... Thomas Jefferson : his permanent influence on American institutions

Front matter

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Preface

I WROTE and delivered these lectures not only in great haste, but under great pressure. At the time the promise to deliver them was made, Congress was expected to adjourn about the middle of June. It adjourned about the first of September. This subtracted two and one-half months from my time. I deemed it my duty later to devote two and one-half weeks of the time remaining to campaign field work in behalf of the election to the Presidency of one of Mr. Jefferson's successors. Governor Woodrow Wilson. The natural inference from all this is that the work may, and probably does, contain errors.

I have sought as much as possible to bring the past bodily into the present by quotations from dead actors. The reader will find a very free use of itahcs. It is not good taste; but the hearer was thereby spared much hearing, and the reader will be spared much reading. Italicizing the salient point of a quotation is my way of saving words of comment, which otherwise would be necessary.

No man can entirely divorce himself from his likings and dislikings. I have tried to do it; but I have for long loved world democracy and its apostles, and disliked special privilege and its beneficiaries and upholders.

There is no American about whom more has been written than Mr. Jefferson. In addition to the stand-

Viii PREFACE

ard histories of the United States and what they record concerning him, there is a distinct Jeffersonian bibliography. The hst below, under the heading "Bibliography," contains articles, pamphlets, and books, especially appertaining to Mr. Jefferson, which I have read either recently, or in times past.

John Sharp Williams.

Contents

Chapter Page

, I. Introductory 1

* II. Jefferson the Revolutionist

Chapter I Introductory

In an article written by Andrew D. White, entitled, ''Jefferson and Slavery," in the Atlantic Monthly for January, 1862, he says that "in the architecture" of our democratic repubhc, we find ''the agency mainly of six men."

First, three men who "did most to found the Republic: and these three men are Washington, Adams and Jefferson."

"Secondly, two men who" . . . "did most to huild the Republic: and these two men are Jefferson and Hamilton."

" Third, three men, who, having a clear theory in their heads, and a deep conviction in their hearts . . . did most to brace the Republic: and these three men are Franklin, Jefferson and Channing."

He continues : —

"So, rising above the dust raised in our old quarrels, and taking a broad view of this Democracy, we see Jefferson placed firmly in each of these groups.

2 1

"If we search in Jefferson's writings and in the contemporary records to ascertain what that power was which won him these positions, we find that it was no personal skill in cajoling friends or scaring enemies. . . .

"The real secret of his power was, first of all, that Jefferson saw infinitely deeper into the principles of the rising democracy, and infinitely farther into its future working, than any other man of his time. Those who earnestly read him will often halt astounded at proofs of a foresight in him almost miraculous."

The subject prescribed for me in these lectures is the permanent influence of Thomas Jefferson on American institutions. Who can say, with assurance, what feature in a nation's institutions is permanent, until its life has been Hved out to its end? To dehneate the birth principles of the American confederation is easy, but to tell how far these birth principles are permanently Hfe principles, is not so. What Solon said to Croesus applies. What features seemingly essential to our institutions at any one particular time, are really so, is a question whose answer is colored by the time at which the question is asked. If such a question had been asked during and immediately after the Revolution, when the love of freedom was at high tide, the answer would have been one thing; if after Shay's Rebellion in Massachusetts and the general anarchic condition, leading to a great and general reaction against the principles of the American Revolution, it would have been another. If asked once more, after four years of Jefferson's administration had allayed the fear of democracy and of popular rule, the reply would have been still different. Then put yourselves back in the period of 1850-60, and again to the year 1866, and yet again to 1876, and get a different reply in each case.

INTRODUCTORY 3

Imagine the question asked and answered during reconstruction days, and again later on after sensible men had concluded with Tourgee, who called himself "One of the Fools," that reconstruction had been ''A Fool's Errand." Again how essentially different the replies would be before and after we had "gone a world-powering" in the Philippines; — before, when all were agreed that we wanted no entanglements with the old world by interference, or possession; that we desired only "friendly commerce with all and entangling aUiances with none," and after, when we stood amazed to find that somehow we had silHly drifted into becoming an Asiatic power, with Asiatic territorial and poUtical interests and anxieties.

Not knowing what all this has made pregnant in the womb of the future, which of us can assert that any particular feature of our system now deemed fundamental, characteristic, permanent, shall be so ten years from now — whether, in any particular case, "having the wolf by the ears," we shall or shall not, or can or can not, "turn him loose"? All of which concludes in this; that for the purpose of the inquiry of these lectures, that is permanent which the inquirer in his horoscoping deems permanent, and, as the wish is so much the father of the thought, it will be largely that which he wishes and prays and hopes is so.

