America's Greatest 19th Century Presidents (7 page)

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Matters for American ships only worsened when Napoleon issued the Berlin Decree in November.  Just like American ships, French ships were subject to searches by the British Navy.  France thus banned trade with Great Britain and vowed to block all ships trading with the country, including the few American ships that still traded with Britain.  Jefferson now had to deal with two nations limiting American commerce in Europe.

 

In 1807, the British Navy stopped an American ship, the
Chesapeake
, but the ship's crew refused to allow the British to search their ship.  The British opened fire and sunk the ship, outraging Jefferson and the American public. In response, Jefferson recommended that Congress pass a total embargo of all trade with European nations, which it did in December of 1807.

 

However, the Embargo Act added one huge failure to Jefferson's lengthy list of diplomatic accomplishments.  The Act proved to be a disaster for the United States; it solved the problem of kidnapped sailors at the price of huge economic decline.  For France and Great Britain, American trade represented a tiny fraction of their economies, but for the U.S., trade with those two European nations was a much larger piece of the total economy.  France and Great Britain barely noticed the economic impact of the Embargo Act, but by 1809, American national income was estimated to have fallen by 50%. 

 

Though the Embargo was an enormous failure on Jefferson's part, it opened the opportunity to achieve something Jefferson had long wanted: a ban on the African slave trade.  With the U.S. not participating in virtually any foreign trade, the time was ripe to limit another form of international trade: the important of slaves from Africa.  At the beginning of 1808, Congress passed a ban on the African slave trade, which meant that the importation of slaves was banned. It is of course important to note that this did not outlaw the owning or trading of slaves already within the country.

 

By 1809, the Embargo Act had become too much.  Jefferson, too, realized the pain the Act had brought to the nation.  Congress repealed the Act in March and replaced it with a milder law called the Non-Intercourse Act, which allowed trade with all nations except Britain and France.  Within three years, however, the U.S. found itself at war with Great Britain, with Jefferson’s successor and protégé, James Madison, leading the nation during the War of 1812.

 

Chapter 6: Post-Presidency, 1809-1826

 

Jefferson chose not to run for reelection in 1808, following the two-term precedent set by George Washington, but his friend and ally James Madison was elected President, which allowed Jefferson's party to continue to control the White House.  All this came in spite of the enormous unpopularity of the Embargo Act. Despite his successes, Jefferson left office disgruntled with politics, and he set out out to fulfill an achievement he considered greater than having been President: founding the University of Virginia.

 

Believing strongly in the benefits of universal college education, Jefferson wanted the University of Virginia to educate students both rich and poor.  He paid close attention to the details of the University, and as an avid fan of architecture, he plotted the grounds of the campus himself.  Jefferson championed the idea of academic quadrangles, now commonplace on college campuses across the U.S., and neoclassical architecture also dominated the facades of campus buildings, much as it did in Monticello.

 

Although he had been wealthy all his life, or perhaps even because of it, Jefferson was a notorious freespender who never learned to operate a budget. During the twilight of Jefferson’s life, debt was a recurring issue. In particular, his expenses incurred by his work on Monticello and the University were enormous, and they ultimately depleted his considerable wealth.

 

Chapter 7: Death and Legacy, 1826-Present

 

Death

 

After the election of 1800, Adams and Jefferson stopped speaking to each other for over a decade. A mutual friend, however, helped the two reconcile in 1812, leading to a renewal in their exchange of letters, which remain some of the most famous correspondences in the nation’s history.

 

On July 4, 1826, exactly 50 years to the day of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, 90 year old John Adams lay dying. Recognizing the anniversary, Adams responded “It is a great day ,” and it was reported that his last words were “Thomas Jefferson survives.” In one of the most fitting twists of fate, Adams was wrong. Jefferson had died hours earlier on the very same day.

 

Of course, dying on the 50
th
anniversary of the nation's birth could not be more fitting for Thomas Jefferson.  He considered the Declaration to be one of his most important achievements.  On his grave stone, he demanded that it read, “Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom and the Father of the University of Virginia.”

Legacy

 

Whether history agrees with Jefferson that those were his crowning achievements is another story. Certainly the Declaration of Independence goes down as Jefferson's most important contribution to the United States, but his legacy has proven much more complicated.

 

As a politician and political leader, Jefferson's accomplishments don't actually seem that great.  His time as Governor of Virginia was a disaster.  In diplomacy, he has a mixed legacy.  His position as Minister to France brought tangible, though not transformative, accomplishments.  As Secretary of State, Jefferson's influence was minimal, and as President, his diplomatic achievements are mixed: the Louisiana Purchase was an enormous success, but the Embargo Act was an unprecedented failure.

 

The Jefferson Presidency is notable mainly and almost exclusively for the Louisiana Purchase.  While certainly a momentous and consequential achievement, it alone does not seem to validate the enormous place Thomas Jefferson holds in the American narrative.

 

This is because Jefferson's preeminence and lasting influence on American life will not be found in tangible accomplishments.  At heart and in practice, Jefferson was at his best as an intellectual.  It is in the realm of ideas that Jefferson's legacy shines brightest.

