The Thomas Jefferson Hour; Constitutional Amendments; Part 1

Welcome to the Thomas Jefferson Hour, your weekly conversation with our third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson. The Thomas Jefferson Hour is produced by High Plains Public Radio and New Enlightenment Radio Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the search for truth in the tradition of Thomas Jefferson. Today's program was recorded in late February of 2004. Please join us as our host Bill Crystal speaks with Thomas Jefferson portrayed by Humanity Scholar Clay Jenkinson. Welcome to the Thomas Jefferson Hour, your weekly conversation with the third president of the United States. Good day to you Mr. Jefferson. Good day to you, citizen. Mr. Jefferson, from time to time you're willing to step out of your own era and address current events. We're grateful to you that you have indicated your willingness to do that again today. We're going to look at a number of topics if we have the time. Haiti and what's going on there, the renewal of the Patriot Act, the constitutional amendment, not the amendment itself that has been proposed by the president of the United States, but

rather the process of constitutional amendments and whether you think it's appropriate or not. And if we have any other time, a couple of other topics. But let's begin with the renewal of the Patriot Act. I think all of our listeners are aware that in the wake of September 11th Congress passed legislation which gave the agencies of the United States government more power to look into what were here to the private affairs of citizens. It was a piece of legislation that had a beginning and an end time and it's up for renewal now. How do you feel about the Patriot Act? Well, let me say again that the world belongs to the living and not the dead that in my own time I had very strong opinions about legislation of this sort. But in your time you live in a very dangerous world with extremely complex security questions. And so I'm not certain that I'm really competent to speak as a as a philosopher on this, but I can tell you what I thought in my own time. First of all, I'd like to say that I think it's it's

exceptionally good that the Patriot Act had a sunset clause. In other words that it automatically goes out of existence on such and such a day. It's similar to the alien and sedition laws which were passed by John Adams administration in 1798 and they didn't have they weren't to to be in place in perpetuity. They would they would expire with the Adams administration. I think that's exactly right. So that each time one president or Congress wants to renew something like this, it has to be an overt act. It can't simply be something that we that won administration or won Congress inherits from another. And the the act itself. You know, I would must say I'm suspicious of anything that the government of the United States labels the Patriot Act. I don't no matter what is inside it because that suggests that's an emotional term. That's a term of of national civic religion almost. And it suggests just by being in the title of that legislation that anyone who doesn't agree is

unpatriotic or less patriotic. So I'm troubled by the very structure, the very way that this has been stylized in legislation. It seemed to me that a Republican form of government would say an act for the greater security of the United States or an act providing for certain types of surveillance in an age of terrorism. But something that's more neutral than something that's called the Patriot Act. That doesn't touch on the merits of it. That just touches on the the titling, the propaganda of it. Wasn't it a contemporary of yours Edmund Burke who said that patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels. This is actually Samuel Johnson, but he went to the great dictionary maker, but Burke would have agreed with that. And so that I'm a little bit troubled by that by use of emotional emotive terms for an act of security legislation. And finally you know I can go back to the alien and sedition laws which were passed by the Adams administration during a time of international crisis. And I felt that the alien law which allowed the government to expel anyone that had considered a

security risk and the sedition law which made it illegal to criticize the government. I felt that those were palpable violations of the Bill of Rights and really a test of the American people. I was glad when those acts of legislation passed into their rightful obscurity. And I'm afraid I think of any government attempts to secure us even when they're necessary because they do erode our rights. We probably ought to tell our listeners that the alien in sedition acts were passed during a quasi war with France that it was a time not unlike the one in which we live now. There was a great deal of fear and hysteria about as to who who were our enemies and were they lurking within our own borders. And I know that the John Adams, my old friend, was not himself the proposer of those acts and he was not really even in favor of them, but he did sign them believing they were probably necessary. They did pass out of existence with the end of his administration. And I frankly think that they cost him reelection. Here's what happens. There are times of emergency that was perceived

to be one of them. Perception is frequently more hysterical than truth. But when these acts are passed, they are inevitably erosions of our natural rights. There are erosions of sometimes provisions in the Bill of Rights. And then the people have to decide whether that's something that they are going to permit temporarily because it leads to a greater good or whether it's something that they want to forbid because it violates part of the social compact that we have all agreed upon. And I think it should really be a decision by the people and by state legislatures and by reelections to Congress. You know, every member of the House of Representatives stands for re-election every second year, which allows the people to to indicate their displeasure emphatically if they feel it. So I think that the question that I would want to ask the people of your time is have they examined the provisions of this act? Are they aware of the ways in which the Patriot act appears to violate certain provisions of the Bill of Rights? Does that matter fundamentally to them? I

