Jerry:

Obviously you are no fan of Jefferson

I place Jefferson in that category because after he whacked the Pirates he dismantled the Navy, instituted a self-blockade through the embargo acts which almost destroyed the economy. Attempted to appease the British over impressments without taking measures to ensure that Royal Navy would stop impressing American citizens from American ships even if they were indeed considered British subjects. His actions led us into the near suicide of the War of 1812.

At the end of his second term Jefferson agreed to wander off to Monticello to grow grapes instead of being impeached. Yes, he had good start but it was all down hill after Lewis and Clark and the Shores of Tripoli.

Regarding some threat of impeachment which had Jefferson wandering off to “grow grapes”, I’ll have to await some cite from you for that. I’ve read a fair bit of Jefferson and the history of the times around him and I recall no serious threat of impeachment. In fact I quickly scanned a few of the Jefferson volumes I have and found nothing regarding impeachment threats. If there was such a threat and it happened near the end of his second term how serious a threat could it have been? There is no evidence whatsoever that I am aware of that Jefferson ever considered a third term.

But on to more substantive matters. Jefferson’s second term was without doubt not a particularly good one. If that is all we had to measure his presidency by one might easily lump him in with some list of failed presidents.

His second term is not, however, all we have to measure him by. And even in that light we must have some context. The impressment of US citizens was a matter that extended through several presidencies. As always we can latch onto any one president and place the blame for failing to solve the problem. If we do that, however, we have a whole lot of presidents we must condemn as failures. FDR, after all, had opportunities to solve the problems which led to war with Japan. Do we toss out all of his three terms and rate him a failure because of what he failed to accomplish in one term?

But back to impressment. The matter that brought the entire impressment issue to a head, IIRC, was the Chesapeake inciddent. This happened, again IIRC, at least half way through his second term. And it was not a particularly clear cut case. The Chesapeake had several (7 or 8?) members of its crew who were direct deserters from British warships and the claim to US citizenship of some of them, if not all, was shaky. The British attempted “diplomacy” to recover the sailors, diplomacy “failed” and the most powerful navy in the world took matters into their own hands. The US was not then in any position to fight off the British Navy. Jefferson did, however, respond to this incident with attempts to increase the strength of the US Navy. Too little, too late of course, but I don’t believe I or anyone else claims Jerfferson’s presidency was perfect.

There is no dobut the embargo acts were ill-concienved. But Jefferson was obsessed with removing the US from entanglement in the wars of Europe and he seems to have honestly (albeit mistakenly) believed that the US would develop the manufacturing and replace the trade either domestically or, at least, within the hemisphere. And that was at least partially true.

As for laying blame for the War of 1812 at Jefferson’s feet, you case there seems danged thin. The two presidents prior to Jefferson and the one following him also failed to solve the impressement issue. The war began after the treaty to prevent it was signed, its signature battle was fought after the treaty to end it was signed, and its hard to blame Jefferson for our inability to defend Washington DC four years after he slinked off to grow grapes as you suggest.

So, we’re left to judge Jefferson by the achievements of his entire presidency and not simply by the failures and difficulties of his second term. He entered office following an electoral catfight and with a nation at least as “divided” as at any point in our history. We faced very real risk of bankruptcy. European nations were active on the continent. He geopolitical opponents were the biggest of the Big Dogs of his times. And he had no significant sticks or collars of leashes with which to deal with those Big Dogs. He did so by pure guile.

When Jefferson entered office he faced a nearly bankrupt and badly divided nation with roughly half the population against him. The person who would have been president, had Jefferson not won, was Aaron Burr. Adams had come to almost hate Jefferson and on his way out nearly sabotaged the government. Jefferson, a man who had no public speaking skills worthy of the name and who hated public speaking the gave an inaugural address that calmed the nation (yo, people, read the speeches!). And he entered office at a time when we had barely escaped going to war with France (see the X, Y, Z affair of Adam’s administration).

He then went on to have a first term that was so monumental in its positive achievements that it is completely impossible to imagine the modern US without its successes. He managed, partly from luck but mostly from boldness, to get France out of the New World while simultaneously securing the communications and internal trade routes of the nation. The Louisiana Purchase cannot be misunderestimated as an event of astonishing magnitude.

Jefferson’s first term brought successes that are so profound in their impact in both scope and longevity that even if his second term had been a dismal failure the success would undoubtedly outwiegh the failure. Yet he managed to avoid going to war with either France or England (Napolean had plans to put significant forces into North America and, luckily, was foiled by the Hatian revolution and disease). In his second term he made some serious mistakes but the impact of those mistakes was transient and long since forgotten and even within those mistakes one can find a germ of long term benefit.

Now that I’ve gone so far as to hijack Roger’s bandwidth for this screed about American history, I might as well go whole hog and make the following assertions:

There are only three Founding Fathers who are completely indispensable. Without any one of these men there is no United States or Modern World that any of us would recognize. Those three are (in order of precedence):

- George Washington (nuhduh! No other person in the entire world could have pulled off what he did)

- Thomas Jefferson (OK Jefferson haters, tear into me)

- John Adams (his presidency was a near failure but he was a squeeking giant among men)

There are some others who are possibly indispensable (again, Knucklehead’s order of precedence):

- James Madison

- Alexander Hamilton

- Benjamin Franklin

- Dolly Madison

There is one person – just one – who I am sure would have destroyed the USA if he’d achieved even slightly more success:

- Aaron Burr

Last, but not least, is the oddest of all the assertions I’ll make before I finally shut up.

The single most fortuitous tragedy of early American history may be the duel between Burr and Hamilton. I can never get a good handle on Hamilton but he strikes me as the one person who was both nearly indispensable and might have destroyed.

Sorry, Roger, I went way overboard but there it is.