Jones allowed that he had found Jefferson’s Inaugural Address passage noting the resemblance between “religious & political Intolerance” insightful. He was happy that Jefferson would not be giving vent to “all the fervor of vindictive Retaliation” that possessed some of their fellows. Yet, like the Peripatetic, Jones did not think “Forbearance” ought to be indulged “in its extreme Latitude.” After all, voters had investigated the meaning of votes for Jefferson and for Adams, and their decision had to have its effect. “A society of conscientious Baptists,” he noted, “would act very absurdly in electing for their Pastor, a lutheran Priest, tho in other respects a pious & virtuous man.”

  As Jones saw it, the top officials in the Executive Branch must share the president’s views, because “to them he must impart his Confidential counsels and Commit his official responsibility.” When it came to those lower on the totem pole, on the other hand, “Talent, diligence & fidelity seem to bound the claims of the state,” and personal opinions ought to play no role. A man deprived of or denied office on the basis of “his private Judgment” would likely “foster in his Party the implacable obstinacy of martyrdom, which grows out of Persecution.” A good republican will occasionally notice principled disagreement, but in making appointments he ought “to exhibit occasional proofs, that he aims not at the Extermination but the Reformation of his adversaries, at a System of Comprehension not of exclusion.…” Over time this approach would lead to widespread agreement “in every mind not eminently perverted, and gradually sink the spirit of Party, in a Common attachment to true Principles of Liberty & Right.” Judicious appointments could even win converts.

  Jefferson’s reply to Jones’s thoughtful ruminations on the challenge Jefferson faced when it came to appointments, the considerations he should bear in mind, and the course he ought to follow did not reach the length of Jones’s.22 It did make clear that the president understood the task facing him. “I am sensible,” he wrote, “how far I should fall short of effecting all the reformation which reason would suggest and experience approve, were I free to do whatever I thought best. but when we reflect how difficult it is to move or inflect the great machine of society, how impossible to advance the notions of a whole people suddenly to ideal right, we see the wisdom of Solen’s remark that no more good must be attempted than the nation can bear.…” His priorities would be “to reform the waste of public money … and improve some little on old routines.”

  6

  The new president had already paid considerable attention to appointments by the time he took the oath of office, drawing up lists of Adams’s appointees, making notes on patronage problems in particular states, requiring State Department Chief Clerk Jacob Wagner to provide him a list of that department’s clerks including a description of each man’s duties, and otherwise methodically preparing for the task he faced. He continued on this path throughout his tenure.1 Appointment issues would be a kind of leitmotif of his presidency, swelling to dominant volume from time to time and otherwise always humming along in the background. (Reverberations of some of Jefferson’s patronage decisions would affect the Madison administration significantly.) Characteristically Jefferson hoped to strike some kind of medium. On one hand he would not throw out all of the old functionaries and replace them with new ones. On the other he could hardly be expected to leave things as they were. Federalist presidents had excluded Republicans from office, and the newly ascendant Republicans (whom Jefferson regarded as being the American people) ought ultimately to have a due proportion of federal offices. (“Ultimately” could be distant.)

  Jefferson thought he had 316 employees under his power of removal.2 Subordinates of those 316 could be replaced by the president’s appointees, which meant they were at Jefferson’s beck and call in case he decided to push the matter. Most of the three thousand or so other civilian workers in the Federal Government came under the authority of Postmaster General Gideon Granger, also a presidential appointee.3 The selection of a New Englander for that patronage-heavy post reflected the president’s calculations concerning the special care that would need to be taken to coax that homeland of Federalism into line.

  Immediately upon entering office, Jefferson sent a letter to the “midnight appointees” informing them that they would never enter into their intended offices.4 Jefferson regarded John Adams’s and the Federalist Senate’s appointment of these people in what were known to be the waning days of their tenure not only as an affront to the people that had chosen Republicans to control the Executive Branch and Congress in 1800–01, but as a personal unkindness by his onetime friend John Adams to him. The letter explained that Adams had selected these people “when so restricted in time as not to admit sufficient enquiry & consideration,” and that since Jefferson had a right to “agents of his administration … on whom he ha[d] personal reliance,” they would “therefore be pleased to consider the appointment[s they] ha[d] received as if never made.”