Next, in determining the scope of our work in these lectures: what are the "institutions" of a people? Are they simply constitutional forms? If so, these United States and Mexico and the Central American republics have the same institutions; and England and Italy and Germany, all being "Hmited monarchies" with so-called

''responsible parliamentary ministries," have the same institutions. Can either of these statements be true? No. Why not? Because just as a man has an outward body and an inner informing and directing soul, so a nation has a body-poHtic, about which we hear so much, and a soul-politic, about which we hear little, or nothing, under that name. U Esprit des Lois — the spirit of the institution — that is, the thing vitahzing the words of constitutions and statutes — must be taken into consideration. Buckle's unfinished political novum organum — his ''History of Civilization" — is only a historical analysis of the evolutionary development of the soul-politic of the peoples.

All considered, I shall then treat the subject in this full sense, and I shall exhibit the permanent, or thoughtto-be-permanent, influence of Mr. Jefferson, not only on American visible institutions, but on American vitalizing thought and practice.

But again, how can one tell a man's political influence, without knowing at least enough of his heredity and environment to explain his words, theories, and acts in the light of them?

No man can escape altogether the impress of the form and color of his time and place, nor altogether ignore the blood which courses in his veins. Yet for all this, I shall have neither time nor space. The man, Jefferson, in his lovableness of disposition, his feminine cleanness of speech and thought and life, his almost infinite versatility, his noble optimism, his worldvision, I would literally love to describe. But all that I must ruthlessly forego, save for a sidelight here and there, while correcting some errors of others.

INTRODUCTORY 5

What was his environment? First, he was a Virginian and a planter. Secondly, he was a frontiersman, because Albemarle County, when he was growing up, was still a frontier country. The county settled very rapidly, but still, during the formative period of Thomas Jefferson's life, his environment was a frontier environment. The life he lived later was that of an independent country gentleman. Thus from both sources individuality was the first and necessary product of his life and of the lives of those about him; its chief and indispensable lesson being a reliance on one's own intellect, initiative, and resources; from which proceeded an absolute contempt for authority and precedent — merely as such.

Much has been said about Jefferson's being influenced by Rousseau's ''Contrat Social." The idea of a social contract being at the base of government — a compact of the people amongst themselves — was ingrained in his thought and in the thought of all those around him, but it was not from reading. Jefferson never read Rousseau until long after his own political opinions had been formed. Indeed if he read him at all, I can find no trace of it. On the frontier people got this idea of government resting on compact because it was a fact of their lives. First one settler, then half a dozen, then a score would move into a neighborhood beyond the support of old settlements, and then naturally the neighbors would some day gather, and after they had chatted about the crops, about getting a teacher if they could, and about a place for the itinerant preacher to "hold forth" when he came, they would take up the question of the establishment of a practical local government; the selection of somebody before whom neighborhood differences should be argued and by whom they should be settled — by analogy of English law, a ''justice of the peace" — the selection of somebody who should pursue horse thieves, or other criminals, arrest and bring them in for trial — by analogy of English law, a "constable" — the selection of somebody to correspond with the legislature to secure the organization of a new county, so that they might have a local board to lay out roads, designate ferries, etc., and so that they might have representation in the State legislative body; but preceding all, where and how and under what leadership they should meet for defence against the Indians, when needful. All of these things were done in America in each neighborhood, by a "compact" of the people with one another. This each frontiersman's son learned, with his other A B Cs, on his father's knee, as a part of the usual poUtical experience of the American people.

Chapter II Jefferson The Revolutionist

1. IN AMERICA

I TAKE it that the influence of our independence has permanently affected our institutions and that our revolutionary principles are the informing spirit of them; therefore, that Jefferson's acts and words as a revolutionist come within the scope of this inquiry.

Jefferson became of age in 1764. Before that, he had become attached to the cause of American freedom. Soon, nobody was more decided, none more radical, in opposition to the British policy towards the colonies than he.

In a letter to William Wirt, with his good sense and canny tact, he says: "Sensible, however, of the importance of unanimity among our constituents, although we often wished to go faster, we slackened our pace that our less ardent colleagues might keep up with us; and they, on their part, differing nothing from us in principle, quickened their gait somewhat beyond that which their prudence might of itself have advised, and thus consolidated the phalanx, which breasted the power of Britain. By this harmony of the bold with the cautious, we advanced with our constituents in undivided mass and with fewer examples" (in Virginia) "of separation than perhaps existed in any other part of the Union."

