The Great Divide Read online

  THE GREAT DIVIDE

  ALSO BY THOMAS FLEMING

  NONFICTION

  1776: Year of Illusions

  Washington’s Secret War: The Hidden History of Valley Forge

  Duel: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr and the Future of America

  The Perils of Peace: America’s Struggle for Survival After Yorktown

  The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers

  A Disease in the Public Mind

  FICTION

  Liberty Tavern

  Dreams of Glory

  Remember the Morning

  The Officers’ Wives

  Time and Tide

  The Secret Trial of Robert E. Lee

  Copyright © 2015 by Thomas Fleming

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  For information, address Da Capo Press, 44 Farnsworth Street, 3rd Floor, Boston, MA 02210.

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  Cataloging-in-Publication data for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

  First Da Capo Press edition 2015

  ISBN: 978-0-306-82236-0 (eBook)

  Published by Da Capo Press

  A Member of the Perseus Books Group

  www.dacapopress.com

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  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To Alice

  To see this country happy…is so much the wish of my soul… nothing on this side of Elysium can be placed in competition with it.

  GEORGE WASHINGTON1

  Rather than it [The French Revolution] should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated. Were there but an Adam and Eve left in every country, and left free, it would be better than as it now is.

  THOMAS JEFFERSON2

  The government we mean to erect is intended to last for ages.

  JAMES MADISON3

  Contents

  Introduction

  1The Man Who Lived Dangerously

  2The Man Who Loved to Legislate—But Hated to Govern

  3Should This Constitution Be Ratified?

  4The President and His Partner Begin Making History

  5The Birth of an Ideologue

  6The President Takes Charge

  7The Secretary of State from Paris

  8Mr. Jefferson Wins a Victory That He Soon Regrets

  9From Disagreements to the First Divide

  10When Best-Laid Plans Go Wrong

  11The President—and the Secretary of State—Make Up Their Minds

  12The Problems of the Secretary of State’s Polar Star

  13Can America Remain Neutral in a Warring World?

  14Challenging Old Man Washington

  15The Secretary of State Calls It Quits

  16Shooting Wars Loom on Several Doorsteps

  17Will Whiskey Rebels Unravel the Union?

  18A Master Politician Takes Charge

  19The End of Three Friendships

  20A Very Political Farewell

  21Martha Washington Sends a Message

  22The Vice President as Party Boss

  23The Ultimate Divide

  24The Death That Changed Everything

  25The Race to Make the Vice First

  26The UnWashington President in His Federal Village

  27How a Mosquito Rescued Thomas Jefferson’s Presidency

  28An Empire vs. A Constitution

  29The Voters Speak the Language of Praise

  30The Improbable Failures of a Triumphant Second Term

  31The President vs. The Chief Justice

  32The Final Defeat of an UnWashington President

  33The Transformation of James Madison

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  Index

  Introduction

  A CONFLICT BETWEEN GEORGE Washington and Thomas Jefferson? Most Americans are unaware that such discord ever existed. Numerous historians have explored Jefferson’s clash with Alexander Hamilton. But little has been written about the differences that developed between the two most famous founding fathers.

  Two years after her husband’s death, Martha Washington told a visiting congressman that she regarded Mr. Jefferson “as one of the most detestable of mankind,” and saw his election as president as “the greatest misfortune our country has ever experienced.” The congressman agreed with her and recorded these opinions in his diary.1

  A series of political clashes had gradually destroyed the friendship and mutual respect the two men had enjoyed at the start of Washington’s presidency. Ultimately, they became enemies. Small, slight James Madison, whose brilliant political theorizing won the admiration of both men, was forced to choose between these two tall antagonists.

  Eleven years older than Jefferson, Washington had almost no formal education. He spent his teenage years as a hardworking surveyor. Jefferson devoured books and ideas at the College of William and Mary. At the age of twenty-two, Washington went to war against the French and Indians in Virginia’s western wilderness, and became the colony’s best known soldier. Jefferson studied law and became a passionate revolutionist when America’s grievances against British rule exploded into rebellion.

  During the eight-year struggle for independence, Washington rose to worldwide fame as the commander of the American “Continental” Army. He crowned his victory by rejecting pleas to banish the bankrupt Continental Congress and become the new nation’s military dictator. Instead, he resigned his commission and returned to civilian life.

  Jefferson’s chief contribution to the struggle was drafting the Declaration of Independence. The opening paragraph’s soaring insistence that every human being was entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness would ultimately give the document world-transforming power. But few people emphasized this aspect of the Declaration—or thought of Jefferson as its author—during the War for Independence. Congress had heavily edited and revised his draft before issuing it on July 4, 1776. Jefferson was better known for his two years as governor of Virginia, during which he revealed a dismaying inability to deal with the crises that confronted him.

