The Great Divide: The Conflict
between Washington and Jefferson that Defined a Nation. By Thomas Fleming.
Da Capo. $27.99.
America’s rampant
anti-intellectualism and suspicion of the “smart elite” has long had to
contend, historically, with the unfortunate-to-those-of-this-persuasion reality
that the nation was founded by well-born, elitist men of high intellect,
steeped in the values of the Enlightenment (of which most modern Americans have
never heard) and highly skilled in putting those values into practical context
in elegantly written documents whose skilled prose resonated deeply with their
contemporaries – even if few modern Americans have ever read the Declaration of
Independence and Constitution from start to finish. Foremost among all the
founding intellectuals was Thomas Jefferson, a rather poor speaker whose
ability to communicate in writing was absolutely crucial to gaining support
both at home and abroad for American independence from Great Britain. The
anti-intellectuals of modern times have, however, had a field day bringing
Jefferson down (or so they imagine) ever since the modern conclusion that he
apparently fathered several of the children of his slave, Sally Hemings (an
accusation that actually dates to Jefferson’s own lifetime but that only began
to be used to “take him down a peg” in the 21st century). Some
people seem to think that by denigrating Jefferson, they raise their own
standing (at least in their own estimation).
Given these factors, it is a
shame to find a well-known historian and prolific writer such as Thomas Fleming
jumping on the bash-Jefferson bandwagon. Fleming does not specifically present The Great Divide on that basis, of
course, being himself too erudite and too knowledgeable to appear overtly to
throw in with modern know-nothingism. But in exploring the very real
philosophical and political differences and outlooks of the nation’s first and
third presidents, Fleming so thoroughly “talks down” Jefferson that his book
comes across as far more inequitable than he likely intended it to be.
The basic differences
between the Washingtonian and Jeffersonian outlooks are actually well known,
although they are rarely explored with the depth and intensity of The Great Divide. Washington believed in
a very strong central government and a presidency that, if scarcely the
“imperial” type of which some presidents have been accused, was primus inter pares in case of conflicts
among the three branches of government – and certainly so in instances of
disagreements with Congress. Counterbalancing the power of the presidency,
Washington believed, was the limitation of the time for which any one man could
hold it: his decision not to seek a third term, which he would surely have won
had he wanted it, was one of his great gifts to the young nation.
Jefferson had more respect
for states’ rights and for individual rights, as shown (among many other
examples) in his famous statement on religion, “It does me no injury for my
neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket
nor breaks my leg. ... Reason and free enquiry are the only effectual agents
against error.” Jefferson’s preference for a comparatively weak presidency
meant he believed Congress should have more power than Washington thought it
should, and Jefferson’s firm belief in individual rights as indispensable to
freedom kept him an ardent supporter of the French Revolution (which was
precipitated in part by the success of the American one) long after the violent
excesses of the Reign of Terror had turned so many others against it.
There are ironies aplenty in
both men’s lives and actions – for example, Jefferson’s acquisition of the
Louisiana Territory from Napoleon represented just the kind of presidential
overreaching to which Jefferson would have been adamantly opposed had it been
practiced by anyone else. But The Great
Divide goes beyond irony to paint Jefferson as a waffler and hypocrite, in
contrast to the thoroughly upstanding Washington. For example, Fleming writes
about Jefferson’s dislike of cities in general and of New York in particular:
“Although he had five servants, including a slave chef , James Hemings, whom he
had taken to Paris for training, as well as a maître d’hotel (essentially a
butler) imported from the French capital, he told one correspondent that he was
dismayed by the way hitherto unspoiled Americans were succumbing to extravagance
and luxury. It was ‘a more baneful evil than Toryism was during the war.’”
Fleming takes that obvious hyperbole and discusses it as if Jefferson meant it
seriously and disingenuously (“the British and their loyalist American
supporters were looking forward to hanging, drawing and quartering General
Washington…”); and instead of interpreting Jefferson’s bringing of Hemings to
Paris for culinary training as a positive thing, Fleming twists it into a
negative “extravagance.” And Fleming
goes on, in a further discussion of Jefferson’s “hatred of cities” – in the
context of arguments about where to locate the nation’s capital – to snidely
remark, “It is hard to see how these convictions jibe with Jefferson’s faith in
the ultimate triumph of the French Revolution, which was struggling to be born
in one of the largest cities in the world, with an addiction to luxury that was
second to none.”
Then, writing about the
eventual decision to create Washington, D.C., which “for the next two hundred
years…would remain a small, isolated town, whose only industry was politics,”
Fleming lays a truly bizarre criticism at Jefferson’s feet: “The preferences of
three Virginia presidents (Jefferson and his two disciples, Madison and Monroe)
played a significant part in Congress’s lack of interest in spending the money
to create a federal metropolis. The million young men who died in the Civil War
bear mute witness to one of the many prices America paid for this hostility to
the kind of unified nation Washington and [Alexander] Hamilton hoped to create
in America.”
There is no doubt that
Fleming means this extremely peculiar accusation sincerely. His writing is
quite direct and forthright, although his style can be confusing and is
scarcely error-free: “Thomas Jefferson displayed a painting of [Sir Francis]
Bacon wherever he happened to be living, not unlike devout Catholics mounted
portraits of favorite saints.” What is unfortunate is that Fleming’s highly
skewed view of Jefferson creates thoroughgoing confirmation bias throughout The Great Divide: every hesitation by
Jefferson is interpreted as a failure of decision-making ability, while every
political action by Washington – and most of those by Hamilton – come across as
forward-looking ones, actuated by the deepest possible commitment to a truly
unified United States of America. The notion that Jefferson may have been led
to his positions, even ones with which Fleming strongly disagrees, by deep intellectual
curiosity and a kind of dogged determination, is simply absent here: Jefferson
becomes a caricature, a would-be intellectual rather than a genuine one, a
small man arranging for posterity to consider him larger than life through, in
part, his denigration of the far greater Washington. Fleming is certainly quite
free to make this argument – Jefferson would have supported his right to do so,
and in fact put up with worse in his own lifetime – but hagiography of
Washington and demonization of Jefferson do not, singly or together, make for a
convincing interpretation or reinterpretation of the many and various
philosophical, factional, sectional, regional and political disagreements (some
of them extremely deep) among the Founders. The
Great Divide is an interesting book to read and will surely make modern
anti-intellectuals feel that they are somehow “one up” on Thomas Jefferson. But
despite the many citations of primary as well as secondary sources, Fleming’s
work is not particularly convincing as history and not particularly admirable
from a scholarly or intellectual standpoint, being far too one-sided to make it
possible for readers to know just where its clarities end and its condemnatory jeremiads
begin.
No comments:
Post a Comment