Inventing a Nation by Gore Vidal & Jefferson

Author:Gore Vidal & Jefferson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2003-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Between 1793 and 1797 the farmer-philosopher Jefferson seems to have undergone what a later generation would term a midlife crisis, to which he alludes, April 27, 1795, in a letter to Madison, the acknowledged leader of the Republican Party, whose idol was—Jefferson himself. “My health,” he writes Madison, “is entirely broken down within the last eight months.” Yet at fifty, he was not about to relinquish his web of political operatives while, simultaneously, building and rebuilding Monticello and farming (wheat—not tobacco). Of this curious period, he later writes to his daughter Polly, “From 1793 to 1797, I remained closely at home, saw none but those who came there, and at length became very sensible of the ill effect it had upon my own mind, and of its direct and irresistible tendency to render unfit for society, and uneasy when necessarily engaged in it. I felt enough of the effect of withdrawing from the world then, to see that it led to an antisocial and misanthropic state of mind, which severely punishes him who gives in to it.” Although for thirty-seven months Jefferson never strayed more than seven miles from Monticello, he wrote letters, read newspapers, received visitors. One year after he had settled into his “retirement,” Madison was putting him forward as Republican candidate for president against “the British party.”

Alexander Hamilton had resigned as secretary of the treasury January 31, 1795, a Saturday; on the following Monday, Washington accepted the resignation, coolly: “In every relation which you have borne to me, I have found that my confidence in your talents, exertions and integrity has been well placed.” On February 3 Hamilton replied, “As often as I may recall the vexations I have endured, your approbation will be a great and precious consolation. You will always have my fervent wishes for your public and private felicity.”

In politics mutual need, no matter how temporary, is all that matters. For the moment, Hamilton was now free to return to New York City, to the law, to his compulsive political conniving, and he would not return until the president needed him for one final task; the composition of the president’s Farewell to the Nation, a sort of credo which would prove to be, after the extraordinary insight that a national debt, properly administered, is the secret of national wealth, Hamilton’s (and Washington’s) enduring legacy to the American system. Washington’s original cabinet was, finally, dispersed except for Edmund Randolph, now secretary of state.

In London, John Jay had concluded a treaty with England which Lord Grenville and he had signed. But as of March 4, the day that Congress adjourned, no copy of the treaty had arrived, making it impossible for the Senate to give or withhold its advice and consent. Washington and Randolph were rightly nervous as to the treaty’s contents.

Finally, on March 7, “The Treaty of Amity, Commerce and Navigation” arrived, accompanied by Jay’s bleak note to Washington: “It must speak for itself. . . . To do more was not possible.” What the

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