The Books: “The Adams-Jefferson Letters”

And here is my next excerpt of the day. US history shelf.

511WPY8EY8L._SS500_.jpgNext book in my American history section is the massive The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams.

The correspondence between those two men has to be one of their greatest legacies they left behind for us. In the beginning – they were just sharing diplomatic information, they were colleagues, and – with Abigail – they were all friends. The rift finally came (it had been building for years) – but finally, they broke apart. And did not speak to one another for years. Benjamin Rush, a friend of both, was the one who “got them back together” – although Jefferson had reached out to Abigail in a letter – he truly missed her friendship. She wrote him back with the now-famous “faithfull are the wounds of a friend” letter which was her 18th century way of saying, “Talk to the hand!” It took Rush’s pleading on both sides to open up the way to correspondence again – it’s a great story – he told Adams that he had had a dream about it. That these two old gents were meant to correspond with one another … it was in the stars! I think Rush knew what an amazing document the correspondence would be for future generations – but I don’t think even he could anticipate how INCREDIBLE those letters really are.

I love, too, that you can just hear their different personalities IN the letters. Adams is rambunctious, emotional, funny. Jefferson is more reserved – but that makes his little sparks of emotion even more moving. You really get the sense of how much intimacy cost this man. His feelings ran deep deep deep.

So – I picked out two letters to excerpt – which seems so unfair to all the rest of them, but oh well!

In these two letters, we can see the character of the entire correspondence. But you should read the whole thing, if you haven’t already!!! The letters illuminate the differences in philosophy between Adams and Jefferson. In some ways, they illuminate the irreconcilable differences. However – overriding all of this is mutal respect and cordiality. They were both in process. Neither of them “gave up” on trying to figure all of this stuff out. When they used to be active politically, their different conclusions caused much strife. But once retired they were free to discuss all of these issues at length, with no object but to illuminate and explain their point of view to the other. (In 1813 John Adams wrote a letter to Jefferson which is still rightly famous – and in it he said: “You and I ought not to die before We have explained ourselves to each other.” Gulp. So moving.)

And so that’s what they did. Over the next 13 years, they wrote letter after letter, trying to “explain” themselves “to each other”. The letters only stopped when they died (er – on the same feckin’ day, mkay? Also – ehm … it was July 4. Mmkay? Also, it was the 50th anniversary of 1776. Mmkay? I mean, you just could not make this shit up!! No one would believe it!)

These are two letters from 1815.

So: a couple things swirling around in the world at that time

— The aftermath of the war of 1812.

— Adams and Jefferson watched the meteoric rise of Napoleon with horror. (Jefferson had been a big fan of the French revolution, Adams had been horrified by it … but they both were horrified by the tyranny of Napoleon. Jefferson called him ‘the Attila of the age’)

— March to June 1815: The Hundred Days. (the end of the Napoleonic regime, the last chapter, as it were)

— But, let us add this in to the mix: Jefferson and Adams, now old men, wondered to one another: who was the greater tyrant, John Bull or this new tyrannical France? They hashed it out. Their anti-British feelings were still strong … and yet the two of them knew, somehow, that the fortunes of the United States would be forever tied with the fortunes of that original parent nation. (I think of Emily, Bill and myself toasting Tony Blair the first time we all met, clinking our beer glasses together. Ha!)

These events are, collectively, center stage for Adams and Jefferson at this time. They are their current-day concerns. On a more uber level, they wonder: have the advances from the 18th century in political/moral theory and man’s enlightenment all been swept away? Is it so easy to regress, did all you and I worked for mean nothing?

Pertinent questions to them in their day, and, I believe, still pertinent to us in ours.

Note – at the end of the first letter: John Adams is making a joke here. A book had just come out which included some of Adams’ private letters – used without his permission. And after one of the letters, which had to do with the convulsions going on in Europe at the time, the author of the book characterized Adams’ thought process as “the effusions of a splenetic mind, rather than as the sober reflections of an unbiassed Understanding”. Adams continuously made jokes from there on out about his “splenetic mind” and its “effusions”.

