Writing to Madison, he went more into detail, balancing the good against the bad. He liked the separation of the departments, endorsed the lodging of the power of initiating money bills with the representatives of the people, and was ‘captivated with the compromise of the opposite claims of the great and little States’; but he insisted that a bill of rights ‘is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse or rest in inference.’ Professing himself ‘no friend to a very energetic government’ as ‘always oppressive,’ he added that should the people approve the Constitution in all its parts he should ‘concur in it cheerfully in hopes that they will amend it whenever they think it works wrong.’[409]

Little more than a month later he had become an ardent friend of ratification. ‘I wish with all my soul,’ he wrote, ‘that the nine first Conventions may accept the Constitution, because this may secure to us the good it contains, which I think great and important. But I equally wish that the four latest Conventions, whichever they may be, may refuse to accede to it till a declaration of rights is annexed.’[410]

When the Massachusetts Convention accepted with ‘perpetual instructions to her Delegates to endeavor to secure reforms,’ he was delighted,[411] and the same day he wrote another correspondent of his pleasure at the progress made toward ratification. ‘Indeed I have presumed that it would gain on the public mind as I confess it has on my own.’[412] When South Carolina acted, he wrote E. Rutledge his congratulations. ‘Our government wanted bracing,’ he said. ‘Still we must take care not to run from one extreme to another; not to brace too high.’[413] When the requisite nine States had ratified, he wrote Madison in a spirit of rejoicing. ‘It is a good canvas on which some strokes only want retouching. What these are I think are sufficiently manifested by the general voice from North to South which calls for a bill of rights.’[414]

After the ratification, he wrote Madison in praise of ‘The Federalist,’ describing it as ‘the best commentary on government ever written,’ and admitting that it had ‘rectified’ him on many points.[415] In the same vein he wrote to Washington, expressing the hope that a bill of rights would be speedily added.[416] In the spring of 1789 he wrote another that the Constitution was ‘unquestionably the wisest ever yet presented to men.’[417] And after the Bill of Rights had been added, he wrote to Lafayette that ‘the opposition to the Constitution has almost totally disappeared’ and that ‘the amendments proposed by Congress have brought over almost all’ of the objectors.[418]

Years afterward, when he wrote his ‘Autobiography,’ he reviewed his reactions on the document: ‘I received a copy early in November,’ he wrote, ‘and read and contemplated its provisions, with great satisfaction.... The absence of express declarations, ensuring freedom of religious worship, freedom of the press, freedom of the person under the uninterrupted protection of the Habeas Corpus & trial by jury in civil as well as in criminal cases excited my jealousy; and the reëligibility of the President for life I quite disapproved. I expressed freely in letters to my friends, and most particularly to Mr. Madison and General Washington, my approbations and objections.’[419] His recollections were true to the facts as conclusively shown in the correspondence to which reference has been made.

He was no more opposed to the Constitution and its ratification than he was an atheist.

VII

This brings us to Jefferson the creator and leader of a party, and his methods of management. Here he was without a peer in the mastery of men. He intuitively knew men, and when bent upon it could usually bend them to his will. He was a psychologist and could easily probe the minds and hearts of those he met. In his understanding of mass psychology, he had no equal. When a measure was passed or a policy adopted in Philadelphia, he knew the reactions in the woods of Georgia without waiting for letters and papers. This rare insight into the mass mind made him a brilliantly successful propagandist. In every community he had his correspondents with whom he communicated with reasonable regularity, doing more in this way to mould and direct the policies of his party than could have been done in any other way. Seldom has there lived a more tireless and voluminous letter-writer. With all the powerful elements arrayed against him, he appreciated the importance of the press as did few others. ‘I desired you in my last to send me the newspapers, notwithstanding the expense,’ he wrote a friend from Paris.[420] Believing that the people, in possession of the facts, would reach reasonable conclusions, he considered newspapers a necessary engine of democracy. ‘If left to me,’ he once wrote, ‘to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter.’[421] There is not a scintilla of evidence to confute his stout contention that he never wrote for the papers anonymously, but the evidence piles mountain high to prove that he constantly inspired the tone of the party press.

In his personal contacts he was captivating—a master of diplomacy and tact, born of his intuitive knowledge of men. Perhaps no better illustration of his cleverness in analyzing men can be found than in his letter to Madison on De Moustier, a newly appointed French Minister to the United States. ‘De M. is remarkably communicative. With adroitness he may be pumped of anything. His openness is from character, not affectation. An intimacy with him may, on this account, be politically valuable.’[422]

In his leadership we find more of leading than of driving. He had a genius for gently and imperceptibly insinuating his own views into the minds of others and leaving them with the impression that they had conceived the ideas and convinced Jefferson. To Madison this was a source of keen delight.[423] Jefferson was the original ‘Easy Boss.’ His tact was proverbial. He never sought to overshadow or overawe. Inferior men were not embarrassed or depressed in his presence. He was amazingly thoughtful and considerate. In a company he instinctively went to the assistance of the neglected. Thus at a dinner party, a guest, long absent from the country, and unknown to the diners, was left out of the conversation and ignored. In a momentary silence, Jefferson turned to him. ‘To you, Mr. C., we are indebted for this benefit—’ he said, ‘no one deserves more the gratitude of his country.’ The other guests were all attention. ‘Yes, sir, the upland rice which you sent from Algiers, and which thus far succeeds, will, when generally adopted by the planters, prove an inestimable blessing to our Southern States.’ After that the neglected guest became the lion of the dinner.[424] Thoughtfulness in small things—this entered not a little into Jefferson’s hold on his followers.