In the 1800 presidential election Jefferson and the Republican candidate
for Vice President, Aaron Burr, got the same number of electoral votes,
and Burr tried to use this in the voting by the House of Representatives.
They had 36 ballots before Jefferson was elected with Burr as Vice President.
On 4 March 1801 the new Chief Justice John Marshall, a Virginia Federalist,
who revered George Washington and detested the Republican Thomas Jefferson,
administered the oath of office to the latter as the third President of the United States.
In his inaugural address Jefferson began by humbly describing the weakness
of his powers to accomplish the greatness of his charge.
He asserted his trust in the United States Constitution, and he
explained his philosophy and policies in this Inaugural Address:
Friends and Fellow Citizens,
Called upon to undertake the duties of the first executive
office of our country, I avail myself of the presence of that
portion of my fellow-citizens which is here assembled
to express my grateful thanks for the favor with which
they have been pleased to look toward me, to declare
a sincere consciousness that the task is above my talents,
and that I approach it with those anxious and awful
presentiments which the greatness of the charge
and the weakness of my powers so justly inspire.
A rising nation, spread over a wide and fruitful land,
traversing all the seas with the rich productions of their
industry, engaged in commerce with nations who feel power
and forget right, advancing rapidly to destinies beyond
the reach of mortal eye—when I contemplate these
transcendent objects, and see the honor, the happiness,
and the hopes of this beloved country committed
to the issue and the auspices of this day,
I shrink from the contemplation and humble myself
before the magnitude of the undertaking.
Utterly, indeed, should I despair did not the presence
of many whom I here see remind me that in the
other high authorities provided by our Constitution
I shall find resources of wisdom, of virtue,
and of zeal on which to rely under all difficulties.
To you, then, gentlemen, who are charged with the
sovereign functions of legislation, and to those associated
with you, I look with encouragement for that guidance
and support which may enable us to steer with safety
the vessel in which we are all embarked amidst
the conflicting elements of a troubled world.
During the contest of opinion through which we have
passed the animation of discussions and of exertions has
sometimes worn an aspect which might impose on strangers
unused to think freely and to speak and to write
what they think; but this being now decided by the voice
of the nation, announced according to the rules of the
Constitution, all will, of course, arrange themselves
under the will of the law and unite
in common efforts for the common good.
All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that
though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail,
that will to be rightful must be reasonable;
that the minority possess their equal rights, which
equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
Let us, then, fellow-citizens,
unite with one heart and one mind.
Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony
and affection without which liberty and
even life itself are but dreary things.
And let us reflect that, having banished from our land
that religious intolerance under which mankind
so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little
if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as
wicked and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions.
During the throes and convulsions of the ancient world,
during the agonizing spasms of infuriated man,
seeking through blood and slaughter his long-lost liberty,
it was not wonderful that the agitation of the billows should
reach even this distant and peaceful shore; that this should
be more felt and feared by some and less by others,
and should divide opinions as to measures of safety.
But every difference of opinion
is not a difference of principle.
We have called by different names
brethren of the same principle.
We are all Republicans; we are all Federalists.
If there be any among us who would wish to
dissolve this Union or to change its republican form,
let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety
with which error of opinion may be tolerated
where reason is left free to combat it.
I know, indeed, that some honest men fear that a republican
government can not be strong, that this Government
is not strong enough; but would the honest patriot,
in the full tide of successful experiment,
abandon a government which has so far kept us free
and firm on the theoretic and visionary fear that
this Government, the world’s best hope, may
by possibility want energy to preserve itself?
I trust not.
I believe this, on the contrary,
the strongest Government on earth.
I believe it the only one where every man,
at the call of the law would fly to the standard of the law,
and would meet invasions of the public order
as his own personal concern.
Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted
with the government of himself.
Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?
Or have we found angels in the forms
of kings to govern him?
Let history answer this question.
Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue
our own Federal and Republican principles,
our attachment to union and representative government.
Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the
exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe;
too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others;
possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our
descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation;
entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use
of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry,
to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting
not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them;
enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed,
and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating
honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man;
acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence,
which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the
happiness of man here and his greater happiness
hereafter—with all these blessings, what more is
necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people?
Still one thing more, fellow-citizens—a wise and frugal
Government, which shall restrain men from injuring
one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate
their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall
not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.
This is the sum of good government, and this is
necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties
which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you,
it is proper you should understand what I deem
the essential principles of our Government, and
consequently those which ought to shape its Administration.
I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will
bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations.
Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or
persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and
honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances
with none; the support of the State governments
in all their rights, as the most competent administrations
for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks
against antirepublican tendencies; the preservation of
the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor,
as the sheet anchor of our peace at home
and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of
election by the people—a mild and safe corrective
of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution
where peaceable remedies are unprovided;
absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority,
the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal
but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent
of despotism; a well-disciplined militia, our best reliance
in peace and for the first moments of war till regulars
may relieve them; the supremacy of the civil over
the military authority; economy in the public expense,
that labor may be lightly burthened; the honest payment
of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith;
encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce
as its handmaid; the diffusion of information and
arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason;
freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and
freedom of person under the protection of the
habeas corpus and trial by juries impartially selected.
These principles form the bright constellation which
has gone before us and guided our steps through
an age of revolution and reformation.
The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes
have been devoted to their attainment.
They should be the creed of our political faith,
the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which
to try the services of those we trust; and should we
wander from them in moments of error or of alarm,
let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain
the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety.
I repair, then, fellow-citizens,
to the post you have assigned me.
With experience enough in subordinate offices to have
seen the difficulties of this the greatest of all,
I have learned to expect that it will rarely fall to the lot
of imperfect man to retire from this station
with the reputation and the favor which bring him into it.
Without pretensions to that high confidence you reposed
in our first and greatest revolutionary character,
whose preeminent services had entitled him to the
first place in his country’s love and destined for him
the fairest page in the volume of faithful history,
I ask so much confidence only as may give firmness
and effect to the legal administration of your affairs.
I shall often go wrong through defect of judgment.
When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose
positions will not command a view of the whole ground.
I ask your indulgence for my own errors,
which will never be intentional, and your support
against the errors of others, who may condemn
what they would not if seen in all its parts.
The approbation implied by your suffrage is a great
consolation to me for the past, and my future solicitude
will be to retain the good opinion of those who have
bestowed it in advance, to conciliate that of others
by doing them all the good in my power, and to be
instrumental to the happiness and freedom of all.
Relying, then, on the patronage of your good will,
I advance with obedience to the work, ready
to retire from it whenever you become sensible
how much better choice it is in your power to make.
And may that Infinite Power which rules the destinies
of the universe lead our councils to what is best and give
them a favorable issue for your peace and prosperity.1
On March 5 Jefferson nominated James Madison as Secretary of State,
Henry Dearborn to be Secretary of War, and Levi Lincoln as Attorney General.
On March 7 Jefferson in a letter to James Monroe wrote,
I am in hopes my inaugural address will in some measure
set this to rights, as it will present the leading objects
to be conciliation and adherence to sound principle.
This I know is impracticable with the leaders of the late
faction, whom I abandon as incurables, & will never
turn an inch out of my way to reconcile them.
But with the main body of the Federalists,
I believe it very practicable.
You know that the maneuvers of the year X Y Z carried
over from us a great body of the people, real republicans,
& honest men under virtuous motives.
The delusion lasted a while.
At length the poor arts of tub plots &c. were repeated
till the designs of the party became suspected.
From that moment those who had left us,
began to come back.
It was by their return to us that we gained the victory
in November 1800 which we should not
have gained in November 1799.
But during the suspension of the public mind from
the 11th to the 17th of February and the anxiety
& alarm lest there should be no election,
& anarchy ensue, a wonderful effect was produced on
the mass of Federalists who had not before come over.
Those who had before become sensible of their error
in the former change, & only wanted a decent excuse
for coming back, seized that occasion for doing so.
Another body, and a large one it is, who from timidity
of constitution had gone with those who wished for
a strong executive, were induced by the same timidity
to come over to us rather than risk anarchy: so that
according to the evidence we receive from every direction,
we may say that the whole of that portion of the people
which was called federalist, was made to desire anxiously
the very event they had just before opposed with all their
energies, and to receive the election, which was made,
as an object of their earnest wishes, a child of their own.
These people (I always include their leaders) are now
aggregated with us, they look with a certain degree
of affection and confidence to the administration,
ready to become attached to it if it avoids, in the outset,
acts which might revolt and throw them off.
To give time for a perfect consolidation seems prudent.2
The Senate quickly confirmed James Madison as Secretary of State,
though he did not arrive in Washington for a few weeks.
John Marshall continued as Secretary of State for a while and neglected
to send out 42 commissions of justices of the peace for the
District of Columbia whom Adams had appointed in his last days.
Jefferson resented that Adams appointed so many judges and officials
after losing the election and never once appointed a Republican to be a judge.
Jefferson instructed Madison not to deliver the commissions.
They cut expenses by closing all the American foreign legations except
they kept
on the Federalist Rufus King in London and Robert R. Livingston in Paris.
He appointed Charles Pinckney as Minister to Spain.
Albert Gallatin was nominated as Secretary of the Treasury,
but his difficult confirmation was postponed to the next season.
He began his duties after moving his family from southwestern Pennsylvania.
On 12 March 1801 Gallatin approved of Jefferson’s choice of
Levi Lincoln as Attorney General writing to Maria Nicholson,
General Dearborn is a man of strong sense, great
practical information on all the subjects connected with
his department, and is what is called a man of business.
He is not, I believe, a scholar; but I think he will make
the best Secretary of War we have as yet had.
