Though for the most part the
Kentucky Resolutions represent Thomas Jefferson in a more prosecutorial mode
than was his custom, they still contain flashes of the idealist he was often
known to be. At times these moments seem to incline toward naiveté, or even
intolerance, and at others the sort of high-minded radicalism that Jefferson
was so quick to express and quicker to disregard. They are collectively of
interest because they depict the man at a moment of intersection in his career.
In 1798 he was a former congressman, governor, and diplomat, Vice-President in
an administration whose policies he despised, and intellectual leader of a
burgeoning political opposition movement. He was on the cusp of becoming
President himself, and yet seemed prepared to see the country torn apart if it
meant preserving what he regarded as the natural rights of the people. The
Resolutions are a snapshot in the life of a great and contradictory man, and
the great and contradictory nation he helped to create; in addition to
showcasing his sharp political mind they capture his errors, assumptions, and
petty accusations.
Among the many and various statements that
Jefferson made in his Resolutions about the nature of American government under
the Constitution, or the crisis surrounding the Alien and Sedition Acts,
certain of them strike me as slightly erroneous or skewed in some way. Whether
this was the result of honest error on Jefferson’s part, or a calculated
attempt to mislead, it’s hard to say. Likely they represented what Jefferson
believed at that moment; at times a
little out of touch with reality, but offered sincerely. Some are relatively
minor; an overly simple characterization of the relation between the states and
the federal government, or a claim to have knowledge of the true intentions of
the Framers of the Constitution. Others seem rather more severe; a veiled
promise of revolt, or an entire philosophical premise that he himself later
completely ignored. Whatever their size or nature, I find them to be
fascinating reflections of both Jefferson, the principled man, and Jefferson,
the cunning politician, and are well worth a brief examination.
As quickly as the first resolve
Jefferson put forth a rather matter-of-fact statement that arguably elides the
rather complex relationship that exists between the state and federal
governments. Specifically, he described the United States as a compact that,
“each state acceded as a state, and is an integral party.” It is simply put,
and true in point of fact, but there is more to the state/federal bond than
Jefferson lets on. While it is the case that every state that acceded to the
Union did so after first establishing a constitution and a provisional
government, and thus their existence as a formal political entity technically
pre-dated their admission to the United States, not all of them arrived at
statehood in the same fashion. The Thirteen Colonies, which formed the thirteen
original states, were all founded at least fifty years prior to the existence
of the Union. The federal government that they formed in the 1770s could
accordingly be thought of as a pact among thirteen co-equal republics whose
sovereignty was based in their respective independent foundings. Vermont, the
fourteenth state, also existed as an autonomous republic before being admitted
to the Union in 1791, but the states that followed did so by somewhat more
complicated routes.
Tennessee, which was admitted in
1796, was formed out of the organized, federally administered Southwest
Territory. This political entity was comprised of western land ceded to the
federal government by North Carolina in 1790 as payment for outstanding debts.
It was overseen, as all organized, incorporated U.S. territories were, by a
governor appointed by the President, and whose powers were practically
absolute. Though there can be no argument that the residents of the Territory
were responsible for creating a provisional government and drafting what would
become Tennessee’s first constitution, the Territory’s very existence was owed
to actions taken by the federal government. Indeed, I would submit that
Tennessee itself would not exist were it not for the federal government
claiming North Carolina’s debt, accepting western land as payment, and
organizing and administering the Southwest Territory in the interim. Consequently,
though Tennessee did accede to the Union as an independent and legally equal
state, it was more a creation of the Union itself than any state that had come
before.
It’s also worth noting that the formula
used to create the Southwest Territory, and that structured the admission of
Tennessee and later states, was set out by the United States Congress in 1787
in the Northwest Ordinance. One of the few acts of congress under the Articles
of Confederation that had a lasting effect, the Ordinance
spun out of the efforts of, among others, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison to
compel certain states to abandon their competing land claims on the western
frontier and cede the territory to the federal government. The resulting
federally-administered region, the Northwest Territory, was to be then
subdivided into separate states as the population increased and constitutions
were written by the settlers living there. In all, five states were carved out
of the land covered by the Northwest Territory, including Ohio, Michigan,
Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. All of these states gained admission to the
Union after Jefferson’s Resolutions were made public in November 1798, but the
process by which they did so was laid down and set in motion over a decade
prior.