certainly disagree profoundly with the process in your time of letting the courts decide these questions. You know, most people feel, I think. He tell me if I'm wrong, that if these are truly violations of the Constitution, the Supreme Court will tell the American people that and declare these acts avoid and that the court will protect us from whatever difficulties there are. I think many constitutional scholars believe that the activism of the court has been a reaction to the heightened activism of the executive branch and the the passiveness of the legislative branch. The mix intended by the founders, this system of checks and balances has been re-adjusted because Congress frequently rubber stamped the executive rather than than doing its job of standing over and against it. But notice what you have said here. You've said that the judicial branch is activistic as is the executive branch. The legislative you have called passive that's exactly the opposite of how a republic should work in a republic. The

legislative branch should be the most activistic and powerful and the one that has most sovereignty and the executive and the judicial branch should be much less important because we are a republic insofar as we lean on the will of the people and the people's branch of government is the Congress, particularly the House of Representatives. So I'm troubled by your analysis. I'm sure that it's true. I certainly don't want to hold you responsible, Mr. Jefferson, but one could argue that with the introduction of the second political party, the president as the head of a party always could turn to his congressional colleagues, members of the same party, and one would presume that the same agenda would be shared by both. I think that the introduction of the second political party may have had something to do with the increased power of the executive as over against the the legislative branch. Well, I certainly will take some responsibility for my

actions, but I always attempted to defer to the legislative branch, at least rhetorically, if not in an actual substance. And I would hope that your people would too. But let me conclude my remarks about this by saying that I would I would ask the American people to have this criterion of citizenship that questions of where the highway goes or how how tall the bridge is or whether the tariff is 8% or 9% are questions that on the whole they should leave to their legislators because that's why we send representatives from amongst our selves off to the Congress. They're in a position to investigate. They're in a position to reflect. And we are busy in our private lives and we should probably defer to them on many, if not most, of these questions. There are some questions that citizens should never defer to a legislative body, no matter how wise. And those are questions of war and peace, questions of fundamental taxation, and questions that intrude upon the sanctity of the Bill of Rights, particularly. And so in this case, I think everyone who's

listening knows that the Patriot Act is perceived at least by some to have been erosive of the Bill of Rights. That may or may not be true, but I would ask everyone who is listening to investigate this somewhat and not simply abdicate civics responsibility to legislatures. This is to grave a set of circumstances and to grave a proposed set of legislations for the American people to shrug their shoulders. And I would say that anytime the country is about to go to war or anytime there is a major tax proposal or a revision or reform bill in Congress. These are these are the fundamentals of the life of a citizen. Thank you, Mr. Jefferson. I sense that you have said as much about the content of the Patriot Act as you're willing to say. Well, it's not really for me to know because you know, my world had this 3,000 mile moat, the Atlantic. And I know that things are very different technologically in your time. But I remember saying to Madison that really the first business of a nation is

security. Whether we like it or not, that's what a government exists to do. A government exists to secure its citizens and keep them in peace and comfort, to repel attacks, to respond to attacks. That this is the stuff of a society. And if a government is unwilling to do that, it doesn't deserve to be in power in any sense of the term. So anyone living in the post 9-11 world that you live in, any government has no choice but to spend an enormous portion of its time on this set of questions. And if wise people determine after much reflection that that this sort of legislation is probably necessary to protect the American citizens, then that should be an open national debate that that people make a conscious choice about instead of saying the worst thing the government could do is say, just trust us. The government should say, here's the argument we're willing to make. But here is the consequence. You will pay a price for this in taxes. The Fourth Amendment will not be what

it once was. The First Amendment might not be what it once was. But we think these are sacrifices that we must as a nation make if we wish to be secure and free. That's a candid government. And then the people have a chance to repudiate it if they wish. But you must always keep the people informed and you ought to keep them in charge. Thank you, Mr. Jefferson. We could continue, I think our discussion of the Patriot Act, but we would be wise to move on perhaps to another topic. Haiti, for example, the nation of Haiti has been unstable for a long time. The United States went into Haiti a number of years ago in order to ensure that the lawfully elected president was able to be in power. We left. That same man has perceived now to have fraudulently gained reelection and there is a rebel force of foot. One of the things I find most interesting about the whole situation with Haiti is that the United States is not planning at the present time to do much in the way of intervention, but we're not at all unhappy about the French perhaps coming in and sending troops. I'm

wondering what happened to the so-called Monroe Doctrine. It's such a set of ironies here. Haiti was called Santa Domingo in my time, or Santa Manique. It was partly owned by the French and partly controlled by the Spanish. Napoleon Bonaparte, the dictator of France, had decided that he was going to recreate a colonial empire in the New World and that it would begin in New Orleans, that he would infiltrate what was then French-owned Louisiana with colonists and that he intended to create a rival republic in the New World to the United States. He was completely serious about this and troops were amassed for the occupation of Louisiana and there was a move to create a colonial set of incentives so that French-farmist citizens would come here. You wonder why the Federalists were nervous at having all of those French nationals living in the United States? I was nervous too, but I'm less paranoid than my Federalist friends, but I was nervous certainly not about the French in the

