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Scholars commonly talk of the enmity between George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, as they commonly do of the enmity both between Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton and between Jefferson and John Marshall. Thomas Fleming, for instance, is one such scholar. He begins his book on Jefferson and Washington with the story of Martha Washington’s description of Jefferson as “one of the most detestable of mankind.” The implication is that her husband must have felt the same way about Jefferson, if that is the way she felt. The quote from Martha sets the tone for Fleming’s book, much slanted. The relationship between Washington and Jefferson, not between Hamilton and Jefferson, was the catalyst for the subsequent political divisiveness.
There is without question a certain tension that began as Jefferson assumed the position of secretary of state in Washinton’s administration. Washington, during his presidency, execrated the political differences between Federalists and Republicans that were heatedly expressed in print and in private political discussions between Jefferson and Hamilton.
Yet did Jefferson hate Washington, and Washington, Jefferson?
The tension between Jefferson and Washington—and tension is not equivalent to rancor—likely came to a head when content from a letter from Jefferson to Philip Mazzei (24 Apr. 1796) was made public and came to the attention of Washington. In that letter, Jefferson complains to his Italian neighbor and friend that the liberty-loving republicans who fought for the Colonists’ liberty have been supplanted by “an Anglican monarchial, & aristocratical party.” The offices in the judiciary and the executive are fraught with men “who prefer that calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty.” He sums, “It would give you a fever were I to name to you the apostates who have gone over to these heresies, men who were Samsons in the field & Solomons in the council, but who have had their heads shorn by the harlot of England.”
Mazzei had the letter published in an Italian newspaper, and it was picked up and published in France. And so, the letter circuitously made its way to America, where it was taken, by implication, to be a sharp denigration of George Washington, though Washington was not mentioned by name. The two would end their correspondence in summer 1796, shortly after publication of Mazzei’s letter. Jefferson would craft a long letter to Washington on June 19 to rationalize his comments. Washington would reply on July 6 that he never entertained any suspicions about his former secretary of state, though he inculpated Jefferson’s fellow party members of accusing him of partisanship. Of the calumniators, Washington writes Jefferson that he would have replied
that I had never discovered any thing in the conduct of Mr Jefferson to raise suspicions, in my mind, of his insincerity; that if he would retrace my public conduct while he was in the Administration, abundant proofs would occur to him, that truth and right decisions, were the sole objects of my pursuit; that there were as many instances within his own knowledge of my having decided against, as in favor of the opinions of the person evidently alluded to; and moreover, that I was no believer in the infallibility of the politics, or measures of any man living. In short, that I was no party man myself, and the first wish of my heart was, if parties did exist, to reconcile them.
It could be that Washington is dissembling in the passage to save Jefferson’s feelings. I do not think so. Washington was always a fair-minded person who appreciated the advice of intelligent persons of all persuasions, when he was confronted with a political problem. The passage suggests hatred of the inflexibility of partisanship, not of partisans.
Thus, their long correspondence would end just after the leak of the content of Jefferson’s letter to Mazzei—strongly suggestive that the letter caused an irreconcilable rupture between the two.
Surceasance of their correspondence is typically taken as proof of irresoluble hostility between the two. I see no reason to adopt that view. To bolster my view, I examine a long letter by Jefferson to Dr. Walter Jones (2 Jan 1814)—physician, politician, and former classmate of Jefferson at William and Mary—on the character and achievements of Washington.
Jefferson begins by denying Jones’ assertion that Washington was a victim of his “Federal coalition.” Jefferson says that Washington may have been often seduced, but he was not depraved.
Jefferson then turns to the mind of Washington. It is large and powerful, “without being of the very first order,” and focused and steadfast. Washington, prudent, likes to entertain many varied thoughts on a problem prior to deciding it. Once he decides—and he is typically slow—he has no misgivings. Yet Washington lacks imagination and cannot readily adjust to unexpected circumstances. Thus, “if deranged during the course of the action, if any member of his plan was dislocated by sudden circumstances, he was slow in re-adjustment. The consequence was, that he often failed in the field, and [but?] rarely against an enemy in station, as at Boston and York.”
The moral disposition of Washington included fearlessness, prudence, integrity, justice, and greatness. The description shows that Jefferson follows (non-exhaustively) something like Aristotle’s list of virtues in the latter’s ethical books.
His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known, no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was, indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man.
His temper was in general good, because it was not readily roused, though it was not easily leashed when roused.
If ever, however, it broke its bonds, he was most tremendous in his wrath.
Washington was honorable and exact in expenses and liberal in his generosity when it promised utility; otherwise, he was niggard. He also proportioned justice to an agent.
His heart was not warm in its affections; but he exactly calculated every man’s value, and gave him a solid esteem proportioned to it.
Concerning his persona,
Washington was fine, his stature exactly what one would wish, his deportment easy, erect and noble; the best horseman of his age, and the most graceful figure that could be seen on horseback.
Nonetheless, not being of large education, Washington was out of his element in society. He was comfortable among friends, but not around strangers.
His colloquial talents were not above mediocrity, possessing neither copiousness of ideas, nor fluency of words. In public, when called on for a sudden opinion, he was unready, short and embarrassed.
Deficiencies in colloquy and in informal public discussions did not manifest itself in his writing.
He wrote readily, rather diffusely, in an easy and correct style. This he had acquired by conversation with the world, for his education was merely reading, writing and common arithmetic, to which he added surveying at a later day.
