this election; discount as one will the contrary obsessions of
men like Fisher Ames, Hamilton and Jefferson, the time was
fateful. Unable to induce Burr to avow Federalist principles,
influential Federalists, in defiance of the constitution, contemplated
the desperate alternative of preventing an election, and
appointing an extra-constitutional (Federalist) president pro
tempore. Better counsels, however, prevailed; Hamilton used
his influence in favour of Jefferson as against Burr, and Jefferson
became president, entering upon his duties on the 4th of March
1801. Republicans who had affiliated with the Federalists at
the time of the X. Y. Z. disclosures returned; very many of the
Federalists themselves Jefferson placated and drew over. “Believing,”
he wrote, “that (excepting the ardent monarchists) all
our citizens agreed in ancient whig principles”—or, as he elsewhere
expressed it, in “republican forms”—“I thought it
advisable to define and declare them, and let them see the ground
on which we can rally.” This he did in his inaugural, which,
though somewhat rhetorical, is a splendid and famous statement
of democracy.[1] His conciliatory policy produced a mild schism
in his own party, but proved eminently wise, and the state
elections of 1801 fulfilled his prophecy of 1791 that the policy of
the Federalists would leave them “all head and no body.” In
1804 he was re-elected by 162 out of 176 votes.
Jefferson’s administrations were distinguished by the simplicity that marked his conduct in private life. He eschewed the pomp and ceremonies, natural inheritances from English origins, that had been an innocent setting to the character of his two noble predecessors. His dress was of “plain cloth” on the day of his inauguration. Instead of driving to the Capitol in a coach and six, he walked without a guard or servant from his lodgings—or, as a rival tradition has it, he rode, and hitched his horse to a neighbouring fence—attended by a crowd of citizens. Instead of opening Congress with a speech to which a formal reply was expected, he sent in a written message by a private hand. He discontinued the practice of sending ministers abroad in public vessels. Between himself and the governors of states he recognized no difference in rank. He would not have his birthday celebrated by state balls. The weekly levée was practically abandoned. Even such titles as “Excellency,” “Honourable,” “Mr” were distasteful to him. It was formally agreed in cabinet meeting that “when brought together in society, all are perfectly equal, whether foreign or domestic, titled or untitled, in or out of office.” Thus diplomatic grades were ignored in social precedence and foreign relations were seriously compromised by dinner-table complications. One minister who appeared in gold lace and dress sword for his first, and regularly appointed, official call on the president, was received—as he insisted with studied purpose—by Jefferson in negligent undress and slippers down at the heel. All this was in part premeditated system[2]—a part of Jefferson’s purpose to republicanize the government and public opinion, which was the distinguishing feature of his administration; but it was also simply the nature of the man. In the company he chose by preference, honesty and knowledge were his only tests. He knew absolutely no social distinctions in his willingness to perform services for the deserving. He held up to his daughter as an especial model the family of a poor but gifted mechanic as one wherein she would see “the best examples of rational living.” “If it be possible,” he said, “to be certainly conscious of anything, I am conscious of feeling no difference between writing to the highest and lowest being on earth.”
Jefferson’s first administration was marked by a reduction of the army, navy, diplomatic establishment and, to the uttermost, of governmental expenses; some reduction of the civil service, accompanied by a large shifting of offices to Republicans; and, above all, by the Louisiana Purchase (q.v.), following which Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, sent by Jefferson, conducted their famous exploring expedition across the continent to the Pacific (see Lewis, Meriwether). Early in his term he carried out a policy he had urged upon the government when minister to France and when vice-president, by dispatching naval forces to coerce Tripoli into a decent respect for the trade of his country—the first in Christendom to gain honourable immunity from tribute or piracy in the Mediterranean. The Louisiana Purchase, although the greatest “inconsistency” of his career, was also an illustration, in corresponding degree, of his essential practicality, and one of the greatest proofs of his statesmanship. It was the crowning achievement of his administration. It is often said that Jefferson established the “spoils system” by his changes in the civil service. He was the innovator, because for the first time there was opportunity for innovation. But mere justice requires attention to the fact that incentive to that innovation, and excuse for it, were found in the absolute one-party monopoly maintained by the Federalists. Moreover, Jefferson’s ideals were high; his reasons for changes were in general excellent; he at least so far resisted the great pressure for office—producing by his resistance dissatisfaction within his party—as not to have lowered, apparently, the personnel of the service; and there were no such blots on his administration as President Adams’s “midnight judges.” Nevertheless, his record here was not clear of blots, showing a few regrettable inconsistencies.[3] Among important but secondary measures of his second administration were the extinguishment of Indian titles, and promotion of Indian emigration to lands beyond the Mississippi; reorganization of the militia; fortification of the seaports; reduction of the public debt; and a simultaneous reduction of taxes. But his second term derives most of its historical interest from the unsuccessful efforts to convict Aaron Burr of treasonable acts in the south-west, and from the efforts made to maintain, without war, the rights of neutrals on the high seas. In his diplomacy with Napoleon and Great Britain Jefferson betrayed a painful incorrigibility of optimism. A national policy of “growling before fighting”—later practised successfully enough by the United States—was not then possible; and one writer has very justly said that what chiefly affects one in the whole matter is the pathos of it—“a philosopher and a friend of peace struggling with a despot of superhuman genius, and a Tory cabinet of superhuman insolence and stolidity” (Trent). It is possible to regard the embargo policy dispassionately as an interesting illustration of Jefferson’s love of peace. The idea—a very old one with Jefferson—was not entirely original; in essence it received other attempted applications in the Napoleonic period—and especially in the continental blockade. Jefferson’s statesmanship had the limitations of an agrarian outlook. The extreme to which he carried his advocacy of diplomatic isolation, his opposition to the creation of an adequate navy,[4] his estimate of cities as “sores upon the body politic,” his prejudice against manufactures, trust in farmers, and political distrust of the artisan class, all reflect them.
When, on the 4th of March 1809, Jefferson retired from the presidency, he had been almost continuously in the public service for forty years. He refused to be re-elected for a third time, though requested by the legislatures of five states to be a candidate; and thus, with Washington’s prior example, helped
- ↑ See also Jefferson to E. Gerry, 26th of January 1799 (Writings, vii. 325), and to Dupont de Nemours (x. 23). Cf. Hamilton to J. Dayton, 1799 (Works, x. 329).
- ↑ In 1786 he suggested to James Monroe that the society of friends he hoped to gather in Albemarle might, in sumptuary matters, “set a good example” to a country (i.e. Virginia) that “needed” it.
- ↑ See C. R. Fish, The Civil Service and the Patronage (Harvard Historical Studies, New York, 1905), ch. 2.
- ↑ Jefferson’s dislike of a navy was due to his desire for an economical administration and for peace. Shortly after his inauguration he expressed a desire to lay up the larger men of war in the eastern branch of the Potomac, where they would require only “one set of plunderers to take care of them.” To Thomas Paine he wrote in 1807: “I believe that gunboats are the only water defence which can be useful to us and protect us from the ruinous folly of a navy.” (Works, Ford ed., ix. 137.) The gunboats desired by Jefferson were small, cheap craft equipped with one or two guns and kept on shore under sheds until actually needed, when they were to be launched and manned by a sort of naval militia. A large number of these boats were constructed and they afforded some protection to coasting vessels against privateers, but in bad weather, or when employed against a frigate, they were worse than useless, and Jefferson’s “gunboat system” was admittedly a failure.