And about Jefferson’s reply: The letter is a masterpiece of Jeffersonian abstraction: good vs. evil, light vs. dark … all that stuff he loved. Diametrical opposites balancing each other out, trembling across the abyss from one another… But anyway – I’ll refrain from commenting too much. At least for now. I just love that letter.


From The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams.

JOHN ADAMS to THOMAS JEFFERSON

Quincy Nov. 13 1815

Dear Sir

The fund[a]mental Article of my political Creed is, that Despotism, or unlimited Sovereignty, or absolute Power is the same in a Majority of a popular Assembly, an Aristocratical Counsel, an Oligarchical Junto and a single Emperor. Equally arbitrary cruel bloody and in every respect diabolical.

Accordingly arbitrary Power, wherever it has resided, has never failed to destroy all the records Memorials and Histories of former times which it did not like and to corrupt and interpolate such as it was cunning enough to preserve or to tolerate. We cannot therefore say with much confidence, what Knowledge or what Virtues may have prevailed in some former Ages in some quarters of the World.

Nevertheless, according to the few lights that remain to Us, We may say that the Eighteenth Century, notwithstanding all its Errors and Vices has been, of all that are past, the most honourable to human Nature. Knowledge and Virtues were increased and diffused, Arts, Sciences useful to Men, ameliorating their condition, were improved, more than in any former equal Period.

But, what are We to say now? Is the Nineteenth Century to be a contrast to the Eighteenth? Is it to extinguish all the Lights of its Predecessor? Are the Sorbonne, the Inquisition, the Index expurgatorius, and the Knights Errant of St Ignatius Loyola to be revived and restored to all their salutary Powers of supporting and propagating the mild Spirit of Christianity? The Proceedings of the Allies and their Congress at Vienna, the Accounts from Spain France etc the Chateaubriands and the Genlis, indicate which Way the Wind blows. The Priests are at their Old Work again. The Protestants are denounced and another St Bartholomew’s day, threatened.

This however, will probably, 25 Years hence, be honoured with the Character of “the effusions of a splenetic mind, rather than as the sober reflections of an unbiassed Understanding.”

THOMAS JEFFERSON to JOHN ADAMS

Monticello Jan. 11 1816

I agree with you in all it’s eulogies on the 18th century. It certainly witnessed the sciences and arts, manners and morals, advanced to a higher degree than the world had ever before seen. And might we not go back to the aera of the Borgias, by which time the barbarous ages had reduced national morality to it’s lowest point of depravity, and observe that the arts and sciences, rising from that point, advanced gradually thro’ all the 16th. 17th. and 18th. centuries, softening and correcting the manners and moral of man? I think too we may add, to the great honor of science and the arts, that their natural effect is, by illuminating public opinion, to erect it into a Censor, before which the most exalted tremble for their future, as well as present fame.

With some exceptions only, through the 17th. and 18th. centuries morality occupied an honorable chapter in the political code of nations. You must have observed while in Europe, as I thought I did, that those who administered the governments of the greater powers at least, had a respect to faith, and considered the dignity of their government as involved in it’s integrity. A wound indeed was inflicted on this character of honor in the 18th. century by the partition of Poland. But this was the atrocity of a barbarous government chiefly, in conjunction with a smaller one still scrambling to become great, while one only of these already great, and having character to lose, descended to the baseness of an accomplice in the crime.

France, England, Spain shared in it only inasmuch as they stood aloof and permitted it’s perpetration. How then has it happened that these nations, France especially and England, so great, so dignified, so distinguished by science and the arts, plunged at once into all the depths of human enormity, threw off suddenly and openly all the restraints of morality, all sensation to character, and unblushingly avowed and acted on the principle that power was right? Can this sudden apostacy from national rectitude be accounted for?

The treaty of Pilnitz seems to have begun it, suggested perhaps by the baneful precedent of Poland. Was it from the terror of monarchs, alarmed at the light returning on them from the West, and kindling a Volcano under their thrones? Was it a combination to extinguish that light, and to bring back, as their best auxiliaries, those enumerated by you, the Sorbonne, the Inquisition, the Index expurgatorius, and the knights of Loyola?