Philadelphia. These were harmless philosophers. Well I was worried about where the French troops in New Orleans because they could shut the Mississippi River, which is a vital artery to our national commerce and I believe that rivers are free arenas of traffic anyway that a nation cannot control a river which shares with another with another sovereign and we shared that river first with Spain and then with France. So we owned at least half of those waters if not all of them. At any rate what happened was that Napoleon wanted first to put down the slave rebellion in Haiti because there was a slave rebellion that began in the 1790s in what's now Haiti and it was led by a black freedom fighter named Tucson Lovature and Lovature was astonishingly successful. He's been called the black Napoleon by some historians and commentators and the French then decided to put down this rebellion and they sent some of their best troops under the leadership of Napoleon's relative Leclerc and those troops

20,000 strong got to send it a mingo and were bogged down not by the black resistance so much as by the yellow fever and other tropical diseases and they died by the thousands and so to use a term from your time this was in a sense Napoleon's Vietnam where great resolve but but naïveté of purpose produced a crisis and a real setback for Napoleon's French imperial designs and so the idea that in our time we were frightened of the French occupation of Haiti and believed that it was part of an imperial assault on the new world whereas in your time the Americans appear to welcome French troops in that troubled island that seems to me to be the first of several ironies. Well and as I understand it the whole point of the Monroe doctrine was to keep European parties out of what we considered to be our back door. The Monroe doctrine of course came about long after my presidency my protege James Monroe was watching

the liberation movement of the Spanish and Portuguese republics of Central and South America. This would be in the late teens of the 19th century and Monroe often sought my advice on questions of this sort and he asked me what he thought an American initiative could be in this post-colonial period you might call it and I helped him formulate what became the Monroe doctrine John Quincy Adams the one of the greatest of all secretaries of state played an important role in this too but the doctrine says that that the Europeans cannot recolonize the new world the Western hemisphere South and Central America but in return for this we offered a quid pro quo that the United States would stay out of European affairs so basically what we said was we hope that all of these southern nations or colonies would create republics and that they would be free and unmolested by outside force but if any outside force had to police them or put down rebellions or take charge in any sense in those in those

troubled early republics it would be the United States and not Germany not France not England not Spain not Portugal that was the Monroe doctrine and I was proud of of its effects then in your last century or President Theodore Roosevelt added the Roosevelt corollary to the Monroe doctrine which said that because we insisted that the Europeans stay out of the Western hemisphere we decided that we would police those waters that if there were problems of credit or if there were problems of free ports or or or terrorist violence that that we would take care of this that we realized that if we didn't want Europeans to do this then we would have to take on this set of burdens and we would go police Central and South America so that's a more activist attitude than James Monroe's but of course in your time if the French come to to Haiti to to put down a rebellion or to maintain peace that would be a a palpable violation of the Monroe doctrine and I think the United States should resist it on principle instead of encourage it because either the Monroe doctrine is

absolute or it isn't but if you if you if you create exception clauses when it seems useful then you are of course opening the door to precedent now as I understand it during the Cuban Missile Crisis the Monroe doctrine was invoked that that was one of the justifications for telling the Soviet Union to get out of Cuba absolutely I mean it was one of the most important of all presidential decrees in American history certainly more important than anything that I decreed as president of the United States and James Monroe who was I wouldn't say he was a second rank intelligence and a second rank political leader but I but he certainly wasn't as brilliant as Madison or or John or John Quincy Adams much much better politics than either of the Adams but not as brilliant by any means but this was a fabulous piece of diplomacy and it really was one of the making moments of American security to know that the Germans or the Russians or the Portuguese were not going to be attempting to create spheres of influence or new colonial empires in central and South

America that this this hemisphere was going to be the hemisphere in which freedom really had a chance to prevail unmalested well how do you feel at the news the apparent news or knowledge that the United States is not only willing to stand by as the the French go to Haiti but to some degree are even encouraging them to do so well I understand you have your I think of what your cliche is that you have your plate fold just now with with other activities around the world that and that the French have a historic linkage to Haiti you know the French and the Spanish have a presence in San domingo that the United States never had it's only appropriate that these that in a post-colonial world these former colonial empires now that they have become much more enlightened than they ever were would play a supervisory role at least in easing these pitiful nations from abject poverty and and rebelliousness and a state of nature into something like a responsible constitutional culture so the French as advisors the French as onlookers maybe even as as passive peacekeepers that I would accept but French invasion

of Haiti in some sense that would be a violation mr. Jefferson we have to take a short break but when we get back let's continue our discussion of Haiti for just a moment you are listening to the Thomas Jefferson hour please visit our website www.th hyphen Jefferson dot org we will be back in just a moment welcome back to the Thomas Jefferson hour mr. Jefferson before we went to

break we were talking about Haiti and the possibility that France would be sending some sort of armed force in to help stabilize this this country and in its chaos the United States set a force not too many years ago less than 10 years ago to to essentially do the same thing we're not willing to do that now perhaps because our plate is full but but some have suggested it's also because there's a different foreign policy in effect that we have a different administration with different ideas about how things need to be done what degree does this happen in the American government where one administration will be activism in a in a particular way and the next one will will operate in a completely different fashion well this is in fact one of the one of the implications of a republic nothing in the constitution requires a continuous

