty years,‖ Journal of the Early Republic 19 (1999): 169-195. 162

they were ssaid to be inaudible in much of the Senate chamber. Discussing the second such occasion Malone comments that Jefferson ―had once expressed satisfaction at being able to pursue a noiseless course; he was virtually doing that now, wittingly or unwittingly.‖518 We have already noted the aggressive meaning Jefferson‘s written eloquence seems to have held for him and how, in consequence, he often used surrogates, like Madison, to deliver his words or thoughts for him. Other well-known stand-ins favored by him were John Freneau, whom he persuaded, with Madison, to edit the first national Democratic Republican newspaper, and James Callender, who audaciously published virulent attacks on Adams and the Federalists in books Jefferson helped to underwrite. Since this Jefferson aimed to keep this practice covert it is likely that his rwesponsibility for other such writings remain unknown to this day. For example, rumor, though not firm evidence, linked Jefferson the strategy of trying to induce Washington to respond indiscreetly by sending him a bogus letter of compliments and inquiries over the signature of a man who would be expected to inspire trust. Allegedly, the deception was undertaken by a nephew of Jefferson‘s, but possibly it was concocted, if not actually written by Jefferson himself.519 Jefferson‘s preference for exercise of indirect means to achieve his political ends became more and more evident when he began to assume executive office. Forced, as Governor of Virginia, to take a role of military commander, he failed, owing, Binger thinks, to ―difficulty experienced in facing his aggressive impulses.‖520 Instead, as Nathan Schachner writes, he issued an ―amazing…volume‖ of letters, correspondence and orders---his usual method of assuming leadership, but in this case ineffectual. ―Perhaps,‖ Schachner continues perceptively, ―that was one of his failings—the belief that dispatching a letter could solve a situation.‖521 Barnes traces another important feature of Jefferson's political perspective to his displaced rage against Peter Jefferson. This is an "ever active tendency towards distrust, suspicion and misgivings...inclined towards finding hidden and invidious motives in the acts of

518 Malone 4: 92; 5: 4. 519 The two John Nicholsons…?? 520 Binger in Butterfield ―Conflicts in the Life of Thomas Jefferson,‖ American Journal of Psychiatry 125 (1969)): 1098-1104. 521 Nathan Schachner, Thomas Jefferson, A Biography (New York: Appleton Century, 1951), 214. 163 opponents.‖522 Indeed, it was not only opponents, like Hamilton, to whom Jefferson attributed such motives. Virtually every important political leader senior to himself to whom Jefferson had initially deferred became at some time the object of his obloquy. George III was among the first of these; others were Patrick Henry, George Washington and John Adams. Benjamin Franklin, one who for long far surpassed Jefferson in public esteem in America and Europe, seems to be the outstanding exception. However, Franklin had authority over him only briefly and then moved out of Jefferson's political arena, dying soon after. Moreover, as Franklin's biographer, Claude-Anne Lopez, has noted, Jefferson‘s failure to grant Franklin‘s request for a deserved appointment for his beloved grandson and his later unwarranted suspicions of Temple Franklin can be interpreted as a disguised blow to the revered, aged leader.523 Barnes's attribution of Jefferson's typical political stance to unresolved rage against his father neglects (but does not preclude) another aspect of the personality that this president frequently presented--a feminine identification. Related to this may be Jefferson‘s "ultra- sensitiveness" that Barnes perceives, without accounting for it, that enabled him "to anticipate…the trends in the popular mind" and made him that "most astute political leader of the organizing and instigative type."524 Alexander Hamilton was one of the first to describe Jefferson as "feminine," but many have since seconded the characterization. Henry Adams, who had, as a boy, sat at the knee of his grandfather, John Quincy Adams, in his youth an admirer of Thomas Jefferson, wrote in 1889, "Jefferson's nature was feminine; he was more refined than many women in the delicacy of his private relations....He yearned for love and praise as no other great American ever did." 525 Jefferson himself and testimony from family members bear witness to his taste for taking a feminine role. Of the days in which he attended the deathbed of his wife, his daughter exclaimed, "As a nurse no female ever had more tenderness or anxiety."526 The death of Martha Wayles Jefferson at first sent him into a mourning so extreme that it was as though Jefferson,

522 .Harry Elmer Barnes, "Some Reflections on the Possible Service of Analytical Psychology to History," Psychoanalytic Review 8 (1921) 22-37. 523 Personal communication of Claude-Anne Lopez. Boyd, 11/27/90, 18: 86-96. 524 Barnes, "Reflections," 22-37.sic—look up page. 525 Henry Adams, The History of the United States during the Administration of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1986 [1889]), 220. A recent analysis of Adams's work subtly identifies politically relevant emotional affinities on the masculine-feminine dimension that the historian perceived between himself and Jefferson. ??citation? 526 Sarah N. Randolph The Domestic Life of Thomas Jefferson (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1968), 63. 164 too, were dead to the world. As he began to revive he wrote to his sister of his misery at having to take over the "care and instruction" of his three surviving daughters.527 Yet family members were to notice the readiness with which he soon assumed a maternal, as well as fatherly role. In the following years he participated in every aspect of his daughters' lives. After their marriages he continued to take part--personally and in letters--in all the details of their conduct, affective as well as domestic. These included the care and feeding of their children and their own spousal relationships. His involvement extended as well to the physical aspects of childbirth--"no more than a jog of the elbow," he assured his frail, pregnant younger daughter, though the early death of her mother had probably owed something to the effects of six deliveries in ten years of marriage to himself. "He would have liked to have borne the child himself, if such a thing were physically possible," Elizabeth Langhorne writes.528 His oldest daughter, Martha, the only child to survive him, was, in Erikson's assessment, "while she was young, mothered by him as much as fathered, and later a maternal companion to him as much as a daughter."529 In fact, Jefferson drew on the ten-year old Martha's maternal qualities when his wife died,530 using her as his constant companion in grieving sorties on horseback into the wilderness. His controlling maternalism toward her may have thus served him earlier than Erikson thought in mastering his own need for maternal care. A sensitive biographer of 1943 noticed a curious incidence of manifest feminine identification in one of Jefferson's youthful notebook entries. In it he writes as a woman, expressing some of those exaggerated exhortations to females to comply entirely with male demands that would frequently characterize his correspondence with women. The success of a marriage, he writes, depends on the ―conduct of the wife; for marriage, be a husband what he may, reverses the prerogative of sex; his will expect to be pleased, and ours must be sedulous to please.‖531 He thus attributes to an imagined woman the desire to devote herself entirely to his own desires. Kenneth Lockridge and others have labelled "mysogynistic" an assortment of demeaning observations about the female sex and hectoring, humorless, demanding letters to his daughters and other women–young and old—that were patronizing and utterly insensitive to his

527 TJ to MJCarr? on trials of widowed fatherhood. 528Elizabeth Langhorne, Monticello, A Family Story , (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1987), 128, 63. 529 .Erikson, Dimensions , 57 530 Martha Wayles Jefferson died on Sept. 6, 1782.Martha Jefferson was born on September 27, 1772. 165 correspondents' dispositions.532 Erikson recognizes certain of Jefferson's letters to his daughters as "somewhat punitive."533 When Martha Jefferson was an eleven-year old school girl he threatened her with loss of his love if she fell short on effort and achievement. In later years he preached submission to male wishes to both daughters and extended to them and to other American ladies of his acquaintance his warnings against becoming involved in male affairs— notably politics.534 In writing advice to Madison on revising the constitution of Virginia, he opined that the danger in a severe penalty for rape was that it might encourage women to seek vengeance against lovers who had abandoned them by charging them with this crime.535 In cases where the interests of his male friends were concerned, Jefferson could express himself quite loosely about women in private correspondence. For example, in writing of the separated wife of his Italian friend Mazzei, he alluded to her as a ―cagna‖ [bitch].536 This mysogynistic side of Jefferson has been traced to his childhood family situation and linked to the revolutionary political orientation he eventually developed. Carl Binger suggests that his early ambivalence toward independence reflected ambivalence to his mother: the fact that she was "upper-class" and "English-born...helped make a revolutionary of [him]." Some of his derogatory allusions, as to "the harlot England," "Samsons in the field,‖ and his assignment to Marie Antoinette of responsibility for provoking the French revolution suggest, as Fawn Brodie notices, a covert expression of deep resentment against his British-born, aristocratic Randolph mother. Imagery of this kind seems to attribute to women a sinister, dangerous power. Other observations by Jefferson about some women tend to trivialize their interests and deny their

531 Marie Kimball, Jefferson, the Road to Glory, 1743-1776. 166-7. 532 . Kenneth A. Lockridge, On the Sources of Patriarchal Rage, The Commonplace Books of William Byrd and Thomas Jefferson and the Gendering of Power in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1992). For other examples of Jefferson's complex views on women see Elizabeth Marvick, "Thomas Jefferson and the Ladies of Paris," Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History 21 (1994): 81-94. 533 Erikson, Dimensions , 69. 534 Threatening loss of love letteer to Martha, Submission letters to older girls, Anne Willing correspondence from TJ-Ladies. 535 TJ to JM on rape clausse sin Va constitution. 536 ]. Mazzei, Filippo, Memoirs of the life and pereginations of the Florentine, Philip Mazzei, 1730-1816, trs. Howard R. Marraro, NY Columbia U. Press, 1942 (Kraus Reprint, 1973). Gets things wrong about TJ, i.e., when (r)MDUL¯Notes(r)MDNM¯ were written, whose map for it he used, left-hand right hand stuff etc. (296) "When I mentioned the trouble my wife had caused me, Jefferson said, 'She really is a great bitch.'"[cagna, says note on 284] 293] Had note from America from John Blair telling him of death of his wife., adding [a joke.] "This induced Jefferson to say: 'That would be enough to prove to what point that bitch made herself hated, since a man so steeped in sweetness and human kindness could joke under such circumstances.'" 284] 166 autonomy, intellect and importance--perhaps for him an unconscious strategy against deeper fears.537 A bizarre project of Jefferson‘s during his retirement confirms the notion that he felt sufficiently threatened by women to develop costly and convoluted—one might plausibly say ―obsessive‖—strategies to ward off his fear of them. In 1814, preparing his library in order to negotiate a price for it from Congress that would help him discharge some of his debts, he pointed out to a young New England visitor to Monticello, ―with a satisfaction somewhat inconsistent with the measured gravity he claims in relation to such subjects generally‖ six volumes of what Ticknor describes as ―documents of regal scandal‖ that ―seemed to be favorites‖ with Jefferson.‖538 Throughout his five-year Paris stay and afterwards Jefferson had avidly acquired new volumes of memoirs of courtiers and royalty. The diverse volumes Ticknor saw had been specially bound on Jefferson‘s orders to include in his offer to Congress. He had them titled uniformly ―The Book of Kings,‖ but they comprised four works of ―regal scandal,‖ in the form of memoirs attributed to female authors. These related tales of adultery and other vices as they were supposedly played out in high circles of Europe. In Jefferson‘s arrangement the first two volumes described scandals in the Prussian court in which the author was a victim, including intrafamilial poisonings, abusive marriages, and forced prostitution..539 The third and fourth, by a French countess, cater to the rising powers of the revolutionists by flattery and by implicating Marie Antoinette as the motivator of certain scandals. It is a tale of woe told by a woman, presumably of a great family, who had been ill-treated and abandoned by a venal, promiscuous mother, and suffered from the social pretensions of an otherwise weak father.540

537Binger, "Conflicts in the Life of Thomas Jefferson," American Journal of Psychiatry 125: (1969): 1098-1104; Fawn Brodie, Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History (New York: Norton, 1974), 45; Marvick, "Ladies of Paris," 81-94. 538 Ticknor memoir of visit to TJ. 539 M‚moires de Fr‚d‚rique sophie Wilhelmine de Prusse, Margrave de Bareith Soeur de Fr‚d‚ric le Grand; ecrits de sa main, Paris, 1811. 540 Vie de Jeanne Saint-R‚my de Valois, ci-devant comtesse de La Motte...‚crite par elle-mˆme. 2me ‚dition, An 1. [1792]. This is the edition Jefferson’s library. 167

The fifth volume comprised the supposed memoirs of Mary Anne Clarke, ―mistress of the Duke of York‖ that demonstrated, in the words of its French translator, how ―intrigues of the boudoir play a great role in [English] politics.‖541 Jefferson instructed his binder to have the last four volumes of his compendium pared down or adjusted to match the first two, writing him, ―Pray do it immediately and return it by the stage that they may be replaced on their shelves should Congress take my library."542 A picture of Jefferson that stresses a different aspect of his early family experience is advanced in a brief study by Ramòn Harris. Instead of Barnes's reconstruction of a brutal and feared father to explain Jefferson's hostility to male authority, Harris points to Peter Jefferson's frequent long absences from home during his son's childhood, with the consequence that Thomas Jefferson was raised in a predominantly feminine milieu. He observes further that Peter Jefferson, as the third son in a family of modest status, had not only held a disadvantaged position in the family of his birth, but also in the illustrious Randolph family into which he married. Harris points also to the cultural superiority of Thomas's mother to his father. He suggests that Jane Randolph Jefferson may have been embittered by the social isolation, hardship, and loss of status that her marriage had brought her. Her own father, Isham Randolph, was a college-educated sea-captain and merchant who became rich in the slave trade. Developing this theme, Gisela Tauber surmises that Jefferson's mother may have held up to her son her own father as a better model than her husband--a pattern that Erik Erikson long ago attributed to America‘s unprecedented opportunities for social mobility, seen in many of its households.543 Direct evidence on how Jefferson experienced his mother as a small child is lacking. In his autobiography, written toward the end of his life, he mentions her undeniable claims to upper-class British origins with skepticism and a certain contempt. Testimony from one of his granddaughters that Jane Randolph Jefferson was "a stern and strict lady much feared and little

541 Mary Anne Clarke, Evidence and proceedings upon the charges preferred against the Duke of York, in 1809. London, 1809. [She, 1776-1852 mistrss ofs Fred. duke of York, charged by Col Gwillym Lloyd Wardle.] not known which work. mayrefs 542 ." ford 14 , 407]?? This reference lying around, or Sowerby? 543 Ram•n I. Harris, "Thomas Jefferson: Female Identification," American Imago 25 (1968): 371-83; Gisela Tauber, "Thomas Jefferson's Relationships with Women," American Imago 45(1988): 431-47; Erik H. Erikson, Childhood and Society (New York: Norton, 1950), 271. 168 loved by her children" probably came from Jefferson himself by way of his daughter Martha, mother of the reporter of this description.544 Circumstantial confirmation of such a family constellation is suggested by Jefferson's later relations with his father-in-law, . Like Isham Randolph, Wayles was a rich, British-born, well-educated slave importer. Wayles had been thrice-married and was believed as well to have taken a mulatto woman as concubine and sired several children by her, among them the famous Sally Hemings, believed by some later to have played the same role for Jefferson. Jefferson's specially affectionate feeling for Wayles is in interesting contrast with the puritanical standards he sometimes exalted. One biographer notes that his letters announcing his betrothal were as enthusiastic about his prospective father-in-law as about Wayles‘s daughter. A similar emphasis on the male connection would be seen years later, when Jefferson joyfully announced the marriage of his elder daughter to the son of the Randolph heir with whom he himself had been raised at Tuckahoe, and shortly afterward, when he admonished his daughter to defer in everything to her new father-in-law, who had just remarried a very young woman. In this letter there is, writes a biographer familiar with the family correspondence, a "not so subtle concern for himself."545 Such strivings, through his daughters, to win and keep the approval of the men they married confirm Harris's perception of a feminine identification in Jefferson, expressed as a yearning for the love of men. In Harris's interpretation, even Jefferson's last words to his doctor represented "unrelinquished attachment to his father."546 Erik Erikson, not a specialist in early American history, does not pretend to analyze Jefferson's politics. Yet his intuition leads him to possibly important aspects of Jefferson‘s personality that earlier interpreters overlooked. For example, he sees Jefferson's response to the experience of heights as of central significance. He connects it with the child's early developmental struggles to achieve and sustain erectness, calling attention to a recurrent motif in Jefferson's book, Notes on the State of Virginia, of the "precariousness of human uprightness." Carl Binger's characterization of Jefferson: "His life had been "upright, open, and continent," while debatable on the last two attributions, reflects in the first a sensitivity to Jefferson‘s own habitual imagery.547

544 Ellen Coolidge on TJ‘s mother. Look in Personality and Politics. 545 .Langhorne, Monticello , 58. 546 Harris, "Feminine Identification," 382. 547 Well-tempered Mind, 191. 169

In his Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson recounts [as noted above] experiencing both exaltation, terror, and violent migraine on reaching the heights of Virginia's Natural Bridge. Erikson notes a "juxtaposition of height and downfall, of sublime emotions--and the violent pain in his head." The episodes of migraine from which Jefferson suffered during the first half of his life, Erikson believes, reflected conflicts linked to the age at which he had first struggled to maintain an erect posture. Of related significance, he thinks, is Jefferson's warning to his daughter Martha to avoid idleness as "the precipice of a gulph" from which hysteria loomed.548 Jefferson‘s typical strategy for overcoming his terror is manifest in his taking possession of the frightening object and making it his own. By the date on which the Notes appeared, Jefferson had acquired the land on which the Natural Bridge was situated. In like manner the lofty isolation of Monticello protected him from political assaults from the outside as it would eventually give him the power to survey and control the realization of his creation, the University of Virginia, in the valley below. Such meanings had for long been touched upon in relation to the extreme sacrifice in economy and convenience that Jefferson made in choosing a mountain top for the site on which to build his dream house. At least one contemporary experienced the ambience of Monticello's summit as not only bizarre but somewhat terror-inspiring. Anna Brodeau Thornton wrote on September 18, 1812, "There is something grand & awful in the situation but far from convenient or in my opinion agreeable. It is a plan you would rather look at now & then than live at...A great deal of money has been expended both above and below ground, but not so as to appear to the best advantage."549 The role of "surveyor," in which Erikson notes Jefferson often cast himself, had been the profession of his father, Peter Jefferson, as well as that of George Washington. It combines, in Jefferson's behavior and thought, with the idea of controlling the actions of others, at the same time protecting himself from damage by removing himself to a site above the fray.550 Several other times, too, Jefferson made the choice of a high dwelling site. In Paris he leased the luxurious Hôtel de Langeac at the crest of the Champs Elysées. Notwithstanding the amenities of this new building, he also arranged for periodic

548 Erikson, Dimensions , 25, 23, 54, 68.

549 Diaries of Mrs. William Thornton, LC. 550 Breitheiser on surveying/controlling? 170

escapes, renting an apartment in the hermitage atop Mont Valérien, overlooking the whole city. The latter refuge,located in the suburb of Suresne, surmounted even the "sightly eminence" on which his elevated Parisian mansion was situated.551 Later, he wrote John Adams of how much ―tranquility of mind‖ he had found in ―a total abstraction from everything political…Tranquility becomes daily more and more the object of my life.‖552.And toward the end of his life, finally retired to Monticello, his highest wish for this friend was ―nights of rest and days of tranquility.‖553 Such a monastic life had an immense appeal for Jefferson, as his design of the cloister-like living quarters of the University of Virginia would later show. This appeal was rooted in his early experience: before he decided upon "Monticello" Jefferson had planned, as a very young man, to call his Virginia home "The Hermitage.‖554 In Jefferson‘s correspondence Monticello is the longed-for retreat where, with his family gathered around him, he might take refuge from the slings and arrows of political life. Yet, once there (as he very often was, even during busy political seasons), he sometimes found it an insufficient protection. Therefore he planned the construction of a still more isolated dwelling in a less developed adjacent county, , and used it periodically for prolonged escapes from the bustling life at Monticello.555 Fawm Brodie raises the question of who took responsibility for mothering the future president during the seven years the Jefferson family spent at Tuckahoe. It would, as she remarks, have been usual if this function had been shared by his own mother and a black nurse. Indeed it is certain that several slaves, some near to childhood themselves--participated in the care of the Randolph and Jefferson children individually and collectively. The fourteen-year old Jefferson himself had a male servant bequeathed to him by his father. This slave or a predecessor had probably attended Jefferson since both were children. Brodie takes note, too, of the fact that the young man Jefferson expressed deep attachment to his oldest sister, (who bore his mother's name), as we know from his expressions of grief and loss when she died at the age of twenty- five. This suggests that Jefferson had transferred to her some feelings originally directed toward his mother. Turning back again to Jefferson's childhood for evidence that may throw further light

551 The term is used by Howard C. Rice, L'H―tel de Langeac, 1785-1789 . (Paris, 1947), 15. 552 Cappon 257. MO 2/6/95 553 Cappon 609, MO 2/15/25. 554 Monticello first the ―Hermitage‖ 171 on aspects of his later behavior, attention falls upon an event that seems not to have caught the attention of Barnes, Harris, Binger or Erikson. It is, however, given importance by Gisela Tauber and Fawn Brodie. This was the uprooting of the whole family of Peter Jefferson from their remote country home of Shadwell and their transplantation to the much greater estate of the late William Randolph of Tuckahoe, amongst the fine plantations along the James River. Jefferson was less than two and a half and when his father uprooted the whole family to take on the task of managing Tuckahoe and acting as guardian of the children of his rich relation, Randolph. Thomas Jefferson was at an age when most children are beginning, uncertainly, to acquire certain forms of motor control,556 For this child, the sudden move may have rekindled the struggle for secure erectness and motor control. According to a famous report, apparently told by him to a family member, his earliest memory was of the commencement of the move itself, ―his being handed up and carried on a pillow by a mounted slave, as the train [of wagons and horses] set off down the river towards Tuckahoe.‖557 This recollection seems related to the high charge that Erikson saw attached to heights in Jefferson's mind. While Jefferson may have suppressed it, another experience that could have enhanced the force of the first one awaited him at the destination of this trek. While Jefferson reports his memory of this momentous departure, he gives no account of the scene that confronted him upon his arrival. His new home, seat of his mother‘s more advantaged cousin, was a great estate on the north bank of the James River near Richmond. Although the dimensions of the house were scarcely on the scale of European palaces, its interior, in the words of a German visitor, was ―worthy of a Prince‘s Palace.‖ Its public rooms, meant for receptions and entertainments on a grand scale, were spacious and impressive. According to Van Closen, ―every piece of furniture was exquisitely beautiful, of mahog. or rosewood, with very beautiful mirrors.‖ 558 All this splendor represented a vast change from the Jeffersons‘ backwoods dwelling, possibly perceptible even by a toddler.

555 Poplar Forest (county? 556 Although Erikson was unaware of this removal, he attributes various characteristics of Jefferson—the drive to achieve ―erectness,‖ the passion for a preeminent position from which he could ―survey‖ his surroundings, and anal components in Jefferson‘s imagery and preoccupations as indicating a crisis at this developmental stage. 557 Randall, 1: 11. The reminiscence reached the historian Randall through Jefferson's grandchildren. Ibid., 1:11.Roger Wilkins takes this recollection as the point of departure for discussion of the dependence of white Virginian notables on the support of a black infrastructure. Jefferson‘s Pillow (UVA? 2001). 558 Evelyn M. Acomb., ed., ―The Journal of Baron Von Closen,‖ WMMMQ 10 (1953), 221-2. Cited by Kierner, ―Dark & Dense cloud‖ 187.

172

But one feature of the new house may have struck the two and a half-year old immediately. On his arrival he must have been carried, or led, up the magnificent carved mahogany staircase in the entry hall of the Tuckahoe house to the family sleeping quarters above. Such a palatial-style staircase was an architectural feature that Jefferson was later purposefully to shun at Monticello. In building the house of his dreams he insisted on making the only access to the second storey two cramped, ladder-like and concealed staircases hidden in the back of the house. Anna Thornton commented on the oddity and inconvenience of this predilection.559 Another interesting feature of Jefferson‘s architectural taste that may date to this childhood experience was his fascination with what he attributed to current French fashion in structures whose façades concealed the second storey. Jefferson, who had begun construction on Monticello before his marriage in 1771 [?], undertook completely to rebuild it after his European sojourn. One of his motives, avowedly, was his discovery in France of a fashionable architectural pattern that he found extremely attractive—one that completely concealed the existence of a second storey by the structure of the façade. This was a feature he tried to duplicate at Monticello.560 Emerging psychodynamic patterns Erikson does not cite this reported memory of the two-year old‘s removal from Shadwell—he may have been unaware of it—but in view of his convincing interpretation of Monticello's representation to Jefferson of the mother's embrace, one may ask whether this separation from the home of his early childhood may not also have caused Jefferson to suffer an important loss. Breitweiser is surely right in confirming Brodie‘s conclusion that this particular early memory of Jefferson‘s must attest to the profound and central position the presence of black caretakers held in his mental life. In some way it indicates, with a high degree of certainty, ―that his later attitudes were rooted in the obscurity of his elemental emotional life, in a crucial ambiguity of mastery and dependence.‖561 Erikson drew his audience's attention to what he saw as a "lifelong" and "deep nostalgia" in the third president, and asks, "was it for that mysterious mother about whom, partially because

559 .:Anna Thornton on TJ‘s staircase: LC ms. 560 Jefferson‘s letter on concealing the 2d storey. 561 Add reference to Fawn on separation from shadwell; Mitchell R. Breitweiser, ―Jefferson‘s Prospect,‖ Prospects 10 (1985) : 315-352.. 173 he kept her from us, we as yet know so little?"562 He seems to assume that the mother in question was the mother whose letters to himself Jefferson destroyed--the mother in whose home he lived for many years and upon whose death he leaves us no comment. Another possibility would be compatible with the social milieu in which the third president was raised, as well as his own memories. When the Jefferson family moved to the Randolphs' plantation, it is likely that few of their own slaves accompanied them. Lorena S. Walsh discusses the distinctive Virginia practice, often specified by legal documents, that attached slaves to particular properties of the planter, rather than treating them as personal property.563 If, at Shadwell, there had been a slave woman who had mothered Jefferson, she would most likely have been left behind when the family moved away. Such a rupture, for a two- year old, would indeed account for the deeply buried feelings of longing that have been attributed to Jefferson. There is, as will be seen, additional psychological evidence, in Jefferson‘s scant recollections of his childhood, that suggests this possibility. Both Jefferson‘s own reports and analyses of his personality as an adult point to the loss of an important nurturing figure who stayed with his native plantation when he was transplanted to another home.564 In this new home Jefferson would find himself displaced and outranked by two older sons of the late head of the new household.565 The death of his favorite older sister, just as he was launching his career, was deeply mourned. It, too, seems to have reproduced earlier feelings of loss. At the same time it evoked creative efforts to replace one who had protected him. A poem he wrote for Jane Jefferson‘s epitaph, and the unique monument he designed for her grave form one pattern that Jefferson would show in coping with loss.566 Another form taken by what Erik Erikson perceived as Jefferson‘s intense narcissistic needs was a tendency to reproduce the maternal embrace in the form of objects—especially dwellings that he continually constructed and reconstructed—and persons whom he endowed with the capacity to give him the affective ―supplies‖ he required. A history of his relations with his elder daughter provides an extreme example of his demands for such supplies. Upon the

562 Erikson, Dimensions , 56. 563 Lorena S. Walsh, From Calabar to Carter’s Grove: The History of a Virginia Slave Community. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1997.43-44, 275ff. 564 Marvick, ―Jefferson‘s Personality and his Politics,‖ The Psychohistory Review 27[?] (19..?): . 565 Fawn Brodie called attention to the fact that Jefferson‘s sisters also encountered older rivals in the new milieu. Thomas Jefferson, an Intimate History ( ), , 566 Expressions of loss at Jane‘s death (10/1/65)/epitaph & monument. 174 death of his wife he coopted this ten-year old girl as his companion for long, grief-laden horseback rides through the forest. As a boarding school pupil she received such warnings as, ―The acquirements which I hope you will make...will render you more worthy of my love, and...prevent it‘s diminution,‖ and, ―If you love me...acquire those accomplishments...which will...ensur[e] you [my] love.‖567 Jefferson‘s success in eliciting from his daughter Martha the response he desired was complete. As a woman married to the man of her father‘s choice, she would preside over his household as well her own. In 1804 Martha, now wife of a demanding man and mother of seven young children, responded to a letter from her father that complained of an uncomfortable journey with this assurance: ―If my other duties could possibly interfere with my devotion to you I should not feel a scruple in sacrificing them [to you]. It is truly the happiness of my life to think that I can dedicate the remainder of it to promote yours.‖568 In any case the early change of Jefferson‘s habitation resulted in the sudden merging of two families of children. Henry Randall, an acquaintance of Randolph descendants, drew attention to the possible significance for the child Thomas in suddenly ceding his position of the only son in his family to the superior Randolph heir, a boy of four. Fawn Brodie stressed the importance of probable "tyrannizing" of the Jefferson children by the Randolph ones.569 At the very least, the sole Jefferson boy must have felt himself to have been saddled with new handicaps in the competition for advantage. Further, soon after the family‘s installation at Tuckahoe the first of three pregnancies of his mother produced the second of Jefferson‘s younger sisters.570 Two years later Martha Jefferson gave birth to a second son, who died a month later, and sixteen months after that to a third baby boy who died the same day. These events surely further diminished the attention alotted by his mother to her first son. In addition it is likely that Thomas experienced strong feelings, either from competition with or responsibilities for his younger, handicapped sister, the sibling born only seventeen months after himself.571

567 TJ letters to Martha as schoolgirl 568 treatment of Martha when Mom died (Ellen‘s or Martha‘s memoir?); Martha‘s letter declaring love. 569 .Randall?? drew attention to competition? Fawn Brodie has pointed also to the probable importance of the diminished status of Thomas's own older sisters who were each three to four years younger than their Randolph counterparts. Brodie, Intimate History , 48. 570 Martha J. Carr b. 5/29/46. 571 Tauber, "Jefferson and Women," 4400-1; Brodie, Intimate History , 48.

175

The challenge that Jefferson faced in adapting to his new environment was formidable and the resources that he brought to meet it had to be powerful as well. He was ―receptive,‖ Dumas Malone observes, in a different context, and had ―a rare gift of adaptation which constituted a form of originality.‖ On this Pauline Maier observes, ―He applied the same gift in drafting the Declaration of Independence.‖ Indeed, as will be seen, this gift for adaptation was applied in a wide array of the demanding situations in which Jefferson would find himself. The particular mode by which Jefferson adapted to his new childhood environment shaped many of the skills that were to make him notable. The early Tuckahoe experience was a painful forge of these skills. Two memories attributed to Jefferson suggest his misery as he discovered the ways to make his way in a setting that must have seemed alien, if not hostile.572 The first, a family story of the Tuckahoe sojourn, was relayed by Jefferson's biographer John Randall. It has the little boy Jefferson "away from home" becoming very hungry and praying for food. A second story is related by Sarah Randolph whose father, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, was Jefferson's eldest grandson and his executor. It tells of Jefferson, as a five-year old, praying for school to be out. This was a memory of the primary school for white children on the Tuckahoe plantation, the first that he attended. Both accounts could have originated in one, told by Jefferson himself, that was a memory both of hunger and longing for home. Malone assumes that both stories are versions of the same recollection.573 The first memory refers to the sense of loss and the homesickness which I have conjectured Jefferson felt when he was taken from the emotional security provided by Shadwell, and also, perhaps, from a nurturing person or persons left behind. The second, however, refers specifically to the learning context of school, the arena in which young Jefferson would figure brilliantly. There are children who, though intensely unhappy, nevertheless strive effectively and excel in intellectual performance, particularly in school. Randolph‘s report suggests such unhappiness. As for performance, Jefferson became the star pupil in every school situation. A modern case study suggests a kind of emotional arrangement like one described in a very

572 Malone, 1, 148, referring here to his eclecticism in choosing designs for Monticello. Of this gift Pauline Maier observes, ―He applied the same gift in drafting the Declaration of Independence.‖ 573 Randolph, Domestic Life , 23; Henry S. Randall, The Life of Thomas Jefferson , 3 vols. (New York: 1858) 1: 17. Malone. vol. 1: 22n. 176 anxious four and a half-year old boy. This child warded off his fears and guarded his emotional vulnerability by becoming an outstanding student who, ―under the impact of ...anxiety...attempted to bind energy to ideas, thereby diminishing the danger of retaliation for discharge."574 In Jefferson, as in this little boy, anger was sometimes transformed into intellectual virtuosity. In this way the child could avoid the dangerous retaliation that he feared would meet direct assaults. Central to the image that Jefferson would later construct for himself and the public was the persona of the self-made man of the highest cultural achievement in every field, who owed his intellectual distinction to his own talent and industry. When the Jefferson family, including sister Jane and a new, Tuckahoe-born sibling did return to Shadwell, Thomas, now nine years old, was left behind to attend boarding school. While this may have confirmed his sense of abandonment and isolation, his achievement in the next few years was at such a high level that it enabled the sixteen-year old Jefferson, now fatherless and living at home, to petition a guardian to allow him to continue to pursue his studies in Greek, Latin and mathematics at the College of William and Mary, because the company at home took more than ―one fourth‖ of his time, and kept him from study.575 His subsequent experience at college proved to be so gratifying that he prolonged it considerably beyond the usual term, incurring debts to the Jefferson estate for which others would later try to hold him accountable.576 Political consequences The need that Jefferson showed, even in his early years, for escape and self-isolation seems associated with his non-confrontational, indirect methods in politics. It also suggests clues to the substance of his political decisions. For example, many have observed the centrality of the theme of independence in his writings. National independence and personal autonomy were sometimes equated as supreme goals in Jefferson's professed scheme of values. The fusion of the two is shown in another letter to his daughter Martha, whom he admonishes, "It is part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate, to surmount every difficulty by resolution

574 Wieder, Herbert. "Intellectuality: aspects of its development from the analysis of a precocious four-and-a-half- year-old boy." Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 21: (1966), 294-323. 575 Letter of schoolboy TJ to his guardian

576 Excessive years at school. source?(TJ as Lawyer?) letter reproaching with Overspending at college? 177 and contrivance. Remote from all other aid, we are obliged to invent and to execute; to find means within ourselves and not to lean on others."577 Jefferson‘s struggle to reconcile dangerous aggression with manly independence appears in a career-long conflict between making war and preserving peace. We have pointed earlier to Jefferson‘s avoidance of confrontation when, as revolutionary governor of Virginia, he attempted to muster and lead the Virginia militia by issuing dispatches. The indignant commander, General Nathanael Greene, warned him impatiently, ―An Army on paper will give you no security.‖578 Such episodes, and others during his presidency, prompted Henry Adams to impute to Jefferson a willingness to pay any price to avoid war. Yet in various contexts Jefferson did express aggressive, militaristic policies. Of earliest importance, of course, was his promotion of the war of independence from Britain. He was by no means the first of Virginians to call for complete separation: in midsummer of 1774 he could still write of the mother country, ―It is neither our wish nor our interest to separate from her.‖579 Rather, his position evolved along with the preponderant opinion of the colony‘s elite, for which he became an eloquent spokesman. By the time that opinion had reached a high level of revolutionary zeal he evoked the struggle in terms that seem to resonate with his own deep feelings. He described the choice of resistance as one between supineness and standing upright against a king who "is the bitterest enemy we have,‖ and whom ―we must drub…soundly‖ so that ―the sceptered tyrant will know we are not mere brutes, to crouch under his hand and kiss the rod with which he deigns to scourge us."580 Standing upright is of paramount importance in Jefferson‘s self-estimation. Another occasion on which Jefferson advocated war was in the context of the depredations of the Barbary pirates in 1784. From Paris he coolly asked whether, rather than paying exorbitant tribute to the Barbary states in order ―to purchase their peace…why not go to war with them?‖ For commercial objectives as well as greater national autonomy he cited the further advantages of starting to build an American navy: ―Can we begin it on a more honourable occasion or with a weaker foe?‖ Later in the year he wrote to General Horatio Gates, ―Tribute or war is the usual alternative of these

577 [Randolph, Domestic Life ?] Ibid., 68.Repeated 183, 191]

578 To TJ from NG, Deep river Nc , 3/27/81 471-2] 579 Quuoted from the ―Summary View‖ by Malone, 1: 188. 580 11/29/75 TJ to John Randolph, Phila.Italics supplied. 178

pirates…Why not begin a navy then and decide on war?‖581 ―Aggressive actions against the pasha of Tripoli‖ (disapproved by other republicans) were due, according to Elkins and McKendrick, to his ―vengeful feelings toward the Barbary states.‖ As President, however, he enthusiastically acceded to radically diminishing the modest strength of the navy that the previous regimes had been able to build. Jefferson regarded American sea power as likely to be useless in confronting the enormous superiority of Europe‘s forces, and it seemed that retaining vessels to control the weak Barbary pirates was the only purpose for which they might safely be used. The same inconsistency appears on his policy towards a permanent military force.582 In his confrontation of Napoleon's policies in 1802 Jefferson's language seem clearly colored by the early developmental struggle Erikson describes: "No matter," the new president declares, "is important enough to risk a break of peace...except the preserving of an erect and independent attitude."583 Herbert Butterfield notes that although Jefferson edited, disguised or repressed much of the extreme hostility that he felt toward former patrons, certain testimony survives. One of these is Jefferson's characterization of Patrick Henry as the "whale" in and out of whose "fundament" circulated the "minners" (Virginia legislators who had enraged Jefferson by censuring his official conduct during the British invasion of 1781)--suggestive of rage that was linked to conflicts experienced during a phase of development in which sphincter controls are acquired. Erikson too, noting the "especially strong and hostile" association of the "behind with elimination," quotes Jefferson's complaint: "The British...are in our bowels and we must expel them.'"584 As president, Jefferson usually managed to avoid policies that would result in violent encounters, substituting indirect strategies (such as patronage and embargo) and behind-the- scenes manipulation for confrontation. ―A proficient political ventriloquist, Jefferson was skilled at using proxies while keeping his own lips tightly sealed,‖ writes Hamilton‘s biographer,‖ Ron

581 Boyd, TJ to Monroe, November 11; to Horatio Gates, December 13, 1784. Boyd 7: 511; 571. 582 . See Theodore Crackel, Mr. Jefferson's Army, Political and Social Reform in the Military Establishment, 1801-1809 (New York, 1987). 583Quoted by Tucker and Hendrickson, Empire of Liberty , 120. 584 L. H. Butterfield, Discussion of Binger, "Conflicts," 1104-5; Erikson, Dimensions , 89. 179

Chernow.585 In confidential correspondence with trusted friends, however, it was habitual for him to anathematize the potential or supposed enemy with the strongest of words. Some of these had a religious content, as Julian Boyd and Dumas Malone have noted; his opponents were guilty of "apostasy" or "heresy," while he himself was enlisted in tending the "sacred fire," nurturing "the holy flame of liberty." In Ben Atar‘s words, Jefferson ‖infused American policy and interests with religious-like righteousness…[and] would not compromise.‖586 In his personal life, too, Jefferson spared no effort to blacken the character of proved opponents. John Walker, son of one of Jefferson‘s guardians, family friend and intimate of his youth, revealed himself to be such an opponent after discovering Jefferson‘s attempts to seduce his wife, allegedly both before and after Jefferson himself was married. His enmity was proved when, at the time Jefferson returned from France, Walker threatened to expose his former friend. Jefferson himself later confessed that when his daughters had enquired about the disappearance of the Walkers from their circle, he attributed it to shady financial dealings on Walker‘s part—a completely groundless allegation, but one he may also have circulated more widely.587 His often unjustified attribution to others of monarchical sympathies and autocratic ambitions could make even former close friends and benefactors, like John Adams, targets for such exaggerated characterization.588 He was not above suggesting that mere political opponents were guilty of ―treason‖ on account of their opinions, implying they deserved capital punishment, expressing his wish for the death of Patrick Henry, and even George Washington, on account of what he considered obstructionism.589 A revealing illustration of this ―bi-polar‖ pattern is the perspective Jefferson developed toward Edmund Randolph. This distant relation of Jefferson‘s wife was the son of John Randolph, a distinguished loyalist attorney of the crown, who had been friendly with Jefferson in Williamsburg days. John Randolph had been obliged to withdraw to Britain at the start of the Revolution: Jefferson negotiated to buy his violin before he departed. The son, Edmund, followed his father into the law. Ten years younger than Jefferson, he had already been several years at the bar when he took over the law practice relinquished by Jefferson who believed that

