MAD TOM: THE SAGE OF MONTICELLO

The Sage Of Monticello.
After John Adams, as President, comes Thomas Jefferson, of course; and his name has not been diminished in the later revisions, because of his primary authorship of the iconic 1776 Declaration of Independence, although he is not viewed as favorably in his role as America’s Third President; and the tawdry story of how he fathered a number of black children from his female slaves, even if true, has perhaps been intended to bring him down. I have said so much about Jefferson elsewhere, and his general accomplishments have been so conspicuous, that it feels as though nothing more meaningful can be added to the accolades already bestowed upon him.
Yet there is indeed much more that can be said about him, particularly regarding him as a person, and also in connection with his foreign policy. Thus giving him two separate entries here, in addition to the several others I have written on him in other sections, I am justified by the fact of this man’s truly enormous importance to American history and to the American phenomenon in general, and even after all these I continue to feel that there is so much more I could say about him, and probably some other day I will.
The title of this entry is taken from the celebrated six-volume Jefferson biography (Jefferson and His Time) by the American historian Dumas Malone (1892-1986). I needed a pleasant-sounding title here, considering that my next Jefferson title is not going to be pleasant at all, and, between them two, some kind of balance is in order. It is no secret that during his life and even at times after his death, Jefferson was much vilified, and his iconic status of a true American legend was achieved only after Lincoln’s beatification of him, although in more recent times it has been shaken again (together with all Founding Fathers as a group) by the attacks of the anti-historical and determinedly iconoclastic hacks of political correctness.

Jefferson’s legacy to mankind is best capsulated in his own epitaph of himself, written a year before he died. Here it is, in his own words:
“Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the statute of Virginia for religious freedom, and father of the University of Virginia.”
This is a good summary of Jefferson’s major accomplishments (notice that he, most commendably, neglects to include his eight years as the Third President of the United States, and quite a few other things), although I still prefer Generalissimus Alexander Vasilievich Suvorov’s self-addressed epitaph, which he demanded to be written on his tombstone, without a single word added to it: “Here lies Suvorov.” (…Incidentally, his last command was most reverently obeyed.)
Returning to Jefferson, I am quite satisfied with his desire to prioritize his life accomplishments in the set of three, and by no means regard it as vanity. (By the way, Suvorov’s extreme humility may well be interpreted as the pinnacle of vanity, as he intentionally turns the name Suvorov into a self-sufficient monument to glory for himself, and in himself to mother Russia.)
One cannot possibly suggest that Jefferson was not appreciated enough in his lifetime. The fact that he was asked to write the American Declaration of Independence already speaks for itself. Then, we have a speech given on the floor of the House of Representatives on January 8, 1813, by the great American statesman and the Speaker of the House Henry Clay, known as the President-Maker: “The name of Jefferson will be hailed with gratitude, his memory honored and cherished as the second founder of the liberties of the people.”
On the other hand, Alexander Hamilton (admittedly his political opponent) calls him in a 1792 letter “a man of profound ambition and violent passions.” John Quincy Adams on several occasions questions his moral character, religious beliefs, and downright personal sincerity:
“If not an absolute atheist, he had no belief in a future existence. All his ideas of obligation or retribution were bounded by the present life. His duties to his neighbor were under no stronger guarantee than the laws of the land and the opinions of the world. The tendency of this condition upon a mind of great compass and powerful resources is to produce insincerity and duplicity, which were his besetting sins through life.” (John Quincy Adams: Diary, January 11, 1831.)
The same line continues in another Adams’s Diary entry five years later:
“I incline to the opinion that he was not altogether conscious of his own insincerity, and deceived himself, as well as others. His success through a long life, and especially from his entrance upon the office of Secretary of State under Washington until he reached the Presidential chair, seems, to my imperfect vision, a slur upon the moral government of the world.” (John Quincy Adams: Diary, July 29, 1836.)
Despite his admittedly “imperfect vision,” Adams’s opinion carries some weight, as he knew Jefferson as an actual person, rather than as a historical legend, but in my opinion, which the reader has long been apprised of, Jefferson the perfect legend is far more important than Jefferson the imperfect man, as his objective benefits to humanity well outweigh his personal foibles. For this simple reason, in my overall opinion of Jefferson, I am purposely siding with the above statement of Henry Clay as well as with the following statements of two American Presidents, which I have chosen to close this entry with:
“The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society.” (Abraham Lincoln: Letter to H. L. Pierce, April 6, 1856.)
“The immortality of Jefferson does not lie in any one of his achievements, but in his attitude toward mankind.” (Woodrow Wilson: Speech at Washington, April 13, 1916.)
As for Jefferson the “real man,” let him rest in peace. He has earned that, at the very least.

