Chapter 27: Jefferson’s Second Term

1804

The Presidential Election Of 1804

As the 1804 election approaches, Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans discard Aaron Burr as their Vice-Presidential candidate in favor of former General George Clinton, now sitting Governor of New York.

With Washington and Hamilton dead and Adams out of the picture, the Federalists begin what will be an on-going struggle to find a candidate capable of winning widespread popular support. In 1804 they choose Charles C. Pinckney, an aristocratic planter from Charleston, Revolutionary War General, influential pro-slavery delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Minister to France under Washington, and running mate of Adams in 1800.

In advance of the election of 1804, the states have ratified the 12^th Amendment to the Constitution in order to distinguish between party candidates running for President vs. Vice-President. This is accomplished by a simple change – having the Electoral College shift from one combined vote for the offices, to two separate votes, one for President, the other for Vice-President. Any “ties” will still be broken in Congress, the House voting on President, the Senate on Vice-President. The possibility of having a President from one party and a Vice-President from the other remains.

Change To Voting Procedures Beginning With 1804 Presidential Election

The election takes place between November 2 and December 5, 1804.

A total of 143,110 “popular votes” are cast, double the level recorded in 1800. Eligibility continues to be limited to white men owning various threshold levels of property – and only 11 of the 17 states factor popular votes into their process for choosing “presidential electors. (In the other six they are chosen exclusively by state legislators.)

Still, the 1804 election is the first where mainstream Americans begin to feel that their direct votes have a great deal to do with who will be President. This trend will grow over time, much to the chagrin of the 1787 convention delegates who felt that selection of the Executive was much too important to be left up to “popular passions.”

Growth In Popular Voting For Presidential Electors

When the ballots are all in, Jefferson is re-elected by an overwhelming majority. He beats Charles C. Pinckney by a 73% to 27% margin in the popular vote, and by 162-14 in the Electoral College. He carries 15 of the 17 states (losing only in Connecticut and Delaware), including prior Federalist strongholds across the North.

Results Of The 1804 Presidential Election

The same story holds true in the race for Vice-President, where Governor Clinton easily outdistances Rufus King, the New York Federalist and former Ambassador to Britain under Washington.

1804 Electoral College Vote For VP

Jefferson’s victory reflects approval for his Louisiana Purchase and an uptick in the economy in 1803-4, after a lessening of tensions with France.

1804

Democratic-Republicans Win By A Landslide In 1804

The Democratic-Republicans also dominate the Federalists in the 1804 Congressional races.

In the House, the total number of seats up for grabs has expanded from 106 to 142 based on the new population counts from the 1800 Census. The largest gains in apportionment are in the Northern states, a fact that is already troubling to politicians in the South.

Apportionment Of House Seat After The 1800 Census

The margin of victory for the Democratic-Republicans in the lower chamber is remarkable. Only six years earlier, in 1799, the Federalists held the House by 14 seats (60-46). After the 1804 votes are in, they trail their opponents by 86 seats (28-114).

Election Trends – House Of Representatives

In addition to continuing their dominance across the South, the Democratic-Republicans have now won solid majorities in the North in both 1802 and 1804.

House Trends By Region

In the Senate, the Democratic-Republicans now enjoy a 27-7 margin over the Federalists, after a pick-up of two more seats. Recent additions in the upper chamber include the Federalist John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts in 1802 and Henry Clay of Kentucky in 1804, who begins his career as a Democratic-Republican.

Election Trends — Senate 

Regional results in the Senate mirror those in the House, with a steady erosion for the Federalists in the North.

Senate Trends By Region

Overall then, the Democratic-Republicans emerge from the 1804 election in firm control of the Presidency and both chambers of Congress – while the Federalists are left reeling.

March 4, 1805

Jefferson’s Second Inaugural Address

On March 4, 1805, Jefferson delivers his second inaugural address in the Senate chamber. Unlike the soaring rhetoric achieved four years ago, his tone is defensive, aimed at justifying his policies and programs against what he regards as ongoing slanders by the press – especially surrounding his mistress, Sally Hemmings.

He seeks peace with the major foreign powers…

In the transaction of your foreign affairs, we have endeavored to cultivate the friendship of all nations, and especially of those with which we have the most important relations. 

Restraint on taxes and federal spending, to help fund targeted infrastructure improvements…

The suppression of unnecessary offices, of useless establishments and expenses, enabled us to discontinue our internal taxes. The remaining revenue on the consumption of  foreign articles, is paid cheerfully by those who can afford to add foreign luxuries to  domestic comforts…it may be the pleasure and pride of an American to ask, what farmer,  what mechanic, what laborer, ever sees a tax-gatherer of the United States?