585 Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton. New York: Penguin Press, 395. 586Malone on TJ‘s use of ―apostasy‖; Ben-Atar, 168. Next ftnt should come first here? 587 Walker affair, shady financial dealings. Sarah Randolph? Langhorne? Callender? Note Walker role in revolution. 588Dumas Malone, Thomas Jefferson , 6 vols. (Boston: Little Brown, 1948-1977) 2: 242; Julian Boyd, "The Chasm that Separated Thomas Jefferson and John Marshall," in Essays on the American Constitution , Gottfried Dietze, ed. (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1964), 7. 180 his marriage in 1770(?)had made him financially independent.590 Like Jefferson, young Randolph joined the revolutionary movement. Unlike him he volunteered for service under Washington and served as an aide-de-camp until family affairs recalled him to Williamsburg. Over the years he not only took care of the legal needs of Madison, Jefferson and Washington, among many others, but also served in numerous political capacities, as governor of Virginia in 1786 and as delegate from Virginia to the confederation congress and to the constitutional convention of 1787. It was he who introduced to that convention the instrument that became the basis of the document finally adopted—the Virginia Plan—whose details have been authoritatively attributed to his friend James Madison. Despite Randolph‘s refusal to sign the convention‘s product on account of its lack of a bill of rights, he helped to organize and lead the ratification of that document by the Virginia convention in 1788. With the establishment of the new federal government, Washington appointed Randolph attorney general. It was in the years that followed that, as his biographer writes, ―his uncanny talent for identifying the ‗middle position‘…made him indispensable to the President.‖591 It was also during this period of Washington‘s first term that Jefferson dubbed Randolph the ―worst cameleon he had ever seen‖ and made him, increasingly, the target of his wrath. Mckitrick and Elkins have called attention to Jefferson‘s outspoken ―venom‖ toward Edmund Randolph, a lifelong familiar, whom they characterize not only as thoughtful and upright, but also as largely identified with Jefferson‘s pro-French and Republican views. One explanation for Jefferson‘s growing dislike of Randolph may be that he saw in the younger man‘s ―cameleon‖-like qualities tendencies of which he was aware in himself. A further likely contributor to Jefferson‘s venomous feelings toward this friend of his youth was Randolph‘s apparent role as moral critic of the older man. In a late writing recalling his personal life Randolph deplores the amorality of his less devout friends and specifically takes Jefferson to task for his "violent and intemperate" language in saying, during the revolution that although domestic Tories might not be traitors ―in deed,‖ they were so ―in thought.‖592 On one of the few

589 TJ death to P Henry and GW 590 Huntington accts of ER‘s assumption of TJ‘s cases. 591 Reardon, Edmund Randolph 189 592 Randolph(Hist of Va. 218f) 181 occasions (of which we have a record) that Madison expressed exasperation, on moral grounds, with Jefferson, it was to Edmund Randolph that he wrote of his complaints.593 Most of all, however, it was Randolph‘s attempt to be judicious and independent in Washington‘s cabinet that most outraged Jefferson. The thrust of his ―cameleon‖ charge is anger toward the younger man for not being consistently on his, Jefferson‘s, own side in the struggle within Washington‘s cabinet. While irked at the subservience of Henry Knox, the Secretary of War, to his enemy Alexander Hamilton, ―he was ―equally irked at not having Randolph in his [pocket].‖594 His irritation reflected an attitude that those not ―for us‖ are ―against us.‖ In this there is a conception of politics that may have had a precedent in Jefferson‘s Tuckahoe experience of an opposing ―side‖ that sought to dominate and exclude the Jefferson contingent. A letter from Jefferson to Abigail Adams during his presidency gives support to this interpretation of Jefferson‘s feelings about political rivalry and dissent. His aim was to restore friendly relations with her husband after a long estrangement during which Jefferson had repeatedly attacked Adams‘s ―monarchical‖ sympathies—a charge that Adams repudiated—and privately maligned the second president with less polite imputations. Had either he or Adams "disappeared," Jefferson wrote to Adams's wife, neither's partisans would "have gone over to the other" but would have sought only someone of like opinions to follow. This was "sufficient to keep down all jealousy between us and to guard our friendship from...sentiments of rivalship.‖595 The remark helps to explain his anger at Randolph. He had known the younger lawyer since Williamsburg days, and believed him to have been under his captaincy. In Jefferson‘s view, Randolph‘s efforts to be the judicious mediator among diverse points of view in the administration could only inspire ―jealousy‖ and ―rivalship.‖ In Jefferson‘s thinking, the honorable position, if one could not be wholly ―for‖ was to be wholly and openly ―against.‖ Jefferson‘s hope of restoring friendly relations with Adams seems especially insensitive to the consequences of his own acts. Yet from his earliest acquaintance with Adams, Jefferson had defended the older man‘s integrity and good intentions against Madison‘s persistent dislike and deprecations.596 During Adams's incumbency as president, however, Jefferson covertly accused him, and covertly supported others who accused him, of dastardly designs on

593 Cite [below] page Jmad to ER on TJ‘s resignation behavior. 594 Elkins and McKitrick 359. 595 TJ to Abigail Adams, June , 1804, in Randolph, Domestic Life , 305-6. 596 Republic, JM to TJ , 2/11/83; 5/6/83; 1: 220; 243. TJ to Jmad, 2/14/83,Republic, 1:223. 182 republicanism. When Callender became disillusioned with his earlier benefactor he remembered the immense glee with which Jefferson had greeted the journalist‘s attack on John Adams: After reading the first installment of The Prospect, Callender claimed, the future president had contributed his $50 subscription with the delighted comment,597 ‗‖I think I see John Adams twirling off his wig and stamping on it.‘"598 Jefferson‘s letters to Callender, brought to light several years later, showed that as Secretary of State he had searched the files of his own department, at Callender‘s suggestions, for evidence of Adams‘s wrongdoing during his missions abroad, although he himself, when minister to France, had appealed to Adams to advise him on ethical points of charges to the government, evidently because of his belief in the older man‘s probity.599 Once President, Jefferson gave a gratuitous, though surreptitious, rebuff to John Quincy Adams, the Adamses‘ oldest son, an act which Abigail Adams considered vengeful and unforgivable.600 Yet it seems that Jefferson could not easily tolerate the notion that such acts were reciprocated with enmity. Periodically Jefferson proposed overtures, in the form of proposed compliments, to the elder Adams (discouraged, in at least one case by Madison, as will be considered later). Eventually he succeeded in persuading Adams to resume their long-suspended correspondence, though only after the death of Abigail. What the significance of this may be as far as the older statesman is concerned is a matter for speculation by others. But for Jefferson it bespeaks one possible motive for the typical indirection or covertness with which he expressed anger and hostility: a strong anxiety lest he lose the love of someone who had once bestowed it. He found it intolerable that anyone personally connected to him might go ―over to the other,‖ no matter how little claim he might have on their amity. Young male visitors whose partisan identifications had little in common with Jefferson‘s could be surprised at his apparent sympathy with—even acquiescence in—the views that they expressed. He could not forego courting them, even if it entailed contradicting his own recent pronouncements. Again, he had expressed no support for his son-in-law‘s sister, Nancy Randolph, who had been subjected to legal criminal prosecution for an alleged personal offense,

597 Richmond Recorder 1 53 Wed. July 5 598 TJ gave him money for The American Annual Register or, Historical Memoirs of the U.S. for 1796, in June 97. 1802 corrrespondence or Malone?? 599 Mad supplied material, at TJ‘s request, from State for Callender on 5/27/98.Idem? TJ to Adams, from France, on policy on charging govt. for expenses. 600 AA‘s letter of reproach to TJ on behalf of JQA?Or was it soninlaw Smith? 183 but when, after her acquittal, he learned that she had taken refuge with the family of Edward Carrington, a staunchly Federalist political enemy of Jefferson‘s own party, he attempted to lure her away through an intermediary with a generous offer of hospitality.601 This sort of offer was one that he extended repeatedly throughout his life, mostly to a wide range of young men of promise.602 A pervasive pattern in Jefferson‘s behavior shows him reimagining the past in order to make it compatible with present needs. Thus his attempts to rewrite his personal history by excising past friction, contention or criticism. For example, exasperated letters during the war with Britain show that Nathaniel Greene, commander of the revolutionary forces in the South, felt stymied and angry when he could not mobilize Governor Jefferson‘s effective support in Virginia. He wrote to him of his urgent need of reinforcement, the detachments that had been sent being "greatly over rated.‖ He warned Jefferson sternly, ―An Army on paper will give you no security...I have committed my life and reputation to your service...my misfortune will...become yours." 603 Jefferson was unaccustomed to such outspoken reproach and surely resented it. Yet we find him declaring, in 1822, that Greene (by now a dead national hero) was a ―great man, second to none in military talent.‖604 In Paris Jefferson took a dislike to the sometime finance minister of France, Jacques Necker, calling him a ―mediocre mind.‖605 This was the same official whom Alexander Hamilton had described as a ―great and good man.‖ Moreover Necker was also a hero to the liberal intellectual French circle that was so much admired by and so hospitable to Jefferson.606 But many years later Jefferson typically adapted his words to please his correspondent of the moment, the famous Madame de Staël, Necker‘s daughter. In replying to one of her letters he went out of his way to praise her father.607

601 Nancy Randolph offer, last volume? E.g.Carrington complains [to N. Greene?]of "indifference, in duty" of public persons in VA. [Greene papers?] 9: 582 Richmd, 11/17/81 602 Hébergement offered to Short, Trumbull, the Swiss, Madison etc etc. 603 TJ from NG, Deep river Nc , 3/27/81: 471f. Papers of General Nathanael Greene: Richard K. Showman, ed.Chapel Hill: UNC Vol. 7 (1976-): 471f. 604 Review of N. Greene Papers 7-10 by Paul David Nelson. WMQ 3d series 58 (2001): 1017-1022. 1035 605 606 .Boyd, TJ on Necker’s mediocrity from France. See his deprecation of Necker in a letter to John Jay. Paris, June 17, 1789. Boyd 15: 190 In a letter to Lafayette, Alexander Hamilton congratulated the younger man on being ―combined‖ with the ―great and good‖ Necker. 607 TJ to Mme de Stael: admiration for Necker. In her works? 184

It was characteristic of Jefferson to belittle the abilities and impugn the motives of those not in his ―camp,‖ as we have noted in the case of John Adams. Washington, too, became his covert target. In his first years as Secretary of State he seems to have had confidence in his powers to influence his chief, but after he had been so often disappointed in this he expressed to Madison the hostile thought that only after the revered leader‘s death would progress be possible. During an interval in which he was out of office Jefferson‘s notorious ―Samsons in the field‖ letter to his Italian friend, Philip Mazzei, deprecated the general as one who had ―had his head shorn by the harlot England‖ further identifying the president as siding with the ―Anglican, monarchical aristocratical party.‖608 In cases in which potential rivalry to Jefferson was more intellectual and moral than political, Jefferson often took pains to avoid exposing himself. This seems to have been the case with Necker, from whom he kept his distance during the Paris years. Chinard [Rice?] was surprised that when Jefferson visited Strasbourg, a city completely unfamiliar to him, he avoided an encounter with a notable scientist for whom he had expressed admiration.609 The most notable intellectual of the era, Benjamin Franklin, was thirty-seven years Jefferson‘s senior. The two men first had businesslike contact in Philadelphia working on the strategy of declaring independence at the start of the revolutionary war. Later correspondence shows appropriate deference on Jefferson‘s part and cordiality on Franklin‘s (who in 1782, from Paris, wrote Jefferson of his hopes of once more enjoying ―your pleasing society and conversation.‖) When Jefferson finally arrived in Paris, in 1784, he found that Franklin was universally venerated by those social and intellectual leaders into whose society he was introduced, including the Marquis de Lafayette who hoped that Jefferson would extend his anticipated stay in France only ―in case our Respected Doctor Franklin is indulged in his wishes for retirement.‖ The popular Franklin‘s reputation as an advocate for the rights of man may have influenced the stance Jefferson assumed in Paris as an outright abolitionist, but even there he only dared to put such a sentiment on paper in a private letter to the concerned French journalist, Brissot.610 After his return to the United States to take up the post of Secretary of State in 1790, he was in no position officially to

608 Mazzei letter April 14, 1796. 609 . (NY 10/6/89. Syrett: 425.)X (?) [TJ in Strasbourg: Chinard or Howard Rice ? [Have used ―find‖ to no avail.]A notable exception to this pattern, of course, was Jefferson‘s long and intimate friendship with Madison, discussed below.[page?]

610BF to TJ citation; ditto Lafayette. Letter to Brissot endorsing abolition. In TJ Politics article. 185 profess any views on slavery. Madison‘s alarm, however, at the ―shamefully indecent‖ character of the debates in the house brought on by the abolitionist petition introduced there by the Quakers with the endorsement of Benjamin Franklin was expressed in a letter to Edmund Randolph on March 21, 1790. This was the very day that Jefferson arrived in the capital of Philadelphia. In the absence of letters between them, we can only speculate that Jefferson‘s condemnation of Franklin‘s provocative sponsorship may have been less conflicted than Madison‘s for whom, Mckitrick and Elkins believe, ―Franklin‘s life and doings…lay very deep in the awareness and conscience.‖611 In the sporadic, specific-purpose oriented correspondence between Jefferson and Franklin, however, until the latter‘s death in 1790, there is nothing to indicate that either man sought to draw upon the special intellectual resources of the other. In Jefferson‘s suspicions—even dread—of the motives and intentions of his political opponents there is much that hints at an underlying fear of damage to himself. Henry Adams thought, for example, that his feelings toward John Marshall—were ―akin to fear.‖ Jefferson seems to have directed some of the same feelings that he felt toward his mother toward John Marshall, whose mother, like his, claimed distinguished Randolph connections traceable to the English gentry. Ron Chernow observes the manner in which Jefferson deliberately presented himself as ―the spokesman for the common people,‖ donning casual clothes and a ―folksy air.‖ He cites Senator Maclay‘s impression of Jefferson‘s manners: he sat in a ―lounging manner,‖ and adopted a ―loose shackling air.‖612 Given this effort to project a populist persona it seems to signify a certain bitter envy that Jefferson himself found Marshall‘s "lax lounging manners" distasteful and derisorily claimed that it was Marshall‘s "English principles‖ that made him "popular in Richmond.‖613 For while Jefferson had little success in his effort to appear to be a man of the people, Marshall, notwithstanding his Federalist principles, was one of the most universally liked figures in Virginia. His humor and easy amiability charmed almost everyone and his casual self-presentation seemed genuine and endearing to most who encountered him. If Jefferson‘s preference for concealed manipulation, avoiding confrontation, can often be better accounted for by apprehensiveness than by deliberate choice of effective strategy, his expression of hostility in private correspondence was sometimes unconstrained. Here he was

611 Jmad to ER, March 21, 1790; PJM 13: 110; Elkins & Mck. 152; here Chernow‘s citation of BF‘s disapproval of TJ?] 612 Chernow, 311 part from Maclay, jrnl. 272. 613 ."613 To mad: 11/26/95. Ford TJ 7:38/ [Madison papers 6:134f]. 186 accustomed to attribute extreme motives to his opponents and endorse extreme measures to counter them. Although most of his public advocacy was for policies that avoided the use of violence, he could express the most violent solutions to friends. For example, during the height of the French Terror in 1794, now safely ensconced in bucolic Washington, he wished for the "triumph of France over its enemies‖ and rejoiced in the wrath of its people that would bring "kings nobles & priests to the scaffolds they have been so long deluging with human blood.‖614:".In the same year he admonished his former aide, Short, for reporting from France the horrors of Robespierre‘s regime, with the famous ―Adam and Eve‖ letter, wherein he declares his preference for the destruction of all but two of the human race over the sacrifice of republican ideals.615 While Jefferson invoked violence as appropriate to chastise others, his own career, like Madison‘s, was free of threats to his person in martial service. Yet in retrospect he would reconstruct his role to fit the pattern of the patriots who fought the Revolution, as in a letter to Short after the War of 1812 in which he suggested that he was habitually inclined to offer to fight, ―altho' the debility of age disable me from the services & the sufferings of the field.‖ At the same time, he suggested, he had sacrificed as much as those who had offered, and perhaps lost, their lives ―by the total annihilation in value of the produce which was to give me subsistence and independence‖—that is by the inflation and economic crash that followed the war and destroyed the few hopes Jefferson still had of avoiding total bankruptcy.616 While Jefferson generally avoided direct confrontation with potentially hostile political figures, with equal consistency, his words would evoke imagery of aggressive action in the name of ―manliness‖ or ―honor‖ in response to ―injuries‖ or ―insults‖ supposedly inflicted by others on oneself. Throughout his long association with Jefferson, Madison sometimes found it necessary to minimize the significance of Jefferson‘s extreme imagery, suggesting that these exaggerations were a minor eccentricity often seen in men of genius.617

614 [To Tench coxe, 5/1/94] 270n 615 TJ to Short, Adam & Eve letter 616 TJ to WS MOnticello, 11/28/14. [peace celebrated 4/13/15] [replies to short letter of 10/15/14] Short family correspondence Carrelldad. 617 Jmad‘s minimization of TJ‘s Ky resolution secessionism.[Koch, collaboration?]Jmad notes searched; Brant, Malone? Later, below? 187

Ben-Atar notes startling incidences of such evocations of violence in Jefferson‘s writing to less obscure correspondents. In one letter [to Madison?] he characterizes Britain as ―Satan.‖ and [in another?] claims ―that the rumor of war had delighted many Virginians because of ‗their ancient hatred of Great Britain.‘‖618 To Vice President Adams he ―implied that [Adams] shared his desire that there be an ‗ocean of fire between Britain and the United States.‘‖ In an outburst he asked, ―Can we trust [the British] not to make a separate peace?‖ and berated ―the faith of a nation of merchants!‖619 Jefferson‘s use of the word ―merchant‖ as invective reflects his lifelong aversion to ―money men‖ whom he alleged to be unproductive and parasitic on the the body politic. Unlike Washington, who had considerable experience with banking and commerce and whose father was actively engaged in manufacturing and marketing, Jefferson‘s idealization of agrarian virtue coincided with a naïve and uninformed view of business enterprise and finance. Although land- and slave-poor he never lost faith in the superiority of property in real estate and slaves. After the economic downturn of 1814 he wrote his millionaire friend and former protégé Short, "Your situation , my dear friend, is much better, for altho I do not know with certainty the nature of your investments, yet I presume they are not in banks, insurance cos. or any of those gossamer castles."620 During the 1819 panic he exulted at ―the destruction of our ‗gambling adventurers.‘‖621 Of the measures taken or endorsed by Jefferson during his presidency the most ill-fated was the which aimed to cut off all mercantile intercourse with the world outside the United States. American and British resistance to the embargo deepened ―Jefferson‘s hatred of England…and all merchants.‖622 Withal, on substantive policies, as contrasted with words, Jefferson usually avoided violence. Actually to have attempted to enforce the embargo would have required massive use of force, but Jefferson, continuing to make it ―a Cause…washed his hands of all the unpleasant details of carrying it out.‖623 Constructing the world to fit a self-image.

618 (Atar 172, 255, 619 Ibid, 167? 620 Carrelldad ref. above. 621 TJ‘s aversion to ―gamblers‖ 1819—article on economics? Dorfman? 622139? from pre- or suc-ceding?] Vengeful feelings from Elkins & McKK? c 161?171? [not there] The other quote from Ben Atar? 623 167 Ben Atar? 188

Erik Erikson sees the persistence, in Jefferson's life and writings, of an effort to create "façades," not only in his own dwellings and in structures representing himself—the Virginia statehouse, the Washington capitol, the University of Virginia‘s rotunda—but more generally in every form of self-presentation. Avowedly concerned with the task of self-invention, he worked carefully to create "the desired historical appearance," destroying the evidence when it did not "fit into the frame...he wished to immortalize."624 Erikson uses the word "narcissistic" to describe Jefferson, and qualifies, with respectful diffidence, that his was a narcissism used "artfully and competently" to answer the call for leadership--"to see himself mirrored in the imagery" of the people.625 Nowhere did the ―sage of Monticello‖ express this more clearly than in his confident admonition to a grandson: "My character ...is in the hands of my fellow-citizens at large, and will be consigned to honor or infamy by the verdict of the republican mass of our country, according to what themselves will have seen....Always show that you are not afraid to leave my character to the umpirage of public opinion.‖ 626 All his life, however, Jefferson labored to construct that public opinion to reflect an idealized view of himself. Most likely it was at Tuckahoe, where the small boy Jefferson was suddenly deposited, that he first learned the artful competence he later showed in "listening to the grass roots" and trimming his course accordingly. One may suppose that a sensitive, growing boy also became aware of a certain loss of autonomy suffered by his father, and a comparable diminution of his mother‘s status as resident ―poor relations‖ in the affluent household of the more senior branch of the Randolph family. Even if he did not feel that his father‘s powers to protect him had diminished, his father was frequently absent, leaving the son to adjust to a new childhood context that was filled with older, more powerful rivals.627 It was a sink-or-swim situation which he survived with notable skills. It seems to have been the prototype of the series of remarkable adjustments that Jefferson would deftly make in later years. First, as a very young student at William and Mary College he was quickly assimilated to a threesome of powerful and distinguished older adults, one of them the colonial governor of Virginia. Similarly, as a young, provincial delegate to the capital of the American

624 Erikson ―immortalize‖ [facades] 625 Erikson, Dimensions , 55-6. 626 To TJR 11/24/08. Randolph 274. 189 revolutionary leadership, he made his mark as a notable participant by demonstrating his remarkable literary skill. In pre-revolutionary Paris he readily revised and adapted his whole mode of constructing a "façade‖—in dress, in manners, in language—to become a respected contributor to the life of the world's most highly refined cultural elite. In doing so he even found it possible to appreciate the Roman Catholic forms that still colored the culture of that elite, rationalizing the religious demands of the convent in which his daughters were educated, seeking for himself the comforts and isolation offered by a monastic retreat in the Parisian suburbs, and falling in love with a talented, charming, and intelligent, conventionally pious Anglo-Italian Catholic woman. Yet Jefferson‘s repeated ―artful and competent‖ adjustments to new environments were not without cost. He gives a hint of his own initial feelings of helplessness and inferiority in such situations in his offer of sympathy to a French woman friend who has gone to America. Her "plight," as he tells her he knows from experience, is the "disagreeable aspect of new customs, the perplexities of a foreign language, the insulted state in which it places us in the midst of society and the embarrassment it occasions when speaking or spoken to.‖628 His sympathy was unwarranted. In fact, his correspondent, Madame de Brehan, was quite fluent in English before she left Europe and even wrote a goodbye note to Jefferson in that language. She was one of those who picked up the language very quickly as her companion and her later letters testify. It was Jefferson himself who had experienced helplessness and inferiority from his inability to achieve command over spoken French. Testifying to how artful and competent was his response to such "insult" and "embarrassment" is the strict rein we have seen him keeping on overt aggression, the successful disguises in which he clothed his rage. Erikson asks. "What [did] such a façade cost a man in pained concerns about loss of face, in some deviousness of self-defense under attack, and in loneliness?" "He...held his head high...at the price of incapacitating migraine.‖629 Debilitating, persistent headache, indeed, was Jefferson‘s repeated response to changes in his environment that seemed for a time to deprive him of the gratifying feedback that he longed to win.

627 PJ had done his surveying in "period of five years when the family lived at Tuckahoe and Tom was aging from 3- 8."9] ―Fry Map‖ pref by D. Malone, PUP 628 ." TJ to Madame de Brehan, Paris, May 9, 1788. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson , Julian P. Boyd, et al., eds. Vol 1--[26]. (Princeton: Princeton University, 1950--): 13:149-50. 629 Erikson, Dimensions , 54.)

190

Heinz Kohut has considered the effects on infants of severe disappointments from the nurturing figures on whom they depended to mirror themselves in infancy, and to set ideals toward which they might realistically strive. ―The vague dread of having again to suffer the old traumatic rejection from the side of an environment that will not respond empathically to the rekindled narcissistic needs of childhood‖ arouses tension and rage. The need to control rage may transform such disappointments into hypochondriacal fears. 630 Such is the dread and fear of illness that Jefferson sometimes experienced, along with headache, when he occasionally withdrew, temporarily, from the political fray after feeling threatened, rejected or abandoned. He often describes symptoms, or the struggle against symptoms of migraine and depression, that suggest unconscious resistance to acknowledging his own grandiose demands and his rage at the failure to have them met.631 Another characteristic defense of Jefferson, as has been noted, is to project his own rage onto others. It was habitual for him to describe as conscienceless, murderous, and covetous not only kings, queens and priests, but sometimes ordinary political or intellectual critics. "Those Virginians who opposed the opinions and political views of Mr. Jefferson seem to have been considered rather as rebellious subjects than legitimate enemies entitled to the rights of political war," complained John Marshall.632 For Jefferson, opposition to himself was dealt with by projection of the darkest aims—for authoritarian control, for dishonest gain, even for corruption of correct Christian doctrine—onto his political enemies and rivals. Henry Adams, again, perceives the mechanism at work in Jefferson's mind when he blackened the motives of opponents: "believing that Massachusetts and Connecticut were ruled by an oligarchy like the old Virginia tobacco-planters, with no deep hold on the people, he was bent upon attacking and overthrowing it." Of course, the tobacco-planting oligarchy of Virginia included Jefferson

630 Heinz Kohut, Self-Psychology and the Humanities (New York: Norton, 1985), 152.

631 . The relation of Jefferson's symptoms to rage is also discussed by Carren Linn-Downs, Thomas Jefferson: A Psychohistorical Perspective on Personality Structure, Patriarchal Ideology, and Paradox. Ph.D. disseration, Wright Institute, 1986.

632 . Quoted by Sloan, Principle , 226. 191 himself and by transferring, in his imagination, its sins onto the New England elite he also transferred to them the hostility of the masses they supposedly controlled. A like displacement appears, curiously, in two contrasting comments on Jews, the first often cited as an example of Jefferson's devotion to civil liberty. In the congressional debate on naturalization he supported the rights of Jews, as well as Catholics and other non-Protestants to citizenship, on the grounds that "All who have not full rights are secret enemies.‖633 The second, less known, suggests that the Jews have indeed gone over to the enemy: "Our New England associates....will ever be the minority, and they are marked, like the Jews, with such a perversity of character as to constitute... the... division of our parties." 634 Unlike Washington, Jefferson seems to have been rather worried about the Jews. While he was working on his biblical compendium, designed to set out his idea of the correct picture of Jesus of Nazareth, he compared the disloyalty of the Quakers to that of Jews and Jesuits: "Dispersed,...they still form, as those do, one nation, foreign to the land they live in."635 Jefferson's quest for leadership was ever built upon the notion that he understood, intuitively, the needs and wishes of "the people‖—or at least, the people who counted—and that they were the same as his own. As he had been able, so felicitously and accurately, to foresee and articulate the defiant stance of the colonists in 1776, so he was sure, almost as soon as he landed in France in 1785, that the masses there were oppressed and prone to revolution. After setting foot in England for a brief visit in 1786 he also became convinced that the unhappy English people were on the verge of throwing off the yoke of their oppressors. In 1793 he wrote his son-in-law with all the assurance of his position as Secretary of State that ―private letters‖ that he was receiving from abroad ―strengthen the idea of a civil war in England.‖636 In 1798 he saw the New England elite as grinding down the faces of subjects who would soon rebel. His apparent prescience, in the French case, was belied by the New England analogy, as it had been also by the belief he formed, on his first visit to Britain, that the English masses had reached the end of their patience. If those who openly opposed himself were anathematized, those from whom he took political nourishment--his supporters--were almost part of himself. As he learned to make of his

633 ].Notes on the back of the naturalization bill of 1779, in Boyd, Papers 1: 559n. 634Quoted from TJ to John Taylor, June 1, 1798, by H. Adams, History , 212. 635 TJ to Lafayette May 14, 1817. Chinard, Correspondence , 389.

192 intimate surroundings a reflection of his idea of himself as benevolent, fair and independent, so he came to create also the political circle that surrounded him, casting all ignoble aims onto opponents. The ―façade‖ that Jefferson repeatedly created not only protected his political posture; it also penetrated his self-presentation in personal affairs and colored many facets of the thinking that has given him, in later years, his reputation as a ―renaissance man.‖ Any of the many fields of his financial, intellectual and artistic interests could be turned to such a purpose. His professed preference for the study of mathematics and his constant calculations of all kinds of natural and social phenomena are here in point. Herbert Sloan was not the first to notice the self-serving function of many of Jefferson's calculations, In his account books he frequently makes errors of calculation in his own favor. See, for example, "a one hundred florin error in his own favor," in a payment to creditors on May 17, 1789. This and others are noted by Lucia C. Stanton and James Bear in Jefferson's memoranda.637 Sloan, however, was the first to identify the aim of these manipulations to reduce "every possible aspect of life to numbers," and to call this "an obsession in a clinical sense." Sloan points out that where numbers were concerned, money was usually the object of acquisition, raising "further issues" concerning Jefferson which, in psychoanalytic research, have been associated with the anal phase of development that Erikson conjectured was probably especially conflictual for the development of Jefferson's sense of independence. Jefferson's use of numbers to make his case "expressed his need to control the world around him. He let calculation create its own form of...a reality he could control," Sloan observes. Drawing on Fenichel and Freud, he surmises that this was "'compulsive systematizing performed not for the purpose of mastering reality but in order to deny certain aspects of it." Where his debts were concerned, "he was attempting to...move his relations with his creditors out of the sphere of ordinary legality and into one he created and controlled." Belief that he was "acting as a gentleman should...allowed him to indulge the feeling of martyrdom he cultivated in his thinking about his financial affairs.‖638 Of the many transactions that illustrated these points of Sloan‘s, a striking one is the picture of himself that Jefferson paints in applying for a loan of two thousand dollars to Van

636 To TMR,Jr. Phila 3/31/93. Boyd25:475. To be sure he predicted ―a very general war through Europe‖ as well.! 637 . I thank Ms. Stanton for permitting me to consult this important work. 193

Staphorst & Hubbard early in 1796, on the grounds that the money is needed to restore the productivity of his estate (―of which it is very susceptible‖) after ―an absence of ten years.‖ Actually, since his return from his five-year stay Europe at the end of 1789 he has regularly commuted between Albemarle and Philadelphia, and has been living at Monticello for fully two years since his withdrawal from the federal government at the end of 1793.639 In Jefferson's repeated announcements to his creditors that he was unable to meet the terms to which he had agreed, he disclaimed responsibility on the grounds that he could vouch only for things that depended on himself. "Creditors ...were to run all the risks; Jefferson took no responsibility," writes Sloan. At the end of his life, when he anticipated a lottery would come to his rescue, there was "something of wish fulfillment about the course he chose," as though "he could create a world to his liking...in which he would make the rules and determine the outcome. But always, when things failed...to turn out as he had...expected, there were others to whom the blame could be shifted ―640 Most strikingly, his resistance to the demands of his creditors often simply affirmed the priority of his own needs. One of the most shocking example of this form of resistance concerned his widowed sister whose finances he had managed, to his own advantage, since the death of her husband, Jefferson‘s good friend . After Carr‘s early death Martha Jefferson Carr had turned over her assets—Dabney had been a wealthy man—to her brother to invest for her and her children. Jefferson had acted as a mentor and somteime tutor to her two boys, who sometimes lived at Monticello. Apparently, however, he had paid interest to his sister on her fortune but had not invested all—or part—of it, instead treating it as his own capital and paying her the interest she presumably would have gained.641 Other monies entrusted to him by friends abroad to invest in American assets—Mazzei, William Short—were also frequently drawn upon by Jefferson for personal use. Some of these unauthorized loans were still liens on Jefferson‘s estate when he died.642 The renaissance man

638 Sloan, Principle , 58-59, 280n31. 639 TJ to Van Staphorst, 1796. 640 Ibid., 23-25. 641.Sloan on his rationale to Mary Carr; letter from her asking for Kitty dowry. MJ Carr to TJ 12/15/92; TJ to MJC 2/18/93. 642 Borrowing from Short on grounds just right amount for buying a quarter‘s worth of nail stock See Shiner Tjnotes. 194

While Sloan considers chiefly the functions of denial, wish fulfillment and projection served by Jefferson's financial behavior, the same set of motivations is discernible in many other fields of his diverse interests, personal and public. Various scholars have considered the motivation for Jefferson's scientific interests. I. B. Cohen, for example, cites Jefferson's interest in paleontology to refute the notion that his pursuit of scientific knowledge was exclusively motivated by practical aims.643 Usually, however, in Jefferson‘s mind, there was some point to be proved that excluded the admission of contrary evidence. His investigations of nature were often unsystematic.644 For example, his biological interests were concerned with proving the comparatively greater grandeur of American species, or musicality of American birds, or deliciousness of American fruits, and so forth. To support his denial that shell fossils discovered at elevated levels were actually evidence of former underwater life, he engaged in teleological reasoning and specious numerical proofs concerning earlier water levels.645 There was also an aspect of fantasy in his analysis of prehistoric animal bones.646 The evidence he brings to his contentions about differences between the races of men owes nothing to scientific inquiry, as Holly Brewer has concluded.647 Indeed all these observations are so anecdotal and impressionistic as to encourage the suspicion that Jefferson basically misunderstood the scientific method and was little interested in it. His interests lay in collecting and organizing materials, classifying, or cataloguing them. In this sense he was a true dilettante. He was capable of investing enormous time, energy and even money in these activities, certainly another and interesting aspect of his anal predilections ―Scientific‖ inquiries more closely related to his vital personal interests seem manifestly more self-serving. In his Notes on the State of Virginia, written in 1784, he presents an elaborately tortuous series of estimates of the Virginia slave and free population by a method

643 Bernard Cohen, Science and the Founding Fathers, Science in the Political Thought of Jefferson, Franklin, Adams and Madison , (New York: Norton), 1995, 288-9. 644 See, on this point, Boyd, "The Megalonyx, the Megatherium, and Thomas Jefferson's Lapse of Memory," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 102 (1958): 420-435

645 Schachner, Jefferson, 228. 646 Julian Boyd, "The Megalonyx, the Megatherium, and Thomas Jefferson's lapse of memory," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 102 (1958):420-453.

647 Holly Brewer, ―Review of Peter S. Onuf, Jefferson‘s Empire: the Language of American Nationhood,‖H SHEAR, H-Net Reviews, January, 2001. 195 which two modern demographers describe as ―confusing and apparently not very accurate.‖648 John Adams, who read and admired the work in 1787, had, as a teen-ager been charmed by . The Virginia planter, always interested in forming acolytes, had taken serious care to convince young Adams that the slaves of his state were generally treated very well by their owners and cited as evidence their greater proportional increase in population over the whites.649 Paul Finkelman remarks that Jefferson, the supposed scientist, could easily have established, by observation, the falsity of his ―absurdly unscientific‖ hypothesis that blacks had blood of a different color than whites.650 Unlike Washington, on whom he so often modeled his persona, curiosity does not seem to have been an important motive for Jefferson‘s inquiries. Mostly, when he seeks information in his correspondence, his aim is to amass reinforcement for ideas he has already formed. Nor was he, as Washington was, avidly in search of political news of the world for its own sake. His objective with almost all information was to make it useful for his own purposes. The motives for Jefferson‘s artistic interests follow the same pattern. The central role played by architecture and construction in giving Jefferson a sense of control over his most vital needs—for maternal supplies and masculine independence—has been discussed. But, just as his original desires had been thwarted, the range of Jefferson's thirst for acquisition of artifacts of all kinds was now limitless. Marie Kimball attributes Jefferson's omnivorousness to a contemporary American perspective that failed to distinguish between objects of curiosity—―collectibles‖ in today's terminology--and works of art.651 In fact, almost every object Jefferson admitted to admiring became an object for collection. His appreciation of objects of art, as also of objects of utility, depended on his ability to make them his own by incorporation or reproduction, or to imagine them as part of what belonged to him. Besides the anal component that Erikson and Sloan have already noted in Jefferson‘s patterns of thought, the ardor with which Jefferson sought supplies of all sorts--affective, material, political--from everyone and every thing around him, also suggests emotional roots in an earlier, oral stage, during which, I have guessed, he may have experienced severe disappointment and perhaps sudden deprivation of a nurturing figure. Such experience, as well as

648 Evarts Greene and ? Harrington, American Population before the Fede[ral ….?] (….1966 [1932] ): P ? 649 JQA Diary (3?)—meeting TJ & reading (1787) his Notes. 650 Finkelman, 109. 651 . Marie Kimball, "Thomas Jefferson's Monticello Collection," Antiques 59 (1951): 297-299. 196 the later experience to which Erikson refers, helps explain Jefferson‘s insatiable demands for supplies of all kinds and his evident defenses against acknowledging them. This was shown, where money was concerned, in his ―obsessive,‖ in Sloan‘s words, preoccupation with calculation of what was ―due‖ him, together with grandiose acts of generosity and professions of disinterest in personal aggrandizement. In seeking what he claimed was due him in additional compensation for his government service he wrote the auditor of the United States of his concern ―that his position 'not be mistaken for avarice.'"652 The arguments are: ―I am demanding no more than I am owed,‖ but ―I also deserve it because of special virtues and needs.‖ Both of these are shown in one of a series of accounts submitted to officers of the U. S. government requesting reimbursement for expenses incurred during his mission in France. The details and convoluted reasonings this very long letter contains are beyond any clear description, but the themes clearly emerge in a way that illustrates his complex defenses against his intense desire: He was forced to go into debt abroad (again, by $2000 dollars with Von Staphorst and Hubbard) because of inadequate provision by Congress for his quite justifiable expences (he cites the revered Benjamin Franklin in confirmation of the government‘s responsibility to pay for these); and now he finds himself ‖having no resource but my farms, which [were] not profitably managed in my absence.‖ Thus, the circumstances he has described ―left me loser, on the whole mission‖ and the ―consequence of the defalcation,‖ (presumably of the government, in not reimbursing him--an invidious term in this context), ―is to cut off exactly so much of a farm‖ (his life‘s blood, and that of all virtuous citizens). He concludes with his hope that ―my aversion for this,‖ (loss of a farm) ―will not be mistaken for avarice.‖ His overwhelming need to keep his farmlands intact is balanced by an equal aversion to being charged with greed, as a separate personal note to the U.S. auditor affirms by the words ―I beseech you‖ in asking to decide his case favorably on his own, and that if it must be put to Congress it be framed as a ―simple abstract question.‖ ―No man on earth has such mortal aversion as myself to be the subject of discussion.‖653 His denial of base or shameful motives was not only strategic; it preserved a picture of himself that was necessary to him.