Mr. Lincoln is a good lawyer, a fine scholar,
a man of great discretion and sound judgment,
and of the mildest and most amiable manners.
He has never, I should think from his manners,
been out of his own State, or mixed much with the world,
except on business.
Both are men of 1776, sound and decided Republicans;
both are men of the strictest integrity; and both,
but Mr. Lincoln principally, have a great weight
of character to the Eastward with both parties.3
He had been elected to the House of Representatives from
Worcester,
Massachusetts, and Lincoln also acted temporarily as Secretary of State.
The President selected Henry Dearborn who had fought in the
War for Independence and became a Lt. Colonel in 1777.
By 1783 he was a Major General, and General Washington
appointed him Marshal for the District of Maine.
Jefferson chose Dearborn to run the War Department.
Gallatin observed that Benjamin Stoddert of Maryland stayed on
as Navy Secretary until he was replaced by Samuel Smith of Maryland
who on July 15 was succeeded by his brother
Robert Smith, a lawyer from Baltimore.
On March 6 Jefferson wrote to John Dickinson
his hope for consolidating their revolution.
I hope to see shortly a perfect consolidation to effect
which nothing shall be spared on my part short of
the abandonment of the principles of our revolution.
A just and solid republican government maintained here,
will be a standing monument & example
for the aim & imitation of the people of other countries;
and I join with you in the hope and belief that
they will see from our example that a
free government is of all others the most energetic;
that the inquiry which has been excited among
the mass of mankind by our revolution &
its consequences will ameliorate the condition
of man over a great portion of the globe.
What a satisfaction have we in the contemplation
of the benevolent effects of our efforts,
compared with those of the leaders on
the other side, who have discountenanced
all advances in science as dangerous innovations,
have endeavored to render philosophy and
republicanism terms of reproach, to persuade us
that man cannot be governed but by the rod, &c.
I shall have the happiness of living
& dying in the contrary hope.4
Like Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, Thomas Jefferson
believed that the entire art of government consisted of being honest.
He was concerned that reason without feelings could be miserable
because it lacked “benevolence, justice, sympathy, and friendship.”
He praised Indians for their loyalty to friends and found
that such sentiments led to the love of humanity.
For Jefferson human rights are “gifts of God,” and he believed
that God punishing injustice was the basis of morality.
He held that believing in the law of God is the safest foundation for liberty.
He came to accept immigration because he wanted America
to be a refuge for victims of oppression.
In 1800 the Dey Bobba Mustafa of Algiers had ordered Captain Bainbridge
to put his George Washington frigate under Algerine colors
and take an embassy to the Grand Sultan of the Ottoman Empire.
The four Barbary powers of Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli
were engaged in demanding ransoms for piracy or protection money.
In the past ten years the United States had made treaties
with all four and had paid them more than $2 million.
In July the Tripoli captured the New York brig Catherine and its cargo
worth $50,000, but the Pasha Yusuf Karamanli released the ship, crew, and cargo
in October with the warning that if he did not get a treaty within six months,
he would be at war against the United States.
That month Bainbridge lowered the Algerian flag and put up
the stars and stripes on the George Washington while sailing to Istanbul.
After he made a treaty with Sweden, Tripoli’s Yusuf Karamanli
on 3 January 1801 warned Americans again of war.
On the 18th the George Washington returned to Algiers,
and the Dey had new demands.
On March 9 President Jefferson consulted his cabinet
about sending a naval squadron to the Mediterranean.
In a letter to Thomas Paine on March 18 Jefferson wrote,
Determined as we are to avoid, if possible,
wasting the energies of our people in war and destruction,
we shall avoid implicating ourselves
with the Powers of Europe,
even in support of principles which we mean to pursue.
They have so many other interests different from ours
that we must avoid being entangled in them.
We believe we can enforce those principles as to ourselves
by peaceable means, now that we are likely
to have our public councils detached from foreign views.5
On 21 March 1801 Jefferson wrote in a letter to Dr. Joseph Priestley,
As the storm is now subsiding, and the horizon
becoming serene, it is pleasant to consider
the phenomenon with attention.
We can no longer say there is nothing new under the sun.
For this whole chapter in the history of man is new.
The great extent of our republic is new.
Its sparse habitation is new.
The mighty wave of public opinion
which has rolled over it is new.
But the most pleasing novelty is its so quickly subsiding
over such an extent of surface to its true level again.
The order & good sense displayed in this recovery
from delusion, and in the momentous crisis which
lately arose, really bespeak a strength of character
in our nation which augurs well for the duration
of our Republic; & I am much better satisfied
now of its stability than I was before it was tried.
I have been above all things solaced by the prospect which
opened on us in the event of a non-election of a president;
in which case the federal government would have
been in the situation of a clock or watch run down.
There was no idea of force, nor of any occasion for it.
A convention, invited by the Republican members of
Congress with the virtual President & Vice President,
would have been on the ground in 8 weeks,
would have repaired the Constitution where
it was defective & wound it up again.
This peaceable & legitimate resource, to which we are
in the habit of implicit obedience, superseding all
appeal to force, and being always within our reach,
shows a precious principle of self-preservation in our
composition till a change of circumstances shall take place,
which is not within prospect at any definite period.6
Also on March 21 President Jefferson wrote this letter to the
newly elected United States Senator Dr. George Logan,
a peacemaker from Pennsylvania, explaining that he planned how
they could relate to other nations with peaceable principles.
An immense press of business has prevented my
sooner acknowledging your favors of February 20 and 27.
I join you in congratulations on the return of republican
ascendancy; and also in a sense of the necessity of
restoring freedom to the ocean.
But I doubt with you whether the U. S. ought to
join in an armed confederacy for that purpose;
or rather I am satisfied they ought not.
It ought to be the very first object of our pursuits to
have nothing to do with the European interests & politics.
Let them be free or slaves at will, navigators or agricultural,
swallowed into one government or divided into a thousand,
we have nothing to fear from them in any form,
and therefore to take part in their conflicts would be
to divert our energies from creation to destruction.
Our commerce is so valuable to them that they will be glad
to purchase it when the only price we ask is to do us justice.
I believe we have in our own hands the means of
peaceable coercion; and that the moment they see our
government so united as that they can make use of it,
they will for their own interest be disposed to do us justice.
In this way we shall not be obliged by any treaty of
confederation to go to war for injuries done to others.7
Jefferson on 22 March 1801 wrote to Nathaniel Niles,
The times have been awful, but they have proved
a useful truth, that the good citizen must never
despair of the commonwealth.
How many good men abandoned the deck,
& gave up the vessel as lost.
It furnishes a new proof of the falsehood of
Montesquieu’s doctrine, that a republic
can be preserved only in a small territory.
The reverse is the truth.
Had our territory been even a third only of what it is,
we were gone.
But while frenzy & delusion like an epidemic, gained certain
parts, the residue remained sound & untouched, and held
on till their brethren could recover from the temporary
delusion; and that circumstance has given me great comfort.
There was general alarm during the pending of the election
in Congress, lest no President should be chosen,
the government be dissolved and anarchy ensue.
But the cool determination of the really patriotic to call
a convention in that case, which might be on the ground
in 8 weeks, and wind up the machine again which
had only run down, pointed out to my mind a perpetual
& peaceable resource against force in whatever extremity
might befall us; and I am certain a convention would
have commanded immediate and universal obedience.
How happy that our army had been disbanded!
What might have happened otherwise seems
rather a subject of reflection than explanation.8
Jefferson wrote at least four letters on March 24,
and this one to Benjamin Rush is the most interesting:
With regard to appointments, I have so much confidence
in the justice and good sense of the federalists that I have
no doubt they will concur in the fairness of the position,
that after they have been in the exclusive possession
of all offices from the very first origin of party among us
to the 3rd of March at 9 o’clock in the night, no republican
ever admitted, & this doctrine openly avowed, it is now
perfectly just that the republicans should come in
for the vacancies which may fall in, until something
like an equilibrium in office be restored; after which
“Tros, Tyriusque nullo discrimine habeatur.”
But the great stumbling block will be removals,
which though made on those just principles only on which
my predecessor ought to have removed the same persons,
will nevertheless be ascribed to removal on party principles.
Imprimis I will expunge the effects of Mr. Adams indecent
conduct, in crowding nominations after he knew they
were not for himself, till 9 o’clock of the night,
at 12 o’clock of which he was to go out of office.
So far as they are during pleasure, I shall not consider
the persons named, even as candidates for the office,
nor pay the respect of notifying them that I consider
what was done as a nullity.
2nd. Some removals must be made for misconduct.
One of these is of the marshal in your city, who being
an officer of justice, entrusted with the sacred function
of choosing impartial judges for the trial of his fellow citizens
placed at the awful tribunal of God & their country,
selected judges who either avowed, or were known to him
to be predetermined to condemn; and if the lives of the
unfortunate persons were not cut short by the sword
of the law, it was not for want of his good-will.
In another state I have to perform the same act of justice
on the dearest connection of my dearest friend,
for similar conduct in cases not capital.
The same practice of packing juries & prosecuting their
fellow citizens with the bitterness of party hatred,
will probably involve several other marshals & attorneys.
Out of this line, I see but very few instances where past
misconduct has been in such a degree as to call for notice.
Of the thousands of officers therefore in the U S, a very
few individuals only, probably not 20, will be removed;
& these only for doing what they ought not to have done.
2 or 3 instances indeed where Mr. Adams removed men
because they would not sign addresses &c to him,
will be rectified, & the persons restored.
The whole world will say this is just.
I know that in stopping thus short in the career of removal,
I shall give great offence to many of my friends.
That torrent has been pressing me heavily,
& will require all my force to bear up against;
but my maxim is “fiat justitia, ruat coelum.’
