Jefferson and the Nuclear Treaty with Iran

The most remarkeable political occurrence with us has been the treaty with England, of which no man in the US. has had the effrontery to affirm that it was not a very bad one except A.H. under the signature of Camillus. It’s most zealous defenders only pretend that it was better than war. As if war was not invited rather than avoided by unfounded demands. I have never known the public pulse beat so full and in such universal unison on any Subject since the declaration of Independance. The House of representatives of the US. has manifested it’s disapprobation of the treaty. We are yet to learn whether they will exercise their constitutional right of refusing the means which depend on them for carrying it into execution.

Jefferson to James Monroe
March 2, 1796

Many Americans are discontented with the treaty that Secretary of State John Kerry has concluded with the Iranian government in the summer of 2015. Critics have argued that we did not exact enough concessions from the Iranian government, that in concluding a bad treaty we give up the only real tool we had at our disposal, the Draconian trade sanctions that have severely damaged the Iranian economy, and that we have now made it much more likely that Iran will be able to produce nuclear weapons. Critics of the treaty are loudly demanding that the U.S. Senate refuse to ratify the treaty come September. 

Meanwhile, the President of the United States, Barack Obama, has made the case for the treaty by saying that a: it is the best treaty we are likely to achieve; b: that if we don't ratify the treaty we will be unable to convince our European allies to continue the trade sanctions, and c: that the collapse of the treaty negotiations will make it much more likely that Iran will obtain nuclear weapons.

The Obama administration has not exactly built a record of credibility in its Middle East diplomacy, particularly after the president failed to follow up on his now famous "red line" threats against Bashar al-Assad's Syrian oppressions.

It may be useful to think about this diplomatic crisis through the lens of the Jay Treaty of Jefferson's time. 

The French Revolution destabilized Europe for a quarter of a century between 1789 and 1815. As England and France fought a world war for national survival, the fledgling American republic, the United States, was repeatedly buffeted by one of the belligerents or the other, and sometimes both. Britain had been doing whatever it could to keep the U.S. in economic bondage following the Revolution. The added pressures of the wars of the French Revolution made things much worse.

Although President Washington was appalled by British depredations in the Atlantic and the Caribbean--more than 200 American merchant trips were captured by the British Navy--he did not want war. Washington sent the chief justice of the Supreme Court, John Jay, to Britain to try to work out some accommodation that would protect American interests and American honor.

Jay did what he could. It was not much. England made no concessions about its practices on the high seas, including seizing American trade vessels. It agreed to establish joint commissions to work out boundary issues along the Canadian frontier, to settle America's pre-1776 debts to British merchants, and to determine how to resolve American claims about confiscated merchandise. The British did agree to vacate its trade and military forts on the American side of the Great Lakes. (This had been promised in the 1783 Treaty of Paris that ended the American Revolution, but Britain had never complied). The British refused to consider compensating southern slave holders for slaves captured during the war.

Although nobody in America was very happy with Jay's treaty, the party in power (the Federalists) put the best face on an imperfect situation and rallied to support the president. The emerging opposition party, the Republicans (informally founded by Madison and Jefferson), was loud in its denunciation of Jay, the treaty, and to a certain extent President Washington. Jay was burned in effigy in larger American cities. When Alexander Hamilton rose in public in New York to defend the treaty, he was pelted with stones and had to withdraw to safety.

Bowing to President Washington's enormous national prestige, the U.S. Senate ratified the Jay Treaty on June 24, 1795.

Jefferson and Madison were livid. Madison had called it a "ruinous bargain," sponsored by "a British party [i.e. the Federalists], systematically aiming at an exclusive connection with the British government and ready to sacrifice. . . the dearest interests of our commerce [and] the most sacred dictates of national honor."

Sound familiar?

But here's the part worth careful consideration.

Scholars, including Jefferson biographers and diplomatic historians, have long concluded that the unpopular Jay Treaty was the best deal we could possibly have obtained without recourse to war, that the treaty, however imperfect, enabled the United States to build its confidence and national economy for a generation before lingering issues brought on the War of 1812. Because the United States had a weak navy and a tiny army, Britain felt no need to grant concessions to its rebellious former colonies. Jay may not have pleased the American people, and he positively offended the emerging Republicans, but he did manage to clarify a number of important issues, and maintain the peace in a very troubled Atlantic world.

Historians conclude that Washington did the right thing to send Jay to London in spite of unpropitious circumstances, and to work hard for ratification of a treaty he knew to be imperfect.