Mad Tom.
The demeaning and probably little deserved title of this “foreign policy” entry on Jefferson is taken from an uncharitable British political cartoon circa 1801 (courtesy of Encyclopaedia Britannica), which attacks not so much Jefferson himself as his Administration as a whole, and thus shows distinct relevance to the narrow subject under our present consideration.
In the cartoon, “Mad Tom” Jefferson is depicted in the rather prejudicial company of the Devil, which must be the natural British view of America’s state of the union at the time. A no less prejudicial view must have been projected to the world by the demented 1800 Presidential election, in which the Federalists, led by the sitting President John Adams, were narrowly defeated by the Republican ticket of Jefferson and Aaron Burr, at which point it was completely unclear as to who of these two, Jefferson or Burr, had won the Presidency. Each collected exactly seventy-three votes, and the winner was to be determined by the Federalist House of Representatives on the basis of which of the two was less unacceptable. Alexander Hamilton, by no means a friend of Jefferson, still lobbied for him against Burr, who was the ultimate anathema to him. (Later on, this extreme mutual animosity would lead to a duel, in which Burr would kill Hamilton.)
The 1800 election managed to produce an almost lethal Constitutional crisis. However, Jefferson swayed the Federalist vote in his favor by essentially promising to stay the Federalist course, and the House eventually picked him as America’s Third President on February 17, 1801. This hugely embarrassing and vexing crisis, would very soon produce (in 1804) the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution, making sure that both the President and the Vice President would, from then on, receive separate non-conflicting balloting.

But, returning to President Jefferson’s foreign policy, he was by no means a novice in this. Having served as President Washington’s Secretary of State, and having been one of the topmost intellectuals in all American history, he had by then firmly established the principles of such policy, by which he would abide.
His two guiding principles were staying out of war and territorial expansionism. (Ironically, these are the opposites of what seems to be the essence of American foreign policy today: getting involved in disastrously unprofitable wars, while steadily losing territory in such traditional spheres of influence as Latin America, where country after country--- and now, even the Washington DC-headquartered Organization of American States!--- are categorically refusing to toe the US-drawn line.)
At the time of Jefferson’s stay in office as President, Europe was heavily preoccupied with its Napoleonic wars, but Jefferson made neutrality his paramount principle, and followed it with an unfaltering precision, which, unsurprisingly, was beneficial only to the French, and so the angry British were anxious to retaliate, initially in the form of seizing American ships, and impressing American sailors on them into forced service in the British Navy, which would eventually lead to another British-American war of 1812-1815, reluctantly inherited by Thomas Jefferson’s successor, the next President of the United States James Madison.

Now, in his deliberate and aggressive pursuit of American expansionism, Jefferson presided over definitely the most profitable government purchase ever made, which was the 1803 Louisiana Purchase from France, which effectively doubled the existing size of the United States. I am certain that the fact that France would agree to the Louisiana Purchase, so beneficial to the United States, was in large measure due to Jefferson’s policy of neutrality in the current British-French War, as a reward for the American position, although other more objective considerations were certainly at play as well. To summarize this, it wasn’t merely a policy of “neutrality,” but one of calculated neutrality, while its obvious downside, the clash with Great Britain, was a foregone conclusion anyway, soon bound to happen no matter what.
Another outstanding achievement of the Jefferson Administration was the great 1804-1806 Lewis and Clark Expedition, a triumph of exploration and territorial expansion, which owes a large measure of gratitude to Jefferson’s foresight and willingness to take risks by investing a load of desperately needed money in what a lesser man would have rejected outright, as a classic example of a wild goose chase.

Critical historians, ever proud of their calculated objectivity, are eager to point out several downsides and in retrospect failures of Jefferson’s foreign policy, most conspicuously the unstoppable slide toward a war with Great Britain. But looking at a larger picture, one may safely conclude that, on the balance, it was a success, no matter which political angle one wishes to assume, whether one sympathetic toward Thomas Jefferson or utterly hostile to him both politically and as a person.