These contributions enable us to give support… in time of peace, to rivers, canals, roads, arts, manufactures, education and other great objects within each state. In time of war… by other resources reserved for that crisis… War will then be but a suspension of useful  works, and a return to a state of peace, a return to the progress of improvement. 

Support for his controversial Louisiana Purchase… 

I know that the acquisition of Louisiana has been disapproved by some, from a candid apprehension that the enlargement of our territory would endanger its union…. and in any view, is it not better that the opposite bank of the Mississippi should be settled by our own brethren and children, than by strangers of another family? 

Favorable treatment of the native American tribes…

Humanity enjoins us to teach (our aboriginal inhabitants) agriculture and the domestic arts; to encourage to that industry which alone can enable them to maintain their place in existence…. But the endeavors to enlighten them… have powerful obstacles to encounter. 

An end of the personal attacks he has suffered in the press…

During this course of administration, and in order to disturb it, the artillery of the press has been levelled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science, are deeply to be  regretted.

Our fellow citizens have looked on, cool and collected… they gathered around their public functionaries, and when the constitution called them to the decision by suffrage, they pronounced their verdict, honorable to those who had served them, and consolatory to the friend of man, who believes he may be intrusted with his own affairs…our wish, as  well as theirs, is, that the public efforts may be directed honestly to the public good.

Finally, guidance from that “Being in whose hands we are.”

I shall now enter on the duties to which my fellow citizens have again called me, and shall proceed in the spirit of those principles which they have approved. I fear not that any motives of interest may lead me astray; I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are secure to you the peace, friendship, and approbation of all nations. 

March 4, 1805 – March 4, 1809

Overview Of Jefferson’s Second Term

Jefferson’s wish to concentrate on domestic policy in his second term will be frustrated by America’s inevitable entanglement in the warfare between Napoleon’s France and Great Britain.

As the term begins, the President’s cabinet is largely unchanged from before, except for Clinton as Vice-President and the Virginian, John Breckinridge, as Attorney General.

Thomas Jefferson’s Cabinet In 1805

James Monroe continues as Ambassador to France, with ex-New York Senator John Armstrong remaining in London at the Court of St. James.

Jefferson’s financial priority lies in ridding the nation of debt, by reducing the size of the standing army and trimming other federal expenses.

I place economy among the first and most important virtues and public debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with public debt. 

His commitment to an agrarian economy and way of life is undiminished.

Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine  virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from the face of the earth.  

Achieving this idyllic vision rests on geographic expansion – opening more available land for farming.

With the Louisiana Territory already in hand, he now tries, unsuccessfully, to buy Florida and Cuba from Spain.

He also has William Henry Harrison, Territorial Governor of Indiana, negotiate two sizable land cessions with native tribes to the west. Unlike his successors, Jefferson claims to be favorably impressed by the capacities of the Indians, and hopes to teach them agricultural skills and assimilate, rather than banish, them. His actions, however, will often belie his words in this regard.

1804 Cessions Of Tribal Lands To The West

His far westward explorations continue, with news flowing in from Lewis and Clark about the Missouri River and a pathway to the west coast, and with another expedition setting out under Zebulon Pike.

Pike – later an army General killed in the War of 1812 – heads into the Louisiana Territory, first up north to Minnesota, then across the southwest to find the headwaters of the Red River and the Arkansas River. This takes him into Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado, and the famous Rocky Mountain peak that bears his name.

As he drives westward, Jefferson is intent on weaving the new lands into the fabric of the Union.

To link the old east with the new west commercially, he initiates and funds two major road-building projects — despite his philosophical aversion to federal spending and debt.

Jefferson’s Major Road Initiatives 

While Jefferson is pleased with this progress on the domestic front, he soon finds that threats to national security are occupying more and more of his time and energy.

One threat is particularly grating. Just as he is trying to glue new states onto the Union, he learns that his former Vice-President, Aaron Burr, is plotting with James Wilkinson, his Territorial Governor in Louisiana, to mount a “filibustering” campaign – to create an independent confederation of states extending through New Orleans and into Mexico. He will go after Burr with a vengeance for this transgression.

But the Burr affair is nothing compared to the repeated acts of war being committed against the United States by Britain and France on the high seas throughout Jefferson’s second term – as Napoleon attempts to achieve worldwide hegemony between 1805 and 1815.

The US role in the grand scheme is largely that of a pawn — with the two super-powers intent on blocking all shipping traffic between America and ports controlled by the enemy. To do so means breaking commercial laws — interfering with US ships at sea, turning them back or attacking them outright, seizing their cargoes and impressing their sailors into foreign duty.

After negotiating efforts in Paris and London fail, Jefferson makes a fatal error in attempting to stay out of the war.

To demonstrate neutrality toward both sides, he secures passage of the 1807 Embargo Act, which bans US ships from sailing to all foreign ports. But this move not only fails to improve diplomatic relations, it also crushes the east coast shipping industry. In 1808 the value of U.S. exports fall by almost 80% and talk of “nullification” forces the President to repeal the Act just prior to leaving office.

