Anthony Comegna: Kevin Gutzman is a New York
Times best-selling author and professor of
history at Western Connecticut State University.
Three of his books, Virginia's American Revolution,
James Madison and the Making of America, and
Thomas Jefferson: Revolutionary flesh out
what Gutzman takes to be a radical, revolutionary
time and place in American history.
Many might join with mainstream academia in
noting this generation and this place's shortcomings,
but we would be remiss [00:00:30] if we did
not try to understand the world from above,
just as we try to understand it from below.
Welcome to Liberty Chronicles, a project of
Libertarianism.org.
I'm Anthony Comegna.
We often hear, or at least, sometimes now
we hear, that there was a Revolution of 1800,
that it was an important year, because here
we have the peaceful transfer of power from
one party [00:01:00] to another, and Jefferson
was a significant enough break from the old
federal tradition that it qualifies as a Revolution
of 1800.
Let me put it to you, was there a Revolution
of 1800?
Kevin Gutzman: Oh, yes.
I certainly think there was.
Anthony Comegna: In what way?
What was really radical or important about
that year or that event?
Kevin Gutzman: Well, not Washington himself,
but people around [00:01:30] him, other people
high among the Federalists, were essentially
monarchists.
That is, both Alexander Hamilton, the Treasury
Secretary in Washington's early years as president,
and John Adams, made clear that they thought
eventually the United States would have a
monarchy.
Hamilton had explained on June 18th, 1787,
in a day-long speech in the Philadelphia Convention,
as the Constitution [00:02:00] was being written,
what kind of monarchy he would like the United
States to have.
At the conclusion of his description of this
hypothetical government, he said, "Well, of
course, the American people aren't ready for
this now, but they are more congenial to it
than they have been before, and I see that
they're becoming ... They're coming closer
to my position all the time."
I think Hamilton's program [00:02:30] is rightly
understood then as having been intended to
assimilate American government finance to
the British model, and in doing so, also to
assimilate the American social structure and
the government itself to the British model.
Adams told Jefferson at a dinner attended
at Jefferson's house by Adams and Hamilton
that ... Well, he responded to Hamilton's
claim [00:03:00] that ... I'm sorry, Adams'
claim that, if the British Constitution could
be purged of its corruption, it would be the
best in the world, to which Hamilton responded,
"Well, without its corruption, it wouldn't
work.
It's already the best in the world."
Jefferson, hearing the Prime Minister, essentially
Hamilton, and the Vice President Adams say
this thought, "Well, we have a general problem,
that there are a lot [00:03:30] of prominent
American politicians who think that a Republican
experiment is a forlorn hope, and we shouldn't
have it."
On the other hand, by the time the end of
the 1790s came, and the Federalists had launched
their effort to make outspoken opposition
to the administration illegal through the
Sedition Act, a lot of peoples' minds had
been changed, and so when, in 1800, [00:04:00]
the Republicans won the elections, it seemed
to Jefferson and to others that there had
been a change, not only in parties, but in
the actual principles that were going to underlie
the administration from that point on.
I tend to agree with that.
Not only were the political predilections
of the leaders of the two parties substantially
different, but their programs were notably
different.
Jefferson came into office, and within a few
months, his allies in the Congress, [00:04:30]
now in control of Congress for the first time,
had eliminated all the internal taxes, substantially
reduced the size of the Navy, substantially
reduced the size of the Army, actually by
95%.
They reduced the number of men present was
statutorily entitled to recruit into the Army.
Jefferson himself pardoned everybody who'd
been convicted under the Sedition Act, of
whom there were 12 people.
It seems to me [00:05:00] that this meant
there had been a real change in the government.
Jefferson said that it was as real a revolution
in the principles of government as that of
'76 was in its form.
I think that's true, essentially.
I do believe that there was real difference
between the Federalists and the Republicans,
and that the right side won in the end, and
that immediately on taking office began making
substantial changes.
Anthony Comegna: Was this [00:05:30] only
a revolution really for those in power, those
with political influence?
I mean, this is an extremely tiny number of
people actually voting for Jefferson or anybody
else in that era.
It's a very tiny number of essentially privileged
white males with property electing other white
males with property.
The vast majority of the population has little-to-no
official say in the matter.
