#1590 Ten Things: The Jefferson-Adams Correspondence

And there is a level of evasiveness or even duplicity in his character at times. You know, the problem is that Jefferson could not just be a man of letters and a scientist and an exemplar of the Enlightenment. He could not just be a classifier of library collections, an amateur paleontologist, America's foremost architect. If he had never been involved in politics, it'd be easier for us to see consistency in his character. But the worst thing that can happen to an ideologue is that he or she holds power.

And when you hold power, you essentially have to moderate your views in order to lead a nation, in order to get things done. And Jefferson did. He was close to being a kind of quasi-federalist during his two terms as President of the United States. So being an ideologue, and Jefferson truly was a political radical with a very strong agrarian vision of exceedingly limited and local government. A nation that was isolationist and minded its own business and turned its back on the havoc of the rest of the world.

In spite of that ideology, which is a very powerful ideology in Jefferson, he's not a pragmatist, really. He was able to play a pragmatist when he held power. And this frustrated people like John Randolph of Roanoke and others. The other problem for Jefferson is slavery, of course. It would be so much easier to revere Thomas Jefferson, in spite of politics, if it hadn't been for race and slavery, which were a toxic cocktail that damaged him, damaged others, damaged this nation.

The original sin of America came in 1619, when that first Dutch ship came and slavery got its footing. But he isn't one of the big, great presidents like Washington or Lincoln or FDR, because he read the presidency in this very low-key way, and he never took himself too seriously. as a world historical figure. It's hard to really know where to place the lever with Jefferson, to figure him out. And if anybody ever tried to figure him out, it was John Adams.

We didn't get to say this during the program, but I think John Adams genuinely loved Jefferson. I mean, he actually loved him. It wasn't just throwing that word around. He loved Thomas Jefferson and he grieved over the loss of the friendship and he ached and he felt bereft because Jefferson had once been one of the central figures of Adams' life and he wanted Jefferson's friendship and he wanted Jefferson's approval. He wanted Jefferson to see the world in many respects as he, John Adams, saw it.

And that Jefferson didn't and wouldn't was deeply upsetting to him. And so the correspondence is, in some sense, Adams trying to make the case for himself and to score a few points against his old friend and adversary, Thomas Jefferson. Remember, at this time, Jefferson is riding very high. He's the senior member of the Virginia dynasty and he's in splendid retirement. with his spectacular gardens and his many intellectual projects.

He's just creating the University of Virginia. He's a man of deep classical serenity and stoicism. He's gracious to pure strangers. His hospitality is enormous, in fact, financially crippling. And he's an American hero.

His side won, as Lindsay puts it in this program. The Federalists are in disarray. John Adams at this point is at a low ebb, essentially forgotten in many circles and desperately in need of some sort of vindication, some sort of an understanding that he was central to the whole project of American independence in the early national period. And he's not getting that admiration that he so desperately needs in a way that Jefferson takes his soul of solacing in a different way from intellectual friendships and from his family, from his little world. And he's not that concerned with the public's view of him, or at least so he says.

At any rate, we could have talked for 10 hours about this, and we will talk more. And in a few weeks, we'll do Jefferson and Abigail Adams correspondence, 10 things. I think it's a remarkable thing to see this young, brilliant woman in this much older Chautauquan. Man, she's heading into the Empyrean, I think, amongst American historians. Just watch her career.

But it's such fun. And I always look forward to Lindsay, because we're both terribly busy. Let's go to the program. If you can help us. I just had my annual financial meeting today with my accountants and my manager.

And, you know, we do need money for listening to America, particularly for this grand thing that I'm about to do, starting on May 2nd to drive America in the wake of John Steinbeck's 1960 Travels with Charlie tour. If you can help us achieve this great dream, we'll be absolutely thrilled. I think there are a few places left on the summer Lewis and Clark trip, please sign up. It will fill soon. But it's the trip of trips.