When the alternative is between a bad treaty and war, as President Obama has  repeatedly admonished, sometimes you have to hold your nose and ratify what nobody finds altogether satisfying. Although the Senate has the constitutional right to reject any treaty brought before it, for any reason, good or bad, generally speaking our constitutional "protocol" is to grant the executive the benefit of the doubt, because he and his agents have been involved in the international deliberations, understand the issues more fully than anyone standing on the outside can possibly do, and deserve a fair level of deference in international relations.

That is not to say that Jefferson and Madison were wrong to decry the Jay Treaty. My point is that the Iran crisis is not the first time such a seemingly unpalatable treaty has been presented to the U.S. Senate, and anyone who feels instinctively antagonistic to the Iran Treaty should spend some time reflecting on how the larger trajectory of American history may regard the painstaking and frustrating negotiations that Secretary Kerry and European diplomats have recently concluded.

Jefferson had a visceral and principled aversion to war as a tool in international relations. His view (then) was that time is on the side of the United States, that war should be used only as a "last melancholy resort," and that peace, however tense, is almost always preferable to armed combat.

Further Reading:

• Founders Online: From Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 12 January 1800
• The Jay Treaty Debate: Public Opinion, and the Evolution of Early American Political Culture by Todd Estes
• Madison's Gift: Five Partnerships that Built America by David O. Stewart
• The Federalist Era, 1789-1801 by John C. Miller

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Jefferson: Seems Content on the $2 Bill!

I feel much alarmed at the prospect of seeing General Jackson President.  He is one of the most unfit men I know of for such a place.  He has had very little respect for laws and constitutions, and is, in fact, an able military chief.  His passions are terrible.  When I was President of the Senate, he was Senator; and he could never speak on account of the rashness of his feelings.  I have seen him attempt it repeatedly, and as often choke with rage.  His passions are, no doubt, cooler now; he has been much tried since I knew him, but he is a dangerous man.

Daniel Webster’s Interview with Jefferson
1824

Thomas Jefferson was no fan of Andrew Jackson, whom he regarded as a vulgarian, a man of rashness and passion, and a duelist. They dined together at Jefferson's retreat home Poplar Forest in August 1815. Jackson was still riding high from his stunning victory over the British at the Battle of New Orleans (December 24, 1814-January 8, 1815).

Jackson was engaged in a large number of "affairs of honor," several of which found their way to the dueling grounds. On May 30, 1806, Jackson killed a man named Charles Dickinson in a duel. Dickinson had not only accused the future President of cheating him on a bet involving horse racing, but of insulting Jackson's wife Rachel, whom Dickinson called a bigamist.

Jackson's "Americans" appeared in force at his first inauguration on March 4, 1829. After the ceremony, the first held on the East Portico of the Capitol, the mob forced its way into the White House, climbed through windows, stood on the furniture, and tore down draperies. In order to clear the White House, bowls of punch and other hard liquors were place on the front lawn.

Needless to say, this was not the sort of dignified republic Jefferson had in mind. He was, all of his life, fearful of the role of popular military leaders in the governance of a free society.

Given that, plus Jefferson's antagonism to paper currency, I doubt that he would lose much sleep over the removal of Andrew Jackson from the $20 bill. Jackson displaced Grover Cleveland on the $20 back in 1928.

Whether he would be in favor of replacing Jackson with Harriet Tubman (ca. 1820-1913) is another question, of course.

Like most Virginia slaveholders, Jefferson lived in fear of a general slave revolt, and helped to put down such minor revolts as that of Gabriel Prosser in 1800. Jefferson placed newspaper ads offering rewards for Monticello slaves who ran away. He regraded slavery as a nightmare and a violation of natural rights, but somehow managed to learn to live with the institutional all of his life. He freed only eight slaves: three in his lifetime, five at the time of his death in 1826. He would have been against the Underground Railroad (an anachronistic term for TJ).

Jefferson never met Harriet Tubman. It's not clear what she would have thought of Jefferson. Because he had written a passionate denunciation of slavery in Notes on the State of Virginia, he was often cited by abolitionists who, without forgetting that he was a lifelong slaveholder, nevertheless regarded Jefferson as an ally of careful manumission, a statesman (stuck in an institution he despised) who had the right core values on this subject. This probably gives Jefferson more credit than he deserves, but rhetorically speaking, he could be quoted as an abolitionist.

Jefferson would have preferred that money be stamped on precious metals, which have intrinsic value anywhere in the world. He feared that paper certificates could be manipulated by the "Hamiltonians," since the value of any bill ($1, $2, $100) is only what the government and the economy ascribe to it; otherwise, it is mere printed paper. 

But if we must have paper currency, Jefferson would surely have preferred that we remove all visages of historical figures from our bills, to be replaced by such things as celebrate the beauty and sublimity of America, the new Garden of Eden. Perhaps the Natural Bridge in Virginia; the Confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac at Harper's Ferry; the Great Falls of the Missouri River (discovered by Jefferson's protege Meriwether Lewis); the Source of the Mississippi; the Grand Canyon; etc.