Is it purely a policy [00:06:00] change, or
a change in the mind of those who govern,
or was there a palpable sense among the population
that the country was changing in dramatic
ways?
Kevin Gutzman: There was a substantial difference
between the Federalists and the Republicans,
considering ... Concerning the extent to which
or the degree to which common people ought
to be involved in the political life of the
country.
In the 1790s, spontaneously, in communities
across the country, there [00:06:30] grew
up what were called Democratic Republican
societies, which were common people generally
who turned out to celebrate, say, to commemorate
particular events in the history of the French
Revolution, or to celebrate the 4th of July,
which was a partisan, Jeffersonian holiday
in those days, or otherwise to demonstrate
that they were active members of the polity.
On the other hand, Federalists strongly disapproved
of this.
[00:07:00] Classically, in his farewell address,
Washington said that the role of the average
person in the political system was to vote
every two years, and that was it.
It was supposed to be for policy makers to
make the decisions, to conduct the discussions,
to be involved in the actual political life
of the country.
The Jeffersonian Republicans actually were
more democratically oriented than the Federalists
by far, [00:07:30] and people knew that.
That was one ground on which they tended to
associate with one or the other party.
Over time, the Federalists actually became
more aristocratic.
As to this question about the suffrage, there
is some exaggeration in the common understanding
of the extent to which suffrage was restricted
to property-owning males.
Actually, by the end of the Jefferson [00:08:00]
administration, as I recall, there were only
two states, New York and Virginia, in which
there is still any property qualifications
for voting at all.
In general, people could vote.
Even considering the property qualification,
in Virginia, we think about half of adult
white men of sound mind were eligible to vote,
which made Virginia more democratic than any
country in Europe, except for some cantons
in Switzerland.
That, in our own [00:08:30] context, that's
not very democratic, but in the context in
which it lay, which was the early 19th century,
Jefferson's Virginia was very democratic.
Of course, the direction of reform was in
favor or in the direction of more democracy,
whatever one thinks of that.
I think this criticism, on one hand, is generally
uninformed, or intentionally distorted, [00:09:00]
but of course, there's also some disagreement
among libertarians about the question how
Republican our society ought to be.
A lot of libertarian constitutional legal
thinkers really don't mind the idea of an
extensive policy-making role for federal judges,
as long as they have a feeling that they'll
get policy outcomes from those judges that
they prefer.
I could name names, but I'm sure you know
whom I mean.
This is one way in which I find myself sometimes
at variance with the mainline of libertarian
[00:09:30] thinkers these days.
I consider myself a Jeffersonian.
I'm a libertarian personally, but I think
the Constitution ought to have a fixed meaning,
not whatever the judges can be persuaded to
say it means.
That's of course a Jeffersonian position.
Anyway, I think it's kind of calumny to assert
that these polities, these states, weren't
very democratic.
Compared to today, when the Constitution declares
that blacks, and women, [00:10:00] and basically
any man can vote, it wasn't democratic, but
for the 18th century, it was crazy democratic.
There was no place like it.
Of course, I said that in Virginia, they had
a more widely distributed suffrage than essentially
any place in Europe except for some Swiss
cantons, and New England was even more democratic
than that.
Virtually every male could vote in New England.
Anthony Comegna: Yeah.
Rhode Island restricted the suffrage to property
holders until 1842.
Kevin Gutzman: Is [00:10:30] that right?
Anthony Comegna: But it caused significant
constitutional crises in the [crosstalk 00:10:34].
Kevin Gutzman: Oh, and you ended up with a
rebellion over the Constitution, right?
Anthony Comegna: Right.
Yeah.
The Dorr War, which we will get to on the
podcast in all good time.
Now, let's dig into that Jeffersonianism that
you said most libertarians share something
with.
I think that's certainly true.
It's hard to deny that, at the very least,
our intellectual history leads back pretty
strongly to the Jeffersonians.
[00:11:00] I want to sort of dig into that,
and maybe, if we could, get a bit of a scorecard
for the Jefferson administration, especially
considering that, just a few years after he
leaves office, the conflict started during
his term have brewed into a war between two
of the premiere powers in the Atlantic.