652 Hochman, citing TJ to Harrison, 3/8,9, 96 (LC) 196f. 653 TJP , Monticello March 8 & 9, 1796. TJP 29, 13-25. 197

Fenichel's characterization of a certain type of "oral character" describes a pathological condition which is far from that of Thomas Jefferson. Nevertheless, for those familiar with Jefferson's correspondence and behavior, it seems exaggeratedly but uncannily apt, an inspired caricature of Jefferson's "slipperiness" in so many matters. It depicts a fixation at an infantile level "in which the sole demand is the satisfaction of their immediate needs...Dependent on external supplies...they have no really defined personality of their own but are what they believe others expect them to be. They change completely, depending upon the persons in the immediate situation.‖654 Such a desire to please his audience was frequently demonstrated by Jefferson‘s telling of ―tall stories‖ on matters of little importance. On one occasion in 1804 he claimed at a dinner party that he had experienced a six-weeks period in Paris when the thermometer had not risen above twenty degrees below zero Fahrenheit. The witness, John Quincy Adams, had become familiar with what he called Jefferson‘s ―itch for telling prodigies‖ since he had observed him in Paris twenty years before. He knew also that ―never since Mr. Jefferson existed‖ had the temperature in Paris been so low, and never in history so low for so long. Adams thought that the president ―knows better than all this.‖ He explained the fabrication with the comment, ―He loves to excite wonder.‖655 Clinically speaking, such persons ―seem to have nothing stable in their whole make-up...Their attitude is that it is easier to take the risk of being refused if one plays the part of someone else--a part that may be given up, if a rebuff follows,...lightly."656 The importance of this evanescence lies in the fact that Jefferson also demonstrated it on subjects of great political import. John Quincy Adams was astonished, at another dinner party in the same year, at Jefferson‘s ―waxing and waning opinions‖ on the French Revolution. On this occasion the president actually expressed his wish that the French would call back ―the Old Family‖ to lead them!657 For Jefferson, the urge to construct the outside world so that it supplied the ―feedback‖ he craved applied to the people that comprised that world. In Fenichel‘s depiction ―the other fellow

654 Fenichel, oral character quote below? 655 The Diary of John Quincy Adams, 1794-1845, American Diplomacy and Poliltical Social and Intellectual Life, from Washington to Polk. ed Allan Nevins. New York: Scribner‘s, 1951 656Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis , (New York: Norton, 1945) 509-10 657 The Diary of John Quincy Adams, 1794-1845, American Diplomacy and Poliltical Social and Intellectual Life, from Washington to Polk. ed Allan Nevins. New York: Scribner‘s, 1951, 28, 25.

198 ought to behave in such a way as to make the desired identification possible...ought to be what the person himself would like to be, so that he, by empathy, may participate again in his own ideal. The object has to behave so as to admit of the identification that the subject needs as a narcissistic supply. [Such] persons...try to influence the objects by force, by ingratiation, and by every magical means, not only directly to furnish the necessary supplies...but also to behave in a special manner corresponding to the subject's ideal.‖658 Such a need explains how Jefferson sometimes could go so wrong in his ―intuition‖ of the desires of others, particularly perhaps, where women were concerned, as in the cases of Anne Bingham, Madame de Brehan and Maria Cosway all of whom proved to be quite different persons than he imagined them to be.659 A complex narcissistic process is recognizable in Jefferson and in many others: The loved "myself" is projected onto another person. Such persons "then identify themselves with this person so as to enjoy the feeling of being loved by themselves. To achieve it, they need the objects to behave as their unconscious wish for identification desires them to."660 Both Binger and Erikson have noted the operation of this mechanism in Jefferson's romance with Maria Cosway, an attractive young married Anglo-Italian artist whom he first met in France in 1786. Binger uses the Jungian concept of anima to describe her as "a symbol...in which men see reflected their own unconscious femininity to which they are desperately attracted."661 Erikson says she was "a twin, indeed--whose presence evoked both a sense of wholeness and a rare quality of interplay."662 Heinz Kohut might say that she replaced a satisfactory mirroring function which, I have hypothesized, had been abruptly interrupted or damaged in his early childhood. The mechanism is detectable in a letter to Maria that he writes from the south of France in the year following their final separation[??]. He imagines her engaged in painting the Natural Bridge near his Virginia home, and "our own dear Monticello" itself, both properties that he owned. In this way he becomes the lady admiring himself in the most gratifying way--she is glorifying in art what belongs to, or is a part of him.663 A short time before he left France Jefferson himself describes his hunger for Maria‘s love and admiration in

658Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis , (New York: Norton, 1945) 509-10. IP7OF7RM66 659 Wrong ideas of Bingham, Brehan and Maria Cosway. Cite Shackelford on last. 660 Fenichel, Theory of the Neurosis , 511. 661 Well-tempered mind (Cosway an anima‖) 662 Binger, Well-tempered mind; Dimension , 58. 663 To Mme. de Tott, Marseilles, April 5, 1787. Boyd, Papers [where is this in text?] 11:251; To Maria Cosway, Paris, October 12, 1786, Randolph, Domestic Life , 88. 199 terms which seem to express its origins in infantile craving: "Wherever I am I feed on your friendship. I therefore need assurances of it in all times & places." 664 Jefferson‘s efforts to construct persons in the outside world in the image of his ideal self extended in many directions. There are his lists and study plans compiled for an admiring young prospective lawyer that have little resemblance to the course of study he himself had actually pursued as a lawyer.665 In France, he offered advice to La Fayette, already a national hero, on how to achieve political preeminence there. To William Short, a one-time protégé‚ who became a millionaire investor, he gave advice for financial success—a success which had entirely eluded him.666 To John Trumbull, the painter, whom he tried to lure as Short's successor, he prescribed how to acquire necessary experience in his art.667 To young Virginian men he set out prescriptions for economy and avoidance of temptation in their student years, prescriptions, some of which (at least) he himself had not followed. To a German philological scholar he claimed special knowledge of how to revise the grammar and orthography of German, a language he did not know.668 He advised his young brother, in detail, on how to rotate crops and become an efficient farmer, a skill he himself admitted to never having mastered.669 Above all, in letters to his young daughters he ordered a program to spend every hour of the day in edifying activity. In one of these he failed to allot any time for dinner.670 Fenichel describes a related behavior arising from this psychodynamic structure that is typical of Jefferson--the "magical gesture." We have seen a form of it in Jefferson's behavior toward his creditors: In casting himself as the disinterested Virginia gentleman, victim of the baser motives of others but ready to make any sacrifice for the sake of his honor, he "behaves as he wants the object to behave, impelled by the magical expectation that the sight of his gesture will force the object to imitate it."671

664 TJ to MC, 7/25/89, 116. 665 Frank L. Dewey, Thomas Jefferson , Lawyer , (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1987), 3-28. 666 Really ridiculous letter to Short—―If I were young again‖-- TJ to WS MOnticello, 11/28/14. [peace celebrated 4/13/15 copied more fully below. 667 Letter to J. Trumbull from Paris 668 Sowerby, Catalogue 5: 112-3. 669 ¯Thomas Jefferson and his Unknown Brother® ¯. Reprinted with additions by James A. Bear, Jr. Cville, UVA, 1981. [The author of this is listed as Mayo, ed. in valst--an error 670 TJ to Martha Jefferson, November 28, 1783. Edwin M. Betts and James A. Bear, Jr., eds., The Family Letters of Thomas Jefferson (Columbia: University of Missouri, 1966), 19-20. 671 Fenichel, Theory of the Neurosis, 511.

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For Jefferson, a distinctive type of "magical gesture" was expressed in extravagantly generous acts towards those whose love he craved—often with gifts of money or other objects— even when he was desperately, and, at last, hopelessly, in debt. As Fenichel puts it, such actions express "As I shower you with love, I want to be showered."672 Thus he instructs his eleven-year old daughter, ―Keep my letters and read them at times, that you may always have present in your mind those things which will endear you to me.‖673 Once his children are grown, he arranges for himself the schedule of letters from them that will give him the feedback he requires. He tells his son-in-law ‖I calculate thus: I will send my letters by the post of Wednesday always. They will arrive in Richmond in time for the Charlottesville post. You will receive them the Saturday, (11 days after they leave this place). If answered on Sunday, the Albemarle post will carry them to Richmond immediately and they will be here before the expiration of the three weeks from the date of mine.‖674 Over the years and into his old age his solicitation of love and consideration from his children and grandchildren took the form not only of the issuance of strictures and exhortations but also enticements and indulgences that sometimes have an air of unreality. In 1816, when Jefferson's financial situation, always difficult, was beginning to plummet, Ellen Wayles Randolph, a favorite granddaughter, wrote her mother from Washington, where she was visiting, that she hoped to make an excursion to Philadelphia. Even though Thomas Jefferson Randolph, Ellen's brother, had taken over management of Jefferson's embattled estate, Ellen tells her mother "I feel sure of Grandpapa's approbation. He wrote to me to say that the sale of his tobacco afforded him an opportunity for increasing my "moyens de jouissance." In reminiscing later, Ellen Coolidge generalizes: "Our grandfather seemed to read our hearts…to be our good genius, to wave the fairy wand, to brighten our young lives by his goodness and his gifts."675 Jefferson was often governed—on a grand national scale as well as on the personal and domestic scene—―by the striving to induce the object to do what they want him to do."676 Such unrealistic efforts to make the outside world behave in a way gratifying to himself seem to be in play when President Jefferson declares, "My hope of preserving peace for our country...[is

672 Fenichel, Theory of the Neuroses , 489. 673 Betts and Bear. TJ to Marth Jefferson, Nove. 28, 1783, p. 20. (Emphasis supplied.) 674 TJ to TM Randolph, Jr., Phila November 23, 1790. Boyd,18: 65. 675 Ellen W. Randolph to Martha J. Randolph, March, 1816. Edghill Randolph Corrrespondence, UVa; Randolph, Domestic Life , 345. 676 Fenichel, Theory of the Neurosis , 511. 201 founded] in the belief that a just and friendly conduct on our part will procure justice and friendship from others."677 What is remarkable is how often this sort of ―magical thinking‖ had the desired effect on its objects. Jefferson‘s expectations—even some that seem outrageously unrealistic—were often met with an almost ―magically‖ gratifying response. There is a considerable body of literature that considers the basis for the ability of particular narcissistic leaders in history to elicit the responses they desire from their audiences.678 In Jefferson‘s case, as in most of those in pre-mass communication settings, the influence of his personality was confined mostly to personal contacts, sometimes through his unprecedentedly prolific production of letters, sometimes through actual face-to-face encounters. We have already seen how his strong need for certain kinds of feedback from his environment combined with his exceptional sensitivity to certain kinds of stimuli from that environment to achieve the responses he wished for. His success in charming others into adopting his views or complying with his wishes is legendary. Legend, however, is an insufficient basis for estimating the response of others to Jefferson‘s personality. Manifestly, many were impervious to it and hostile to the man himself. In cases where Jefferson met failure through misjudgment, his strong bent for self-protection from injury generally led him immediately to withdraw interest from his object or to deprecate its value. Furthermore, in any attempt to estimate Jefferson‘s personal skills, the effect of his official status must be taken into account. While some have marveled at his ability to accumulate massive debt throughout his lifetime and postpone repayment over and over again, with acquiescence of most of his many creditors. His first contacts with French and Dutch banks were as minister to France on behalf of the frail new American confederacy. The Dutch firm of Van Staphorst handled accounts of the United States. In his own accounts, Stephen Hochman notes, Jefferson ―never separated personal from business property and expenses, nor kept more than single entry ledger.‖679 In view of the fact that he felt constantly that he had claims—for back salary and, especially, expenses—against the government that employed him, it is not surprising

677 Henry Adams, History, 1: 543-4. 678 Schiffer, Hitler, etc. 679 Steven Harold Hochman, Thomas Jefferson: A Personal Financial Biography. PHD diss., U. of Va., 1987.47-52 202 that his private account and the public one were also commingled in his mind. Similarly, after he returned to the United States Later, as Secretary of State and Vice President, his destiny for the Presidency was obvious to many, both at home and abroad. In 1796 the Van Staphorst bankers, probably aware of his rising star, were willing to give him a line of credit secured by second mortages on some 200 of his slaves, on the basis of whose value his frends had already lent him money. The leniency granted him by some of his creditors was not always without costs. Then, as now, some of these contributors to the welfare of this powerful public man expected quid pro quo in political favors.680 High political office is a powerful contributor to charm. This helps to explain also why his progress toward financial ruin accelerated rapidly after he left office for good. Less benign than his efforts to construct a personal and public world that was warm and sunny was Jefferson‘s frequent tendency to project base motives onto those who failed to cooperate in those efforts or who otherwise thwarted him, as we have seen in his extreme chacterization of political and personal enemies alike. Such objectives sometimes led Jefferson to the kind of dissimulation that gave him his reputation for Janus-like perfidy, as on an occasion when he strove to preserve his long-standing relations with John Adams. Jefferson was vitally interested both in maintaining the esteem of George Washington and in influencing him. In a letter to the first President he had denounced an essay written by Adams‘s under the pseudonym of ―Davila‖ as preaching the ―unconstitutional doctrines‖ of the ―Anglomen.‖ His propitiatory letter to Adams evaded the motives he had implicitly attributed to him in his letter to Washington and claimed always to have respected the ―purity‖ of his old friend‘s motives despite their differences in ideas of ―the best form of government,‖ omitting his indirect characterization to Washington of Adams‘s ideas as ―monarchical‖ and ―aristocratical.‖ Adams made an indignant reply that Jefferson had no basis for attributing to Adams any deficiency in republican ideals. Thus confronted, Jefferson responded, denying ―what he had already written to George Washington and others, that he did have Adams…in mind when he wrote the commendatory note [of Tom Paine‘s pamphlet, Rights of Man…], that questioned Adams‘s allegiance to those ideals.681

680 Haim ?? Baltimore? who expected return for his money. 681 TJ to GW, Phila. 5/8/91 GW Papers Presdtl Seriies 8: 163-4; TJ to Adams, 7/17/91; Adams to TJ , Braintree, 7/29/91, TJ to Adams, 8/30/91, Cappon 1:247-52; Philip Marsh-TJ/Jmad vacation 71n. 203

The complex operation of Jefferson‘s mentality in trying to resolve conflicting motives of conciliation and denunciation is well illustrated by narrating the fate of a letter he proposed, but did not send, to Adams upon his election as president in 1796. Jefferson, also a candidate for that office, came in second in the vote of the electoral college, qualifying only for the vice presidency, generally regarded as a useless office. It is almost certain that Jefferson felt disappointed, even rejected by the rebuff. The situation could also have revived memories of his childhood experience of being subordinated to an older Randolph boy. But after the votes had been cast, Jefferson drafted a letter to Adams, granting priority to the older man‘s greater age, and absolutely denying any ambition of his own to be president. He depicted himself as preferring to be surrounded by friends and neighbors "and fellow laborers of the earth," rather than enjoying the "sublime delights of riding in the storm" of politics. Adrienne Koch sees this letter as expressive of Jefferson's "quixotic desire for a life of political leadership and adventure without the soiling enmities and cruelties that invariably accompany it." She recognizes Jefferson's exalted state of mind in casting himself as shunning the sordid world of "spies and sycophants," as he put it. "In certain highly charged political situations Jefferson had a[n]...impractical tendency to resort to the 'higher' ground of the speculative thinker or the friend who is large enough to be above political animosities."682 After generously conceding the low ground to Adams, and expressing the hope that the new president will avoid the war threatening with France, Jefferson congratulates him as follows: "That your administration may be filled with glory and happiness...is the sincere wish of one...who retains still for you the solid esteem of the moments when we were working for our independence, and sentiments of respect and affectionate attachment."683 As a magical gesture casting himself in a superior and independent light, Jefferson's letter is self-serving. As a congratulatory message and appreciation of the fine qualities of one who had been Jefferson's sponsor at home, and his mentor and champion in Paris, it seems rather cool. Nevertheless, James Madison, to whom Jefferson gave the letter for comment, found it "ineligible" to be sent on. The reasons he gave for its suppression have

682 Adrienne Koch. Jefferson and Madison, The Great Collaboration (New York: Knopf, 1950), 168.

683 Lester J. Cappon, ed., The Adams Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and John and Abigail Adams , 2 vols. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1959) 1: 262-3. 204 interest not only on account of Jefferson‘s motives, but also for throwing light on the relationship between the two men. Madison advised Jefferson not to send such a letter to Adams with an explanation that was flattering to Jefferson's highmindedness, at the same time that it seemed to serve the older man‘s self-interest. Since it may be necessary for "the Republican quarter" to oppose Adams at some later date, Madison wrote his friend, "real embarrassments" may result from giving the new president written evidence "of the degree of compliment and confidence which your personal delicacy and friendship have suggested.‖684 The friendship and collaboration of Jefferson and Madison endured over nearly sixty years and have inspired much interest and speculation among scholars. Jefferson, at least, had no relationship of such confidence with any other person. Some of the psychodynamic elements that seem to have made it possible are evident in this interchange of letters. Madison understood Jefferson's need to appear to be above the political fray; at the same time he knew of his destructive intentions toward Adams—intentions that he himself shared. He was willing to play the "bad cop" who censored his friend's noble and delicate impulses for the sake of his future worldly success. Jefferson, in turn, relied upon his friend to cast him in a virtuous light. With Madison, apparently, he was free of the mistrust and caution that he usually exhibited toward independent political persons who were his intellectual equals. "Small...sensitive, reserved, in address simple and pleasing...rather thoughtful and benevolent than strong he was such a man as Jefferson, who so much disliked contentious and self-asserting manners, loved to keep by his side,'" wrote Henry Adams of James Madison‘s particular attraction for Jefferson.685 Adams omitted from his list of adjectives, the fact that Madison had also a decidedly feminine physical aspect may have enhanced his appeal.686 However, as Jefferson knew, Madison's benign and pleasing aspect concealed a shrewd political realism ready to rationalize any of Jefferson's aims that he thought likely to succeed--and to warn him, confidentially, of the imprudence of those he did not. Madison also had, as will be discussed later, an affinity for destructive or iconoclastic thoughts that made nothing sacred

684, James Madison to TJ, January 15, 1797. Writings of James Madison, ed. Gaillard Hunt (New York: Putnam's, 1906) 6: 302-5 685Adams, History , 1:129 686 Portrait by Chas. Wilson? Peale for Kitty Floyd—1783. Reprdcd by Boyd vol 5, p.3. 205 between them. In letters to Madison—and probably still more in private conversation with him— Jeffeerson did not hesitate to express such thoughts more freely than to anyone else: ―He even imagined war breaking out so that the Federalists could be destroyed and the union purified.‖687 Jefferson could confide in Madison his "ungenerous" thoughts on George Washington, whose dependable ally Madison had once been. Thus, in 1797, he predicted an event that might have applied equally to himself: "He will have his usual good fortune of reaping credit from the good acts of others, and leaving to them that of his errors."688 Sloan has shown how, in the early years under the constitution, Jefferson relied on Madison‘s political knowledge, intuition, and leadership. Again, in the second term of his presidency, two political insiders agreed that Jefferson, somewhat at sea in turbulent conflict, "has been in the habit of trusting almost implicitly" in Madison, who was observed to have "compleat ascendancy over him." Madison, not one for the ringing, grandiose declarations of principle that characterized Jefferson‘s eloquent style, was adept at legalistic rationalization that legitimized the contradictions in which the older man so often found himself enmeshed. This too created a complementarity that facilitated their collaboration. In private, Jefferson could reliably depend on Madison's reassurances when he expressed scruples on adoption of methods that seemed inconsistent with his theories of federalism. On the need for a constitutional amendment to legitimize the , for example, Madison, agreeing on the principle, had not the problem Jefferson felt in making its operation conditional, or suspending it altogether.689 He was ready to serve his friend by any means that would advance their linked political interests. In another way, too, Madison supplied a lack in Jefferson that was necessary to their common political success. Jefferson's inhibition on public speaking was such that during the debate over the Declaration of Independence Adams claimed never to have heard him "utter

687 Trees ―Private Correspondence: Cites Onuf, TJ‘s Empire for Liberty (as forthcoming) TO Madison??? 688 TJ to Madison, Monticello, January 3, 1797, T J to Madison, Monticello, January 3, 1797,Cited by Koch, Collaboration , 170. Sloan, Principle , 127-140. This fact is not discussed by Lee Wilkins, "Madison and Jefferson: The Making of a Friendship," Political Psychology 12 (1991): 593-608, a paper which contains numerous errors and is also inconsistent with most of the discussion that follows here.

689 . .úúRalph Ketcham, James Madison, A Biography (Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1990), 472, 422 206 three sentences together," even in his "weak and husky voice." Binger plausibly attributes this incapacity to guilt at aggressive feelings, an interpretation consistent with the notion that it was inspired also by fear of retaliation for expressing aggressive feelings.690 Whatever its source, Madison's readinesss to speak publicly, as well as to serve as journalistic advocate, supplied Jefferson's deficiency. Although Madison‘s style of speaking was sometimes ridiculed by hostile critics,691 he himself seems to have had no inhibition against public performance. Nor were most witnesses as harsh. One of these, who heard him on the floor of Congress, marveled at his mastery of information and statistics on trade laws, presented with an "eloquence which baffles everything I had ever heard."692 Another reported that if the power to persuade were the measure of eloquence, "Mr. Madison was the most eloquent man I ever heard."693 Thus, in Jefferson's interior world, his friend could be his safe repository of bad thoughts, and give him the reassurance and admiration he needed. In the dangerous outside world Madison could be his reliable emissary, his effective "mouthpiece." Soon after he ended his second term as President Jefferson pronounced the newly-elected Madison to be his protector against the angry feelings he felt directed toward himself: ―Our enemies may try their cajoleries with my successor‖ he declared. ―They will find him as immovable in his republican principles as him whom they have honored with their peculiar enmity."694 Thus he declared the younger man to be his alter ego. Jefferson and Women Irrelevant as the intimate relations of political actors may be to judging the effectiveness of public performance, they often are the best points of entry into the personality dynamics that influence that performance. In Jefferson‘s case, relationship with his children and grandchildren offer particularly interesting clues. Of all the people for whom Jefferson labored to ―construct‖ an image of himself that would serve his own needs, no effort was more prolonged, no ―façade‖ more successfully

690.Carl Binger, "Conflicts," 1098-1104. 691 Manasses Cutler ridiciuling JM‘s speech.??? 692 The Papers of James Madison , W. T. Hutchinson, R. A Rutland, et al, eds., (Chicago & Charlottesville: University of Chicago and University of Virginia, 1962-) 15:148-9 (January 14, 1794). 693 Louis C. Schaedler, 1946. "James Madison, Literary Craftsman," William and Mary Quarterly Series 3, 3(1946): 515-533. 694 (Jefferson, Republlic of Letters?. 1853,Mo, 5/28//09. V:450-51) s Louis C. Schaedler, 1946. "James Madison, Literary Craftsman," William and Mary Quarterly Series 3, 3(1946): 515-533. 207 constructed, than the one he presented to his elder daughter, Martha, who became, in 1790, the wife of Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr. In [Ellen Coolidge‘s] memoir of her mother she has Martha contrasting an ideal of her father in contrast with a somewhat imperfect mother: ‖My grandmother Jefferson had a vivacity of temper which might sometimes border on tartness,‖ Martha‘s daughter recollects.695?? Margaret Bayard Smith recalls seeing Martha and her father together late in his life, and marvels at the perfect, unspoken harmony between themOn his deathbed Jefferson acknowledged, in a letter to Martha, the importance of this relationship.696 In sketching this approach to the links between Jefferson's personality and his politics, a failure to discuss the influence of his adult heterosocial and heterosexual relationships might seem evasive. Space does not permit, however, a detailed examination of the very extensive evidence on his complex relationships with many women. Elsewhere I have suggested that Jefferson's incorporation of the political views of some of the highly politicized, French aristocratic women who included him in their circles in Paris for over five years represented the kind of sensitive adaptation to new milieus that he had learned through childhood experience and practiced, increasingly effectively, ever afterward.697 When he left France in 1789 he failed to take leave of most of those women who had been most hospitable to him. Some of them reproached him for his abandonment of them, and indeed it is as though, in this abrupt departure, he reversed earlier scenes of being abandoned by those who had nurtured him by actively abandoning them first. In his later correspondence with some of these women, during the French Revolution and afterwards, his denial of the horrors and hardships they endured and his obliviousness to their real personalities are so complete as to shock his preeminent Franco-American biographer, Gilbert Chinard.698

695 "My grandmother Jefferson had a vivacity of temper which might sometimes border on tartness‖ I think, ends with ―except when towards her husband—always respectful sweetness. from Tjntsa: Fawn cites Ellen Coolidge UVA ms 66 " for him...She was a very attractive person" 81; 505n where she has dot dot dot dot I have "shewed”

To John Harvie, 1/14/60. Boyd, 1: 3.

696 [Mrs. Smith’s description of Martha and TJ together].

697 Marvick, "Ladies of Paris." 698 Gilbert Chinard, Trois amitiés françaises de Jefferson (avec Madame de Bréhan, Madame de Tessé & Madame de Corny), (Paris, 1927), 100-135.

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During the five years that Jefferson often took on the coloration of the Parisian intellectual, male or female, his correspondence with Americans continued to celebrate the women who distanced themselves from the sordid workshops of commerce and politics, providing solace and refuge for their menfolk, themselves "too wise to wrinkle their foreheads with politics," but "contented to soothe and calm the minds of their husbands returning ruffled from political debate."699 This was the same ideal he set for his daughters, but it was far from describing the limits of their political orientations--a fact that is rarely acknowledged in his letters to them. The correspondence of both Martha Randolph and Maria Eppes regularly shows considerable attention to and sophisticated knowledge of political matters. Witnesses to conversations at Monticello confirm that Martha, at least, played a full part in political discussions when the company was mixed. Despite the regular arrival of new children, Martha regularly acted as his hostess in the White House. It seems certain that the "refuge" and "solace" with which she provided Jefferson for so many years included informed political conversation.700 The existence of a direct link of Jefferson's romance with Maria Cosway to his political attitudes and behavior has not been sustained by any scholar. Between her two visits to Paris, Jefferson's letters to her show, as we have seen, that he endowed her with the attributes of another, ideal self--one far removed from the political arena, unworldly and devoted to aesthetic values. In fact, after the death of her husband she showed her independence, traveling to Italy with a man to whom she was not married, and undertaking direction of a convent school devoted to educating disadvantaged girls.701 When Fawn Brodie undertook her own biography of the third American president she countered the picture of of a "cold and strange ideal figure" of Jefferson that she believed Dumas Malone and Merrill Peterson had accepted, with the image of a romantic and sensual, Jefferson who not only formed a deep, enduring and passionate, though secret, liaison with a slave girl twenty-five years his junior, but an attachment so powerful that it colored the tone of all his other modes of behavior, although in ways that Brodie did not make explicit. Malone and Peterson, she concluded, had portrayed Jefferson with an image that served their defenses against unconscious oedipal feelings: as an asexual being whose only serious romantic attachment had been to his

699 T.J. to Anne Bingham, May 11, 1788. Boyd, Papers 13: 152. 700 George Ticknor, in Merrill Peterson, ed., Visitors to Monticello , (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1989). 209 wife of eleven years, upon whose death all heterosexual interest--or at least activity--ended.702 Since Brodie's revival of the allegation that Sally Hemings was Jefferson's mistress for many years, and bore him several children--an allegation first published in 1802--every student of Jefferson's personality has found it necessary to weigh the evidence concerning his sexual life. As for the circumstantial evidence, Erik Erikson, again, summarizes well: "the available data oscillate between conveying something that seems possible to something even probable." More than twenty years of subsequent research has provided more details on Sally Heming‘s childbearing history and Jefferson's genetic inheritance and has strengthened the possibility that there was physical intimacy between them. Lucia C. Stanton, an authority on Monticello slave families, has been unable to rule out, on the basis of where Jefferson was when Sally Hemings's Monticello children were conceived, the possibility that he was the father of some or all of them.703 Milton Greenblatt has observed, as did Brodie and many others, that there were powerful psychological reasons for Jefferson's choice of Sally, based on the fact that she was the half sister of his dead wife, whom she may have evoked for Jefferson, through physical and other resemblances and associations.704 In Jefferson's early correspondence there is evidence that he also shared the "typical" Virginian cavalier's tolerant attitude toward sexual predation. Jack McLaughlin points to a notebook entry of Jefferson, after his rejection by an early love, that suggests he had no inhibitions against resorting to the prostitutes available in the Virginian capital of his day. In later years, when accused of a youthful attempt to seduce the wife of one of his best friends, his defense was based on the grounds that since he himself was not yet married, there was no harm in "offering love to a handsome woman." In his responses to young Virginian men who proposed to finish their educations in France he warns of the threat of whores, dangerous to the health. But the ready sexual availability of attractive women seems to have struck Jefferson very powerfully almost as soon as he arrived in Paris. Such sexual commerce, he wrote home is "difficult for

701 Shackelford on Maria C‘s later life. 702 Fawn Brodie, "Jefferson Biographers and the Psychology of Canonization," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 2 (1971): 155-71. 703 .Stanton (Personal communication on TJ‘s whereabouts, but better Stanton sources….Onuf?) 704 Milton Greenblatt, "Thomas Jefferson's Women," Psychohistory Review 19 (1991): 233-254. 210 young men to refuse...where beauty is a begging in every street." There is no obvious reason to suppose that he himself refused it.705 Nor is there reason to assume (although it may be so) that Jefferson had inhibitions against satisfying his sexual impulses through slave women--perhaps from time to time, perhaps regularly—nor against siring children by one or more to add to his stock.706 In the records of his farm for 1820, he subscribes to the axiom that a slave woman who gives birth to a child every two years is more profitable than a good male worker: "The labor of a breeding woman is no object. A child raised every two years is of more profit than the crop of the best laboring man." Here he makes the comparison as an argument for allowing slave women to take time off from field labor to produce and care for their own infants. He takes credit for the humanity of this argument with the Panglossian observation: "In this, as in all other cases, providence has made our interests and our duties coincide perfectly," 707 oblivious, apparently, to the fact that "our," in this context, means "my," and providence's universal benevolence remains unproved, absent the testimony of the women whose interests are directly involved. In Fawn Brodie's argument for the significance of Sally Hemings in Jefferson's orientation to the larger world, she considers his frequently expressed aversion to black-white miscegenation, based on his professed "scientific" belief that such intermingling threatened to degrade what he considered the superior race.708 Nevertheless Brodie thought that an inner conflict must have existed between Jefferson's hypothesized devotion to Sally Hemings and the political and social beliefs on slavery that he negotiated so carefully. Yet her contention is made doubtful by the fact that Jefferson himself has left no evidence, either of the devotion, or of the conflict. In view of what we know of him, and of the way in such things were regarded in his milieu, it is plausible that the relationship--if it existed--was as segregated from his political orientation as it was from the social life he lived in public. At the beginning of this study we pointed to the psychological task imposed on every developing Virginia planter. This was to reconcile the childhood experience of intimacy with and attachment to black slaves with the need, in maturity, to detach oneself from these affects that

705 McLaughlin, Jefferson and Monticello , 150-1; Dumas Malone, 1: appendix (on Walker affair); TJ to Charles Thomson, November 11, 1784. Boyd, Papers 7:519 . 706 A similar view is taken by Conor Cruise O'Brien, The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, 1785-1800 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 23 707 Betts, Jefferson's Farm Book , 43. The 708John Chester Miller, The Wolf by the Ears , Thomas Jefferson and Slavery (New York: Free Press, 1977), 142. 211 had been formed so early. For Jefferson, if our interpretation is correct, the intimacy had been suddenly ruptured, and the detachment worked through only with great difficulty and long suffering. The intensity of such conflict, when it is finally resolved, is to a great degree the measure of the level of detachment that is thus achieved. Since it was achieved to such a high degree by Jefferson, his capacity for denial of an affective bond between himself and slaves was probably more than equal to any conflict between impulse and ideology.709 Generations to come In the view taken here, Jefferson's powers of unconscious denial also operated consistently to separate his need for the love and admiration of women from the world of politics. On the other hand, his attachments to younger men were more central to his political ambitions throughout his long life. These included his two sons-in-law, and his grandsons, as well as nephews and cousins whom he recruited as protégés and disciples, and many other promising young gentlemen who were gratified to be "adopted" by this influential, charming, and intelligent man. The narcissistic function these "adoptions" played for Jefferson has already been alluded to. More significant for American history are the political and institutional forms in which Jefferson clothed his ambition to form future generations in his own, idealized image. Always ready to take on the task of mentoring the minds of young men, he dreamed of their succeeding him in the seats of power as a projection of himself into the future. One of the most durable and powerful of these projections was his ambition for William Short, a younger product of William and Mary Law School, and a distant relation. During his tenure in the Confederation legislature in Philadelphia he let Madison know that he wanted Short sent to Congress. Generalizing on the effects for future policy influence, he writes, ―I see the best effects produced by sending our young statesmen here. They see the affairs of the Confederacy from a high ground; they learn the importance of the union & befriend federal measures when they return.‖ As for Short, "His talents are great and his weight in our state must ere long become principal."710 Short followed Jefferson to Europe and for some time acted as his secretary in France. Yet he soon showed his independence of his mentor, embedding himself in a French family, rapidly learning the language, and forming liaisons with French women of the kind

709 Lucia C. Stanton, "'Those who Labor for My Happiness' Thomas Jefferson and his Slaves," in Peter Onuf, ed., Jeffersonian Legacies, (Charlottesville, University of Virginia, 1993), 147-180. 212

Jefferson worried, in the case of another young American man, ―might detain him disadvantageously here.‖711 Only after Short had formed a firm relationship of this kind, and expatriated himself to France for many years did Jefferson finally give up the idea that this particular protété might become a United States Senator from Virginia. However, the list is long of other younger men in whom he perceived talent and future ―principal‖ influence under his tutelage. Besides Madison it most notably included James Monroe and the Marquis de La Fayette (for France), as well as several of his own nephews and his son-in-law. As in the case of Madison, whose link to Jefferson was certainly the most important of such relationships, Jefferson usually tried to gather young men around him physically, offering to house and board them, or offering them land in his neighborhood at supposedly advantageous prices. Madison was one of those who resisted being drawn into Jefferson's household from the beginning, and settled in a different county at a "safe" distance. William Short, who consented to live for a while in Jefferson's Paris dwelling, soon moved out on his own, and steadfastly refused, despite pressure from Jefferson, to settle near Monticello after his return to the United States. Jefferson advanced money to some of these younger men, but more often he borrowed money from them, amounting sometimes to considerable sums over protracted periods. Either kind of link was a powerful, often an enduring, one. To Jefferson the dictum, "the earth belongs to the living," that seems to exalt the independence of the next generation, was a pressing incentive to control the outcome of that eventual transfer of power. It was not necessarily equalitarianism that motivated his opposition to primogeniture and entail; it is as likely that it was the obstacle these legal restrictions placed on his desire to shape the future. For example, he disapproved of entailing a property he destined for Frances Eppes, only surviving son of his younger daughter, on the grounds that it would lessen his own influence in the formation of the young man.712 The ambition to shape the minds of future generations was a lifelong concern of Jefferson‘s. Writing to Madison of his hopes eventually to give a new constitution to Virginia, Jefferson said, "What we have to do, I think, is...to keep alive the idea that the present one is but an ordinance, and to prepare the minds of the young men."713 He put this ambition into active

710 om, (TJ to Mad 2/20/84) Boyd, 7: 426. 711 TJ to Charles Thomson, 11/11/84. Boyd 7: 519. 712 Norma B. Cuthbert, "Poplar Forest," Huntington Library Quarterly 6 (May, 1943), 333-356. 713., TJ to Jmad December 8, 1784. Boyd 7:558 213 practice. While he feared letting his only published book, Notes on the State of Virginia, fall into the hands of the general public, he proposed to Madison that it be distributed free, without publicity, to the student body of young men at William and Mary, his Alma Mater. His creation, the new University of Virginia, was to cradle a future elite along lines he designed in detail. There he would house its youths in a cloistered, monastic setting, exposing them to literature selected by himself. Their professors too, (whom he helped choose), were to be quartered amongst the students they taught,in pavilions adjoining the student cells.714 The lengths to which he was willing to go in order to protect the conception he had of the ideal university are significant for understanding his motives. In order to defend it he adopted methods that were manifestly deceptive, and his objective was not only opposed to Washington‘s nation-building aims of creating a national university in the Federal City, but opposed to the educational interests of Virginia, which already had a state university, from which Jefferson‘s creation would necessarily draw off resources.715 To make more enduring the legacy of his ideal self to future generations, Jefferson turned, in later life, to autobiography, to memoirs, and to the editing of his correspondence. The form he wished to give his image was far above everyday politics: his epitaph takes credit for founding the University of Virginia and for writing the Declaration of Independence and the Virginian guarantee of freedom of religion. It mentions no public office that he held. This self description has been accepted by many at face value. Carl Binger, for example, concludes his monograph with Jefferson's first presidential inauguration, and follows it with an epilogue that reproduces the former president's epitaph. Jefferson‘s desire not to be known for his governmental role expresses his unwillingness to take responsibility for using the means of politics to achieve realistic day-to day ends. Max Weber contrasts the ―ethic of responsibility‖ with the ―ethic of ultimate ends.‖ Nothing better

714 Frederick Doveton Nichols and Ralph E. Griswold, Thomas Jefferson, Landscape Architect (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978), 148-163. 715 C. M. Harris, Washington‘s Gamble, L‘Enfant‘s Dream: Politics, Design, and the Founding of the National Capital,‖ WMQ 3d Series 56 (1999): 527-64. Also preface to Thornton letters, by idem, dadnts1.See GWnts on GW‘s nationalism.Interltns. GW angered at disregard for his authority, fired Hallet 556] In a ―characteristically personal way‖ GW ―put his hopes [in solidifying nation] in the physical world.‖ 564] ; Cameron Addis, Jefferson‘s Vision for Education, 1760-1845. New York: Peter Lang, 2003. Page? Article on Latrobe, GW, & WDC natl. monuments. In a letter to TJ of Wm. Thornton introducing Volney ―I have conversed with him on the Establishment of a National University in this place….he approves…(& also a philosophical society within it, as in France w a select committee.) Thornton to TJ, Georgetown, 5/22/96. 29: 110f. \ 214 expresses the ―irresponsible‖ advocacy of the ethic of ultimate ends than Jefferson‘s famous, much-condemned proclamation in his ―Adam and Eve‖ letter.716 Yet had Jefferson never turned his hand to office-holding and partisan politics it is doubtful that his reputation in any other of the fields that interested him, or in all of them together, would have won him more than a modestly notable place in American history. Politics was the only occupation that ever came near to giving him the income he thought he needed. As a farmer and as a lawyer—the two other professions he tried—he was a failure. For most of the years between 1769 (when he was 26) and 1809, when he retired from the presidency, he was salaried by one or another government agency, from the colonial regime of Virginia, to the revolutionary Virginia legislature, to the confederate national legislature, to the Federal government under the constitution of 1787. Even during his few years of temporary withdrawal—1794-1797—he ardently pursued compensation from the federal government that he thought was owed him, and politics claimed much of his time, thought, conversation and correspondence. It was his life's vocation. He certainly lived "off" politics, in the Weberian sense, even if he did not, as he so often insisted he did not, live "for" it. Jefferson played the role of skillful politician while at the same time denying the primacy of politics and professing to despise the political arena. He exhibited the spirit of noblesse oblige, implying that his political activity was gratuitous rather than obligatory—a freely given, generous gift rather than the responsibility of a citizen who enjoyed exceptional privileges.717 He exalted the ideal of the life of the mind of a cultivated country gentleman engaged in the autonomous vocation of farmer at the expense of the duty to serve fellow citizens through boring, difficult but necessary work for the common good. He deserves a good part of the credit for encouraging a now-prevalent American view that the occupation of politician is inherently corrupt and impure. Jefferson‘s notion that politics was ―low‖ is explicit in his unsent letter to John Adams, purporting to congratulate him on his electoral victory. It is implicit in the fantasy he spins of American women providing a chaste refuge and solace for their menfolk engaged in

716 Seeabove.. 717 Dumas Malone concedes that ―he was motivated from the first by the spirit of noblesse oblige.‖ He asserts this was accompanied by ―a tradition of responsibility,‖ but he cites no early writing that shows a feeling of obligation to this tradition in Jefferson. Malone, 1: 174-9.Max Weber‘s conception of honoratiores attributes to this type a feeling of duty to serve (gratuitously) by virtueof the privilege of one‘s status, a sense of duty in which, as we have seen, Jefferson seemed deficient.. [Weber honoraatiores citation?] 215 sordid politics.718 In fact, Jefferson‘s willingness to take the low road—albeit covertly—when his political advantage seemed to require it enraged his enemies while it explains his feeling that power tended to soil those who wielded it. The ambivalence that such an attitude engendered may also explain Jefferson‘s conflict over taking responsibility for the daily political tasks assigned to him long before he reached the pinnacle of authority. The governorship of Virginia, which he assumed in 1780, was the first post where the ―buck stopped‖ at Jefferson himself. We have seen at what pains he was to dissociate himself from the problems presented by the British invasion of his home territory. Condemning Jefferson‘s self-justification of what many considered an abandonment of ship on grounds that on such occasions a professional soldier would better defend the republic than a statesman, John Quincy Adams recalls that the episode ―brought imputations…upon [Jefferson‘s]… personal courage.‖ Adams implies that Jefferson‘s consciousness of his own lack of this quality caused him to minimize the heroism of others; thus he finds his "silence" on the the victory at Yorktown "expressive.‖719 Dumas Malone, for the most part a sympathetic biographer, noticed a pattern in Jefferson of "abdicating the responsibilities of his office,‖720 refusing, as President (against the advice of Gallatin & Madison) to point out a "precise & distinct course" to the legislature, seeming ―to have done all he could to avoid decision-making." Jefferson‘s explanation, that he did not wish to ―meddle‖ in measures "the execution of which will devolve on my successor" was also one that he had given to explain his unannounced withdrawal from responsibility at the end of his term as governor. It was a pattern of self-protection through avoidance of possible rebuffs or retaliation. An interpretation of such a mechanism suggests that such a ―vague dread‖ is one of ―having again to suffer the old traumatic rejection from the side of an environment that will not respond empathically to needs that originated in childhood."721

718 T.J. to Anne Bingham. May 11, 1788. Boyd, 13: 152. depictiohis fantasized portrait of the distinguished Philadelphia social leader, Anne Bingham

719 1/4/01: Memoirs of John Quincy Adams. 12 vols. Phila ???-1877. 8:292. 8:294f] 720 D. Malone quote from governorship? [charge of J. Q. Adams in Life of,377 and History 4: 354-60] in Nov. dec. 1808; " 621-41 721 the vague dread of having again to suffer the old traumatic rejection from the side of an environment that will not respond empathically to the rekindled narcissistic needs of childhood."Heinz Kohut, Self-Psychology and the Humanities (New York: Norton, 1985), 152. 216

When Jefferson actually held the reins of power the record he laid down was a curious vascillation between the strong ―boring of hard boards‖—that is, the use of coercive methods including violence—and the proclamation of high ideals. What is lacking is attention to the immediate or short-run effects of either of those means on the people who would experience them, and the assumption of responsibility for these effects. It was not habitual for Jefferson to evaluate the consequences in human misery of state policies. Strikingly, as Finkelman notes, his arguments against slavery in his early career are entirely lacking in empathy for the plight of slaves. They are focused instead on the moral effects of slavery on whites.722Even Boyd, found it rather odd that Lafayette‘s suggestions for getting bread to the starving French in the early stage of the revolution seemed to be brushed off—for lack of interest—by Jefferson.723 Jefferson‘s arguments for policies that fell heavily on certain groups of people in impairing their ability to buy or earn the means necessary for a livelihood—notably the embargo on commerce with Europe—were habitually justified by long-run ideational objectives—not in terms of balancing sacrifices against future gratifications to actual human beings.724 Despite all his efforts to depict his highest achievements as cultural triumphs, Jefferson's place in history lies in his role as a tremendously talented professional American politician of great and lasting influence—not only in his own country but among aspiring democrats in many parts of the world. So magnetic has been his performance of that role that in every later generation recruits have been found to march under the banner of "Jeffersonian democracy." Moreover, "Mr. Jefferson's academical village" survives and the image of Mr. Jefferson, as shaped by himself, is very much alive in it, although neither students nor teachers are any longer willing to follow the living and learning arrangements he made for them. Even Monticello has been restored, and become part of the growth industry that is Jeffersonian scholarship, attracting recruits from near and far. These long-term accomplishments are unique among the legacies of American presidents. They would surely have gratified Jefferson's deepest ambition.

