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LETTER CCXXXVI.—TO JOHN TAYLOR, June 1, 1798

THOMAS JEFFERSON TO JOHN TAYLOR

Philadelphia, June 1, 1798.

Mr. New showed me your letter on the subject of the patent, which gave me an opportunity of observing what you said as to the effect, with you, of public proceedings, and that it was not unwise now to estimate the separate mass of Virginia and North Carolina, with a view to their separate existence. It is true that we are completely under the saddle of Massachusetts and Connecticut, and that they ride us very hard, cruelly insulting our feelings, as well as exhausting our strength and subsistence. Their natural friends, the three other eastern States, join them from a sort of family pride, and they have the art to divide certain other parts of the Union so as to make use of them to govern the whole. This is not new, it is the old practice of despots; to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order. And those who have once got an ascendency, and possessed themselves of all the resources of the nation, their revenues and offices, have immense means for retaining their advantage. But our present situation is not a natural one. The republicans, through every part of the Union, say, that it was the irresistible influence and popularity of General Washington played off by the cunning of Hamilton, which turned the government over to anti-republican hands, or turned the republicans chosen by the people into anti-republicans. He delivered it over to his successor in this state, and very untoward events since, improved with great artifice, have produced on the public mind the impressions we see. But still I repeat it, this is not the natural state. Time alone would bring round an order of things more correspondent to the sentiments of our constituents. But are there no events impending, which will do it within a few months? The crisis with England, the public and authentic avowal of sentiments hostile to the leading principles of our constitution, the prospect of a war, in which we shall stand alone, land-tax, stamp-tax, increase of public debt, &c. Be this as it may, in every free and deliberating society, there must, from the nature of man, be opposite parties, and violent dissensions and discords; and one of these, for the most part, must prevail over the other for a longer or shorter time. Perhaps this party division is necessary to induce each to watch and delate to the people the proceedings of the other. But if on a temporary superiority of the one party, the other is to resort to a scission of the Union, no federal government can ever exist. If to rid ourselves of the present rule of Massachusetts and Connecticut, we break the Union, will the evil stop there? Suppose the New England States alone cut off, will our natures be changed? Are we not men still to the south of that, and with all the passions of men? Immediately, we shall see a Pennsylvania and a Virginia party arise in the residuary confederacy, and the public mind will be distracted with the same party-spirit. What a game too will the one party have in their hands, by eternally threatening the other, that unless they do so and so, they will join their northern neighbors. If we reduce our Union to Virginia and North Carolina, immediately the conflict will be established between the representatives of these two States, and they will end by breaking into their simple units. Seeing, therefore, that an association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town-meeting or a vestry; seeing that we must have somebody to quarrel with, I had rather keep our New England associates for that purpose, than to see our bickerings transferred to others. They are circumscribed within such narrow limits, and their population so full, that their numbers will ever be the minority, and they are marked, like the Jews, with such a perversity of character, as to constitute, from that circumstance, the natural division of our parties. A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolved, and the people recovering their true sight, restoring their government to its true principles. It is true, that in the mean time, we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war, and long oppressions of enormous public debt. But who can say what would be the evils of a scission, and when and where they would end? Better keep together as we are, haul off from Europe as soon as we can, and from all attachments to any portions of it; and if they show their powers just sufficiently to hoop us together, it will be the happiest situation in which we can exist. If the game runs sometimes against us at home, we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost For this is a game where principles are the stake. Better luck, therefore, to us all, and health, happiness, and friendly salutations to yourself. Adieu.

P. S. It is hardly necessary to caution you to let nothing of mine get before the public; a single sentence got hold of by the Porcupines, will suffice to abuse and persecute me in their papers for months. T. J.

LETTER CCXXXVII.—TO GENERAL KOSCIUSKO, June 1, 1798

TO GENERAL KOSCIUSKO.

Philadelphia, June 1, 1798.