Let's talk about what were some of the successes
for what we might call a libertarian radicalism
under Jefferson, and what were some of the
most serious problematic or [00:11:30] anti-libertarian
policies that he advanced?
Kevin Gutzman: Jefferson's platform included
a serious retrenchment of federal spending
and taxing.
As I said before, within a few months of his
becoming president, the Congress had repealed
essentially all the federal taxes except for
the tariff, so there no longer was going to
be a carriage tax, or a whisky tax, or any
internal tax at all.
In fact, if you encountered the federal government
in the early part of the 19th century, [00:12:00]
likely you had met somebody who was associated
with the local postmaster.
If you weren't dealing with him, and most
people wouldn't have been, then you were unlikely
to encounter federal officials at all.
This was Jefferson's and his party's doing,
and that was essentially his platform.
He laid out this program in his first inaugural
address.
Another way that they were successful is that
they decided to retrench the military.
In the quasi-war years [00:12:30] of the Adams
administration, Congress had authorized the
president to recruit as many as 50,000 soldiers
into the Army, which would be about twice
as many as Washington ever had during the
Revolution.
They substantially increased taxes to pay
for purchasing numerous warships, not the
top-of-the-line types that England had, that
Britain had 400 of, but the next class down.
When Jefferson came into office, they essentially
put [00:13:00] those in dry dock and decided
to do without them.
The difference between the Adams administration
and Jefferson administration in this regard
was essentially, "We're not going to have
a big military, and we're not going to need
the taxes to pay for it."
Jefferson also immediately pardoned everybody
who had been convicted under the Sedition
Act, which were all 12 people who had been
tried under the Sedition Act.
That included a congressman from Vermont,
the publisher of the chief Republican [00:13:30]
paper in the country, the Philadelphia Aurora,
and other prominent Republicans.
This was obviously substantial change.
The Jeffersons' foreign and domestic policies
were notably different from those of his opponents.
He said in his inaugural address that there
might have been the question whether there'd
be reprisals against the Federalists once
the Republicans took office, as of course
there had been numerous instances of party
change followed by mass murder in France.
[00:14:00] Jefferson said in his first inaugural
address, essentially, that there would be
no such thing.
In fact, that those people who had been wrong
in the past could be left as monuments to
the safety with which error could be tolerated
where reason was left free to combat it.
In other words, if you saw Al Hamilton walking
down the street, just point at him and laugh.
We didn't need a guillotine.
We just had voted him out, and that was the
end of it.
Jefferson thought actually that, since Americans
had come to their senses, [00:14:30] there
wouldn't be any more party disputation.
People don't realize that the Republican dynasty
that is three, two-term Virginia Republican
presidents at the beginning of the 19th century,
they actually tried to implement this program.
So by the time James Monroe, who was formerly
Jefferson's law student, and was a kind of
political lieutenant of Jefferson's, by the
time he left office, the Federalist party
had ceased to exist.
He actually, Monroe, was reelected with all
but one vote in the electoral [00:15:00] college.
Part of the reason the Federalist party had
ceased to exist was that Monroe made no attempt
to keep the Republican party alive.
He thought it didn't make sense to be appointing
people to postmasters, or court marshals,
or to other federal offices on the basis of
service to the Republican party, and he did
not pursue that course.
This was, again, part of the Jefferson program.
He thought, Jefferson thought, there was a
kind of natural consensus [00:15:30] among
Americans that had only been disrupted by
the malign influences he saw of Hamilton,
the unwitting support of Hamilton's malignity
by the uniquely popular Washington.
Anthony Comegna: Do you think that's to some
degree the result of people's proclivity to
make a cartoon out of their enemies?
Jefferson did plenty while he was in office
to gain himself detractors, [00:16:00] and
to upset whatever consensus there might have
been.
It's not as though partisan feelings are always
malicious, right?
Sometimes the person in power is genuinely
misbehaving.
I wanted to ask you especially about the Louisiana
Purchase, because Jefferson himself seems
to have thought, "Well, maybe this is unconstitutional
for me to do, but it's too good a deal to
pass up, so I'll go ahead with it, and send
it to Congress to authorize later.
If people think I've [00:16:30] acted unconstitutionally,
then so be it, but I'm not going to let Louisiana
just go, and maybe Spain come in and take
it, or who knows what?