or stable foreign policy the people vote every fourth year to determine who shall be the president of the United States foreign policy is certainly one of the one of the arenas in which the president must take charge because the Congress is often not informed and it's often sectional or regional and it's in its biases and its interests there's only one person who really can speak for the entire culture that's the president of the United States so as early as the Washington administration it began to emerge that the president would play a very significant even the key role in foreign policy concerns and in many regards I was my own secretary of state although I certainly had one of the ablest in human history James Madison as the man who was formerly in that in that office so I but then when another election occurs if I'm thrown out in in 184 and let's say Hamilton won the election or Aaron Burr then they would be free to reshape the foreign policy of the nation at will that causes some

disruption because the world likes consistency and the world might not be willing to treat with a certain president waiting in the hopes that he would be retired after one or two terms so this is one of the instabilities of a republic foreign policy can be an instability the habit of the American people particularly in the 20th century was to believe that there should be a basic bipartisan consensus about foreign policy and and I think people often say in a kind of a cliche politics ends at the national boundary at the Atlantic ocean that's not specifically true and there's nothing in the constitution to require it if you wanted that to be the case if you wanted to have a British style continuity and foreign policy with a pure permanent bureaucracy of the of the sort that exists in Britain then you would probably need a constitutional amendment to enable it but even though I can see the point of consistency I broke with the Adams administration very completely they were Adams was himself I don't think in charge of this because I believe that Adams was on the

whole very intelligent man about foreign policy but the Adams administration certainly was was waging an undeclared war against France and there was war fever in the United States during that terrible period between 1798 and 1800 and we were veering I felt from our historic allegiance with France France had played so critical a role in the revolution that when I became president I tried to move back to the center on this question I wasn't pro France at this point because of what had happened to the French Revolution but I certainly wasn't as anti-France as as what I took to be the the official position of the Adams administration and as you know Napoleon took advantage of my election to solve all those problems almost effortlessly all the things that had been deviled Adams in 1798 Napoleon shrugged his shoulders over and said oh let's just clear them up and they were cleared up very successfully in 1800 and that was the end of that the Tucson Lovatoor affair was handled much

differently by the Adams administration and by yours indeed Tucson got a certain amount of support if not directly then indirectly from that administration they were not fiercely opposing this slave rebellion and yet when you became president the United States's policy seemed to change well there are two more ironies at least in this whole Haitian debacle one is that in our time Haiti was the wealthiest of all the Caribbean islands in your time it is by far in a way the most impoverished and so it has gone from being one of the world's economic enterprise zones it was a sugar island in my time it's now as poor as it could possibly be and still even exist and that note out is fueling some of the chaos in Haiti now if I dare say if there were huge economic infusions in the Haiti that there would soon be stability but so there's a considerable irony the second one is the one that you point to the

Adams administration was on the whole pro Lovatoor pro black rebellion why because they were the Adams administration was really a New England administration and it represented New England demographics and to a certain degree interest and New England had never had slavery and New England was the was the source of the American revolution and and all those people took seriously our claims that we wanted every people to be self-determining and if the black enslaved classes of Haiti could rise up and overthrow an oppressive set of overseers and a French colonial regime and set up their own republic the Adams administration felt that was inevitable and and welcome consequence of the American revolution I look at it of course a little differently because for two reasons one was sectional I'm a virginian not a Massachusetts citizen and secondly I wanted to stop Napoleon from reasserting his empire in Louisiana so the first one

first I'm a southerner I own slaves my constituents were slave elders they were terrified driven almost a distraction by any hint of a slave rebellion anywhere in the new world and there were some there was a slave rebellion in Virginia Gabriel's rebellion just about the time that I was elected to the presidency and and Virginia overreacted dramatically and I actually wrote to Colonel Monroe who was then the governor of the common author Virginia said enough there's been too much too many hanging too many lynchings too much reprisal that this will this will backfire overreacting it was a terrible thing and I'm not in favor of black rebellions but but the government and the people of Virginia were indeed overreacting in my opinion it would look it would put a blot upon our reputation in the world's arena if nothing else but I also felt that if the black rebellion and Haiti were successful that it would bleed over to Georgia and the Carolinas and maybe Virginia and I was frightened of that and so I was willing not happy but

willing to help Napoleon regain control let's say I hope that doesn't sound like a euphemism for put down the rebellion but to bring stability to that trouble the region so that the rebellion would not get out of hand coming from the man who said all men are created equal this is hard for us to count and it's Mr. Jefferson the man who said that the people have every right in the world to rebel and in fact you encourage rebellion well that would be for me to put a gun in the hands of my own black servants and that's something that I was unwilling to do and I know that that sounds like a hypocritical assertion but the fact is that I was not going to commit suicide by arming my own slaves or encouraging a slavery rebellion in Virginia this needed to be handled by careful painstaking long-term legislative and diplomatic activity there had to be some plan for what to do with freed blacks once freed and there had to be a plan for compensation of some sort for their owners who had bought their slaves