  Jefferson confided to one political ally, “[T]here is nothing I am so anxious about as good nominations, conscious that the merit as well as reputation of an administration depends as much on that as on it’s measures.”5 He had learned this lesson from participation in and close observation of his presidential predecessors’ administrations.

  Different states would present their own unique patronage problems, as not only did Federalist strength vary from state to state, but some states’ Republicans were divided into numerous groups. Thus Jefferson found himself in July 1801 writing to Republican U.S. Senator Wilson Cary Nicholas of Virginia that he heard nothing about removals from south of the Old Dominion, “in Delaware & Jersey they are moderately importunate: in Pennsylvania there is a strong pressure on us, & some discontent. but in N. York a section of the republicans is furious on this subject.” Nicholas knew of the three Republican groups in the Empire State—Livingstonians, Clintonians, and supporters of Vice President Aaron Burr—“without my venturing a specification of them,” and Jefferson had “the confidential sentiments of the most respectable persons of each.” One New York Republican group “has opened a battery on us as you will see by the inclosed paper. you will be at no loss for the source of this”: followers of Vice President Burr.6

  Perhaps Burr thought that, as vice president, he could count on the president’s support when it came to squabbles among New York Republicans. If so, he mistook Jefferson. To Nicholas, a Virginian and sometime confidant, Jefferson made clear that Burr had no claim to his loyalty: “we shall yield a little to their pressure, but no more than appears absolutely necessary to keep them together.”

  Ultimately Jefferson decided that the Clintonians and the Livingstonians had outstripped the Burrites, and so he cut Burr supporters out of the patronage in their state. Eventually Jefferson gave his behind-the-scenes support to George Clinton for Republican vice presidential candidate in 1804.7 Burr, recognizing that staying in the District of Columbia had become a political dead end, tried to buttress his political strength by running for governor of New York.8 Alexander Hamilton, who had advocated Jefferson’s cause against Burr during the 1801 presidential runoff in the U.S. House of Representatives, slandered his onetime friend during the latter’s ill-fated governor’s race as well. Burr demanded an explanation—that is, some kind of retraction of Hamilton’s insinuations about Burr’s character. Although Hamilton had given way in a similar context once before, he decided this time not to do so. Burr demanded “satisfaction.” The “interview” was scheduled for Weehawken, New Jersey.

  Though he had told a friend beforehand that he intended to waste his shot, Hamilton took hair-trigger pistols to the dueling ground. This became clear when one of his pistols misfired before the combatants assumed their places. In the event the greatest living Federalist missed the vice president. Aaron Burr took careful aim, then delivered a mortal wound. Hamilton died the next day.

  Despite soon being indicted in both New York and New Jersey, Aaron Burr remained vice president. His role in the Virginia Dynasty drama had two more acts to play.

  We have no surviving commentary from Jefferson concerning Hamilton’s fate. Life’s fleeting nature weighed on his mind in mid-1804 for personal reasons.

  Jefferson married Martha Wayles on January 1, 1772, and they had two daughters who survived to adulthood: Martha and Mary, aka Maria. Mrs. Jefferson died as a result of complications from Mary’s birth, and family lore says she exacted a promise from her husband on her deathbed that he would never remarry. Aged thirty-nine at the time, and with nearly forty-four years ahead of him, he never did.

  By all accounts Jefferson invested considerable emotional energy in these daughters and their children. He also seems to have gotten along well with his sons-in-law, both of whom won election to Congress during his presidency and lived in the Executive Mansion with him at one point, though Martha’s husband, Thomas Mann Randolph, was increasingly beset with mental or emotional issues as he aged.

