Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham

Author:Jon Meacham
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, Politics, Biography, Azizex666, History
ISBN: 9780679645368
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2012-11-13T05:00:00+00:00

THIRTY-SEVEN

A DEEP, DARK, AND WIDESPREAD CONSPIRACY

The designs of our Cataline are as real as they are romantic.

—THOMAS JEFFERSON, on Aaron Burr’s western maneuvers

JEFFERSON’S WINTER WAS BRIGHTENED by Patsy’s family’s long stay in the President’s House, where his only surviving daughter from his marriage gave birth to a grandson, James Madison Randolph, named in honor of the grandfather’s secretary of state. Dolley Madison had helped Patsy prepare for the season, acquiring a “fashionable wig … a set of combs for dressing the hair, a bonnet, shawl and white lace veil” from Baltimore, as well as two lace half handkerchiefs.

The president also took a moment to tend to his cellar in Washington, checking to make sure he had sufficient Bordeaux (he did) but sending for some additional sparkling wines. He thought his current holdings “dry without any softness.”

On Capitol Hill, though, a cousin brought whatever serenity Jefferson was enjoying to an end. Once an ally, always an eccentric, John Randolph of Roanoke broke with Jefferson in March 1806. The year before, Randolph had stopped a Jefferson-sponsored compromise settlement of a longstanding dispute involving the Yazoo land companies (a corrupt Georgia legislature had sold lands rightly belonging to the Creeks, creating a speculative market). That episode was a prelude to Randolph’s more decisive move into opposition.

The new occasion was debate over resolutions to limit or even ban British imports in retaliation for British depredations against American shipping. On the floor of the House, Randolph declared war on the administration.

William Plumer left the Senate chamber that day to go to the House to hear him. “He considered Great Britain as now contending for her existence—as fighting the battles of the civilized world against Bonaparte who is usurping the dominion of the world,” Plumer wrote of Randolph’s speech. Randolph singled out Jefferson and Madison for particular assault. “It was the most bitter, severe and eloquent philippic I ever heard,” wrote Plumer. Randolph struck again the next day and was, Plumer said, “uncommonly severe on the President.… Mr. Randolph has passed the Rubicon, neither the President or Secretary of State can after this be on terms with him. He has set them and their measures at defiance.”

Cutting and sarcastic, Randolph seemed to spare no one. A colleague who rose to speak was waved away. “Sit down, Sir, I say sit down, Sir, learn to keep your proper level,” Randolph said. (“Indeed he has treated the House as so many inferior beings,” said Navy Secretary Robert Smith, “and all submit.”) On the subject of the president himself, Randolph “astonished all his hearers by the boldness of his animosity on executive conduct,” Smith wrote.

Eventually known as either the “Quids” (after “tertium quid,” which in Latin means “a third something”) or the “Old Republicans,” Randolph’s faction was a manifestation of purer, simpler Republican principles. Randolph’s followers held that Jefferson had moved too far in a Federalist direction and that they, not the president or his men, were the true believers.

The break was in some ways a sign that Jefferson had transcended the simpler rhetorical categories of the post-1798 period.

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