In my own view, we should follow Britain and Europe's lead in placing cultural giants on our currency. Britain's decision in 2013 to place Jane Austen on the 10 pound note seems just right. What about Emily Dickinson, John Muir, Aaron Copland, Louis Armstrong; Mark Twain, Zora Neale Hurston, Henry David Thoreau, William Faulkner, or for that matter Harriet Tubman?

People often ask me what Jefferson would think about being on the seldom-used $2 bill. I doubt that he would care much, but he would not feel honored. The Library of Congress—now that's a proper tribute to Thomas Jefferson.

Further Reading:

• Thomas Jefferson and the Stony Mountains by Donald L. Jackson
• Poplar Forest and Thomas Jefferson by S. Allen Chambers
• Andrew Jackson by Robert V. Remini
• Read more about Daniel Webster's 1824 visit to Monticello.

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More from the Thomas Jefferson Hour

How Would Jefferson Respond to the Baltimore Riots?

“The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the Atmosphere."

— Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams

Abigail Adams was not amused. But Jefferson was quite serious. He was writing about Shays' Rebellion in western Massachusetts in 1786. While most of the Founders, including George Washington, regarded the rebellion as an outbreak of lawlessness, anarchy, and fundamental disrespect for authority, Jefferson defended the rebels. 

Jefferson believed that people do not rebel for no purpose. In other words, he believed that most people want to live quietly, go about their business, and steer clear of trouble, but that when conditions became intolerable, when they perceived "a long train of abuses and usurpations," as he put it in the Declaration of Independence, they had a right (even a duty) to raise the temperature of their discontentment until it got the attention of their public representatives. Jefferson believed that almost everyone would prefer to use peaceful means to achieve reforms, but that such tools as petition, remonstrance, letters to members of Congress, broadsides, pamphlets, protest parades, and sermons did not always, or even often, achieve their ends. 

Then--when all peaceful means had been exhausted--Jefferson believed that it was permissible for the people to rebel.

He wrote similar letters about Shays' Rebellion to James Madison and others, and he later defended the French Revolution's moments of violence, including the Reign of Terror.

Fair enough. That is part of the historical record. Even Jefferson's friends were shocked by his defense of blood as the manure of the "Tree of Liberty." But he seems to have been in earnest.

But would Jefferson argue that the African-American community in Baltimore in 2015 has a right to engage in rioting and looting in the face of what it regards as structural racism, overt racism, profiling, and excessive use of force among police officers and the judicial system?

Hard to know. 

He was not a "law and order man." He would certainly acknowledge that the first duty of authorities in Baltimore and elsewhere is to to maintain order and restore peace--as gently as possible but as forcibly as necessary. That is why they have been elected and appointed by the people of Baltimore and Maryland. But he routinely called for treating rebellious citizens with mildness and even with a kind of admiration.

Easy for him to say from his lunar perspective; he is not one of the property owners whose shops and merchandise have been destroyed by looting. 

The black citizens of Baltimore have gotten the attention of not only city and state authorities, but of the nation and world. Once order has been restored and tempers slip a little below the flash point, there will now certainly be a serious public conversation, even a national conversation, about race and the law, the protocols of the nation's police forces, appropriate uses of force, the deep frustrations of the African-American community, and the lingering race prejudices in American life.

And I'm guessing the events in Ferguson and Baltimore (and elsewhere) will lead to reforms. 

If so, the riots (which Jefferson would regard as the spontaneous outpouring of public rage when no other tool any longer seemed to be efficacious) will have served their Jeffersonian purpose. Those who renounce violence altogether, Jefferson believed, will not remain free very long.

On the other hand, Jefferson's serenity with respect to rebellion broke down entirely when it involved African-Americans and slavery. Like most other southern planters and slave holders, Jefferson lived in a kind of morbid fear of a widespread race revolt, acknowledged that the justice would be on the side of the slaves, but nevertheless insisted that his own white culture had no choice but to crush even the merest hint of slave rebellion.

When slave Gabriel Prosser led a slave revolt near Richmond, Virginia, in the late summer of 1800, Jefferson supported his protege James Monroe in what became a ruthless and vengeful response to the revolt. Altogether 26 slaves were publicly hanged, including Gabriel and his two brothers.

It's hard to think of Jefferson looking mildly on any rebellion led by African-Americans, even 200 years after his own time.

As usual, Jefferson provides an inconsistent lens on the key fissures of the American experience. One thing is certain: no other Founding Father would have been capable of writing the letter TJ wrote to Abigail Adams, liking "a little rebellion now and then," but for all of that Jefferson was never able successfully to transcend his race prejudices.

