As the 1780s wore on -- even after Great Britain recognized U.S. independence in 1783 -- the grand experiment in overthrowing a King's dominion and establishing a Republic was in grave danger from the lack of a strong national government.
While Washington and Hamilton grasped this problem, Jefferson, who had returned to Virginia after his work drafting the Declaration of Independence in 1776, continued to view his state as his country. He also avoided any actual fighting for independence, fleeing rather than rallying Virginians to defend Richmond (when it was attacked by a Loyalist army led by Benedict Arnold) and then Charlottesville and Monticello (when they were threatened by the cavalry of Banastre Tarleton).
Jefferson, the coddled son of a wealthy plantation owner, preferred a philosophic or romantic view of revolution, never fully confronting its human horrors and practical challenges. His experience representing the United States in France were marked by both his lavish lifestyle at the fringes of Louis XVI's court and a blind enthusiasm for the bloody French Revolution.
Neither did he see the realities of America very clearly as he toyed with a vision of a bucolic land of industrious small farmers, somehow blotting out the reality around him of large plantations worked by slaves whose hard labor made possible the comfortable life of Southern gentry and Jefferson's addiction to luxuries.
As Washington, Hamilton and other Founders contemplated a strong central government, Jefferson mused about whether a national Congress was needed at all. So, his clash with Hamilton carried something of an historical inevitability about it.
Clash over Slavery
The two men differed profoundly over slavery. Having grown up poor on sugar islands of the Caribbean, Hamilton knew and despised slavery. He respected the humanity of African slaves whom he had seen literally worked to death or executed for any signs of resistance.
As Chernow wrote, Hamilton "had expressed an unwavering belief in the genetic equality of blacks and whites -- unlike Jefferson, for instance, who regarded blacks as innately inferior." Indeed, Hamilton may have been the most dedicated abolitionist among the Founders, even more consistently hostile to slavery than were John Adams and Benjamin Franklin.
By contrast, Jefferson delved into the pseudo-science of measuring the skulls of his black slaves to "prove" their inferiority. He also could not tolerate the idea of free blacks living alongside whites in America. By contrast, Hamilton not only considered blacks equal to whites but advocated on behalf of their right to live free in America.
In short, Jefferson was a mass of often ugly contradictions, declaring "all Men are created equal" while insisting that blacks were not; advocating a strictly "limited" federal government as a guarantee of "liberty" while staying silent about how that prescription fit neatly with the desire of his fellow plantation owners to maintain slavery; rejecting the tyranny of government power while making apologies for the mass executions by France's revolutionary government.
Yet, while Jefferson surely was a hypocrite, he was, without doubt, a political genius. After Jefferson wore out his welcome with President Washington through back-biting attacks on Hamilton, Jefferson left Washington's three-member Cabinet (Henry Knox was Secretary of War) and began fashioning the first American political party.
Backed by wealthy Southern plantation owners and supported by some opportunistic Northern politicians (like Aaron Burr), Jefferson not only forged his "Republicans" into a potent opposition to the Federalists but devised a system of sophisticated propaganda, including secretly financing newspaper editors to gin up "scandals" to be pinned on Hamilton and the Federalists.
Jefferson also understood the value of personal myth-making, presenting himself as a humble philosopher who preferred designing Monticello or the Virginian Statehouse over the dirty business of politics. Though he had dressed and behaved like a dandy in Paris, Jefferson attired himself modestly after returning to America, the down-to-earth republican.
As Hamilton and the Federalists muted their opposition to slavery out of concern that the issue could shatter the new constitutional structure, Jefferson and the slaveholders took advantage of that relative silence to depict Washington's administration and its efforts to put the country on a solid financial footing as favoring economic elites.
As Chernow wrote, "The most damning and hypocritical aristocratic economic system emanated from the most aristocratic southern slaveholders, who deflected attention from their own nefarious deeds by posing as populist champions and assailing the northern financial and mercantile interests aligned with Hamilton."
So, Jefferson and his Southern-dominated political faction won the image battle. Jefferson and the plantation owners -- despite possessing human chattel -- were the embattled little guys while the abolitionist Hamilton and his merchant political base were the anti-democratic elitists.
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