Washington was a man of actions, not of ideas. He was, as we are inclined to say, schooled on the streets, not in the classroom.
Jefferson sums Washington the man in grandiloquent, not pompously so, words of praise:
On the whole, his character was, in its mass, perfect, in nothing bad, in few points indifferent; and it may truly be said, that never did nature and fortune combine more perfectly to make a man great, and to place him in the same constellation with whatever worthies have merited from man an everlasting remembrance. For his was the singular destiny and merit, of leading the armies of his country successfully through an arduous war, for the establishment of its independence; of conducting its councils through the birth of a government, new in its forms and principles, until it had settled down into a quiet and orderly train; and of scrupulously obeying the laws through the whole of his career, civil and military, of which the history of the world furnishes no other example.
Nonetheless, Jefferson, consistent with his letter to Mazzei, ends by noting that Washington’s attitude toward Jefferson-styled republicanism was at best tepid.
He has often declared to me that he considered our new Constitution as an experiment on the practicability of republican government, and with what dose of liberty man could be trusted for his own good; that he was determined the experiment should have a fair trial, and would lose the last drop of his blood in support of it.
The reasons for Washington’s tepidity, adds Jefferson, were his natural distrust of men and his inclination to gloomy thoughts. In the end, thinks Jefferson, Washington inclined toward Hamiltonianism, not Republicanism. There is no attempt to ridicule Washington for his inclination, for all men, thought Jefferson and consistent with Ancient Greek and Roman philosophers and physicians, are uniquely dispositioned.
All in all, Jefferson’s assessment of Washington is fair and to my mind it fits the first president like a well-tailored coat. It is clean, honest, as it depicts a man, great in the Aristotelian sense of making the most of the varied dispositions toward the particular virtues (Gr., aretai) that each person is given at birth.
There is nothing in Washington’s correspondence of which I know that shows that Washington did not have a high estimation of Jefferson, even if wife Martha hated Thomas Jefferson. Maurine Beasley in First Ladies and the Press shows that detestation of Jefferson might be due to the not too infrequent attacks on her husband and her by radical Republicans of Jefferson’s day. Martha. as the first “first lady,” was accused at times of too much formality bordering on mummery as well as insufficient formality. She, as Washington’s wife, was nolens volens thrust into a situation with which she was most uncomfortable and that she had to endure.
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Jefferson must be viewed mostly as how he differed from Washington not in his, Jefferson’s, vision but in his response to it. Washington was nothing if not first of all willing to put the common good ahead of even his own personal beliefs and desires. Let’s look at one instance as to how this made a difference in both men. When Jefferson was Governor of Virginia during the Revolution, he was so busy setting up the “perfect government” according to his own beliefs as to how that should be that he weakened Virginia and almost got himself captured by Benedict Arnold when the British brought the war to the Old Dominion. Washington had ideals of government as well, but he went first with what he KNEW WORKED in pursuing the war even when it was not what he believed to be the best answer. It was in this spirit that he informed Congress that “patriotism” had to be joined with self interest; that is, men would fight AT FIRST in the spirit of resistance as they had at Bunker Hill, but if you wanted to keep them in the field, you had to appeal to their self-interest. It was foolish to try to maintain a war with “noble sentiments” alone.
Washington throughout his career with the American army ALWAYS thought of all the colonies and not one colony or one section. He understood that if there was ever going to be a nation, it required an end to sectionalism and the acceptance of differing ways of life than just the “agrarian culture” found in the South. Jefferson was narrow in his view while Washington was wide. Washington understood the danger of sectionalism and the need for a strong central government for he had seen, throughout the periods before, during and immediately after the war that if the “confederation” spirit remained with every State working for itself, the cause of liberty would fail. That’s why I always find it so strange that Jefferson is seen as the man of “vision” while Washington is seen as a man with an “ordinary mind.” Exactly the opposite was true at least until Jefferson became President. I don’t believe that the Thomas Jefferson of the Revolutionary and immediate post-Revolutionary period would have attacked the Barbary pirates or moved to add to the size of the United States the lands of the Louisiana Purchase! Washington would have done so without cavil, but Jefferson had changed considerably by that time.
Jefferson deeply hurt Washington NOT because they disagreed but because Jefferson brought a “plant” into Washington’s government who, using his “newspaper” caused the President great personal anguish. Mrs. Washington never forgot his suffering merely because Jefferson hated any strong central authority and equated Washington’s insistence on neutrality to preserve the nation as a rejection of France. But the France that had succored America had already gone to the guillotine and what remained had destroyed it. Washington wrote of the revolution in France early on and said that he feared that it would turn into something very different from the type of government that arose in America. And, again, Washington was right.
Sadly, I believe that the genius of Jefferson ~ and he was a genius ~ tends to vindicate even his mistakes and wrongful acts because he WAS a genius. And in the same way, the very different mind of Washington who had a very different KIND of “genius” finds any comparison with his fellow Virginian to be to his disadvantage for that very reason.
What a great description of each illuminating their differences, without which we might not be in our present, young, and God given government (never perfect but the best in the world). Each contributed their own qualities at the right time and place. I admire Jefferson for his ability to change or adapt his opinions later in life.
Would love to have met them in person.
Thanks for this essay.
I am not in the business of having to show one or the other to be victorious. If I did care to do that, it would be judgment by assessment of the virtue of each person, not by genius.
I am no scholar, but it seems to me that both Washington and Jefferson presumed that, in the years that would follow, the majority of those who governed would be virtuous and enlightened (i.e., well educated). Alas . . .