the way a New Englander buys a fence or a wagon and so their property issues in a society which is as committed to the sanctity of property as are so I don't it's not as bad as it sounds so ever bad it it does happen to sound but let me turn to the second issue quickly and that's the real politics which is a technical term of international diplomacy which essentially means you do what is in your interest and what you have to do irrespective of whatever claims you have previously made or whatever the ideals are in the situation you do the thing that that advances your interest as a nation relatively self-centered in your approach so that's real politic and I did not want Napoleon to have a New World Empire headquartered in New Orleans and so if he could get bogged down in Haiti that was good news if I could help him quell the Haitian rebellion and that that satisfied him and he would then feel disposed to sell us Louisiana or sell us New Orleans in other words if I could do him a quid pro quo favor aid his

repression of that rebellion in exchange for a freer hand for the United States on the Mississippi I was willing to do that my primary interest was not Haiti about which I didn't care much my primary interest was the American people and the Mississippi River and the port of New Orleans and the Florida's and I was willing to do a fair amount of what you might call horse trading to get that set of goals accomplished even if it showed a negative attitude towards the black rebellion in Haiti are you suggesting Mr. Jefferson that you actually gained favorable consideration for the purchase of Louisiana by yes by not supporting the Tucson yes rebellion you know Napoleon first of all we try to review just if I understand it or write Adams antagonized the Adams administration let's say maybe not John Adams but Adams antagonized the French in 1796 through 1800 and therefore the French were eager for me to be

elected to be the third president because then they would have a friendlier president in what you call the White House and when I was my election had nothing to do with French intervention obviously but when I was elected that was good news to the French and then Napoleon solved the problems that had been deviled the Adams administration almost unilaterally and then he through his agents in Washington and elsewhere wondered whether the United States might be willing to help him with put down the rebellion and in San of Mingo and I expressed a modest willingness not at least to get in the way not to aid the rebels and Napoleon appreciated that and so when the moment came in the spring of 183 he had some goodwill built up with respect to the administration that I represent and with respect to the United States and that may have played some small and immeasurable role in convincing him to shrug his shoulders and say let's just sell all of the Louisiana territory to

these Yankees interesting you raise a curious kind of issue in recent elections people have feared the influences of foreign countries in terms of funds and and and preferring one candidate over another you're suggesting that this goes back to to your election in the year 1800 of course and then we were just a tiny little frail country of no consequence I mean in the world's arena during the the Napoleonic World War that occurred between let's say 1800 and 1815 the United States barely registered in in French and British courts and when we would protest that they were doing this or that piece of damage to us they would we would have to get their attention first because they didn't in some sense they regarded us as you might regard a person if he would agree to live his life over again if you could live your life over again and you came to that crossroads agriculture and obscurity or law revolution the presidency and painful fame which choice would you make I enjoyed the years

after my retirement enormously once I adjusted to them once I accepted my various my various feelings and and and made peace with them but I I think I would still go down that path I once wrote that public service was a was a journey over long undistinguished expanses only to reach an occasional beautiful vista and I think it is those occasional beautiful vistas for which one would again take the same road and I think you said later that living through a revolution particularly a legitimate one like ours a legally based revolution without a lot of social chaos and bloodshed in the streets was one of the most extraordinary moments in human history and that people like sold and and like urges would have wanted to live in such an age I believe so yes sir and I I'm really happy that I made a difference in in how this country was formed I'd like to think that my constitution for the state of

Massachusetts was was in part a model for the Constitution of the United States that was passed and devised and passed in 1787 and I really I think I made a difference in the form of government that Americans have and I I think it's a difference based on an understanding of of people that was not necessarily widely shared but I think is nonetheless a true reading not only of history but of human nature I want to come back in the second portion of this program to your your core philosophy of life of humanity of society and government but let me ask one more question to tie up another loose end you might have been a congregational minister you come from a Calvinist tradition in New England and yet I think it's the case that by the end of your life you were something of a unitarian well my church became a unitarian church I'm I'm buried in a unitarian churchyard cemetery but my church was always a congregational church I I think I am not orthodox in any stretch of the

imagination some might see me as an absolute free thinker like Mr. Jefferson except I always believed in life after death do you believe in Christ crucified I believe I believe as I said to people my my theology is pretty simple the ten commandments and the sermon on the mount do you believe that Jesus rose on the third day bodily to heaven I have trouble with the creeds of christened them as have so many people throughout history I don't I don't feel that that's necessary to live one's one's life in faith I was a church going animal from cradle to grave I heard sermons about Christ crucified with great regularity but for me the ten commandments and the sermon on the mount were enough does the Trinity befuddle you indeed sir and I read theology habitually and as a hobby do you share Mr. Jefferson's view that if we only would follow the simple precepts of the of the human ethicist Jesus that we would thrive well I think that's what the sermon on the mount

