19 The Apostle of Peace
The war feeling grew, the new Congress came in, and Mr. Clay, as was predicted, became Speaker of the House, to be recognised at once as the leader of the war party. But things still lagged, though everybody could see that the war clouds hovered lower, and still, though war seemed inevitable, the Government was supine. Mercer railed at me bitterly about what he was pleased to call my Government, because I was one of its clerks. The winter was passing, a winter which had been pleasant to me, despite the national anxieties, for Washington was gay socially, and I saw Marian often, when Mr. Gallatin said to me as he was leaving the office one afternoon:
“Philip, as you have shown yourself to be a trustworthy messenger, I want you to take up that duty again. Have your horse ready and start in the morning for Monticello. I will give you a letter to Mr. Jefferson which will show that you came from us. Talk to him about this war, see what he thinks, and report to us. But say nothing of it to anybody else. Be discreet, you understand.”
I understood very well, for it was charged publicly, especially by the Federalists, that Mr. Madison was the creature of Mr. Jefferson, who had made him his successor and controlled the administration at the hundred-mile-range of Monticello, which was a falsehood, though it was eminently proper that the President and his Cabinet should obtain the advice of the greatest living American on the most important subject of the day. But it must be kept secret, that it might not furnish capital to unscrupulous political opponents.
I shrank a moment from so delicate a task, and then accepted it, for I was flattered, and, moreover, I had never yet seen Mr. Jefferson, a man who exerted a greater influence than any other upon our nation, with the possible exception of Washington.
I mounted my horse on a raw, cold morning in late winter and rode to Monticello, carrying in my waistcoat pocket a letter of introduction to Mr. Jefferson which was to do part of my work for me, though I was to rely upon what tact and address I might have for the remainder. It was a hundred miles from Washington to Monticello, over a red road heavy with mud, and I crossed eight deep rivers, five of them without bridges. Virginia was a great State then, perhaps the greatest State in our Union, but I, who had returned so recently from two trips into the North, noticed a sad contrast. I fear that our fine Virginia gentlemen thought more of sounding political principles in the abstract and the empty triumphs of oratory than of personal thrift, economy, and neatness, which I think must lie at the foundation of a strong nation.
I saw on either side of the road fields worn out already by careless cropping, deserted and growing up in red sassafras bushes, and several times I met the fine old Virginia gentlemen, still wearing the costume of fifteen or twenty years earlier, powdered hair, three-cornered hat, long cue, white top breeches, and fine coats of buff or other bright colour. Yet their dress always lacked the final touch of neatness and care, and it seemed to me that their houses, large, fine, and imposing, yet spotted with neglected weather stains, and with the shabby negro cabins huddling in the rear, were a reflex of themselves, their eyes fixed too much upon big things to do the little things which make up the big things.
With bad weather and worse roads it took me three days to make the journey of a hundred miles, but at last I came within sight of Monticello, Mr. Jefferson’s spacious mansion of antique plan, with its rolling hills and fertile fields around it, and the blue haze of the Blue Ridge behind it, a fit abode for a man who had seen nearly all and had had nearly all that this world offers—one who had lived at the French court in its wildest luxury and recklessness, who had passed through our own Revolution and that other of France far bloodier and more terrible, who had been for eight years the President of our nation, and for many more years than that the most powerful man in it, and yet through all had been a dreamer imagining a state of perfect peace, peopled only by farmers, when all the world was at war, with blows random or intended falling incessantly upon us; a great and good man who worked for the future, and yet made some terrible mistakes in the present.
I knew that Mr. Jefferson, the greatest of democrats, was an austere man, fond only of the society of men cultivated like himself, but I knew also that he consistently cared nothing for the forms of ceremony and that I would have no trouble in approaching him at Monticello. His farm, or rather estate, was much neater than the others, for a love and skilful practice of agriculture came within the scope of his wide activities; yet I saw many slouchy negroes about, and they paid so little attention to me that I hitched my horse at a post unnoticed, walked upon the porch, and thumped at the door with the butt of my riding whip.
A tall man, far gone in years and with scanty, longish red hair, opened the door. He wore home-made jeans trousers and a richly embroidered loose velvet dressing jacket, coat and trousers, forming a strange contrast. It was Mr. Jefferson himself, and I knew him at once, though I had never seen him before.
I gave him my name and showed him my letter of introduction, and he became at once the hospitable Southern host. Shambling in front, he led the way into a room in which a wood fire crackled on a wide hearth. He gave me a chair himself and then punched the fire with an iron poker. There was no servant about.
“I have some twenty or thirty lazy negroes to wait on me,” he said, “but I do not recall when I was able to find one of them at the time I wanted him.”
Their absence did not appear to annoy him, and he bustled about, talking of many things with all the ease and charm of a man who had known the great world and had been equal to it.
The room was like its master, a mass of contradictions, Old World elegance and New World rudeness; on the floor some rich European rugs and a piece of rough home-made Virginia carpet, some chairs of wood that had been carved and twisted in France or Italy, and two more of rude handwork, probably by his own negroes. But everywhere on the tables, the chairs, the shelves, and the floor were books, and a hasty glance was sufficient to show that they were the books of the masters.
He discovered very soon why I came, and I had not expected otherwise. There was no desire to fence with Mr. Jefferson, and if it had been so I would not have been sent on such an errand; it was intended from the first that he should know without preliminaries. The mention of war threw him into a distemper. He had fought so long against it, he had thought it the greatest of all evils, an evil that could be banished from the world, and now the party of which he was the founder and still the head was hurrying it on; the President whom he had helped most to make would choose it, too, and yet he could not say no to them, as he could find no argument against them but the single ignoble one of risk.
“I will have nothing to do with it! Nothing! Nothing!” he said, a certain despair showing in his tone at the crash of his most beloved theory. “Tell them I am only a private citizen of the United States, no more than the million others, and I have no part in governments or policies.”
Then he added in a milder tone:
“Tell them I am to found a university here and am trying to discover a method of restoring the exhausted lands of Virginia. The two things will keep me busy for the remainder of my life.”
When I left he followed me to the hitching post and gave me a hearty handshake at good-bye. Then he threw the remains of an old Continental overcoat over his shoulders, called to a couple of hounds, and walked away to manage the work of some negroes on a new tobacco barn.