In this Virginia History Blog, we first look at Madison’s constitutional thought in “A Politician Thinking”. “James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and the British Challenge” investigates their nationalist response to British interference with American trade and their violations of the Treaty of Paris.
Jefferson’s changing image even during his own time is described in “Confounding Father”, and “Thomas Jefferson, Legal History, and Recollection” looks at how Jefferson used law reform to constitute the new state of Virginia and the United States.
Current releases related to Virginia history in other eras from Spring 2018 journals can be found in previous Virginia History Blogs at Colonial Virginia – Spring 2018, Revolutionary Virginia – Spring 2018, and Civil War Virginia – Spring 2018, and New South and Modern Virginia – Spring 2018.
Summer journal titles begin with the Colonial Virginia Era i , Colonial Virginia Era ii and Revolution and New Nation.
The TVH webpage for Revolution, Constitution and New Nation Eras 1750-1824, features our top title picks taken from the bibliographies of three surveys of Virginia History’s 400 years: two that are widely used in Virginia college courses, and one to be published by the University of Virginia Press in 2019.
The Table of Contents divides Political and Economic Virginia, 1750-1824 into Revolution and Constitution Policy, and New Nation Policy. Topical history is treated under headings of Social History, Gender in Virginia, Religious Virginia and African American Virginian. Finally, two wars are featured under American Revolution and the War of 1812.
A Politician Thinking
Jack Rakove wrote A Politician Thinking: The Creative Mind of James Madison in 2017. It is available from the University of Oklahoma Press, on Kindle and online new and used. Reviewed in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography.
Rakove explores Madison’s constitutional thought in the 1780s and 1790s, noting a balance of empirical and theoretical factors. Trying to explain political behavior, Madison came to the conclusion that the bad state legislation had arisen during the period 1776-1788, not from temporary uninformed lapses or personal corruption, but from sustained self-interested constituencies. His solution was to seek an expanded national republic where a multiplicity of competing factions would neutralized the bad effects of one another, and mutual state suspicions would be dissipated by equitable application and enforcement.
At the Constitutional Convention, Madison sought a Congressional veto over state legislation, but the proposal failed; he succeeded in securing a congressional power to levy direct taxes. Though making the national legislature’s authority spring directly from the people in the House and from the states in the Senate, strict reliance on the Congress as the advocate and protector of the liberties and welfare of the American people was balanced by the separation of powers among the national legislature, executive and judiciary.
Madison adopted the need for a Bill of Rights in the Constitution in response to political requirement to secure its ratification. But he had little faith in “parchment barriers”. The rights of individuals would be best guaranteed by a “culture of constitutionalism” that elevated constitutional principles over political interests. If the new republic were given enough time to win the public’s affection, then the nation’s leadership might be able to enact legislation of moderation, compromise and precise language to ensure the perpetuation of a virtuous republic.
Buy “A Politician Thinking” on Amazon here.
Jefferson, Madison, and the British Challenge
Michael Schwarz wrote Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the British Challenge to Republican America, 1783-1795 in 2017. It is available from the University of North Carolina Press, on Kindle and online new and used. Reviewed in the Journal of Southern History, Summer 2018.
Strained relations between the United States and Great Britain in the Early Republic had a substantial influence on American politics. Schwarz studies the period from the adoption of the Treaty of Paris in 1783 to the ratification of the Jay Treaty in 1795. The British violated of the peace treaty and they instituted predatory trade practices against the United States, along with pitting each state against the other.
They cut off American trade from their Caribbean colonies. They refused to evacuate forts among their Native American military allies east of the Mississippi on U.S. soil, including in Virginia (later Kentucky) and in the Northwest Territory. The Continental Congress under the Articles of Confederation could not make effective commercial or military retaliation. By 1787 there was a wide nationalist consensus for a central government powerful enough to effectively end Great Britain’s interference.
Both Jefferson and Madison consistently supported the more nationalist approach to Britain during this period. Schwarz attributes the break between Madison and Hamilton to Hamilton’s seeming abandonment of the western frontier and Mississippi navigation interests with the adoption of the Jay Treaty in 1795, granting Britain “most favored nation” status benefitting New England, New York city and Philadelphia. It was a substantial contributor to the split between the Federalists and the Jeffersonian Republicans who allied with populations in the Northwest (free) Territory, Southwest (slave) Territory, North Carolina-later-Tennessee and Virginia-later-West Virginia-Kentucky interests.
Buy “Jefferson, Madison, and the British Challenge” on Amazon here.
Confounding Father: Thomas Jefferson
Robert M. S. McDonald wrote Confounding Father: Thomas Jefferson’s Image in His Own Time in 2016. It is available from the University of Virginia Press, on Kindle and online new and used. Reviewed in the Journal Southern History, Summer 2018.