In his biography he uses this language, concerning the origin of the committees of correspondence: —

"We were all sensible that the most urgent of all measures was that of coming to an understanding with all the other colonies to consider the British claims as a common cause to all and to produce a unity of action; and for this purpose that a committee of correspondence in each colony would be the best instrument for intercommunication: and that their first measure would probably be to propose a meeting of deputies for every colony, at some central place, who should be charged with the direction of measures which should be taken by all. I, therefore, drew up the resolutions which may be seen in Wirt, page 67."

The resolutions to which he refers designate a standing committee of intercolonial correspondence and inquiry.

There has been some contention about which colony first organized the committees of correspondence. Bancroft has it about right when he says, ''Massachusetts organized a province, Virginia promoted a confederacy. Were the several committees but to come together, the world would see an American Congress."

Senator Lodge, in the History of Nations Series, Volume 23, is one of the few historians who gives due weight to the committees of correspondence and safety, as provisional governments. He calls them very aptly, "a system of revolutionary machinery."

Much of this committee government was secret and constitutes lost pages of our history.

The real truth is that a Union for the colonies was effected with the inauguration of the intercolonial correspondence committees. They constituted as purely a revolutionary group of bodies as did the committees of public safety and the other committees, formed partially in imitation of them, during the French revolutionary period. It was the American committees of safety, which suggested an example for the Ku Klux Klan in the South later in its history — both acting with a perfect secrecy, which thus far even has never been fully unveiled. By virtue of this self-constituted authority, men threw the tea overboard in Boston harbor and persuaded, coerced, or intimidated consignees in other American ports to refuse to receive any such consignments.

A more perfectly enigmatic Ku Klux announcement was never made than that of John Rowe, when — the people of Boston having exhausted all peaceful and legal means to prevent the Governor from granting a pass, which would enable the ship laden with tea to clear the harbor under the guns of the castle — he asked: ''Who knows how tea will mingle with salt water?" Then, Fiske recites that, ''amidst profound stillness," Samuel Adams arose and said, quietly, but distinctly, "This meeting can do nothing more to save the country." This was the signal upon which the Massachusetts committees ceased by public utterance to direct the movement and when, in some agreed way, there came about the secret movement by disguised men. The "Mohawk Indians," hastening to the wharf, taking possession of the ship, unloaded its cargo into the sea.

Too much importance cannot be attached to the Revolutionary committees of correspondence; first, for making and keeping a united front between the towns in Massachusetts, upon the motion of Samuel Adams, and afterwards, for securing this same harmony of action and unity of purpose between the several colonies, upon the suggestion of Jefferson's resolution adopted by the band of patriots met in the Apollo Room in the Raleigh Tavern at WiUiamsburg. During the interregnum between recognized British authority and the newly organized American authority, these committees constituted the real government. Through them the American people learned, in nearly all of the colonies, the lesson of the capacity of the people to govern themselves directly, even without regularly constituted over-lords or governors. It is no wonder that Daniel Leonard, the great Tory and British local leader, said of these committees, ''This is the foulest, subtlest, and most venomous serpent ever issued from the egg of sedition. It is the source of the rebellion. I saw the small seed when it was planted; it was a grain of mustard. I have watched the plant until it has become a tree."

The resolution to make these committees of correspondence intercolonial was, at Jefferson's request, offered in the Assembly by Dabney Carr, the friend and later the brother-in-law of Jefferson, with whom Jefferson had so often sat upon the ''Little Mountain," in closest political and intellectual communion, in a sweetness of friendship seldom rivaled between men.

Now comes another meeting of the members of the House of Burgesses at the Apollo Room in the Raleigh Tavern and the formation of another association, entered into by all of them, declaring it unpatriotic to buy British East Indian tea or other commodities; that "an attack upon one of the colonies was an attack upon all," and directing the Corresponding Committee of the State to devise with the other committees of the other colonies a general annual congress, and at the same time calling a Virginia convention to be held at Williamsburg on August 1st, to appoint delegates to this Congress. Thus was formally conceived our Union, destined to grow and strengthen, in due process of development, until it should become indissoluble.

Massachusetts, in this crisis of her history, would probably have stood alone but for the committees of correspondence — really revolutionary conMnittees — which were keeping in elbow touch with one another from what is now Vermont down to what is now Georgia.

The action of the Government in closing the port of Boston constituted a declaration of war upon all America, although perhaps no man in the British ministry, or in the confidence of the King, so understood it.

It is wonderful how everything goes back to this Apollo Room in the Raleigh Tavern, where Jefferson was one of the ruling spirits. For example, the movement towards a Continental Congress came first from New York. Coming from that State, only partially loyal to the American cause — perhaps not at that time loyal by a majority vote — it would have died still-born, had it not been taken up by the members of the Legislature of Virginia — prorogued and adjourned — but still sitting in solemn voluntary session — in the Raleigh Tavern.