Read Jefferson’s letter to the Abigail Adams on February 22, 1787.

Further Reading: 

The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, 1785-1800
by Conor Cruise O'Brien

The Radical Politics of Thomas Jefferson
by Richard K. Matthews

Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves
by Henry Wiencek

Jefferson, Encryption, and The Imitation Game

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 indecipherable, and varied by a new key with the greatest facility of any one I have ever known.

Thomas Jefferson to Robert Livingstone
April 18, 1802

The success of the recent film, The Imitation Game, reminds me of Thomas Jefferson's efforts to encrypt his official and personal correspondence. Jefferson was a Renaissance man, America's Leonardo Da Vinci, and there was almost no subject to which he did not turn his genius in the course of a long and amazingly productive life.

Jefferson was an exceedingly private man, sometimes a secretive one. He was well aware that the fledgling U.S. Postal System was inefficient and seldom secure. It was not uncommon for postmasters to open the mail that passed through their offices, especially letters written by political figures or famous men and women. Jefferson rightly understood that his Federalist enemies would very gladly open his correspondence, read it out loud to those gathered in the nation's post offices, and take hand written extracts from his correspondence to use against him in the political arena.

Jefferson experimented with several cyphers. His famous "Cypher Wheel" was developed sometime between 1790-1800. His Enlightenment friend Dr. Robert Patterson, a mathematician at the University of Pennsylvania, and vice president of the American Philosophical Society, may have had a hand in the project.  The Cypher Wheel was a set of 26 cylindrical disks, each with all of the letters of the alphabet etched randomly on its circumference. Each wooden disk had a small hole at its center, and they were assembled on a stiff wire and bound at either end. Jefferson would turn the wheels to spell out the words he had in mind to encrypt, and then choose another random line of letters to reproduce on the page of his letter. The recipient, with an identical set of disks, would align his device to reproduce the encrypted gibberish on the baseline, and then turn the cypher wheel until an intelligible line of English words appeared. 

According to historian David Kahn, "Jefferson's wheel cypher was far and away the most advanced devised in its day. It seems to have come out of the blue rather than as a result of mature reflection upon cryptology." Kahn's second sentence almost certainly fails to do Jefferson justice. Jefferson had a genius for this sort of creative thinking. He puzzled over systems, ways of ordering (and disordering) knowledge, and what he called "gimcracks" all of his life. He had a rage for order that enabled him to see into the heart of machines and taxonomical systems, and to discover possible improvements. 

Jefferson seems to have abandoned the cypher wheel in 1802. The device was forgotten, therefore, and not rediscovered among his papers in the Library of Congress until 1922.

Meanwhile, Jefferson's system was discovered independently, twice, by other individuals. In 1817 a man named Colonel Decius Wadsworth created a similar cypher wheel His cylinders were made of brass. He added the numerical digits 2 through 8 to the system. Wadsworth was probably assisted in this invention by his friend Eli Whitney, the inventor of the cotton gin and a pioneer in the use of interchangeable parts.

A second re-invention occurred just before World War I. The device, known as M-94, was used by American military personnel from 1922 until just before World War II.

Jefferson's Cypher Wheel bears no resemblance to the Enigma Machine devised by German engineer Arthur Scherbius at the end of World War I.

Jefferson also developed a two-dimensional encryption device, though it was not an original creation. It was based on the European Vigenere cypher. It was a 28-column alphanumerical grid. Jefferson made that version available to Meriwether Lewis when he ascended the Missouri River in 1804. Jefferson believed that Lewis may need to send messages of a sensitive geopolitical nature to Washington, D.C., and the president did not wish such communiques to fall into the hands of America's rivals for the West, Britain, France, or Spain. In his letter of instructions to Lewis, Jefferson showed his protege how to encrypt the sentence, "I am at the head of the Missouri. All is well, and the Indians so far friendly." This quintessentially optimistic and Jeffersonian sentence would be encrypted as "jsfjwawpmfsxxiawprjjlxxzpwqxweudusdmf&gmlibexpxu&izxpsecr." 

Lewis never employed encryption in the course of his transcontinental journey. 

A children's version of Jefferson's Cypher Wheel is available in some bookstores and online. 

Further Reading:

• Founders Online: From Thomas Jefferson to Robert R. Livingston, 18 April 1802
• The Code Breakers: The First Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Threshold of Outer Space by David Kahn
• Thomas Jefferson: Statesman of Science by Silvio A. Bedini
• Jefferson's Shadow: The Story of His Science by Keith Stewart Thomson

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A Sad, Colossal Setback for the Bill of Rights

A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means. When, in the battle of Germantown, General Washington's army was annoyed from Chew's house, he did not hesitate to plant his cannon against it, although the property of a citizen. When he besieged Yorktown, he leveled the suburbs, feeling that the laws of property must be postponed to the safety of the nation.