722 Finkelman, 152-3. 723 Boyd‘s comment on TJ‘s legalistic rsponse to Laf‘s inquiry about bread. 724 217

Chapter 5: Madison: “A Peculiarly artificial and complicated Character”? 725

The first two Virginian presidents were tall, strong, impressive figures, endowed by mass followings with charismatic attributes. They had varied ―lives‖ beyond those of political leader and Virginia planter. George Washington was a surveyor, an athlete and a professional soldier; Thomas Jefferson a lawyer and diplomat who possessed an eloquent literary style. Both had reputations for romantic attachments and sexual liaisons. They gave the impression, to observers of their time and ours, of being men of action. Madison, by contrast, was a small, bookish man, shy in large gatherings, wary of women, prone to debilitating ailments, considered fragile by his friends. Aside from his obligatory role as planter his sole occupation was as politician. Hence, of the first three Virginian presidents, only Madison exemplifies the type of ―modern‖ politician who lives ―for,‖ as well as ―off‖ politics. In contrast with his two Virginian predecessors, who often bemoaned the onerous demands that forced them to stay active in politics and expressed their longing to retire to their country homes, Madison seems a thoroughly political man. Early in his life, as William Lee Miller writes, Madison ―became committed to politics and never looked back, for a sixty-year career.‖726 Such a career bespeaks powerful ambition. Yet even in the Old Dominion of the eighteenth century, where few questioned the entitlement of ―gentlemen freeholders‖ to monopolize the political elite, the consistent path to national power that James Madison was able to pursue so successfully seems to need special explanations. One of those explanations is that he hitched his ―wagon‖ to stars, notably, the two more glamorous Virginian presidents who preceded him, and rose to power on their coattails. They provided him with a pathway to power that he could not have followed on his own. In exchange, he gave each of them the particular kind of support that was needed. It is also noteworthy that he renounced the political guidance of each, once it had served his political ambition. The Political Man: An overview of Madison‟s career. From the perspective of many, Madison, more than any other founder, was considered the intellectual generator of the new republic. Yet the lifelong thrust of his political itinerary is less consistent than that of the first

725 —Alexander Hamilton to Edward Carrington. Hamilton 11: 432

726 William Lee Miller, The Business of May Next, James Madison anad the Founding. Charlottesville: Universityi Press of Virginia, 1992, 9. 218 two of our Virginian leaders. Less a straight arrow than Washington who never wavered from his pragmatic, principled nationalism, less a Janus than Jefferson, who was more successful at expressing simultaneously views of opposite import to two different audiences, Madison‘s decisions on policy undulated, through time, between two poles. In 1787 he took a firm stance in support of the most extreme nationalistic position: he held that the Constitution would fail if the national legislature had no veto on state laws.727 His overall proposals for the new government generally reproduced the British system, diminishing the independence of state governments as much as seemed politically possible. Moreover, his fears of a tyrannical majority left him with few objections to enhancing the power of a single executive. He was opposed, in the constitutional convention, to the imposition of term limits on the presidency.728 He favored a strong and independent Federal judiciary and a national legislature with extensive powers to further the ―general welfare,‖ powers virtually unrestricted in the case of the spending power. As Madison‘s most thorough biographer notes, ―The Supreme Court‘s [later]interpretation of [these powers was] ….squarely in line with the history of a provision whose true paternity runs back to Madison himself.‖729 By the end of the century he had reeled to the opposite extreme, adopting a doctrine that seemed to justify the right of states to nullify federal legislation.730 Favoring in his early years a vigorous federal public works policy to encourage commerce and safeguard national unity, he ended his administration as President with an almost inexplicable veto of what Gutzman calls the "most promising plan for recementing the Union,‖ a bill sponsored by John C. Calhoun to underwrite with federal funds the construction of roads and canals, the Bonus Bill of 1817.731 Yet still later, now in retirement, in a tortuous, perhaps intentionally ambiguous letter to Thomas Ritchie,he does not revert to his earlier point of view at the Constitutional convention that had interpreted liberally the powers of the national government to legislate for the general welfare, but instead suggests that he accepts an interpretation of enumerated powers to support the national development of roads and canals, and opposes a Virginia protest of such interpretation

727 Jmad to TJ 9/6/87 10:163f] 728 "Notes of Major Wm Pierce on the Fedl Convention of 1787," AHR 3 (1898)310-334. 729 Brant 3:139] 730 Madison disputed this characterization. His complex (and varying) argument hinged on ambiguities raised by the term ―states‖ and denied the appropriateness of the use of the term ―nullify.‖ 731 The Bonus Bill of 1817 was introduced by John C. Calhoun. [Gutzman?, 570 219 which ―would, in the present state of Public Opinion, end in a riveting decision against Virginia.‖732 Madison‘s record on the advisability and constitutionality of a national bank shows a similar vascillation. While apparently not objecting in 1790, by 1791 he took a firm stand against the power of the central government to establish such an institution.733 Keen scrutiny of Madison‘s inconsistencies prompted Abigail Adams to doubt his wisdom, writing, ―It is difficult for the world in general to discern why a wise man or rather why so learned a man can take up such opinions as he does.‖734 Since these oscillations in policy baffled many of his friends, admirers and partisans of the early years, it is not surprising that the dynamic patterns of Madison‘s personality are also harder to penetrate. Alexander Hamilton‘s changing views of Madison exemplified the range of judgments expressed over time by some who perceived ambiguities in ―little Jemmy‘s‖ character. At one time, Hamilton wrote, he had attributed "candour...simplicity and fairness" to his collaborator in propounding the Constitution of 1787. By October, 1789, however, Hamilton agreed with a British agent with whom he was on confidential terms that it was surprising to find Madison amongst those in the new Congress who were ―so decidedly hostile to us.‖ John Beckwith complained of Madison, who had sponsored discriminatory trade measures against Britain, that the ―character of good sense‖ he had supposed him to have ―led to expect a very different conduct.‖ .‖ Hamilton, however, still thought Madison ―uncorrupted and incorruptible‖ and was still persuaded that he ―shares my aims.‖ He attributes his apparent deviation to a personal characteristic that is relatively innocuous: ―The truth is,‖ he wrote, ―that although [Madison] is a clever man, he is very little acquainted with the world.‖735 Hamilton‘s original estimation of Madison was received opinion among many in the early years of his career: he was highly honorable, but unworldly. Jefferson defined the consensus on his friend‘s spotless character: in a letter to Benjamin Rush he reported that Dr. Witherspoon had told him of his former pupil, Madison, "that during the whole time he was

732 Republic of letters; Madison to TJ Montp. 12/28/25 (with enclosure to Thomas Ritchie of Dec. 18, 1825) 1947- 1951. 733 Marvin Meyers, ed., The Mind of the Founder (1973) p.? 734Quoted in Margaret C. S. Christman, The First Federal Congress, 1789-1791. Washington D. C.: Smithsonian Instituion Press, 1989, 209. 735 ,‖ Ketcham 305‘ Syrett 5:482-8.[485?] 220 under his tuition he never knew him to do nor to say an improper thing.‖736 While Philip Mazzei described Madison to John Adams as ―One of the most noble, most sensible, and virtuous men on the Globe‖ he echoed Hamilton‘s attribution of unworldliness: urging Jefferson to run for a third term in 1807 he thought back on the Madison he had last seen in 1785. He wrote the president, ―Talent and virtue are not enough in the present crisis. A wide experience in world affairs and a knowlege of human psychology are required. Madison, who is first-rate as far as the first two qualities are concerned, is but an innocent babe as regards the latter.‖737 Such views of Madison give an idea of how his personality affected those who had learned, like Hamilton, to appreciate him in a working context: they concluded that although he was highly intelligent and hard-working, he was ingenuous, and his occasionally wrong-headed opinions were due to naiveté. By 1792, however, Hamilton‘s misgivings about his former collaborator had taken a different shape. He had reached the "opinion‖ that Madison‘s character ―is one of a peculiarly artifical and complicated kind.‖738 In 1789, he recalls, he had begun to be puzzled. Having attributed the "same point of departure" to Madison‘s politics as his own, he began to perceive that the Virginian had a ―strange mode of attaining‖ the ends they presumably shared. Three years after Hamilton‘s first ―surprise‖, he is no longer convinced that Madison‘s character is either simple or benign. In a long and careful letter to the influential Virginian, Edward Carrington, he outlines the causes of his dismay. At first, he reports, he had good reason to believe that his and Madison‘s views coincided entirely. He cites a congressional address of 1783, written by Madison for a committee on which Hamilton also served, that decried discriminatory compensation of various creditors of the government, to contrast with the view that Madison would hold in early 1790. Hamilton tells Carrington that he can no longer attribute Madison's "uniform & persevering opposition" to himself by "a sincere difference of opinion." In short, he has come to believe that self-interest, or something still more sinister, rather than principle is guiding his colleague. With Madison‘s increasing hostility to every federalist policy,

736 (9/5/85: Boyd 7: 124n.), "Rush letters, 850 vants592.don]

737 PM to TJ, June 22, 1807. "Unpublished letters to Jefferson: ed. by Howard R. Marraro. WMQ, 3d series, II: 91f. 738 (Hamilton 11: 432] 221

Hamilton has begun to consider his former collaborator‘s personality and aims in a different light.739 Critical to Hamilton‘s revised judgment was his growing perception that Madison‘s relationship with Washington was changing. Washington‘s early confidence in the goodwill toward himself of the young Virginian is shown in 1786 when he was agonizing about whether he should agree to be a delegate to the Philadelphia convention. On learning that he had been invited, he told his intimate friend, Humphreys, ―"I immediately wrote to my particular friend Mr. Madison" to ask for advice on ―what had I best do?"740 In 1789, in the first session of the first congress, the frequency with which the president consulted Madison, who held an influential role in the lower house, has led some historians to regard the younger man as a sort of prime minister.741 A cursory reading of the correspondence between the two during that peeriod, however, suggests that Washington sought Madison‘s advice and assistance more on questions of procedure and public relations than on policy. And at first neither the President nor Hamilton had any inkling that the congressman‘s position on basic issues might differ from theirs. Toward the end of the session Madison took an impassioned stand in favor of discrimination against Great Britain in tonnage shipments allowed and tariffs imposed on imports, painting ―a cheerful picture, based more on desire than fact, of the prospects of Franco-American commerce‖ should the measure pass.742 The Senate prevented inclusion of the discriminatory clauses in the final acts. In a conversation with a British emissary, George Beckwith, Hamilton expressed his surprise that Madison had led a group in Congress that had comprised the ―only opposition to General Washington.‖743 Elkins and Mckitrick, noting that Hamilton was here presuming to speak for his chief, call this a ―stretch‖ and even a ―projection‖ of his own views on to Washington. It is notable that Washington was circumspect in his correspondence on this issue. His allusions to the subject in a letter to a Virginia friend are (perhaps purposely) ambiguous. Yet the president may well have been franker in stating his preference to his new treasury secretary, whose views, so far as can be told, coincided with those

739 AH to Carrington. 740 GW to DH, MV 12/26/86 Fitzp 29:127 741 Leibiger, JM prime minister 742 Elkins & McKitrick , 153 . note the uncertainty concerning the process in the Senate that resulted in the defeat of Madison‘s amendments. See Stuart to GW, and GW to Stuart, July 1789.. / AH on interview with George Beckwith became Sec. 9/11/89. 222 of his chief. Later developments would make even clearer a much greater coincidence of Washington‘s opeinions with Hamilton‘s than with Madison‘s. For more than a week after the adjournment of Congress in September, 1789, Madison lingered in New York hoping for the arrival of Thomas Jefferson from France. Hamilton, in his new official capacity, wrote a courteous note to Madison asking his opinion on ―What further taxes will be least unpopular?‖ Chernow sees Madison‘s response to the inquiry as the ―first preview of a fateful schism between them.‖ By his reply Madison made clear that his interest was in putting the public debt ―in a manifest course of extinguishment,‖ avoiding the dangers of attracting foreign investment—a view with which Hamilton had little sympathy.744 Early in 1790, when Congress had reconvened, Manasseh Cutler, a member of the House, wrote to a friend of the puzzling position Madison had taken on the subject of redeeming the national debt: In Congress, Cutler wrote, "most of last week was taken up with a very unexpected motion‖—we may interpolate, ―wildly impractical‖—from Madison, ―for making a discrimination between original holders and purchasers of securities. A motion of this kind from a member of less consequence...would have been smiled at, but his character gave it importance."745 This time Washington overrules his usual circumspection in pronouncing judgments on policy. Madison‘s promotion of discrimination in redemption of the national debt, he writes Stuart, though ―actuated, I am persuaded, by the purest motives & most heartfelt conviction‖ opened a subject that was ―delicate, and perhaps had better not have been stirred.‖746 This coincided entirely with Hamilton‘s view. By now Thomas Jefferson had returned from France, accepted the Secretaryship of State, and been united with Madison. From this point forward the two friends were in intimate collaboration on matters of policy. It is difficult to identify the beginnings and the progress of Washington‘s estrangement from the two of them. One reason for this is the rigor with which the president imposed restraint on his own self-expression. He made a practice of wide consultation within his cabinet, for example, usually inviting input for any decision from any member who might be concerned. Often he extended his consultations to Madison, either in writing or in person. On matters of domestic policy, however, he usually took Hamilton‘s advice over that of Madison and Jefferson when the two views diverged, as they increasingly did.

744 Chernow quote: first indication of split. AH to JM 10/12/89 JMP12: 435; Jmad to AH11/19/89. Ibid. 449-451. 745 to Rev. Oliver Everett, NY, 2/24/90:Manasseh Cutler, 1: 458 (?) 746 Twohig 5:287. 3/28/90 223

It is doubtful that Washington was often equally open to both sides in the competition. It is not clear how seriously he actually considered the Jefferson-Madison view when it conflicted with Hamilton‘s. Washington gave Jefferson and Madison the impression that he was manipulable on policy, possibly because his apparent open-mindedness belied the clear conception of the public interest that his private correspondence reveals. Hamilton cites an occasion on which he believes Madison misrepresented issues to Washington in order to manipulate him into opposing Hamilton‘s plans on national coinage by reversing clauses establishing values "without his being aware of the tendency." According to Hamilton, when he called Washington‘s attention to the effect of the changed wording, the general ―declared...he had no such intention" and reversed his acquiescence in Madison‘s version.747 Leibiger says of Madison‘s perception of Washington, ―He did not fully understand so impenetrable an individual….. In many respects [he]…came to know the public image that was carefully projected rather than the true man.‖748 Rather than concluding that the President had a strong, well-reasoned, long-standing predisposition to federal policies that minimized particularistic state influence and strengthened commercial financial and industrial interests, both Jefferson and Madison were more likely to attribute the Washington decisions they disliked to sinister influences—especially Hamilton‘s—on a guileless man. Madison obliquely derogated the general, believing him naively subject to ―snares‖ laid by Hamilton.749 It was typical of his lack of understanding of Washington‘s complexity that Madison depicted him as accepting of conventional forms of Episcopal church observances and speculated that he had given little thought to religious issues.750 A possible effect of the change in Madison‘s perspectives after Jefferson took up his post in early 1790, is that Madison seems to have been less frequently consulted by Washington than in the preceding year. Comparing the number of written messages—fourteen—from the president to the younger man in the fourteen months preceding Jefferson‘s advent with that within the same time span succeeding January 20, 1790—four—we may have a rough measure of a decline in Washington‘s feeling that there was utility in seeking Madison‘s views. This decline was not antedated by many days by the precursor of the ―fateful schism‖ between

747Carrington letter 1792, Syrett, 11:43 748 .‖ Leibiger 16. 749 (Rakove in re TJ/Jmad correspdce 109] 750 , Bolling, Paul F., Jr. George Washington & Religion. SMU press, Dallas, 1963, 89. 224

Hamilton and Madison that Chernow placed in October, 1789. It is considerably earlier than the signs of estrangement between Washington and Madison that Leibiger first sees in 1792.751 Jefferson‘s return to the United States and his assumption, in 1790, of the office of Secretary of State marked to outsiders what more than one saw as the ―seduction‖ of James Madison. The word was used by Hamilton in 1792 as he looked back on the events that had marked the estrangement between himself and the co-author of the Federalist. Hamilton had known of the prodigious correspondence between the two Virginians during Jefferson‘s sojourn in France, and knew also that Madison had ―always entertained an exalted opinion of the talents, knowledge and virtues of [Jefferson].‖ The ―close intimacy‖ that he saw arising after Jefferson‘s return, he thought, might be owed to Madison‘s having been "seduced by the expectation of popularity and possibly by the calculation of advantage to the state of Vi[rgini]a." Writing in 1792 Hamilton is already certain that Jefferson "aims with ardent desire at the Presidential Chair."752 The issues on which Madison came into conflict with Hamilton after Jefferson‘s reentry were central to government policy. The treasury secretary declared than he had accepted his own appointment fully persuaded of the identity of his views with Madison‘s.753 As time passed, however, positions taken by the Virginian in Congress and in private gatherings filled him with horror and led him to believe that Madison was devious and underhanded. For example, he had heard a report that Madison had expressed sympathy, in private conversation, with a speech in the House by J.F. Mercer of Maryland denying the legislature‘s right to fund the debt on the grounds that "Nature has given the earth to the living" and hence could not commit future generations to financial commitments. The argument that shocked Hamilton was that the contracts already entered into by the government were unlawful; thus ―what has been unlawfully done may be undone."754 Hamilton‘s shock is understandable. This idea had been tried out on Madison in a letter from Jefferson only ?? years before. In his reply Madison had pointed out to Jefferson the many reasons that stable government could not be based on such a notion. Hamilton probably did not know of this exchange, but he knew of the views—identical with his own—that Madison had

751 On Chernow, see above, p. . Leibiger date of estrangement….? 752 AH to Carringtn Syrett PHila. 5/26/92.(426-445) 753. Idem. 754 3/30/92 Hampapers 11:436n 225 held when they labored together to formulate the principles that would sell the constitution to New Yorkers. Yet here was Madison undermining the most basic assumptions of constitutional government. Hamilton himself could have been the author of the anonymous letter to George Washington warning him of the viper in his bosom—Jefferson—who was ―endeavouring to sting you to death ‖ with the assistance of his ―cunning little friend,‖ Madison.755 The radical reversal of Madison‘s position that Hamilton deplored in 1792 was only one of the first of the many tergiversations that Madison would navigate in his long political career. One historian puts a benign interpretation on these oscillations: ―Madison‘s greatest achievements were in reconciling the apparently unreconcilable.‖756 Before exploring the development and dynamics of Madison‘s personality it is important to point to some issues on which Madison never vascillated. For example, his belief in the effectiveness of coercive commercial edicts never wavered despite their repeated failures to control trade. Fisher Ames of Massachusetts, considered a ―responsible‖ Federalist, thought Jefferson less intractable on such policies than Madison. When the electoral college vote was tied between Aaron Burr and Jefferson in 1800, Ames favored negotiating with the latter to extract promises that he would pursue responsible policies if elected—including eschewing ―Madison‘s empiricism [wrongheaded,unsound principles] in regard to trade & navy.‖757 These principles seemed to arise partly out of Madison‘s steadfast hostility to Great Britain and mistrust of its leaders. His Anglophobia, like his Francophilia, were consistent motivators throughout his career. In an 1808 letter John Marshall explains to Charles C. Pinckney that the Virginia Federalists have endorsed Monroe‘s candidacy for President despite ―the superiority‖ of Madison‘s mind, because of the latter‘s ―inveterate and incurable…prejudices‖ on American foreign relations. In point here was Madison‘s support of Bonaparte‘s attack on Spain, seemingly on account of his enmity to British commerce. It may be noted that Madison‘s predilection for France seems less determined by ideological affinity and less flexible than Jefferson‘s. Not only did it extend to Bonaparte; it also antedated the French revolution, for which both had high hopes. Madison was touting the great possibilities of Franco-

755 Anonymous to GW, c. Januaary 3, 1792. Twohig 9: 369f.: 756 Richard Allison, ―Covenant of Peace…‖ 343. 757 Cometti, John Rutledge Jr., 198. 226

American cooperation in 1789 at the same time that Hamilton voiced his suspicion of the ―House of Bourbon,‖ then in power.758 Another fixed pole in Madison‘s values which apparently never fluctuated was his wholehearted commitment to completely free choice in religion. This predilection was not necessarily inconsistent with personal faith. Indeed, there is some evidence that Madison‘s private commitment to Christian belief was stronger than either Washington‘s or Jefferson‘s. One biographical source depicts him fervently praying as a young boy.759 Madison‘s editors suggest that Madison himself considered becoming a minister and might have done so had he had more confidence in his health. Soon after leaving college he wrote to his former classmate, William Bradford, advising that those who are "rising" (like Bradford, in contrast with himself, who expected an early death) should become "fervent advocates in the cause of Christ."760) Jefferson, in his retirement, suggested the continued importance religious studies held for his friend when he thought that Madison was abetter authority than himself for choosing recent theological works for the nascent University of Virginia library.761 Yet at an early age Madison showed his belief in complete religious freedom in his innovative insistence, in drafting the Virginia Declaration of Rights in 1776, that the word ―toleration‖ be eliminated in describing the freedom to dissent on the grounds that this implied that freedom of conscience was conditional upon permission from the state.762 Clearly, religious freedom touched deep chords in Madison‘s soul. Jefferson doubtless had all these persistent themes in Madison‘s values in mind when he predicted, at the end of his own second term as president, that "our enemies, the monarchists‖ would have no luck in cajoling his successor. into deviating from the course they had set together.763 No doubt Madison‘s ―sweetness‖ and retiring manner was attributed to shyness and naivete but Hamilton eventually arrived at a different view: MadOne ison was artful in dissimulation. Skip to ―three years‖

758 Madison on Bonaparte & elkins McKittrick on his exaggeration of opps for franco-amer. cooperation; AH on ―House of Bourbon.i 759 Meade on Jmad praying as child? 760 (to Bradford 9/25/73; 1:96]. 761 TJ that JM more learned theologically…Sowerby? 762 Rives 1:142-4 763 TJ on his successor in 1808 [?] 227

.In what did his misjudgment of men consist? They seem to have alternated, especially with older men, between excessive admiration and excessive mistrust. Vide willingness to be a hired pen for GW: Leibiger notes a series of reversals on JM‘s part in order to serve the chief. Our ―great Personage,‖came to symbolize, for Madison…the cause‘s beleaguered virtue.‖ Fury at B. Arnold, who wanted to betray ―our Great General‖. 20-1f] JM papers: JK 111 M26p 1: 144f] Letter to Bradford on GW, RHLee unwillingness to be pugnacious about gunpowder theft; later of B Franklin. Also JM papers on GW: memos of 5/5 & 5/9 & letter of 6/21/92.[Hunt 6:106-116] We may notice that his idolization of this ―public image‖ became transformed into disparagement and distaste. They seem to have alternated, especially with older men, between excessive admiration and excessive mistrust. Vide willingness to be a hired pen for GW: ON Madison‘s part the defense against succumbing, idealization of the older man was such disparagement. Madison and his Father Nelly Conway Madison The Young James Madison The Mind and the Man It is likely that Hamilton had particular powers to evoke such feelings in Madison. Not only must he have aggravated the Virginian‘s mistrust of all things commercial by his own ease in the world of business and high finance, but Hamilton also took pride in his own martial qualifications and rarely missed the chance to refer to his friends by their military titles—e.g., ―General [Charles C.] Pinckney, ―General [John] Marshall,‖—calling to memory Madison‘s virtually blank record as far as wartime service was concerned. After Callender, in disappointment, turned against the newly-appointed Secretary of State, he specifically alluded to the fact that Madison had had no personal experience of wartime hostilities. Even Madison‘s friends gave intimations that they doubted the strength of Madison‘s masculine impulses. Before he successfully courted, at the age of forty-three, the widow Dolley Todd Payne, his only certain romantic attachment had ended in its fifteen-year old object rejecting him in favor of a younger, more interesting man.764 In September, 1794, Madison began a forty-year marriage that brought him, in his words, ―every happiness…which female merit could impart‖ (Madison, 1975). His bride, a twenty-six year old widow, Dolley Todd Payne, was the daughter of Virginian Quakers who had expatriated themselves because of opposition to slavery. Dolley implied to a woman friend, on the eve of her wedding, that she ―admired‖ but did not love her prospective husband,

764 Ketcham discounts a rumor that originated from a sister of Madison‘s that about the time his formal studies were supposed to end, a young Philadelphia woman with whom he had “exchanged lockets” rejected his courtship. There is no evidence of any interest in female liaisons on Madison’s part during hiss college stay. 228 and she took care to put her late husband‘s considerable legacy in trust for her adored three-year old son before her second marriage took place (Madison, 1962, 15:357 Madison‘s decisiveness in courting Dolley Todd Payne—asking to be presented to her and promptly offering marriage—has suggested to some that he had probably had a number of occasions to observe her socially in the years he had spent in Philadelphia, and had already been attracted by her charms. An additional possibility suggests itself: he may have become aware of the effect her charms worked on others and informed himself about her expected inheritance of her late husband‘s fortune as well. With these considerations in mind it would have been reasonable to conclude that such a wife would be a considerable asset in many ways, not least, perhaps, politically. Rutland has presented evidence that he had recently rejected a long-time friend--his landlady—who had expected to marry him. A small clue that he was aware of the hindrance a wife could be to the success of her husband dates back to the trip through New England he had taken in 1791 when he seemed to suggest that the absence of a wife had been a factor in the entrepreneurial achievement of the free black farmer he had observed on Lake George.765 With marriage, however, Madison had to adapt to a new way of life. One of his relations reported a month after the marriage that Dolley‘s little boy had insisted on sleeping with the newlyweds every night since the ceremony. For whatever reasons, James‘s friends were not surprised when the marriage proved barren: two years after the wedding Aaron Burr wrote to Monroe, "Madison still childless, and I fear like to continue so.‖ Even Jefferson had to report to a friend, who must have inquired, that Madison, after six [?] years of marriage, was "not yet a father.‖766 Sexuality aside, Madison‘s marriage to Dolley Todd Payne was distinctive among those of the three chief founders considered here, in the extent to which it seems to have allowed—and perhaps even depended upon—the political participation of the wife. Dolley Madison is one founder's wife who broke the Virginian model of shrinking violet although she had passed some of her

765 Rutland, Mary Coxe to Tench, ; PJM, 14:27.June 1, 1791 766(Moore, 1979 p. 20); ." TJ Writings 7:437 3/14/01(Ketcham, 1990, p.387).Burr to Monroe: 3/10/96:"Madison still childless , and I fear like to continue so"; TJ toBenj. Hawkins

229

childhood in Virginia.: Born in the South, she was raised in Quaker communities and became, through her parents‘ move, a Philadelphian in early adolescence. This history, followed by her first marriage to a fellow Quaker, a prosperous young Philadelphia lawyer, comprised a background very different from that of the other Virginian founders‘ wives. The same could certainly have been said for Martha Randolph--a one-woman fund of same.It helps explain, too, how she, unlike the wives of the other Virginia founders, was given much credit for the more successful aspects of the role her husband played in politics after his marriage in 1794: "Mrs. Madison is an elegant and accomplished lady, attractive in her manner and interesting in her conversation," a visitor to the Madisons‘ country home concluded. Like others, he stressed the social skills that enabled her to make a great number and variety of guests comfortable, thus providing the ―essential means of social happiness" in the President‘s home. Harriet Martineau , on a visit to Montpelier, perceived what had been obscured by Dolley Madison‘s charm and flair for entertaining: she was a full partner in the President‘s political life. Dolley Madison proved to be a lively, sociable, strong-willed woman whose opinions, ―even upon public affairs, had great weight with her husband‖ (Cutts, 1886, p. 148). The English social commentator, Harriet Martineau, had a good opportunity to observe the two together over several days toward the end of the retired president‘s life. She perceived that Dolley was ―capable of entering into her husband‘s occupations & cares…He owed much to her intellectual companionship‖ as well as her ―sustaining the outward dignity of the office ― & ―impartially administering White House hospitalities.‖ 192]767 From their marriage in 1794 to Madison‘s death more than forty years later, Dolley was rarely separated from James. One exceptional occasion, however, left correspondence between the two that reveals the tactful, but penetrating way in which the First Lady participated in the political life of her husband who was then Secretary of State. From Philadelphia she assures him that there is not the ―slightest danger‖ that she would become like their neighbor, a certain Mrs. L., who is an ―active partisan,‖ because she is ―conscious of her want of talents‖ and

767Martineau, Retrospect of Western Travel, 1838. Vol. I 192 230

therefore diffident in expressing opinions on politics, a matter ―always imperfectly understood by her sex" 768 She belies these words, however, with the request, ―I wish you would indulge me with some information respecting the war with Spain and the disagreement with England...You know I am not much of a politician but I am extremely anxious to hear (as far as you think proper) what is going forward in the cabinet.‖ Her interest in politics was intensely partisan: after a stay at Monticello toward the end of Jefferson‘s term she writes her sister, "The President & Madison have been greatly perplexed by the remonstrances from so many towns to remove the Embargo…..The evading it is a terrible thing.‖ It is doubtful that she participated actively in a conversation about politics with Jefferson who was so opposed to feminine intervention in such matters. Her report makes it highly likely, however, that she and Madison had discussed the matter together more than once. Further evidence of Dolley‘s political activism is a letter of May, 1812, written to her brother in law, Richard Cutts, then a member of Congress, in which she urges him to hurry back to ―give his vote for war.‖769 Issues of masculinity/femininity also help to explain the consistently harmonious relationship betweeen Jefferson and Madison. Jefferson‘s wartime record reputation, which came under open attack just after he assumed thte presidency. In the commotion raised by accusations leveled at the older man Madison played the central role of Jefferson‘s agent and covert defender. In this way he was able to participate in his chief‘s sexual exploits.770 —even as a non- military man—left a good deal to desire and the supposed ―sense of inferiority‖ that Ketcham attributes to him on account of Hamilton could not have been aroused by Jefferson. Henry Adams‘s intuition that Madison‘s outward ―softness‖ [mild?] was especially appealing to Jefferson (coupled with the trenchant capacities of his pen) may have had a counterpart in Madison‘s feelings about Jefferson‘s It seems that Madison‘s opposition to

768 Dolley from Phila] while sick, to JMad, WDC, 11/1/05 Cutts memoirs, 60f. 8//28/08: 769 Dolley Madison to Richard Cutts, May 12, 1812. Roger H. Brown, The Republic in Peril: 1812.NY: Columbia: 1964, 85. Dolley Madison 770 Callender in the Recorder saying that Jmad knew all about Sally; Jmad-TJ correspondence about everything else to do with Callender 231

Hamilton‘s policies included personal hostility and resentment. Ketcham reports that Crosskey speculated that Madison‘s sense of impotence "beside Hamilton‘s fecundity and prowess with women played a major role in the inveterate hostility, extreme sensitivity, and feeling of inferiority Mad. displayed toward AH." Ketcham, 704:n.?

[This should be part of the end of the chapter??] What accounts for Madison‘s oscillation between the centralist, nationalistic position and the states‘ rights argument? Historians seem to have agreed that the change began as he became increasingly aware that his political prospects and private fortune were dependent upon Virginia and its leaders. His high influence, of course, had begun as he became closely affiliated with the leading Virginian of American history— George Washington. But he would soon learn that while Washington had the unconditional support of almost all Virginians, as well as those of the rest of the young country, it was the nation that claimed Washington‘s highest loyalty. Sectional loyalties held comparatively little importance for him and, of course, Washington‘s status was no longer dependent on Virginia‘s approval. If Madison had hitched his wagon only to the star of the Founder of his country, he could realistically have estimated, Washington‘s coattails would be insufficient to carry his own small chariot to the same summits of influence. Early on, Madison had been severely limited in his political career by opposition within Virginia to his sponsorship of the constitution. Most notably, Patrick Henry conducted a systematic campaign to frustrate his progress, making it impossible for him to seek election to the Senate and very difficult to win a seat in the House. Madison early became an expert interpreter of what Virginia political elite opinion would stand for in Washington‘s aspiring Virginian successors and what it would not. Thus, almost from the time of the Constitution‘s adoption, Madison showed the shift in his early strong federalist stand toward the side of the dominant opinion of the leaders in his state. Only after he had left office for good would he seek once again the esteem of national opinion at the cost of losing support from the new political elite rising in the south. Putting aside sectional considerations and narrow conceptions of Virginian interests and reverting to constitutional precedents he had helped to shape he was able to elicit from John Marshall, in 1829 (?) the generous appreciation, ―Mr Madison has come to his senses‖ or ????. We can see the whole panorama of Madison‘s career path as he reflected [Schachner quotes Gaillard Hunt writings 1: 336—I think it‘s the autobiographical notes] in his old age [?] 232 on Hamilton‘s ―imprudence,‖ as a member of the Congress of the Confederation, in arguing, just after the success of the Revolution, that the purpose of proposing revenue collectors who owed their jobs to congress was to introduce another tie of interest that would strengthen the central authority. ―All the members of congress who concurred .. with the States in this jealousy ― of their powers, ―smiled at the disclosure,‖ Madison writes. From the rest of this passage it is clear that Madison himself, as a younger congressman was taking note only of the ―smiles‖ of the senior elite of his own state . He goes on to identify the very influential Virginian representatives, ―Mr. [Theodorick] B[land] & still more Mr. [Richard Henry] L[ee]‖ who ―took notice in private conversation, that Mr. Hamilton had let out the secret.‖ [What is this guilty secret? The power of Patronage to exact loyalty?] Bland and Lee were the prestigious members of the Virginian delegation of which Madison was then a very junior member, and in whose ―private conversations‖ he was then privileged to participate. They would later oppose ratifying the Constitution which Madison, in collaboration with Hamilton, would do so much to support. In his backward musings of 1832 there is pleasure in remembering Hamilton‘s impetuosity in disregarding the public opinion of the southern state that would carry Madison so far. When first came into politics the protégé of Joseph Jones [Monroe‘s uncle!] and Edmund Pendleton [also pal of Monroe!], friends of his father. When he was defeated for reelection to Congress in 1777 they made him a colonel and found him a job on the state executive council. Reelected to Congress 1779 (TJ governor and friend).(Stayed till 83). The first departure: ]() James Madison, as first-born son to the leading figure in Orange county and descended on his mother‘s side an old line of distinguished Virginians, could hardly be patronized in the same way that Jefferson was, but he was a diminutive person who suffered from various illnesses as a child. His family connections, his wide learning, and his manifest intellect assured him deference when he first ventured on the public stage, but with his weak voice and tiny stature, he cut anything but an imposing figure. One gets a sense of the somewhat amused indulgence with which he was regarded by the remarks of Manasseh Cutler (above) in one of the sessions of the first Congressand it was given due attention in the House, although its rejection followed in due course. 233

Monroe the nephew of Joseph Jones, left army in 78, returned to W & M for law, met Jmad and Gov. Jefferson.82, house of delegattes; congress 1783-6/ What had happened? He had lost the election in his own district and Jefferson had come home. In effect he transferred from the father'‘ camp to the older brother-leader. Brilliant political strategist, discerning worker-arguer, helpless as decision-maker. Precedent for this: Bradford as the first older brother guide? Cosmopolitan, rich, distinguished in the great world of letters and affairs (Dad); but TJ made him feel better than anyone—and needed more doing for him. Reciprocally, (from chicago.doc) In any case, Erikson notes that Jefferson‘s narcissism was used "artfully and competently" to answer the call for leadership--"to see himself mirrored in the imagery" of the people (pp. 55-6). It was also ―used‖ in many other of Jefferson‘s relationships, including the forty-year, ―uninterrupted‖ friendship and political collaboration with James Madison (M. B. Smith, p. 408).

lacked public charisma, What were the factors? Conflict paralyzing? inhibition of rage? (Adams, Dad?)

Rakove suggests that the basic constl question (―half-slave, half-free‖) incompatible with Mad approach ―a quizzical intelligence that preferred careful distinctions to simple formulations.‖ 178] But clearly this niggling over minor devices, especially the argument that federal jurisdiction did not extend to apportioning certain values, were means of avoiding basic divisive issues. Defense against conflict, rocking the boat, instability.