Two and a half days on the Missouri River and the White Cliff section in canoes, camping where they camped, sleeping where they slept, talking about Lewis and Clark, but about much more to the following late June or July, when we go up to see the world of Lewis and Clark in this marvelous, marvelous way. So go to the website ltamerica.org. You'll see my dispatches, my postings, the videos. Now there are videos of Lindsay and I talking together. So we've pulled some video off of the Riverside or Zoom recording, and we're sharing a little bit with you, so you can see, you know, the really snarky eye rolling that she's engaged in much of the time.

So let's go to the show.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the special edition of Listening to America. Across from me, across the country, is Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky, my friend and my colleague in the 10 Things series. Today, 10 Things about Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and their correspondence. One of the great subjects, and, Lindsay, my friend, Patricia Limerick, you know, the great Patricia Limerick, the Western historian, used to teach a course in which the Jefferson-Adams letters came up.

And she said, she said when she would get to the end of her life, she would slow down because she didn't want them to die. Do you have that feeling at all? Like, do you warm to this correspondence?

And I think the nation felt that way, like they were gone. And all of a sudden, that generation is not there to help. And I think that that is probably a very scary moment. And I think it's impossible to not have a sense of that when you're reading, especially towards the end, because they knew, I mean, they knew it was coming. So I, you know, they weren't surprised.

But they were friends, and then they were enemies. Well, let's put it this way. They were friends, and they were then frenemies. And then they were sort of enemies. And then they worked it out.

Amazing, really, because, well, first of all, do you think that this mattered? I mean, the country sort of knew this, in some circles that they had reconciled, and they were exchanging letters. And there was even a suggestion that maybe they published some of them. Do you think it mattered to the country that these two formidable founders work things out?

And so everyone knew that that wasn't really solving the problem long-term. But it was hopefully a really good Band-Aid and would allow, again, would allow future generations to try and come up with a more creative solution that they could yet foresee. And so in some ways, when Adams and Jefferson came back together and were talking, it felt like, OK, well, maybe we can actually get past these divisions. They were the first generation of really divided partisans, and they were able to get past it. So maybe we too can get past our divisions.

And I think it meant a lot to a lot of Americans and the people, especially the people who knew them both, that they were able to retain a good.

And Adams isn't really a full-on Northerner in the Timothy Pickering, Rufus King sense, that they were both essentially moderates, don't you think? I think that they were mostly.

And it's really easy to have strong opinions about things when you haven't seen the world. And I wonder how much of some of their moderation came from the fact that they were worldly, they were traveled, they had seen other cultures, they had experienced other cultures. And it didn't necessarily mean that they always thought well of those other cultures. Certainly, sometimes they could see real flaws. But I do think that it just, it made them a little bit more balanced in their perspective, because they just had a much broader view of the world.

I'm talking with my friend,

he was so intense that maybe he would have made even the Puritans uncomfortable.

So let's start there. 10 Things About John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, Their Late Correspondence with Lindsay Chervinsky. You've read this correspondence before, certainly read in it. Now. you wrote this book about Adams, so you had to read it, of course.

And it's one of the delights of any study of these two great American founders. What was different this time? Because now you are, and I don't mean this in a negative way, but you are an Adams partisan this time.

And I love that about him. I find it so endearing and so amusing and so entertaining. And I'm sure sometimes Jefferson felt that way, and sometimes he also found it to be very annoying. I think he both loved and was annoyed by Adams. And so you can really see that in the correspondence.

And I think.

It still botherss me. I'm not going to let this go. You want to fight about this? And Jefferson's like, the weather has been cloudy, and my granddaughters seem to be thriving, and it looks like a good year for crops. And, by the way, I've been reading this really extraordinary book.

And Adams is like, yeah, but I want to fight about this. Can't we fight about this? I'm really upset. You've never really come to terms with your.