Jefferson to John Colvin
September 20, 1810

The U.S. Senate's decision to continue permitting the NSA to monitor calls of millions of Americans (335 million to be exact) is a shameful violation of the Bill of Rights. Thanks to whistleblower Edward Snowden, we now know that the NSA has tapped into the trunk lines of all the major internet providers, from Google to Apple, and that it listens in on hundreds of thousands of "conversations" on email, Facebook, and audio cell phone communications. The NSA engages in this wholesale brand of surveillance without warrants or court orders. If you invoke key words--"terror, bomb, Taliban, etc."--your communications might trip wires in our security agencies, and get your entire life monitored without your knowing it, and in direct violation of the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Amendments to the Constitution.

When Snowden and courageous journalists revealed that these illegal searches were taking place, the NSA lied, denied the allegations, tried to destroy the reputations of the individuals in question, and eventually charged Snowden under provisions of the Espionage Act.

On November 18, 2014, the U.S. Senate voted to maintain the existing surveillance law. Sixty votes were needed to reign in the domestic spying of the NSA, and the vote to proceed with the bill failed at 58-42. All of the nay votes were cast by Republicans. The new Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said, “This is the worst possible time to be tying our hands behind our backs. The threat from ISIL is real. It’s different from what we faced before.”
 
The gravity of this decision can hardly be exaggerated. It was one thing to permit such illegal surveillance when the nation, including most members of Congress, did not really know what the NSA was up to. But now that we know--and nobody refutes Snowden's allegations, which constitute undeniable proof of official wrongdoing--one would expect any liberty-loving American, any liberty-loving member of Congress, to have deep misgivings about such surveillance, and to demand of the NSA and all other information and security agencies or sub-agencies within the national government, that they prove to all of us that such violations of the Bill of Rights are necessary to American security.

They cannot do this, except to invoke whatever is the latest and most convenient "threat" to the national security.

As the passage from Jefferson's letter to John Colvin indicates, even our greatest civil libertarian understood that there may be times when "a strict observance of the written laws" must yield to emergency conditions, but do we really believe that the rise of militant Islam is a sufficient reason to permit wholesale surveillance into the lives of American citizens. Do we need that broad a net to tease out improbable terror plots. When Snowden revealed the extent of the NSA spying, the immediate "defense" of such practices was that they had actually prevented a number of terror attacks on the United States. It is simple enough to say such a thing, but the NSA was subsequently unable to name a single credible threat that had been quashed thanks to this level of spying.

In other words, our government is counting on our relative indifference--"Hey, I got nothin to hide!--and our dark fears--"Hey, if that's what you have to do to keep us safe, have at it!"--to subvert the Constitution and create a creepy, dangerous, and outrageous Surveillance State.

Texas Senator John Cornyn said that the reform bill, taht would have restricted some of the worst aspects of NSA domestic spying, "basically takes us back to a pre-9/11 lack of capacity to identify terrorists making telephone calls in the United States. I think that sort of unilateral disarmament would be bad for the country."

Really? Adhering to the Bill of Rights represents "unilateral disarmament" of the United States in the face of the terror threat?

It's one thing for mealy-mouthed Senators to cave in to official lies and a paranoid narrative about American security, but where is the citizen outrage about the greatest damage to the Bill of Rights of the last century?

Jefferson opposed the 1798 Alien and Sedition acts and called them "worthy of the 8th and 9th century." Does anyone believe Jefferson would regard this sort of massive, even universal intrusion, not on the communications of foreign nationals, or non-American terrorists, but on the entire population of the United States, as an acceptable sacrifice for national security?

The question is simple. Is there no other way to protect American security than to throw out the Bill of Rights? Have we now acceded to Dick Cheney's proposition, that if we knew what he knows, we would cheerfully accept a security regimen that makes Orwell look like a Rotarian?

You decide.

Further Reading:

• Jefferson and Civil Liberties: The Darker Side by Leonard W. Levy
• The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction by Akil Amar
• No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State by Glenn Greenwald

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If We Were Still a Republic, Heavy Security Would Not Be Necessary

"When I hear another express an opinion, which is not mine, I say to myself, He has a right to his opinion, as I to mine; why should I question it? His error does me no injury, and shall I become a Don Quixote to bring all men by force of argument, to one opinion?"

TJ letter to his favorite grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph
November 28, 1808
  
Thomas Jefferson had no Secret Service protection. He walked to his inauguration. He rode his horse alone around Washington, D.C., during his eight years as President. No attempts were made on his life.