England invade, or whatever."
What did Jefferson do while he was in office
to gain enemies?
Kevin Gutzman: It's not that he thought perhaps
the Louisiana Purchase was unconstitutional.
He was certain that it was unconstitutional.
His initial response to news of the treaty
was that, "Well, we could [00:17:00] buy this
territory, but we could not make into states."
Then his next ... His first reconsideration
was to the effect that, "Well, actually, we
couldn't do that either.
We're going to need an amendment before we
can take any further steps."
He asked Madison to draft him an amendment,
and Madison did so.
Along with that, Madison conveyed to him his
opinion that, "Well, of course, you can't
try to amend the Constitution to empower the
federal government [00:17:30] to do this,
because for all we know, the next ship from
France is going to contain word that Napoleon
has changed his mind, so we need to hurry
and strike in this regard."
Madison actually believed that it was obviously
constitutional, that when the Constitution
said in Article 2 that the president could
enter into treaties with the advice and consent
of the Senate, since the Constitution did
not say what kind of treaties the president
could enter into with the advice and consent
of the Senate, the only reasonable [00:18:00]
reading was "any common kind of treaty."
Although today they are not common, in those
days, treaties of peace, treaties of alliance,
trade treaties, and treaties for purchase
and sale of land were all common, so Madison
said, "Clearly, this is covered by the general
power to make a treaty."
However, Jefferson seems to have been the
only significant Republican who did not buy
this argument, including even John [00:18:30]
Randolph Roanoke.
Ultimately, Jefferson's conclusion was that
it was unconstitutional, but it was absolutely
essential, and so he hoped the people would
forgive him.
Anthony Comegna: A very rare sentiment, isn't
it?
That itself is enough to give Jefferson some
redemption in my mind, whatever you think
the problems with him might be, just that
he would recognize that, "You know, this thing
I'm doing right now, that I'm still going
to do, it might be illegal, and you can [00:19:00]
hold me responsible for that."
Boy, that's a rare thing.
Kevin Gutzman: Yes, essentially unheard of.
Now, whatever they want to do is permissible.
But they were in kind of a box.
Jefferson actually had written before this
all happened that, as he put it, "There's
only one spot on the map the possessor of
which must be an enemy of the United States,
and that is New Orleans."
That's why he had sent Monroe, James Monroe,
to France to join [00:19:30] Robert Livingston
in negotiating the purchase of New Orleans
and the area right around New Orleans.
Of course, the response they got from Talleyrand
was, "Well, how about if I sell you all of
Louisiana?"
As far as Jefferson was concerned, obtaining
New Orleans was essential.
It was just ... It was the one real geostrategic
imperative that the country faced.
He did think it was unconstitutional.
He never changed his mind about that.
People commonly say, "Well, you know, he changed
his mind when he got into office.
He bought Louisiana."
[00:20:00] Actually, no, he didn't change
his mind.
He just decided that he had to do it anyway,
and he said, "I hope the people will forgive
me," which, apparently they did.
Anthony Comegna: Lots of people never forgave
him for the Embargo Act.
Plenty of people threatened his life over
it.
Can you tell us why Jefferson, who should
have, I think at least, should have known
better economics than to support something
like an embargo, why did he support this thing?
Did he really want war with Great Britain
during the Napoleonic period?
[00:20:30] Is there any teeth to the Federalist
claim that the Republicans were all crypto-Jacobins
who wanted to make war on all the monarchies
of the world?
Was there any truth to that whatsoever, that
Jefferson was seeking out a war with Britain?
Kevin Gutzman: I don't read it that way.
I think that, as early as the early 1780s,
James Madison had had the idea that the United
States could coerce European powers with its
economic might.
At one [00:21:00] point, he said that European
countries would be dependent on American foodstuffs
as long as Europeans were in the custom of
eating.
Madison thought that economic embargo could
be a substitute for military strength.
Jefferson, as was his greatest weakness, was
persuaded by Madison.
There are other instances where the same thing
happened.
[00:21:30] In 1807, in response to war fever
up and down the East coast, over what is called
the Chesapeake Leopard Incident, where a British
warship attacked an American military vessel
at Hampton Roads, just coming out of Chesapeake
Bay, within sight of numerous civilians watching
this from on shore.
