Thomas Jefferson, the Apostle of Americanism

by Gilbert Chinard

Thanks to the Republican victory, America no longer had to pay any attention to the political convulsions which were tearing the vitals of the Old World. The American experiment no longer depended on the issue of the French Revolution. The Argosy had weathered the storm; America had become the sole arbiter of her destinies, she had become, Jefferson proclaimed, "a standing monument and example for the aim and imitation of the people of other countries; and I join with you in the hope and belief that they will see, from our example, that a free government is of all others the most energetic; that the inquiry which has been excited among the mass of mankind by our revolution and its consequences, will ameliorate the condition of man over a great portion of the globe."

Such a declaration should not be mistaken for a manifestation of a missionary spirit by which Jefferson was never moved and which was absolutely abhorrent to his nature. America was not to engage in any crusade. She was not to preach a new gospel of liberty to the oppressed peoples of the earth. She had proclaimed no Déclaration européenne des droits de l'homme et du citoyen, as the French Revolution had ambitiously done. She was not sending overseas to the shackled nations a call to throw off the yoke and liberate themselves. Such declarations would have seemed to Jefferson idle and dangerous. Every people had to work out their own salvation; any attempt by America to help and encourage them would only embroil her in difficulties which would retard her own development. She could best serve the cause of humanity by standing aloof and simply existing as an example which others, if they had eyes to see, could not fail sooner or later to imitate. It was essentially the doctrine which has been so often expounded by the non-interventionists every time America has been invited to coöperate with Europe.

This doctrine therefore was not the expression of a passing mood; it constituted one of the fundamental principles of Americanism and had a permanent value, because, as Montesquieu would have said, it was the result of "the nature of things", and not a deduction drawn from an a priori principle. On the other hand, it contained a new and interesting affirmation of the unquestionable superiority of the American people over all the peoples of the earth, not only morally but intellectually; and this was not forgotten either, for the "high-mindedness" of Jefferson was echoed and reflected more than a hundred years later in the "too proud to fight" of Woodrow Wilson. Taken in itself, this statement was no worse than so many statements made in political speeches; all peoples like to be told and to believe that they are a chosen people. But it must be confessed that Jefferson drew very dangerous conclusions from that uniqueness of America's position.

One of the earliest and frankest expressions of that naïve and almost unconscious imperialism appears in an unpublished letter to Doctor Mitchell. After discussing every possible subject under heaven, from frosts to mammoth bones and electricity, Jefferson concluded with this disquieting statement: "Nor is it in physics alone that we shall be found to differ from the other hemisphere. I strongly suspect that our geographical peculiarities may call for a different code of natural law to govern relations with other nations from that which the conditions of Europe have given rise to there."[425]

This idea was reiterated in a letter written to Short more than a year later. In it Jefferson laid down the principle, the moral foundation of American imperialism—a curious mixture of common sense, practical idealism, and moralizing not to be found perhaps in any other people, but more permanently American than typically Jeffersonian. To any sort of arrangement with Europe he was irreducibly opposed: "We have a perfect horror at everything connecting ourselves with the politics of Europe." In order to protect America from the wiles of the European diplomats, the best course was "in the meantime, to wish to let every treaty we have drop off without renewal. We call in our diplomatic missions, barely keeping up those to the most important nations. There is a strong disposition in our countrymen to discontinue even these; and very possibly it may be done." Jefferson admitted that the neutral rights of the United States might suffer; they would undoubtedly suffer temporarily, and one had to accept this as an unavoidable evil. But it would be only temporary: "We feel ourselves strong and daily growing stronger ... If we can delay but for a few years the necessity of vindicating the laws of nature on the ocean, we shall be the more sure of doing it with effect. The day is within my time as well as yours; when we may say by what laws other nations shall treat us on the sea. And we will say it."[426]

Nor was this imperialism purely theoretical. It was susceptible of immediate applications and it manifested itself openly in a letter written to James Monroe a few weeks later. The people of Virginia were most anxious to get rid of a band of malefactors guilty of insurgency, conspiracy, and rebellion. Had they been whites, the solution would have been easy enough, but it happened that they were colored people and they could not reasonably be sent to the northern boundary, or be provided with land in the Western Territory. Could these undesirables be pushed into the Spanish sphere of influence? To this solution Jefferson was unequivocally opposed and for reasons worth considering: "However our present situation may restrain us within our own limits," he wrote to Monroe, "it is impossible not to look forward to distant times, when our rapid multiplication will expand itself beyond those limits, and cover the whole northern, if not the southern continent, with a people speaking the same language, governed in similar forms, and by similar laws; nor can we contemplate either blot or mixture on that surface."[427]

Truly enough, Jefferson said at the beginning of the letter that publication of his views might have an ill effect in more than one quarter. I shall not even advance the theory that Jefferson's foreign policies constituted a systematic effort to put such a program into effect. But that such aspirations and ambitions existed in his mind and influenced him to a certain extent cannot be denied, and they should not be overlooked in any discussion of his attitude during the negotiations that led to the purchase of Louisiana.

Many of Jefferson's contemporaries, and not a few American historians, have harshly criticized him for buying Louisiana from France, when no clause in the Constitution authorized the acquisition of new territory. On the French side, not only historians but even Bonaparte's brother considered that the cession, without the previous consultation of the Chambers, of a colony recently recovered by France was an act arbitrary and unconstitutional. Both principals have been condemned and praised by posterity, but there is no doubt that the full responsibility for the transaction rests not upon the peoples of France and America, but on the President of the United States and the Premier Consul. It was remarkable that two great minds, so divergent in their views and principles, should meet on a common ground instead of clashing. On neither side was it a triumph of idealism, but of that enlightened self-interest which, according to Jefferson, directs the actions of men as well as of nations.

Nor were they entirely unsupported by the public opinion of their respective countries. I have already indicated in a preceding book[428] that a friendly conspiracy seems to have been organized in France in order to induce the First Consul, and chiefly Talleyrand, to acquiesce in the cession. At any rate, it appears from several letters of Volney that the Ideologists were anxious to avoid an open conflict with the United States and, at the same time, to promote a measure which, in their opinion, would insure the growth and prosperity of the Republican Promised Land. Volney, himself one of the "voyageurs" of the Directory, had made a trip to the West and come back fully convinced that France could never hope to develop an empire in the Mississippi Valley. The few scattered French colonists who remained isolated in the Middle West were condemned to be gradually absorbed by the influx of American pioneers and to disappear before the rising flood of American colonization. The question of the lower valley of the Mississippi was different, to be sure, but if the United States were thwarted in their development, if they were hemmed in on every side by powerful neighbors, the theory of Montesquieu that only small nations could adopt the republican system of government would seem vindicated. It was not only the fate of the United States which was at stake, but the fate of the doctrine of popular government, and it was the duty of all liberals to bend every effort to make more secure the prosperity of America.

On the other hand, as we have already seen in previous chapters, while Jefferson was satisfied to leave Louisiana in the hands of Spain, at least temporarily, he had always watched for a favorable opportunity to unite the Spanish colonies to the main body of the United States. It was not so much desire of expansion and imperialism as the conviction that colonies were only pawns in the game of European politics; that they could change hands at any time according to the fortunes of war; that there existed consequently a permanent danger of seeing France recover some day her former colonies or, still worse, to have them fall into the hands of the British. With England, or possibly France, on the northern border, in the Floridas, on the Gulf, and in the valley of the Mississippi, the old dream of European domination of the North American continent would revive. The United States would be placed in the same position as the old colonies with reference to France. A clash could not be avoided; the issue would have to be fought out, until one of the adversaries should remain in full and undisputed possession of the whole northern part of the New World.