  It came as a shock to President Jefferson when Mary died, aged twenty-five years, early in 1804. His friend from college days and fellow eminent Virginia politician John Page wrote Jefferson a truly heartfelt note of condolence after waiting a little while.9 As he explained, he had not wanted to intrude on Jefferson’s “precious time which paternal tenderness could not but devote to bewailing the inexpressible loss of an inestimable Daughter! But I should be void of sympathetic Feelings, were I any longer to refrain from mingling my Grief, & that of my Family, with yours!” (Page used five exclamation points in this quite poignant eleven-sentence letter, a record in Jefferson’s entire surviving correspondence.)

  Pious Episcopalian that he was, Page drew Jefferson’s attention to his own conviction that Maria was now “happy! And that our unavailing grief for lost happiness is to be unhappy indeed. Let us no longer be selfish,” he counseled, “and make ourselves unhappy, because we could not detain her in this Vale of Sorrow.… Mrs. Eppes,” John assured Tom, “was too dear to every one who had even once seen her, not to leave on their minds a long recollection of her, & a lasting impression of Grief for her loss.” Everyone who had witnessed her father’s “paternal delight in her, must be greatly afflicted till they can know, or hope at least, that you have found that consolation which they wish you to receive.”

  If that were not a beautiful enough statement, Jefferson responded with perhaps the most affectingly poetic passage he ever wrote. “Your letter, my dear friend, of the 25th ult.,” he began, “is a new proof of the goodness of your heart, and the part you take in my loss marks an affectionate concern for the greatness of it. it is great indeed. others may lose of their abundance.; but, I, of my want, have lost, even the half of all I had.”10 Whatever expectations of a contented retirement he nurtured “now hang on the slender thread of a single life.” After ruminating a bit on the passing of so many of their common college friends, Jefferson—for whom staying in Virginia’s coastal Tidewater region (including Washington and Williamsburg) in the heat of the summer was anathema—invited Page to bring his family to Monticello to escape the sick season.

  Maria Eppes’s death also brought another unexpected event: a sympathetic letter from Jefferson’s former friend Abigail Adams.11 The wife of former president John Adams, Mrs. Adams had known Maria as a child who made quite a powerful impression on her. Thomas Jefferson, American minister to France, had left young Mary at home in the care of his sister when first he went with his older daughter Martha to France. Finding the separation unbearable, Jefferson père finally sent for his younger daughter. She was to travel by ship to England, then from there to France, in company of a slave woman.

  Mary turned up in England not in the company of the person Jefferson had intended, but of a girl only slightly older than she, Sally Hemings. Abigail Adams thought this shocking. Still, over several days’ stay, Mary made a strong impression on the frosty Yankee. Thus, despite the political acrimony between the House of Adams and Père Jefferson over the previous decade, Mrs. Adams felt impelled to tell him how sorry she was at his loss.

  “Had you been no other than the private inhabitant of Monticello,” she began, “I should e’er this time have addrest you, with that sympathy, which a recent event has awakened in my Bosom, but reasons of various kinds withheld my pen, until the powerful feelings of my heart, have burst through the restraint, and called upon me to shed the tear of sorrow over the departed remains, of your beloved and deserving Daughter, an event which I most sincerely mourn.” Bygones had not exactly become bygones so far as she was concerned, but she had to commiserate with him anyway. She did so by recalling a touching scene between herself and young Maria, then aged nine years. “It has been some time since that I conceived of any event in this Life, which could call forth, feelings of Mutual sympathy, but … I have tasted the bitter cup, and bow with reverence, and humility before the great Dispenser of it, without whose permission, and over ruling providence; not a sparrow falls to the ground.” She signed “her, who once took pleasure in Subscribing Herself your Friend ABIGAIL ADAMS.”