Value Of U.S. Exports: Before – After Embargo Act 

Across his entire time in office, the overall economy drifts up and down, with per capita GDP ending in 1808 about where it was in 1801.

Economic Growth During Jefferson’s Two Terms 

Milestones during Jefferson’s second term are as follows:

Jefferson’s Second Term: Key Events

Thomas Jefferson’s Lasting Legacies

His Principles Of Government

Thomas Jefferson’s political philosophy will dominate the American scene over the next four decades.

The Democratic Party he founds turns the country away from the Federalist principles espoused by Washington, Hamilton and Adams and relegates their followers to minority status in Congress.

Jefferson also works the political process in such a way that he hands the presidency over to his two Virginian protégés – Madison and Monroe – thereby extending his behind-the-scenes’ power another 16 years, almost to his death (and Adams) on July 4, 1826, fifty years to the day from the adoption of his monumental Declaration of Independence.

The central themes of Jefferson’s presidency will ring down the generations to follow:

• The shift in focus from the original 13 colonies to the acquisition and development of the vast lands west of the Appalachians and then of the Mississippi River – a shift which sets America’s “manifest destiny” in motion and provides the Democratic Party with a long-run lock on western voters.
  
• Commitment to firmly integrating the new states into the Union based on the ideals in the Constitution.
  
• The libertarian drive to insure that power remains in the hands of individual citizens distributed across the states – and away from centralized power blocks, be they in the form of government or churches or economic entities.
  
• A wish to sharply limit the size of a central government and concentrate its role on foreign policy rather than domestic policy which, according to “his” Tenth Amendment, involves “rights belonging to the states.”
  
• Belief that common local men will prove superior to distant politicians in debating and resolving social needs or problems arising in their own communities.
  
• Abhorrence of public debt and strict limits on taxation and spending, in order to minimize government’s impact on the lives of citizens.
  
• A deep and abiding distrust of bankers, soft money and the banking system in general, especially Hamilton’s central Bank of the United States.
  
• A similar fear of capitalism and corporations, where money trumps labor and white men run the risk of being reduced to wage slaves.
  
• A conviction that all white Americans should have access to free public education, and to the development of outstanding colleges, such as the University of Virginia, which he founded in 1785.
  
• Undying faith in the power of the Union and a commitment to preserve it against all threats, foreign or domestic.

While also having faith in the basically good intentions of common men, he firmly believes that leadership belongs with a “natural aristocracy.” As he says in an 1813 note to Adams:

For I agree with you that there a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents. There is an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents. The natural aristocracy I consider the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society.

Interwoven with all these principles is Jefferson’s commitment to the southern, agrarian way of life he has known since childhood – including slavery.

So a final part of his legacy comes back to his an examination of his words and deeds relative to that institution.

Jefferson’s Rationalizations On Slavery

Thomas Jefferson lives among slaves all his life. They provide the hard labor required to build his mountain-top home and miniature town, grow and harvest his farm crops, operate his mill and brewery, his spindles and nailery, cook and serve his fine French cuisine, pay off his debts, and, in the case of Sally Hemmings, act as his surrogate wife after Martha dies in 1782.

They seem to fascinate him intellectually. He studies them: their physical, mental and emotional traits, their joys and sorrows, the ways in which they deal with their fate. Almost in scientific fashion, he records these observations in his Farm Book and in his Notes On The State of Virginia, first drafted in 1781 and completed in 1785.

Throughout his life he also reflects on the institution of slavery, and on his personal relationship to it.

In a telling 1805 note to William Burwell, his private secretary, he describes a range of attitudes toward slavery he has encountered among owners:

There are many virtuous men who would make any sacrifices to effect it. Many equally virtuous who persuade themselves either that the thing is not wrong, or that it cannot be remedied. And very many, with whom interest is morality.

Over time, he seems to see himself belonging in the first class – ready to make “any sacrifices” to end the practice. This is clear in a 1788 letter to Jacques Brissot, a leading proponent of abolition in France.

You know that nobody wishes more ardently to see an abolition not only of the trade but of the condition of slavery: and certainly nobody will be more willing to encounter every sacrifice for that object.

He reiterates this, using similar words, a quarter of a century later in an 1814 letter to his friend, the academician, Thomas Cooper.

There is nothing I would not sacrifice to a practicable plan of abolishing every vestige of this moral and political depravity.

Like Hamlet, Jefferson asserts that he is ready to act to correct that which is morally wrong to him — if only he can arrive at a proper remedy. And therein lies the rub.

His contact with the Africans has convinced him that they probably have descended from a different species, and are biologically inferior to white men. Given this, he tells Edward Bancroft in 1789 that releasing the slaves would be tantamount to “abandoning children.”

