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26. Vice-President
n the last day of December 1, 1793, Mr. Jefferson resigned the office of Secretary of State and retired from political life. This was not a sudden resolution on his part, nor unexpected to his country. The political disagreement between himself and the Secretary of the Treasury, added to his general disinclination to holding office, was the cause of his retirement. This disagreement, originating in a fundamental difference of opinion and aggravated by subsequent collisions in the cabinet, was reflected back upon the people and aggravated in turn the agitations and animosities between the republicans and federalists, of which they were respectively the leaders.
Having discovered in a letter from the President while on a journey to the south that he intended to resign the administration at the end of his first term, Mr. Jefferson decided on making that the date of his own retirement. This resolution was formed so early as April, 1791, and first communicated to the President in February, 1792. The private conversations held between these two great public servants at different periods during their official connection attest the sincerity of their attachment to each other and the fervor of their devotion to the country. While both were sighing for retirement, each endeavored to dissuade the other from it as an irreparable public calamity.
After five and twenty years' continual employment in the public service, Mr. Jefferson returned with great satisfaction to that mode of life which had always been congenial to him and from which he was resolved never again to be diverted. In answer to a letter to the Secretary of State soon after his resignation containing an invitation by the President pressing his return to the public councils, he wrote: "No circumstances, my dear sir, will evermore tempt me to engage in anything public. I thought myself perfectly fixed in this determination when I left Philadelphia; but every day and hour since has added to its inflexibility. It is a great pleasure to me to retain the esteem and approbation of the President, and this forms the only ground of any reluctance at being unable to comply with every wish of his. Pray convey these sentiments and a thousand more to him, which my situation does not permit me to go into." (to Edmund Randolph, Sept. 7, 1794. ME 9:290)
In the cultivation of his farm, with which he was at all times enamored and to which he was now intently devoted, Mr. Jefferson was as philosophical and original as in every other department of business. On and around the mountain on which Monticello is situated was an estate of about 5,000 acres owned by him, of which eleven hundred and twenty acres only were under cultivation. A ten-years' abandonment of his lands to the ravages of overseers had brought on them a degree of deterioration far beyond what he had expected, and he determined upon the following plan for retrieving them from the wretched condition in which they were found: He divided all his lands under culture into four farms, and every farm into seven fields of forty acres. Each farm, therefore, consisted of two hundred and eighty acres. He established a system of rotation in cropping which embraced seven years, and this was the reason for the division of each farm into seven fields. In the first of these years, wheat was cultivated; in the second, Indian corn; in the third, peas or potatoes; in the fourth, vetches; in the fifth, wheat; and in the sixth and seventh, clover. Thus each of his fields yielded some produce every year, and the rotation of culture, while it prepared the soil for the succeeding crop, increased its produce. Each farm under the direction of a particular steward or bailiff was cultivated by four Negroes, four Negresses, four oxen, and four horses. On each field was constructed a barn sufficiently capacious to hold its produce in grain and forage. A few extracts from his private correspondence at this period will show how completely his mind was abstracted from the political world and absorbed in the occupations and enjoyments of his rural retreat.