“After the first unfavorable impressions of doing
too much in the opinion of some, & too little in
that of others, shall be got over, I should hope
a steady line of conciliation very practicable,
and that without yielding a single republican principle.
A certainty that these principles prevailed in the
breasts of the main body of federalists was my motive
for stating them as the ground of reunion.9
The George Washington returned to Philadelphia on April 19,
and Captain Bainbridge reported to the President in Washington.
William Eaton and others urged stronger action.
Yusuf of Tripoli had received $83,000, but his demand for $225,000
plus $25,000 a year was refused on May 14.
He declared war by having the consular flag cut down.
The acting Navy Secretary Samuel Smith sent Commodore Richard Dale
and four ships, and they sailed from Virginia on June 2.
On their way to Malta they destroyed a Tripolitan corsair.
Their mission was to blockade Tripoli and intercept pirate ships.
President Jefferson sent a letter of friendship and $10,000 cash
to be delivered if Yusuf rescinded his declaration of war.
When Pasha Yusuf was defiant, Dale reminded him that their 1797 treaty
called for mediation by Algiers; but Tripoli resented this clause.
After Dale blockaded Tripoli, the Pasha submitted.
On the high seas the Enterprise commanded by Lt. Sterrett
on August 1 defeated the Tripoli near Malta.
Dale’s men lacked fresh food, and 152 sailors became seriously ill.
Dale left Tripoli on September 3, and his ships blockaded Morocco’s Meshuda.
The Adams Administration had handled a diplomatic problem in 1797-98
with three French agents, who demanded bribes from the Americans,
by rejecting bribes and labeling them X, Y, and Z.
Moses Robinson had served on the Council of Safety
as a colonel during the War for Independence.
In Vermont he was Chief Justice in 1778-89 and was Governor in 1789-90.
He became a Republican and was elected a
United States Senator in 1791 and served for five years.
On 23 March 1801 Jefferson wrote this letter to Moses Robinson:
I have to acknowledge the receipt of your
favor of the 3rd inst. and to thank you
for the friendly expressions it contains.
I entertain real hope that the whole body
of our fellow citizens (many of whom had
been carried away by the X Y Z business)
will shortly be consolidated in the same sentiments.
When they examine the real principles of both parties,
I think they will find little to differ about.
I know indeed that there are some of their leaders
who have so committed themselves that pride,
if no other passion, will prevent their coalescing.
We must be easy with them.
The eastern states will be the last to come over on account
of the dominion of the clergy, who had got a smell of union
between church & state and began to indulge reveries which
can never be realized in the present state of science.
If indeed they could have prevailed on us to view
all advances in science as dangerous innovations
and to look back to the opinions & practices of our
forefathers, instead of looking forward for improvement,
a promising ground work would have been laid.
But I am in hopes their good sense will dictate to them
that since the mountain will not come to them,
they had better go to the mountain: that they will find
their interest in acquiescing in the liberty and science
of their country, and that the Christian religion when
divested of the rags in which they have enveloped it, and
brought to the original purity & simplicity of its benevolent
institutor, is a religion of all others most friendly to liberty,
science, & the freest expansions of the human mind.
I sincerely wish with you we could see our government
so secured as to depend less on the character
of the person in whose hands it is trusted.
Bad men will sometimes get in, and with such
an immense patronage, may make great progress
in corrupting the public mind and principles.
This is a subject with which wisdom
and patriotism should be occupied.
I pray you to accept assurances
of my high respect and esteem.10
Jefferson wrote to Dr. Benjamin Rush on March 24 that out of 700 clerks
and assistants chosen by presidential appointees and 3,000 in the Post Office
Department he was only removing about 20 federal officials out of the
316 civilian employees subject to presidential appointment and removal.
Yet Theodore Dwight and other Federalists in Connecticut complained
when he replaced the Collector from New Haven.
Republican George Clinton was elected Governor of New York.
He and young DeWitt Clinton and Ambrose Spencer
of the Council replaced many state officers.
Jefferson did not like the Clintons or Vice President Aaron Burr.
The President spent the months of April, August, and September
at his Monticello home in Virginia.
On May 2 Jefferson wrote to the Aliens of Beaver County, Pennsylvania,
Born in other countries, yet believing you could be happy
in this, our laws acknowledge, as they should do,
your right to join us in society, conforming,
as I doubt not you will do, to our established rules.
That these rules shall be as equal as prudential
considerations will admit, will certainly be the aim
of our legislatures, general & particular.
To unequal privileges among members of the same society
the spirit of our nation is, with one accord, adverse.
If the unexampled state of the world has in any instance
occasioned among us temporary departures from
the system of equal rule, the restoration of tranquility
will doubtless produce reconsideration: and your own
knowledge of the liberal conduct heretofore observed
towards strangers settling among us will warrant
the belief that what is right will be done.11
Treasury Secretary Gallatin arrived in Washington on May 13.
He was ready with a plan to reduce the national debt,
and they also wanted to reduce taxes.
He complained that under Hamilton about $10 million had been
unnecessarily
added to the $80 million debt through corruption and incompetence.
Gallatin was the most qualified Republican and had created the
House Ways and Means Committee to supervise public expenditures.
As a former leader in the House he was a natural liaison with House Republicans.
Government revenue for the year was expected to be $9,950,000,
and he wanted to apply $7,300,000 to pay interest and principal
on the debt each year for 16 years to pay off what was owed by the year 1817.
He hoped to reduce the Army’s budget to $930,000 and the Navy’s to $670,000.
The Federalists had spent $6,000,000 on them in 1799 preparing to fight France.
The Army was needed for frontier forts and was reduced to 3,000 men,
and they raised the reduced expense for both Army and Navy to $1,900,000.
Jefferson believed that the vital interest of maintaining commerce with America
and its harbors would encourage every nation to be at peace with them.
The Republicans ended most of the internal taxes such as the hated excise,
carriage, and direct property taxes that the Federalists had passed in 1798.
Instead about 90% of all revenues came from duties on imports.
On May 15 Jefferson asked his cabinet officers if they should send
the squadron at Norfolk to cruise in the Mediterranean Sea and for what purpose.
They agreed on the cruise.
War Secretary Lincoln suggested repelling attacks on American ships,
and Gallatin went along with that as long as it was not a war
which only Congress could declare according to the Constitution.
Secretary of State James Madison on May 20 wrote a letter to the
American consul in Tunis that three frigates and a sloop
would be coming to the Mediterranean.
He advised,
The present moment is peculiarly favorable for
the experiment, not only as we are now at peace
and amity with all the rest of the world, and as
the force employed would, if at home, be at nearly
the same expense with less advantages to mariners.12
Jefferson in a letter to a Committee of New Haven
merchants on 12 July 1801 wrote,
Of the various executive duties, no one excites more
anxious concern than that of placing the interests
of our fellow citizens in the hands of honest men
with understandings sufficient for their station.
No duty, at the same time, is more difficult to fulfill.
The knowledge of characters possessed
by a single individual is of necessity limited.
To seek out the best through the whole Union,
we must resort to other information, which,
from the best of men, acting disinterestedly
and with the purest motives, is sometimes incorrect….
When it is considered that during the late administration,
those who were not of a particular sect of politics
were excluded from all office; when by a steady
pursuit of this measure, nearly the whole offices
of the United States were monopolized by that sect;
when the public sentiment at length declared itself
and burst open the doors of honor and confidence
to those whose opinions they more approved;
was it to be imagined that this monopoly of office
was still to be continued in the hands of the minority?
Does it violate their equal rights to assert
some rights in the majority also?
Is it political intolerance to claim a proportionate share
in the direction of the public affairs?
Can they not harmonize in society unless
they have everything in their own hands?13
On 13 July 1801 Jefferson wrote to William C. Claiborne,
the new governor of the Mississippi Territory:
You will receive from the Secretary of State a commission
as governor of the Mississippi territory, an office which
I consider as of primary importance, in as much as that
country is the principal point of contact between Spain
and us, & also as it is the embryo of a very great state.
Independent of the official communications, which the
Secretary of State will make to you from time to time,
I cannot deny myself a few words, private & confidential,
the object of which will be to contribute to the shaping your
course to the greatest benefit of the people you are to
govern and of the U. S. and to your own best satisfaction.
With respect to Spain our dispositions are
sincerely amicable and even affectionate.
We consider her possession of the adjacent country
as most favorable to our interests, & should see with
extreme pain any other nation substituted for them.
In all communications therefore with their officers
conciliation and mutual accommodation
are to be duly attended to.
Everything irritating to be avoided,
everything friendly to be done for them.
The most fruitful source of misunderstanding will be
the contact of their and our people at New Orleans.
Temper and justice will be the best guides
through those intricacies.
Should France get possession of that country,
it will be more to be lamented than remedied by us,
as it will furnish ground for profound consideration
on our part how best to conduct ourselves in that case.
It would of course be the subject
of fresh communications to you.
As to the people you are to govern, we are apprised
that they are divided into two adverse parties,
the one composed of the richer and better informed
attached to the 1st grade of government, the other
of the body of the people, not a very homogenous mass,
advocates for the 2nd grade which they possess in fact.
Our love of freedom & the value we set on
self-government disposes us to prefer the principles
of the 2nd grade, and they are strengthened by knowing
that they are preferred by the will of the majority.
While cooperation with that plan therefore is
essentially to be observed, your best endeavors
should be exerted to bring over those opposed to it
by every means soothing and conciliatory.
The happiness of society depends so much on preventing
party spirit from infecting the common intercourse of life,
that nothing should be spared to harmonize and
amalgamate the two parties in social circles.
The great objection of the advocates for the 1st grade
is the expense of the 2nd.
Everything should be done therefore to lessen that expense,
and the legislative body, the most expensive part of all
our governments, should recommend themselves
by making their particular expenses as light as possible.