Jefferson was undeniably aware of
this fact, but it would not have served his purpose to acknowledge it. His
conception of the United States in 1798 was as a union of sovereign political
entities that voluntarily surrendered a portion of their authority to a central
government and could take it back if they wished. There are times when this
has been an accurate description, but so often America is more than the sum of
its parts. When the federal government set out to create new states, and laid
down policies and created territories for that purpose, it transcended its
origins as an alliance of independent political entities and became a sovereign
entity in and of itself. While I would not go so far as to say that Jefferson
was wrong in his thinking, it would be fair to say that his characterization of
the matter is somewhat misleading.
The aforementioned ninth revolve
contains several other noteworthy statements by Jefferson, evidence of the
hyperbole to which he so often resorted. First, he claimed while discussing the
necessity of opposing the Alien and Sedition Acts that they violated the
Constitution, “according to the plain intent and meaning in which it was
understood and acceded to by the several parties.” He added no special emphasis
to this passage in particular, and moved on to other topics in short order, but
it strikes me as a rather odd thing for him to say. For one thing, and as I
mentioned previously, he was not present at the Philadelphia Convention when
the Constitution was being drafted. Nor was he even in the United States when
the approved final draft was being debated and ratified by the various state
conventions. It therefore would seem a rather strange claim for Jefferson to
make that he knew the “plain intent and meaning” by which the “several parties”
understood and voted in favour of the Constitution.
Granted he no doubt exchanged
opinions and insights in letters with men like James Madison, who were present,
or discussed the issue with colleagues in the various states upon his return to
America in 1789. But the ferocity of the ratification debates in some states and
the closeness of some of the final convention votes (the New York convention,
for instance, voted in favour of ratification, 30-27) demonstrates how far people
in the United States were from holding any “plain intent and meaning” in common
about their newly minted government. Opinions on the Constitution varied state
by state, county by county, according to economic class, occupation, and any
number of other social and political distinctions. For Jefferson to tacitly
claim that there was a consensus of opinion concerning the Constitution and
that the Alien and Sedition Acts ran counter to it would seem to wilfully
ignore the complexity of the situation. But then that was Jeffersonian
rhetoric; soaring, charismatic, and inspirational, but also often exaggerated
and distorted.
Similar embellishments appear
further on in the ninth resolve. While detailing all the many and various
negative effects that would result from a common acceptance of the Alien and
Sedition Acts, Jefferson wrote that, “these and successive acts of the same
character, unless arrested on the threshold, may tend to drive these states
into revolution and blood, and will furnish new calumnies against republican
governments, and new pretexts for those who wish it to be believed that man
cannot be governed but by a rod of iron.” It would be difficult to say whether
this was intended as a premonition or a promise. It’s possible that Jefferson
was honestly trying to forecast what he believed would be the regrettable
result of a growing concentration of power in the hands of the federal
government. At once it seems equally possible that he was instead attempting to
subtly but unmistakably intimate to supporters of the Alien and Sedition Acts
that bloodshed would be the inevitable result of their efforts.
Though by all accounts a peaceful
man, there were times over the course of his career when Jefferson seemed
indifferent to violence, or even encouraged it, provided it served a higher
motivation. His support of the French Revolution was just one such occasion; no
matter how bloody the streets of Paris became Jefferson maintained that the
result, a free, republican France, was worth the turmoil. That he would have
adopted a similar attitude toward his own country seems, to me, far from
inconceivable. However much the thought of a sitting Vice-President encouraging
an anti-government insurrection would seem today to be beyond the pale,
revolution was not so far from the minds of Americans in 1798. Revolts over war
debt in Massachusetts in 1786 and tax collection in Pennsylvania between 1791
and 1794 proved that in the early decades of the United States armed resistance
was still a widely accepted protest tactic.
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