Rutland, Robert A James Madison, The Founding Father.New York: Macmillan, 1987. Fisher Ames on Jmad,, 84; Rumor of jilting Mrs. Trist,Jan. 89 93f]

Jmad defiant to TJ on chief dangers coming from legislature and popular factions; no wonder AH thot (up to 1789 at least) that their views identical on aims; then 234 absolutely opposite view. Most of the issues which Jmad dared to differ with him concerned stability, continuity. The formidable James Madison, Sr. Brant 4: re DAD: ―Fatherless after the age of nine, he had lived from early childhood on the O C estate enlarging it through the years by land purchases and the increase of slave families…the foremost ‗squire‘ of the region. Justice of the peace, vestryman and sheriff, he had been county lt. in the Revolution, committeeman, army recruiter and wagon builder. The brilliance and fame of his eldest son never impaired the father‘s primacy in community affairs.‖—nor in many other things! 37] Nor was he abstemious or prudish —e.g. the ―good rum‖ for ―4 gals. of brandy.‖ Ibid.‘ Contrast with Witherspoon on Mad. On several of the points of family history and structure that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson had in common, James Madison‘s position differs. James Madison, Senior, unlike Augustine Washington and Peter Jefferson was an only son; his first-born son hence was the third generation to grow up on the family estate in Orange County, Virginia. Twenty-eight years old when his namesake was born, the elder Madison would give his successor his close attention and, much of the time, live in close proximity to him until his death in 1801. The quality of the affect between father and son, however, remains somewhat mysterious: As in other intimate matters, James Madison seems to have removed most traces of his early experience of his father. From the time of his departure for college at the age of eighteen until after the end of the Revolution, fifteen years afterward, no letter of James Madison Sr. is known to exist, although their correspondence was continuous and many of James, Jr.‘s responses to his father‘s many letters survive.

The letters from the younger Madison show that he acted as his father‘s agent, and by extension, that of his brothers, in all kinds of matters concerning the family plantation, purchase and sales of commodities and supplies and other business matters. Madison was his father‘s deputy and agent—a jack of every trade involved in the family enterprise—and expected to be at his beck and call. The few surviving letters of James Sr. that exist show his reliance on his eldest son to act in his interest, at his bidding. James, Jr. was asked to buy supplies for the far-flung plantation interests of the father; to seek them out when difficult to obtain, to act as a monetary go-between, determining the best prices for sales of agricultural products, for investment of capital, for exchange of currency and credit, etc. 235

The senior Madison‘s formidable presence in the lives of his sons occasionally is suggested in James, Jr.‘s correspondence with his closest brother, Ambrose. In 1786 the rapid decline in value of government currencies was inhibiting the payment of debts and Madison‘s younger sibling was in a tense situation with his creditors. Madison was hoping soon to collect payments to tide his brother over but asks, ―Can‘t Father spare you the £80 for immediate purposes?‖ Apparently neither he nor Ambrose had the courage to make a direct appeal to the patriarch.771 Thus it was to a role to which he was already well accustomed when George Washington began to call upon him for multiple services. Not only did the president ask for advice on the text of speeches, procedures to follow in relations with congress and information on the histories of those seeking appointments to office; he also assigned Madison more menial tasks such as arranging suitable lodgings for him and his retinue in New York. Between the first calls to the constitutional convention and the end of the first session of the new Congress Washington‘s requests to Madison for assistance give the impression that the latter was expected to be available for service on demand.772 In comparing James, Sr.‘s expectations of James, Jr. with those of George Washington one is struck with important similarities. James Madison, Sr‘s letters to his eldest son show the father as an active and confident strategist for the son‘s career in Virginia politics, at the same time that he drew freely for James, Jr.‘s services in the maintenance the family‘s expanding estate. These letters are rather perfunctorily authoritarian, e.g., on Madison‘s campaign for ratification of the Constitution—―I think you had better come [back here] as early as you can,‖— and on a method for measuring the plantation‘s tobacco crop suggested by James Jr and a friend, ―I have been acquainted with [it] long since; before either you or he had existence.‖773 His son‘s letters to him are numerous, prompt, formal, entirely polite and often expressly dutiful, even when referring to affection. Washington‘s requests for service were always tactful and clothed in infinitely polite language (e.g., asking him to come for consultation that very afternoon ―if perfectly agreeable to you,‖) and show more deference and warmth than Madison‘s father‘s, but they are equally demanding in the breadth of the services they require from the younger man and

771 JMP 9: 165. The editors also note that ―JM wrote ‗Mr‘ before ‗Father‘ here and failed to delete it.‖ To Ambrose Madison, Nov. 8, 1786. 165 & n.! 772 Leibiger, 124-133, 773 James Madison, Sr. to James Madison, Jr., January 30, 1788. Papers of James Madison 10: 446f. 236 show equal confidence in asking for them.774 The possible significance of this parallel will be discussed later. Pretensions justified of Conway's descent fr. Brit/scot aristocracy. Brant says though Conway connection w/ Sir Edward C, knighted by Q.E., unproved, in Va. society Madisons not listed in Hayden's Va Genealogies, Conways were. It seems important that of all the founders James Madison was the only one who was wholly dependent on his father late into his adulthood. His political career, supported by his father, was the only occupation he ever seriously pretended to equip himself for, and it was not until he became Secretary of State, with Jefferson‘s election as President, that he derived anything like a livable income from it. In letters addressed to his father, when he was a member of the Congress of the Confederation toward the end of the revolutionary war, we get an inkling—absent any letters in reply—that James Madison Senior derived some gratification from keeping the purse-strings rather taut. The son continually reports his shortage of cash; his ―disappointment‖ at his father‘s effort to forward money through an intermediary ―has been sorely felt by me,‖ since the Legislature has made insufficient provision for the ―subsistance of the Delegates‖ and he hopes that ―some opportunity will soon put it in your power to renew the attempt to transmit it,‖ as he hopes augmented in quantity because of the delay. He begs him to hasten as there is an opportunity to buy certain hard-to-obtain books at a favorable price. More than a month later he has bought the books, but not yet having money for them, he was ―obliged to give him [the seller] a draught on you.‖ His father has obviously agreed to subsidize him while he is a delegate, but he hopes that the book expenditure will not have to come out of this allowance. If the father so decides, however,―I must submit to it,‖ he wrote. As we have seen, the young man had inherited slaves from an aunt, and it is apparently one of these that he tells his father ―I shall be under the necessity of selling‖ if the legislature does not make up the difference between his needs and his father‘s supply of cash. Two months later he answers an inquiry from James, Sr. as to the date of his return. Just as he did when he postponed his return after graduating from college, he describes the need for remaining in Congress during the ―crisis,‖ and then says that ―the state of my finances‖ will also ―will be a serious bar:‖ he needs to buy a carriage and to pay off his debts before leaving, and ―where the means for doing this are to be

774 Ibid. 114 237

found is totally without my comprehension.‖ He further suggests his father supply him with a horse, as his own are no longer fit for the trip.775 Evidence that Madison‘s dutiful correctness toward his father overlaid some hostility, is indirect. It is of course noteworthy that all of our ―founders‖ early lent themselves wholeheartedly to the cause of separation from Britain. Closer to indicating forms of rebellion against the father in Madison is the fact that no Virginian of his time was more ardent than he in championing the cause of complete religious freedom. James Madison, Sr., on the other hand, seems to have had a reputation for rigidity on religious matters. As an official of his county he is known on one occasion to have refused a request of the Baptists to use the parish church.776 He probably opposed the ending of tax subsidization of the Anglican church in the Virginia Constitution—a policy the adoption of which his son was particularly proud 777 Later self- description as Baptist defender. PJM 1:107n. The young Madison‘s experience at college made him highly critical of Virginian political values. His repugnance to his colony‘s unenlightened. illiberal views is especially strongly expressed to college friends after his own graduation and return to the family estate. In early travels he made attempts to find lands for speculative investment in the North, apparently entertaining the possibility of breaking free from his close ties to Virginia, and perhaps, especially, his dependency on his father778. Sending young James out of the colony to the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) is said by Bishop Meade to have been a decision made by his father to avoid the overly ―enlightened‖ religious views prevailing at the College of William and Mary, then the only institution of higher education in Virginia.779 Meade gives no direct evidence for this and acknowledges the considerable high church connections of the Madison family. It is equally plausible that James Sr. preferred the Williamsburg Church of England institution for his eldest son‘s education, where the son of his first cousin was a professor and rising Anglican cleric.

775 JMP 4:126-7; 255-6. March 30; May 20, 1782. 776 Meade has letter from Dad, denying request of baptists to use local church (8/23/81)[Meade 2:87]______William Meade, Old churches, ministers & families of Va. 2 vols. Phila, Lippincott, 1891.(1st ed. 1857)

777 It was owed to James Madison that the extremely ―modern‖ liberal step of removing the word ―toleration‖ was taken in favor of the present version of the the first article of the Bill of Rights. For Madison‘s rejoicing in the Virginia law ending Establishment, see his letter to TJ …. s 778 Rutledge, Jmad‘s speculation 779 Meade, Old churches 2:89 [?] 238

Robert Rutland also finds the choice of Princeton rather strange since it was known as a ―bulwark against episcopacy.780 New Jersey may well have been James, Jr‘s own first choice. If so, it was probably influenced by his tutor Thomas Martin, a graduate of the school, who accompanied him when he enrolled. Recently (1746) founded to train parsons for diverse Protestant sects, Princeton was associated with Whig influence, while the Tories were more often associated with the Anglican church.781 John Witherspoon, the Scottish Presbyterian educator, who, as the new President, had recently brought vibrant leadership to the New Jersey college, was an erudite Glaswegian theologian who condoned religious freedom. Under Witherspoon the school came to be ―denounced in Tory quarters as a nursery of political radicalism.‖782 Madison Jr.‘s experience at college helped to make him highly critical of Virginian cultural values and reinforced impulses to become independent of his provincial milieu. In his attempts to find lands for speculative investment in the North he apparently entertained the possibility of breaking free from his dependency on his father783. Madison came to be known by his colleagues as an exceptionally mild-mannered, obligingly polite, and sweet-tempered man. Early in his career however, certain women gave him mixed reviews for charm. Theodorick Bland‘s ―sparkling wife‖ described the young Madison she met in 1780 as "gloomy‖ and ―stiff" in mixed company, "the most unsociable creature in existence."784 McCoy points out that even as a young man in male company he was ―most capable of imputing harsh motives to others and of indulging his own measure of partisan passion.‖785 From his college days there survives evidence of the scatological form his fantasy could take in verses he composed against a rival campus group whom he imagines as castrated for the sake of a ―more melodious voice,‖ and transformed into asses, ―emitting a monstrous stench...where each ones stench will kill his brother.‖786 Later in Madison‘s career his letters to Jefferson—sometimes encoded—often expressed hostility toward certain older authority figures in stronger terms than those used by his friend,

780 R. A. Rutland, encyc. 260 781 Donald Robert Come."The influence of princeton on higher education in the south before 1825. WMQ 3:2 (1945) 359-396.Founded (chartered 1746) to train parsons, for any denominati 782 Chernow, 47. 783 Rutledge, Jmad‘s speculation 784 Brant 2:33. 785 McCoy 24]

239 who occasionally allowed himself similar indiscretions. John Adams was a particular target of Madison‘s, especially detested, apparently, for his vanity and pomposity, qualities that may not be ruled out as characteristic of the senior James Madison. Nor did George Washington, whose close collaborator he had been in the first years of the republic, escape young Madison‘s criticism for displaying too prominently the dignified trappings of office and for becoming too attached to popular adulation. Madison‘s biographers have speculated on the nature of an emotional collapse he suffered at the end of his last term at college.in 1771. His intellectual efforts at Princeton had been especially arduous; the precocious erudition he displayed in his youthful correspondence there testifies to their intensity. On his arrival in school he had found himself at a disadvantage because of the provincial limits of his Virginian literary education and he appears to have made heroic efforts to compensate, schooling himself to correct his deficiencies and succeeding in covering three years of the required course work in two. This may have been one precipitant of what he described as, many years later, ―suspending the intellectual functions. ‖Others called his attacks ―of the nature of epilepsy,‖ or as a biographer calls it, ―epileptoid hysteria.‖ One may speculate that his disappointment in love and other events combined to bring to the surface of consciousness a certain libidinization of his intellect that the ardor of his studies suggests sp stronngly. Another possibly ―triggering‖ event was signalled from home with the news that his mother had given birth to a baby boy. This new brother, Reuben, was the second child born to his mother since he had arrived in Princeton. Nelly Conway had delivered two babies during the last two years before his departure for college, while he was being tutored at home. (The one born in 1770 had been stillborn. Elizabeth, born in 1768 had been preceded by a shortlived son born in 1767). He responded to his father‘s announcement with a letter postponing the return which his father had expected. In it he also conveys what one biographer calls ―studiously casual‖ congratulations on the new addition to his parents family.787 Another sign of Madison‘s tendency to identify with his mother was his apparent replication of her hypochondria. From the time of . Re Wills, 8:270 (JMP) afraid of going overseas ―A touch of Robespierre in Madison,‖ re Wills. Cites bloodinmindedness toward home

786 Papers 1: 61-67.- 787The report is attributed to a sister of Madison‘s by (Allison, 1991 I have copyu of this)) Ketcham cites a ―family tradiston‖ that during the Princeton years Madison had a romantic interest in Freneau‘s sister Mary, but he gives no credence to it. (10/17?/71 Letter ―studiously casual.‖ 240 traitors . Also, didn‘t share TJ‘s abhorrence of war? Abreaction from pusalliniity? Gunghoness re British—eagerness to invade Canada. Anti free-speech law adopted in Va convention of 1776. On several of the points of family history and structure that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson had in common, James Madison‘s position differs. James Madison, Senior, unlike Augustine Washington and Peter Jefferson was an only son; his first-born son, who told his best friend that the proper address for letters to himself was ―James Madison, Junr.,represented the third Madison generation to reside on the family estate in Orange County, Virginia. Twenty-eight years old when his namesake was born, the elder Madison would give his successor his close attention and, for much of the time until his death in 1801, live in close proximity to him. The quality of the affect between father and son, however, remains somewhat mysterious: As in many other matters, James Madison seems to have removed most traces of his early intimate experience of his father. From the time of his departure for college at the age of eighteen until after the end of the Revolution, fifteen years later, no letter of James Madison Sr. is known to exist, although their correspondence was continuous and many of James, Jr.‘s responses to his father‘s letters survive. 788 The letters from the younger Madison show that he acted as his father‘s agent in all kinds of matters concerning the family plantation and other holdings. The few letters of James Sr. that exist show this agency to have been reciprocal. They also show the father as an active and confident strategist for the son‘s career in Virginia politics, at the same time that he supervised the establishment and expansion of his own large family, mostly on neighboring estates. His last child, a daughter, was born when his first-born was twenty three. Brant 4: re Jmad Sr: ―Fatherless after the age of nine, he had lived from early childhood on the O C estate enlarging it through the years by land purchases and the increase of slave families…the foremost ‗squire‘ of the region. Justice of the peace, vestryman and sheriff, he had been county lt. in the Revolution, committeeman, army recuiter and wagon builder. The brilliance and fame of his eldest son never impaired the father‘s primacy in community affairs.‖—nor in many other things! 37] Nor was he abstemious or puritanical—e.g. the ―good rum‖ for ―4 gals. of brandy.‖ Ibid.‘ The fathers of both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were often absent from home and disappeared at a rather early age. They could thus, to some extent or even ―reconstructed‖ in imagination to fit the needs and wishes of their sons.

788 Started editing his papers as early as 1789 [McCoy?] 241

There was no such possibility for James Madison: his father was a figure rather larger than life and he remained a very active, inescapable presence in the life of his eldest son, as well as in the larger community, for fifty years—―the model of a Virginia gentleman,‖ as Ketcham concludes.789 Rakove too points out that Madison, Jr.‘s initiation into politics followed in the giant footsteps of his father. . chosen...Madison lost...owing entirely to PHenry. Some think just as well "means of having him better employed as Minister for the Home Department."[Twohig points out that Mad was elected to House "with GW's quiet support...helped in early mos. w/ appts protocol and 1st inaugural; 'unofficial cabinet member and admintn. whip in the House.'] Diaries of GW 5:448n.] ed to the Committee of Safety of his native Orange County was merely to take a place on a body chaired by his father.‖Commissioned as colonel of the county militia,‖ he was under the orders of his father, the commander.

The few remaining letters to his son from the senior Madison are businesslike and quite demanding—even rather perfunctorily authoritarian. For exsample, on Madison‘s campaign for ratification of the Constitution, ―I think you had better come [back here…] as early as you can,‖ and on a method for measuring the plantation‘s tobacco crop suggested by James Jr and a friend, ―I have been acquainted with [it] long since; before either you or he had existence.‖790 Of the scant remains of the father‘s words to his son perhaps the most significant ones are in a letter replying to one of James Jr‘s—mostly on business, as usual—that refers to his intention to consult ―Col Carrington‖ and to take his advice over his son‘s in case of a conflict. The letter is not only casually deprecating to the younger James; it also shows James‘s high deference for the ardent Federalist, Edward Carrington, one of Washington‘s closest old friends. His son‘s letters addressed to him are more formal and entirely polite, often expressly dutiful, even when referring to him with affection. Of all the Virginian founders James Madison was the only one who was wholly dependent on his father late into his adulthood. His political career, supported by his father, was the only occupation he ever seriously pretended to equip himself for, and it was not until he

789 Ralph Ketcham, ―James Madison, 1723-1801,‖ in James Madison and the American Nation, 1751-1836 ed. Robert A. Rutland (New York: Charles Scribner‘s Sons, 1994), 258. 790 James Madison, Sr. to James Madison, Jr., January 30, 1788. Papers of James Madison 10: 446f. 242

became Secretary of State, with Jefferson‘s election as President, that he derived anything like a living wage from it Evidence that Madison‘s dutiful correctness toward his father overlaid some hostility, is indirect. It is of course noteworthy that all of our ―founders‖ early lent themselves wholeheartedly to the anti-authoritarian cause of separation from Britain. Closer to indicating forms of rebellion against the father in Madison is the fact that no Virginian of his time was more ardent than he in championing the cause of complete religious freedom. James Madison, Sr., on the other hand, seems to have had a reputation for rigidity on religious matters. As a longtime vestryman of his Anglican church and an official of his county he is known on one occasion to have refused a request of the Baptists to use the parish church for a meeting.791 [Altho Wills cites JMP 1: 136, that Dad allowed the Presbyterians to preach when they visited Montp. 16] He probably opposed ending tax subsidization of the Anglican church in the Virginia Constitution— a policy the adoption of which his son was particularly proud 792

As ?? points out, he had to give up the idea. No business man, instead of an imagination adept at conceiving opportunities for investment in the bubbling economy of the new republic, Madison‘s ambitions for money-making were limited to the idea of acquiring and exploiting land. (Land speculation what he did). Prejudice (of old money??) against making money: imputed corruption to speculative profit. Each step away from domination of father put him under the influence/protection of another, older man. At Princeton, together with his friends, William Bradford, Philip Freneau and others, he accepted wholeheartedly the intellectual guidance of John Witherspoon, the new President. When he stayed on at the college over his [third?] summer, ostensibly to master Hebrew, it was to put himself under Witherspoon‘s tutelage. As for the small group of young men with whom he had formed important friendships, his attachments were long-lasting and seemed to be easy and conflict free.

791 Meade has letter from Dad, denying request of baptists to use local church (8/23/81)[Meade 2:87]______William Meade, Old churches, ministers & families of Va. 2 vols. Phila, Lippincott, 1891.(1st ed. 1857)

792 It was owed to James Madison that the extremely ―modern‖ liberal step of removing the word ―toleration‖ was taken in favor of the present version of the the first article of the Bill of Rights. For Madison‘s rejoicing in the Virginia law ending Establishment, see his letter to TJ …. s 243

As the storms of revolution gathered Madison formed a new attachment to another older man—a doer rather than talker and thinker, and a Virginian—George Washington. A recent study of the relationship between the young Madison, by now a delegate to the continental congress, and the general who dominated the revolutionary forces, has stressed two facts: Madison became and agent for, and learned to serve, Washington even before he had become acquainted with him personally to any degree and (2): his confidence in the Supreme Commander was steadily raised by his gradual persuasion that Washington would scrupulously defer to civilian leadership and that he was devoid of personal pretentiousness and vanity. From the point of view of Washington‘s promoters, the general‘s reticence, his lack of public assertiveness, were defects in his capacity to subdue rebellion in the army and assert his authority in defense of national unity. To Madison, however, this reticence was attractive—an important factor, no doubt, in his ability to act as the leader‘s often-unseen agent in the legislature and in the press. By contrast, venomous antipathy could be evoked in James Madison by certain older statesmen whose characteristics, real or supposed, seem to have struck raw nerves in the younger man. His conflict over submitting to older, virtuous men—first enthusiasm (or first sight antipathy) followed by gradual rebellion, to the point of disparagment. B Edmund Pendleton in Virginia Assembly?? Then GW: .Dhumphreys to TJ in Europe: 11/29/88" Senators chosen...Madison lost...owing entirely to PHenry. Some think just as well "means of having him better employed as Minister for the Home Department." Humphreys to TJ in Europe. Humphreys report was a comment upon the increasing confidence George Washington was putting in this intensely cerebral, yet congenial younger man. Did this contribute to TJ‘s wanting to come home, recapture JMAd? Certainly behaved it see interrel. , [Twohig points out that Mad was elected to House "with GW's quiet support...helped in early mos. w/ appts protocol and 1st inaugural; 'unofficial cabinet member and admintn. whip in the House.'] Diaries of GW 5:448n Many factors seem to have combined, both in Washington‘s inclinations and Madison‘s personality and behavior, to put the younger man in a filial relationship to the chief of state. The relationship seems never to have been as comfortable for the younger as for the elder partner. In contrast with young Madison‘s friendship with Jefferson, which dated, by his own report, to their simultaneous service in the Virginia House of Burgesses, 244

On the other hand, he may have sensed a reservation in Washington himself. Did W indeed want him as secretary of state? (Rakove, 111). He was very good at slipping out from under the men who expected to dominate him. Dolley essential for this. After TJ left office did not consult him. It has been pointed out by political psychologists that the attraction exercised by certain leaders over followers is not based on the power of those who play a fatherly role. An equally compelling influence is sometimes exercised by one whose appeal is more like that of an older brother. [Redl] The first president was old enough to be Madison‘s father, and his dignity and the veneration in which he was held by his fellow citizens were among the factors that made him a paternal figure for many in the new nation. Jefferson was only eight years senior to James Madison Jr., and the role he played was anything but fatherly. Deferential, buttered Madison up with flattery, and tempted his ambition, but otherwise the daring leader—heedless, reckless, encouraged Jmad‘s aggression at the same time gave him excuse to restrain it (in TJ). Who took the lead in what? …. The most important service Madison provided for Jefferson was to validate the latter‘s view of the world by seeming to accept it at face value. One of the first of the many examples of this that may be cited is a representation of the British minister, Hammond, as having ―acknowledged explicitly‖ that the British court had had its eyes opened by a document Jefferson had presented detailing American grievances on Britain‘s observances of the peace treaty. Elkins and McKitrick comment, ―That Hammond actually acknowledged any such thing is inconceivable.‖ They agree that ―it is plausible‖ that Jefferson himself had persuaded himself of the truth of his statement.793 Madison‘s response to Jefferson‘s version is congratulatory. (By this time TJ‘s letter to Hammond, and Hamilton‘s criticisms of it, had been considered by the cabinet.) ―Your answer to Hammond has on the whole got triumphantly through the ordeal…The points on which you did not relax appear to me to be fully vindicated; the main ones unanswerably so.‖ 794It may be, as several witnesses claimed, that Madison was naïve in his appraisal of many characters he encountered in the political world, but in some of his insights into those closer to him one gains the impression of considerable subtlety deliberately disguised. In this case his assurances to TJ seem actually to be manipulative. Complicated character indeed.

793 Elkins & McK 255. TJ to Mad 14:314f. 794 Jmad to TJ, Orange, /12/92. 14: 316. 245

Note ambivalence To TJ (McCoy, 129f &154 & Notes) ―Such peculiar confidence where that ground of distrust (TJ‘s greater age & presumably therefore irrationality) would be so much stronger ! Rives & Fendall, eds. Letters & other Writings (of Jmadvol. 4) TJ gave Callender money for The American Annual Register or, Historical Memoirs of the U.S. for 1796, in June 97. Mad supplied material on 5/27/98., Suavity and sublety recognized by Callender before he turned against him entirely, e.g. Recorder 5/12/02: With a private character inaccessible to blame, with a flow of eloquence which is at once pure and lively, nervous and gentle, perspicuous and persuasive, our present secretary may demand the same kind of rank among the statesmen of America which Mr. Addison holds among the classicks of Britain.‖ Apparently Madison ―much diverted at the petulance of the managers on their disappointment‖ at the failure to convict Judge Chase795 [Did this include John Randolph?] Brant observes how little he consulted TJ after he had assumed the office of President. McCoy notes how he ignored Jefferson‘s dismissal of Joseph Story‘s candidacy as a Supreme Court justice in 1810.796 Childhood: correspondent warned Washington Mad made " insidious insinuations about Ham's integrity with public money; " In this letter there is disappointment and still some puzzlement, but as the months passed he came to consider Madison as inimical to the best interests of the United States In John Bull: Horror of breaking up the union—―pandora‘s box.‖ ―Serpent‖ wants to slip into it and sow discord. ―The union is not barren, it is fertile.‖ –in fact one of the many attributes he most admired. He derived his own strength and stature from being one with it.[Allison] He knew that slavery was the greatest threat to his beloved progeny and he attempted to cope with it –as usual—by cerebration. An allegorical tale that he devised relatedhe "stainJonathan Bull & Mary Bull" by J. Mad "composed shortly after the Mo. crisis" discussed in McCoy 274-6--in Rives & Fendall, eds. Letters & other Writings (of JMad):3: 259-256. Mary's stained right arm a threat to marital union. She talks him out of it.[I have copy] And yet privately he sometimes

795 Brant (Sec of State, 250-1, 504) Cites JQ Adams Diary March 1/05 but not in my edition of JQA diary; also Madison to ______, May 29, 05 in LC Ppers.

796 McCoy cites TJ to Jmad, 10/15/10 in Ford, 11: 151f. 246 despaired that the eradicable ―stain‖ could not be ignored. JMad to Edw. Coles (register of Ill. land office) 9/3/19: Problems of negroes w/out education property or employmts of freemen, cant make it work (tho coles is trying): I wish your philanthropy could complete its object by changing their color as well as their legal condition. W/out this they seem destined to a privation of that moral rank and those social blessings which give to freedom more than half its value." Cutts 164f] The same with the [HIS] constitution—proprietary view of it, to the extent of Jmad to TJ, 3/6/96 [JMP 16 247)30 disapproving of republican Edw. Livingston‘s demand that the House review the treaty (Estes, 149). Cerebration took all his effort; the freedom he was most committed to was also an act of the mind, the imagination—i.e. religious belief. Madison came to be known by his colleagues as an exceptionally mild-mannered, obligingly polite, and sweet-tempered man."797 Yet from his college days there survives evidence of the highly aggressive, scatological form his fantasy could take in verses he composed against a rival campus group. He imagines its members, the ―Cleosophists,‖ as castrated for the sake of a ―more melodious voice,‖ and transformed into asses, ―emitting a monstrous stench...where each ones stench will kill his brother.‖798 After he returned home at the end of his years in Princeton, political figures in the national eye became his targets. His youthful letters to his close friend William Bradford, who is in Philadelphia, quite often show a good deal of mean-spirited derogation of prominent public figures. When Bradford reports the suspicions entertained by some Philadelphians that Benjamin Franklin, recently returned from London, may be a spy rather than a friend of the Patriots‘ cause, his friend ―Jemmy‖ speculates, paraphrasing Jeremiah, that he may be ―deceitful above all things & desperately wicked,‖ and then jumps to the conclusion that ―the bare suspicion of his guilt amounts very nearly to a proof of its reality.‖ He is also, in the same letter, more than ready to believe the worst of his fellow Virginian, , who is a delegate to Congress in Philadelphia. He has heard reports of suspicions that Bland ―has turned traitor‖ because he has left that city and these ―hints…to his prejudice‖ inspire the reflection in young Madison that the

797 McCoy 24]

798 Papers 1: 61-67.- 247 delegate is ―in needy circumstances‖ and that ―age [Bland is 65] is no stranger to avarice.‖ This rumor was later shown to have been circulated by Tory sympathizers and Bland, who had departed because of illness, was cleared of such charges. Madison was not given to allowing the benefit of the doubt to the motives of figures of authority and he was especially ready to impute personal venality to highly respected others:In April, 1775, "A 25-year old back country radical named JM...praised Henry [his own first cuz!] and criticized Washington as one of the Tidewater gentlemen who had, bcuz their 'property will be exposed in case of civil war...discovered a pusillanimity little comporting with their professions or the name of Virginian.'"Flexner 1:330 (JM papers 1:144f.And this included GW, Peyton Randolph, Edm Pendleton and R. H. Lee! He himself acompanied Henry and yet they turned back too. 12, Leibiger, Winning independnence. General envy and suspicion of Tidewater types by JM, at the same time sought to emulate? [eg Beveridge's description of dandyism.] Perhaps no sympathy for ER either? Search for my source saying Jmad hated Feds. more than TJ. Animosity can be explained because of his extreme possessivness as the creator of the constitution—and the fact that he had to compromise (on points on which he was originally firm) but they did not—took his original position. Later suggests to TJ that W.C. Nicholas can no longer be trusted because he is over-confident in Marshall, who must be a slave to the monied interests & to the bank because of the Fairfax deals (see Jmadnts.] McCoy also notes that ―early in his career‖ Madison ―had been most capable of imputing harsh motives to others and of indulging his own measure of partisan passion.‖799 But this was not a capacity that disappeared. Often in his long correspondence with Jefferson Madison would express rank hostility toward certain public figures, sometimes in stronger terms than those used by his friend who was notorious for his occasionally indiscreet use of destructive language. Dignified figures of authority were favorite targets for Madison. John Adams was especially detested, apparently, for his disingenous vanity and pomposity, qualities that may not be ruled out as characteristic of the senior James Madison. Nor did George Washington, whose close collaborator he had been in the first years of the republic, escape his criticism for displaying too prominently the dignified trappings of office and for becoming too attached to popular adulation.

799 799 McCoy 24]

248

But his hostility was not limited to older men. He made no attempt to disguise his dislike of the popular LaFayette after his first encounters with the Frenchman. The marquis, of course, was a particular favorite of George Washington and later became highly favored by Jefferson as well.

Madison‘s voyage to the College of New Jersey, his first outside of his native Virginia [?], must have impressed him with the superiority of the scenery as much as it did a visitor from abroad, Robert Hunter, who found the roads good and ―Princetown‖ to have a ―handsome college.‖ As one approached Philadelphia, ―pleasing beyond description,‖ and predicted to become the ―first city in the world‖ the roads grew ―still better if poossible.‖800 On his arrival in school he found himself at a disadvantage because of the provincial limits of his Virginian literary education and he made heroic efforts to compensate, earning for himself, not only from friends but also from the revered University president Wilberforce, the reputation for precocious wisdom.

Madison‘s biographers have speculated on the nature of an emotional collapse Madison suffered at the end of his last term at college.in 1771. His intellectual efforts at Princeton had been especially arduous; the exhibition of hard-earned erudition he displayed in his youthful correspondence there and later testifies to their intensity. This may have been one precipitant of his "suspending the intellectual functions," the symptom that was later described by his stepson. He himself described his attacks ―of the nature of epilepsy,‖ or as a biographer calls it, ―epileptoid hysteria.‖801 One may speculate that his disappointment in love combined with the culmination of his ardent scholarly efforts suddenly allowed to rise to consciousness the libidinal component of activities that had until then been entirely intellectualized. One event that could certainly have aggravated this surfacing of formerly suppressed associations was the news from home that his mother had given birth to still a new baby brother802 He responded in a letter postponing the return which his father had expected. In it he also conveys ―studiously casual‖ congratulations to his mother. Four years later he reports, in the middle of a letter to his friend Bradford, that a ―dysentery‖ which has erupted ―in my father‘s family‖ has ―carried off‖ this

800 Québec to Carolina in 1785-1786, 165-9. 801 Ketcham casts doubt on this diagnosis, but notes only that the symptoms seemed to appear ‖at times of strain and tension.‖ 51-52 802 10/9/71 Letter ―studiously casual.‖ JMP 1: 68. 249 brother, as well as a sister three years older, but that although the ―disorder‖ persists among the blacks ―as it is now out of the house I live in, I hope the danger is over.‖803 He turns his attention, in the same paragraph, to local politics. As far as we can tell, Madison did not renew his attempts to win a woman for many years. When he did do so his choice was of a widow with a young son. 804 James Madison‘s experience of his eariest years is also less transparent than that of Washington, Jefferson or Marshall. Aside from what has been noted above of the regularly long interval—twenty-four months—between his birth and that of his next sibling, no evidence of his earliest relations with maternal figures is known except that his mother chose her mother‘s house as the site for her first son‘s delivery, suggesting a close relationship with this grandmother, and that his paternal grandmother, as well as his mother, was present in his household until her death when he was eleven years old. It is thus possible that more than one of these maternal figures shared mothering tasks. There were probably a number of black women servants available for child care as well: Orange County, scene of Madison‘s childhood, had a much higher ratio of native slave to white population than the older Tidewater region. Personal attendance by slaves from an early age. Gran‘ma‘s legcy of Billy. Sawney? (The aunt‘s legacy suggests one woman slave with him from the beginnning?) Brant‘s description of childhood play: demonstrated an affinity, respect for earthy wisdom that TJ never did: Jokes; Why slaves can‘t read [Oakes?] never made racist remarks,touted slave wisdom [paulding,valst], worldliness, humor. Perceived anomaly in sitch—but guilt entirely absent as far as one can tell. Only talk of freeing slaves is when he can‘t think of reenslaving one? martineau‘s point of his unrealism in late life.? In searching for clues to childhood experience provided by the Virginian laders‘ adult relations with their mothers, it should be remembered that each son had ample time to edit his correspondence and to eliminate many traces of personal evidence that they did not wish seen.

803 6/19/75. JMP 1:152. 804 Ms Colden, whom Madison seems to have been interested in and may have courted in 1790 (1?) was also a rich widow with a young son—in this case, a son of about the age that Madison was when he experienced his severe disturbance at the end of his Princeton sojourn. 250

James Madison‘s early development is less transparent than that of the first two of these Virginians. Aside from what has been noted above of the long interval between his birth and that of his next sibling, no evidence of his earliest relations with maternal figures is known except that his mother chose her mother‘s house as the site for her first son‘s delivery, suggesting a close relationship with this grandmother, and that his paternal grandmother, as well as his mother, was present in his household until her death when he was eleven years old. It is thus possible that more than one of these maternal figures shared mothering tasks. There were probably a number of black women servants available for child care as well: Orange County, scene of Madison‘s childhood, had a much higher ratio of native slave to white population than the older Tidewater region. When Madison was away from home, beginning in his college days, he regularly expressed anxious concern for his mother‘s health in letters to his father; Nelly Conway Madison was subject to various complaints that were regarded as serious, especially, apparently, by her first-born. His anxiety did not abate with the years. Upon returning to New York for the new session of the first Congress, for example, Madison ends a letter to his father with ―I was in hopes on my arrival here to find a letter which would have given in (full? a)an account of my mothers health. I have been disappointed and am extremely anxious to receive information on that subject. I shall look for it on the arrival of every mail. With the most fervent wishes that it may prove favorable, I remain you dutiful & affecte. son…‖ 805 . Between these indirect exchanges concerning his mother‘s health and the progress of Madison‘s own health are several interesting points of parallel. Both, apparently, regarded their health as fragile and their survival as precarious throughout their long lives. When, at the Constitutional convention, Madison determined to take complete notes on the discussions, ―the ordeal, he later claimed, ‗almost killed him; but having undertaken the task, he was determined to accomplish it.‘‖ The close assocoiation of intense mental exertion and physical damage was continually present in his mind during those critical days:[continual presence—missed nothing)presensteemingly thought reports on his own state of health expressed continuous anxious solicitude for threats to his physical well-being. After the famous New England vacation of 1791 that permanently cemented the growing mutual devotion between Jefferson and Madison, Jefferson expresses a mother‘s pride in the good effect her ministrations have been able to produce on a son‘s health: concerned dAlthough James Madison lived into his eighty-

805 JMjr. to JM Sr. 1/21/90. JMP 13: 2. 251 sixth year, he outlived his mother by only six[??] years. Nelly Conway Madison was ninety eight when she died in the family home of Montpelier, where she had lived in a separate wing of her son‘s household since being widowed many years before. Throughout almost all of his life, therefore, he lived in symbiosis with a mother who had probably been his most intimate connection with the outside world since his earliest infancy. Interestingly, no scrap of written communication between her and her son is known to exist. The conjecture that Madison destroyed all such direct evidence seems justified, although it may also be put in doubt by the frequent references to communication of her ―wishes‖ by other members of the family. [e..g. I. Hite, Jmad papers, Wm. ditto. etc.] that seem to show that she retained her share of decision-making power in the family, and was deferred to accordingly, for most of the many years she survived her husband‘s death.

ii. Fathers

Only in the case of James Madison‘s mother‘s many offspring were all the interbirth intervals large enough (24 months in his case) to make probable prolonged close contact of Nelly Madison with each of her children. But in Madison‘s case we have direct evidence on the presence in his early years of several important mothering figures. Something wrong w/ JMad's own relations with mother; Oedipal? & she perhaps preferred his bro. Francis. Non mention of Francis.

When Madison was away from home, beginning in his college days, he regularly expressed intense concern for his mother‘s health in letters to his father; apparently Nelly Conway Madison was subject to various complaints that she regarded as serious. Between these indirect exchanges concerning his mother‘s health and the progress of Madison‘s own health are several interesting points of parallel. Both, apparently, regarded their health as fragile and their survival as precarious throughout their long lives. Madison seemingly thought reports on his own state of health obligatory in communication with all his friends. From his college mate, …Bradley to his closest friend of his later life, Thomas Jefferson, his intimates expressed continuous anxious solicitude for threats to his physical well-being. After the famous New England vacation of 1791 that permanently cemented the growing mutual devotion between 252

Jefferson and Madison, Jefferson expresses a mother‘s pride in the good effect her ministrations have been able to produce on a son‘s health: concerned Although James Madison lived into his eighty-sixth year, he outlived his mother by only six[??] years. Nelly Conway Madison was ninety eight when she died in the family home of Montpelier, where she had lived in a separate wing of her son‘s household since being widowed for more than twenty-five years [?] Throughout almost all of his life, therefore, he lived in symbiosis with a mother who had probably been his most intimate connection with the outside world since his earliest infancy. Interestingly, no scrap of written communication between her and her son is known to exist. The conjecture that Madison destroyed all such direct evidence seems justified, although it may also be put in doubt by the frequent references to communication of her ―wishes‖ by other members of the family. [e..g. I. Hite, Jmad papers, Wm. ditto. etc.] that seem to show that she retained her share of decision-making power in the family, and was deferred to accordingly, for most of the many years she survived her husband‘s death. Like all four of the earliest Virginia ―Founders,‖ and very much unlike many of Virginia‘s leading citizens who remained loyal to the Crown, and of others who joined the Revolution but later refused their support to the Federal Constitution, Madison early expressed a sense of nationhood,806 and remained all his life sensitive to and interested in opinion outside his native state. Travelled for educational value; thought of settling outside the South.