I shall consider it as the happiest proof that
in our nomination I have done what was best for that state,
if I should find that you shall have been able
to reconcile parties to yourself and to one another.
The only objection to you, which has been strongly pressed,
covers the allegation that you had taken your side
too strongly with the one party to be able
to become agreeable or just to the other.
Had this been my opinion of you,
the nomination would not have been made.
We have appointed Mr. Daniel Clarke
at New Orleans our consul there.
His worth & influence will aid you powerfully in the
interfering interests of those who go and who reside there.
I take the liberty of recommending to your particular
civilities & respect Mr. William Dunbar, a person
of great worth & wealth there and one of the most
distinguished citizens of the U. S. in point of science.
He is a correspondent of mine in that line
on whom I set great store.
As a native of Britain he must have a predilection towards
her; but as to every other nation he is purely American.
I should think it fortunate could he be added
to the friends of the 2nd grade.14
Jefferson on August 28 wrote to James Madison,
I know that nothing will stop the eternal increase of demand
from these pirates but the presence of an armed force,
and it will be more economical & more honorable to use the
same means at once for suppressing their insolencies.15
On 9 September 1801 Jefferson wrote about principles to
Robert R. Livingston whom he appointed Minister of France
after he had been Chancellor of New York for 24 years.
Shall two nations turning tigers, break up in one instant
the peaceable relations of the whole world?
Reason and nature clearly pronounce that
the neutral is to go on in the enjoyment of all its rights,
that its commerce remains free,
not subject to the jurisdiction of another,
nor consequently its vessels to search, or to enquiries
whether their contents are the property of an enemy,
or are of those which have been called contraband of war….
Although I consider the observance of these principles
as of great importance to the interests of peaceable nations,
among whom I hope the United States
will ever place themselves, yet in the present state of things
they are not worth a war, nor do I believe war
the most certain means of enforcing them.
Those peaceable coercions
which are in the power of every nation,
if undertaken in concert and in time of peace,
are more likely to produce the desired effect.16
Jefferson on September 18 in a letter to Treasury Secretary Gallatin
commented on how much time the President takes off each year, and he wrote,
As it is not possible but that the administration must
take some portion of time for their own affairs,
I think it best they should select that season for absence.
General Washington set the example of those 2 months.
Mr. Adams extended them to 8 months.
I should not suppose our bringing it back to 2 months
a ground for grumbling, but grumble who will,
I will never pass those months on tide-water.17
President Jefferson would spend August and September each year at Monticello.
On October 10 he wrote another letter to Robert R. Livingston in France,
In this state of things, we shall so take our distance
between the two rival nations, as remaining disengaged
till necessity compels us, we may haul finally to
the enemy of that which shall make it necessary.
We see all the disadvantageous consequences of taking a
side and shall be forced into it only by a more disagreeable
alternative; in which event, we must countervail the
disadvantages by measures which will give us splendor &
power, but not as much happiness as our present system.
We wish, therefore, to remain well with France.
But we see that no consequences, however ruinous to them,
can secure us with certainty against the
extravagance of her present rulers.
I think, therefore, that while we do nothing which
the first nation on earth would deem crouching,
we had better give to all our communications
with them a very mild, complaisant, and even
friendly complexion but always independent.
Ask no favors, leave small & irritating things
to be conducted by the individuals interested in them,
interfere ourselves but in the greatest cases,
& then not push them to irritation.
No matter at present existing between them & us
is important enough to risk a breach of peace;
peace being indeed the most important of all things to us,
except the preserving an erect & independent attitude.
Although I know your own judgment leads you
to pursue this line identically, yet I thought it just
to strengthen it by the concurrence of my own.
You will have seen by our newspapers, that with the aid
of a lying renegado from republicanism, the federalists
have opened all their sluices of calumny.
They say we lied them out of power,
and openly avow they will do the same by us.
But it was not lies or argument on our part which
dethroned them, but their own foolish acts, sedition laws,
alien laws, taxes, extravagance & heresies.18
Jefferson’s cabinet assembled in October.
On December 7 the House of Representatives elected the Republican
Nathaniel Macon of North Carolina as Speaker over the Federalist
candidate James Bayard of Delaware by a vote of 53-26.
Thomas Jefferson had made 26-year-old Meriwether Lewis his secretary
in April 1801, and Lewis also lived in the spacious new President’s House in Washington.
Jefferson preferred to communicate in writing more than by making speeches,
and he sent Lewis with his First Annual Message to the
United States Congress in writing on 8 December 1801.
This is the entire document:
It is a circumstance of sincere gratification to me that
on meeting the great council of our nation,
I am able to announce to them, on the grounds of
reasonable certainty, that the wars and troubles which
have for so many years afflicted our sister nations have at
length come to an end, and that the communications of
peace and commerce are once more opening among them.
While we devoutly return thanks to the beneficent Being
who has been pleased to breathe into them the spirit
of conciliation and forgiveness, we are bound with peculiar
gratitude to be thankful to him that our own peace has been
preserved through so perilous a season, and ourselves
permitted quietly to cultivate the earth and to practice and
improve those arts which tend to increase our comforts.
The assurances, indeed, of friendly disposition,
received from all the powers with whom we have
principal relations, had inspired a confidence that
our peace with them would not have been disturbed.
But a cessation of the irregularities which had effected the
commerce of neutral nations, and of the irritations and
injuries produced by them, cannot but add to this
confidence; and strengthens at the same time the hope,
that wrongs committed on offending friends, under a
pressure of circumstances, will now be reviewed with
candor and will be considered as founding just claims of
retribution for the past and new assurances for the future.
Among our Indian neighbors also a spirit of peace and
friendship generally prevails, and I am happy to inform
you that the continued efforts to introduce among them
the implements and the practice of husbandry, and of
the household arts, have not been without success;
that they are becoming more and more sensible of
the superiority of this dependence for clothing and
subsistence over the precarious resources of hunting
and fishing; and already we are able to announce,
that instead of that constant diminution of their numbers,
produced by their wars and their wants, some of them
begin to experience an increase of population.
To this state of general peace with which
we have been blessed, one only exception exists.
Tripoli, the least considerable of the Barbary States,
had come forward with demands unfounded either
in right or in compact, and had permitted itself to
denounce war on our failure to comply before a given day.
The style of the demand admitted but one answer.
I sent a small squadron of frigates into the Mediterranean,
with assurances to that power of our sincere
desire to remain in peace, but with orders to
protect our commerce against the threatened attack.
The measure was seasonable and salutary.
The bey had already declared war in form.
His cruisers were out.
Two had arrived at Gibraltar.
Our commerce in the Mediterranean was blockaded,
and that of the Atlantic in peril.
The arrival of our squadron dispelled the danger.
One of the Tripolitan cruisers having fallen in with,
and engaged the small schooner Enterprise, commanded
by Lieutenant Sterret, which had gone as a tender to
our larger vessels, was captured after a heavy slaughter
of her men without the loss of a single one on our part.
The bravery exhibited by our citizens on that element,
will, I trust, be a testimony to the world that
it is not the want of that virtue which makes us
seek their peace, but a conscientious desire
to direct the energies of our nation to the multiplication
of the human race and not to its destruction.
Unauthorized by the Constitution without the sanction
of Congress to go out beyond the line of defense,
the vessel being disabled from committing further
hostilities, was liberated with its crew.
The legislature will doubtless consider whether,
by authorizing measures of offence, also, they will place
our force on an equal footing with that of its adversaries.
I communicate all material information on this subject,
that in the exercise of the important function considered
by the Constitution to the legislature exclusively,
their judgment may form itself on a knowledge and
consideration of every circumstance of weight.
I wish I could say that our situation with all
the other Barbary states was entirely satisfactory.
Discovering that some delays had taken place in the
performance of certain articles stipulated by us,
I thought it my duty by immediate measures for fulfilling
them to vindicate to ourselves the right of considering
the effect of departure from stipulation on their side.
From the papers which will be laid before you, you will be
enabled to judge whether our treaties are regarded by them
as fixing at all the measure of their demands, or as guarding
from the exercise of force our vessels within their power;
and to consider how far it will be safe and expedient to
leave our affairs with them in their present posture.
I lay before you the result of the census lately taken
of our inhabitants, to a conformity with which we are to
reduce the ensuing rates of representation and taxation.
You will perceive that the increase of numbers during
the last ten years, proceeding in geometrical ratio,
promises a duplication in little more than twenty-two years.
We contemplate this rapid growth, and the prospect it holds
up to us, not with a view to the injuries it may enable us to
do to others in some future day, but to the settlement of the
extensive country still remaining vacant within our limits,
to the multiplications of men susceptible of happiness,
educated in the love of order, habituated to self-government,
and value its blessings above all price.
Other circumstances, combined with the increase of
numbers, have produced an augmentation of revenue
arising from consumption, in a ratio far beyond that of
population alone, and though the changes of foreign
relations now taking place so desirably for the world,
may for a season affect this branch of revenue, yet,
weighing all probabilities of expense, as well as of income,
there is reasonable ground of confidence that we may now
safely dispense with all the internal taxes, comprehending
excises, stamps, auctions, licenses, carriages, and refined
sugars, to which the postage on newspapers may be added,
to facilitate the progress of information, and that the
remaining sources of revenue will be sufficient to provide for
the support of government to pay the interest on the public
debts, and to discharge the principals in shorter periods than
the laws or the general expectations had contemplated.
War, indeed, and untoward events, may change this
prospect of things, and call for expenses which the
imposts could not meet; but sound principles will
not justify our taxing the industry of our fellow citizens
to accumulate treasure for wars to happen we
know not when, and which might not perhaps happen
but from the temptations offered by that treasure.