Whereas Adams, it was required as part of his congregationalist upbringing. You had to self-reflect because you had to reflect on your failures in order to improve them. But I think there were also moments where Adams loved a good debate. Even if it wasn't a fight in the negative sense, he loved to grapple with ideas and concepts. And he loved nothing more than a long meal in which you were really going back and forth.

And there are, I think, few people, to Jefferson's credit, who could have given as good as they got from Adams, because he was such an impressive intellect. And Jefferson was too. So here Adams was thinking, I have someone who can really push me and we can think through these things. And Jefferson's like, do we have to? Can't we talk about the books we're?

And yet nobody understands me. They think I'm a monarchist. They think that I'm an aristocrat. They think that I don't, you know, and he's constantly saying, why haven't I been understood? Jefferson's view was, hey, they're your words out there.

You know, you wrote these things. You exposed yourself in this way. Don't blame us for ascertaining from your writings what we have. And Jefferson's view was, I just want harmony. I mean, Jefferson didn't have anything to prove at this point.

He didn't feel like, well, tell.

And it was his world, though. Yeah, it was his world. And, you know, it's not to say that there wasn't another vision of the United States. I think the Hamiltonian vision came back into vogue later, but he won. And so he didn't have anything to prove, because he was celebrated as this incredible figure and the declaration, the author of the Declaration of Independence and all of these things.

And Adams was like, excuse me, there's a little bit more nuance to this story.

He did have, I do think that Adams, I mean, he may have benefited from a good editor on some of his writing to reduce some of the clutter and the confusion. But I do think he sometimes also did have a point. Like there were times when people did intentionally misunderstand what he was saying. And maybe that's because they were either cherry picking a section or it suited their political purposes. But he sometimes was misunderstood.

And I don't blame him for being.

Welcome back to Listening to America. Dr. Lindsay Trevinsky, across from me, across the country from me, we're talking about 10 things about the famous Jefferson-Adams correspondence, 1812 to 1826.. They exchanged 158 letters. Adams wrote about three for every one of Jefferson.

And Jefferson often apologizes and says, you know, I'm sorry. I've been busy in the fields. And, you know, I built a university. I don't know what you've been doing, but I built a university.

And I just love that about him that he's like, nope, I'm just going to keep going.

And this is where the protege concept came in. He was like, how could I hate my protege? You know, I was his mentor.

So at one point Adams asked Jefferson, when this was when Madison was president, to help or to put in a good word, for a judicial nominee. And Jefferson's like, sure, I'll try. And he writes to Madison. He's like, no, this person is a arch federalist, not happening. And then he writes back to Adams and he's like, oh, I'm sorry, my letter got there too late.

Oops. And on the flip side, Adams, you know, kind of smooths Jefferson's feathers about the declaration, because a copy of the Muhlenberg Declaration came out and people were like, oh, did Jefferson copy, you know, from this to get his words? And Adams is like, of course he didn't. He says this to Jefferson, of course you didn't. And this is, you know, not a real, and then, you know, to other people, he was like, obviously he did.

So there was a little bit of white lies going on from both sides. And then, of course,

Q. Adams is running for president and Jefferson actually supports somebody else, but he makes Adams believe that he thinks this is good. I'm really glad for you. Congratulations. Your son was important to me during those years in France.

And then to his partisan friends, he's saying, uh, my real choice is somewhere else. So they, they did this little white lies, which one does in a correspondence with an old friend. And I think both of them were afraid. Do you agree that they might do something that would explode the magic, that?

It was the balance of the Senate, the balance in the Senate. When Jefferson learned about the Missouri Compromise, he said, this is the death knell of the nation, because now there's an artificial line between North and South and it's just going to grow worse. And it's like hearing a fire bell in the night. And I'm sorry that I live to see our children squander the great blessings. It's a wonderful letter, a little bit defensive.