Dear Sir,

Mr. Volney’s departure for France gives me an opportunity of writing to you. I was happy in observing, for many days after your departure, that our winds were favorable for you. I hope, therefore, you quickly passed the cruising grounds on our coast, and have safely arrived at the term of your journey. Your departure is not yet known, or even suspected.⁹ Niemsevioz was much affected. He is now at the federal city. He desired me to have some things taken care of for you. There were some kitchen furniture, backgammon table, and chess men, and a pelisse of fine fur. The latter I have taken to my own apartment and had packed in hops, and sewed up; the former are put into a warehouse of Mr. Barnes; all subject to your future orders. Some letters came for you soon after your departure: the person who delivered them said there were enclosed in them some for your friend whom you left here, and desired I would open them. I did so in his presence, found only one letter for your friend, took it out and sealed the letters again in the presence of the same person, without reading a word or looking who they were from. I now forward them to you, as I do this to my friend.

Jacob Van Staphorst at Paris. Our alien-bill struggles hard for a passage. It has been considerably mollified. It is not yet through the Senate. We are proceeding further and further in war-measures. I consider that event as almost inevitable. I am extremely anxious to hear from you, to know what sort of a passage you had, how you find yourself and the state and prospect of things in Europe. I hope I shall not be long without hearing from you. The first dividend which will be drawn for you and remitted, will be in January, and as the winter passages are dangerous, it will not be forwarded till April: after that, regularly, from six months to six months. This will be done by Mr. Barnes. I shall leave this place in three weeks. The times do not permit an indulgence in political disquisitions. But they forbid not the effusion of friendship, and not my warmest towards you, which no time will alter. Your principles and dispositions were made to be honored, revered, and loved. True to a single object, the freedom and happiness of man, they have not veered about with the changelings and apostates of our acquaintance. May health and happiness ever attend you. Accept sincere assurances of my affectionate esteem and respect. Adieu.

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CCXXXVIII.—TO JAMES MADISON, June 21, 1798

TO JAMES MADISON

Philadelphia, June 21, 1798.

Dear Sir,

Yours of the 10th instant is received. I expected mine of the 14th would have been my last from hence, as I had proposed to set out on the 20th; but on the morning of the 19th, we heard of the arrival of Marshall at New York, and I concluded to stay and see whether that circumstance would produce any new projects. No doubt he there received more than hints from Hamilton as to the tone required to be assumed. Yet I apprehend he is not hot enough for his friends. Livingston came with him from New York. Marshall told him they had no idea in France of a war with us. That Talleyrand sent passports to him and Pinckney, but none for Gerry. Upon this, Gerry stayed, without explaining to them the reason. He wrote, however, to the President by Marshall, who knew nothing of the contents of the letter. So that there must have been a previous understanding between Talleyrand and Gerry. Marshall was received here with the utmost eclat. The Secretary of State and many carriages, with all the city cavalry, went to Frankfort to meet him, and on his arrival here in the evening, the bells rung till late in the night, and immense crowds were collected to see and make part of the show, which was circuitously paraded through the streets before he was set down at the City tavern. All this was to secure him to their views, that he might say nothing which would oppose the game they have been playing. Since his arrival I can hear of nothing directly from him, while they are disseminating through the town, things, as from him, diametrically opposite to what he said to Livingston. Doctor Logan, about a fortnight ago, sailed for Hamburgh. Though for a twelvemonth past he had been intending to go to Europe as soon as he could get money enough to carry him there, yet when he had accomplished this, and fixed a time for going, he very unwisely made a mystery of it; so that his disappearance without notice excited conversation. This was seized by the war-hawks, and given out as a secret mission from the Jacobins here to solicit an army from France, instruct them as to their landing, he. This extravagance produced a real panic among the citizens; and happening just when Bache published Talleyrand’s letter, Harper, on the 18th, gravely announced to the House of Representatives, that there existed a traitorous correspondence between the Jacobins here and the French Directory; that he had got hold of some threads and clues of it, and would soon be able to develope the whole. This increased the alarm; their libelists immediately set to work, directly and indirectly to implicate whom they pleased. Porcupine gave me a principal share in it, as I am told, for I never read his papers. This state of things added to my reasons for not departing at the time I intended. These follies seem to have died away in some degree already. Perhaps I may renew my purpose by the 25th. Their system is, professedly, to keep up an alarm. Tracy, at the meeting of the joint committee for adjournment, declared it necessary for Congress to stay together to keep up the inflammation of the public mind; and Otis has expressed a similar sentiment since. However, they will adjourn. The opposers of an adjournment in Senate, yesterday agreed to adjourn on the 10th of July. But I think the 1st of July will be carried. That is one of the objects which detain myself, as well as one or two more of the Senate, who had got leave of absence. I imagine it will be decided tomorrow or next day. To separate Congress now, will be withdrawing the fire from under a boiling pot.