These views, however, of reducing our burdens,
are formed on the expectation that a sensible,
and at the same time a salutary reduction,
may take place in our habitual expenditures.
For this purpose, those of the civil government,
the army and navy will need revisal.
When we consider that this government is charged
with the external and mutual relations only of these states;
that the states themselves have principal care of our
persons, our property, and our reputation, constituting
the great field of human concerns, we may well
doubt whether our organization is not too complicated,
too expensive; whether offices or officers have
not been multiplied unnecessarily, and sometimes
injuriously to the service they were meant to promote.
I will cause to be laid before you an essay toward a
statement of those who, under public employment of various
kinds, draw money from the treasury or from our citizens.
Time has not permitted a perfect enumeration,
the ramifications of office being too multiplied
and remote to be completely traced in a first trial.
Among those who are dependent on executive discretion,
I have begun the reduction of what was deemed necessary.
The expenses of diplomatic agency
have been considerably diminished.
The inspectors of internal revenue who
were found to obstruct the accountability
of the institution have been discontinued.
Several agencies created by executive authority
on salaries fixed by that also have been
suppressed and should suggest the expediency
of regulating that power by law, so as to subject its
exercises to legislative inspection and sanction.
Other reformations of the same kind will be pursued
with that caution which is requisite in removing
useless things, not to injure what is retained.
But the great mass of public offices is established by law,
and, therefore, by law alone can be abolished.
Should the legislature think it expedient to pass
this roll in review and try all its parts by the test
of public utility, they may be assured of every aid
and light which executive information can yield.
Considering the general tendency to multiply offices and
dependencies, and to increase expense to the ultimate
term of burden which the citizen can bear, it behooves us to
avail ourselves of every occasion which presents itself for
taking off the surcharge; that it may never be seen here
that, after leaving to labor the smallest portion of its
earnings on which it can subsist, government shall itself
consume the residue of what it was instituted to guard.
In our care, too, of the public contributions entrusted to
our direction, it would be prudent to multiply barriers against
their dissipation, by appropriating specific sums to every
specific purpose susceptible of definition; by disallowing
applications of money varying from the appropriation in
object, or transcending it in amount; by reducing the
undefined field of contingencies, and thereby circumscribing
discretionary powers over money; and by bringing back to a
single department all accountabilities for money where the
examination may be prompt, efficacious, and uniform.
An account of the receipts and expenditures of the
last year, as prepared by the secretary of the treasury,
will as usual be laid before you.
The success which has attended the late sales
of the public lands, shows that with attention they
may be made an important source of receipt.
Among the payments, those made in discharge of the
principal and interest of the national debt, will show
that the public faith has been exactly maintained.
To these will be added an estimate of
appropriations necessary for the ensuing year.
This last will of course be effected by such modifications of
the systems of expense, as you shall think proper to adopt.
A statement has been formed by the secretary of war,
on mature consideration, of all the posts and stations
where garrisons will be expedient, and of the number
of men requisite for each garrison.
The whole amount is considerably short
of the present military establishment.
For the surplus no particular use can be pointed out.
For defense against invasion, their number is as nothing;
nor is it conceived needful or safe that a standing army
should be kept up in time of peace for that purpose.
Uncertain as we must ever be of the particular point in our
circumference where an enemy may choose to invade us,
the only force which can be ready at every point
and competent to oppose them, is the body
of neighboring citizens as formed into a militia.
On these, collected from the parts most convenient,
in numbers proportioned to the invading foe,
it is best to rely, not only to meet the first attack,
but if it threatens to be permanent, to maintain the
defense until regulars may be engaged to relieve them.
These considerations render it important that we should
at every session continue to amend the defects
which from time to time show themselves in the laws for
regulating the militia until they are sufficiently perfect.
Nor should we now or at any time separate,
until we can say we have done everything for the militia
which we could do were an enemy at our door.
The provisions of military stores on hand
will be laid before you, that you may judge
of the additions still requisite.
With respect to the extent to which our naval
preparations should be carried, some difference
of opinion may be expected to appear;
but just attention to the circumstances of every part
of the Union will doubtless reconcile all.
A small force will probably continue to be wanted
for actual service in the Mediterranean.
Whatever annual sum beyond that you may think
proper to appropriate to naval preparations, would
perhaps be better employed in providing those articles
which may be kept without waste or consumption, and
be in readiness when any exigence calls them into use.
Progress has been made, as will appear by papers
now communicated, in providing materials
for seventy-four gunships as directed by law.
How far the authority given by the legislature
for procuring and establishing sites for naval purposes
has been perfectly understood and pursued
in the execution, admits of some doubt.
A statement of the expenses already incurred
on that subject shall be laid before you.
I have in certain cases suspended or slackened these
expenditures, that the legislature might determine whether
so many yards are necessary as have been contemplated.
The works at this place are among those permitted to go
on; and five of the seven frigates directed to be laid up,
have been brought and laid up here, where, besides
the safety of their position, they are under the eye of
the executive administration, as well as of its agents
and where yourselves also will be guided by your
own view in the legislative provisions respecting them
which may from time to time be necessary.
They are preserved in such condition, as well the vessels
as whatever belongs to them, as to be at all times
ready for sea on a short warning.
Two others are yet to be laid up so soon as
they shall have reserved the repairs requisite
to put them also into sound condition.
As a superintending officer will be necessary at each yard,
his duties and emoluments, hitherto fixed by the executive,
will be a more proper subject for legislation.
A communication will also be made of our
progress in the execution of the law
respecting the vessels directed to be sold.
The fortifications of our harbors, more or less advanced,
present considerations of great difficulty.
While some of them are on a scale sufficiently proportioned
to the advantages of their position, to the efficacy of their
protection, and the importance of the points within it,
others are so extensive, will cost so much in their
first erection, so much in their maintenance,
and require such a force to garrison them,
as to make it questionable what is best now to be done.
A statement of those commenced or projected, of the
expenses already incurred, and estimates of their future
cost, so far as can be foreseen, shall be laid before you,
that you may be enabled to judge whether any attention
is necessary in the laws respecting this subject.
Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation,
the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving
when left most free to individual enterprise.
Protection from casual embarrassments, however,
may sometimes be seasonably interposed.
If in the course of your observations or inquiries they
should appear to need any aid within the limits of our
constitutional powers, your sense of their importance is
a sufficient assurance they will occupy your attention.
We cannot, indeed, but all feel an anxious
solicitude for the difficulties under which
our carrying trade will soon be placed.
How far it can be relieved, otherwise than by time,
is a subject of important consideration.
The judiciary system of the United States, and especially
that portion of it recently erected, will of course present
itself to the contemplation of Congress: and that they
may be able to judge of the proportion which the
institution bears to the business it has to perform,
I have caused to be procured from the several States,
and now lay before Congress, an exact statement
of all the causes decided since the first establishment
of the courts, and of those which were depending when
additional courts and judges were brought in to their aid.
And while on the judiciary organization, it will be
worthy your consideration, whether the protection of the
inestimable institution of juries has been extended to all the
cases involving the security of our persons and property.
Their impartial selection also being essential to their value,
we ought further to consider whether that is sufficiently
secured in those States where they are named by
a marshal depending on executive will, or designated
by the court or by officers dependent on them.
I cannot omit recommending a revisal of the laws
on the subject of naturalization.
Considering the ordinary chances of human life, a denial
of citizenship under a residence of fourteen years is a denial
to a great proportion of those who ask it, and controls a
policy pursued from their first settlement by many of these
States, and still believed of consequence to their prosperity.
And shall we refuse the unhappy fugitives from distress
that hospitality which the savages of the wilderness
extended to our fathers arriving in this land?
Shall oppressed humanity find no asylum on this globe?
The constitution, indeed, has wisely provided that, for
admission to certain offices of important trust, a residence
shall be required sufficient to develop character and design.
But might not the general character and capabilities
of a citizen be safely communicated to every one
manifesting a bona fide purpose of embarking
his life and fortunes permanently with us?
With restrictions, perhaps, to guard
against the fraudulent usurpation of our flag;
an abuse which brings so much embarrassment
and loss on the genuine citizen, and so much danger
to the nation of being involved in war, that no
endeavor should be spared to detect and suppress it.
These, fellow citizens, are the matters respecting
the state of the nation, which I have thought of importance
to be submitted to your consideration at this time.
Some others of less moment, or not yet ready for
communication, will be the subject of separate messages.
I am happy in this opportunity of committing
the arduous affairs of our government
to the collected wisdom of the Union.
Nothing shall be wanting on my part to inform,
as far as in my power, the legislative judgment,
nor to carry that judgment into faithful execution.
The prudence and temperance of your discussions will
promote within your own walls that conciliation which
so much befriends national conclusion; and by its example
will encourage among our constituents that progress of
opinion which is tending to unite them in object and in will.
That all should be satisfied with any one order of things
is not to be expected, but I indulge the pleasing persuasion
that the great body of our citizens will cordially concur in
honest and disinterested efforts, which have for their
object to preserve the general and State governments
in their constitutional form and equilibrium;
to maintain peace abroad, and order and obedience
to the laws at home; to establish principles and practices
of administration favorable to the security of liberty
and prosperity, and to reduce expenses to what
is necessary for the useful purposes of government.19
He began this message by expressing gratitude that
wars were ending as communications of peace were opening.
Because Tripoli had made demands, Jefferson sent frigates to the
Mediterranean with assurances that peace could be maintained.
Yet he gave orders to protect commerce.
The President reported that the 1800 Census had found
that their population had doubled to 5,305,925.
He promised to repeal internal taxes.
He aimed to pay off the national debt by avoiding wars.
Abolishing internal taxes could reduce patronage in government.
