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“To Close the Circle of our Felicities”: Caritas and Jefferson's First Inaugural

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Matthew S. Holland
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Abstract

Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence defends an inherent and individual right to the pursuit of happiness. For Jefferson, this right dramatically limited Christianity's role in politics. In any case, when drafting the Declaration, Jefferson thought Christianity largely irrelevant, if not inimical, to America's well-being. However, shortly before becoming president, several events transformed Jefferson's private thoughts about Christianity and its public utility. Careful attention to both the text and context of Jefferson's First Inaugural (a significant Jeffersonian document, but one that has never been examined in great detail by political theorists and intellectual historians) reveals that Jefferson came to embrace the teachings of a rationalized version of the New Testament in a way that lightly amends the liberal paradigm of his Declaration. Without significantly altering his commitment to a rights-based government of limited proportions, Jefferson's First Inaugural bespeaks the new political importance he placed on widely cultivating a largely demystified sense of Christian charity.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 66 , Issue 2 , Spring 2004 , pp. 181 - 205
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2004

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References

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23. Ibid., p. 42.

24. Ibid., pp. 24–25.

25. Ibid., p. 55.

26. Ibid., p. 35.

27. Wilson, Douglas L., introduction to Jefferson's Literary Commonplace Book, pp. 5–8Google Scholar Also see Koch, Adrienne, The Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943), pp. 2, 4.Google Scholar

28. Jefferson, , Extracts from the Gospels, p. 388, emphasis added.Google Scholar

29. Ibid., p. 414, emphasis added.

30. Ibid., p. 348 (Letter to Adams, John, 08 22, 1813).Google Scholar

31. Wilson, , introduction to Jefferson's Literary Commonplace Book, pp. 16–17.Google Scholar Also see D'Elia, Donald J., “Jefferson, Rush, and the Limits of Philosophical Friendship,” in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 117, no. 5 (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1973): 336–37.Google Scholar

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33. Letter of 04 21, 1803, in Jefferson, , Extracts From the Gospels, p. 331.Google Scholar

34. Ibid., p. 334.

35. Ibid.

36. “The Philosophy of Jesus,” lost shortly after Jefferson's death, has been ingeniously reconstructed by Dickson Adams. See “The Reconstruction of ‘The Philosophy of Jesus’” in Extracts from the Gospels, pp. 45–53.Google Scholar Emphasizing how important this book was to Jefferson is the fact that late in retirement Jefferson redid it (titling it “The Life and Morals of Jesus”), feeling that the first one was “too hastily done” (Jefferson, , Extracts From the Gospels, pp. 37–38, 369, 352).Google Scholar

37. Ibid., p. 365 (letter to Thomson, Charles, 01 9, 1816Google Scholar).

38. Ibid., pp. 57–59.

39. Ibid., p. 59.

40. The New Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, s. v. “agape.”

41. The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition designates “charity” as “Christian love: a word representing caritas of the Vulgate” and notes that it is often applied as “Man's love of God and his neighbor, commanded as the fulfilling of the law, Matt. xxii. 37, 41. Also see Nygren, Anders, Agape and Eros, trans. Watson, Philip S. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1953)Google Scholar and Hallet, Garth, Christian Neighbor-Love: An Assessment of Six Rival Versions (Washington, D. C.: Georgetown University Press, 1989).Google Scholar

42. Orwin, Clifford, “Machiavelli's Unchristian Charity,” American Political Science Review 72, no. 4 (1978): 1222–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This understanding of charity, not nearly as common today, was more prevalent in Jefferson's day. Webster's 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language opening definition indicates that charity is mostly used either “in a general sense” to mean “love, benevolence, good will,” or “in a theological sense, [where] it includes supreme love to God, and universal good will to men.”

43. In the First Epistle of John (4:10–21)—a book entirely excluded from Jefferson's New Testament—one reads, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. … We love him because he first loved us. … And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also.”

44. Jefferson, , Extracts From the Gospels, p. 355.Google Scholar

45. Ibid., pp. 356–57.

46. Ibid., p. 357.

47. Ibid., p. 405 (letter of June 26, 1822).

48. Luebke, , “The Origins of Thomas Jefferson's Anti-Clericalism,” Church History 32, no. 3 (1963): 344, 352.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49. Jefferson, , Extracts From the Gospels, p. 327Google Scholar(letter to Joseph Priestly, 04 9, 1803), 320Google Scholar (letter to Rush, Benjamin, 09 23, 1800).Google Scholar

50. Letter to Tyler, Judge John, 03 29, 1805, in Jefferson, , Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ll:69.Google Scholar

51. Jefferson's biographers—who typically devote just a few pages to the First Inaugural—are universally robust in their praise of this speech. Ellis considers it “an eloquent” expression of “panoramic wisdom,” a “seminal statement in American history,” and something that “can be read with profit on several levels” (Ellis, Joseph E., American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998], pp. 192, see also 181).Google Scholar Malone writes of its “enduring appeal” because of its “verbal felicity” and “timelessness” of thought (Malone, Dumas, Jefferson the President-First Term [Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1970], p. 17).Google Scholar And Peterson recommends it as “an address to be studied and pondered in the cool reflection of the written word,” for never was Jefferson's “happy faculty of condensing whole chapters into aphorisms more brilliantly displayed” (p. 655). Despite this, no detailed study of the speech by a political theorist or intellectual historian has previously been done.

52. Letter to Hopkinson, Francis, 03 13, 1789Google Scholar in Jefferson, , Writings, p. 941.Google Scholar Conventions of the day were such that Jefferson did very little campaigning, or campaign management (Ellis, Joseph J., Founding Brothers [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000], p. 210).Google Scholar He does appear, though, to have at least tacitly supported James Callender in his vicious and often unfounded attacks on John Adams's fitness for the presidency (Ellis, , American Spinx, pp. 218–19;Google ScholarMcCullough, David, John Adams [New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001], pp. 536–37:Google Scholar Also see Aldrich, John H. and Grant, Ruth W., “The Antifederalists, the First Congress, and the First Parties,” The Journal of Politics 55, no. 2 [1993]: 295–326).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also see Lerche, Charles O. Jr. “Jefferson and the Election of the 1800: A Case Study in the Political Smear,” The William and Mary Quarterly 5, no. 4 (1948): 468, 469.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

53. Ibid., p. 470 fn. 4, see all; Jefferson, , Extracts From the Gospels, p. 10.Google Scholar

54. Luebke, , Anti-Clericalism, pp. 344–47.Google ScholarEllis, , American Sphinx, p. 130.Google Scholar This increasing conflict greatly influenced Rush's efforts to convince Jefferson of Christian charity's vital role in stabilizing the union, and Federalist accusations factored heavily in Jefferson's efforts to come more precisely to grips with what he really believed about Christianity (see D'Elia's, “Jefferson, Rush and the Limits of Philosophical Friendship” and Sheridan's introduction to Jefferson's Extracts From the Gospels, especially pages pp. 12–17).Google Scholar And the often acid and unjust quality of these accusations also helps explain that while Jefferson came to embrace warmly components of Christian morality, he never lost a deep antipathy toward zealously sectarian forms of Christianity. It was not just that he thought orthodox clerics were wrong intellectually, or theologically; many had personally and profoundly hurt him (Luebke, Anti-Clericalism, see all). In a June 25, 1819 letter to Ezra Stile, Jefferson recognizes the discrepancy between the Christian morality he came to espouse and his hard feelings toward many in the clergy, confessing, “I am sometimes more angry with [certain Christian ministers] than is authorized by the blessed charities [Jesus] preached” (Jefferson, , Extracts From the Gospels, p. 387).Google Scholar

55. Jefferson, , Writings, p. 1089,Google Scholar emphasis added.

56. These and all subsequent references to Jefferson's, First Inaugural are taken from “Jefferson's Inauguration Address, March 4, 1801” as found in The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Koch, Adrienne and Peden, William, Library, Modern ed. (New York: Random House, 1993), pp. 297–301.Google Scholar

57. Jefferson strikes a similar note in the middle of the speech when he refers to America as “a chosen country,” and “the world's best hope” (biblical imagery Lincoln later picks up on).

58. Ellis, , American Sphinx, p. 301.Google Scholar

59. Ibid., p. 119.

60. As Dreisbach, , Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation between Church and State (New York: New York University Press, 2002), p. 57,Google Scholar explains, the famous Danbury Letter, where Jefferson introduces the “wall of separation” metaphor, was specifically written to explain why Jefferson would not continue such a tradition. See also Driesbach, , “‘Sowing Useful Truths and Principles’: The Danbury Baptists, Thomas Jefferson, and the ‘Wall of Seperation,’” Journal of Church and State 39, no. 3 (1997): 462–66.Google Scholar

61. Even Jean Yarbrough, whose particularly thoughtful treatment of Jefferson comports with the argument of this paper, suggests that “Jefferson never systematically explores what he means by happiness in general or the pursuit of happiness in particular. Nearly all of his comments about happiness occur in private correspondence addressed to a wide variety of family, friends, acquaintances, and even strangers, in which the meaning of happiness is often casually treated” (American Virtues, pp. 14–15).Google Scholar

62. Malone, , Jefferson the President-First Term, p. 18.Google Scholar

63. Ellis, , American Sphinx, p. 182.Google Scholar

64. Besides working to retire the national debt (a welcome surprise to many Federalists), Jefferson allowed many Federalist officers to keep their government positions (ibid., pp. 194–99). In detailing this, Ellis quotes a letter from Jefferson, who speaks of believing that by working to “conciliate the honest part of those who were called federalists, and do justice to those who have so long been excluded from it, I shall hope to be able to obliterate, or rather unite the names of federalists and republicans” (ibid., p. 198). The letter's tone and lower-case spellings of the two parties further undermine Ellis's claim about the significance of the lower-case spellings of “republican” and “federalist” in the First Inaugural.

65. Ibid., p. 183.

66. Ibid.

67. Contrast this with the self-oriented and controlling tone of Andrew Jackson's First Inaugural where the phrase “I shall” is employed six times in a speech half as long (U.S. Congress, Senate, Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States: From George Washington 1789 to George Bush 1989, 101st Cong., 1st sess., 1989, S.101–10,61–64).Google Scholar

68. In Webster's 1828 dictionary, “affection” prominently appears in the definitions of both “love” and “charity.” Also, dreariness, or rather “dreary,” is said to imply “both solitude and gloom,” emphasizing in a second way that a lack of human happiness appears linked to a lack of human connection.

69. Emphasis added.

70. Emphasis added.

71. Felicity's first definition in Webster's 1828 Dictionary is “Happiness, or rather great happiness.”

72. In an “Opinion on the French Treaties” to Washington (1793), Jefferson argued that “the law of self-preservation overrules the laws of obligations to others.” See Jefferson, , Writings, p. 423.Google Scholar

73. McWilliams, Wilson Carey, The Idea of Fraternity in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), p. 212.Google Scholar

74. The other principles Jefferson recognizes are “support of state governments … as the most competent administrators of domestic concerns,” “preservation of the general government … as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad,” “right of election by the people,” “acquiescence in the decisions of the majority,” “a well disciplined militia,” “supremacy of the civil over the military authority,” “economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burdened” (the third reference to keeping government collection and spending of monies at a minimum), “honest payment of our debts,” “encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid,” “diffusion of information,” the “protection of habeus corpus,” and “trial by juries.” Combined with the “freedom of religion” and the “freedom of the press,” these are what Jefferson believes “forms the bright constellation” that guided America through its “revolution,” from English rule, and now must guide it through its “reformation” of Federalist rule.

75. The sole exception in this list of minimalist ideals is Jefferson's commitment to the “encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid.” This highlights a heretofore underemphasized point. Jefferson's post-Priestly/Rush moral world was never exclusively liberal/rational-Christian. Always in the mix was a significant current of classical republican attention to the virtues found in laboring the land and enjoying the pastoral life. By privileging agriculture over commerce—yet not to the exclusion of the latter—Jefferson simultaneously honors his conviction that people should be free in the choice of their pursuits as he acknowledges that a nation of farmers was more likely to preserve the very freedoms and ideals of the Declaration than a nation of merchants. As Jefferson once wrote to John Jay in 1785, “Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, & they are tied to their country, & wedded to its liberty & interests, by the most lasting bonds” (Jefferson, , Writings, p. 818).Google Scholar

76. Ibid., p. 1110, emphasis added.

77. Writing well into his retirement, in an 1816 letter to Joseph C. Cabell, Jefferson says, “Let the national government be entrusted with the defence of the nation, and its foreign and federal relations; the State governments with the civil rights, laws, police, and administration of what concerns the State generally; the counties with the local concerns of the counties, and each ward direct the interests within itself” (ibid., p. 1380).

78. In 1785, Jefferson led the effort to pass a bill updating a 1775 Virginia statute designed to render aid and give care to the “poor, lame, impotent, blind, and other inhabitants of the county as are not able to maintain themselves” (Jefferson, , Papers of Thomas Jefferson, p. 420).Google Scholar The major difference between the policies of 1775 and 1785 is that, in keeping with Jefferson's desire for a stronger separation of Church and State, the care for the poor gets transferred from Anglican vestrymen to aldermen of the county.

79. Jefferson, , Writings, pp. 1087–88.Google Scholar

80. Jefferson, , Extracts From the Gospels, p. 360,Google Scholar emphasis added. The use here of “moral agents” is again a reminder that Jefferson's later concept of Christian love builds on an earlier “moral sense” understanding of love which Jefferson developed in college, prior to the Declaration (Yarbrough, , American Virtues, pp. 17–18).Google Scholar This suggests that Jefferson saw “social love” and philosophical liberalism as compatible at the time of the Declaration, the difference being that later this social love took on more distinct Christian hues and political importance than Jefferson saw in 1776.

81. Many have pointed out that it is just this kind of love that ultimately heals the rift between Adams and Jefferson. Benjamin Rush, ceaseless in advocating the importance of Christian charity for American politics, patiently goads both men (at one point warning Adams that he and Jefferson will soon die and stand before a “Judge with whom the forgiveness and love of enemies is the condition of acceptance.”) toward a heartfelt reconciliation. See Butterfield, Lyman H., “The Dream of Benjamin Rush: The Reconciliation of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson,” The Yale Review 40, no 2 (1950): 297–319;Google ScholarCappon, Lester J., The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), pp. 284–86;Google ScholarEllis, , Founding Brothers, pp. 206–48.Google Scholar

82. Letter to Miles King, 09 26, 1814 in Jefferson, , Extracts From the Gospels, p. 360.Google Scholar