McDonald documents how Jefferson’s reputation was enlarged to preeminence in the American political imagination over the two decades at the end of his life. His image was honed by self-promoting efforts, his allies and admirers, opponents and critics. Following Jefferson’s presidency, there was a reinterpretation of the Declaration as a consensus of already existing ideas to the product of a lone author genius (Also see Pauline Maier – “American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence”).
Further contributing to Jefferson’s image relative to the other Founders, Jefferson’s supporters made a conscious decision of political positioning to elevate principles over men to diminish the Federalist’s George Washington. The formation of the first party system was reinterpreted to become a decline of factional politics based on personal loyalty and a rise of institutions of common ideology.
Buy “Confounding Father” on Amazon here.
Thomas Jefferson, Legal History and Recollection
Matthew Crow wrote Thomas Jefferson, Legal History, and the Art of Recollection in 2017. It is available from the Cambridge University Press, on Kindle and online new and used. Reviewed in The William and Mary Quarterly Summer 2018.
Crow tackles the evolving law in Virginia and the United States from 1765 to 1826, from British mother country and colonialism to a somewhat sovereign state in a Confederation to incorporation into the American Union of contested federal relationship between nation and state authorities.
The law to Jefferson was more than a vehicle to resolve disputes between parties regarding property, contracts and wills. It was a constitutive force defining the core principles of a polity and its citizens. As an American patriot, Jefferson saw the law as essential to the definition, development and subsequent defense of American nationalism.
Just prior to his two one-year terms as governor, Jefferson was the chair of the law reform committee of the General Assembly proposing a full recodification of the colonial laws of Virginia. They included criminal law reform, educational reform, the end of primogeniture and entail, and the Virginia Bill for Religious Freedom. While his educational and religious provisions did not pass, Crow notes Jefferson’s concern that “a republican constitution demanded a republican [citizen] possessed of the cultivated capacity for participation in it”, and Virginia did not provide for that cultivation for all of the white residents at the time.
Crow observes that given the diversity in Virginia’s racial and ethnic composition, Jefferson had to choose which legal history should inform the core of Virginia’s legal system and its “civic identity”. His answer was reform of the colonial constitutive force but still grounded in the property-owning males supporting the ongoing American Revolution. This choice enabled the dispossession of Native Americans allying with the British as well as others.
In retirement, Jefferson took on a role of oracle for liberty, addressing federalism, democratization, and social hierarchies. Crow sees Jefferson as opposing David Hume for his Tory influence, and Sir William Blackstone for his defense of the common law, since their suspicion of democracy and veneration of tradition served to justify feudalistic suppression of legal and social reform.
Buy “Thomas Jefferson, Legal History and the Art of Recollection” on Amazon here.
Democracy’s Muse: Thomas Jefferson
Andrew Burnstein wrote Democracy’s Muse: How Thomas Jefferson Became an FDR Liberal, a Reagan Republican, and a Tea Party Fanatic in 2015. It is available from the University of Virginia Press, on Kindle and online new and used. Reviewed in the Journal Southern History, Summer 2018.
The first chapters of this book study how Jefferson has been invoked in the political realm from the late 1920s through 2000. Beginning with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s advocacy for a Jefferson Memorial on the National Mall, chapters discuss John F. Kennedy, Reagan Republicans and Bill Clinton. Jefferson was used both to promote federal programs to give the everyday American a leg up in the economy, and to propose decreased in the federal government’s footprint.
In the second part of the book, Burnstein looks at the historiography of memory and political discourse relating to any paternity by Jefferson for Sally Hemings’ children, and that of Jefferson’s religiosity as it related to Christian evangelism. Burnstein finds the preponderance of evidence points to Jefferson fathering the slaves whom he freed. And the efforts by David Barton and others to make Jefferson out to be a believer suffer from the inconvenience that Jefferson was accused of being an atheist by his contemporaries. Thomas Jefferson both commanded a rhetorical elegance of the written word, and he also avoided giving his enemies explicit ammunition related to his relationship with Sally Hemmings or his big-government Louisiana Purchase land grab.
Buy “Democracy’s Muse” on Amazon here.
Additional history related to Virginia during this time period can be found at the Table of Contents of TheVirginiaHistorian website on the page for Revolution, Constitution and New Nation Eras, 1750-1824. Titles are organized by topics related to Political and Economic Virginia, Social, Gender, Religious, African American Virginia, and Wars in Virginia during this time span.
General surveys of Virginia History can be found at Virginia History Surveys. Other Virginia history divided by topics and time periods can be found at the webpage Books and Reviews.
Note: Insights for these reviews include those available from articles in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, the William and Mary Quarterly, the Journal of the Civil War Era, the Journal of Southern History and the Journal of American History.