He wrote that limited government would enable agriculture,
manufactures, commerce, and navigation to prosper.
The Republicans also tried to repeal the mint,
but Federalists in the Senate would not go along.
On December 18 the Virginians submitted a fugitive-slave bill
that would force employers to advertise hiring of a strange Negro
and require free Africans to carry their certificates of freedom;
but the House rejected it 46-43 one month later.
Naturalization was changed from 14 years back
to a residency requirement of 5 years.
An apportionment act added House members by fixing
the ratio for seats to one per 33,000 citizens.
Jefferson let Rufus King continue as the minister to England,
and he continued the negotiation started by John Marshall
to settle the private debts of Americans to British creditors.
They agreed to the United States paying £600,000,
and the convention was signed in January 1802.
In his first case Chief Justice John Marshall and the Supreme Court
decided on 11 August 1801 in Talbot v. Seeman that Captain Silas Talbot
had a right to capture the Amelia because, even though Congress
had not declared war, they had authorized seizing French ships.
Thus Talbot had just cause to believe that the Amelia was French
though it was actually owned by the neutral citizens of Hamburg.
Because the capture was legal the owner had
a right to compensation for meritorious service.
In United States v. Schooner Peggy the Chief Justice argued that
because the Constitution made treaties the “supreme law of the land,”
they bound the courts as much as an act of Congress.
Thus on December 21 the Court ordered this vessel returned to France.
President Adams had appointed William Marbury
to be a justice of the peace in the District of Columbia;
but he had not received his commission because Jefferson believed
the appointments Adams made at the very end of his term were nullities.
In December 1801 William Marbury asked the Supreme Court to order
Secretary of State Madison to give him his commission,
and the Court ordered Madison to show just cause why he should not.
Republicans objected to the two judiciary acts passed by the Federalists
in 1789 and February 1801 because they usurped jurisdiction from the states.
The latter act had added sixteen circuit judges,
and Federalists were appointed in the last days of the Adams administration.
Virginia Republicans believed in the maxim,
“The government shall not be the final judge of its own powers.”
On 8 January 1802 Senator Breckinridge of Kentucky proposed
repealing the Judiciary Act of 1801, but on January 27 Vice President Burr
broke a tie in the Senate and recommitted the bill to a committee.
The repeal bill passed the Senate 16-15 on February 3
and was debated in the House the next day.
William Branch Giles of Virginia argued the new courts were
not needed and that they would damage state courts.
The Federalist James Bayard responded that the Constitution made the judges
independent of the legislature, and he accused Jefferson of making
Charles Pinckney minister to Spain and giving positions to others
in gratitude for their turning against Burr in the 1801 election.
John Randolph of Virginia also believed that
interfering with the judiciary was unconstitutional.
Yet Republicans in the House of Representatives passed the repeal
of the 1801 Judiciary Act on March 3 and stopped the Supreme Court
from
meeting for 14 months so that they would not rule the repeal unconstitutional.
The new Judiciary Act became law on April 29 and restructured
the
six circuit courts by assigning one Supreme Court justice to each circuit.
The Jefferson Administration reduced the military to three regiments
with 3,350 men under one brigadier-general.
On 16 March 1802 President Jefferson approved a corps of engineers
at West Point, New York with a military academy.
On April 30 the people of Ohio were authorized to
approve a constitution so that they could enter the Union.
After much controversy the state of Georgia was given a liberal settlement
on April 24, though the commissioners did not approve the Yazoo land sale.
Congress approved the Apportionment Act on 3 May 1802
based on the 1800 Census providing a Congressional seat in
the House of Representatives for every 33,000 citizens.
On 2 February 1802 Congress had acknowledged that Tripoli had
declared war against the United States and passed An Act for the protection
of the Commerce and Seaman of the United States that empowered the
President
to use the US Navy and to commission privateers against Tripolitan Corsairs.
Pasha Yusuf Karamanli sought allies by sending
an emissary to Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco.
Sultan Mawlay Sulayman of Morocco asked for passports to bring the Meshuda
to Tangiers, but the Mediterranean squadron’s commander Commodore
Richard Valentine Morris refused
to let the consul James Simpson issue them.
The French led by General Victor E. Leclerc had
occupied Cap Français in St. Domingue in late 1801, and
in February 1802 he seized 20 American ships in that port.
Jefferson through his friend Pierre S. Du Pont de Nemours warned the French
that taking over Louisiana would have consequences
and would cause the Americans to become allied with Britain.
Jefferson explained this in a long letter to the U. S. Minister
to France Robert R. Livingston on April 18.
A favorable and a confidential opportunity offering by
Mr. Dupont de Nemours, who is revisiting his native country,
gives me an opportunity of sending you a cipher to be used
between us, which will give you some trouble to understand,
but once understood, is the easiest to use, the most
indecypherable and varied by a new key with
the greatest facility of any one I have ever known.
I am in hopes the explanation enclosed will be sufficient….
The cession of Louisiana and the Floridas
by Spain to France works most sorely on the U. S.
On this subject the Secretary of State
has written to you fully.
Yet I cannot forbear recurring to it personally,
so deep is the impression it makes in my mind.
It completely reverses all the political relations of the U. S.
and will form a new epoch in our political course.
Of all nations of any consideration France is the one
which hitherto has offered the fewest points
on which we could have any conflict of right,
and the most points of a communion of interests.
From these causes we have ever looked to her
as our natural friend, as one with which
we never could have an occasion of difference.
Her growth therefore we viewed as our own,
her misfortunes ours.
There is on the globe one single spot,
the possessor of which is our natural & habitual enemy.
It is New Orleans, through which the produce
of three eighths of our territory must pass to market,
and from its fertility it will ere long yield
more than half of our whole produce
and contain more than half our inhabitants.
France placing herself in that door
assumes to us the attitude of defiance.
Spain might have retained it quietly for years.
Her pacific dispositions, her feeble state, would
induce her to increase our facilities there, so that
her possession of the place would be hardly felt by us,
and it would not perhaps be very long before some
circumstance might arise which might make the cession
of it to us the price of something of more worth to her.
Not so can it ever be in the hands of France.
The impetuosity of her temper, the energy and restlessness
of her character, placed in a point of eternal friction with us,
and our character, which though quiet, and loving peace and
the pursuit of wealth, is high-minded, despising wealth in
competition with insult or injury, enterprising and energetic
as any nation on earth, these circumstances render it
impossible that France and the U. S. can continue long
friends when they meet in so irritable a position.
They as well as we must be blind if they do not see this;
and we must be very improvident if we do not begin
to make arrangements on that hypothesis.
The day that France takes possession of New Orleans
fixes the sentence which is to restrain her forever
within her low water mark.
It seals the union of two nations who in conjunction
can maintain exclusive possession of the ocean.
From that moment we must marry ourselves
to the British fleet and nation.
We must turn all our attentions to a maritime force,
for which our resources place us on very high grounds:
and having formed and cemented together a power
which may render reinforcement of her settlements here
impossible to France, make the first cannon,
which shall be fired in Europe the signal for tearing up any
settlement she may have made, and for holding the two
continents of America in sequestration for the common
purposes of the United British & American nations.
This is not a state of things we seek or desire.
It is one which this measure, if adopted by France,
forces on us, as necessarily as any other cause,
by the laws of nature, brings on its necessary effect.
It is not from a fear of France that
we deprecate this measure proposed by her.
For however greater her force is than ours
compared in the abstract, it is nothing in comparison
of ours when to be exerted on our soil.
But it is from a sincere love of peace and a firm
persuasion that bound to France by the interests and the
strong sympathies still existing in the minds of our citizens,
and holding relative positions which ensure their
continuance we are secure of a long course of peace.
Whereas the change of friends, which will be rendered
necessary if France changes that position, embarks us
necessarily as a belligerent power in the first war of Europe.
In that case France will have held possession of
New Orleans during the interval of a peace, long or short,
at the end of which it will be wrested from her.
Will this short-lived possession have been
an equivalent to her for the transfer of such
a weight into the scale of her enemy?
Will not the amalgamation of a young thriving nation
continue to that enemy the health and force which
are at present so evidently on the decline?
And will a few years possession of New Orleans
add equally to the strength of France?
She may say she needs Louisiana
for the supply of her West Indies.
She does not need it in time of peace.
And in war she could not depend on them
because they would be so easily intercepted.
I should suppose that all these considerations
might in some proper form be brought into
view of the government of France.
Though stated by us, it ought not to give offense;
because we do not bring them forward as a menace,
but as consequences not controllable by us,
but inevitable from the course of things.
We mention them not as things which we desire
by any means, but as things we deprecate;
and we beseech a friend to look forward
and to prevent them for our common interests.
If France considers Louisiana however as indispensable
for her views she might perhaps be willing to look about
for arrangements which might reconcile it to our interests.
If anything could do this, it would be the ceding to us
the island of New Orleans and the Floridas.
This would certainly in a great degree remove
the causes of jarring and irritation between us,
and perhaps for such a length of time as might produce
other means of making the measure permanently
conciliatory to our interests and friendships.
It would at any rate relieve us from the necessity
of taking immediate measures for countervailing such
an operation by arrangements in another quarter.
Still we should consider New Orleans and the Floridas
as equivalent for the risk of a quarrel with France
produced by her vicinage.
I have no doubt you have urged these considerations on
every proper occasion with the government where you are.
They are such as must have effect if you can find
the means of producing thorough reflection
on them by that government.
The idea here is that the troops sent to St. Domingo,
were to proceed to Louisiana
after finishing their work in that island.
If this were the arrangement, it will give you time
to return again and again to the charge,
for the conquest of St. Domingo will not be a short work.
It will take considerable time to wear down
a great number of soldiers.
Every eye in the U. S. is now fixed
on this affair of Louisiana.