Renounced aspirations: Disappointment at exclusion after returning to Montpellier on conclusion of school; reluctance to return; rueful letters to Bradley. Never got to Europe— another disappointment? Position at ratifying convention: His ―thirteen years in public service…occurred not in his home state, but rather with the continental government.‖ After his one term in the state assembly [76-8?].. But while he found he could persuade his colleagues and peers with argument, to win office he had to win a different group of supporters—in the general Virginian arena an uncultivated electorate without perspective on the whole, with little deference for his unprepossessing figure and intellect, and in the Virginian elite among plantation ―barons‖ with perhaps even more particularistic, localistic views than the average Virginia voter.Beeman 4

806 Brant, vol. 2 (Jas Mad, the Nationalist 80-87)Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis. Brant, The Nationalist 253

Realism re slavery but absolutely outside of policy range: Did rejection of religion take its place? And also serve to sublimate rage at father? Notice the connection of religion with lasciviousness in letter to Bradley. Sublimation in politics. Constructing history a part of it? ―Integrated‖ personality? McCoy

This certainly proved to be true when he became president. Naif with respect to worldly affairs as well: Cutler: had it been someone less respected, would have been amusing. As in his earlier moments fo political crisis, 1784 and 1788, he fled the national scene to the state to regroup his forces.‖ Risjord, Chesapeake 535f. [1798—prior to Va resolutions) When did the final shift in allegiance to TJ take place? Afterwards ran interference for J; covered up for him; in return for total trust and total confidence, wrote under pseudonms for him; bought off detractors for him—eg. see Callender‘s expectations that he would provide the job. in 1800. Jmad‘s virility suspect from the beginning,Attitude of Cutler indulgent—a prodigy, but not wholly a man. but as he became the shadow of each man, moreso: TJ gave him money for The American Annual Register or, Historical Memoirs of the U.S. for 1796, in June 97. Mad supplied material on 5/27/98. But Callender did not spare Jmad in the Prospect: Callender to TJ, Richmond [jail] 10/11/00. Is and has been sending him installments of the Prospect. "and a second set for Mr. Madison "of whom to balance the absolute necessity of condemning his share in the Convention business" I herewith speak in terms merited by his talents and virtues as well as "my personal obligations to him." The familiar tone and the language of this communication to Jefferson suggests that both of them had actually talked critically together of Jmad‘s role in drafting the constitution.Even after his conclusion that Jefferson meant to make him a scapegoat, the angry journalist would tell Madison: "His political ideas are, to the minutest ramification, precisely mine." Callender to Mad., Petersburg 4/27/01]Madison may have had no illusions about his friends chameleon-like adaptation to his collaborators or admirers of the moment. He continued to do TJ‘s dirty work. done by J Mad: Callender probably right that he knew all about Sally; Henry Lee (growing fedlsm) & fedlst Jonthn Trumbull jr. thot 'Dolley would 'soften...some of your political asperities.'" b) [marriage] "has relieved him of much bile" Ketcham 386fCrosskey thinks sense of impotence "beside 's fecundity and prowess with women played a major role in the inveterate hostility, extreme sensitivity, and feeling of inferiority Mad. 254 displayed toward AH." Ketcham, 704:n.? Lance Banning on Jmad in ANB notes he declined to run again (for Congress) in 97—in effect became TJ‘s campaign manager? Note his urgent letter to TJ telling him to take vpship[in TJnts?]. [Didn‘t mind hitching himself to TJ‘s virility, covering for him.ewm Chicago clues: Most biographies of political figures that rely on evidence highly material to a psychoanalytic understanding begin with the early years and peter out when it comes to the substance of their behavior at the peak of their eminence. Madison lived the longest of all the eminent virginian founders, and he had the longest opportunity to cover his tracks—that is, to eliminate revealing or intimate material from his papers—and to mend his fences, i.e. rationalize the history of his public beliefs and behavior to make it appear less destructive. Much of his early work was collaborative, either in the drafting of documents (constitutions, journalism—eg the Federalist) or in the legislature---committee work does not lend itself to the discernment of private motives of participants. This puts a higher premium on analysis of his public behavior when he alone was responsible at the pinnacle of the state for the suggestions it may offer of motivational patterns. Policy points to explain: Weak-kneedness on war or aggression? Argument for latter is Canadian idea, repression (―Mild mannerness‖ overlay bloody mindedness.) Turn around on internal improvements: To the disbelief and disillusionment of his erstwhile admirer, Henry Claya, ‗Madison rejected his own bill.‘‖ Skowronek book, 100] quoting from Harrison on internal improvements. Why???? Parting deference to TJ the father???? Cold feet? Monroe‘s ―anxious letter to Madison‖ ―give me in detail the reasons which justify extending, under both Jmad and TJ]the Cumberland road."(12/22/17,) . a101. Jmad waffled ―serious danger‖ posed by enticing precedents that weree, in fact based on ‗inadvertence.‘‖Gaillard Hunt 8: 406….=n.d. [appended:]the articulateness and learning with which Madison set forth prescriptions for workable republican institutions, the enlightenment perspective from which both set forth equalitarian ideals, should not obscure for us, as it did not for them, the archaic aristocratic nature of the Virginian society that both these planters inhabited. It was, for the most part, in Higginbotham‘s words, the ―Virginia of deference and patriarchy, of well-born, well-connected 255 friends and family, of Mount Vernon [for Washington] and not the Virginia of the West, with its social fluidity and native cultures.‖807 Yet Washington himself had foreseen that a British victory would oblige him to resettle westward, toward Ohio; Madison pined, as a young man for the political and cultural life of Philadelphia and toured the northeast with a personal interest in land acquisition. Virginian to Later southern ideologues would rationalize the, narrowly elitist structure of Virginian politics, but all of our Founders were aware that, in the light of their own liberal, Enlightenment ideals, the more urbanized society to the north had the more advanced political institutions. Diary and . Drew R. McCoy, The last of the Fathers:Jas. Mad and the Republican Legacy (NY: 1989) 226-233.This ―last father‖ gave some thought to arranging the possibility of resettling outside the region. In his case even a relatively secure economic position went little distance toward providing prospects of making a go of transplantation. In the spring of 1791, when he accompanied Jefferson on a trip through New York and New England, the editors of his papers accurately observe the ―spare and scientific‖ character of his notes on the journey, in contrast with Jefferson‘s ―colorful journal.‖ There is an exception to this attributed dryness of Madison‘s account: Growing up in 18th century Va: The acclaim for Madison‘s virtue was unanimous among those who corresponded with TJ. Philip Mazzei described him to John Adams (9/5/85: Boyd 7: 124n.), ―One of the most noble, most sensible, and virtuous men on the Globe.‖ But all were protective of his presumed delicate constitution, naivete: 2: Timothy Pickering to JnMrshall, Salem, 1.24.26: Thinks TJ, Jmad& Monroe appeased last with promise of succession [sec. of state to Pres): that TJ rejected treaty to keep anti-British animus that made him popular, but ―‖would have stopped short of WAR ;into which the feebler temper of his successor was driven by the firey popular leaders in the House.‖ Mrshll papers X, 270] But was it really feebler or more firey? 3. Jmad onften took the lead in viciousness : Gutzman Mads & the principles, says see him to TJ (Orange) 4/12: On Mass ―sympathy with the fate of Louis‖ relates ―merely to the man & not to the Monarch‖ & colored by ―spurious accts. in the papers, but ―a fair statement of the case‖—by HIM, apparently, has ―new modelled the sentiment. ‗If he was a Traytor, he ought to be punished as well as another man.‘…language of so many plain men to me‖

807 Higginbotham, Revltry Asceticism, in 159. 256

Chapter 6: John Marshall: Virginia Gentleman?

I am in love with his character, positively in love (Joseph Story on Marshall (to Harriet Martineau?)Story letters 2:205)

Marshall gives a clue to the sources of his feelings of personal affiliation with his northern co-combatants in a short autobiography he drafted for his friend, Joseph Story, of Massachusetts. In the early days of the revolution he writes, In the army ―I found myself associated with brave men from different states…risking life and everything valuable in a common cause,‖ and where he ―partook largely‖ of their ―sufferings and feelings.‖ From the army he entered the Virginia legislature, which by daily questioning those ―principles which I thought most sacred‖ was ―instrumental in augmenting those sufferings.‖

The remarkable tribute above is from an Federalist-appointed Supreme Court Justice, and a New Englander. This makes it even more notable that no Virginia founder was more often cited by contemporaries to be the model of a ―Virginia gentleman‖ than John Marshall--an unambivalently nationalistic and cosmopolitan character. No one who qualified in this respect was more worldly, less chauvinistic on behalf of local aspirations, nor less pretentious socially than John Marshall. Careless in his personal habits to the point of dishevelment, informal in manners to the point of folksiness, co-Virginians nevertheless agreed he was an exemplar of the Old Dominion ideal. What then, was such a Virginia gentleman supposed to be? How was it that John Marshall seemed to fit the type? A tentative answer to this would call attention to the function of a model as a defense against undesirable traits perceived in everyday behavior. The ―gentlemanly‖ characteristics that a Virginian was supposed to display were often more easily demonstrable in the breach than in the observance:Contrast Marshall was ―gentle‖ as befits a gentleman. In this he excelled even Washington who was known to demonstrate temper in private, however equable a face he might present in public. Marshall showed no such tension. Actually the manners of Virginians who were reported to be. 257

And yet, among traits of Marshall most often mentioned, was that of easy sociability—a fondness for fun. Moreover Marshall had a popular touch rare in most politicians of the day, and rather conspicuously lacking in our other principals—Washington who communicated benevolence from a considerable height, Jefferson, who avoided face to face contact with the public as much as possible, or Madison who despised as pandering the celebratory biblious generosity expected of electioneering candidates. In contrast with these notable attributes of Marshall, ―young gentlemen of Virginia‖ were regularly known to be rowdy (a young lady‘s description of return of the drunks),22 violent (bite, scratch, accidental shootings [GW correspondent]) and vain, & exhibitionistic and arrogant. (Boucher).

Father and Son. Of the five Virginian founders we have considered, James Madison and John Marshall provide the only cases of close and prolonged association between father and son. For Madison, the example of his father certainly had a profound effect on his orientation to politics and his insight into the way the world worked—yet its influence as a model for his own political and personal behavior is doubtful. As we have seen, there seems to have been considerable ambivalence behind Madison‘s ostensible dutifulness toward James Madison Sr. In many cases his own choices were in manifest opposition to those of his father. Rather than internalizing his father‘s personality, one suspects, his identification with female parental figures—grandmothers and aunts as well as mother—was more profound and his relationship with his father was a mixture of passivity (particularly visible in his filial piety and his own feminine aspect) and an unconscious resistance to domination. It is the latter—anti- authoritarianism, militancy on behalf of independence and civil liberties—that marked his towering intellectual contribution to the revolution, its aftermath, and the formation of the federal government. But his relapse into passivity is visible in his relationship to Jefferson (Henry Adams quote) and his bland, vascillating, or at worst, weak, performance as President. The Marshalls: Planters not like the others. JMrshl Identified in M/O and everything else w/Thos: Cutting legal corners included. Rhodes A woman‘s man: feminist. Certainly one aspect of the ―gentlemanly‖ side of Virginian males was their disposition to be gallant towards women. In fact, the behavior of many such 258 supposed gentlemen did little credit to southern gallantry. It was otherwise with John Marshall: his respect for and appreciation of women, beginning with his mother and sisters; most conspicuously with his invalid wife of 48 years, and finally with his only daughter, was conscientious., principled, and boundless. [Hardy: JMrshll as son etc: Mom said to have ―great force of character and strong religious faith, loved by Jmrshall with ―chivalrous tender devotion which made him gentle with all women.‖ but one may wonder, in the case of the mother, what exactly this meant, since there is no scrap surviving of any direct communication between them. Her status higher than her husband, her religion austere and conscientious [wish for her children that they be good not great and…?] ancestors scottish and aristocratic, with that tincture of European culture. Scottish military tradition cz of ―The scholarly James Keith, the rector of Hammilton Parish, Va.‖ Great granpa Keith (Scot) raised by Bishop Dad, supported Pretender, fled to Fred the great] d. Hochkirchen. Rev. Jas K.[Son of previous]had to flee to Va. [JMrshll duplicated mom in his marriage to the devout, tho beautiful, Mary Willis ambler, descendant of an old Huguenot family.Mary dotter of Rebecca Burwell [A], said ―pious as an ambler‖(a local saying) a ―famous beauty who discarded [TJ] to marry Col. [Jacquelin] Ambler[family Huguenot refugees.] Hardy contd. ―Miss Cary, who refused GW [???? She has it wrong: this is Mary Cary, sis of Sally C. Fairfax; GW perhaps in love w/ her, sends regards to her & all to Sally, W. Irving said so. Freeman thinks maybe interested; Meade, Old Churches 1:101] married Edward Ambler, bro. of J. Ambler.Edward & Mary Ambler had a son whose second wife was Jn Mrshl‘s sis by whom one son, Thomas Ambler. Meade 2: 102] Hardy article source of [Beveridge report 2:346] of Marshalls remark on TJ slip in ―Sorry I missed you note [6/23/98] on JM‘s XYZ return: ―I was so ^un^ lucky‖—―Mr J. was very near writing me the truth.‖ Sent all five sons to northern colleges. Joseph Ellis cites GW advising his grandson [GW Custis?] ―to attend Harvard in order to escape the provincial versions of learning currently ascendant in the Old Dominion.‖ 808Edward C. Marshall, John Mrshll‘s youngest son, visited J Adams in Quincy; twas to him Adams noted ―proudest act‖ of life to appt. him to court.― All references to his maternal grandfather describe him as scholarly, and to her, ―devout‖ and ―strong‖.All of above from Hardy] Tjletter to Jmad: 6/21 full of chagrin at welcome given Mrshll ―to secure him to their views that he might say nothing which would expose [their game] Since his arrival I can hear [of

808 ―The Farewell, in Higginbotham, GW Reconsidered, 244. No reference.

259

]nothing directly from him.‖ [Thot he might get to him yet??] [TJ had report that Mrshll not ―hot enuf‖ for fedlst friends—apparently from someone who knew Livingston who came w/ Mrshll to Philly who reported that ―M. told him they had no idea in France of a war with us.‖ Republic of ltrs. 1060] ]Mary K. M. Also fertile: when he brought his 16[?] yr old wife to see her, she had a two year old hanging on to her. His admiration for Jane Austen and the taste, & intelligence of his wife (good political advice) were unlimited;809 His sister Elisabeth seems to have been a therapist before her time, and his legacy to his dotter states his desire to exalt the independence of women with ―I have long thought that the provision intended by a parent for a daughter ought, in common prudence, to be secured to herself and children, so as to protect her and them from distress, whatevever casualties may happen ― he gave her equal share of his six children‘s legacy in trust to his nephew, Thos >. Ambler, ―for her and their[her children‘s] separate use, not to be subject to the control of her husband or to the payment of his debts.‖[tho a pal of latter] Hardy, ―the will of a great lawyer: how chief-justice Marshall devised his estate, 4-6. Note: few dads did this: Lorena Walsh, Women in the Chesapeake (valst): sign of his real feminism. Evidence has already been cited that suggests that more than one woman was responsible for the early nurture of John Marshall, whose mother‘s average intervals between the births of her many children were somewhat shorter than any of the other leaders‘ mothers. When these intervals can be determined with certainty, they seem to make it unlikely that John Marshall‘s mother was his wetnurse—and less likely still that she was the steady wetnurse—of her eldest son. The birth interval between him and his next sibling is less than fifteen months, showing that Mary Keith Marshall became pregnant again before John was six months old and thus that her lactation ceased, or greatly diminished, some time well before. In fact the inter-birth intervals between all the numerous Marshall progeny is short, leading to the probability that this mother administered her large household at a certain physical distance from her infants. The absence of almost all documents that might contain clues to Marshall‘s relations with his mother seems noteworthy. It is true that the Chief Justice drastically pruned his private correspondence before it was left to posterity, but many letters to his wife and other members of his family survive. None of these contains any reference whatever to his mother. Nor can the

809 11/29/24, Richmond, Jn Mrshll to Thos White: "Jn Mrshll's views on influence of women on nation and family." [Rhodes 2:235] NN, Emmett coll, 6132,

260 literary incompetence that was characteristic of many upper-class southern women of the time account for this: As the daughter of a father who was a distinguished minister and a mother descended from a senior branch of the Randolph family, Mary Keith Marshall‘s education was probably at least as advanced as that of the other Virginian ―Founders‘‖ mothers.

Another refernce to mom [MKM] not indexed by Hobson in thankyou to publisher for 2d edition of Garnett‘s lectures on Female education [elmwoood, essex cty, va.] ―I have always believed that natl. character, as well as happiness, depends more on the female part of society than is generally imagined. Precepts from the lips of a beloved mother, inculcated in the amiable graceful, and affectionate manner which belongs to the parent and the sex, sink deep in the heart and make an impression which is seldom entirely effaced, These impressions have an influence on character which may contribute greatly to the happiness or misery, the eminence or insignificancy of the individual. If the agency of the mother in forming the character of her children is, in truth, so considerable as I think it, if she does so much towards making her son what she would wish him to be,anad her daughter to resemble herself, how essential is it that she should be fitted for the beneficial performance of these essential duties…object of Mr. Garnetts lecture…‖To Thos.W. White, Mrshlpapers 10:124-5] Appreciation. To Polly, 1/31/30: Dines w Pres. ―Mrs. Donalson, Presisdent‘s niece popular; Mrs. Madison was more so.Rhodes 2:343 Liberal w/ dotter ―not grudging with spending money like her Uncle Colston (Aunt Elizabeth‘s husband); 2/1/11. Rhodes 2:36f In Rhodes II:135; first autobiog. sketch; ―to Joseph Delaplaine‖mentions educated at home by father, a planter, often from home as surveyor‖ ―destined‖ for bar. Dad eldest son of John, who married Miss Mallet whose ―parents migrated from Wales; Dad=Mary Keith‖ whose dad ―a clergyman, migrated from Scotland, = Miss Randolph on James River.‖Dad-in-law, Jacq.Ambler ―third son of Richard Ambler, from England in Yorktown‖ War ―interrupted‖ studies; no mention of WM; 1782 ―to legislature‖ [Va] exec committee same year; =MWA 1783, resigned exec. comm. 84, admitted bar; declined public office except legislatre. ―mission to france97; returned 98, ―1799 to Congress, against inclination, induced by Gen W.‖. ―Nominated Dept. of War, Dept of state, accepted until beginning 1801. Ellsworth resigned, Jay declined, nomination chief justiceship which now holds…‖ Dad seems to have been fatuously devoted (no more sons for a while, Dad more pal than authority; said to have thrashed caster of single 261 vote against sonny in Fauquier cty.Also Sydnor story about other unruly electoral behavior for which reprimanded?] Keiths‘ Scottish military tradition cuz of maternal granpa K [raised by Bishop Dad with cuz who supported Pretender, fled to Fred the Gt and died gloriously for him at Hoch kirchen.] Rev.Jas K had to flee to Va. JnM‘s mom ―great force of character and strong religious faith‖ loved by JM with ―chivalrous tender devotion which made him gentle with all women.‖ Recited Now I lay me down to sleep learned at mom‘s knee.[Hardy, Jn Mrshl] Another incident re Thos. Marshall (dad) related by Sydnor—ignoring electoral rules?—reproved by burgesses[ ?] but no sanctions. Hobson draws on Snowiss for theme of Judicial review: ―assimilation of constitutional exegesis to the methods of common law adjudication…most enduring legacy‖ but doesn‘t think she has ―evidentiary basis ― for saying that Marshall knew what he was doing when he ―legalized‖ the constitution this way. 251] Marshall exempt from defensiveness about his adaptivity. No need to rationalize in grandiose principles. Could pose the ends and happily adapt the argument for means. Indeed: contrasts with the ponderous arguments from principle: he listened to the arguments and winged it on the spot.

Internal peace, peacemaking major objective. See Robarge quote on cty courts below; pt. also stressed by Hobson in Mrshll‘s ambitions for XYZ mission; (reconciliation) who also stresses dislike of partisanship thru his praise of GW‘s freedom from ―those selfish passions, which find their nourishment in the conflicts of party.‖ Hobson 18]. Marshall was the only—probably more than even Washington. This was perhaps because he felt most comfortable, least paranoid with authority? ambivalence toward Polly noted below [?][look how I‘m not taken care of]—No social life…also letters from Paris describing delightful landlady?See Pinckney below---To Polly, 2/23/24WDC Reassuring re Having had a bad fall‖ higher complimentwhich would very much surprize you..All the Ladies of the secretaries have called on me, some more than once, and…brought me…a great many good things….‖[Spends time dreaming of their romance] our little tiffs & makings up…and all the thousand indescribable but deeply affecting instances of your affection or coldness…‖ Mrshl papers 10:5]To Polly WDC 2/8/25: arrived on land…didn‘t take your advice; brought warm cloak ―suffering…had I come without it.‖ Mrshl papers 10: 144 262

8/17/25: Sends book to JnAdams w/ expressions of esteem; JnAdams to Mrshll, Quincy 8/17/25 ―No part of my Life that I look back upon with more pleasure than the short time I spent with you. And it is the pride of my life that I have given to this nation a C…J…equal to Coke or Hale, Holt or Mansfield.‖ Mrshl papers 10:197. Visit of Jared Sparks to Mrshll, rchmnd 4/1/26: ―Pleased with the urbanity and kindly manners of the C J There is consistency in all things about him, his house, grounds, office, himself, bear marks of a primitive simplicity and plainness rarely to be seen combined.‖ Mrshl papers 10: 283f] Baker, JNMrshll. JnMrshl like dad: ―In one way Thos Mrshll was different from contemporaries. ― Land…site for a ..farm, or as an invstment for later…Mrshlls ―he never visualized it as the self-contained center of his world‖ like GW, ..or ―as the cultural achievement of his career‖ like TJ‖Never developed a Montpelier to support his son as [Jmad sr. ] did …a wanderer, restlessly moving on; and his son John felt about the land as his father did…home never more than a simple brick building in Richmnd or a plain farmhouse.‖7] Thos 1st-born of John of the Forest (d. 1752] and Jn ditto of 15 children all of whom lived to adulthood: ―mark of their diligence as parents‖l This was an aspect of the Marshall orientation to property: they were businessmen; their acquisitions, whether in real or personal property, tangible assets or paper , was pragmatic, and seemingly free of romantic connections or a priori conventional notions. The historian of Jefferson‘s own county [Woods [albemarle, 63] was perhaps surprised to find that John Marshall‘s investment reach had extended even into Albemarle: he bought an old estate there about 1809 and sold it in 1813. Rev. Jas. Thomson came from Scotland in 1767 into Mrshll household as teacher. Later estbd school (w/wife), but ―for several generations the Marshalls made schools of their families‖ but Thos.‘s profound native mind, extensive reading and varied experience were superior to the talents of any of his children…‖laid the foundation of John‘s ―judicial wisdom‖ but so little contact outside ―his modesty anad diffidence were a great drawback.‖ Paxton 38]John Mrshll in battle of Great Bridge,Brandywine, Germantown & Monmouth, winter at Valley Forge, but retired in 1779 [How come?],?wounded? summer 1780 licensed as lawyer.40]=Mary Ambler 1/3/83, dad moved west leaving him Oakhill, 1785. Paxton 40]Moved to Richmond 84; elected to Hous e of Delegates 82; At this time says what were concerns of confederacy (in autobiog): 263 followed JasMad ―the enlightened advocate of Union anad of an efficient fedl govt‖ (Adams ed. 7-8).HobsonN Thos Mrshll moved from Westmoreland to Prince Wm Cty. spring 1755; [germantown];Mrshll b. in the fall; 10 yrs later 30 mi. nw, to ―the Hollow‖ leased acres from Thos Ludwell Lee & Rchd Henry L. Thos‘ 1rst public job 1759, year Fauquier split fr. Prince Wm; ―appointed both cty surveyor & justice of the peace…often away earning fees for surveying, sometimes with sonny. As justice of the peace acted w/ other county court members monthly. Mrshll said in 1830 Va has had ―more complete internal quiet…less of ill-feeling betwn man & man‖ cuz cty judges superior men ―act in the spirit of peace-makers and allay, rather than excite…small disputes…among neighbors.‖quoted by Robarge p. 6. PT10Corwin "John Marshall" in DAB 12: Education like JMad's? Dad house of Burgesses 1771-6;[Robarge says 1761-75] sheriff. Influence of Pope (only English book known to be in youth): "Universe is a ...constitl monarchy." His "flow of mind started by auditory nerve" [arguments of counsel.Influence through insinuation[?] 14 sibs: had been "nurse to a whole squadron..." Dad & he at first on PH's revolutionary side. Got the "habit of considering america as my country & Congress as my govt." in war. "Like impress" that GW experienced [fr. French & INdian War]/ 1785 bought military certificates for land. Affirmed judicial review power in Va. convention & also "recommendatory" aspect of Bill of rights. Refused ministry to France 1796. XYZ affair apppt,June 97; said [autobiog] ambitious for ―eclat‖ which Franco- American reconciliation would cause [Hobson 6]; returned June 98. mission paid 20K which rescued investors from creditors (crisis due to Robt. Morris default) & act of confiscation dating to revolution. Note similarity of Marshall‘s family structure to TJ‘s: girls outnumbered; eldest boy responsible; Baker says this is calumny traceable to TJ gossip.cites Ford vol. 1:355.And anyway, Fairfax deal settled before appointment and he no longer had ―to worry about money‖291- 3]Hobson says, however needed ―all the income he could command‖ in order to purchase Northern Neck Fairfax estate ;contractby him, w/ bros ―& close friends‖ signed 1793; not paid off finally till 1806. Hobson 19] , but nevertheless agreed to house campaign, 98, Henry came to his support, letter circulated lauding him; had support of Richmond [Henrico] cty, but not outlying ones. Callender accused him of buying drink for voters (GW had too); Accusation [by?] of fatherng (with 264

Pinckney) illeg. child in Paris; had her arrested in Charleston when she showed up. No substantiation.[out of character to spurn her, Baker thinks. This published by John Wood, The Suppressed History of the Administration of John Adams (from 1797 to 1801): Phila : 1846 ed.(pubd 1802]Woman‘s name Villette: Elkins citations on affair: John C. Miller, Crisis in Freedom: The Alien and Sedition acts (Boston 1951) 148-9; Papers Jn Mrshll, 3:318n, 463, 84. Wm Stinchcombe, The XYZ Affair (Westport Ct. 19980): 75-6. Chas Hobson in ANB:‖Through observing his father in his various roles as surveyor, justice of the peace, sheriff, vestryman, militia leader and burgess of the county, Marshall acquired the values and habits of a Va gentleman and gained admittance to the most famous ruling class America has produced.‖ Mom connected to ―1rst families‘ of Va., such as Randolphs & Lees. At 14 sent to Westmoreland County school [rev. Archibbald Campbell; ; Monroe fellow pupil]; followed by a year of study at home with resident local parish priest.David Thomson. [Hobson Gt Chf Justice, 2] As delegate to legislature & member of council of state 82-87, ―deep solicitude‖ for ―state of the Confederacy‖ caused him to follow Jmad ―enlightened advocate of Union and …efficient fedl govt.‘‖ [autobiog]. In 87-88, in his As delegate to state ratifying convention, 6/88, made speech defending judiciary article and judicial review of congrsssnl acts. ANB ―‘would declare‘ congressnl act ‗void‘ if not ‗warranted by any of the powers enumerated.‘— Hobson, 5, thinks this ‗idea that judges shld be guardians of the constitution‘ but perhaps disingenuous, meant as Reassurance to Phenry and Gmason against tyranny of Congress over states.? Summer 93 ―drew up series of resolutions condemning Genet;Praised GW in public address; For this attacked by Monroe as ―agricola‖; defended himself pubd. ―pseudonymous [―Aristides‖ & Gracchus‖. newspaper pieces praising GW and neutrality. ―‖Cordially received by leading northern Fedlsts…F. Ames, Ted Sedgwick, and rufus King‖ in 1796 when argued Ware v. Hylton before supreme ct. in Phila.[only case so argued, anad lost.]

Fletcher v. Peck: "obligation of contracts" prevented state overriding grants. Fairfax's devisee v. Hunters lessee decided by Story: "Hand of Esau" penned by Jacob. [Corwin, DAB] [In 1786 bill for confiscating Fairfax estate passed Va House in 1/11/86, but lost in Senate 1/16/86.. JMad in the house at time. To TJ, 1/22/86: brought in by John Francis mercer for selling it "ground of its being devized to aliens" but "opposed" cuz interference on the Judiciary 265 question , but "being of a popular cast" it passed the House "by a great majority" tho rejected almost unanimously by Senate. Mrsll. papers9:241n.Fairfax's devisee v Hunter's Lessee (1813) declared treaty supremacy over state law.Va court of appeals disallowed SC mandate, denying its appellate jurdisdiction over state courts. (1815) SC settled it in Martin v Hunter's Lessee, 1816 tho Marshall said "very absurdly put on the treaty of 94" (instead of 83). JMarshll to Jas M Mrshall, rchmnd 7/9/22 Papers 9:239-241]" For VA biog. Edmund Pendleton b. 1721 (or 2) d. 1803 (?) Cmpletely devoted to GW but essentially states-rightist. Wasn t too keen to see ""young Mr. Marshall" though clever, get his Va post so early (1786?);

PT1011/29/24, Richmond, Jn Mrshll to Thos White: "Jn Mrshll's views on influence of women on nation and family." [Rhodes 2:235] NN, Emmett coll, 6132, Appraisal of Jane Austen~(to Story, Rchmnd 11/26/26)incomplete in Story's Life & letters, also Dillon, Marshall, and Oster, Marshall, 103. John E.Oster. Political and Economic doctrines of Jn Marshall, NY 1914 Is also incomplete here:Better in Papers not up to this yet.Congratulates story as "another Judge who...thinks justly of the fair sex" tho reprimands him for not mentioning Austen in "your list of favorites" has just finished reading her novels. 103] Marshall gives account of welcome to GW in Trenton, 4/21/89 given by women :The defennder of the mothers will be the protector of the daughters" & of GW's appreciative response.. [biography?] 17f] Also note genealogy that shows JnM's mom granddaughter of first son of Isham Rndlph, Jane Randolph, TJ's mom granddaughter of 2d.[Always the B team!] Treatment of mom in first 6 vols [Robarge mentions her devout Anglicanism, & quotes, witihout reference, frm Jn Mrshll that ―early impression of a mom durable---―. Vol. 1 of papers, buying her silk, needles, giving her and a sis [Molly?] presents 1:311,381,406. Bought her and sises presentswhen in Richmond, Sept 94 bought Mom tea (which she must have asked for.) 2:384, 482.Vol. 3, to Polly fr. Phila, 7/10/97—Preparing to cross atlantic. Hope your mind has become ―tranquil & as sprightly as usual‖ & if you‘re pregnant remember ―melancholy may inflict punishment on an innocent for whose sake you ought to preserve a serene & composed mind.‖ 3:97] Great advice if you abort! John born Jan 98. 266

To Polly WDC 8/8/00 Tell John (whose ―good breeding‖ she has reported [he is 2 ½ ) ―he is a fine boy for his attention to his sister & love for his mama.‖ Vol. 4:210] No breeches story in letter to Polly! Covert reproach (had also lost money through hole in unmended pocket) Raleigh, NC 1/2/03. Writes her from Richmond, to Fauquier, the Oakes, c/o Mr,. Chas. Marshall that he has dined with her mom on arriving; Liza Carrington and other sises were there. Sent you $50 to the Oaks.6:403z Paxton, The Marshall Family.: Myths that descended fromEarl of Pembroke. Seems certainhe American family descended from an Irish captain ―and a poor one at that,‖John Marshall, settled in Va. mid 17th c.(c 1650)., Family proud that he―fought for the stuarts, and had fled from Ireland with his family rather than submit to the stern rule of Cromwell.‖ 6]This Capt. John Marshall, Dad of Col. Thomas Marshall b.c. 1655 westmrld, d. 5/1704. Two sons: Wm & John. Wm. b. about 1685, family moved to Henderson Co. Ky. John ―of the forest‖ b. c 1700, d. 1752= Elizabeth Markham about 1722: E. [Markham] Marshall (JnMarhshall‘s paternal granny) still living 10/15/73. 6 kids, oldest Thos. Marshall (II) b.4/2/30 Washington parish Westmoreland co.d. Mason Co. Ky 6/22//02‘ =1754 Fauquier co. Va. Mary Randolph Keith,(b. Fauquier 4/28/37, d. Mason Co. KY 9/19/09)dotter of Rev. Jas Keith (edu. Scotland) qui =Mary Isham Randolph. Rev. Jas Keith b. Scotland to Prof. in the Mareschal college of Aberdeen, Bishop of episcopal church and guardian of children of his cousin, the Earl, all rebels, Stuart supporters. Jas. Keith 19 in 1715 when rebels exiled, returned as rebels 1719 & when defeated Parson Jas. migrated to Va. Mary Isham Randolph Keith Maternal granny of John.Mrshll.] She was dotter of Thos Randolph of Tuckahoe, 2d son of Wm. Randolph of Turkey Isle..Romantic tales connected to her; eloped w/ a subaltern Brit army; he and their child murdered by her bros.She is said to have returned to Scotland when Keith did to be ordained. someone pretended to be revenant after she married Keith. She went nuts. ―her insanity…quiet melancholy, varied by some sudden freak of folly.‖ Greatly Outlived her husband .Lived with a ―Mrs Colston for many years (Paxton25f]. Was this her grandniece, Elizabeth ―Eliza‖ Marshall, b. 1756, d. ―Honeywoood‖ Berkeley Cty. 1842.=Rawleigh Colston, b. 5/10/49 d. 1823. She lived out at Honeywood, never going to Ky; schoolmistress to the rest of the kids, special provision in Dad‘s will for her self- sacrifice in this. Like bro., ―supeerior mental qualifications.‖ 45f] Mary Keith 6th child but 1st dotter of parson Jas. K. (Follwed by 2 more dotters.) Thos & Mary Keith Marshall had Eight 267 kids, Thos Sr.died 6/22/02Paxton 19-30] Thomas:Surveyed Fairfax estate w GW said to have attended school of Archibald Campbell, rector of Washington parish, with him too. Paxton, 13- 19] [Baker suggests little John probably went along sometimes on surveys w Dad & GW.)..25f]( In 1773 (after several moves,first when John 10, built ―The Oaks‖ in Fauquier cty,‖Western foot of Little Cobbler mountain.‖ 38] left to John. Paxton 23, 38]Thos. Fought in French War, afterwards superintended Fairfax estate..15 kids.Fought at Brandywine, spkr of Va. Hse of Brgsses (ER) gave him a sword. Reinforced Gen Lincoln in Charleston, 1779,captured, parolled, visited KY in 1780.Paxton 21]Zealous fedlst. Revenue collector for Ky in 1795Letter to John on death of Lucy Ambler (Jamestown Va. ) 11/6/95: Tell the Dad (Mr. Ambler) "―to be careful of its (little son left) health and education---sow the seed of virtue and honor early in its breast-—o make it virtuous rather than learned, if he can‘t make it both‖ Hear you‘re attrny genl; why cant we get one for KY They expect me to collect the revenue, but I can‘rt possibly without power‖as no one will comply with the laws without compulsion.‖ Paxton 22-23] . ―Are the Keiths descended from Pocahontas? Granddotter of Poca. =Col Robt Bolling. Their granddotter =Col. Fleming & a dotter, Judith, said to have married Thos. Randolph [but some doubt as to whether he married a Fleming or a Churchill. ] Meade supports this and ―Aged‖ Keiths and Marshalls say ―proud & noble blood of Pocahontas coursed their veins.‖ 31] 10/29/28: mrshll to Story: women surpass men in virtues of heart and qualities making happiness and domestic fireside. Rhodes 2:301. "veneration for female sex" says Story to Martineau, 2/14/35. Jnmmrshll to Story, richmnd, 7/13/21: grieved at Jefferson position becuz of great influence. surprised and mortified at Madison; TJ ambitions and unforgiving against independent judiciary, passion not reason, resentment of mandamus and batture cases. [see Oster, Marshall, 112-14.]rhodes 2:185]also 130f] See also bkntsum9.See W. M. Paxton, The Marshall Family...(1885;Cincinnati, Clarke, reprinted Baltimore, 1970). 4 JMarshll: Great speech March 1800, defending Adams for turning over American seaman impressed in to Brit. Navy Marshall papers vol. 7:4/07-12/13In Burr case, JnM's decision allowed testimony to be ended becuz charge (making war on Blennerhassett's Island) invalid cuz wasn't there. If 268 argument was that he had procured the assemblage, that was the "overt act" which would have to be proved by two witnesses.[Editorial note, Mrshl Papers 7:3-12] U.S. v. Burr Opinion U.s. CC Va 6/13/07. Last Opinion 10/20. (Never went to Supreme court) 7:4/07-12/13Opinion of 6/13: But Witness had power to subpoena Pres duces tecum (bring docs with you) if could show it was material. Not allowed for king in GB but "principle of the English const. that the king can do no wrong [while U.S. const. says "the Pres as well as every other officer of the govt may be impeached...elected from the mass of the people, and on the expiration of [term] returns to the mass. [king never a subject] "In this respect the first magistrate of the Union may more properly be likened to the first magistrate of a state--at any rate under the former confederation." 7:42].] 7:4/07-12/13G. Morris to JnMrshll, Morrisania 12.2.09. Has taken in Ann Cary Randolph "daughter of our old friend of Tuckahoe"; doesn't care about the gossips "if I stood alone, but connected with so many worthy Men as fill the federal Ranks" may bring stigma on the party if she is "undeserving." Tell me "frankly the Reputation ...[she] left in Virginia and the Standing she held in Society." JnM to G Morris rchmd 12/12/09. Some of her family "believed in her guilt" but sis who knew most & would have been most injured "if true, continued to treat her with an affection apparently unabated" and to "afford her an ssylum...during the life of the husband, but long after her death." Separation not due to this. Some "attached no criminality to her conduct & beleived her..victim of a concurrence of unfortunate circs. Among the latter...were those ladies with whom I am connected." [Besides her sis Mary,stepmom Harvie and br. Wm Randolph, her aunt Mary Cary Page, hostile were Mrs. Peyton Randolph [he prominent Richmd lawyer] (n‚e Maria Ward Randolph) Jn Mrshll, b. 1755 Licking Run, on stage road from Fredskbg to Warrenton. Sarah Hardy Green bag, ―son dotter etc] ; d. 1st s.Thos. Marshall (1730-1802) Freeman notes 2 yrs older than GW.] and Mary Isham Keith.Born in Germantown, now Midland in what became Fauquier Cty in 1759. Began Richmond practice 1783. Hite v. Fairfax, 1786.resigned commsn as captain, 1781. Va. assembly 1782-91; 1795-97, and del. to Va. constl convention (w/madison). In France autmn & winter 1797-8. 269

In France re Baker: Letter to Polly re charm of Mme de Villette, ―la belle et bonne‖ adoptive dotter of Voltaire, rescued fr. convent by V 1776, Reine Philiberte de Varicourt, married to Mqs. de V.., d. 1793 leaving her w. dotter 12 & son 4 when Marshall arrived.256]Shipped out 7/18/97, left Paris 4/15/98 . , Carrington to GW, Richmd 4/25/99: Marshll elected by 108 votes. So small a majority shows ―deep root which jacobinism had taken in the district.‖ Presdtl series 4: 18. GW to Jnmrshll , 5/5/99. Thot your‘d win by more and that we‘d elect more (98-99) than you said (5/1/99)GW presdtl 4: 36f] ―As you are at the fountain of information respecting the politics of the members [give me a report on the party tab]; 49]Mrshll reports (5/16/99) ―baneful influence of a legislature hostile perhaps to the Union—or if not so—to all its measures, will yet be kept up.‖Letter show also that he was an interventionist against French aggression in Europe.(Shld have intervened to relieve Ehrenbreitstein, & preserve Naples & Sardinia. 4:76]To GW 6/12/99, appraising prospective army officers, Mourns ―serious loss‖ to Va. ―which all good men will long lament‖ of P. Henry—knew that TJ and Jmad could hardly wait for it? 118] Elected, with P.Henry's spnsrship, to House,spr. 1799; served 12/99-5/00 (6th congrss) ―Greatest speech‖ March 1800, defending Adams in Jonathan Robbins affair [latter ―claimed‖ to be American impessed into Brit service; turned over to Brits on acct of Jay treaty extradition article; subsequently executed for murder. For this he was ―rwarded‖ by Adams.& advised him, as sec. of state beginning May 1800, on annual message to congress, judicial appts.& negotiated settlement of pre-rev. debt to England. .. Sec. of State 6/6/00-3/4/01. Marshall calendar,10/16/00: Oliver Ellsworth resigns as CJ (from Provence, to adams)1:406] Nov. 20, 26; Dec. 6/00/ on election. In last,SC vote for TJ would make him president; Mrshll alarmed for fedlst cause. DLC papers.Note: doing everything for Adams: getting "decent person" appt. by navy to guard white house (calendar for 10/28/ 1:408] named commissioner to negotiate miss. Ga boundary, 12/8/00, Drafts adams speech to congress, (ante 11/22/00, calendar 1:412). 12/18/00 To cc Pinckney Burr & TJ tied, will not intermeddle in house, NC will decide. Chagrined at fedlst defeat, Jay nominated CJ"returning richmd to practice law; wishes never again to fill pol station. Letter in Papers? in wmq 3, 12:1955, 643f] Apptd. CJ 1/31/01. Wife, Mary Willis Ambler, (m.1782 +1831)) suffered "intensely" from "nervous affection". 10 kids, 6 survived.[duplicated VABIOG] Wm. Short (1759-1849) in Marshall Papers, Vol. 1:40; 117, 131, 142. 270

[For George Wythe's class "At one moot court Marshall headed a team of four students that tried a case against a similar team led by William Short (1759-1849)." 40] [Short] has a certain complaint which you will probably be a judge of before you return from Annapolis."[Jnmrshll to Monroe, 2.24.84. 1:117 JnMrshll Signed, along w/ Jas M, uncle ditto, PH, ER, Short, RHLee, Mazzei, Monroe & others the Subscription Paper to the Va Const] Society (4/23/85) "the surest mode to secure republican systems of government from lapsing into tyranny is, by giving free and frequent information to the mass of people," Essays required, 2/3 of the membership to publish. See AHR 32 (1927): J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton, "A Society for Preservation of Liberty, 1784." 550- 52;792-3. Note Short's eulogy/reminiscence of Marshall in letters to nephew vants592 (prtd) TJ Didn't meet Marshall till TJ Sec of State; TJ "first to recommend that he be made a judge."5] Key to antagonism is Mazzei letter in which Marshall resented idea that GW and Feds had apostatized from republican principles; What got TJ was Marshall's retaliation in his analysis of parties in Washington [returning the charges that the dems. had abandoned the priciples of the Revolution], i.e. "impugned J's fidelity to republican principles.6f].Boyd, Chasm, vants592 Jn Marshall's bro-in-law, Wm. McClung of KY, one of the federal judges removed by TJ through repeal of the Judiciary Act of 1801 in 1802. See Prince, Mayrfs.94 Another bro. in law of Jn M also dropped from civil service. Ibid. Is this what Mrshl meant by ―most unforgiving‖ [i.e. vengeful] of men? [below].Someone said that Mrshll never would speak to TJ after doublecrossing of Richmond university move in favor of UVA. Only reference in Rhodes is letter to son Thos. Marshall, WDC 3/20/29. Richmond Academy estbd. Act of Va legislature, 12/29/03; Mrshll trustee. Rhodes 1: 493.St George Tucker, ER George Wythe co-trustees says Ketcham.445]‖Broke forever‖ over this w/ TJ over UVA in my notes on Hardy Green Bag articles ? J Marshall to Patrick Henry, Richmnd 8/31/90: He knows of suits by Brit. creditors in the federal court under the idea that the act of parlmnt subjecting lands to the payment of debts which we considered as obligatory before the revolution will still operate where the debt was contracted under the authority of that act...Some of the ablest men & soundest lawyers in America (I can instance Mr. Jefferson) think that act will still subject lands to the payment of those debts which were contracted while the force of the law was acknowledgd by us. But for 271 such authority I shoud myself have inclind to the contrary opinion." [Namely that the heirs or devisees are subjected...? Mrshll papers 2:61.] MJ Carr to TJ Spring Forest 2/26/87. Boyd 15: 635."Mrs. Marshal, once Miss Ambler is Insane, the loss of two Children is thought to have Occationed it."Mrshll notes in family bible that dotter Rebecca, born 6/15/86 d. 6/20. Note says death followed some mos. later "by the abortion of another pregnANCY" pAPERS 1:168F] Mrshll is "home" Richmond, 9/22/86. To Giles on legal matters, 9/22/86: had searached for him hearing he was in town. Bro, James in from KY: "I need not tell you how glad he would be to see you." WB Giles, 1762-1830 age of Jas Mrshall (1764-1848). Papers 1: 169] Jn Mrshll at Va convention 88 attacked PH for attainting a Tory outlaw, Josiah Philips, but it was the legislature that had done it says Geo. Morgan, P.Henry 350] (tho PH had written them about this "bandit")See valst & JMaad for more on PH.

