As I mentioned before, Jefferson
was so often his own worst enemy. On numerous occasions over the course of his
public career he issued forth proclamations or enunciated principles only to
violate them himself scant years later. Though he devoted a significant portion
of his First Inaugural Address to decrying the partisan conflict that had
dominated the previous decade of American history and calling for
reconciliation and tolerance, the years that followed his inauguration were not
always characterized by that same elevated spirit. Without asking my readers to
remember, I point first to the controversy that gave rise to the Marbury v.
Madison Supreme Court decision that I wrote about in weeks past. Desperately
seeking for a way to frustrate the incoming Jefferson administration, the
outgoing Federalists under President John Adams passed the Judiciary Act of
1801 and nominated a number of their fellow partisans to various vacant and newly-created
judicial offices. Though I wouldn't say this was entirely in keeping with the
best traditions and practices of public service and good government, it was
certainly legal and fully within the power of the Federalists to accomplish. Rather
than abide by his own declarations of reconciliation and fulfil these
appointments when he came into office in early 1801, however, Jefferson
endeavoured (through his Secretary of State James Madison) to withhold the
necessary commissions until they had expired and the Federalist appointees
could be replaced. While this would seem to be a rather innocuous example,
since Jefferson wasn’t actively persecuting the appointees but rather declining
to act in their favour, the attempted impeachment of Samuel Chase constituted a
far less passive attack on the Federalist judiciary.
A native of Baltimore, former states-rights
advocate, and signer of the Declaration of Independence, Samuel Chase had been
appointed to the United States Supreme Court by President George Washington in
1796. By all accounts a competent jurist, he was known for being somewhat vocal
in his opposition to the principles embraced by Jefferson and his Republican
contemporaries. For instance, Justice Chase had made vociferous attacks on
certain Republican supporters who had been jailed under the Alien &
Sedition Acts, and when the Republican-controlled Congress repealed the
Judiciary Act of 1801 (thereby deriving a number of Federalist judges of their
offices in spite of theoretically lifetime appointments) he publicly stated
his displeasure to a Baltimore grand jury. Confronted after 1803 with a newly
empowered judicial branch after the delivery of Chief Justice John Marshall’s
decision in Marbury v. Madison, Jefferson was quite eager to lessen the control
his Federalist opponents still exercised over the courts. Because federal
judges could not be dismissed by the President or either house of Congress
unless they were impeached for bad behaviour, Jefferson set his sights on the
imprudent Chase. To that end, he wrote a letter to Republican Congressman
Joseph H. Nicholson of Maryland in which he asked, "Ought the seditious
and official attack [by Chase] on the principles of our Constitution [. . .] to
go unpunished?"
The answer, as it happened, was
no. Led by Virginia Congressman John Randolph, the Republicans quickly took up
the charge and served Justice Chase with eight articles of impeachment. Among
other things, the articles alleged that Chase had allowed his political bias to
influence how he treated certain defendants and their counsels, and that the
resulting judgements he delivered were thus manifestly invalid. Because the
trial itself would be conducted by the Republican-controlled Senate and
overseen by his own Vice President, Jefferson doubtless believed that Chase’s
dismissal was a fait accompli, and that similar proceedings could be put to use
in removing other Federalist judges. Unfortunately for Jefferson, however,
enough Republican Senators questioned the propriety of bringing a Supreme Court
Justice up on charges solely based on the quality of his verdicts, and Chase
was fully acquitted on March 1st, 1805. Ironically it was in part
Jefferson’s accusation that Chase was guilty of sedition that had turned many
of his fellow Republicans against the impeachment effort. Evidently they felt
that punishing a federal office-holder because of his publicly expressed
political views was too similar to the Federalists’ efforts under the Alien
& Sedition Acts which Jefferson himself had vehemently opposed. Thereafter
the principle of judicial independence became firmly entrenched as a
cornerstone of American jurisprudence, and Jefferson’s aggressive attempts to
lessen Federalist influence in the courts effectively came to an end. There is
certainly an argument to be made that Jefferson was merely responding in kind
to the Federalist’s rather underhanded attempt to stack the federal judiciary
against the new administration. That being said, the speed with which he was
willing to contradict himself begs certain questions. Namely, which among the
statements Jefferson put forth in his First Inaugural were intended to be
upheld and which were merely for effect?