But what I love is the Adams letter, Lindsay, where he says, you tell me if I've got it wrong, but he says, and I've never really raised this question with you because it's a delicate one and you're Southerners, you know more, and you're good men. I trust you, Washington, you, Monroe, Madison. These are all good men, and it's not for somebody on the outside. But when I see what's going on now, I have these nightmares of armies marching in the night, black versus white. And he says, again, I never really wanted to put this to you, because it's, I feel, very, I feel a genuine desire to defer to you and others.

He writes about how corrosive the institution was to humanity, both to the people that were held in bondage, but also the people that were holding others in bondage, and how it led to just pernicious things like Sally Hemings. So he had thoughts. He just. Spared. It's one of the few.

We were, we were pulling our oars on the same seas through heavy water. We finally came into port and then suddenly what.

They're on the same page. They therefore see each other a fair amount in Philadelphia. Well, first in New York, where the seat of government is, and then in Philadelphia. And I think the first real, uh, there, there are several little blips in the relationship where they start to see things differently. The first is over the presidency, what the presidency should look like and what the powers of the presidency should be, and what the title for the presidency should be.

This is where John Adams starts to lose some of his political credibility, because he wants a more ostentatious title than Mr. President. And then I think the second, and perhaps the real challenge is the French revolution. Jefferson was there. Adams was not.

Jefferson left before. the worst of it, of course. Yes. Jefferson was there. Adams was not.

Jefferson came back, was always very defensive of it and in favor of it. And Adams was like, I warned you.

He was a dark realist about life. And he believed, I think, that France was incapable of having a benign revolution.

And what Adams was basically saying was the ideas are great, but the realities on.

You have to pull down the aristocracy. There's so much that has to be done. if you really mean revolution in France. That really wasn't the case at all in the fledgling United States, but I'm still not satisfied. Okay.

So they disagreed. They disagreed strongly about this issue, but you know what Jefferson always says, we disagree, but we disagree as rational friends. So that doesn't necessarily.

And at this point, they hadn't seen each other in a couple of years because Jefferson had quote unquote, retired in 17, the end of 1793.

. So it goes home to Monticello. And so they don't see each other for a couple of years. And 1796 was the first competitive election. They do not participate.

They stay home. They don't write anything. They don't say anything, but their supporters do. And their supporters can be quite vicious. Nonetheless, after the election, when it turns out that Adams came in first place, Jefferson came in second place, they're going to be president and vice president.

They both make overtures to try and ensure that they're able to work together. And it's a big deal. And actually Jefferson wanted to even make more of an overture, but Madison kind of reined him in at various points. Jefferson really turns from that almost immediately because he concludes that the cabinet is controlling Adams and Adams is looking for war with France. And at that point, he basically cuts off all ties.

I mean, he still is in Philadelphia when government is in session and he sees the president, but he cuts off all ties and he really turns to the Republican Party. And Adams starts to hear reports of Jefferson's criticism of him. And that really ends the relationship. You know, you said that they.

Jefferson's always got a plan. There's always a scheme. You know that under the radar. here, things are happening. And of course, he was right.

He was not 100% right, but Adams realized that Jefferson was too valuable to the country to really go silent, to retire. But also he realized that Jefferson, for all of his protestations of being a kind of another Cincinnatus, was a deeply ambitious human being and also an ideologue who disliked the kind of federalism that he thought.

As I understand it, Lindsay, when intermediary, sorry, as I understand it, Lindsay, when the intermediary of this thing, Benjamin Rush, was trying to convince each of them to renew the correspondence, Jefferson said, maybe, but I don't feel that I should ever have to.

And so there was a little bit of that parental business, but mostly it was, how could you turn loose this scurrilous, irresponsible thug of a so-called journalist to write trash about my husband and then smile when we meet for tea? I think she was just appalled by that. And of course, she wasn't willing just to say, this bothered me. She had to get one real twist in at the end of this correspondence. And, speaking of this calendar, the serpent that you cherished in your bosom, she says, has turned on you.