Whatever it was, the close of the century saw the moral world thrown back again to the age of the Borgias, to the point from which it had departed 300. years before. France, after crushing and punishing the conspiracy of Pilnitz, went herself deeper and deeper into the crimes she has been chastising. I say France, and not Bonaparte; for altho’ he was the head and mouth, the nation furnished the hands which executed his enormities. England, altho’ in opposition, kept full pace with France, not indeed by the manly force of her own arms, but by oppressing the weak, and bribing the strong. At length the whole choir joined and divided the weaker nations among them.

Your prophecies to Dr. Price proved truer than mine [This is a reference to Adams making dire predictions about which way the French revolution was going to go – not a popular view at the time. Adams sensed impending disaster and carnage, and Jefferson thought that “the blood of patriots and tyrants” were needed to water “the tree of liberty”. Adams predicted to Dr. Price, in a letter, that a million people would eventually die.]; and yet fell short of the fact, for instead of a million, the destruction of 8 or 10 millions of human beings has probably been the effect of these convulsions. I did not, in 89. believe they would have lasted so long, nor have cost so much blood. But altho’ your prophecy has proved true so far, I hope it does not preclude a better final result. That same light from our West seems to have spread and illuminated the very engines employed to extinguish it. It has given them a glimmering of their rights and their power. The idea of representative government has taken root and growth among them. Their masters feel it, and are saving themselves by timely offers of this modification of their own powers. Belgium, Prussia, Poland, Lombardy etc. are now offered a representative organization: illusive probably at first, but it will grow into power in the end. Opinion is power, and that opinion will come.

Even France will attain representative government. You observe it makes the basis of every constitution which has been demanded or offered: of that demanded by their Senate; of that offered by Bonaparte; and of that granted by Louis XVIII. The idea then is rooted, and will be established, altho’ rivers of blood may yet flow between them and their object. The allied armies now couching upon them are first to be destroyed, and destroyed they will surely be. A nation united can never be conquered.

We have seen what the ignorant bigotted and unarmed Spaniards could do against the disciplined veterans of their invaders. What then may we not expect from the power and character of the French nation? The oppressors may cut off heads after heads, but like those of the Hydra, they multiply at every stroke. The recruits within a nation’s own limits are prompt and without number; while those of their invaders from a distance are slow, limited, and must come to an end.

I think too we perceive that all these allies do not see the same interest in the annihilation of the power of France. There are certainly some symptoms of foresight in Alexander that France might produce a salutary diversion of force were Austria and Prussia to become her enemies. France too is the natural ally of the Turk, as having no interfering interests, and might be useful in neutralizing and perhaps turning that power on Austria. That a re-acting jealousy too exists with Austria and Prussia I think their late strict alliance indicates; and I should not wonder if Spain should discover a sympathy with them. Italy is so divided as to be nothing.

Here then we see new coalitions in embrio which after France shall in turn have suffered a just punishment for her crimes, will not only raise her from the earth on which she is prostrate, but give her an opportunity to establish a government of as much liberty as she can bear, enough to ensure her happiness and prosperity. When insurrection begins, be it where it will, all the partitioned countries will rush to arms, and Europe again become an Arena of gladiators. And what is the definite object they will propose? A restoration of the status quo prius, of the state of possession of 89.

I see no other principle on which Europe can ever again settle down in lasting peace. I hope your prophecies will go thus far, as my wishes do, and that they, like the former, will prove to have been the sober dictates of a superior understanding, and a sound calculation of effects from causes well understood.

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4 Responses to The Books: “The Adams-Jefferson Letters”

  1. Steve on the mountain says:

    Wow. Presidents what could actually think and speak. Them was the days.
    Steve on the mountain

  2. red says:

    Presidents WHAT could think and speak?

    Er …

  3. Ken says:

    Adams’ opening paragraph just went into my commonplace book.

    I love Jefferson’s oblique recap of the Polish partition, too. A “barbarous government chiefly” must be Russia; “a smaller one still scrambling to become great” is Prussia, and the “only one of these already great” has got to be Austria.

  4. red says:

    I know – it’s really amazing. I love it when they go off into philosophical conversations – but their down-and-dirty political analysis is fascinating too – a bird’s eye view.

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