is however I do not share Mr. Jefferson's optimistic view of of human beings as perfectable creatures I think Calvinism would say that man is to pray I never I never thought that but I do believe he is weak and he will he will inevitably succumb to his own weaknesses as over against all of the all of the virtues of life now I think that the necessity of of life is that we should try as hard as we can to be virtuous but our weaknesses will will doubtless affect us and and you know that view came you know came across in my in my understanding of what government needed to be with checks and balances one more question along those lines what do you take to be the core message of the sermon on the mount the sermon on the mount is that we transcend what is with something that is higher and more and more sublime that our behavior as it exists that human beings as they live their lives can move to another level if they will but make the sacrifice and have the

understanding sir I'd like to return to one more yes of course appointment that I think was extraordinarily important in my life we passed that stage of the discourse too quickly I was the one who was responsible for appointing John Marshall I was trying to avoid that subject I know it's a rankles Mr. Jefferson's spirit that was a midnight appointment was it not yet was indeed I appointed John Marshall as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and many would agree that that is the most important appointment of my entire life I just have to ask why that appointment is so significant in American history well I think from the standpoint of your time the judiciary is activism in a way that I could have never imagined but it has turned out to be the truest of the checks and balances on the excesses of the the legislative and the executive branches and John Marshall plays a big role in judicial activism in fact his Marbury versus Madison which had such a disappointing effect on Thomas Jefferson turns out to have been the the

basis for much of of what follows in American history judicially speaking and some sense I think it could be argued that you perpetuated your own presidency by placing a life tenured person of Marshall's stamp in the judicial branch it's interesting my presidency has never viewed as a terribly successful one and yet one would have to argue that the appointment of Marshall did carry on for many years afterward and people in my time in in 2003 in 2004 believe that John Marshall is arguably the greatest chief justice the greatest justice in the history of the United States Supreme Court that appalled Jefferson for several reasons midnight appointment and broad construction and nationalism and the fact that he was his cousin and that it's if he felt personally disrespectful to Jefferson but I think historians disagree with Jefferson's view of Marshall and Marshall was enabled diplomat as well he actually was the one who was successfully able to negotiate the treaty which

resolved the XYZ affair and we'll come back to the XYZ affair after our our break here in a minute and so we can explain just just what that was so you're a young lawyer you are rising into certain prominence you write some articles for newspapers you're you're being noticed as a one of the promising young man of Massachusetts I think Jane Austen would say all that you require now is to find a wife and I found a wonderful wife sir I found a life companion of the sort that very few people are blessed to find we are going to come back after a short break to talk about Abigail Smith later Abigail Adams the first lady to the second president of the United States some people believe the most extraordinary woman of her time some people believe the greatest of all the first ladies with the possible exception but Valena Roosevelt we back in a minute I'm Clay Jenkinson stay tuned welcome back to the Thomas Jefferson hour this is Clay Jenkinson speaking now

not Thomas Jefferson I have taken off my wig and my tights and my Jefferson piece metal is no longer around my neck and we're still on the 22nd floor of the new enlightenment radio network building but there's been a turning of the tables and seated across from me now in in full regalia his his rotundity himself John Adams John Adams Mr. Jenkinson please please I would I would I would deserve at least a little of what title would you like a little of the respect that you you are shown by your host what title would you like I would like to be known as as Mr. Adams that's it Mr. Adams oh all right John I'll call you Mr. Adams I apologize I was just picking up the title that had been bandied about during your lifetime as well I was also called a duke of brain tree but this was always behind my back people did not talk oh I'm talking about I'm sure they called

Thomas Jefferson things behind his back well I'm sure they did as long as we're at it tell tell tell it tell us just very briefly why you thought titles were such a good idea I thought that and you know it's it goes directly to the program that I have been listening to today we're buttering you must have been concerned about some of the things you've heard Mr. Jefferson say we talked about the French Revolution Napoleon was the logical conclusion of any revolution that took seriously the idea that we have a democracy that includes all people undifferentiated the whole reason behind titles I thought was to acknowledge what is apparent in life when I was young I talked about a better sort of people when I when I grew older I talked about a natural aristocracy but I think even Mr. Jefferson would have to agree that there there is in any society a group of people who by by virtue of perhaps those things that they come by unnaturally like the wealth of parents and and influence or that by which they come to by dent of their own labor their their own special efforts

make them different there are distinction between eye and thou and I thought that titles was logical way not only to recognize that difference but also to gain the loyalty of those people who if they were in a government and and we're not loyal overall could become not only a nuisance but could even become a potential rebellious source so you're in favor of Mr. and Mrs. and Dr. and Esquire and it went even further I thought the president of the United States and and here again this was in the heading moment in which general Washington assumed the presidency I thought in order to to make our nation before the world the thing that we wanted it to be he needed a title like his highness really his highness his highness did you ever call him that I don't think I ever called him that we bandied this about in the Senate of the United States that's how I became known as as his rotunded because I mean you you could bring they may have said this behind your back but but people must have scoffed at the idea that the American president of a republic would be