Jefferson heard from people from Georgia to
New Hampshire saying, "It's time to declare
war on the British," and [00:22:00] he thought
the embargo was an alternative.
On one hand, this was a way to avoid war,
avoid admitting the Federalists had been right,
avoid raising taxes and building up the military,
maybe even adopting a Sedition Act.
On the other hand, it was a kind of Enlightenment
attempt to create a new world in which you
wouldn't have military powers contending with
each other [00:22:30] violently, but instead,
people would trade, and if they ceased trading,
maybe they'd have to negotiate their disagreements.
I think it's ... Obviously, the idea that
this could be successful in the context of
a world war between France and Britain, in
which one or the other of them was supposed
to buckle in response to being deprived of
Georgian rice, or Virginia tobacco, or Massachusetts
fish, the idea that this was going to be successful
seems just ridiculous, but [00:23:00] Jefferson
thought that the Enlightenment had disclosed
various truths that people hadn't apprehended
before, and one was that economics could be
used in place of warcraft.
If one criticizes him for having this Pollyanna
idea, what about his various other Pollyanna
ideas that we still appreciate?
I think this is just the typical [00:23:30]
Jeffersonian behavior.
It strikes me as fanciful to the point of
foolishness, but consistent with a lot of
his other initiatives that we find more appealing.
Anthony Comegna: Now, the war that followed
the embargo is called Mr. Madison's War, at
least by its opponents, which were sizeable
in number.
This is one of the least popular wars in American
history.
Probably not a coincidence that people were
talking about a draft that was [00:24:00]
terribly disruptive to trade.
Why exactly did the War of 1812 start, and
was it really about principle, Britain seizing
American ships and interfering with our sovereignty,
or was it about conquest and trying to scoop
up those Canadian colonies into the American
Republic and blacken Britain's eye?
Kevin Gutzman: Well, that depends whether
you ask an American or a Canadian.
In general, there is a consensus [00:24:30]
among American historians that what Madison
wanted to do was to grab Canada and then use
it as a bargaining chip, in order to wring
from the British and into impressments and
free access for American ships to both Britain
and British colonial ports in the Caribbean.
On the other hand, Canadians think that America
wanted to conquer Canada.
They commonly depict the War of 1812 as this
great Canadian victory, [00:25:00] even though
Canada didn't exist yet as a separate country.
This British, the victory of the United States,
is a great Canadian identity point for Canadians.
My own feeling is that Madison did want it
as a negotiating chip.
I don't think people generally thought of
Canada as being that valuable a possession.
Remember, in 1763, at the end of the Seven
Years War, Britain had [00:25:30] taken from
France India, Martinique, Guadalupe and Canada.
Then at the end of the war, they told the
French, "Well, if you want, you can have two
of these possessions back."
France said, "Okay, we'll take Guadalupe and
Martinique."
We're prone today to think of a map with enormous
Canada on it and think, "Well, that must have
been very attractive," but people didn't really
think of it as being that [00:26:00] wonderful
a possession.
On the hand, free trade, that was the reigning
shibboleth for Madison.
He thought that was the [inaudible 00:26:11]
ultra.
You'd take that if you could get it.
Really, what it spurred, the embargo, as I
said before, was the policy of impressment.
The Chesapeake Leopard Incident was about
impressment, and [00:26:30] if only the Republicans
could find some way to make the British stop
impressing American sailors, then independence
would be vindicated.
We, of course, we saw a treaty that ended
the Revolution in 1783, with King George III's
recognition of all the states.
He listed them from north to south, but really,
the British hadn't quite accepted the idea
that America was an independent country.
For example, [00:27:00] if you were a British
sailor, and you immigrated to the United States
and became an American citizen, the British
did not recognize that.
They didn't recognize that you could be a
former Britain, and now and American, and
so the nub of the War of 1812 was Americans
wanted access to British ports, they wanted
British respect, they wanted an end of impressment.
These three things were all tightly linked.
Anthony Comegna: For a lot of people, the
war took on [00:27:30] almost apocalyptic
tones.
Here were this ragtag new country fighting
the world's premiere power who wants to re-enslave
us, put us back into the empire.
