THOMAS JEFFERSON, AS SEEN BY THE LIGHT OF 1863.
Mr. Jefferson, in his lifetime, underwent the extremes of abuse and of adulation. Daily, semi-weekly, or weekly did Fenno, Porcupine Cobbett, Dennie, Coleman, and the other Federal journalists, not content with proclaiming him an ambitious, cunning, and deceitful demagogue, ridicule his scientific theories, shudder at his irreligion, sneer at his courage, and allude coarsely to his private morals in a manner more discreditable to themselves than to him; crowning all their accusations and innuendoes with a reckless profusion of epithet. While at the same times and places the whole company of the Democratic press, led by Bache, Duane, Cheetham, Freneau, asserted with equal energy that he was the greatest statesman, the profoundest philosopher, the very sun of republicanism, the abstract of all that was glorious in democracy. And if Abraham Bishop, of New Haven, Connecticut, compared him with Christ, a great many New Englanders of more note than Bishop, pronounced him the man of sin, a malignant manifestation of Satan. On one or the other of these two scales he was placed by every man in the United States, according to each citizen's modicum of sense and temper. We say, every man—because in that war of the Democrats against the Federalists, no one sought to escape the service. Every able-tongued man was ready to fight with it, either for Jefferson or against him.
When Jefferson passed away triumphant, toleration set in. His enemies dropped him to turn upon living prey. They came to acquiesce in him, and even to quote him when he served their purpose. But the admiration of his followers did not abate. They canonized him as the apostle of American democracy, and gave his name to the peculiar form of the doctrine they professed. For many years the utterances of the master were conclusive to the common men of the party—better far than the arguments of any living leader. Of late we have heard less of him. The right wing of the democracy begin to doubt the expediency of the States' Rights theory; and with the wrong wing his standing has been injured by the famous passage on slavery in the 'Notes on Virginia.' The wrong wing of the Democratic party are the men who cry out for the 'Constitution as it is, and the Union as it was'—a cry full of sound and often of fury; but what does it signify? The first gun that was fired at Fort Sumter shattered the old Union. If peace men and abolitionists, secessionists and conservatives were to agree together to restore the old Union to the status quo ante bellum, they could not do it. 'When an epoch is finished,' as Armand Carrel once wrote, 'the mould is broken, it cannot be made again.' All that can be done is to gather up the fragments, and to use them wisely in a new construction. An Indian neophyte came one day to the mission, shouting: 'Moses, Isaiah, Abraham, Christ, John the Baptist!' When out of breath, the brethren asked him what he meant. 'I mean a glass of cider.' If the peace party were as frank as the Indian, they would tell us that their cry signifies place, power, self. The prodigal sons of the South are to be lured back by promises of pardon, indemnification, niggers ad libitum, before they have satiated themselves with the husks which seem to have fallen to their portion, and are willing to confess that they have sinned against heaven and against their country. The arms of the peace men are open; the best robe, the ring, the fatted calf are ready. All that is asked in return is a Union (as it was) of votes, influence, and contributions, to place the party in power and to keep it there.
These misguided Democrats owe to Jefferson the war cries they shout and the arms they are using against the Government. His works are an arsenal where these weapons of sedition are arranged ready for use, bright and in good order, and none of them as yet superseded by modern improvements. He first made excellent practice with the word 'unconstitutional,' an engine dangerous and terrible to the Administration against which it is worked; and of easy construction, for it can be prepared out of anything or nothing. Jefferson found it very effective in annoying and embarrassing the Government in his campaigns. But as he foresaw that the time must come when the Supreme Court of the United States would overpower this attack, he adapted, with great ingenuity, to party warfare the theory of States' Rights, which in 1787 had nearly smothered the Constitution in its cradle. This dangerous contrivance he used vigorously against the alien and sedition law, without considering that his blows were shaking the Union itself. Mr. Calhoun looked upon the Kentucky Resolutions (Jefferson's own work) as the bill of rights of nullification, and wrote for a copy of them in 1828 to use in preparing his manifesto of the grievances of South Carolina. It is unnecessary to allude to the triumph of these doctrines at the South under the name of secession.
As Jefferson soon perceived that a well-disciplined band of needy expectants was the only sure resort in elections, he hit upon rotation in office as the cheapest and most stimulating method of paying the regular soldiers of party for their services (if successful) on these critical occasions. But as a wise general not only prepares his attack, but carefully secures a retreat in case his men push too far in the heat of conflict, Jefferson suggested the plan of an elective judiciary, which he foresaw might prove of great advantage to those whose zeal should outrun the law. He even recommended rebellion in popular governments as a political safety valve; and talked about Shay's War and the Whiskey Insurrection in the same vein and almost the same language that was lately used to the rioters of New York by their friends and fellow voters. And he and his followers shouted then, as their descendants shout now, 'Liberty is in danger!' 'The last earthly hope of republican institutions resides in our ranks!' Jefferson is also entitled to the credit of naturalizing in the United States the phrases of the French Revolution: virtue of the people; reason of the people; natural rights of man, etc.—that Babylonish dialect, as John Adams called it, which in France meant something, but in this country was mere cant. Jefferson knew that here all were people, and that no set of men, whether because of riches or of poverty, had the right to arrogate to themselves this distinction. But he also knew that in Europe this distinction did exist, and that the emigrants who were coming in such numbers all belonged to the lower class, there called people. Of course these flattering phrases would win their ears and their votes for the people's ticket, against an imaginary aristocracy. Thus might be secured an army of obedient voters, knowing nothing but their orders, and thinking of nothing but the pleasing idea that they were the rulers.