called his highness well I admired the British system and I thought that one of the reasons their noblemen had been kept so loyal to the crown for so long was because they were given titles which when you stop and think about it costs you nothing and gains you a great deal of loyalty so viscount bacon automatically is received a certain social deference and a certain reverence that he would not have as citizen bacon that's your point I think I think and I think viscount bacon who could do a lot of damage to you if he were your enemy becomes your friend because you have acknowledged the fact that he is a natural aristocrat do you recall off hand the title that you hoped for for the vice president you were the vice president I thought his highness would also for both president interchangeable for the president and the vice president and of course when this became an issue that embarrassed general Washington I immediately fell silent and remain silent for the rest of for the rest of my time as vice president the last thing in the world I wanted to do was was embarrass the great

Washington and I've been you must understand I had lived overseas for for a long time I had been one of the ministers to France and then to the to the low countries and finally the first ambassador to the court of Saint James I had been around royalty I had seen here again what in those countries the the effect of titles had on on ordinary people so and and I think just to make sure we take you seriously because it's so easy to sort of make fun of all this because things turned out differently but I think you believed to knew that if if our constitution was going to have the majesty of the law we had to build in some ritualistics to it we needed to build in majesty that titles like a flag are important symbols symbols of the majesty of government and I think also a way of heightening the system of checks and balances which I was highly in favor of myself the notion that the Senate which would be basically the upper house the house of lords would be a house in which it was abundantly clear that these were the better

sort of people you know when when Anthony and Mrs. Mary came to the United States to as representatives of George the third they they came up from the south to Washington City which then was just a hauling wilderness more or less and the the the builders of the of the of Washington DC had called the place the capital after Rome and of course we had this body of elders the Senate after the Roman Senate and they had even named a creek in the district of Columbia the Tiber and that led Mrs. Mary to explode that here there's this brackish rotten little creek in this hollowing wilderness with a bunch of brick buildings and that these Americans were stylizing themselves as the new Rome so she found the American pretensions she may have thought they were admirable if they were if they were if they were backed by actual experience but she considered us to be just a primitive little third world country pretending to be Rome and I understand Mr. Jefferson had a lot of fun with the Mary's whenever he could you wouldn't have done that of course not I

would have I would have greeted them dressed appropriately sort and all I'm sure know what I'm often accused of didn't you have a ceremonial sort I did indeed in it and as did all the ambassadors in in the European countries I mean I think that was ambassadorial dress in my time which you didn't I'm I'm I'm asking this as a really anonymous question you didn't wear this as as vice president a president not not routinely maybe I don't inauguration there but but but the point is you would have dressed up appropriately for the Mary's you would not have in to use a term for the 21st century you wouldn't have dissed them purposefully out of ceremonial function at a diplomatic function I certainly would not have I think that the rule of law is extraordinarily important I believe that virtue and diplomacy are equally important and let's move on to the French Revolution you I know you you said a nation of atheists cannot be free but you must have been appalled by the stripping away of titles citizen this citizen that I mean the the the kind of forced egalitarianism of the

early French Revolution you must have looked upon that with a sense of amusement I think I had the French Revolution in mind when I said a democracy will always commit suicide I didn't like democracy the idea that one person one vote every vote every voice is equal I mean obviously that that lends itself to to rule by oligarchy which is indeed what happened in France a small group of people managed to to gain control of this supposed democracy and run riot for years paving the way for a for a dictator like Bonaparte now in Washington's administration Haiti really didn't figure the revolution began in 1791 but it really was your administration that had to face this how did you handle President Adams the Haitian rebellion we were actually quite supportive we sent warships down into Haitian waters in fact at one point to keep the French fleet at bay we were I think we were in favor of of rebellion I mean I think we

believe that it is the natural right of a people be they black or white to rebel against corrupted oppressive government and then the administration of Jefferson changed course and and really in all practical respects cited with the French colonial's against the black rebels of Haiti you know during the the time in which the continental congress was devising and debating the declaration of independence I wrote Abigail and said I don't believe that liberty can beat us as fervently in the hearts of people that own other human beings and then I quoted to her the the the golden rule the idea that that we should do unto others as we would have others do unto them and I I think that that principle played itself out in the administration of my my dear friend Mr. Jefferson and let's go to the Monroe doctrine you're distinguished son John Quincy Adams arguably the finest secretary of state in American history

one of the finest human beings ever produced in this country he was effectively the author of the Monroe doctrine can you give us anything on that I think the Monroe doctrine is absolutely essential for a people who find themselves always being fiddled at on the frontiers by European powers and I think they made it extraordinarily clear in in the Monroe doctrine that foreign interference would not be tolerated that there would be no renewal of colonial empires now in my time that didn't mean very much I think it came to mean a great deal later on when indeed the remains of the Spanish empire visited some of the territories Puerto Rico Cuba and established regimes which the United States government viewed to be hostile to them I think the Monroe doctrine became very important and I find myself wondering how it is that a doctrine that has been so seminal in the 20th century could suddenly not even be mentioned as we look to Haiti