And she didn't say, how do you like it, Mr. Jefferson, but that was sort of the sense. Like, you played with this fire. We all know what you really are like, Thomas Jefferson, and I want nothing more to do with you. I think she heard it, because if you look at all the correspondence in to Jefferson, Lindsay,

And she was willing to call him out on it. And, you know, I mean, like, I understand. I think we also, this is a very human trait. We are often willing to forgive people who harm us before we are willing to forgive people that harm those that we love. And that was certainly true with Abigail and John.

I think you're absolutely right. And of course,

And so his ideal woman is a kind of well-bred Virginia woman who can play the spinet and sing and dance and is pretty well-read, but is very deferential and soft in her manners. That is not our Abigail Adams.

She really got close to his deepest vulnerabilities with that series of letters. And so he says to Benjamin Rush, as long as I don't have to communicate with her, but then they both softened and they wrote some kind of polite letters to each.

And they may have had friendly letters again, but that was, that relationship was different and it was never.

Welcome back to Listening to America. Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky and I talking about one of our very favorite subjects, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Adams has really had an upsurge over the past 25 years. He used to be kind of dismissed as cranky old John Adams and tedious John Adams.

And now he's seen as human John Adams and refreshingly candid John Adams and, and more like us, John Adams. And, um, Joseph Ellis played a large role in that. You're playing a role in that. This is.

And I think that's because a lot of books, if they don't delve deep into him, if they just repeat old cliches, like, you know, H.

W. Brand's new book, Founding Partisans, repeats all of the cliches about Adams that were of the older generation, that he's this grumpy old man that has, you know, nothing to contribute. It's really a shame because it doesn't depict the complexity of who he was and what he has to offer. And one of the things that I write is that some of the things that made him an anathema to his peers, make him so much more accessible to us. Like you said, his humanness, his accessibility, those are qualities we really value.

And they aren't necessarily qualities that his peers valued in the same way. Fair enough. All right. We know why.

It's a time of general peace, except for Mr. Madison's war, of course. The frontier is hopping. People are moving there. America's wealth is growing.

Its population is growing. They could easily have just lived out their lives. They both had busy lives. Why did John Adams pick up his pen on January 1st, 1812?? I think there are a couple of reasons.

He was constantly talking about how great it would be, how he had this dream. He would then take passages that the other wrote about each other and edit them accordingly and send them along. So he was constantly kind of not letting this go and putting it in Adams' ear. And then I do think the last piece was this closure element. Adams was really introspective and reflective about his own shortcomings.

And I think that he wanted that closure. And so the friendship had meant a lot to him, and the note that it left on was so unpleasant that I think he was hoping, even if it didn't turn into the great correspondence that it did, I think he was hoping just for a little bit.

Even you have to acknowledge that. But in his fourth or fifth letter, Adams says, we must not die until we have explained ourselves to each other. I love that.

And we have a much better sense of who they are through this correspondence.

Like, what if something got into the wrong hands? Is it fair to say that the debate, let's call it, between Jefferson and Adams about, yes, we both want a republic, but what does that really mean? And how much control can you really give the people to chart their own destiny? What are the filters? What are the checks and balances?

Remember, Adams says, checks and balances, Mr. Jefferson, checks and balances. So that seems to me to be the actual debate. And Hamilton, brilliant financier and a great man in his own way, was really a different sort of thing, almost an outlier to this debate, because Jefferson Adams both wanted the same thing, a vibrant republic. But Adams was view was sort of look around at human nature.

So we're going to build in some controls here, Mr. J. And Jefferson's view was we have never really seen what humans could do if they were liberated. And I think that's the debate. And it's so moving to watch them.

Do you think that Adams needed to be vindicated? He needed Jefferson to accept that Adams wasn't a kind of a silly aristocratic monarchist with a ceremonial sword and a pompous title. Do you think he ever got the acknowledgement, the vindication that he said he needed from Jefferson in the correspondence? Well, first, I think you're totally right about.