Perhaps nothing since the revolutionary war has produced
more uneasy sensations through the body of the nation.
Notwithstanding temporary bickerings have
taken place with France, she has still a strong hold
on the affections of our citizens generally.
I have thought it not amiss, by way of supplement
to the letters of the Secretary of State to write
you this private one to impress you with
the importance we affix to this transaction.
I pray you to cherish Dupont.
He has the best dispositions for the continuance
of friendship between the two nations, and perhaps
you may be able to make a good use of him.
Accept assurances of my affectionate esteem
and high consideration.20
By 20 April 1802 the reports on seizures of American ships since October 1796
by Spain and France had reached 104 vessels by the French and 118 by Spaniards.
The United States Senate approved An Act to Amend the Judicial System
and it was passed by the House of Representatives
on 23 April 1802 and became law on April 29.
The Act revised the organization of the federal court
that the Federalists had passed on 13 February 1801.
On April 24 Congress fixed the western border of Georgia, and on the 30th
they passed the act enabling Ohio to enter the Union as the 17th state.
Gallatin managed to get included a contract that Ohio
would provide public land for schools and roads.
On June 25 Morocco declared war on the United States.
Eight days before that, corsairs had seized the Franklin,
giving Tripoli its first American prisoners.
In 1802 Tripoli got $158,000 from Sweden
plus $40,000 each from Holland and Denmark.
United States Navy expenditures that year were
reduced by more than half to $915,000.
Hoping to win over New England Federalists, Jefferson appointed
Gideon Granger of Connecticut, and he had become
Postmaster-General on 28 November 1801.
He had patronage to hire employees, though
he was not considered a member of the Cabinet.
He irritated officials by writing a letter to Thomas Paine, offering to give him
free passage to America on the Navy ship Maryland.
After he refused to appoint James Thompson Callender to run
the Richmond post office, this rabid Republican editor turned against Jefferson.
Callender began exposing Jefferson’s secrets such as
his having children by a slave named Sally Hemings
and for having written a secret love-letter to the wife of Major Walker.
The story of Sally that he called an “African Venus” was published
in a series of articles in September and October in the
Richmond Recorder and was distributed by Federalist newspapers.
Some described Sally as nearly white and good-looking,
and she served as housekeeper at Monticello.
On October 25 Jefferson wrote to Attorney General Levi Lincoln,
You will have seen by the newspapers that we have gained
ground generally in the elections, that we have lost ground
in not a single district of the U S except Kent county in
Delaware, where a religious dissension occasioned it.
In Jersey the elections are always carried
by small majorities, consequently the issue
is affected by the smallest accidents.
By the paper of the last night we have a majority
of 3 in their council & 1 in their House of Representatives;
another says it is only of 1 in each House;
even the latter is sufficient for every purpose.
The opinion I originally formed has never been changed,
that such of the body of the people as thought themselves
federalists, would find that they were in truth republicans,
and would come over to us by degrees;
but that their leaders had gone too far ever to change.
Their bitterness increases with their desperation.
They are trying slanders now which nothing
could prompt but a gall which blinds their
judgments as well as their consciences.
I shall take no other revenge, than by a steady pursuit of
economy and peace, and by the establishment of republican
principles in substance and in form, to sink federalism into
an abyss from which there shall be no resurrection for it.
I still think our original idea as to office is best;
that is, to depend for the obtaining a just participation
on deaths, resignations, & delinquencies.
This will least affect the tranquility of the people
and prevent their giving into the suggestion of our enemies,
that ours has been a contest for office, not for principle.
This is rather a slow operation, but it is sure if we pursue
it steadily, which, however, has not been done
with the undeviating resolution I could have wished.
To these means of obtaining a just share in the
transaction of the public business shall be added
one other, to wit, removal for electioneering activity
or open & industrious opposition to the principles
of the present government, legislative & executive.
Every officer of the government may vote at elections
according to his conscience; but we should betray the cause
committed to our care, were we to permit the influence
of official patronage to be used to overthrow that cause.
Your present situation will enable you to judge of prominent
offenders in your State in the case of the present election.
I pray you to seek them, to mark them, to be quite sure
of your ground, that we may commit no error or wrong,
and leave the rest to me.
I have been urged to remove Mr. Whittermore,
the surveyor of Gloucester, on grounds of
neglect of duty and industrious opposition.
Yet no facts are so distinctly charged as to make
the step sure which we should take in this.
Will you take the trouble to satisfy yourself on this point?
I think it not amiss that it should be known that
we are determined to remove officers who are active
or open-mouthed against the government, by which
I mean the legislature as well as the executive.
Accept assurances of my sincere friendship
& high respect.21
Jefferson was interested in science and inventions, and on October 25
he wrote a letter to James Sylvester McLean about steam power.
President Jefferson objected to the judges President John Adams appointed
between 12 December 1800, when South Carolina’s votes made it clear that
Adams had been defeated, and the end of his term on 3 March 1801.
In the 25 months from June 1801 to May 1803 Jefferson removed
14 officeholders, 12 for cause and 2 he considered “revolutionary tories.”
On 2 November 1802 Jefferson wrote
in a letter to architect Benjamin H. Latrobe,
The placing of a navy in a state of perfect preservation,
so that at the beginning of a subsequent war
it shall be as sound as at the end of the preceding one
when laid up, and the lessening the expense of repairs,
perpetually necessary while they lie in the water,
are objects of the first importance to a nation
which to a certain degree must be maritime.
The dry docks of Europe, being below the level of
tide water, are very expensive in their construction
and in the manner of keeping them clear of water,
and are only practicable at all where they have high tides:
insomuch that no nation has ever proposed
to lay up their whole navy in dry docks.
But if the dry dock were above the level of the tide water,
and there be any means of raising the vessels up into them,
and of covering the dock with a roof, thus withdrawn
from the wet and sun, they would last as long as the
interior timbers, doors and floors of a house.
The vast command of running water at this place at different
heights from 30 to 200 feet above the tide water, enables us
to effect this desirable object by forming a lower basin into
which the tide water shall float the vessel and then have its
gates closed, and adjoining to this, but 24 feet higher,
an upper basin 275 feet wide and 800 feet long (sufficient to
contain 12 frigates) into which running water can be
introduced from above, so that filling both basins (as in a
lock) the vessel shall be raised up & floated into the upper
one, and the water then being discharged leave her dry.
Over a basin not wider than 175 feet, a roof can be thrown,
in the manner of that of the Halle au blé at Paris, which
needing no underworks to support it, will permit the basin to
be entirely open and free for the movement of the vessels.
I mean to propose the construction of one of these to the
National legislature, convinced it will be a work of no great
cost, that it will save us great annual expense, & be an
encouragement to prepare in peace the vessels we shall
need in war, when we find they can be kept in a state of
perfect preservation & without expense.22
In the 1802 elections the Democratic Republicans gained 5 seats
in the US Senate increasing their majority from 17-15 to 22-9.
The 1800 Census added 36 seats in the House of Representatives,
and the Republicans gained 34 seats to give them
a 102 to 40 advantage over the Federalists.
President Jefferson sent his Second Annual Message
to Congress on December 15.
This is the complete text:
To the Senate and House of Representatives:
When we assemble together, fellow citizens, to consider
the state of our beloved country, our just attentions are first
drawn to those pleasing circumstances which mark the
goodness of that Being from whose favor they flow and
the large measure of thankfulness we owe for His bounty.
Another year has come around, and finds us still
blessed with peace and friendship abroad; law,
order, and religion at home; good affection and
harmony with our Indian neighbors; our burthens
lightened, yet our income sufficient for the public wants,
and the produce of the year great beyond example.
These, fellow citizens, are the circumstances under
which we meet, and we remark with special
satisfaction those which under the smiles of Providence
result from the skill, industry, and order of our citizens,
managing their own affairs in their own way and for
their own use, unembarrassed by too much regulation,
unoppressed by fiscal exactions.
On the restoration of peace in Europe that portion
of the general carrying trade which had fallen to
our share during the war was abridged by the
returning competition of the belligerent powers.
This was to be expected, and was just.
But in addition we find in some parts of Europe
monopolizing discriminations, which in the form
of duties tend effectually to prohibit the carrying
thither our own produce in our own vessels.
From existing amities and a spirit of justice
it is hoped that friendly discussion will produce
a fair and adequate reciprocity.
But should false calculations of interest defeat our hope,
it rests with the Legislature to decide whether they will
meet inequalities abroad with countervailing inequalities
at home, or provide for the evil in any other way.
It is with satisfaction I lay before you an act of
the British Parliament anticipating this subject so far
as to authorize a mutual abolition of the duties and
countervailing duties permitted under the treaty of 1794.
It shows on their part a spirit of justice
and friendly accommodation which it is our duty
and our interest to cultivate with all nations.
Whether this would produce a due equality
in the navigation between the two countries
is a subject for your consideration.
Another circumstance which claims attention
as directly affecting the very source of our
navigation is the defect or the evasion of the
law providing for the return of sea men, and
particularly of those belonging to vessels sold abroad.
Numbers of them, discharged in foreign ports,
have been thrown on the hands of our consuls,
who to rescue them from the dangers into
which their distresses might plunge them and
save them to their country, have found it necessary
in some cases to return them at the public charge.
The cession of the Spanish Province of Louisiana to
France, which took place in the course of the late war, will
if carried into effect, make a change in the aspect of our
foreign relations which will doubtless have just weight in any
deliberations of the Legislature connected with that subject.
There was reason not long since to apprehend that
the warfare in which we were engaged with Tripoli
might be taken up by some other of the Barbary Powers.
A reinforcement, therefore, was immediately
ordered to the vessels already there.
Subsequent information, however,
has removed these apprehensions for the present.