Another instance of this
disparity between word and deed, though one Jefferson was less likely to have
foreseen, can also be found in the fourth paragraph. Once more in laying out
the principles that his administration was to uphold Jefferson famously stated
that the United States should pursue, “peace, commerce and honest friendship
with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” Putting aside for the moment
his well-documented reputation as a Francophile, this would seem to be in
keeping with Jefferson’s Enlightenment-tinged, inward-looking, free-trade bona
fides. He was not a war-like man, and though as a veteran diplomat he no doubt
understood that at times the threat of hostilities could be a useful tool, his
principles inclined him to believe that national conflicts could best be
avoided by maintaining cordial, if somewhat distant, relations with an many
other countries as possible. And though I have no doubt that he believed he
held true to these principles throughout his eight-year presidency, the reality
is somewhat more complicated.
As I mentioned in a previous post
in this present series, the sequence of wars that unfolded between France and
Britain (and later the United Kingdom) over the course of the late-18th
and early 19th centuries took a serious toll on American commerce. Not
only were American merchant vessels seized by both French and British naval
patrols, but sailors serving in the American Navy and merchant fleet were
apprehended and forcibly inducted (or impressed) into British service. These
policies had the dual effect of visiting significant harm upon the American
economy, both within commercial New England and the agricultural South and
West, at the same time they represented a slander on the dignity and
sovereignty of the United States of America. Matters seemed to come to a head
in 1807 when the British HMS Leopard fired
upon the American USS Chesapeake,
boarded her and abducted four sailors that the British claimed were deserters
from the Royal Navy. The fact that three of the sailors in question were later
proven to be American-born and that the entire incident took place off the
coast of Norfolk, Virginia, seemed to demand an aggressive response. The
Jefferson Administration, ever cautions of foreign entanglements, answered
calls for retaliation with the passage of the Embargo Act of 1807.
The Act attempted to use American
trade as a weapon against the imprudent European powers by denying it to them
outright. From the time it took effect, no American merchants would be
permitted to trade with any other nation, the theory being that American
commerce was too valuable to both Britain and France to be cut off entirely
without one or both powers suffering deleterious effects. Unfortunately for
Jefferson, and really all of his fellow Americans, the Embargo Act proved to be
a spectacular and embarrassing failure. Rather than being shocked into
respecting American neutrality by the loss of one of their major trading
partners, the British simply found markets among the newly independent nations
of South America; meanwhile, British merchants took over the routes abandoned
by American traders and enjoyed greater profits than they’d ever known. In the
United States itself the New England shipbuilding industry nearly collapsed,
merchants went bankrupt, and farmers in the South and West were faced with
useless surpluses without overseas markets in which to sell their produce. This
had the unintended effects of catalyzing American manufacturing, in the absence
of a steady flow of British-made goods, and greatly expanding the role and
scope of the United States government. Indeed, enforcing the terms of the
embargo was a massive undertaking unlike any the federal government had ever anticipated.
A complex systems of bonds, licences, customs, and coastal patrols was
implemented, the discretionary powers of the president in ordering seizures,
detentions or exceptions were greatly increased, and tens of thousands of
dollars in fine were levied against those who violated the embargo, or even
against those it was though had contemplated doing so. Violations were
nonetheless frequent, and customs officials speculated by early spring 1808
that portions of the state of Maine near the border with British New Brunswick
were in a condition of open rebellion. All the while Jefferson refused to back
down, and if anything dug his heels in deeper.