The recent breakdown in Secret Service protection of President Barack Obama has alarmed the American people. Several individuals have gotten over the White House fence and even into the building itself. On one recent occasion, the President rode in an elevator with a man who had a gun on his person. We are fortunate that there has not been a serious assassination attempt on President Obama. The head of the Secret Service, Julia Pierson, resigned in early October in the face of these disturbing incidents.

The U.S. Secret Service was created in July 1865 to combat an epidemic of counterfeit currency. It was not until the 20th century that it began to protect national officers, including the President.

The first Presidential assassination attempt occurred on January 30, 1835, nine years after the death of Jefferson. An unemployed house painter named Richard Lawrence approached President Jackson after he left a funeral held in the House chamber of the U.S. Capitol. His gun misfired. Jackson, 67, who was a soldier and a serial duelist, clubbed his attacker several times with his cane. Lawrence managed to pull out a second pistol. Fortunately it misfired when he pulled the trigger.

The first President to be assassinated was Abraham Lincoln on April 15, 1865. After that James Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy were assassinated in office, though many more attempts were made on sitting Presidents.

Jefferson never feared assassination, and he passed his entire, sometimes controversial life, without a security detail. He did, however, receive his share of hate mail. During his second term, when he chose to respond to British and French hostilities on the high seas with a total economic embargo, his popularity was seriously damaged. One citizen wrote, "You have sat aside and trampled on our most dearest rights bought by the blood of our ancestors." Another exploded with, "You red-headed son of a bitch." Jefferson's response was more bemused than alarmed. "They are almost universally the productions of the most ill-tempered & rascally part of the country," he wrote to his closest friend James Madison, "often evidently written from tavern scenes of drunkenness."

There may be several reasons why no attempts were made on Jefferson's life. First, as the Andrew Jackson incident proves, guns were relatively primitive in Jefferson's day. Each gun fired a single bullet only, and then took a considerable time to reload. Second, the President was not as well known then as he is now, in the age of hypermedia. Most citizens of Jefferson's time had no idea what the President looked like, and they would have had a very hard time picking him out of a crowd. Most Americans lived their entire lives then without any contact with the national government of the United States. Not only was all politics local then, but life was profoundly local in every way.

Most important, perhaps, is the fact that we were a republic then and we are a quasi-monarchical nation now. We are closer to Rome in the age of Augustus than we are to the illusory republic of the Founding Fathers. Augustus pretended that the Roman republic still existed, paying a kind of sentimental-cynical lip service to old republic forms, while ruling the emerging Roman Empire as an uncrowned monarch. So little was at stake in Jefferson's time that it would have been unlikely for a citizen to fixate on any national figure. Jefferson defined his role in the most restrictive and unambitious way. His goal was to reduce the national debt, reduce the size of the army and navy, eliminate internal federal taxes, and return as much sovereignty as possible to the individual states. Not much to decry in terms of Presidential authority.

Thomas Jefferson was a cheerful stoic, who didn't take himself too seriously, and who had a confident, serene, and undramatic view of his life as.as statesman. It would have been uncharacteristic of him to think about personal security. His daughter Maria was more concerned about the loneliness and craftiness of the White House than she was about security issues.

Read the full text of Jefferson's superb letter to his grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph.

Further Reading:

• Jefferson's English Crisis: Commerce, Embargo and the Republican Revolution by Burton Spivak
• To His Excellency Thomas Jefferson: Letters to a President edited by Jack McLaughlin
• Jefferson and the Press: Crucible of Liberty by Jerry W. Knudson

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The Thrill and the Honor of Participating in Ken Burns' The Roosevelts

"It was my crowded hour!" 

Theodore Roosevelt on July 2, 1898—the day he led the charge up San Juan Hill.

The response to Ken Burns' latest documentary The Roosevelts: An Intimate History has been overwhelming. All credit to Ken Burns, who is a genius, and Geoffrey Ward, who has been researching and writing Ken's scripts for many years, and who is the shining star of "talking heads" in this 14-hour epic about TR, Eleanor (his niece) and FDR (TR's 5th cousin).

Working with Ken Burns has been one of the principal honors of my life. I was one of the talking heads in his documentary on Jefferson (1998), and an historical adviser to the film. I was in The National Parks: America's Best Idea. And now I have had the joy of being a commentator about Theodore Roosevelt in this film.

The wonderful outpouring of congratulations and praise I have received has moved me beyond my ability to describe. It is so strange looking at a television screen, seeing George Will, Dorris Kearns Goodwin, H.W. Brands, Patricia O'Toole, and others giants of our time, and then suddenly seeing myself. It's a little disorienting, and of course I half blush and half cringe to see a: what I said; b: how I said it: c: how it fits into the larger context of the film.