  Jefferson’s response to Abigail Adams made clear that Maria had died loving her, and that he welcomed the opportunity “of expressing my regret that circumstances should have arisen which have seemed to draw a line of separation between us.”12 He artfully insisted that he and John Adams had never been rivals, for if either had retired from the contest, his supporters rather than supporting the other would have found a new champion for their principles. He surely must have realized he would provoke her ire by adding, “I can say with truth that one act of mr Adams’s life, and one only, ever gave me a moment’s personal displeasure. I did consider his last appointments to office as personally unkind.” He went on to explain that since “they were from among my most ardent political enemies, from whom no faithful cooperation could ever be expected,” Adams’s appointment of them left Jefferson to choose between their obstruction of his administration if he did not remove them and “the odium of putting others in their places.” However, he concluded, his displeasure at this act of the Adams administration’s closing days had soon come to seem to Jefferson “something for friendship to forgive,” and had been “cordially” forgiven.

  Jefferson concluded his message with assurance he had hoped for an opportunity to “feel relief from being unbosomed” to her. He held Mr. Adams in “the same state of esteem & respect” as he customarily had, as well as feeling “a sincere attachment” to her—which is why he had taken the liberty of “open[ing] myself to you without reserve.” Mrs. Adams replied with equal openness. First she claimed that John Adams had found on entering into the presidency that every appointive office had been filled by his predecessor, and that he had thought nothing of appointing fit people to all the appointive offices. She then leveled a return blast at him: winning an election against her husband had not in itself provoked “any enmity towards you Sir,” but siccing James Thomson Callender on John Adams had “my utter abhorrence and detestation,” because his tactics “were the blackest calumny and foulest falsehoods.”

  As to their friendship, she found the pardon of Callender and attendant reimbursement of his fine had “placed you in a light very different from what I once viewed you in.” Callender’s “basest libel” and “vilest Slander, which malice could invent” had earned him his punishment, to her eye, and for the president to reimburse him the fine “was a public approbation of his conduct” even if Jefferson had not publicly praised the wordsmith’s writing. This “stab” to “the fair fame and upright intentions of” John Adams was insupportable. “This Sir,” she thundered, “I considered as a personal injury. This was the Sword that cut asunder the Gordian knot, which could not be untied by all the efforts of party Spirit, by rivalship by Jealousy or any other malignant fiend.”

  Yet she took some solace in observing, “The serpent you cherished and warmed, bit the hand that nourished him, and gave you sufficient Specimens of his talents, his gratitude his justice, and his truth.” Abigail Adams did not know the half of it. The blowback to which she referred was Callender’s disclosure of Jefferson’s relationship with the slave who had accompanied Maria from Virginia to Paris via the Adamses’ English residence in 1787, Sally Hemings. In time—nearly two centuries later—the stories Callender told would damage Thomas Jefferson’s carefully cultivated historical reputation extremely.13

  After being rebuffed in his quest for a patronage post by the Virginia Republican high command at the beginning of Jefferson’s administration, Callender had resolved to have his revenge. He turned his particular set of skills—those described by Abigail Adams in her letter to President Jefferson—on the man with whom he had been so angry in his correspondence with Secretary James Madison.

  According to the leading scholar of the subject, “Sally Hemings had either six or seven children.”14 Virginians in the know thought Jefferson had fathered them. Although at least one newspaper editor had considered publishing it before, Callender in 1802 made this story, details of which he had gained from Jefferson’s neighbors, public.15 Another reason for Callender’s decision to publicize this matter was his disgust with the easy interaction between upper-class white men and black women in Richmond. His first blast included several examples of the hostile anti-black rhetoric he would use in later installments:

  It is well known that the man, whom it delighteth the people to honor, keeps and for many years has kept, as his concubine, one of his slaves. Her name is SALLY. The name of her eldest son is Tom. His features are said to bear a striking though sable resemblance to those of the president himself. The boy is ten or twelve years of age. His mother went to France in the same vessel with Mr. Jefferson and his two daughters. The delicacy of this arrangement must strike every portion of common sensibility. What a sublime pattern for an American ambassador to place before the eyes of two young ladies!…