My respectful salutations to Mrs. Madison, and cordial friendship to yourself.

Th: Jefferson.

P.M. A message to both Houses this day from the President, with the following communications.

March 23. Pickering’s letter to the Envoys, directing them, if they are not actually engaged in negotiation with authorized persons, or if it is not conducted bonâ fide, and not merely for procrastination, to break up and come home, and at any rate to consent to no loan.

April 3. Talleyrand to Gerry. He supposes the other two gentlemen, perceiving that their known principles are an obstacle to negotiation, will leave the republic, and proposes to renew the negotiations with Gerry immediately.

April 4. Gerry to Talleyrand. Disclaims a power to conclude any thing separately, can only confer informally and as an unaccredited person or individual, reserving to lay every thing before the government of the United States for approbation.

April 14. Gerry to the President. He communicates the preceding, and hopes the President will send other persons instead of his colleagues and himself, if it shall appear that any thing can be done.

The President’s message says, that as the instructions were not to consent to any loan, he considers the negotiation as at an end, and that he will never send another minister to France, until he shall be assured that he will be received and treated with the respect due to a great, powerful, free, and independent nation.

A bill was brought into the Senate this day, to declare the treaties with France void, prefaced by a list of grievances in the style of a manifesto. It passed to the second reading by fourteen to five.

A bill for punishing forgeries of bank-paper passed to the third reading by fourteen to six. Three of the fourteen (Laurence, Bingham, and Read) bank directors.

LETTER CCXXXIX.—TO SAMUEL SMITH, August 22, 1798

TO SAMUEL SMITH.

Monticello, August 22, 1798.