It was on the 14th day of May, 1776, that the selfreconstituted Legislature of Virginia unanimously voted these instructions to its delegates: "To propose to that respectable body" (meaning by that respectable body, the Continental Congress) 'Ho declare the United Colonies free and independent States," and to ''give the assent of this Colony to measures to form foreign alliances and a confederation, ^provided the power of forming government for the internal regulations of each colony he left to the colonial legislatures J ^ Here is the germ of our dual system of government — federal in foreign and inter-state matters, state in domestic affairs. In all your study of American history, keep this itahcized proviso in your minds. It will explain much.

Revolutionary intimidation, it must be confessed, reigned foot-loose throughout America. The bold, patriotic and liberty-loving were not everywhere in a majority. The conditions were such, as Fiske says, that "neither councillors, nor judges, neither sheriffs nor jurymen, could be found to serve under the royal commission" to "execute the Regulating Act in Massachusetts." He further adds that for nine months this state of seeming anarchy continued, and that "yet the affairs of every-day life had gone on without friction or disturbance."

This too recalls the condition of affairs in the South in '74 and '75, when, first in one place and then in another, all carpet-bag authority had been intimidated into flight or quiescence, and yet afterwards peace and law and order reigned. Both conditions, as well as what happened in the early history of California, are high tributes to the capacity of the American people for self-government .

The instructions of Albemarle County to Mr. Thomas

Jefiferson and Mr. John Walker, their two members of the House of Burgesses and their two deputies to the convention, are worth regarding, especially as from the style and the surroundings they were evidently written by Mr. Jefferson. They are as follows: —

"Resolved, That the several inhabitants of the several States of British America are subject to the laws which they adopted at their first settlement, and to such others as have been since made by their respective Legislatures, duly constituted and appointed with their own consent. That no other Legislature whatever can rightly exercise authority over them, and that these privileges they hold as common rights of mankind, confirmed by political constitutions they have respectfully assumed, and also by several charters of compact from the Crown."

Notice he goes back to the ''common rights of mankind," which are ''confirmed" — not created — by charters and "political constitutions."

The language, "these privileges they hold as common rights of mankind," is, so far as I can discover, the first basing of the American cause upon "the rights of man," rather than upon the inherited legal rights of Englishmen. This was to grow into an assertion of the inherent right of self-government vested in every community, and by logical consequence, into the claim of right upon the part of any community to throw off any government, which, in its opinion, had ceased to subserve the purpose of all government, to wit: securing and maintaining the happiness and the liberties of those governed.

Jefferson in his " Memoir " says, that these were his views from the very first dawn of the dispute, but that he had then "never been able to get anyone to agree with him except Mr. Wythe."

Patrick Henry, the controlling genius in Hanover County, and probably the dictator of its resolutions, did not go so far. We find these resolutions asserting only 'Hhe privileges and immunities of their fellowsubjects in England," etc.

The resolutions from Fairfax County, where George Washington presided over the meeting, used language not so strong as that of Hanover.

The Virginia Convention met at the prescribed time. Jefferson was prevented by illness from attending. He had prepared, to be offered to the Convention, a draft of instructions to the Virginia members of Congress. He had forwarded a copy to Peyton Randolph and one to Henry. The fate of these resolutions we will give in Mr. Jefferson's own language: —

"They were written in haste, with some uncertainties and inaccuracies about historical facts, wliich I neglected at the moment, because I thought they could be readily corrected at the convention. . . . Peyton Randolph informed the convention that he had received such a paper from a member, prevented by sickness from offering it in his place, and he laid it on the table for perusal. It was read generally by the members, approved by many, though thought too bold for the present state of things; but they printed it in pamphlet form, under the title of 'A Summary View of the Rights of British America.' It found its way to England and was taken up by the opposition, interpolated a httle by Mr. Burke, so as to make it answer opposition purposes" (in England) "and in that form ran rapidly through several editions. ... I was informed afterwards by Peyton Randolph, that it had procured me the honor of having my name inserted in a long list of proscriptions, enrolled in a bill of attainder, which was commenced in one of the Houses of Parliament, but was suppressed in embryo by the hasty step of events, which warned them to be a Httle cautious. . . . Tamer sentiments were preferred, and, I believe, wisely preferred; the leap I proposed being too long, as yet, for the mass of our citizens. The distance between these and the instructions actually adopted, is of some curiosity, however, and it shows the inequaUty of pace with which we moved, and the prudence required to keep front and rear together. My creed had been formed on unsheatliing the sword at Lexington." (Lexington here is a lapsus linguae, or "plumae"; Boston is meant.)