 

While the present-day American narrative describes Jefferson's Enlightenment rhetoric as a foregone conclusion among the Revolution-era American population, this history is more myth than fact.  In the 1770's, American political and social philosophy broke down along roughly two different trains of thought: a Calvinist world view and a Lockean one.  Thinkers from the North – among them John Adams and Alexander Hamilton – relished the Calvinist view of winners and losers, where capitalist creative destruction was a virtue and hierarchy of winners above losers made sense in governance.  Jefferson was truly a forerunner in democratic thinking, and believed that self-governance was possible, but that industrialism impeded democracy's success.    A rural, agrarian, people were best suited to self-govern.  Additionally, God-given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were central to Jefferson's Enlightenment thought.  The Calvinist view valued these items, but did not give them the sacredness Jefferson instilled.

 

In the early years of the American Republic, Jefferson championed his world view loudly and clearly.  As Secretary of State, he was outraged by Hamilton's industrial vision, and Jefferson thus helped found the Democratic-Republican Party, which lives vicariously today through the Democratic Party.  Though the ideas Jefferson directly championed have naturally subsided with time, the virtues he loved are now firmly ingrained in the American political conversation.

 

Today's American dialogue still focuses heavily on the balance of state and Federal government. In fact, the current size of the federal government has been the foremost political issue in the country’s most recent elections. Jefferson ensured that the strain that supported stronger states would live on strongly in rural America, because he intertwined the virtues of small, local governments and an agrarian life style, and the appeal of states rights still lives on in rural America today.  At its base, Jefferson's political philosophy trusted the broad masses to govern themselves.  Such trust is now a defining cornerstone of American democracy.

 

When Jefferson assumed the Presidency in 1800, he did so after 12 years of Federalist government.  It was not clear that the United States would prefer a course of government that trusted a broad democracy.  Moments like the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts suggest that the United States might have limited the rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.  A hierarchical government was emerging.  The United States might have preferred to become more of a “Republic” than a “Democracy.”

 

Jefferson changed that, and in doing so undid the first 12 years of American political history, and ensured that a more limited, trusting and democratic view of government prevailed in the United States until the Civil War.  After Jefferson left the office of President, both of his successors – who both served two terms – were devout Democratic-Republicans.  Presidents Madison and Monroe further ensured that Jeffersonianism would dominate American political discourse.  After one brief Presidential term under John Quincy Adams, Jeffersonianism again prevailed in a big way under the Presidency of Andrew Jackson.  “Jacksonian Democracy” was, essentially, Jeffersonian Democracy on steroids. 

 

Jefferson's legacy is thus firmly defined by the philosophy he left the nation.  All of his tangible achievements pale in comparison to the ideas he left the nation, which now form an essential building block of the country's identity.  That isn't to say, however, that Jefferson's ideas about governance were perfect.  It can be argued that Jefferson's insistence on states rights over the Federal government – and his support for movements like the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions – set in place the groundwork for secession and the unraveling of the Union, bringing about the Civil War.

 

This is certainly a very sore spot in Jefferson's legacy.  His views on slavery are somewhat murky, but are by no means laudable.  Jefferson was said to deeply oppose slavery.  After all, he included a condemnation of slavery in his original Declaration of Independence, and he proposed that the United States eliminate slavery completely before the nation was even formed.  While he didn't achieve either of these things, his public pronouncements against slavery were prominent.  His personal actions, however, were very different.  Jefferson was among the most prominent slave-owning Founding Fathers.  At their deaths, many Founding Fathers, including George Washington, granted freedom to their slaves, and even paid for their educations.  Jefferson chose to do otherwise and sold his slaves to pay off his debts.  Generations of slaves thus descended from those who served Thomas Jefferson.  Furthermore, though there's no indication that he knew it at the time, Jefferson's early championing of states rights would later prove to be fodder for the pro-slavery Confederacy.  It was under the banner of Federal violations of states rights that the South seceded in defense of slavery.

 

Regardless of these significant consequences, Jeffersonian Democracy lives on strongly in the United States today.  Watching any political debate offers undertones of Jefferson's legacy.  Both major political parties are eager to embrace Jefferson's name.  His commemoration in numerous outlets – from our currency to the Jefferson Memorial and Mount Rushmore – is testament to his enduring impact on the American identity.  Unlike many Presidents, Jefferson's legacy and legend is intimately intertwined with the very identity of the nation itself.

Bibliography

 

Brinkley, Alan and Davis Dyer. 
The American Presidency: the Authoritative Reference.
  Boston:

              Houghton Mifflin, 2004.

 

Cerami, Charles A. 
Dinner at Mr. Jefferson's. 
New Jersey: Wiley, 2008.

 

Dunn, Susan. 
Dominion of Memories: Jefferson, Madison & the Decline of Virginia. 
New York:

              Perseus Books, 2007.

 

Dunn, Susan. 
Jefferson's Second Revolution: The Election Crisis of 1800 and the Triumph of

              Republicanism. 
New York: Perseus Books, 2004.

 

Smith, Carter and Allen Weinstein. 
Presidents: Every Question Answered. 
New York: Hylas

              Publishing, 2004.

 

James Madison

Chapter 1: Early Life and Education, 1751-1775

 

Birth and Early Life

 

BOOK: America's Greatest 19th Century Presidents
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