let me quote from the speaking of magisterial the magisterial encyclopedia of the American constitution edited by Leonard Levy this is on the Monroe doctrine this is page 1274 John Quincy Adams Secretary of State to President James Monroe perceived the threat to the Americas from the reactionary concert of Europe and the Holy Alliance Adams formulated and Monroe announced a policy of resistance to any attempt to restore European hegemony in the Americas although Adams counseled use of diplomatic channels very typical of your son Monroe on the advice of Secretary of War John C. Calhoun announced the doctrine in Monroe's 1823 State of the Union message which was not delivered in person of course uh following Jefferson his protege is Madison and Monroe did not go up to Congress in person that wasn't done until Woodrow Wilson in the 20th century but Adams in the State of the Union written message of 1823 promulgated maybe the most famous doctrine in American history the Monroe doctrine and the author of it was the most

senior and most cosmopolitan diplomat in American history or son who's diplomatic career began at the age of 15 by being secretary to a mission to Russia let me give you one more sentence from this extraordinary encyclopedia he saw Bonaparte close the United States says Leonard Levy the first true revolutionary nation became in 1823 the guardian of the emerging revolutionary states of the new world and that's really the essence of the Monroe doctrine and still invoked to this day and if you asked people on the street that's one they know they that's one of the things that most American citizens have some inkling of that the western hemisphere belongs to western countries and is under the supervisory and security umbrella of the United States of America. One wonders why the United States is speaking with the French rather than the organization of American states in order to solve the problem in Haiti. John Adams we're going to say goodbye to you for the moment we appreciate you're coming on this program from

time to time it's always a nice corrective to Mr. Jefferson's idealistics and you your own sense of the affairs of that era really gives us a second window on the formative era in American history so thank you. It was good hearing Mr. Jefferson speak not just fondly of me but appreciatively. I know that I'm sure that was a bone that was thrown to you by Mr. Jay thank you John Adams I'd like to introduce my friend Phil Crystal who's on first I don't think we've confused ourselves not to mention our audience let's see you're the host but you're also Adams I'm the I'm Jefferson but I'm also occasionally the host is getting confusing we're going to need a flag system. What's his name's on but but the point I think is that I mean this really puts into relief Jefferson's foreign policy that if he could help crush the Haitian rebellion when Adams of all people who hated rebellion favored it and I wanted to give recognition to the Black Haitians talk about the chaos of foreign policy in American history my goodness Jefferson behaved like a slaveholder right to the

core and Adams behaved like a man who really believed in self-determination. Clay do we have any any idea of what Jefferson's response was after Adams wrote him a later a letter during their their mature correspondence saying I have this I have this dream this vision of armies of Negro slaves moving on their masters. This is during the the Missouri Compromise when Adams for the first time ever addressed Jefferson on the problem of slavery. Any idea what Jefferson's reaction was it's it's amazing but they had kept silent on that subject all the time well maybe that was the cost of having a French it was I think you got it exactly right but you remember Adams said in that letter I've never dictated to you southerners I know that you live there that you're good man that you're honest man that you're virtuous man that you live in that world and I don't and I have therefore been silent all this time but now I feel that I cannot be silent and it's one of Adams greatest single letters I think and he's not saying how can you justify this Mr. Jefferson which is what someone today might say

he's saying I fear for the future of this Republic and I leave it to you to understand. Jefferson of course did not reply Jefferson's silences are in some ways more informative than his utterances because when he doesn't want to talk about something he goes back to Plato or back to the classics or back to his garden or back to whatever's on his mind to avoid having to face things he doesn't like to face now that's not John Adams that would be a great program to do sometime on the Jefferson hour the silence evasion the silences of Thomas Jefferson be a long and quiet program uh build this is this is great I know you've just come off a national your first national performance is John Adams I congratulate you and overall it was it was a it was a good program uh I'm glad to hear it overall you're doing well this is the Thomas Jefferson hour we're so glad that you're all listening keep listening John Thomas Clay will all be back next week for another edition of the confusing Thomas Jefferson hour good day

you have been listening to Thomas Jefferson hour in honor of the Jeffersonian leadership series we will begin within the next month Clay Jenkins and his producer Janie Guilm have been selecting leadership tools from today's marketplace the first recommended tool is a single CD entitled Little Voice Management Systems new Enlightenment Radio Network has purchased a box of these CDs and is offering them as a fundraiser for a $40 donation you will receive the first of the modern-day Jeffersonian leadership tools a CD entitled Little Voice Management Systems please call 1-888-458-1803 again the number is 1-888-458-1803 to donate $40 and receive your copy of Little Voice Management Systems thank you very much music for the Thomas Jefferson hour was provided by Stephen Swinford of Reno Nevada you can visit mr. Jefferson's home page on the worldwide web at www.th-Jefferson.org to ask mr. Jefferson a question

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