As far as I can judge from the experiments which have been made, to give liberty to, or rather, to abandon persons whose habits have been formed in slavery is like abandoning children.

Other barriers to abolition materialize over time.

If freed, the Africans could never be assimilated. His 1785 Notes lay out the reasons why.

It will probably be asked, Why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the state? Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race.

In 1803 a letter to James Monroe cites the events surrounding Toussaint’s slave rebellion in Saint-Domingue (Haiti) as evidence of the inevitable violence between the two races, if freedom is granted.

I become daily more & more convinced that all the West India islands will remain in the hands of the people of colour, & a total expulsion of the whites sooner or later take place.

What is left then is re-colonization, the solution he references in his 1814 letter to his Virginia neighbor and anti-slavery advocate, Edward Coles.

I have seen no proposition so expedient on the whole, as that of emancipation of those born after a given day, and of their education and expatriation at a proper age.

So Jefferson appears to come full circle, back to his 1785 Notes. His intellect tells him that no matter the biological inferiority of the Africans, taking away their freedom and forcing them into slavery is morally corrupt and an affront to God’s justice.

The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it…The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to his worst passions, and thus nursed, educated and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities.

If a slave can have a country in this world, it must be any other in preference to that in which he is to be born to live and labor for another … or entail his own miserable condition on the endless generations proceeding from him.

Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever.

He “trembles” again for his country during the 1820 Missouri crisis – “a fire bell in the night” – and once more, as seer, in an 1821 autobiographical reflection.

Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government.

Taken together, Jefferson’s rhetoric is of the virtuous man who recognizes the evils of slavery, is ready to make any sacrifice to end it, but simply sees no viable way out of the dilemma.

All that’s left for him is to do the best he can in the inevitable presence of slavery — a Herculean task, as he points out in his Notes:

The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances.

One suspects again that Jefferson sees himself in this observation – the rare “prodigy” able to rise above the coarsening realities of slavery that surround him.

But is this truly the case? How well do Jefferson’s words match up with his actions as a slave owner?

The record here goes against him.

There is no evidence to support the notion that he was personally harsh in dealing with his slaves. He does, however, expect reasonable levels of “industry” from them, and hires overseers such as William Page and Gabriel Lilly, both known for resorting to the whip to enforce discipline.

More troubling is his assignment of young children to handle some particularly onerous tasks. Because of their short stature, some spend days at a time on hands and knees in the dirt plucking and killing tobacco worms. Others end up in the “nailery,” crowded around a flaming forge in the summer heat, converting iron nail rods into various sizes of finished nails. Jefferson is particularly proud of this factory operation, oversees it himself, and remarks on its profitability.

I now employ a dozen little boys from 10. to 16. years of age, overlooking all the details of their business myself and drawing from it a profit.

It is precisely this tendency to prioritize personal profits over the well-being of his slaves that counts most in calling Jefferson’s moral sense into question.

On one hand he will insist that the slaves are part of “his family;” on the other, he will sell them off whenever economic necessity calls.

For a man with great sensitivity to language, his words about “breeding women” in his Farm Book are both cold and calculating.

The loss of 5 little ones in 4 years induces me to fear that the overseers do not permit the women to devote as much time as is necessary to the care of their children; that they view their labor as the 1st object and the raising their child but as secondary.

I consider the labor of a breeding woman as no object, and a child raised every 2. years is of more profit then the crop of the best laboring man. In this, as in all other cases, providence has made our duties and our interests coincide perfectly…. With respect therefore to our women & their children

I must pray you to inculcate upon the overseers that it is not their labor, but their increase which is the first consideration with us.”

Likewise his “investment advice” to friends.

Invest every (spare) farthing in land and negroes, which besides a present support bring a silent profit of from 5 to 10 per cent in this country, by the increase in their value.

Here indeed his slaves are reduced from “family” to “property,” to be bred and fed and sold at auction. And sell them he does. Never as a “commercial trader” like his father-in-law; rather out of expediency, to buy the many things he wants for Monticello and to pay off debts.

In the decade from 1784 to 1794, records show that he disposes of some 161 slaves. More sales would follow, always accompanied by a stated wish to “keep families together”…

To indulge connections seriously formed by those people, where it can be done reasonably.

Always accompanied by…

Scruples about selling negroes but for delinquency, or on their own request.

Reservations aside, the commitment to “silent profit” also extends to Jefferson’s last will and testament. Unlike Washington, he refuses to free his slaves upon his death, with the exception of some five members of the Heming’s family.

Words and deeds. Weighed in the balance, the record is unattractive.

Jefferson is by no means the callous or uncaring slave master; but neither is he the “prodigy” he refers to in his 1805 note to Burwell.

At moments of economic necessity, self-interest too often trumps morality.