Yet she had seen her husband re-elected to the Virginia Legislature; sent as a member to the Colonial Congress at Philadelphia, there to write the best known of all American literary productions; from their mountain home she had seen British troops march into Charlottesville, four miles away, and then, with household treasure, had fled, knowing that beautiful Monticello would be devastated by the enemy's ruthless tread. She had known Washington, and had visited his lonely wife there at Mount Vernon when victory hung in the balance; when defeat meant that Thomas Jefferson and George Washington would be the first victims of a vengeful foe. She saw her husband War-Governor of Virginia in its most perilous hour; she lived to know that Washington had won; that Cornwallis was his "guest," and that no man, save Washington alone, was more honored in proud Virginia than her beloved lord and husband. She saw a messenger on horseback approach bearing a packet from the Congress at Philadelphia to the effect that "His Excellency, the Honorable Thomas Jefferson," had been appointed as one of an embassy to France in the interests of the United States, with Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane as colleagues, and, knowing her husband's love for Franklin, and his respect for France, she leaned over his chair and with misty eyes saw him write his simple "No," and knew that the only reason he declined was because he would not leave his wife at a time when she might most need his tenderness and sympathy.
And then they retired to beloved Monticello to enjoy the rest that comes only after work well done—to spend the long vacation of their lives in simple homekeeping work and studious leisure, her husband yet in manhood's prime, scarce thirty-seven, as men count time, and rich, passing rich, in goods and lands.
And then she died.
And Thomas Jefferson, the strong, the self-poised, the self-reliant, fell in a helpless swoon, and was laid on a pallet and carried out, as though he, too, were dead. For three weeks his dazed senses prayed for death. He could endure the presence of no one save his eldest daughter, a slim, slender girl of scarce ten years, grown a woman in a day. By her loving touch and tenderness he was lured back from death and reason's night into the world of life and light. With tottering steps, led by the child who had to think for both, he was taken out on the veranda of beautiful Monticello. He looked out on stretching miles of dark-blue hills and waving woods and winding river. He gazed, and as he looked it came slowly to him that the earth was still as when he last saw it, and realized that this would be so even if he were gone. Then, turning to the child, who stood by, stroking his locks, it came to him that even in grief there may be selfishness, and for the first time he responded to the tender caress, saying, "Yes, we will live, daughter—live in memory of her!"
When two men of equal intelligence and sincerity quarrel, both are probably right. Hamilton and Jefferson were opposed to each other by temperament and disposition, in a way that caused either to look with distrust on any proposition made by the other. And yet, when Washington pressed upon Jefferson the position of Secretary of State, I can not but think he did it as an antidote to the growing power and vaunting ambition of Hamilton. Washington won his victories, as great men ever do, by wisely choosing his aides. Hamilton had done yeoman's service in every branch of the government, and while the chief sincerely admired his genius, he guessed his limitations. Power grows until it topples, and when it topples, innocent people are crushed. Washington was wise as a serpent, and rather than risk open ruction with Hamilton by personally setting bounds, he invited Jefferson into his cabinet, and the acid was neutralized to a degree where it could be safely handled.
Jefferson had just returned from Paris with his beloved daughter, Martha. He was intending soon to return to France and study social science at close range. Already, he had seen that mob of women march out to Versailles and fetch the King to Paris, and had seen barricade after barricade erected with the stones from the leveled Bastile; he was on intimate and affectionate terms with Lafayette and the Republican leaders, and here was a pivotal point in his life. Had not Washington persuaded him to remain "just for the present" in America, he might have played a part in Carlyle's best book, that book which is not history, but more—an epic. So, among the many obligations that America owes to Washington, must be named this one of pushing Thomas Jefferson, the scholar and man of peace, into the political embroglio and shutting the door. Then it was that Hamilton's taunting temper awoke a degree of power in Jefferson that before he wist not of; then it was that he first fully realized that the "United States" with England as a sole pattern was not enough.
A pivotal point! Yes, a pivotal point for Jefferson, America and the world; for Jefferson gave the rudder of the Ship of State such a turn to starboard that there was never again danger of her drifting on to aristocratic shoals, an easy victim to the rapacity of Great Britain. Hamilton's distrust of the people found no echo in Jefferson's mind.
He agreed with Hamilton that a "strong government" administered by a few, provided the few are wise and honorable, is the best possible government. Nay, he went further and declared that an absolute monarchy in which the monarch was all-wise and all-powerful, could not be improved upon by the imagination of man.
In his composition, there was a saving touch of humor that both Hamilton and Washington seemed to lack. He could smile at himself; but none ever dared turn a joke on Hamilton, much less on Washington. And so when Hamilton explained that a strong government administered by Washington, President; Jefferson, Secretary of State; Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury; Knox, Secretary of War; and Randolph, Attorney-General, was pretty nearly ideal, no one smiled. But Jefferson's plain inference was that power is dangerous and man is fallible; that a man so good as Washington dies tomorrow and another man steps in, and that those who have the government in their present keeping should curb ambitions, limit their own power, and thus fix a precedent for those who are to follow.