Jn Marshall attrny for TJ, Eppes and [Henry ] Skipwith, as Wayles's executors, in suit brot against them by Wm Jones, as surviving partner of Jos. Farell, for damages of 12,000. in nov. 1790 term of US Crct crt for middle crct, distc of VA. Jury brot in a verdict for the defendants 11/28/97. (continued by Tyndale Ware, successor of Jones.) [Marshall's and TJ's argument was that the estate of Richard Randolph, partner of Wayles, was exclusively responsible for debt of 12,000œ. Boyd 15: 647f] But Sloan says Jn Mrshlls's opinion in 1791 that they had not a leg to stand on." 21] [Mrshll opinion with Andrew P Ronald that since Wayles had signed a paper backing Randolph on the slave cargo the judgment (entered in 2/91) by nil dicit was justified. Their opinion on 4/1/91; JnMrshl paid 9œ for it. But executors persisted anyway toward trial and judgment vacated end of 97--[so much for political influence! ewm]. Mrshll papers, 2:89-90] JMrshl to JMad, Rich. 11/29/90: Cool letter of ref for Giles. Mrshll papers vol. 2] Brant says giles probably boarded w/ Mad & other Va delegates.also on JMad. R. E. Ellis, Jeffsn crisis: Known Reasons for mutual dislike of Marshall and TJ apocryphal. Notes his Jn Mrshl's political agility in remaining a fedlst in 1790s Va. 56 John Marshall 's political aptness, natlsm. Opposed alien & sedition acts, Pickering's pro-British policy in his campaign of 1799.Theo Sedgwick of him: Strong attchmnt to popularity but indisposed to sacrifice his 272 integrity to it...disposed...to feel the public pulse and...[to express] doubts. Ellis 56]. John Marshall. Theo Sedgwick of him: Strong attchmnt to popularity but indisposed to sacrifice his integrity to it...disposed...to feel the public pulse and...[to express] doubts. Quoted by R. E. Ellis, Jeffsn crisis 56. JW Eppes to TJ 5/1/93:631f: RRnndlph and AC[Nancy] R exonerated, Jn Marshall and Mr. Campbell...present...declare...nothing was proved which could even afford grounds for a suspicion that either...acted even imprudently, much less criminally. His own relations were his prosecutors...inveteracy and malice of relations...[Eppes not yet married to Mary].Bizarre case in Jn Marshall Papers 2: 161-178.Marshall's notes taking testimony on the case. See also wdcsprg94b. Suits of Marbury et all directed by Dennis Ramsay, one of those to whom TJ had directed Levi Lincoln not to deliver commissions. SC met 12/17/01 without JMad being present or represented. Left "proceedings under the discretion of the court." 12/18/01 JnMrshl appointed 4th day of next court term, in June 02, for a hearing on mandamus.In 4/02 Congress abolished June and December terms of court. Thus Marbury vs. Madison not handed down until Feb. 03. Donald O. Dewey, Marshall versus Jefferson: The Political Background of Marbury v. Madison. NY 1970. "Batture controversy" betwn Edward Livingston (1764-1836) & TJ decided by JnM USCC, Va. 12/5/11, Opinion in Livingston v. Jefferson. Livingston evicted by "batture" (alluvial ground) he owned in Jan. 1808 on grounds it belonged to U.S.. He brought suit for trespass vs. TJ as private cit., in 1810, JnM decided in favor of TJ (with John Tyler, just apptd on TJ's influence to replace Cyrus Griffin, "whom J regarded as a 'cypher' unable to offset the 'deep- seated enmity' of Marshall."Thot Tyler could. Mrshl papers 7:276.It was in letters to Story (MHS) 7/13 and 9/18 /21 that Jn Mrshll said "case of the mandamus may be the cloak, but the batture is recollected with still more resentment...will never be forgotten." But court didn't have jurisdiction cuz trespass a local act, outside it. 276] Vol. 8 Mrshll papers: 3/14-12/19 (1995 Harvie, Jaquelin B. [JnM's?] son in law.] 280 & n. 2 [wanted to buy nail manufacturing machinery from boston for his own "extensive nail factory."280] TMR jr. 178; Ann Cary Randolph 178 ; ER 333;TJ 65;215n.8; 85; 291. 273

Lafayette letter 151f.LaGrange, 4/22/17 showing admiration of GW, wish to have Bushrod's copies of letters to him, introducing Descaves, Baltimore businessman, refers to self as one whom "you honour with your friendship" and "our friend" Bushrod.151-2] In History of the Colonies ―scarcely any references to Va as an important contributor to America‘s colonial heritage of representative institutions sand self-govt. One scholar [Shaffer, p. 99] has suggested that M, alienated by the Jeffersonian dominance in Va, instead retrospectively viewed Fedlst N E as the torchbearer of liberty during the pre-Revolutionary years.‖Robarge 41]This history made the war entirely on ―constitutional & ideological issues‖ ―a contest of principle‘‖—nothing about Va‘s ―sociopolitical devpnt‖ either ―a subject he knew very well‖ in the revolution. Robarge 41] [Wm Wirt to JnM [Richmnd, 1/7/15] on the stamp act resolves of 1765 in Va; 65] JnM to Robert G. Harper Richmd 4/28/15. Thanks for sending TJ's & Livingston's [1814] pamphlets on Batture controversy. "L...is I think still more the debtor of Mr. J..for having dragged him & his case before the publick...[adds to his]" reputation as a man of talents...[&] "must compel Congress to provide a tribunal for the trial of his cause." 85 & n.1,] 65] Cohens v. Va 3/3/20: Sustained court power to arbitrate "all cases arising under the const." and hence to summon Va. to defend itself. But decided against Cohens since Congress's lottery act not intended to trump a state's penal laws.9:110.

Tim. Pickering to Jas. Hamilton, 1/4/21Jn M. had "an opinion of AH" from reading his corresp. w/ GW "One of the greatest men that had ever appeared in the U.S." JMar to Jas. A. Hamilton:"The very high respect I felt for your father while living, and for his memory...certainly increased by his correspondence with" GW. Papers 9:3//9/22 Story to JMar, 6/27/21 Cites letter of TJ to Jarvis, 9/28/20, discussed in Malone, Sage, 353-5deprecating judiciary, esp. Marbury v Madison. "Its obvious design...to prostrate the judicial authoirty.... at his age & in these critical times these [opinions[ fill me...with indignation & melancholy. Can he wish yet to have influence enuf to destroy the Government of his sCountry? 9:177]

* 274

To Story, 7/13/21:JMar on TJ"He is among the most ambitious, & I suspect among the most unforgiving of men. His great power is over the mass of the people and this power is chiefly acquired by professions of democracy. Every check on the wild impuse of the moment is a chieck on his own power, & he is unfriendly to the source from which it flows. He looks of course, with ill will at an independent judiciary....The case of the mandamus may be the cloak, but the batture is recollected with still more resentent." "In Va the tendency of things verges rapidly to the destruction of the govt and the reestablishment of a league of Sovereign Sstates." Papers 9:179] To Story , Richmd 9/18/21: TJ "The great Lama of the mountains" "The batture will never be forgotten." 9:183] Additions 8/12/00: Charles Warren, ed., "The Story Marshall correspondence (1819- 1830): WMQ ed series 21 (1941): 1-26. In vol.34 (vol. 14, 2d series) of the MHS Proceedings 26 letters from Marshall to Story are published, but the 18 letters acknowledged from Story have not been published. This publishes some of them (acquired by WM college) & reprints relevant Marshall ones. Two (3/26/19) & 5//17/19: deprecate Va.'s reaction to Bank Case:"has roused the Sleeping Spirit of Virginia, if indeed it ever sleeps."; and "denounced by the democracy in Virginia";Letter of Mrshll7/13/19 shows how close their collaboration/consultation was (on a CC case concerning sovereignty of states in re ports for purposes of hypothecation.)Story to Marshall 6/27/21 responding to Marshall to Story 6/15: in which Mrshl talks of Spencer Roane ["Algernon Sydney's] attacks on Cohens v. Va."coaseness & malignity" unsurpassed "There is on this subject no such thing as a free press in Va.," everything like this remains uncontradicted; hence ..."He will be supposed...champion of state rightsd instead of... of dismemberment." In one of these letters, Story tells Marshall that there is no anti-union sentiment /anti-court opinion in Mass. In Story to Mrshll, 6/27: deploring Va.'s "fundamentally erroneous" doctrine on the consitution" "Your appt to the Bench has...more contributed to the preservation of...the Constitution than any other circumstance in our...history." Pans the "Jarvis letter" of TJ (9/28/20) (ford ed. 12:162-3noting "error" in Jarvis's book in approving Marbury. Marshll to Story 7/13: (surprise and mortificaiton at JMad's "embrace" of TJ's views on judiciary.Thinks Roane guided by "greatr Lama of the mountains." attack on the judiciary "an attack upon the union." Marshall sent oldest son to Princeton other 3 to Harvard tho only youngest (Edw. Carrington M.) graduated (in 1826). Story refers 5/29/31 to Marshall letter of 5/3/31: found TJ letter from newspaper of 7/26/ 18/on GW "Character." Same as in correspondence. 10-year old dotter's 275 death has "overwhelmed us" Have you and Mrs M "ever met with like calamities"? Engclose my lines on death which have soothed my anguish" Mrshl to Story 6/26 We have lost four, 3 of them "bidding fairer for health and life than any that have survived them. ...One, a dotter about 6 or 7 was...opne of the most fascinating children I ever saw...followed within a fortnight by a brother (whose survival for 2 days when he had urged her to go to mom, thinking him dead) he concealed from Mary.[Meanwhile he attended the child..."agonized with its condition and with the occasional hope...that I might enraputre his mother with the intelligence of his restoration to us."...Us and we throughout. "She could not bear to return to the house she had left and remained with her mother a fortnight. I then [wrote her an appeal in versedeploring our mutual loss, appealing to her affection for survivors, and her religious confidence in...Providence excited...[closing] with a pressing invitation to return to me and her children...[couldnt find a copy to send Story.]Marshall delayed his resignation till after election of 1832 (6/26/31); Story believed (5/29/31) "some of our Brethren" "design" to separate us (in domicle;); Mrshall regretted (5/3/31) having left Mr. Brown; "like most other unquiet men...pull down without enquiring how we are to build up." [did he know TJ's phrase--or was it intuition?Boarded with Tench Ringold (F & 18th) 1831-2; but moved to Ms. Dunn's, north side of A St. between North Capitol & first streets 1834-end. Last letter to Story 12/3/34 saying worst thing of leaving public life "I shall part forever from friends most dear to m,e." WDC. Story Article North American Review, Jan.1: 1828 "To be amiable, as well as great; to be kind, gentle, simple, modest and social, and at the same time to possess the rarest endowments of mind, and the warmest affections"..very rare. The closer the better, and he is "exactly what a wife, a child, a brother, and a friend would most desire." 19] To Story 12/9/23,Richmd: Regrets pubctn of Correspondence between...Jn Addams...and the late Wm Cunninghamm,...1803-1812 Boston, 1823 "Extreme bitterness" re honourable men who were once his friends...vs those who were always his enemies and gross calumniators, who cannot even now treat him with decency... Non est qualis erat."9:354 Case of Ronald's Heirs v.Barkely USCC Va 12/9/18., Refers to 1797 case to which TJ a party USCC Va. Rec. Bk. 13, 609-10, 619-23. TJ recovered debt and intrst., 215,n.8 "A friend to the Union" essays, 1819, defending McCul loch vs. Md.(3/6/19)Pts. out that judgment unanimous including four judges apptd by TJ,& Mad "sound republicans...selected certainly not for their federalism" 291. 276

Reference in another essay to App. 4-6, Life of GW, paraphrasing opinions of TJ er & AH on constitutionality of bank bill. 333 Lear held GW journal (bequeathed to BushW) for 8 mos. before turning it over. On way to Algiers, Aug. 1802, heard rumor related to a Rev. Kirkland, that he had been told by anon. friend of Marshall that Marshall thot Lear had lifted papers 6/1/91-9/30/94. Marhsl said he had said to this anon. person they were missing but didn‘t remember blaming Lear, tho if X said he had wouldn‘t argue. Benj. Lincoln made intermediary. Actually 5/2/91-7/4/91 (Southern tour) were later turned over by Marshall heir to LC. Lear to Marshall, 8/13/03; Mrshll to Benj. Lincoln, 11/21/03;Affair concluded with letters exchgd betwn Lincoln & Marshall, 4/25/04; 5/6/04. Note that Marshall never siad convinced Lear innocent; just that he has no evidence & thinks did not say he was guilty. (Lear alleged also to have abstracted TJ-Gw correspondence on Mazzei letter. Marshall papers 6: 192-7; 284-286.Re Lear to Jmad, ―clergymen of Boston…warm & zealous promoters of scanadal & falshoods to answer the ends of a desperatte faction.‖ 9/5/03 (on board ship, enclosing above letter to Marshall.) Mad papers 5:334-5. Jmad thaot Mrshll‘s ―Life‖ ―highly respectable‖ except for vol. 5, shows ―bias of party feeling.‖Thot marshall ―would write differently at the present day,‖[--Jared Sparks, jrnl entry 4/25/27 [Adams life of Sparks, 2:36-7] but wrong cuZ Marshall added vituperation on Mazzei letter to 1832 edition, vol.2 Note 26,(of my edition.) Marshall 6:229.] Jmarshll letter to Bushrod, 12/11/24: GW letter to Jmad, 10/10/87 ―mentions Colo. G. Mason & Colo. RH Lee rather in terms of reprobation‖ Thinks should be omitted or names left blank. [was.] Marshall papers, Charles HObson ed. vol. 9: 1/20-12/23 JMar on Jmad: Believed with "surprize and mortification" that Madison "embraced" TJ's views on the judiciary. 179 Note says he was mistaken: "Mad. privately criticized McC v. Md and (to a lesser degree) Cohens v. Va, but he never questioned the role of the fedl judiciary as the proper constl. arbiter in cases that aturned on the completing [sic] claims of federal and state power. He pointedly distanced himself from the views of Roane and Jefferson." Cites Drew R. McCoy, The last of the fathers: Jas. Mad and the Republican Legacy (NY: 1989) 69-71; 99-103; Charles F. Hobson, The Great Chief Justice: John Marshall & the Rule of Law (Lawrence, Kansas, 1996), 208-12, 180n 3] Mrshll's suspicions of TJ's complicity with Roane discussed in essay on Cohens (1821) in Mrshll papers 9: 106-113] Mrshll had more in common w/ Pendleton—clever, resrceful, than Wythe who was 277 erudite but got lost in arguing cases. 29] TJ for strict text law‘ mistrustful of judicial interpretation from the first. 37f]Wythe aadvocated judicial review in a case in 1782 44]in 1792 Genl. Court invalidated va. legislatures judiciary ruling giving addtl jurisdiction to courts as unconstitutional. Kamper v. Hawkins. 45] Timothy Pickering to JMrshll, Salem 1/24/26: Recounting Giles withdrwl of disavowal that JQA‘s motives self-interested. Recounts TJ/Mad/Monroe plan for succession; Giles‘s expectation that he would be Sec of State: ―able, bold, independent, unmanageable, I shld say, that Mr. Mad was afraid to introduce him into his cabinet.‖Monroe treaty rejected without being sent to senate cuz TJ feared public wld like it & hence insisted on formal stipulation of non- impressment intentions; ill will to GB ―rendered his admintn popular…however would have stopped short of WAR; into which the feebler temper of his successor was driven by the fiery popular leaders in the House…Jefferson…respected and loved by his adherents; Mad…loved and not respected;‖ Monroe neither. Marshall Papers 9: 269f]/ Marshall made apologies for his wife's acceptance of revealed religion---he obviously not [in autobiog memoir]. Pecquet on Marshall's supposed deathbed conversion: Decline of the episcopal church by the time of his ordination (1811) re Meade, old churches etc. vol. 1: "Some years after this, when I applied to Judge marshall for a subscripti on to our Theological Seminary, though he gave with his accustomed liberality he could not refrain from saying, that it was a hopeless undertaking, and that it was almost unkind to induce young Virginians to enter the episcopal ministry, the Church being too far gone ever to be revived." 30] [Reasons for revolt vs anglican church described idem, 14-16].

Pecquet, vol. 2Reprints JnM's tribute to his wife, "Hers was the religion taught by the Saviour of man...inculcated by the...Episcopal Church in which she was bred. 30 Daughter Mrs. Genl Harvie with him at the end "reason why he had never communed was that he was Unitarian in opinion, though he never joined their society...that he believed in the truth of the Christian revelation, but not in the divinity of Christ, therefore he could not commune in the Episcopal Church. "But converted by 9 on Prophecy in last months and ready to commune but not in private "becuz he thought it his duty to make a public confession of the Saviour." Signed Wm Norwood. 31]Eliza Carrington to sis Nancy Fisher [I have old notes too] on Captain Marshall coming to York[town] from the Northern army. His Dad in command locally [Col. Marshall] 278

JnM "spoken of by all as a very paragon...[eldest of 15] devoted from his earliest years to his younger brothers and sisters...almost idolized by them." Mary [sis] thought by Eliza her superior. Jn M's "awkward...unpolished manners...total negligence of person." "... amiable unsuspicious temper," never "malevolent or invidious retort." 27-29 To Mary Marshall (Polly) WDC 2/23/24 reporting fall in WDC; reminiscing about their courtship how he passes the time.Papers 10: 4,5. Farewell to Monroe, Richmdn 12/13/24 ―You may look back with…the rare felicity not to find the retrospect darkened by a single spot…which ought to pain yourself or your fellow citizens.‖ 10:134.Monroe replied 3/10/25 (Mrshlpapers 10: 153] ‖Highest gratification. We began our Career together in early youth, and the whole course of my Public conduct has been under your observation…‖ s Madison voted with him at Va convention 1829-30 for independent judiciary after eloquent speech:‖I have… thought.from my earliest youth that the greatest scourge an angry Heaven ever inflicted upon an ungrateful and a sinning people, was an ignorant, a corrupt, or a dependent Judiciary.‖AJB 4:495f] Mrshll let it be known in 1812 that he was up for presdcy, (as anti-war candidate) but locked up for Clinton –―Fedlsts may have had enough of Presidents from Va.‖ (Baker, 535). In 1812 opposed conscription, but what was his position on the Hartford Convention (which Cabot calmed down.).

Note: Marshalls linked to Carys through Randolphs [08interel.doc]

279

Chapter 7: Interrelations: Attachment and Alliance, Aversion and Enmity

Kinship ties: Virtual brothers: can learn about one by studying another's differences: ERndlph like TJ & JMad--but not.JN Mrshll & JMad had very present fathers, entirely different relations. Thos Mrshll & GW; JMad & GW, TJ & Marshall, ER & all. Levelling at the top: intensified by intermarriage (though largely along party lines)."until by the Revolution the aristocracy appeared to be one great tangled counsinry."211.Bernard Bailyn. Politics & social structure in Va. in TH Breen, ed. Shaping southern society: the colonial experience.193-214. TJ‘s if you‘re not with him you‘re against him ―irked‖ that ER remained independent [furious, in fact] See McKitrick, ER The most obvious difference generational but that is complicated. Washington and Marshall vs. TJ & JMad: generational difference similar, [TJ's backwater origins made him culturally comparable w/ GW in some ways] Fighters vs non- fighters; actually part of the acrimony (e.g. Mazzei letter deprecated martial renown of GW] . Jefferson and Madison: ―[First] intercourse…in1776[but in]…1779….an intimacy took place.‖ {Jmad‘s autobiog?] Quote by JMSmith, Republic 1: 100. Mad‘s role vis a vis TJ: to mirror him as he wished to be seen: e.g: Okay to support Paine: (NY: 5/12/91)Adams…attacking ―Repub. constitutions of this country‖ so ―it cannot be very criminal or indecent in [you]…to patronize a written defence of the principles on which that govt is founded‖. p.22] Jmad‘s role: to reassure TJ about the nobility of his behavior---a good father/mother? At the same time to protect him from the consequences of his peculations and philandering. A striking example of this lies in the negotiations that Madison attempted to conduct with James Callender. In one of his articles in the Recorder reviling Jefferson Callender left no doubt that Madison had full knowledge of the ―Sally‖ affair and there is no reason to suppose that this was not correct. Whether or not Jefferson‘s sexual transgressions were discussed openly by him with Madison, the degree of intimacy and Madisons‘ acute intuition make it seem certain that they 280 both were aware of the same facts of the case. Certainly also Jefferson relied on Madison to play [football guard position?] for him while he kept himself at a distance from the ugly exchanges that were appearing in the New England press as well as in the newspaper of his own Virginian capitol. The fine points of this interplay were, apparently, concealed by common arrangement, and all but its traces have largely disappeared. Occasionally, however, a clue hints at the modus operandi in the collaboration. An example is the attempt to neutralize the damage wrought by refusing Callender a job.[See Jm adnts]

―Changing Places?‖ Jmad back to the country when TJ became vice pres. Latter‘s suggestion he go to the Va assembly rejected [Serious? Down-putting?]TJ‘s representation of him to GW subversive (didn‘t want ambassdrshp to France TJ said; Jmad thot it unlikely he ‗d be offered it?)s mmtK . Harris (L‘Enfant) notes that MCW called TJ ―most detestable of mankind ― (Wm Parker Cutler & Julia Perkins Cutler, Lif Jrnls & correspondence of Rev Manasseh Cutler, 2 vols. Cinn. 1888, 2: 56f). But evidence of mistrust surely went back to ‘91 at least. Nascence of GW‘s mistrust of TJ; transferred to Jmad by the time realized the two were hand in glove; northward trip of 91 first (laughed about in fedlst circles); then sighting of them in Georgetown [keyword GW88],followed by consulting them together.**

GW Persuaded TJ was a scoundrel, traitor, by the time of the false Nicholas letter went back to ‘91 at least.But TJ‘s limitation was that his narcissistic idealization/deprecation [great father; intellectually/morally-limited father] of GW prevented him from perceiving GW‘s overweening interest in the political authority of the fedl. govt. Harris, VMBH, came out in decisions on design of capitol: ―Once J. grasped‖ GW‘s ambitions for ―concentrating the political authority of the fedl. govt in the design…he began to oppose it in ―subtle, oblique ways.‖529] GW‘s self-conscious admiration for those (self & others) who acted out of principle extended even to Tories like J. Boucher (altho Boucher‘s criticism that he didn‘t stick his neck out to forestall persecution may have been juste; also in Drummond affair? GW & the fairfax family, some new documents . Peter Walne, ed. VMBH 77 (1969): 4Letter to Bryan Fairfax, from camp, 9/25/77 No change in my friendship for you. I esteem, and revere, every man who 281 acts from principle, as I am persuaded you do..obedt & affte GW]446];l and from Newburgh, 6/15/83awaiting definitive treaty ...to seek that reposewhich a Mind always on the stretch, & embarrassed by a 1000 difficulties..." for 8 years needs badly 447] same to same 1/10/86 Regrets "we have got none yet" of negroes tried to hire with "encouraging terms" for the Potomack Co. because fears of those "bought for " it are "likely to be realized." 448] ER‘s ―uncanny talent for identifying the 'middle position' had made him indispensable to " GW by spring 93. 189] reardon, ernts and abandonment of that role, as GW saw it: see mary bonsteel tachau

Last lettter to B Fairfax in Fitz. 37 1/20/99: "In readiness to gird on the sword" vs France "if the immergency shall require it. It is the fault of that party which opposed every opposition to French "usurpations" (including no doubt the Jay Treaty) & accused us of wanting to introduce monarchy...aristocracy...but only the Va & KY (child of Va.) legislatures against resistance. It was they that gave a false impression of "sentiments of the mass of citizens" & hence cause of present disquietudes by encouraging the Directory to unwarrantable actrts.450] Still believes Providence...will not suffer the discontented...to produce more than temporary interruption to the Permant Peace & happiness of this rising Empire" 450] Self: mind who always walked on a straight line and endeavoured as far as human frailties & perhaps strong passions would enable him, to discharge the relative duties to his Maker & fellow men, without seeking any indirect, or left handed attempts to acquire popularity." glad of praise hence. 451] Apparently would not open affair of Lord Drummond's parole, (eg 11/14/78)Another thing here: seeking approval of Providence/father, but nothing lowdown, pandering (hence rash youth, impudence)

Washington's perception of TJ must always have been tempered: status factor: TJ's dad inferior (with Fry); feedback during TJ's governorship can't be established but certainly there. Must have seen him as less than brave, and at least ineffectual--Steuben and N. Green both reported on him.(Walker was GW‘s aide during rev. war)No help to Laf. either. But snowed or at least put off by his education, facile brilliance, Virginian familiarity. One strike against him however that he not a military man. E.g. Marshall ― General Marshall‖ in [96?] GW a subtle apprehender of TJ‘s (and anybody‘s] ―subtle, oblique (Harris, L‘Enfant) strategies. 282

Importance of military status noted by Latrobe [in early comments on America; obvious in Va. use of titles] TJ Actually had the nerve to deprecate AH's military prowess/courage [and vv?); Nor did Madison fight: his younger bro. & "4/5" of the princeton undergraduates enlisted, but re Rives, although really wanted to, couldn't [weak eyes? other health?)Really ridiculous letter to Short—―If I were young again‖-- TJ to WS MOnticello, 11/28/14. [peace celebrated 4/13/15] [replies to short letter of 10/15/14] "Settlement of your boundary with Col. Monroe' delayed by "hostile expedition to Washington" that kept him from getting here. Justification of the war: we cldnt have known they would repeal order in council "it is the case of giving a ...limb to save life....The enemy are...now disgorging what they had so ravenously swallowed....entirely justifiable...but too bad about the debt...Their new bank...will not last thro' one campaign" and taxes proposed insupportable, yet "benefit...of teaching our enemy that he is never to gain by wanton injries on us." "Altho' the debility of age disable me from the services & the sufferings of the field, yet , by the total annihilation in value of the produce which was to give me subsistence and independance," [I have suffered as much, implied.] "Your situation , my dear friend, is much better, for altho I do not know with certainty the nature of your investments, yet I presume they are not in banks, insurance cos. or any of those gossamer castles." If in groundrents or US stock safe. Retracts former view that war would end interest paying on public debt, but now "satisfied it will never be done." Bloody-minded Thoughts of Mass revolting copied. Example of Henry Adams comment on his crazed delusions. "monster" used for Nappy. Madison puny and intellectualized; not talked of but Callender took the lid off: Richmond Recorder Sept. 1, 1802 ["Vol.2"]. On p. 1: Madison's anonymous pamphlet against the alien & sedition act "in the name of the general assembly of Va. [Does he mean the Va resolutions?] He knew that he did not run the smallest chance of personal danger...[or] peril of persecution.....When the British were at Richmond...where then was...this modern monopolist of republican firmness [TJ]....[?] Never, in his whole life, did Mr. Madison hear a shot fired in Anger." `TJ also badmouthed AH‘s intelligence, e.g. to DuPont de Nemours: ―The contracted English half lettered ideas of Hamilton…‖ Also extremist talking: When I took office ―I found the country entirely in the enemy‘‘s hands.‖ TJ to DuP, WDC 1/18/02: Chinard ed. p. 37.

FL1. Mutual Contacts 283

1. Around the Sun-King: Washington and his courtiers; GW and his aides:Filiality: Laf. Humphreys and convivials . Hamilton Note parallel experience w GW: Dad deserted AH at 10; half brother took all; older bro? Same impulses to impetuous rejection of authority.Danger of being sucked in: showed up with jealousy of Laf. Against hanging of André 10/2/80 (in favor of shooting him as he asked) To Betsey: Tappan, NY "I urged compliance with [his]...request ...and I do not think it would have had an ill effect; but some people are only sensible to motives of policy,UL and sometimes from a narrow disposition mistake it...[later GW]...will be branded with too much obduracy." Ham papers 2:448] Both highly policy oriented: AH proud when he felt milk of human kindness run in his veins (or thought he did.) GW's affinity for Hamilton was not only that he saw his younger self, but that he admired AH's judgment of living well, & saw, brilliantly expressed, ideas with which he was in accord. On the second, when Lear wrote him that GWPC's school no good: said that he "should like to have him at the same School that Hamilton's son goes to" [not the Virginian E. Randolph's, who also had a son at the school.) GW to Lear, Richmd 4/12/91:Pres.series 8: 85. Sibling rivalries: According to Sparks, JMad said "Hamilton often spoke disparagingly of W;s talents, particularly after the Revolution and at the first part of the presidency. Towards the close of W's life perhaps it was otherwise, as they agreed more in sentiment."....When had they ever disagreed?....when Madison saw himself as favorite of GW: ―GW to DH, MV 12/26/86 On learning invited to be delegate to Phila next May "I immediately wrote to my particular friend Mr. Madison." Fitzp 29:127] "Should this matter be further pressed...what had I best do?" id. (also in 05Washington)

Everyone tried to depict GW in own image, or in preferred image...... Often belittling: JMad: did not "suppose that W had ever attended to the arguments for Xty...or...that he had formed definite opinions on the subject. But...took these things as he found them existing...the Episc. Church in which he was brought up." Proctor, ed. of Sparks 263. This exemplifies, as much as any of Madison‘s perceptions of his fellows, the correctness of Mazzei‘s opinion that Madison was no judge of other men. In fact Washington‘s judgment on basic values, 284 including theological values, was probably as independent as almost any man of his age. The repeated efforts that he made (Bolling) to avoid being trapped into expressing conventional piety were so consistent and ingenious that they could only have been deliberate. It is a mark of the deficiency of Madison‘s imagination, or his unconscious wish to deprecate his venerable chief, or both, that Washington‘s wiliness in evading questions made so little impression on Madison. oreover political insight TJ‘s conviction that GW a tool of evils around him confirmed by ER‘s Vindication ―tho‘ an honest man himself, …circumvented by snares and artifices and…surrounded by [bad] men‖ To Jmad 11/26/95. 28:540.‖Madison hoped to rescue the pres. from ‗the snares‘ Hamilton had set for him…and was genuinely worried that…[his] reputation…wld be harmed ― by supporting monarchical prerogatives. Rakove, Jmad, 109. Idem: "Gw "strongly exercised by H's funding system" becuz of his "strong pledges to the army that justice wlsd be done them";;;payment to present holders deprived soldiers "of their just claims" (whod already been paid off) "he could not easily be reconciled to it: Evidence? Proctor cites "Letter of Ebenezer Stevens to Congress," Cal. of Va State papers, 1792-3 , VI (Richmond, 1886), 65f] Relations with others (men) set by relations with father.

i.Washington--Father's providence vindicated, assumed the role himself. 2.Jefferson: repressed the need for dad, fear of same: reaction formation against this ideal father figure. Tendency to idealize GW resisted: perceived GW less than perfect , as declining: growing infirmity, excess sensitivity, poor judgment....and betrayal? for not appreciating him as much as others. Strong, though denied, impulse to replace him. [started early: took his role w Lafayette.] 2.TJ took great pains to represent GW as like himself in later years.... JMad and Lafayette equivalent for GW and (esp. ) TJ who actually made him his successor in his own image. Laf. to JMad, 8/5/87 on urgency of new US constitution: "The fame of the U...S...requires that somewthing be immediately done...Our Notions on that subject are so much alike that I have only to tell you that such immmediate measures are necessary to the consequence of America in Europe." JMad 10: 134 Nevertheless, uncanny affinity between them--or if not affinity, adaptivity to the other's understood moods: eg. GW sounds like a revolutionary to TJ & TJ gets more conservative to GW [see GW2: Sears] 285

3. Both GW & Marshall had a clear idea of what Madison represented [e.g.Marshall in 1829---"Mr. Mad. is his old self....")Based on what? Eminently respectable though modest gentry origins. Higher standing than selves, in fact(i.e. Jmad first of first to contrast with GW; father more cultivated and civilized than either's?). JMad's mom dotter of .....Conway who was bro of husband [Colonel Edwin Conway] of Ann Ball, MBW's older half sis. [Maternal ancestry of MBW]] i.e. JMad's great aunt (sort of) was GW's aunt (by half.) 4.Washington for Marshall:paternal connections; 5.Madison for Jefferson: Only ones who weren't actually related to one another? Quote fr. memo. books (TJntsa):11/12/84: "Lent Colo. Le Maire 400f and gave him an order on mr Madison junr. of Orange for 10 guineas." [nb: not too familiar] Perhaps the most mysterious relationship, and the most important for the development of the nation after 1800, was that between Jefferson and Madison. Madison's first important official role as Hamilton's collaborator on the federalist. Contemporaries--Ham. included-- traced Madison's philosophical conversion to Francophilia to the 1791 trip he took with TJ. Actually first met in 1776 [?] when both in Va legislature. Territory in common; middling status, anti- authoritarianism, anti-upperclass (Fairfax interests) too. Early empathy between them: intellectualizers, admired manly virtues but both left out of the war. Complementarity: TJ quick study, eloquent stirring writer, but inhibited as speaker; JMad. strove to become persuasive speaker as well as writer; eloquence consisted in this. One wonders if John Marshall was not making a slightly invidious comment when he said, according to Rives, "eloquence...the art of persuasion. If it includes persuasion by convincing, Mr. Mad was the most eloquent man I ever heard." Rives 2:612 When TJ withdrew in a huff from politics after 1780 fiasco & death of wife it was Madison who became stern with him and argued that it was owed to duty, not ambition that he return to public life. European correspondence: TJ held up every goody including French trip for JMad, and sent home presents continually. One carrot held out to Mad was to succeed him in France; [ then when GW wanted to offer it in his second term did TJ prevent him from taking it?] another letter mentioned possibility of his becoming pres. TJ acknowledged ambition as long as he could represent it as a thing of the past;consulted JMad on politics--e.g. Notes to Wm & Mary. Each helped the other express his bloodymindedness. TJ Played a motherly role--looked after JMad's health; tried to house him, find a wife for him, looked her over, talked her into it [he 286 thought], approved [Kitty].? Jealousy of AH & GW. Of Lafayette to begin with, of Hamilton, Short & Marshall. Of Monroe? Courted the same woman. 6.Jefferson for Madison: Here is how TJ played into that scene: (letter of 9/8/93 impugning AH's courage, from two guys who never fought--TJ's own fear "to exhibit the appearance of panic."(in yellow fever epidemic] [Besides, principled reasons not to bolt.] but did around 9/12. 104; 106 idem. (JMad 15] Jmad gave TJ ―no peace‖ when he wanted to retire end of 93, ―undertaking to lecture him about his public duty and adminishing him not to leave until he could do so under ‗circumstances which all good citizens will respect.‘ This was a cut, and J erupted with anguish and self-pity‖ (June 9 letter). TJ struck bargain with GW to stay on till Dec. in return for being allowed to handle Genet. McKitrick 359-63] In Spring of 93, relations of JMad and TJ rather reversed: latter in Phila, planning to retire but source of political info., goods; JMad receiving interpretations, news. TJ represents himself [to JMad 66/9/93] as "giving everything I love in exchange for everything I hate" [and who hate me] "without a single gratification in possession or prospect, in present enjoyment or future wish.[this is the self-pity above] " [What about salary?] Thinks his (6/5) opinion against dutch loan proposed by AH probably has carried the day [hadn't?] Beginning[?] of undermining GW: Jefferson ventures an observation on GW's declining health, "feels" attacks made on him in public papers "morethan any person I ever yet met with..."cites JMad on how he said "when I first went to NY" [17900?] that GW could have stood naked and be "sanctimoniously reverenced" but the "rags of royalty ...can hardly be torn off without laceration."JMad 15: 27.] JMad rememberedd it a little differently later: GW had agreed, or volunteered: Brant: JMad "goad" to TJ on plunderers, orthodoxy re Fr. Rev (see JMadnts.] Every member of the band of siblings criticizes one or more other of trying to take advantage of GW, deceive him [supposed easily deceived, whereas actually politically shrewd see JMad on doubts about proclamation: "assumption of prerogatives not clearly found in the Constitution & having the appearance of being copied from a Monarchical model, will beget animadversion...mortifying to him...auspices [GW's] May consecrate the evil till it be incurable" --hence---Conclusion---time to undermine the consecrator! [to TJ Orange, 6/13/93] besides [id. 6/19/93] GW has been sold a bill of goods "Mortifying" to his "real friends" & "wounds the popular feelings." 33] 287

