Tiêu đề Paul S. Boyer, Clifford E. Clark, Jr, Karen Halttunen, Joseph F. Kett, Neal Salisbury, Harvard Sitkoff and Nancy Woloc_America at War and Peace, 1801–1824 ✅

8 AMERICA AT WAR AND PEACE, 1801–1824 CHAPTER OUTLINE • The Age of Jefferson • The Gathering Storm • The War of 1812 • The Awakening of American Nationalism THE AGE OF JEFFERSON Narrowly elected in 1800, Jefferson saw his popularity rise during his first term when he moved quickly to scale down government expenditures. Increasingly confi- dent of popular support, he worked to loosen the Federalists’ grip on appointive federal offices, especially in the judiciary. His purchase of Louisiana against Feder- alist opposition added to his popularity. In all of these moves, Jefferson was guided not merely by political calculation, but also by his philosophy of government— eventually known as Jeffersonianism. Jefferson and Jeffersonianism A man of extraordinary attainments, Jefferson was fluent in French, read Latin and Greek, and studied several Native American languages. He served for more than twenty years as president of America’s foremost scientific association, the American Philoso- phical Society. A student of architecture, he designed his own mansion in Virginia, Monticello. Gadgets fascinated him. He invented a device for duplicating his lett- ers, of which he wrote over twenty thousand, and he improved the design for a revolving book stand, which enabled him to consult up to five books at once. His public career was luminous: principal author of the Declaration of Independence, governor of Virginia, ambassador to France, secretary of state under Washington, and vice president under John Adams. Yet he was, and remains, a controversial figure. His critics, pointing to his doubts about some Christian doctrines and his early support for the French 230 Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
Revolution, portrayed him as an infidel and radical. Federalists alleged that he kept a slave mistress, and in 1802 James Callender, a former supporter furious about not receiving a government job he wanted, wrote a newspaper account naming her as Sally Hemings, a house slave at Monticello. Drawing on the DNA of Sally’s male descendents and linking the timing of Jefferson’s visits to Monticello with the start of Sally’s pregnancies, most scholars now view it as very likely that Jefferson, a wid- ower, was the father of at least one of her four surviving children. Callender’s story did Jefferson little damage in Virginia, because Jefferson had acted according to the rules of white Virginia gentlemen by never acknowledging any of Sally’s children as his own. Although he freed two of her children (the other two ran away), he never freed Sally, the daughter of Jefferson’s own father-in-law and so light-skinned that she could pass for white, nor did he ever mention her in his vast correspondence. Yet the story of Sally fed the charge that Jefferson was a hypocrite, for throughout his career he condemned the very “race-mixing” to which he appears to have contributed. Jefferson did not believe that blacks and whites could live permanently side by side in American society. As the black population grew, he feared a race war so vi- cious that it could be suppressed only by a dictator. This view was consistent with his conviction that the real threat to republics rose less from hostile neighbors than from within. He believed that the French had turned to a dictator, Napoleon Bona- parte, to save them from the chaos of their own revolution. Only by colonizing blacks in Africa, an idea embodied in the American Colonization Society (1816), could America avert a similar fate, he believed. Jefferson worried that high taxes, standing armies, and corruption could de- stroy American liberty by turning government into the master rather than servant of the people. To prevent tyranny, he advocated that state governments retain con- siderable authority. In a vast republic, he reasoned, state governments would be more responsive to the popular will than would the government in Washington. He also believed that popular liberty required popular virtue. For republican theorists like Jefferson, virtue consisted of a decision to place the public good ahead of one’s private interests and to exercise vigilance to keep governments from grow- ing out of control. To Jefferson, the most vigilant and virtuous people were edu- cated farmers who were accustomed to act and think with sturdy independence. Jefferson regarded cities as breeding grounds for mobs and as menaces to liberty. Men who relied on merchants or factory owners for their jobs could have their votes influenced, unlike farmers who worked their own land. When the people “get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe,” he wrote, “they will be- come corrupt as in Europe.” Jefferson’s “Revolution” Jefferson described his election as a revolution. But the revo- lution he sought was to restore the liberty and tranquility that (he thought) the United States had enjoyed in its early years and to reverse what he saw as a drift into despotism. The $10 million growth in the national debt under the Federalists alarmed Jefferson and his secretary of the treasury, Albert Gallatin. They rejected Hamilton’s idea that a national debt would strengthen the government by giving creditors a stake in its health. Just paying the interest on the America at War and Peace, 1801–1824 231 Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.