And Jefferson sees danger in fewer places. He sees danger in concentrated power, whether it's an aristocracy or a monarchy. And Adams says, yes, I agree, those things are dangerous, but so too are the people, because a majority without any checks is really can be quite awful. And he points to the French Revolution as an example. I think that he probably actually got what he wanted, and that I think, by the time that they died, I think Jefferson probably understood that Adams was a fervent patriot and did want a republic, even if they disagreed what exactly that looked like.

But I'm not sure that Jefferson ever acknowledged that. as much as Adams would have liked. Was Adams lifted in the.

I miscalculated. I miscalculated. I thought it would end in a free and well-tempered republic. It didn't. I'm so sorry.

It should have. But I was wrong. And I think that's the only time in those 14 years that Jefferson ever says, okay, fair enough. You won that one. I want to make sure we only have about 10 minutes here.

I want to make sure we get a couple of the great, great letters in. I don't know what your nominations will be, but one is the question about aristocracy. So this is in 1814.. Jefferson's view is essentially that aristocracy by birth is a terrible problem for a society, and we have to do what we can to make that difficult. But there is a natural aristocracy.

You and I would call it a meritocracy. And the great society is the one that knows how to find its natural aristocrats, wherever they are born. Jefferson goes so far to say is in a hovel, in a wigwam, on the prairies. But the great society finds out its natural aristocrats and lifts them into positions of usefulness or authority. And Adam's view was, okay, sure, yeah, I'm all for merit.

But that's not how it works, Mr. Jefferson. There are people that are just born privileged. There are privileged families. There are clans.

There are legacies. Don't you ever think that merit alone is going to prevail in this, our happy republic. And Adam says, we may as well give them the Senate, because they're going to take care of themselves. Put them in the Senate, there we can kind of watch them. We can keep an eye on them.

The public papers, my dear friend, announced the fatal event of which your letter of October 20 had given me ominous, foreboding. Tried myself in the school of affliction by the loss of every form of connection which can writhe the human heart, I know well and feel what you have lost, what you have suffered, are suffering, and have yet to endure. The same trials have taught me that, for ill, so immeasurable, time and silence are the only medicines. I will not, therefore, by useless condolences, open afresh the sluices of your grief, nor, although mingling sincerely my tears with yours, will I say a word more, where words are vain. But it is of some comfort to us both, that the term is not very distant, at which we are to deposit in the same ceremon, our sorrows and suffering bodies, and to ascend, in essence, to an ecstatic meeting with the friends we have loved and lost, whom we shall still love and never lose again.

God bless you and support you under your heavy affliction.

Makes you almost forgive him, doesn't it?

Nobody else can do that. Nobody else can do that.

But there's that issue with Jefferson, right? I do think, though, that in this case,

I want to quickly ask you about another of my favorite letters, where Adams says, I'm going to ask you the most frivolous question you've ever been asked. Would you be willing to live your life over again? And Jefferson says, yes, yes, of course. I steer my bark with hope ahead and fear astern. I would live my life again and again, as often as the creator allowed.

But I will ask you this one question. What is the use of grief? And remember that letter? And then Adams has to reply. The grief letters.

The grief letters. Their.

And Adams is like, this is how useful grief can be. And he's listing all these things. And Jefferson's like, no, it's not useful.

. No, there's no use.

I just reject grief. A God that we can really believe in would have found a better mechanism for loss than this. And Adams is like, no, it supples us for the inevitability of our own death and it humbles us. and it teaches us non-attachment. And Jefferson's just like gritting his teeth in that answer.

But having exhausted that subject, now let me talk about the abuses of grief. And he goes into mourning over George Washington's death. Boy, the people really laid it on for Washington, didn't they?

It really was a little bit excessive.

And the value, therefore, that the relationship and the correspondence brings both to their lives, but also to the historical record. I know it's moronic for me to say this,

We're going to be talking about Jefferson and Abigail Adams' Ten Things, quite a different conversation. To all of you, we'll see you next week for another important edition of Listening to America.