6.Marshall and Jefferson TJ's hatred of his "lax lounging manners have made him popular with the bulk of the people of richmd, and a profound hypocrisay w many thinking men in our country...his english principles" "acting under the mask of republicanism" TJ to JMad, 11/26/95: Mad mpapers 16:134] fear according to H. Adams. JnMrshll"He is among the most ambitious and I suspect among the most unforgiving of men...every check on the wild impulse of the momewnt is a check on his own power"--to story,, 1821. Must have believed that TJ still thot could rule; supported S. Roane plan to establish "elder statesmen."? Malone disputes this"As men of great achievmenete go, he does not seem to have been especly ambition...no seeker of power for its own sake...while he enjoyed personal popularityi" feared "centripetal trend" 6:354 7.Poor Edmund Randolph--Scapegoat for all. At the Constl convention ―Madison‘s course…affected by the need to keep Randolph from getting out of line. Opinionated, impusive and exceedingly sensitive, the governor needed to be gently led or urged, never sharply opposed.‖ [On unique executive: Brant 3: 38f] JMad correspondence w TJ, 1793 [uncscsly] characterizing him as like TJ;They must have been sensitive to this: a kind of caricature of TJ: more penurious, more ambivalent (but guilelessly so, and self-interest manifest: just the opposite for TJ). Note the routine in writing BF of antislaveryiness, then memoir in which credits wife for hardening his heart. Aggravated by the fact that he was related to TJ (on the english side of the family!). Of all the Virginian objects of Jefferson‘s enmity, Edmund Randolph, who was originally his close friend and colleague, seems to have been the target of his most exasperated, if not cruel, impulses. Seeking the roots for the older man‘s feelings, one finds contrasts in their early status that are suggestive. Unlike the plantation-oriented, middling origins of Washington, Jefferson Madison and Marshall, Edmund Randolph was born and raised a few steps from the colonial capital, the cultural center of Virginia. Unlike Jefferson and Marshall, whose mothers were Randolphs, Edmund was a direct descendant, in the male line,of the foounder of the Randolph dynasty in America, William Randolph of Turkey Island. Edmund‘s father was a distinguished and successful lawyer who became attorney general of the colony, succeeding his older brother, Peyton Randolph, in that office. This uncle of Edmund, who was childless and became his second father, was the leading lawyer of Virginia. ian only son of , barely twenty-two [?] years old, appeared at washington‘s headquarters bearing letters from leading figures of Virginia, the introductions were scarcely necessary. Only Edmund Randolph grew up in the colonial town of 288

Williamsburg, may have socialized daily with children of his parents‘ peers, ―whereas the sons of plantation owneers had only the companionship of the children of slaves.‖810 As a former Virginia Burgess, Washington had worked with young Randolph‘s father, the attorney geneeeral, and known [of?]his grandfather, the first American colonial to be knighted by the king. Even without the personal affinity Washington seems originally to have felt for the young man, his most distinguished legal and British connections were of the kind to command particular respect not only from the supreme military commander but also from the rising young lawyer who was his senior by 10 years, Thomas Jefferson.Jefferson obviously had introductions to the whole Randolph family, if he did not already know them personally, when he arrived in Williamsburg as an undergraduate student in He seems to have admired John Randolph, then the Crown‘s leading attorney in the colony, not only for his status as a native- grown British aristocrat, but also as a person of high cultivation. (Violin borrowing). Elkin and McKittrick emphasize the heady attractions of the circle to which the young Jefferson was admitted when he first arrived in Williamsburg—the only city he had seen until then. The governor, Fauquier, George Wythe, and William Small—leading intellectual lights of the College—took the very precocious and studious young man under their wing and helped initiate him to the political culture of the day. But this was the milieu in which Edmund Randolph had been raised, and to Jefferson John Randolph‘s only son must have have seemed a child of privilege. The letter of recommendation which he took to George Washington from the latter‘s old friend, governor Benjamin Harrison, declare, ―You know him as well as I do…one of the cleverest yngg men in America…[and the ] 811most valuable…one that I love…146f] Joined GW 8/15/75;"described young Edmund as tsenWhen Jefferson after inherited his father-in-law‘s estate he sought first to transfer his law practice to John Randolph, Edmund‘s father. When the elder Randolph made plans to defect to great Britain in 177[5?] Jefferson was on hand, not to persuade him to stay but to buy his violin—no doubt a great prize at a bargain price! As for young Edmund RandolphHimself already a well-initiated lawyer when he cast his lot with the patriots, young Edmund had every reason to expect that if the revolutionary cause succeeded he would join Washington and Jefferson among preeminent political leaders of the new republic. Peyton? Randolph, who had adopted Edmund when his father defected, was the) "most popular

810 Reardon, 5. 811 . Bharrison letter to GW Rev. War, 1:phila 7/21-24/75 289 leader in VA in decades [Pecquet, vabiognn-] preceding Rev."And indeed his career for the next two decades.confirmed these expections. When, in 1776, he left Washington‘s army for Virginia to bury his uncle, he took leave to drafted a new constitution for Virginia and was almost as soon, chosen attorney general of the state.thus established. Drafted into service in the Continental Congress, he was recalled by Virginia to serve as governor. Again, while still in this office, he returned to Philadelphia to play, with his close friend and client Madison, a preeminent role in the drafting of the Federal Constitution. and later to play an equally critical role in its ratification by Virginia. Long the chief legal counsel of Washington as well as Madison, he was appointed by the first President to serve as his second Attorney General. When Randolph was appointed Secretary of State in 1794 his eventual succession to the presidency seemed to many in Virginia, as natural, and likely a prospect as that of Jefferson—and to some leading figures to the north, a far more desirable event. That this prospect was abruptly ended by Randolph‘s sudden resignation from the cabinet in 1795 is owed to the interplay of a unique combination of personal and political contextual factors, rather than to the set of variables that made three of his compatriots more successful. His electoral appeal in Virginia was always as great as that of all of the others, except for Washington.

2. The meanings of others

i.Hamilton for TJ: Must have been attracted--forced a choice on Madison who found denouncing him "the most grating [task] I have ever experienced. Schcter, fndg dads, 271 JMad to tj 7/30/93. (Further bond between them, rejecting formerly beloved, addtrl. reaction formation binding him to TJ] 2. William Short: a pattern--estrangement if can't control, preference for nullities & sycophants (i.e. Monroe), dislike of intellectual rivals--JMad okay cuz put to the test, burned his bridges. 3. Marshall: reaching beyond Virginia 4.Poor John Adams FL3. The Founders and the Ladies 290

GW: To a woman on temptation: 27:128 28:15 Old friend's sex performance in new marriage. Disclaimers re Martha: To Sally Fairfax; mannto E. Powel; MCW his partner, his consort, his alliance. 3. Court politics: Washington as the Sun King.

Everyone saw him as the object of manipulation, attempted to manipulate him themselves. AH uses Carrington to complain of TJ's and JMad's attempt to manipulate GW on provisions for coinage.(AH 11:435 "he had not been aware of it"(GW & JMad nts.) Rpresent him to others as agreeing with themselves, comparing self with him aftnath. TJ & JMad also represented GW as manipulable: TJ to JMad that ER's "vindication" will intimate that "the Pres., tho' an honest man himself, may be circumvented by snares and artifices, and is in fact surrounded by those who wish to clothe the Exec. with more thata constitle powers...a truth." Mad papers, 11/26/95 16:135]

291

Chapter 8: Personality and Politics:Decision Making and Acting Out

To a reader not professionally immersed in research into early American political history, it may be surprising to find the intense partisan emotions that often accompany that research. To some such readers, of course, the reverence with which George Washington's life has been approached by many historians is well known, and the vehement factionalism surrounding Jefferson's character and behavior is a familiar fact. Less well known, perhaps, are the scores of writings that cause a recent biographer of Madison to deplore the fact that the favorable image of him "has faded, and been replaced by a less flattering sense of him as deficient in some...qualities of character and leadership," and inspired the same writer to present him in a different light--as "a far more appealing figure than is commonly realized." McCoy xv] Present-day perspectives on John Marshall similarly reflect the passionately conflicting ones of his contemporaries. Likewise, the near oblivion to which Edmund Randolph has most recently been consigned is probably influenced by the rejection Randolph encountered from both the principal warring parties of his own era. The psychopolitical point of view adopted here is not likely to be immune to the same influences. Its claim to consideration, however, is different from that of many biographers with other perspectives. For its purpose of bringing psychobiographical insights to bear on historical figures is not to present the personalities of the protagonists in a favorable or unfavorable light--appealing or unappealing, well-meaning or not as they may seem to the inquirer, but to try to understand better the effects of those personalities in specific decision- making contexts, and, through such insight, to identify patterns of behavior--previously unperceived patterns--in particular kin22ds of decision-making contexts. Self-consciousness in constitution-making: shadow of Shays rebellion: For example, the consitution: Jmad‘s promotion of authoritative central power, veto of states; ER to Jmad [? from Jmad] ER: Convention is "one ray of hope that those, who began, carried on & consummated the revolution can yet rescue America from the impending ruin." 12/6/86 Every issue shows personality in debate over constitution and Va. ratification (Jmad‘s loathing for Phenry….; Gw‘s strategy—not go to latter…go to former despite Humphrey‘s anti- risk advice—take over later!). 292

Modus operandi of all had somethings in common reflecting common experience, special to Virginia; But m.o. of each distinctive, special history in question. All of our leaders were broadly and deeply shaped by Virginia; none felt himself wholly to be of Virginia. In this they differed from other members of Virginia's elite of the time. Patrick Henry and George Mason, for example, perhaps never distanced themselves far enough from their Virginia milieu to consider the degree of their congruence with it.. George Wythe and William Small, Jefferson's mentors, true cosmopolitans, were largely alienated from it. Marshall's father, and several of his siblings, apparently did not hesitate to pull out their Virginian roots--at least partially--and stake their futures in the wider prospects of the West. A notable aspect of the four Virginians was their realistic sensitivity to the political climate of their state, and to the position of Virginia in national politics, and in an even broader context. This sensitivity was a function of being able to detach themselves, when needed, from the context that had shaped them, and look with a clear eye on the demands and trends in that context. The realistic awareness of political conditions in their native state that the four leaders shared, co-existed with varying orientations to those conditions. While it is tempting to think of Washington and Marshall as a pair, just as Jefferson and Madison acted in tandem through much of their political lives, in fact various political skills and styles of action overlapped among them as well as contrasting, in many cases, between the two pairs. TJ‘s draft of annual message, 1801, included par. nullifying sedition act: ―Obvious that the advice to omit came from [Madison]‖ as ―‘capable of…furnishiing..handle‖ to the opposition TJ quote in Brant 5:58]

TJ not only influenced indirectly but tried to guess at indirect influence possibility of others. Never went after the hostile directly (e.g. G. Harris.) Vide Madison on request to get Nicolas to try it on ER. Didn't know opinions of A or B....But used influence of others (anonymously) to the hilt--e.g. when speaking for GW (to G. Morris, vants592).AH perceived subtlety of this (see letter to carrington on what TJ had learned in France)

Can be described and can be assessed for success; Rationality & realism vs. magical, wishful thinking one measure; characteristic of GW, vs. the romance of TJ (especially about the public)See Nathanael Greene actual confirmation of 293

Schachner‘s observation about power of word to TJ: An Army on paper will give you no security...I have committed my life and reputation to your service...my misfortune will...become yours." 7:471-2]Greene or TJ papers?

1. Ambition: sources & forms. Power desire: Everyone wants to correct the power deficiencies of childhood; took different forms. GW in childhood, GW the father-substitute adult, gift-giving impulse: really wanted to leave something good to heirs, replacing, improving on dad, who didn't help the younger bros. enough. Critical, self-serving/pitying letter of TJ to Jmad 6/9/93:26:239-42)that C.M. Harris calls ―harsh‖ on GW (as in Mazzei letter) shows both overt (is GW or AH the ―paper- Coryphaeus?)and covert (he looks bad, affected by attacks ―more than any person I ever yet met with…Even his [character]…insufficient to justify ―pitch of stateliness‖ enveloping him…Naked he would have been sanctimoniously reverenced. But inveloped in the rags of royalty, theyy can hedly be torn off without laceration.‖:‖dislike of GW.But did he really look bad? : They were always contending he‘d passed his prime. Look for simultaneous reports on GW by his friends and by TJ and Jmad—e.g. Carrington letter to Jmad 4/20/91 ―exceeding good health and spirits‖ JMP 14:11; In fact, the pleasure-principle seems often to have regulated TJ‘s behavior:‖tearing down‖ and only—maybe—building up.Institution-building not his aim, rather the opposite.:things falling apart pleased him, while GW feared disintegration. However, how did he understand state-building methods so well? Necessity for Civility, mutual respect; vide his sponsorship of a monumental national metropolis, provisions for a National University in his will (vs. Jefferson‘s covert opposition, + actual competition in a university that was a personal monument to himself—Virginia in the title) Concept of the rule of law as personfied in the stable judiciary. Article citation missing for this. TJ actually thwarted the idea of a national university when Thornton, May 22, 1796 TJP 29 110-11. wrote to him promoting it, and sending Volney. Relinquishment patterns: This explains the pattern of withdrawal: set it up, turn it over. Each time GW persuaded to continue becuz no one would accept the gift, need to improve 294 it, make it more durable. A delegator. Open solicitor of advice. Ritual of transfer of power. Love of elder statesman role? TJ: giving up power dangerous, but showing you held it also made you vulnerable. The uses of withdrawal: not transfer but covert mobilization of opposition force: 1793; 1808. Didn't do the trick to put JMad in: little indication that he saw him as an alter ego, continuer of his regime, since point of his regime was not ends but that he was in control (in the wings.) At end of 2d term all these patterns emerged: see TJntsc. Evidence that he considered council of elders in place of Supreme Court (endorsement of Roane et al: in Ambler, Thos Ritchie?) Also, would have accepted cabinet position after 1808? showin

Political skill may conveniently be defined as knowing how to influence events in the direction consciously desired. On a scale measuring such skill George Washington would surely rank very high among world leaders of all time. A contrast is here implied with Thomas Jefferson, certainly a politician of consummate skill and great influence. Yet in most of his explicit public aims, whether of broad political orientation or spefic policy, his actual influence was quite different from the one he professed to intend, and even, often tended in a different direction. How else can we interpret the observation made by Conor Cruse O'Brien:...... ? Uncs....thirst for power, including imperial ambitions, intolerance of opposition and dissent when in office. But when out, minimalist re govt powers, relish of anarchy. Acted out the wish for goals; little relations between ends and means adopted. Hence: Failure of embargo, military policy....Many of his gains fortuitous:basic trends uninfluenced by his policies. In Madison unrealistic thinking most prominent in economic matters: Something funny about JMad's relatively shrewd political thinking, dumb economic thought. ―Loved but not respected‖ (T. Pickering to Marshall, Mrshll papers 10: 1/24/26: 270) Pickering to idem, 12/26/28: Reports but can‘t substantiate that it was PH who said ―that he could forgive every thing else in Mr. J , but his corrupting Mr. Madison.‘‖but himself believes that if TJ had died in Paris, or not seen Jmad after return, Jmad anda AH would have cooperated 295 in administration as they had been ―cordial & successful fellow labourers‖ Instead Jmad became ―a virulent persecutor.‖ JMrshll papers 11: 193] .Criticizes Short's free-tradism, acquisitive practices are corrupt, oblivious of own influence in making southerners sell out debt when he opposed it; Mystery of JMad: when was economic opportunity corrupting, when not? See below: pro-canals, anti-bank. A leveller? Jealous of the advantaged who took advantage.[this in JMad too.]But also irrational about Canada? [Re Gallatin] "Justifying Hamilton's measures [for funding the public debt] because they raised security values was a kind of reasoning foreign to the mental processes of the Virginia ideologues...[who had also "nothing but praise for Jefferson's bˆte noire , the Bank of the United States." E. James Ferguson, ed. Selected Writings of Albert Gallatin . Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill, 1967.xxviif]. Realism about social, ec. forces The great thing about Marshall: He knew how to affirm a principle without throwing a monkey wrench in the works; or simply realism? Didn't want to be destructive of existing arrangements, such as they were. Priority for stability. w/ Bishop Meade realism, but also maybe he didn't want to promote anglicanism? didn't want to say not??non-confrontational opposition to the well-meaning) Certainly appreciative of piety as well-meaning, though didn't need it himself. Personal ambition: where did it come from; how did it show itself in seeking, relinquishing power?

TJ: Not the politics of principle but of impulse. Sometimes saved by sensitive apprehension of dominant opinion trends. At least, could lend himself to seeing it come out either way. Eg on Constitution: very late in perceiving, but when did, infinite rationalizing capacity: To Carrington, 12/21/87"Nearly a neutral" on new constitution, "mass of good in it" but also "a bitter pill or two." Idem 5/27/88 felt more favorable to Const. than at first! (Pretty late! When was the supposedly persuasive letter from JMad ?)

Compare w GW (to carrington, 5/1/96): "Whatever my own opinion may be....it always has been...my earnest desire to learn, and, as far as is consistent, to comply with, the public 296 sentiment; but it is on great occasions only, and after time has been given for cool and deliberate reflection, that the real voice of the people can be known." [hopkins 53] Note his sincere desire to learn whether people were really unhappy in 91-92 correspondence re treasury policies at time of his trip south. Learning capacity....Acting on uncs. inner aims [projections & other defenses], or realistic assessment of the outside world [knowledge of self; accepting recognition of it in others.] Since TJ could do both from beginning, 50-50 each time, as though no learning capacity- -each event discreet. This is the essence of his childhood learning of adaptability. AH thot he'd learned it in France, but France only expanded his repertoire of tactics. GW Blamed Va and KY legislatures [ie TJ & Jmad !] for giving French a false impression of true American sentiment –[see GWnts88) The Irony was that the only way to keep TJ from destroying the federal system was to give him power over it…then became a champion of federal power.

In this GW unsurpassed: thirst for intelligence [GWnts1: "avid";Abbot & intelligence; valist] geared to action: impelled to take control [JMad's rmarks, idem] Unafraid of power [Morgan] a contrast w/ TJ and JMad. Few people seek disinterested truth as he did w/ AH by writing out in his own hand the qs TJ had raised [GWnts2]. Quote from Baker witness, vants692:"Consults with officers...gets all their opinions w/out divulging his intentions...no tincture of pride" [dadntsdn] Affinities.....and hostilities...GW Sympathetic letter to AH during convention gwnts 7/10/87. MOs: GW, TJ, JMad, mrshll, ER. Add to LC paper on TJ: learned in France what AH said: manipulation rather than direct action [see JMAd notes] GW & Hamilton really the creators; as though starting from scratch to build a new structure? TJ & Madison saw themselves as elaborating on existing texts; attitude of consumers, piece by piece.[G. Wood on Jmadnts]

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GW's education in politics: Arthur Holcombe considers him the framer:Arthur N. Holcombe, The Role of Washington in the Framing of the Constitution" Huntington Library Quarterly 4 (1956): 317-344; conscs of own influence; contrast w/ tj on empathy score: TJ constructed others in own desired image or the opposite; GW saw himself in traits of others, hence able to learn from history. Farewell to soldiers in May 82 defused a coup, in which he "learned that Americans were not immune to the fevers that can kill republics ." [D.L. Robinson, "The Inventors of the Presidency" PresSQ 13 (1983): 8-25. But certainly he had learned this even before--violence of the wild. Note also that in shunning of Mason,(Henriques, vabiog) as w/ mistrust of TJ he was acute in perceiving self-serving loose cannons. Madison's judgment impaired by his apprehension of the proneness to corruption of others (and himself?) Doctrine of equality=levelling impulse; keeping others from popping up from corrupt advantage. Fear of ungovernable acquisitive impulses? Sibling upstarts? Does this explain favoring public works for transport, against direct protection of money-making possibilities. Economics and Commerce GW hospitable to entrewpreneurship; viz, his dad & the ironworks. Aimed to substitute capital for labor; get out from under slavery. TJ just the opposite;;--feared derogation of his noblesse. Decisions: Successors/ succession Consider issue positions in context of demands for specific decisions, because on all of them, when generalizing, spoke the same lingo: Aristocracy vs democracy: GW and the Cincinnati: Nothing wrong with them---but recognized bad impression, associations others made. For Jmad, equality a central concern, yet not upset by Cincinnati. But charmed by self- made free black—nurture vs. nature. TJ au contraire: perhaps the military connection is what enraged him so much? Belief in the incompetence of the well-born. evil secrets, .L e

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[Chapter 10]:Lessons from the Past? Populist pragmatism and republican realism in modern democratic politics[010Conclusion.doc]

Political correctness: eighteenth-century style.There were things they couldn‘t say either: (but attributed such thots to enemies) E.G., that they weren‘t sure it would work or not. TJ called them monarchists, aristocrats etc etc. The Politics of Imagination vs the Politics of Realism: Popular contentment, public opinion on policy of primary importance for GW (albeit, only of selected persons—Citizens) All the high-falutin statements of TJ etc. caused him to check with the public. How Jefferson wanted to be remembered: Epitaph. What was behind the epitaph as far as the University of Va went shows the dangers of politics for him and why he got more pleasure operating in the private arena. With Jefferson the disagreeable aspect of politics was that it threatened the image of himself that he wanted to enjoy (criticism, slander, principled opposition—all equally threatening to his self image. : Public interest and self-vindication: McKitrick: Ambiguity of TJ;s position (e.g. neutrality, parricide) in contrast with AH‘s ―for whom partisan requirements and requirements of the public interest…fit together ― 359.eValidating an idea all-important for TJ; conditions of life [of others] unimportant (e.g, Adam & Eve illustration.) Alternated between desire for validating ideas vs responsibility for events. Pattern: reckless daring, vs. fear of consequences: Position on French Charter an example: Justified ―presumption‖ on unmeasurable love for your nation‖…to prevent ―Despotism‖ from re-seizing them with ―untold fury.‖ Prescribed ―dose‖ [his words elsewhere] of liberty that they were ―able to beaar.‖ but when Laf. consulted him ―directly‖ to know what the English plement would have done for food relief, & whether librl minority of the Nobility should accede to 3 estate ―J. proved unexpectly coy.‖ cites Malone 2:217 (perhaps feared he‘d gone too far); or perhaps recoiled from violence and that ―Laf was less fearful of violence than he…replied cautiously.‖ …Boyd 15 (TJ to Laf, 6/12/89) 179f.‖ Gottschalk 58-60.

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Religion: Religious liberalism: In the new ―civic religion‖ ]known as well by GW as TJ-- cf his remarks on mutual deference for religious beliefs and practices.bkntsspg94] Madison and the Va. bill--really innovative that he refused to concede anything to the dominant view. GW cordial thanks to Richmd & other congregations: [Our] liberal sentiment towards each other...stands unrivalled in the history of nations." Jan. 1790; least given to defining, flounting it [rebuke to TJ]; when TJ in office just as pragmatic in public, not given to ideological arousal.All had distinct sense of us vs the other---need to prove selves came from intimate experience. TJ‘s first contact with the wider world of learning through his intellectual mentors at William and Mary College, seems to have engendered the ambitions that led him to Philadelphia in 177. But note that they were not his peers but he describes them as such (Quoted in TJ & ladies.), and yet ―powerful sense of sectional grievance‖ [Onuf, ―Fate of J‘s children‖ 161].increased as the nation moved to isolate the Virginians for clinging to their peculiar institution Comparing patterns of action the goal: Political scientists have attempted to characterize the political patterns at the adult performance end of the construct—e.g. Stephen Skowronek, Dave Barber, but the consecutive aspect of this means the contexts were really not comparable. Multiplicity of variables makes difficiulties. This TJ &JMad could not do: quote on Gallatin & political devices for economic ends....ewm: Understood self interest as mainspring of social solidarity; slaves had no incentive to work without rewards; westerners, mostly foreigners, without interest "that is, trade and commerce " opportunities, "can have no predilection for us, and a commercial connnection is the only tie we can have upon them." The Papers of George Washington, Or perhaps this is a transposition of the experience of this particiular stratum of rural Virginian society--isolated planters? Presidential Series. WW Abbot & D. Twohig, eds., Vol.3: (1993) 157] Something lacking in the natlsm of the decl. of I. A people, not a nation? ? When TJ abroad, self-esteem connected to natl. esteem. But still uncurious about [unsympathetic with?] cultural differences. Hard to find in his writings observations about local variations in political or other practices. Zero interest in 300 ethnic origins, not even linguistic, of blacks. In fact not an empiricist at all. Romantic notion of saxon origins. His American nationalism like his love for his children: conditional upon their appearing to be what his ideals demanded and his imagination proclaimed. Otherwise he could switch—and did—without difficulty. Ego deeply involved w Virginia, however. Really ―his‖ nation (because it actually belonged to him!) Obituary claims: D of I author (personal—not because a nation rallied round it);& 2 for Va: religious freedom and UVA. Madison was tempted by nationalism, but had to renounce it for pecuniary reasons. Excessive desire to please others; ideally suited to please TJ as H.Adams said. Acquisitiveness of "objects?" Characteristic elsewhere?--e.g. anything like it for Franklin, Adams etc? Is it rural origin only? Early deprivation? (vide. sears roebuck catalog in modern rural areas.)  FLLinks to one another of two kinds:common experience ancestral/ traditional and affinal. Mother/father status. First and 2d Mrs. Washingtons, TJ & Mrshl Randolph, connections. Origins compared:Common dependency-autonomy conflict:To a great extent a human problem but in Virginia it took on a special character, and with our guys developed into even more specialized behavior and thought patterns. But in a sense all always on stage; the slave world watching them; naked boys and girls around in most intimate contact had to be ignored, kept at a distance. This as true of GW and Madison as of Jefferson. Probably true of John Marshall too—he conceals it more than almost anyone. But his family, too, felt their dependence on trade of cash crops abroad. At the same time isolation of the plantation system made them mostly dependent on selves for self-defense, control of their surroundings, policing, law, conscious of lack of effective control.from above. (kidnap by indians storoy in Jmad‘s history][Certainly, from above e.g., Dinwiddie, conscsness of lawlessness, rootlessness; JMarshll‘s Dad on frontier lawlessness. The presence of the 301 wilderness felt by all: TJ in notes on Va., Indians, indeed, were never far from the imagination of our Virginians. While such imaginings had little romance for Madison, Marshall, or Washington, who perhaps had had day-to-day experience with their society, it was otherwise with Thomas Jefferson who connected them with legendary exploits of his father in his Notes on Virginia and endowed them some of the idealized qualities of ―Natural Man.‖ Indians perceived as autonomous? Explicitly an escape/opportunity for GW/ Thos. Marshall & whole clan. Striving for autarky: Non importation movment, [Ragsdale]. Attempts to set up manufacturies of crafts needed for autonomy. 2. Heroes, fantasy & Mythology: GW seen as taking Cromwell as anti-hero. No British king a hero, Roman models often cited (Fabius)--but not as rulers? but something to be said for a French king--Henry 4 as hero. Really a popular warrior-king (& Protestant!). [See Sully, gwnts]No hero-rulers for TJ? Weird stuff about the Anglo-Saxon ancestors. Anti-British

The experience of slavery: from general to specific....Sudden increase in Va. slave population:Rapid purchase began 1695-1700; rapid rise in %(13% 1700; 130% by 1732; rapid natural increase: 30,000 in 1730; 200K in 1775.Ragsdale, Hofstra, 38f] citation valst

Fairfax county the only Tidewater county to persist with less than thirty per cent slave population as late as 1775, giving it more affinity with more cosmopolitan Maryland to the north. Orange county, on the other hand, to which Madison finally was forced to confide his future, was distinguished from the counties directly to its by a higher ratio of slaves to free persons (40-49% during the whole period 1740-90. Philip Morgan :Slave Counterpoint Black Culture,98-9. lest one think they were unaware of such demographic facts, note jmad sr to Jr letter. 302

Mason on the other extreme, recalcitraant ―Virginia principle;‖ And what about P. Henry? Cosmopolitan realism of TJ (& others) in sensitivity to outside world's thot & power--in contrast to PHenry et al. Hypocrisy is the evidence of it--most didnt realize it was necessary. Even Jmad said to have ―imagined Europe‖ without ever having seen it. But a fork in the road in the form to be taken by political adaptation. Towards the legislature or towards the executive-judiciary. In the setting of the Virginia legialature, which he entered in 1787, Marshall found continual questioning of ―principles which I thought most sacred.‖ He reacted strongly against the setting in which ―everything was afloat‖ and ―we had no safe anchorage ground,‖ and transferred his hopes to the proposed central government, whose constitution was then being considered by the states for ratification.812 i.e. P. Henrys and others who thot va. could go it alone. Hypocrsy, two- facedness a sine qua non. How did they get so adept at it? Madison perhaps even more than TJ Marshall exempt from defensiveness about it, need to rationalize in grandiose principles. Could pose the ends and happily adapt the argument for means. Indeed: contrasts with the ponderous arguments from principle: he listened to the arguments and winged it on the spot. ER had it too: Uncanny talent for identifying the 'middle position' had made him indispensable to " GW by spring 93. 189] reardon, ernts This TJ &JMad could not do: quote on Gallatin & political devices for economic ends....ewm: Understood self interest as mainspring of social solidarity; slaves had no incentive to work without rewards; westerners, mostly foreigners, without interest "that is, trade and commerce " opportunities, "can have no predilection for us, and a commercial connnection is the only tie we can have upon them." 157] The Papers of George Washington, Or perhaps this is

812 Marshall papers 11: 38. 303

characteristic of this particiular stratum of rural Virginian society--isolated planters? Presidential Series. WW Abbot & D. Twohig, eds., Vol.3: (1993)

Language: TJ on neologisms; letter in Randall, vol. 2; Jmad. on deficiency of gift from ―muses‖ [Jmad] magic pen of TJ. Acquisitiveness of "objects?" Characteristic elsewhere?--e.g. anything like it for Franklin, Adams etc? Is it rural origin only? Early deprivation? (vide. sears roebuck catalog in modern rural areas.)  Intellectuality Parallel Histories, parallel perspectives Links to one another of two kinds:common experience ancestral/ traditional and affinal. 3d generation Mother/father status. First and 2d Mrs. Washingtons, TJ & Mrshl Randolph, connections. Common dependency-autonomy conflict: Peripheral to the great: GW & the Fairfax connection; JnMrshll‘s Dad‘s relation similar; TJ‘s Dad too family‘s feudal dependence. Condescension of [Byrd2?] towards his dad, too. ER also for hire to earn a living. Madison perhaps the the only one who was not raised feeling his dependence on patronage of others. But his family, too, must have felt theiir dependence on trade of cash crops abroad. At the same time isolation of the plantation system made them mostly dependent on selves for self-defense, control of their surroundings, policing, law, conscious of lack of effective control.from above. [Certainly, from above e.g., Dinwiddie, conscsness of lawlessness, rootlessness; JMarshll‘s Dad on frontier lawlessness. The presence of the wilderness felt by all: TJ in notes on Va., Indians perceived as autonomous? Explicitly an escape/opportunity for GW/ Thos. Marshall & whole clan. Striving for autarky: Non importation movment, [Ragsdale]. Attempts to set up manufacturies of crafts needed for autonomy. 2. Heroes, fantasy & Mythology: GW seen as taking Cromwell as anti-hero. No British king a hero, Roman models often cited (Fabius)--but not as rulers? but something to be said for a French king-- Henry 4 as hero. Really a popular warrior-king (& Protestant!). [See Sully, gwnts]No hero-rulers for TJ? Weird stuff about the Anglo-Saxon ancestors. Anti-British 304

The experience of slavery: from general to specific....Sudden increase in Va. slave population:Rapid purchase began 1695-1700; rapid rise in %(13% 1700; 130% by 1732; rapid natural increase: 30,000 in 1730; 200K in 1775.Ragsdale, Hofstra, 38f] citation valst

). Generative capacity: Hoffman et al, Through a Glass Darkly: Reflections, Mary Beth Norton, ―Communal definitions of gendered identity in 17th-century English America.,‖ 40-66 ―The ability to impregnate a woman was perhaps the key indicator of manhood in 17th-century Anglo-America.‖60] There is no reason to suppose that this idea had changed by the 18th century (or indeed that it is not always with us). What about GW? Altho he apparently didn‘t acknowledge it, MCW‘s fertility must have seemed obvious to others, but offset by creative powers in other fields (as it also must always be—i.e. powerful artists like Michelangelo )— simulation of godlike generative powers. But if the public image of GW as father of his country exempted him fromthis, it did not do so for Madison, the other member of the quartet who failed to produce offspring. Ridicule of his tiny stature, allegedly fragile physique amd ―feeble voice‖ as well as his hyper-studious intellectuality lay always close to the surface in the reaction to his public appearances. When, a few years after his late marriage to a widely-admired widow with a son, he failed to produce a child, two of his friends revealed their preconceptions of his low potency in their expressed lack of surprise. Sonlessness could be almost as much of a risk as childlessness: it may have enhanced Jefferson‘s enemies view of him as ―womanish.‖―femininity charge? Washington, Jefferson, Madison all sonless, all acted in loco paternis to young men. Lafayette literally trasnferred (although not his loyalties) from GW to TJ; Madison stood in for TJ with Carr boys; some of his own nephews & Dolley‘s son; W. Short sponsored 2 Denis brothers. GW Jmad and TJ married women w sons; [to no avail]; Fathers of all four prolific; Only JnMrshl followed suit. Washington, Madison, TJ & Mrshll all felt themselves to be self-made men; all but Mrshll openly expressed hostility to hereditary privilege. TJ‘s special slant: Nowadays, he wrote ―A Randolph a Carter or a Burwell must have great personal superiority over a common competitor to be elected by the people.‖ To J Adams, MO 10/28/13 [Petersen, Portable TJ, 305

536).)(I.e rationalized his son-inlaw‘s and grandson‘s legitimacy.)t comparisons and similarities go only so far...before examining each of them in power have to resume their individual histories, personal developents.i The cousinry Unto the nth generation.....Family status of each known. Washington dad/Pete Jefferson; Marshall dad/GW. Jmad senior leading man of orange county; TJ guardians chosen for their Virginian renown—Thomas Walker et al. Just as there was general familiarity of each family with every other one, there also was a general sense of the personalities of family members. In the small world of the Virginia gentry, for example, Thomas Jefferson seems early to have been stereotyped by the most affluent leaders as a cerebral, free-thinking, ambitious young man, deficient in some of the virtues of the model Virginian cavalier. [this is a repeat]The facetious characterization of him by Liza Ambler, shows a family bias against his ―enlightened‖ views on religion and his resistance to accepted usage in everyday manners. She ridicules Jefferson for his lack of military readiness.in confronting the invading British forces in 1781. to Mildred Dudley, Richmond, Friday evening, 1781 "laughable....our illustrious Gov. "who they say took neither rest or food, for man or horse, til he reached Carters Mountain." Liza Ambler, from one of the oldest , richest English-educated Tidewater families had married, like her younger sister, a young man who had sprung to defend the revolutionary cause with arms, both [her first husband] and John Marshall and his father were dashing figures in the struggle against the nmother countryheroes VMBH 38 (1930: 168. [167-169][In these notes there is also a reference to his religious deficiency?] Bushrod & Marshall pals and colleagues on the court and off; intermarriages were shaped by and reshaped political allliances. (Eg Tobias Lear brought a branch of the Washington descendance nearer the Jeffersonian faction, and in turn opened himself to suspicion from the general. Randolph connections disputed among rival political forces from the very beginning. JnMrshll's daughter married a Harvie, [what relation to?] the last wife of Thos. Randolph Sr.; Madison‘s sister [?] married a Washington niece toward the end [?] of the close association between Madison and the first President. TJ fired David Mead Randolph, and turned his back, as did his dotter [&son in law?] on Nancy Randolph who later married Gouverneur Morris with the approval of John Marshall who had defended the lady and her alleged accomplice in the trial of....years before. And who is leading the campaign on behalf of state sovereignty in Virginia in October, 1820, when the state was summoned to appear before the Superene court in the case that would become Cohens v. Va. but the goveernor of the commonwealth, following in the footsteps; of his 306 father-in-law Thomas Jefferson. Thomas :Mann Randolph,Jr., who had married Martha Jefferson in 1790, had shown himself ready to throw himself into battle on his behalf in 1802, when James Callender's allegations against the first Republican president appeared in the Richmond Record . Peyton Randolph (1779-1828) lawyer O& son of the late Edmund Randolph.(writing as "Somers" in the Richmond Enquirer in May & June, 1821.)[mrshl papers 9: 118] was one of the publicissts for the same view, organized as John Marshall believed, by the now retired president, the "great Lama of the mountains" and believed to be behind the whole virginian line of reasoning that aimed, as the chiewf justice thought, at dissolving the Union. "The attack upon the judiciary," Marshall wrote, "is in fact an attack upon the union...a marked battery aimed at the govt. itself...if not originating with Mr. J...n, is obviously approved and guided by him." Mrshl papers 9:184 [9/18/21] Spencer Roane, a cousin of Ritchie, editor of the Richmond Enquireer during oppstn. to SC. See Anderson, WB Giles , 208] Content of thots--republicanism, pragmatism, patriotism Spencer Roane, a cousin of Ritchie, editor of the Richmond Enquireer during oppstn. to SC. See Anderson, WB Giles , 208] Content of thots-- republicanism, pragmatism, patriotism

Skills: Adaptability to cultural environment; Flexibility of thots, of means, of language: EWMthots: Realism of TJ (& others) in sensitivity to outside world's thot & power--in contrast to PHenry et al. Hypocrisy is the evidence of it--most didnt realize it was necessary. i.e. P. Henrys and others who thot va. could go it alone. Hypocrsy, two-facedness a sine qua non. How did they get so adept at it? Madison perhaps even more than TJ

Marshall exempt from defensiveness about it, need to rationalize in grandiose principles. Could pose the ends and happily adapt the argument for means. Indeed: contrasts with the ponderous arguments from principle: he listened to the arguments and winged it on the spot. ER had it too: Uncanny talent for identifying the 'middle position' had made him indispensable to " GW by spring 93. 189] reardon, ernts This TJ &JMad could not do: quote on Gallatin & political devices for economic ends....ewm: Understood self interest as mainspring of social solidarity; slaves had no incentive 307 to work without rewards; westerners, mostly foreigners, without interest "that is, trade and commerce " opportunities, "can have no predilection for us, and a commercial connnection is the only tie we can have upon them." 157] The Papers of George Washington, Or perhaps this is characteristic of this particiular stratum of rural Virginian society--isolated planters? Presidential Series. WW Abbot & D. Twohig, eds., Vol.3: (1993) An explanation of patriotism/nationalism: deficiencies of Va.: Greater respect in the whole. Hence Mortification of JMad and GW at centrifugal forces. Reaction to whiskey rebellion: suppression to impress Europeans that there was a state that could act. Language: TJ on neologisms; letter in Randall, vol. 2; Jmad. on deficiency of gift from ―muses‖ [Jmad] magic pen of TJ. Acquisitiveness of "objects?" Characteristic elsewhere?--e.g. anything like it for Franklin, Adams etc? Is it rural origin only? Early deprivation? (vide. sears roebuck catalog in modern rural areas.)  Intellectuality

Role exchanges, Madison, TJ: ;‖ In Spring of 93, relations of JMad and TJ rather reversed: latter in Phila, planning to retire but source of political info., goods; JMad receiving interpretations, news.Vice versa during Jmad‘s presidency?