To James Madison.-- "I long to see you. I am proceeding in my agricultural plans with a slow but sure step. To get under full way will require four or five years. But patience and perseverance will accomplish it. My little essay in red clover the last year has had the most encouraging success. I sowed then about forty acres. I have sowed this year about 120, which the rain now falling comes very opportunely on. From 160 to 200 acres will be my yearly sowing. The seed-box described in the agricultural transactions of New York, reduces the expense of seeding from six shillings to two shillings, three pence the acre, and does the business better than is possible to be done by the human hand." (Apr. 27, 1795. ME 9:303)
To William B. Giles.-- "I sincerely congratulate you on the great prosperities of our two first allies, the French and Dutch. If I could but see them now at peace with the rest of their continent, I should have little doubt of dining with Pichegru in London next autumn, for I believe I should be tempted to leave my clover for a while and go and hail the dawn of liberty and republicanism in that island. I shall be rendered very happy by the visit you promise me. The only thing wanting to make me completely so is the more frequent society of my friends. It is the more wanting as I am become more firmly fixed to the glebe. If you visit me as a farmer, it must be as a condisciple, for I am but a learner -- an eager one indeed -- but yet desperate, being too old to learn a new art. However, I am as much delighted and occupied with it as if I was the greatest adept. I shall talk with you about it from morning till night and put you on very short allowance as to political aliment. Now and then a pious ejaculation for the French and Dutch republicans, returning with due dispatch to clover, potatoes, wheat, etc." (Apr. 27, 1795. ME 9:305)
To Mann Page.-- "It was not in my power to attend at Fredericksburg according to the kind invitation in your letter and in that of Mr. Ogilvie. The heat of the weather, the business of the farm, to which I have made myself necessary, forbade it; and to give one round reason for all, mature sanus, I have laid up my Rosinante in his stall before his unfitness for the road shall expose him faltering to the world. But why did not I answer you in time? Because in truth I am encouraging myself to grow lazy, and I was sure you would ascribe the delay to anything sooner than a want of affection or respect to you, for this was not among the possible causes. In truth, if anything could ever induce me to sleep another night out of my own house, it would have been your friendly invitation and my solicitude for the subject of it: the education of our youth. I do most anxiously wish to see the highest degrees of education given to the higher degrees of genius, and to all degrees of it, so much as may enable them to read and understand what is going on in the world and to keep their part of it going on right: for nothing can keep it right but their own vigilant and distrustful superintendence." (Aug. 30, 1795. ME 9:306)
ith the peaceful operations of agriculture, Mr. Jefferson combined another gratification, to wit, the pursuit of science. In compliment to his uncommon passion for philosophy and his exalted attainments in science, he was about this time appointed president of the American Philosophical Society, the oldest and most distinguished institution in the United States at that time. This honor had been first conferred on Dr. Franklin and afterwards on David Rittenhouse, at whose death Mr. Jefferson was chosen. His sensibility to this mark of distinction was more profound than he had ever felt on any occasion of political preferment. "The suffrage of a body," said he in reply, "which comprehends whatever the American world has of distinction in philosophy and science in general, is the most flattering incident of my life, and that to which I am the most sensible. My satisfaction would be complete were it not for the consciousness that it is far beyond my titles. I feel no qualification for this distinguished post but a sincere zeal for all the objects of our institution and an ardent desire to see knowledge so disseminated through the mass of mankind that it may at length reach even the extremes of society: beggars and kings." (1796?)
Of this society he was the pride and ornament. He presided over it for a number of years with great efficiency, elevating its character and extending its operations by those means which his enlarged acquaintance with science and the literary world enabled him to command. His constant attendance at its meetings while he resided in Philadelphia gave them an interest which had not been excited for a number of years. Science under his auspices received a fresh impulse, as will appear by consulting the society's Transactions of that period, which were enriched by many valuable contributions from himself.
ut it was impossible for Mr. Jefferson utterly to extinguish that inbred republicanism for which he was so remarkable or those anxieties for its preservation and purity which weighed on him so heavily at times. He had left Philadelphia not without some inquietude for the future destinies of the government, yet with a confidence so strong as never permitted him to doubt the final result of the experiment.
Early in the year 1795, the two great parties of the nation became firmly arrayed against each other on the question of providing a successor to General Washington. Mr. Adams was taken up by the Federalists, and Mr. Jefferson was undividedly designated as the Democratic-Republican candidate.