These useful inventions are enough to immortalize any man. His theory, that the rich only should be taxed, as an indirect form of agrarianism, ought not to be forgotten, for we see it daily carried out; and his darling doctrine, that no generation can bind its successors, will come to light again and life whenever a party may think the repudiation of our war debt likely to be a popular measure. Indeed, there is scarcely a form of disorganization and of disorder which Jefferson does not extract from some elementary principle or natural right. We do not mean to accuse him of doing wrong deliberately. Jefferson was an optimist. All was for the best—at least, all that he did; for he was naturally predisposed to object to any measure which did not originate with himself or had not been submitted to his judgment. His elementary principles were always at his call. They were based upon reason: how could they be wrong? His mind grasped quickly all upon the surface that suited his purpose; deeper he did not care to go. In deciding whether any political doctrine was consistent or inconsistent with natural reason, he generally judged of it by his reason—and this varied with his position, his interest, his feelings. He probably was not aware of the extent of his mutations; his mind was fixed on the results to be obtained—always the same: the gratification of his wishes. His was a Vicar-of-Bray kind of logic. The ultimate results of his dealings, as affecting others and the nation at large, he apparently was unable to consider, or put them aside for the time; taking it for granted, in a careless way, that all must come well.
Thus as times changed, he changed with them. Laws, measures, customs, men, that seemed useful and praiseworthy when he was a private individual, appeared pernicious and wicked to the Secretary of State or to the President. His life and writings are full of self-contradictions, or rather of self-refutations, for he seems to forget that he had ever thought differently. Men of sense modify their opinions as they advance in years and in wisdom, but very few men of sense have held diametrically different opinions on almost every important question that has come before them.
Jefferson satisfied himself early in life that slavery was wrong, morally and economically. On no subject has he expressed himself more decidedly. When a very young member of the Assembly of Virginia, he seconded Colonel Bland's motion to extend the protection of the laws to slaves. Bland was treated roughly, and the matter dropped. From Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration of Independence a long passage on the iniquity of slavery and the slave trade was stricken out by Congress. In 1778 he introduced a bill prohibiting the importation of slaves into Virginia. Two years later he wrote the well-known pages in the 'Notes.' In 1783 it was proposed to adopt a new constitution in Virginia; Jefferson drew one up, and inserted an article granting liberty to all persons born of slave parents after the year 1800. From that time his zeal began to cool. He perceived that his views were unpopular at the South. The 'Notes' had been printed for private circulation only; when Châstellux asked permission to publish them in France, Jefferson consented on the condition that all passages relating to slavery should be stricken out.[A] Although he adopted so heartily the most extravagant doctrines of the French Revolution on the natural rights of mankind, among which liberty, equality, fraternity certainly ranked first, he quietly ignored the claims of the American black to a share in the bright future that was promised to the human race. The act of Congress prohibiting the importation of slaves came into force in 1808. It was well received by slave owners, for it increased the value of the homemade 'article.' Jefferson could safely approve of it. He did so warmly. With that exception his silence on this great question was profound during the period of his power; but he had no language too theatrical for liberty in the abstract, nor too violent for despots who were three thousand miles away, and with whose oppressions the people of the United States had no concern whatever. When the debates on the admission of Missouri brought up this ever-recurring question again to the exclusion of all others, Jefferson spoke to sneer at the friends of freedom. The Federalists had found out that their cherished monarchical 'form' would get them no adherents, and so were trying to throw a new tub to the whale by appealing to the virtuous sentiments of the people. He was in favor of making Missouri a Slave State. To extend the area of slavery would increase the comfort of the slaves without adding one more to their number, and would improve their chances for emancipation. It would also relieve Virginia from the burden that was weighing her down—slaves being rather cheaper there than horses—and would enable her to export her surplus crop of negroes; perhaps eventually to dispose of them all. This last notion, by the way, gives us a pretty good idea of Jefferson's practical knowledge of political economy.
His chief objection to the new constitution, when he first saw it, was the omission in it of a bill of rights providing for the 'eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus act'—and for the freedom of the press. When Colonel Burr was arrested, Jefferson, who, by the way, showed a want of dignity and self-respect throughout the affair, was eager to suspend the habeas corpus act, and got a bill to that effect passed by one branch of Congress; it was lost in the other. This was the first instance in the history of the United States. The many fine things he had said on the integrity and independence of judges did not prevent him from finding bitter fault with Chief-Justice Marshall for not convicting Burr. He accused Marshall and the whole tribe of Federalists of complicity in Burr's conspiracy. Poor old Paine, then near his end, who was one of Jefferson's jackals of the press, informed the Chief-Justice, through the Public Advertiser, that he was 'a suspected character.' When Jefferson had felt the pricking of the Federal quills, he began to think differently of the freedom of the press. Once, in the safety of private station, he had got off this antithesis: if he had to choose between a government without newspapers, and newspapers without a government, he should prefer the latter. But when in his turn he felt the stings that previously, under his management, had goaded even Washington out of his self-control, Jefferson could not help saying that 'a suspension of the press would not more completely deprive the nation of its benefits than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood.'