This "Summary View of the Rights of British America" became the mine into which many delved for ideas and phrases in presenting the American side of the dispute.

The Virginia State ''Convention" is worthy of note in this; that it is, as far as I know, the first of those pecuharly characteristic American institutions. A ''Convention" with us is considered superior to an ordinary representative assembly; so much so, that a state convention can adopt a new constitution, without even referring it back to the people for their approval, as has been done in my State two or three times. It is looked upon as "the body of the people representatively assembled" and possesses full powers for state purposes, as a national convention would have for the purpose of completely altering the Constitution of the United States.

Jefferson's argument in the "Summary View" is based very strongly upon the assertion of the right of expatriation. Hence his constant insistence through life on that right. It was, according to his view, at the very root of our contention in the Revolution. The right of expatriation was not then admitted by any nation of the earth. It is not admitted by Russia at all, nor fully by Prussia, nor Austria, to this good day, and was denied by Great Britain up to and even after the War of 1812. It has not been very long since we abrogated a treaty with Russia, growing out of differences between that Government and ours, based upon antagonistic views with regard to the doctrine of indefeasible allegiance. The " Summary View," however, takes the position that the American colonies expatriated themselves as fully as did the Angles and the Saxons from their old country, when they settled in England, and that except for their voluntary adhesion to the same crown, the independence between the two countries would have been as complete, as that between England and the old home of the race.

Jefferson had gone back to the Greek Republican conception of the status of colonies.

The assertion is made that Great Britain had rendered no assistance to the colonists until after they had established themselves on a firm and permanent footing, and had, therefore, become valuable as customers to the mother country; that we had submitted to trade regulations in our own interest, as long as they were not too restrictive to our own rights and were advantageous to the mother country, but that these had now become unbearable and too oppressive to be further permitted.

From the same instrument, I shall quote another sentence characteristically Jeffersonian, because it is a forerunner of what will later appear in the Declaration of Independence : —

"Scarcely have our minds been able to emerge from the astonishment into which one stroke of Parliamentary thunder has involved us, before another, more heavy and more alarming, is fallen on us. Single acts of tjTanny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematical plan of reducing us to slavery,"

It is not too much to say that the "Summary View of the Rights of British America" contained most of the essential ideas of the Declaration of Independence. It antedated that document by nearly two years; it complained of the same wrongs and set forth the same inherent and natural rights, and, in some respects, was more advanced in its views than the Declaration itself.

It was scarcely a subject of wonder that it led to Mr. Jefferson's being placed upon the proscribed list. Here, as elsewhere, the student of Jefferson's life will find him always in advance, even of the progressive wing of the party with which he is cooperating, and will also find an illustration of his readiness to yield and concede non-essentials in order that all might move along together.

One thing is most remarkable; the " Summary View " goes out of its way to refer justifyingly to the execution of Charles I. This was done in a paper proposed to be adopted by a Virginia convention, where men sat whose forefathers had resisted in the cause of the Stuart the utmost power of Oliver Cromwell, until, indeed, a formal treaty had been entered into between the great Lord Protector and the Old Dominion. In that body sat men, whose forefathers had been killed in the King's service, or had left England for Virginia rather than submit to the rule of the "Commonwealth."

A distinguished Ex-President speaks of Mr. Jefferson as being "timid" and "vacillating!" He was more nearly rash. 3

The reader of the " Summary View " will note the ground upon which Jefferson places his protest against closing the port of Boston. It is the punishment of the many innocent for the acts of the few guilty.

In this connection, it might be recalled that certain people in a Southern town, having signed a petition to a negro postmistress requesting her resignation, which was regarded by the Administration as a species of " intimidation," the post office was closed, by order of an American President, and all of the people in the town and adjacent territory put to the inconvenience and expense of getting their mail from a place a dozen miles or more away. The Federal Court was open, with Federal judge, marshal, grand juries and petty juries, and the federal law could have been vindicated by an exercise of the ordinary powers of the court. Even a little instance like this shows the importance of keeping general principles of justice and right government always in view, and illustrates the truth of the time-honored maxim that ''eternal vigilance is the price of hberty."

Nobody in Virginia, or South Carolina, or New York, would have objected, or would have had any right to object, to the punishment by law of the men who unlawfully seized and threw the tea into the harbor, but the high-handed punishment of the whole people showed an absolute disregard of accepted rules of civilized government, and ''an intention not to punish an act, but an opinion." Still more tyrannical was the act of Parliament providing for the trial in England for certain classes of offenders. The plea in both cases and in the Southern post office case, that "the juries will not convict," is one to which tyrants resort, but one which ought never to be entertained in a free country.