They're stirring up Native American tribes
on the frontier, making the frontier a place
of violence again.
Fusion between British and American Indian
interests that terrified American frontiersmen
shaped the mindset and the way of life out
[00:28:00] there for decades to come.
This used to be a major point of periodization
for historians.
The War of 1812 separates the early republic
from the Jacksonian era, and they're very
different.
There's the world before the war, of local
and regional markets, and then there's the
world after the war, where like you said,
this greater free trade zone has now been
fought for and established, especially after
Napoleon's gone.
Now we have swifter globalization.
We have market revolutions [00:28:30] and
things like that.
What's more, we have a growing sense of nationalism,
and a whole cast of characters who comes to
dominate politics for the next generation
or two.
Can you say a bit about how the war wrapped
up, and what its long-term effects were on
what was the early republic?
Kevin Gutzman: Well, you began by saying this
used to be a point of periodization.
Actually, it still is.
My current project is [00:29:00] a history
of the Virginia dynasty, 1801 to '25, and
I'm cutting against the grain of saying that
the War of 1812 marked a point of departure.
My contention is that the Monroe administration
was a kind of culmination of the Jeffersonian
program or Jeffersonian, really, continuous
administration from 1801.
But it's true that Americans saw [00:29:30]
the War of 1812 as making a substantial difference.
You can say though that same thing would have
happened even if there hadn't been a War of
1812.
People of course didn't know at the time that
Napoleon was going to abdicate in 1814 then
be defeated at Waterloo in 1815, but what
that meant was that impressment was going
to end regardless of the War of 1812.
In fact, it did end regardless of the War
of 1812.
The British never conceded that they didn't
have a right to impress sailors from [00:30:00]
American ships.
They just stopped doing it because the Napoleonic
Wars came to an end.
Another significant result of the War of 1812
was, as you mentioned, that the Indians, who
had tended to align themselves first with
the French before the Seven Years War, and
then with the British in the War of 1812,
now, they found themselves essentially stranded
in North America at the tender mercies of
[00:30:30] the United States, which were,
despite the sentimentality of people like
Jefferson concerning the Indians, which were
not going to be very tender.
I think the idea of a market revolution is
emblematic of the general ignorance of economics
among historians of the early republic, and
the idea that people didn't act in markets
before the War of 1812 is just somewhat ridiculous
[00:31:00] to me.
But it is true, and actually, it also ... The
idea that there's going to be the market revolution
starting after the War of 1812 assumes that
it takes the government building roads and
bridges to make a market.
You didn't really have a market until you
had government expenditure on canals, most
of which, virtually all of which, in virtually
all the states that tried canal building,
were not self-sustaining.
In fact, virtually [00:31:30] every state
found that its canals didn't pay for themselves.
A lot of states ended up really stuck with
substantial debt because of this binge of
canal-building.
I think then that, again, that this idea of
a market revolution starting after the War
of 1812 is just thoroughly wrongheaded.
Anthony Comegna: That is exactly what the
Nationalists like Calhoun, Clay, Danial Webster,
other people in the period who dominate politics
leading up to Jackson, [00:32:00] that is
exactly what they argue though, right?
That the government does have to step in and
create this bold new world, conquering space
and extending the market all over for the
benefit of the people.
Surely the war did impress itself upon the
minds of the leadership at least in a way
that's pretty significant.
Kevin Gutzman: I see Henry Clay as a kind
of case study in public choice theory.
You're bound to have somebody [00:32:30] who
says, "Well, if I'm the guy who could be associated
with building roads in the western part of
the country where there aren't any at all,
then I'll make myself popular in every congressional
district, and I can be elected president."
To borrow a phrase, if there hadn't been Henry
Clay, we would have had to invent him.
He seems just somebody who was bound to exist,
but the fact of Henry Clay's steering the
government toward protective tariffs and [00:33:00]
log rolling doesn't mean that that's why we
have a market economy.
Anthony Comegna: The warriors cast a long,
dark, dangerous shadow over the still-young
republic, the shadow of expansionary nationalism,
a permanently militarized frontier, and an
ever-present, ever-threatening juggernaut
on the northern border.
People felt a palpable mix of hope and fear
for the future.
[00:33:30] The world was changing quickly,
and everyone took note.
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