I was interviewed several years ago for the film, at Ken's home and studio in Walpole, New Hampshire. One sits in a chair about three feet from Burns, with a film camera rolling and a separate audio track, and there is no rehearsal, no hint of what he might ask. He just starts with some provocative statement, and his questions, his penetration, his visual responses, his followups, all bring out of the interviewee (or at least this one) much more than we came to say or thought we had in us.

Then you leave for the airport, cursing the day you were born, wishing you had said that differently, and thisbetter, and that more succinctly. Whenever I come home from Walpole, I write a formulaic letter begging for a second interview. This never happens. Ken says, "The best way to stay off the cutting room floor is to 'stick the landing.'" 

After that, you (or at least I) actually half forget that I was interviewed at all. And I assume that what I had to say, even if it helped to inform the script, would surely have wound up on the cutting room floor.

Finally, often several years later, when the film airs on public television, I like everyone else have to watch to see what's in it. As someone who makes documentary films himself, I am always astonished by Burns' genius as an editor.

Frankly, I wish in The Roosevelts I had said a few things I did not, and wish I had not said, or said differently, a few things that wound up in the film. In particular, I wish I had softened a little my statement that Roosevelt was a killer. He WAS a killer, to be sure, and in some ways a jingoist and a warmonger, but that needs to be contextualized very carefully before it can fully make sense. TR lived in a more "heroic" age than ours, and it was still widely felt then that war was the grand test of a man's character and a nation's destiny. TR's thirst to kill quadrupeds was not so much bloodlust (though perhaps there was some of that) as a desire to dominate the world around him. The same dynamics that characterized Roosevelt led Europe into the most disastrous war in its history in 1914. Millions of young man sang and exulted as they marched off to bloody and muddy death in the trenches.

At any rate, there is so much more to admire in TR than to criticize--it's a shame to spend much time questioning his actions or motives. He is one of the most fascinating, most exuberant, most energetic, curious, questing, intelligent, and well-read men of American history. He is so much larger than life that the phrase doesn't do him justice.

I feel honored to have had the opportunity to study him, and to be one of those to try to make sense of him for America's greatest documentary filmmaker.

Two people have contacted me to tease me for using the phrase "writingest president." One of them is one of my dearest friends, my old secretary Naomi Brooker of Grass Valley, CA. The other is an Australian woman I have never met, who said, "at least you did not say threepeat!" I stand by my phrase, though I actually borrowed it from one of the greatest historians of our time, Donald Jackson, who wrote about Lewis and Clark as "the writingest explorers of all time."

I've reconnected with old lost friends in the last few days, and made some new ones. Two of the historians I most respect in the world have taken the time to write letters of praise. I'm on cloud nine, humbled, moved deeply, and of course RESOLVED to get better, learn more, master more, become better read and better educated, and to make this one of the moments which increase one's creative life rather than cap it.

I think this is Ken Burns' best film ever, no thanks to me, and that the episodes on FDR and Eleanor are, if anything, dramatically better than those on Theodore.

Again, to all of you, heartfelt thanks. Bully.

Further Reading:

• The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris
• Mornings on Horseback by David McCullough
• Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life by Kathleen Dalton

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Jefferson Doused Within Boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase

I have been more fortunate than my friend in the article of health. So free from catarrhs [serious colds] that I have not had one, (in the breast, I mean) on an average of eight or ten years through life. I ascribe this exemption partly to the habit of bathing my feet in cold water every morning, for sixty years past. A fever of more than twenty-four hours I have not had above two or three times in my life.

Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Vine Utley
March 21, 1819

Thomas Jefferson was a dignified man of enormous self-control and self-restraint. He was essentially a character in a Jane Austen novel. His personal space was never invaded by others. He was only angry two or three times in the whole course of his life. It is doubtful that he ever really raised his voice. 

The period in which Jefferson lived (1743-1826) was almost infinitely more formal and civil than our time. The social revolutions since 1826--in music, art, conversation, clothing, entertainment, and all other forms of social intercourse--would probably shock even Andrew Jackson, whom Jefferson believed too vulgar for higher office in the United States.

Surely nobody ever dumped a tub of ice water on the Third President's head. 

On the other hand, Jefferson was a lifelong advocate of cold foot water baths. He owned a copy of Floyer and Baynard's The History of Cold Bathing: Both Ancient and Modern in Two Parts (1706). Jefferson was so much a creature of habit, so addicted to orderliness in his personal life, that the impression of his bath pail can be seen on the wooden floor next to his alcove bed at Monticello.

Here are the facts. On Monday August 25, 2014, the Lieutenant Governor of North Dakota, one Drew Wrigley, unceremoniously dumped a trashcan of ice water on the Third President's head, on the capitol steps of the North Dakota State Capital in Bismarck, North Dakota.

