Thomas Jefferson, the Apostle of Americanism

by Gilbert Chinard

The "true line of interest" of the United States was consequently that Bonaparte should be able to effect the complete exclusion of England from the whole continent of Europe, in order to make her renounce her views of dominion over the ocean. As there was no longer any hope of expelling England completely from the American continent, it remained "the interest of the U. S. to wish Bonaparte a moderate success so as to curb the ambition of Great Britain."[501]

From this and many other similar passages it would follow that Jefferson was one of the first exponents of the famous policy of the balance of power. Although at war with England, America could not wish for a complete defeat of her enemy which would enable the monster to pursue his dreams of world domination. But hateful as the Corsican was, no one could wish for an English victory which would leave Great Britain the undisputed ruler of the ocean. Incidents of the war did wring from Jefferson impassioned outbursts which expressed a temporary anger, but whenever he took time to weigh the different factors in his mind, the realistic politician emerged every time.

This appears clearly in his correspondence with Madame de Staël, who had urged him on several occasions to make every effort to decide his fellow countrymen to join in the battle against the oppressors of liberty. It appears also quite significantly in his correspondence with Madison, following the burning of the White House and the destruction by the English soldiers of the first Congressional Library. His indignation ran high when he learned "through the paper" that "the vandalism of our enemy has triumphed at Washington over science as well as the arts, with the destruction of the public library with the noble edifice in which it was deposited." "Of that transaction, as that of Copenhagen, the world will entertain but one sentiment," he wrote to Samuel H. Smith.[502] But it was characteristic of the man that he thought at once of the means of restoring the library. Books could not be procured easily from abroad and there was no other private library in the country comparable to the collection of books he had systematically accumulated for over forty years. He placed his books at the disposal of Congress "to be valued by persons named by the Library Committee, and the payment made convenient to the public." This was not a piece of business in order to retrieve his fortune, nor a disguised request for financial help, but simply the act of a public-spirited citizen unable to make an outright gift and yet unwilling to make any profit on the public treasury.

The end of the war was in sight—a war which could be considered as a draw, in which both sides had lost heavily and neither had gained anything:

It is a deplorable misfortune to us. It has arrested the course of the most remarkable tide of prosperity any nation ever experienced, and has closed such prospects of future improvements as were never before in the view of any people. Farewell all hopes of extinguishing public debt! Farewell all visions of applying surpluses of revenue to the improvement of peace, rather than the ravages of war. Our enemy has indeed the consolation of Satan on removing our first parents from Paradise; from a peaceable and agricultural nation, he makes us a military and manufacturing one....[503]

It could truly be said that the war had failed. The best that could be expected was the status ante bellum. "Indemnity for the past and security for the future which was our motto at the beginning of this war, must be adjourned to another, when, disarmed and bankrupt our enemy shall be less able to insult and plunder the world with impunity."[504]

The news that peace had been signed did not cause him any elation, it was "in fact but an armistice", and even when he wrote again to his dear and ancient friend James Maury, Jefferson was careful to note that America would never peacefully accept again England's practice of impressment on the high seas. "On that point," he wrote, "we have thrown away the scabbard and the moment an European war brings her back to this practice, adds us again to her enemies."[505]

This was repeated in a letter to his old friend Du Pont de Nemours who had asked him for his influence in order to send his grandson to the Naval Academy:

For twenty years to come we should consider peace as the summum bonum of our country. At the end of that period we shall be twenty millions in number, and forty in energy, when encountering the starved and rickety paupers and dwarfs of English workshops. By that time your grandson will have become one of our High-Admirals, and bear distinguished part in retorting the wrongs of both his countries on the most implacable and cruel of their enemies.[506]

Yet one would be mistaken in believing that Jefferson felt against England any deep-seated animosity, and his resentment, however justifiable, did not last long after the close of hostilities. The fine friendly letters he wrote to Thomas Law and James Maury at the eve of the war were more than mere gestures. He had many friends in England, he was imbued with English philosophy, English ideas, English law and, if he detested the rulers and the régime, he always maintained the same sentimental and quite natural feelings of so many Americans for the mother country as a whole: