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The Presidency of Thomas Jefferson

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McDonald wrenches Jefferson out of the prism of 20th century admirers and detractors to see him in his own time. He interprets the first term as a stunning success: to wit, Jefferson set about the dismantling of government over the lives of the Republic's citizens. For one brief shining moment the ideals of the Revolution reached their pinnacle. It was not, alas and inevitably, destined to last. McDonald charts the decline and fall that was Jefferson's second term. Both brilliant and unorthodox, this book is exciting to read and confirms my belief that books that can interpret the past only through current day perspectives are more about the present than the past. This book is about the past and makes no apologies for it, and takes its place among Jeffersonian books by Henry Adams, Dumas Malone, and Joseph Ellis as a classic treatment of our classic President.

Forrest McDonald has produced a succinct, penetrating and fascinating history of Thomas Jefferson's Administration.

This book is part of the Univ. of Kansas' history of the presidency series and the second effort from McDonald (he wrote a wonderful history of Washington's Administration). This book is about the policies, international relations, politics and style of America's third chief executive. Running at less than 200 pages, McDonald manages to be both thorough and interesting in his telling of this period.

Jefferson and his Administration produced wonderful contradictions. His party espoused a "Republican" philosophy that basically wanted to liberate Americans from Hamilton's financial system and Adam's heavy handedness as witnessed by the Alien and Sedition Acts.

Jefferson's early term saw him implement much of his program. As McDonald points out, few if any other Presidents have had their way so successfully with Congress. Jefferson also added greatly to the US through the Louisianna Purchase, despite his concerns with the Constitutionality of the aquisition.

Jefferson and his Administration reached rough shoals in foreign affairs. Blinded by anti-British sentiment, the Administration prooved less than adroit at negotiating the position between Napolean and England. America was buffetted by this struggle and it reverberated back on our domestic situation. Suddenly, Jefferson's first term accomplishments became liabilities and were revealed as short sighted. The scheduled reduction of America's debt through the slashing of the Navy budget left us without the ability to challenge foreign powers. The abolition of Hamilton's system of internal revenues that left us entirely dependent upon tarriffs and thereby upon the grace of the British (who had the ability to determine how much trade our country could enjoy)for government revenue.

In the most surprising irony, Jefferson -- who had decried Adams and his anti-liberal legislation (Alien and Sedition Acts) would go much farther than Adams in restricting liberties and in executive arrogance through his Embargo Acts and various executive orders designed to limit trade with the European powers.

This is a fascinating story well told. Besides the policies, McDonald gives insight as to how Jefferson governed, his relations with Congress and the Judiciary as well as the toll of the office on the man himself. A good book.

McDonald is not only a great scholar, he is a storyteller without peer. He presents the Jeffersonian presidency in an objective and even-handed manner, highlighting both the successes and the tragic shortcomings of the Jefferson administration. Despite Jefferson's reputation today as a civil libertarian and a champion of liberty, McDonald shows how his heavy-handed tactics and his disregard for the Constitution led to disaster both at home and abroad. Despite ushering in the Republican Revolution of 1800, by 1808 Jefferson had lost control of the party he helped create and found himself at the mercy of John Randolph and his ilk in the House. McDonald never attacks Jefferson, however; he simply tells the rather sad story of a man consistently unable to meet the challenges with which he was faced. Another masterpiece from America's foremost historian.

Due to his primary authorship of the American Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson is widely viewed as a strong civil libertarian. The words of the Declaration and the American constitution speak so strongly about the limitations that government has when dealing with the citizens that they are just as valid over 200 years after they were written. He was also the primary individual around which the fledgling Republican party coalesced. In fact, McDonald commonly refers to the party as the Jeffersonian Republicans.
Less well known is the manner whereby the Jefferson administration callously ignored those rights so clearly stated in those magnificent documents. People were arrested for their political persuasion and he attempted to have Federal judges removed simply because he was unhappy with their Federalist philosophy. This really was a sad time in history, as it was the first case where a president openly interpreted the law as it suited him. In my opinion, the clear statement of these actions of Jefferson while president is what makes this book. Since the Louisiana Purchase was the greatest event in the United States between independence and the war between the states, it tends to overshadow many of the other things that Jefferson did during his presidency.
Jefferson's wholesale destruction of the American military left the country defenseless when it was being drawn into the wars between Napoleonic France and Great Britain. The consequences of these errors were monumental to the new country and his diplomatic mistakes contributed to a senseless conflict between the United States and Great Britain that served no useful purpose and could easily have destroyed the United States. Once again, McDonald is right on the mark in explaining what Jefferson did.
Thomas Jefferson is often held up to mythic proportions as a champion of liberty and as an early statesman. In this volume, he is described as he truly was, a man who professed liberty for all, but practiced it only when it suited him. This is a superb account of what he did while president.

An insightful, often witty account of Jefferson's administration. Here we see how the success and failure of Jeffersonian ideology was largely dependent on events unfolding in Europe. When foreign policy was favorable, wine and initiative flowed in the White House. Unfavorable, and the President was incapacitated by migraines and reduced to high-handed tactics. Professor McDonald puts his storytelling ability to good use on the supporting cast as well: Madison, in over his head as Secretary of State; Monroe, the versatile envoy who can never seem to get an early start; Gallatin, the most able member of the cabinet and yet often ignored on crucial issues; and John Randolph, the scourge of Congress and the President. Hell, everybody. "It was generally believed that Lyon was trying to provoke Randolph into a duel, and Randolph was at that point trying to provoke Dana into one. Neither duel materialized: Dana, a good Yankee, was not even tempted to rise to the bait, and Randolph refused to condescend to challenge a social inferior, as Lyon clearly was. Besides, he probably realized Lyon would have chosen some barbaric form of weaponry and butchered him."

McDonald analyzes Jefferson's presidency, discussing the early successes in stopping Federalism, as well as the limitations to the changes that Jefferson and the Republicans could achieve. He discusses the failures of his presidency, notably the embargo of all trade, in a fair manner. Finally, he provides an interesting analysis of the motivations and sources of Republican policy and places Jeffersonianism in its historical context in a much clearer way than I have ever read before.

The book is well-written, although perhaps on the short side. It also contains almost nothing about Jefferson's life before or after the presidency--it really is a history of his presidency.

Forest McDonald points out in his Preface that historians write a lot about the ideas and writings of Thomas Jefferson but tend to overlook his 2 terms as President. That is quite unfortunate since it allows these historians to paint a much more favorable picture of Jefferson than he deserves. McDonald's essential book shows Jefferson in a very different light; instead of the idealistic Sage of Monticello and champion of freedom and liberty, McDonald shows us a man who trampled all over the Constitution and Bill of Rights during his second term in office. McDonald does this in a balanced fashion, allowing Jefferson's actions to speak for themselves.

Jefferson's violations included deceiving the American public about his actual foreign policy (by issuing public and private messages to Congress), lying to Congress, approving the arrest of people without warrants and denying them legal counsel or trial by jury in the district where their supposed crimes had been committed, and approving legislation in Congress that gave him the right to violate the 4th and 5th Amendments of the Constitution while trying to enforce his disastrous and ineffective embargo. Two quotes from Jefferson in 1808 paint a pretty clear picture of how far his support for civil liberties had declined: he told his Treasury Secretary, Albert Gallatin, that "Congress must legalize all means which may be necessary to obtain its end" (meaning the enforcement of the embargo) and told one congressman that in emergencies, "the universal resource is a dictator".

Despite all of Jefferson's writings about civil liberties, in the end, he felt compelled to trample all over them to achieve his foreign policy objectives. Ironically, these objectives were guided by his ideology which envisioned an agrarian republic that would be completely independent of any foreign influence or corruption. Jefferson believed that establishing the society he envisioned was the only way to ensure the long-term preservation of liberty in America. The ultimate irony is that he was irrationally willing to violate the rights of his fellow Americans in order to protect the future of these rights. It's actually a very sad story to see the author of the Declaration of Independence and man of so many other accomplishments sink so low by the end of his Presidency.

I think McDonald's book should be essential reading for all Americans, especially our politicians, since it demonstrates so well the dangers of being locked into an ideological frame of mind regardless of the facts and circumstances that face us. McDonald points out that Jefferson could have abandoned his ideology and aligned America with Great Britain toward the end of his Presidency. Doing this would have been in the actual long term political and economic interests of the United States and would have avoided the disastrous War of 1812. But Jefferson was too rigid to give up his intense dislike of England and confront the realities of the situation he faced.