Dear Sir,

Your favor of August the 4th came to hand by our last post, together with the ‘extract of a letter from a gentleman of Philadelphia, dated July the 10th,’ cut from a newspaper, stating some facts which respect me. I shall notice these facts. The writer says, that ‘the day after the last despatches were communicated to Congress, Bache, Leib, &c, and a Dr. Reynolds, were closeted with me.’ If the receipt of visits in my public room, the door continuing free to every one who should call at the same time, may be called closeting, then it is true that I was closeted with every person who visited me; in no other sense is it true as to any person. I sometimes received visits from Mr. Bache and Dr. Leib. I received them always with pleasure, because they are men of abilities, and of principles the most friendly to liberty and our present form of government. Mr. Bache has another claim on my respect, as being the grandson of Dr. Franklin, the greatest man and ornament of the age and country in which he lived. Whether I was visited by Mr. Bache or Dr. Leib the day after the communication referred to, I do not remember. I know that all my motions at Philadelphia, here, and every where, are watched and recorded. Some of these spies, therefore, may remember, better than I do, the dates of these visits. If they say these two gentlemen visited me the day after the communication, as their trade proves their accuracy, I shall not contradict them, though I affirm that I do not recollect it. However, as to Dr. Reynolds, I can be more particular, because I never saw him but once, which was on an introductory visit he was so kind as to pay me. This, I well remember, was before the communication alluded to, and that during the short conversation I had with him, not one word was said on the subject of any of the communications. Not that I should not have spoken freely on their subject to Dr. Reynolds, as I should also have done to the letter-writer, or to any other person who should have introduced the subject. I know my own principles to be pure, and therefore am not ashamed of them. On the contrary, I wish them known, and therefore willingly express them to every one. They are the same I have acted on from the year 1775 to this day, and are the same, I am sure, with those of the great body of the American people. I only wish the real principles of those who censure mine were also known. But warring against those of the people, the delusion of the people is necessary to the dominant party. I see the extent to which that delusion has been already carried, and I see there is no length to which it may not be pushed by a party in possession of the revenues and the legal authorities of the United States, for a short time indeed, but yet long enough to admit much particular mischief. There is no event, therefore, however atrocious, which may not be expected. I have contemplated every event which the Maratists of the day can perpetrate, and am prepared to meet every one in such a way, as shall not be derogatory either to the public liberty or my own personal honor. This letter-writer says, I am ‘for peace; but it is only with France.’ He has told half the truth. He would have told the whole, if he had added England. I am for peace with both countries. I know that both of them have given, and are daily giving, sufficient cause of war; that in defiance of the laws of nations, they are every day trampling on the rights of the neutral powers, whenever they can thereby do the least injury, either to the other. But, as I view a peace between France and England the ensuing winter to be certain, I have thought it would have been better for us to have continued to bear from France through the present summer, what we have been bearing both from her and England these four years, and still continue to bear from England, and to have required indemnification in the hour of peace, when I verily believe it would have been yielded by both. This seems to be the plan of the other neutral nations; and whether this, or the commencing war on one of them, as we have done, would have been wisest, time and events must decide. But I am quite at a loss on what ground the letter-writer can question the opinion, that France had no intention of making war on us, and was willing to treat with Mr. Gerry, when we have this from Talleyrand’s letter, and from the written and verbal information of our Envoys. It is true then, that, as with England, we might of right have chosen either war or peace, and have chosen peace, and prudently in my opinion, so with France, we might also of right have chosen either peace or war, and we have chosen war. Whether the choice may be a popular one in the other States, I know not. Here it certainly is not; and I have no doubt the whole American people will rally ere long to the same sentiment, and re-judge those, who, at present, think they have all judgment in their own hands.

These observations will show you how far the imputations in the paragraph sent me approach the truth. Yet they are not intended for a newspaper. At a very early period of my life, I determined never to put a sentence into any newspaper. I have religiously adhered to the resolution through my life, and have great reason to be contented with it. Were I to undertake to answer the calumnies of the newspapers, it would be more than all my own time and that of twenty aids could effect. For while I should be answering one, twenty new ones would be invented. I have thought it better to trust to the justice of my countrymen, that they would judge me by what they see of my conduct on the stage where they have placed me, and what they knew of me before the epoch, since which a particular party has supposed it might answer some view of theirs to vilify me in the public eye. Some, I know, will not reflect how apocryphal is the testimony of enemies so palpably betraying the views with which they give it. But this is an injury to which duty requires every one to submit whom the public think proper to call into its councils. I thank you, my dear Sir, for the interest you have for me on this occasion. Though I have made up my mind not to suffer calumny to disturb my tranquillity, yet I retain all my sensibilities for the approbation of the good and just. That is, indeed, the chief consolation for the hatred of so many, who, without the least personal knowledge, and on the sacred evidence of Porcupine and Fenno alone, cover me with their implacable hatred. The only return I will ever make them, will be to do them all the good I can, in spite of their teeth.

I have the pleasure to inform you that all your friends in this quarter are well, and to assure you of the sentiments of sincere esteem and respect with which I am, Dear Sir, your friend and servant,

Th: Jefferson.