Mr. Jefferson received the water assault with his usual stoic imperturbability.

The incident was part of a national phenomenon in which citizens doused themselves and each other to help raise money to study and eradicate a disease known as ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). Although Jefferson would surely have resisted such antics, he was a lifelong advocate of public health, an early and steadfast supporter of the new smallpox vaccine (invented by Dr. Edward Jenner of Britain), and a lover of science and technology. He wrote a fan letter to Dr. Jenner that is one of the great encomiums in the English language.

Here is Mr. Jefferson's initial response:

1. Daily footpaths in cold water were efficacious. Perhaps a full body ice shower would serve as a blanket immunity to all disease and discomfort.

2. This "affair of honor" was certainly less lethal than most such events: notably the duel that ended the life of Alexander Hamilton and the career of Aaron Burr in July 1804.

3. Perhaps the Lt. Governor would like to remember that it was Mr. Jefferson who purchased most of North Dakota from Napoleon Bonaparte in July 1803. One would think that gratitude would be more appropriate than a sneak attack on an 18th century gentleman.

4. The ND state Capitol is one of just three that violate Mr. Jefferson's neoclassical preferences, first seen in his design for the Virginia Capitol at Richmond. That design, submitted by Jefferson from France, created a neoclassical, Palladian template that has been employed in virtually every state. North Dakota's 18-story capitol tower has its own beauty, but it would not be approved by Jefferson's aesthetics. It is just the sort of place where a water assault might be expected. 

5. All's fair for a good cause. ALS was not diagnosed and certainly not named in Jefferson's time. It is at least possible that John Adams was suffering from a form of ALS in his later years.

6. Lt. Governor Wrigley and Mr. Jefferson were seen to shake hands after the incident.

Further Reading:

• Founders Online: From Thomas Jefferson to Vine Utley, 21 March 1819
• Jefferson Treats Himself: Herbs, Physicke, and Nutrition in Early America by John M. Holmes
• Jefferson and Science by Silvio Bedini

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Jefferson Was Not Opposed to the Death Penalty—But He Was Humane

And whereas the reformation of offenders, tho' an object worthy the attention of the laws, is not effected at all by capital punishments, which exterminate instead of reforming, and should be the last melancholy resource against those whose existence is become inconsistent with the safety of their fellow citizens, which also weaken the state by cutting off so many who, if reformed, might be restored sound members to society, who, even under a course of correction, might be rendered useful in various labors for the public, and would be living and long continued spectacles to deter others from committing the like offences.

Thomas Jefferson
Bill for Apportioning Crimes and Punishments, 1778

Thomas Jefferson was not opposed to the death penalty. He believed that a citizen used up his "social contract" rights to life under two conditions: heinous, aggravated murder, and treason against one's country. After writing the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson returned to Virginia, where he was named to a committee to revise the entire law code of the former British colony to bring it into accord with the principles of a Republic, and to harmonize Virginia law with the best practices of the Enlightenment. Jefferson later said it was the single hardest labor of his life.

When he began, there were 39 capital crimes in Virginia, including the stealing of a cabbage. By the time he finished, the number of capital crimes had been reduced to two: heinous, aggravated murder, and treason against the state. Unfortunately, the Virginia House of Delegates did not share Jefferson’s enlightened views. They refused to pass any reform law that did not retain horse stealing as a death-penalty crime.

Jefferson, who was one of the best-read men of his time, was a student of the Italian humanist Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794), who proposed a range of penal reforms. Beccaria argued that it is not in the interest of the state to seek vengeance on behalf of the victims of crime and that the administration of cruel and unusual punishments put the state at a moral disadvantage. The state’s only true interest, he argued, was maintaining the social order.The just state should seek only to restore order, sequester dangerous individuals, and--if possible--rehabilitate them.

Jefferson was naturally a gentle and pacific man. He was clearly influenced (as his prose above indicates) by the humane principles of Beccaria. In the name of humanity and efficient law enforcement, he removed virtually all of the capital crimes from the Virginia code, keeping only the residual two--for crimes he believed so grave that they extinguished a perpetrator's right to life itself.

The botched execution of Joseph Wood in Arizona this week would almost certainly trouble Jefferson. He believed that whatever the state does should be done as humanely and quietly as possible. Still, the method of capital punishment in his time was hanging, by which standard the event in Arizona was arguably humane. Public hangings were still a spectator sport throughout much of the "enlightened" world in Jefferson's time (1743-1826).

To read the full text of Jefferson's proposed penal code for Virginia, click here.

Further Reading:

• On Crimes and Punishment by Cesare Beccaria
• Jefferson and Virginia by Dumas Malone
• Thomas Jefferson: Lawyer by Frank L. Dewey

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