Thomas Jefferson, the Apostle of Americanism

by Gilbert Chinard

CHAPTER IV

"THE DICTATES OF REASON AND PURE AMERICANISM"

When Jefferson arrived in Philadelphia to attend the inauguration of the new President, he had not seen Adams for four years and only insignificant communications had passed between them, since Madison had thought it proper to suppress the letter written by Jefferson at the end of December, not knowing "whether the rather difficult temper of Mr. Adams would not construe certain passages as a personal criticism."[339] With Adams, however, the first impulse was often the best. At the time he felt in a very conciliating mood; he even indulged in the hope that it would be possible to announce a sort of political armistice and to bring about a union of the different parties.

The two old friends had a cordial interview. Both of them, years later, wrote accounts of this historical meeting; though differing in a few details they agreed as to Adams' intention of burying the hatchet and beginning anew. He offered to send Jefferson to Paris as special envoy, insisting that he alone had the confidence of the French and would be able to bring about an arrangement. Jefferson being both unwilling and unavailable, Madison's name was mentioned, but nothing was decided as both knew that Madison had refused such an offer when tendered by Washington.

In his inaugural address Adams discreetly sounded a note of reconciliation. He praised the Constitution, declared that it was "better adapted to the genius, character, situation and relations of this nation and country than any which had ever been proposed or suggested"; he added, much to the disgust of the Federalists, that he did not think of "promoting any alteration in it but such as the people themselves in the course of their experience should see and feel to be necessary or expedient"; finally, he seemed to desert the Federalist camp when he averred that, since he had seen the Constitution for the first time, "it was not then, nor had been since, any objection to it in his mind that the Executive and Senate were not more permanent."

Not without good reason had Hamilton failed to show any enthusiasm over the candidacy of Adams, and the Hamiltonians had some ground for declaring that the speech "was temporizing" and "was a lure for the favor of his opponents at the expense of his sincerity." Two days later Jefferson and Adams attended a dinner offered by Washington to the new administration. When they left the house they started walking home together and the name of Madison being mentioned, Adams declared that objections to the nomination had been raised. The President and the Vice President had come to Fifth Street, where their roads separated; they took leave of each other and the subject was never mentioned again. It was really the parting of the ways after a timid effort toward reconciliation. Adams in the meantime had called together his Cabinet and the Cabinet, as he himself admitted afterwards, had proposed to resign en bloc if he insisted on Madison's nomination.

For the "incongruous portrait gallery" that constituted the Cabinet inherited by Adams from Washington, we may refer to the vivid picture of Mr. Bowers: "Ali Baba among his Forty Thieves is no more deserving of sympathy than John Adams shut up within the seclusion of his Cabinet room with his official family of secret enemies" may seem to some a rather severe characterization. The least that can be said, however, is that it was a Cabinet hand-picked by Hamilton and that neither Pickering, Wolcott nor McHenry were the best minds Adams could have chosen in his party. But there again the term party is inaccurate; if Adams had, in some respect, Federalist tendencies, he was not a party man or a party leader. The irritable, impulsive, patriotic, peevish old New Englander was too individualistic to belong to any party; he was not the man either to rally the hesitating, to uphold the vacillating, or to encourage and educate the blind. Curiously enough, he has found very few defenders. Severely treated by the friends of Jefferson, he has not been spared by the admirers of Hamilton. He stands alone, one of the most complicated and contradictory figures in American history—a pure patriot, whose patriotic work is almost forgotten, a catholic spirit who loved to play with ideas and paradoxes, a contrary mind, but in my opinion more widely read than any of his American contemporaries, not excepting Jefferson. A man who spent his life by the side of the severe and haughty "New England Juno", but who had more ideas in his brain than any sultan of the Arabian Nights had favorites in his harem.

He had taken the helm at the climax of external difficulties. Complicated and delicate as were the problems of domestic administration, they were overshadowed by the difficulties with France. The misunderstandings, the incidents repeated on both sides, had accumulated with such an effect that, at the beginning of 1797, war with France seemed to be almost unavoidable. Though Jefferson had very little to do with it, it is not out of place to recall the main facts.

Genet had unfortunately his American parallel in Gouverneur Morris. As witty and devoid of ordinary morals and honesty as Talleyrand himself, elegant, refined, and corrupt, Gouverneur Morris had been, since his arrival in Paris, the toast of French aristocrats. His activities in favor of the king and his partisans were not unknown to the French, and when Genet was sent to America he had been requested to present discreetly the situation to the American Government. Genet had made no official representation, but he discussed Morris' attitude in a private conversation with Jefferson, and Washington, apprised of the facts, had seen the necessity of acting.