The contest was conducted with great asperity. In fierceness and turbulence of character, in the temper and dispositions of the respective parties, and in the principles which were put in issue, the contest so strongly resembled those of which every generation since then has been eye-witnesses and actors as to render a description unnecessary. The issue was well-recognized. The struggle of the people against the party in power is always an unequal one, and was lost on this occasion. The majority, however, was inconsiderable. On counting the electoral votes in February, 1797, it appeared there were seventy-one for Mr. Adams and sixty-eight for Mr. Jefferson.
he new administration under John Adams commenced on the 4th of March, 1797. Mr. Jefferson had arrived at the seat of government on the 2nd of March. Though there was no necessity for his attendance, he had determined to come on from a principle of respect to the public and the new President. He had taken the precaution, however, to manifest his disapprobation of the forms and ceremonies established at the first inauguration by declining all participation in the homage of the occasion. As soon as he was certified by the public papers of the event of the election, he addressed a letter to Mr. Tazewell, Senator of Virginia, expressing his particular desire to dispense with the formality of notification by a special messenger. At the first election of President and Vice-President, gentlemen of considerable distinction were deputed to notify the parties chosen, and it was made an office of much dignity. But this expensive formality was as unnecessary as it was repugnant to the genius of our government, and he was anxious that the precedent should not be drawn into custom. He therefore authorized Mr. Tazewell to request the Senate, if not incompatible with their views of propriety, to discontinue the practice in relation to himself and to adopt the channel of the post as the least troublesome, the most rapid, and by the use of duplicates and triplicates, always capable of being rendered the most certain. He addressed another letter at the same time to Mr. Madison requesting him to discountenance on his behalf all parades of reception, induction, etc.
There was another point involving an important constitutional principle on which Mr. Jefferson improved the occasion of his election to introduce a salutary reformation in the practice of the government. During the previous administration, the Vice-President was made a member of the cabinet and occasionally participated in the executive consultations equally with the members of the cabinet proper. Since the Vice-President was also president of the Senate, this practice he regarded as a combination of legislative with executive powers which the Constitution had wisely separated. He availed himself, therefore, of the first opening from a friendly quarter to announce his determination to consider the office of Vice-President as legitimately confined to legislative functions and to sustain no part whatever in the executive consultations. In a letter to Mr. Madison dated January 22, 1797, he said: "My letters inform me that Mr. Adams speaks of me with great friendship and with satisfaction in the prospect of administering the government in concurrence with me. I am glad of the first information because, though I saw that our ancient friendship was affected by a little leaven produced partly by his constitution, partly by the contrivance of others, yet I never felt a diminution of confidence in his integrity and retained a solid affection for him. His principles of government I knew to be changed, but conscientiously changed. As to my participation in the administration, if by that he meant the executive cabinet, both duty and inclination will shut this door to me. As to duty, the Constitution will know me only as the member of a legislative body, and its principle is that of a separation of legislative, executive, and judiciary functions except in cases specified. If this principle be not expressed in direct terms, yet it is clearly the spirit of the Constitution, and it ought to be so commented and acted on by every friend to free government." (ME 9:367)
In the first moments of the enthusiasm of the inauguration, Mr. Adams forgot party sentiments and indicated a disposition to harmonize with the republican body of his fellow citizens. He called upon Mr. Jefferson on the 3rd of March and expressed great pleasure at finding him alone, as he wished a free conversation with him. He entered immediately on an explanation of the situation of our affairs with France and the danger of a rupture with that nation; that he was impressed with the necessity of an immediate mission to the directory; that it would have been the first wish of his heart to have got Mr. Jefferson to go there, but that he supposed it was now out of the question. That he had determined on sending an embassy which, by its dignity, should satisfy France and, by its selection from the three great divisions of the continent, should satisfy all parts of the United States; in short, that he determined to join Madison and Gerry to Pinckney, and he wished Mr. Jefferson to consult Madison in his behalf. He did so, but Mr. Madison declined, as was expected. After that, he never said a word to Mr. Jefferson on the subject nor ever consulted him as to any measures of the administration.
From the warmth with which Mr. Jefferson embarked in opposition to the administration, it might be inferred that he permitted his political feelings to influence him in the discharge of his official duties. But this was not the case. He presided over the Senate with dignity and, although it was composed for the most part of his political enemies, with an impartiality which the rancor of the times never attempted to impeach. How attentive he was to the duties of his station and how accurately he understood the rules of parliamentary order is attested by his "Manual of Parliamentary Practice" -- a work which he at that time published and which became the guide of both houses of Congress.
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