To secure our commerce in that sea with the
smallest force competent, we have supposed
it best to watch strictly the harbor of Tripoli.
Still, however, the shallowness of their coast and
the want of smaller vessels on our part has permitted
some cruisers to escape unobserved, and to one
of these an American vessel unfortunately fell prey.
The captain, one American sea man, and two
others of color remain prisoners with them unless
exchanged under an agreement formerly made
with the Bashaw, to whom, on the faith of that,
some of his captive subjects had been restored.
The convention with the State of Georgia has been ratified
by their legislature, and a repurchase from the Creeks has
been consequently made of a part of the Talassee country.
In this purchase has been also comprehended a part of
the lands within the fork of Oconee and Ocmulgee rivers.
The particulars of the contract will be laid before Congress
so soon as they shall be in a state for communication.
In order to remove every ground of difference possible
with our Indian neighbors, I have proceeded in the work of
settling with them and marking the boundaries between us.
That with the Choctaw Nation is fixed in one part
and will be through the whole within a short time.
The country to which their title had been extinguished before
the Revolution is sufficient to receive a very respectable
population, which Congress will probably see the expediency
of encouraging so soon as the limits shall be declared.
We are to view this position as an outpost of the
United States, surrounded by strong neighbors and
distant from its support; and how far that monopoly
which prevents population should here be guarded
against and actual habitation made a condition of
the continuance of title will be for your consideration.
A prompt settlement, too, of all existing
rights and claims within this territory
presents itself as a preliminary operation.
In that part of the Indiana Territory which includes
Vincennes, the lines settled with the neighboring
tribes fix the extinction of their title at a breadth
of 24 leagues from east to west and about the
same length parallel with and including the Wabash.
They have also ceded a tract of 4 miles square,
including the salt springs near the mouth of that river.
In the Department of Finance it is with pleasure I inform
you that the receipts of external duties for the last
12 months have exceeded those of any former year, and
that the ration of increase has been also greater than usual.
This has enabled us to answer all the regular exigencies
of Government, to pay from the Treasury within 1 year
upward of $8M, principal and interest, of the public debt,
exclusive of upward of $1M paid by the sale of bank stock,
and making in the whole a reduction of nearly $5.5M
of principal, and to have now in the Treasury $4.5M
which are in a course of application to the further
discharge of debt and current demands.
Experience too so far authorizes us to believe, if no
extraordinary event supervenes, and the expenses which
will be actually incurred shall not be greater than were
contemplated by Congress at their last session, that we
shall not be disappointed in the expectations then formed.
But nevertheless, as the effect of peace on the amount
of duties is not yet fully ascertained, it is the more
necessary to practice every useful economy and to
incur no expense which may be avoided without prejudice.
The collection of the internal taxes having been
completed in some of the States, the officers
employed in it are of course out of commission.
In others they will be so shortly.
But in a few, where the arrangements for
the direct tax had been retarded, it will be
some time before the system is closed.
It has not yet been thought necessary to employ the
agent authorized by an act of the last session for
transacting business in Europe relative to debts and loans.
Nor have we used the power confided by the same act of
prolonging the foreign debt by reloans, and of redeeming
instead thereof an equal sum of the domestic debt.
Should, however, the difficulties of remittance on so large
a scale render it necessary at any time, the power shall
be executed, and the money thus employed abroad shall
in conformity with that law be faithfully applied
here in an equivalent extinction of domestic debt.
When effects so salutary result from the plans you have
already sanctioned; when merely by avoiding false objects
of expense we are able without a direct tax, without
internal taxes, and without borrowing to make large
and effectual payments toward the discharge of our
public debt and the emancipation of our posterity from
that mortal canker, it is an encouragement, fellow citizens,
of the highest order to proceed as we have begun in
substituting economy for taxation, and in pursuing what
is useful for a nation placed as we are, rather than what
is practiced by others under different circumstances.
And whensoever we are destined to meet events
which shall call forth all the energies of our countrymen,
we have the firmest reliance on those energies
and the comfort of leaving for calls like these the
extraordinary resources of loans and internal taxes.
In the meantime, by payments of the principal of our debt,
we are liberating annually portions of the external taxes
and forming from them a growing fund still further to
lessen the necessity of recurring to extraordinary resources.
The usual account of receipts and expenditures for the last
year with an estimate of the expenses of the ensuing one
will be laid before you by the Secretary of the Treasury.
No change being deemed necessary in our military
establishment, an estimate of its expenses for
the ensuing year on its present footing, as also
of the sums to be employed in fortifications and
other objects within that department, has been
prepared by the Secretary of War, and will make a part
of the general estimates which will be presented you.
Considering that our regular troops are employed for
local purposes, and that the militia is our general reliance
for great and sudden emergencies, you will doubtless
think this institution worthy of a review, and give it
those improvements of which you find it susceptible.
Estimates for the Naval Department, prepared by the
Secretary of the Navy, for another year will in like manner
be communicated with the general estimates.
A small force in the Mediterranean will still be necessary
to restrain the Tripoline cruisers, and the uncertain tenure
of peace with some other of the Barbary Powers
may eventually require that force to be augmented.
The necessity of procuring some smaller vessels for that
service will raise the estimate, but the difference in their
maintenance will soon make it a measure of economy.
Presuming it will be deemed expedient to expend
annually a convenient sum toward providing the naval
defense which our situation may require, I cannot but
recommend that the first appropriations for that purpose
may go to the saving what we already possess.
No cares, no attentions, can preserve vessels from
rapid decay which lie in water and exposed to the sun.
These decays require great and constant repairs,
and will consume, if continued, a great portion
of the money destined to naval purposes.
To avoid this waste of our resources it is proposed to add
to our navy-yard here a dock, within which our present
vessels may be laid up dry and under cover from the sun.
Under these circumstances experience proves that works
of wood will remain scarcely at all affected by time.
The great abundance of running water which this
situation possesses, at heights far above the level
of the tide, if employed as is practiced for lock
navigation, furnishes the means for raising and
laying up our vessels on a dry and sheltered bed.
And should the measure be found useful here,
similar depositories for laying up as well as for
building and repairing vessels may hereafter be
undertaken at other navy-yards offering the same means.
The plans and estimates of the work, prepared by a
person of skill and experience, will be presented
to you without delay, and from this it will be seen that
scarcely more than has been the cost of one vessel is
necessary to save the whole, and that the annual sum
to be employed toward its completion may be adapted
to the views of the Legislature as to naval expenditure.
To cultivate peace and maintain commerce
and navigation in all their lawful enterprises;
to foster our fisheries as nurseries of navigation
and for the nurture of man, and protect the
manufactures adapted to our circumstances;
to preserve the faith of the nation by an exact discharge
of its debts and contracts, expend the public money with
the same care and economy we would practice with our
own, and impose on our citizens no unnecessary burthens;
to keep in all things within the pale of our constitutional
powers and cherish the federal union as the only rock
of safety—these, fellow citizens, are the land-marks
by which we are to guide ourselves in all proceedings.
By continuing to make these the rule of our action we shall
endear to our countrymen the true principles of their
Constitution and promote a union of sentiment and
of action equally auspicious to their happiness and safety.
On my part, you may count on a cordial concurrence
in every measure for the public good and on all
the information I possess which may enable you
to discharge to advantage the high functions
with which you are invested by your country.23
Jefferson’s Second Annual Message to Congress on December 15
did not mention the threats of war.
Yet a French army at New Orleans would change America’s foreign relations.
His friend Du Pont de Nemours believed the French
would cede New Orleans and West Florida for $6 million.
Revenues estimated to be $9,500,000 for 1802
turned out to be the largest so far at $12,280,000.
Not counting interest on the debt, spending in 1802 was $8,100,000.
Republicans did very well in the 1802 elections giving them majorities
of 25 to 9 in the Senate and 103 to 39 in the House of Representatives.
On December 29 Jefferson in a letter to the War Secretary Dearborn wrote,
Our proceedings with the Indians should tend systematically
to that object, leaving the extinguishment of title in the
interior country to fall in as occasions may arise.
The Indians being once closed in between strong settled
countries on the Mississippi & Atlantic, will, for want of
game, be forced to agriculture, will find that small portions
of land well improved, will be worth more to them than
extensive forests unemployed, and will be continually
parting with portions of them, for money to buy stock,
utensils & necessaries for their farms & families.24
Notes
1. Thomas Jefferson Writings, p. 492-496.
2. The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Volume IX ed. Paul Leicester Ford, p. 203-204.
3. History of the United States During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson
by Henry Adams, p. 149-150.
4. Thomas Jefferson Writings, p. 1084-1085.
5. History of the United States During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson
by Henry Adams, p. 145.
6. Thomas Jefferson Writings, p. 1086.
7. The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Volume IX, p. 219-220.
8. Ibid., p. 220-221.
9. Ibid., p. 230-232.
10. Thomas Jefferson Writings, p. 1087-88.
11. The Life of Thomas Jefferson Volume II by Henry Randall, p. 666.
12. Thomas Jefferson: A Biography by Nathan Schachner, p. 686.
13. The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Volume IX, p. 270-272.
14. Ibid., p. 274-277.
15. To James Madison from Thomas Jefferson, 28 August 1801 (Online)
16. Thomas Jefferson Writings, p. 1093.
17. The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Volume IX, p. 306.
18. Ibid., p. 396-398.
19. Ibid., p. 501-509.
20. Thomas Jefferson Writings, p. 1104-1107.
21. The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Volume IX, p. 400-402.
22. Thomas Jefferson Writings, p. 1108.
23. The Basic Writings of Thomas Jefferson ed. Philip S. Foner, p. 342-346.
24. Jefferson the President: First Term, 1801-1805 by Dumas Malone, p. 274.
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