  By 1783, when independence was confirmed by a peace treaty with Great Britain, it had become apparent to many thoughtful men that the Continental Congress and the primitive constitution it had created, the Articles of Confederation, were inadequate to the challenge of governing thirteen contentious states.

  In September 1785, Congressman James Madison began visiting General Washington at Mount Vernon to discuss the need for a more effective federal government. Absent from these conversations, which would have a large influence on the as yet unborn constitution, was Washington’s and Madison’s mutual friend, Thomas Jefferson. He was in France, serving as America’s envoy.

  If Jefferson had been at Mount Vernon, would Washington have influenced him? Or would Jefferson have influenced Washington? It is one of American history’s most intriguing what-ifs.2

  Washington was first, last, and always a realist. “We must take human nature as we find it. Perfection falls not to the share of mortals,” was one of his favorite maxims.3 But he combin
ed this realism with a surprisingly strong faith that America was destined to become a beacon of freedom for men and women everywhere. One recent biographer has called him a realistic visionary.4

  Jefferson tended to see men and events through the lens of a pervasive idealism. He believed that if left to their own devices, free men would inevitably find the path to a good government. All they needed were visionary words to inspire them.

  Experience had convinced Washington that this happy outcome would only occur with the help of strong leadership. This was the missing ingredient in the Articles of Confederation, which made Congress the ruler of the nation and their presiding officer a powerless factotum. Jefferson was reluctant to exercise political power. “I have no ambition to govern men,” he told his friend John Adams. “It is a painful and thankless office.”5

  Against this background, let us begin an exploration of the conflict that arose between these two very different leaders, both of whom cared deeply about the United States of America.

  CHAPTER 1

  The Man Who Lived Dangerously

  AN ADMIRING ENGLISH TRAVELER who saw Mount Vernon before the American Revolution said the house “commands a noble prospect of water, of cliffs, woods, and plantations.” Anyone who has visited George Washington’s home and gazed out at the broad Potomac River flowing past the green lawn will agree with this description. The similarity of the contemporary landscape makes it easy to imagine Washington and James Madison there on the sunny piazza, discussing what might and should be done to rescue the infant republic they had done so much to launch.

  Simultaneously, the house helps us understand its proprietor. As his own architect, Washington had created a mansion from the unassuming one-and-a-half-story building he had inherited from his older brother. He had raised the roof and added four full-sized rooms upstairs. A few years later, he expanded both sides of the house, adding a library on the south end with a bedroom above it, and a double-sized dining room on the north end. He also ordered the exterior “rusticated”—a process that utilized sand-laced paint to make the wooden walls resemble stone. Mount Vernon became a house that revealed its owner’s sense of himself as a man of dignity and importance. But it retained the simple straightforward lines of a home for a country gentleman.1

  The erect, soldierly Washington and the slim, short Madison were an unlikely pair of friends. The thirty-four-year-old congressman was nineteen years younger than the grey-haired retired general. In public, Washington’s formal manner could be almost forbidding; his blue eyes often seemed judgmental, even stern. In private, they could sparkle with delight at a witty remark, especially if it came from a clever woman.

  Madison, a graduate of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton), impressed most people as a shy, scholarly man with a history of ill-health. But friends found “Jemmy” a lively conversationalist, with an amazingly rich mind, thanks to years of omnivorous reading. He had a wicked eye for the flaws and foibles of human nature. He was fond of wry aphorisms, such as: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary”—a viewpoint that matched nicely with Washington’s realism.

  Madison’s contribution to the Revolution started with his service as a councillor to Governor Patrick Henry in 1778 and to Thomas Jefferson in 1779. The following year, the Virginia legislature elected the talented young man to the Continental Congress. There, Madison soon attracted General Washington’s attention because he did his utmost to push two measures that Washington considered vital. One was giving Congress the power to govern the restless states. The second was to raise enough money to pay the back salaries owed to the officers and men of the army he commanded. Almost as important were funds to finance a pension for the army’s officers. Washington told Congress, if they did not make good on this long promised reward, they would “embitter every moment of my future life.”2

  Too often, George Washington has been portrayed as a formidable-looking figurehead, whose fame and leadership abilities were exaggerated and even invented by shrewder, more intelligent men, such as Madison or the general’s wartime aide, Alexander Hamilton. One of these skeptics, who has published a dozen books on the Revolution, has expressed the opinion that Washington’s entire career could be summed up in a single word: luck. Such people may have paid too much attention to Washington’s labored speech accepting command of the American army, in which he protested that he was unfit for the large task confronting him.

  What singles out Washington as a leader was the way he dealt with challenges to his army and his reputation almost from the day he took command in 1775. Again and again, he revealed an ability to think for himself and find the right solution to the daunting problems that confronted him. Year after year, he maintained an amazing equanimity in spite of the constant awareness that failure meant disgrace and death. He was unquestionably a man ready, willing, and able to live dangerously.