In his mind, and perhaps in his
alone, Jefferson was preserving the principle of free trade by cutting off
American commerce entirely. Ultimately harmful and ostensibly hypocritical
though this endeavour may have seemed, there was, upon consideration, a sort of
twisted logic to his thinking. The reasoning behind Jefferson’s support for
free trade was that commerce was the surest means to preserve peace between
nations. The stronger the trade ties between two states, and the more money
both sides stood to make, the less likely either would be to letting
traditional warfare disrupt their profits. When Britain and France refused to
abide by this rationale, instead letting strategic, ideological or diplomatic
considerations guide their actions, they forced Jefferson to react. Rather than
respond in kind, however, and prove that the United States was no better than
the European powers by raising fleets and armies and declaring war, Jefferson
attempted to stay true to his conviction that trade itself was the most
powerful tool in the realm of international relations. It would be difficult to
deny that Jefferson’s resultant attempt at commercial warfare was directly
contradictory to the call he made in his First Inaugural for, “peace, commerce,
and honest friendship with all nations.” He may have avoided taking sides in
the ongoing European conflagration, though many of his fellow Americans wished
he had, but his embargo was nothing if not antagonistic. That being the case,
how did Jefferson himself square his support of the embargo after 1807 with the
principles he had expressed in 1801? The answer, I think, has something to do
with perspective.
Jefferson tended to take the long
view of matters political, diplomatic and economic. His concern was not always
with the immediate future, but the long-term best interests of his country and
its citizens. For instance, Jefferson believed that if the United States were
to survive as a republic it could do so only by devoting itself to limited
government, low taxes, and the promotion of agriculture over commerce or
manufacturing. In order to achieve these ends, he reasoned, America would need
access to land in large quantities. How this land was acquired was of somewhat
less significance to him than the fact that it was made available at all. And
if certain of his guiding principles were violated along the way (raising taxes
to pay for land acquisitions, increasing the authority of the central
government to authorize the purchase, etc..) it would have been unlikely to
give Jefferson pause so long as his ultimate goal was achieved. Put another
way: in order to ensure that the American republic functioned on the basis of
limited government in the future, Jefferson was willing to vastly increase its
scope and authority in the immediate. Just so, in order to prove the utility of
free trade to the rest of the world Jefferson was determined to completely
close his nation to international commerce. In the short run it may have seemed
that he was abandoning his ideals, but Jefferson doubtless believed that posterity
would bear out his wisdom and foresight. One cannot help but wonder, had the
embargo succeeded in bringing either the French or British to the negotiating
table, how history would have looked on Jefferson’s momentary lapse. Kindly,
I’d wager.
Jefferson seemed to have similar
ideas about his critics in 1801. If his First Inaugural is any indication, he
was at least partially aware that his actions as president might occasionally
appear to be imprudent or unprincipled. In the fifth paragraph he wrote, after
first admitting that he might at times do wrong through flaws in his own
judgement, that, “When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose
position will not command a view of the whole ground.” I will say first that it
quite frankly amazes me how someone can so deftly maneuver from humility to
hauteur in only two sentences. It is as I said above: if Jefferson’s actions were
found to be at fault, it was perhaps an error on the observer’s part for
lacking the ability to comprehend what the Sage of Monticello was trying to
accomplish. This attitude seems to demonstrate both a surprising level of
self-awareness of Jefferson’s part as well as a rather breath-taking level of
arrogance. He knew how his critics perceived him and he knew why. But he also
knew what was best for the country and would be damned if he was about to
explain himself, or alter the course he had set.
Perhaps I'm reading too much into
Jefferson’s words, though I would hardly be the first. Still, I think the
points I've tried to bring to light from out of his First Inaugural Address,
the rhetoric and the contradictions, the hypocrisy, the vision, and the
arrogance are what make Jefferson such a fascinating topic of study. He was a
towering intellectual figure, and possessed of one of the brightest minds of
his generation. But he was also a man. He had faults. He could be callous,
arrogant, hypocritical; conniving, even. He was the Thomas Jefferson that
exists in so many of our minds; the demi-god philosopher who changed the course
of human history by the tip of his pen. And he was also the cunning politician
whose opponents quickly learned that he was not to be underestimated. He
punished his rivals when he was in a position to do so; used power when he had
it and railed against its abuses when he didn't. He gave to the United States
the essential vocabulary of its citizenship, and set down political and moral
principles that would guide subsequent generations of Americans for centuries
to follow. But all the same, he bent or broke nearly all of these principles
over the course of his public career.
I suppose what I mean to say is
that Thomas Jefferson was an American. He was as contradictory, complex and
strange as the nation he helped to create, and as essentially, tragically, and
endearingly human.
Anyway, that’s how I figure it.
See for yourself: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson%27s_First_Inaugural_Address
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