  One of General Washington’s first tests was his 1775 discovery that he intensely disliked a great many of the New England soldiers he was supposed to command. In a letter to fellow Virginian Richard Henry Lee, he remarked that the Yankee enlisted men were “an exceeding dirty and nasty people” with the “most indifferent” officers he ever saw. His secretary and aide-de-camp, Joseph Reed, warned him that Lee had shown this letter to John Adams, who had undoubtedly shown it to his fiery cousin, Samuel Adams. Sam would almost certainly resent the slur and be quick to seek revenge. That was the last time Washington ever said anything derogatory about a soldier or politician from any part of their embryo nation. In a painful flash, he saw he must become not only a victorious battlefield leader, but the creator of a sense of brotherhood and mission in his “Continental” army.3

  In 1776, Washington faced a British army three or four times larger than the one that self-appointed military experts such as Thomas Paine had predicted the supposedly bankrupt royal government could send to America. In battles on Long Island and in Manhattan, the redcoated regulars and their hired German allies routed Washington’s mix of regulars bolstered by untrained militia. As he watched fleeing Connecticut militiamen race past him, ignoring his orders to stand and fight at present-day Forty-second Street and the East River, the general roared: “Are these the men with which I am to defend America?”4

  A few nights later, Washington wrote a letter to John Hancock, the president of the Continental Congress, informing him that, henceforth, he would never risk the American army in another all-out confrontation with the British. Instead, he would “protract the war.” This meant the Continental Army would frequently retreat in order to fight another day. Washington hoped Congress would see no disgrace in this new strategy.

  Not a few military historians have considered this decision to change the basic thinking of the war proof of Washington’s ability to make crucial decisions. Many of his staff officers and subordinate generals were too badly rattled by the British victories to do more than wring their hands. He was well aware that he was abandoning the theory that Congress had formulated in 1775—the war would be won in one titanic battle—a “general action”—in which overwhelming numbers of spirited American amateurs would crush King George III’s comparative handful of dispirited mercenaries.5

  Several days later, General Washington declared that Congress’s policy of using untrained militia to save the cost of a large regular army was threatening their cause with ruin. Only a well-trained army, equipped with cannon and cavalry, and strong enough to “look the enemy in the face,” would win the war. It took seven often harrowing years but this combination of a protracted war and a dependable regular army proved to be the formula for victory.6

  A protracted war did not mean that General Washington was unwilling to fight when he thought he had a good chance of winning. In the final weeks of 1776, when the American cause seemed destined for oblivion, he struck two electrifying blows, killing or capturing the German garrison at Trenton, and routing British regiments from Princeton. America, groaned one dismayed loyalist, became “liberty mad aga
in.”

  A year later, in the army’s winter camp at Valley Forge, Washington discovered that the British were not his only enemies. Disillusioned congressmen, under the leadership of Samuel Adams, a foe of a regular army, with neither sympathy nor understanding of the protracted war strategy, tried to oust Washington with a nasty mix of politics and slander. Wealthy Thomas Mifflin, the army’s quartermaster general, was also in on the conspiracy.

  Their chief complaint was the Continental Army’s failure to stop the British army from seizing the American capital, Philadelphia. Adams, Mifflin, and their followers wanted to downgrade Washington and elevate the victor in the 1777 battle of Saratoga, General Horatio Gates. They made Gates chairman of a “Board of War,” with the power to issue orders without bothering to consult the commander in chief. They also began smearing Washington as an overcautious, egotistic fake who thought his two small victories at the close of 1776 had won him enduring fame.

  A congressional delegation came to Valley Forge, ready, one of its backers smugly told Samuel Adams, “to rap a demigod over the knuckles” and embarrass Washington into resigning. The general invited the chairman to dinner, and in two hours turned him into an ally. Next he presented him and his fellow would-be knuckle-rappers with a twenty thousand-word statement, written by a young West Indian–born aide, Alexander Hamilton, who had recently joined his staff. The essay informed the stunned delegation that Congress was responsible for the mess in the quartermaster and commissary departments that had brought the army to the edge of starvation. The would-be knuckle-rappers returned to Congress with Washington’s solution to the problem, plus an insistence on a pension for the officers, to prevent the army’s collapse. Despite frantic objections from the Samuel Adams clique in Congress, the pension passed by a single vote.7

  At the battle of Monmouth, a few months after the ordeal at Valley Forge, Washington placed his second-in-command, former British colonel, Charles Lee, in charge of the advance guard as they pursued the British army retreating from Philadelphia. The French had entered the war as America’s ally and the British had abandoned the American capital to concentrate their forces in New York. Like General Gates, the outspoken Lee had many friends in Congress. He scoffed at Washington’s strategy and urged them to discharge the regular army and rely completely on militia to fight a “partisan” (guerilla) war—with him in command.