A Critique of Thomas Fleming’s The Great Divide: The Conflict between Washington and Jefferson that Defined a Nation
A book about the conflict between George Washington and Thomas Jefferson is overdue, says Thomas Fleming. “Numerous historians have explored Jefferson’s clash with Alexander Hamilton. But little has been written about the differences that developed between the two most famous founding fathers” (1). Those differences, as the subtitle states, “defined a nation.” Washington, we are told, was “first, last, and always a realist.” He admixed his realism with a strong faith in America’s destiny. Jefferson, in contrast, saw things through “the lens of a pervasive idealism.” Men, freed of the yoke of coercive government, would invariably find good government, if only given inspirational “visionary words” (2).
Fleming’s manner of exposition is throughout fluid, engaging, and accessible. Fleming is a talented writer and storyteller, who has a knack for knowing which stories to tell when developing his thesis. That said, readers wishing for an even-handed approach to the conflict will be enormously disappointed.
Fleming paints a vivid picture of Washington as an intrepid, resolute general, with “honest zeal” and flexibility sufficient to abandon faulty or failing military schemes, and aims to show that the virtues that defined his generalship—he wrote “bold letters” to the Continental Congress that admonished them for thinking patriotism and not strategy would win “a long and bloody war” (69)—were the same virtues that defined his presidency. Washington’s plan to visit New England as president, Fleming says, was doubtless motivated by what Washington learned as general of the Continental Army: Share the camp and hardships with the soldiers and deal personally with problems of discipline and morale as they surfaced (70).
And then there is Washington’s goodness. Fleming tells the brief story of six-year-old Washington Irving, meeting Washington, receiving a pat on the head, and that incident (presumably) leading to Irving’s brilliant biography of the first president (70). Yet much of the results of Washington’s “honest zeal” as president, if we follow Fleming’s account carefully, is due to capable advisors like James Madison and take-charge members of his cabinet like Alexander Hamilton, who did much to define the economic and even political direction of Washington’s administration. (Fleming carefully eschews mention of Jefferson’s contributions to the success of the administration—e.g., his reports on French treaties, on commerce of America with foreign countries, and on coinage, weights, and measures.) Thus, Fleming’s Washington qua politician, intentions notwithstanding, comes across as more of a figurehead than a president with a vibrant, clear vision of his nation.
Jefferson—“that most troublesome of politicians—an ideologue” (186)—is depicted as a craven, duplicitous, and a hypocritical castle-builder. When Jefferson was governor of Virginia and the commander in chief of the militia and British forces headed into Virginia in 1780, Jefferson was not to be found rallying Virginians “with words as stirring as those he wrote in the Declaration of Independence” (21). Jefferson, it seems, was a coward.
Fleming also cites numerous instances of Jefferson’s duplicity.
Jefferson allowed others to praise him for his actions apropos of the acquisition of the Louisiana lands, when he did nothing. The acquisition was not due to any shrewdness on Jefferson’s part, but to fortuitousness. France’s mounting debts during war, the French military debacle in Santo Domingo due to plague, and Napoleon’s need of money to maintain his military campaigns led to the selling of the lands (306–21). Are we to believe that Jefferson’s foreign policy vis-à-vis France had no bearing? Did not Jefferson refuse, for instance, to loan one million dollars to Napoleon for his campaign in Santo Domingo?
Again, at a celebratory dinner honoring the administration for the purchase, the band played “Jefferson’s March,” which Fleming says was “a trifle ‘monarchical’” (318). Jefferson, it seems, was again duplicitous for not having quieted the band.
Fleming also writes of Madison’s duplicity—Madison drafted Washington’s annual message to Congress and chaired the committee that responded to it, while he was writing essays in Freneau’s National Gazette that condemned Hamilton’s policies. Madison was mostly “an honorable and honest man,” but “the best explanation for his becoming two-faced in his relationship to President Washington may well be Thomas Jefferson’s role in the Congressman’s political and personal life” (111). Jefferson, the snake, had poisoned Madison.
Finally, Fleming mentions President Jefferson’s celebrated dinners with congressmen. Those with fellow republicans were for the sake of “subtly—and sometimes not so subtly” telling them “how he wanted them to vote on various matters” (327). It is certain that that is sometimes what happened, Fleming’s account treats it as the only motive and it strongly suggests insidious, coercive measures.
There are numerous distortions or corruptions of texts for the sake of slanting. Consider Fleming’s account of a dinner engagement at Jefferson’s residence in the nation’s capital with Alexander Hamilton and John Adams. The source, which Fleming ignores, is a letter from Jefferson to Benjamin Rush (16 Jan. 1811). Jefferson tells Rush of a conversation that turned to political ideals. Adams stated that the British constitution would be the most perfect, if some of its defects were corrected. Hamilton asserted that the British constitution was “the most perfect government that ever existed” (the quote actually reads, “It was the most perfect model of government that could be formed”) even with its corruptions. Jefferson took Hamilton’s words, says Fleming, as “a veritable confession of his admiration for the ruthless men and evil deeds that would eventually snuff out all traces of liberty in the mother country” (109).
Yet Jefferson also in the letter to Rush mentions a second incident at the dinner engagement. Jefferson’s room had numerous paintings of famous men, including Bacon, Locke, and Newton—“The three greatest men the world had ever produced,” adds Jefferson. Hamilton incredulously did not recognize any of the three. In brown study, Hamilton paused and added that he thought Julius Caesar was the greatest man who ever lived. Jefferson sums, “Hamilton, honest as a man, but, as a politician, believing in the necessity of either force or corruption to govern men.” In sum, Fleming depicts Jefferson as a paranoid ideologue, when the letter gives no evidence of that.
Consider also Fleming’s skewed account Jay’s Treaty. After consulting with Secretary of State Randolph, President Washington decided to keep the treaty from the presses, for the perceived clamor of the citizenry would have made it impossible for the Senate “to consider it objectively.” Once the treaty was ratified, Washington then “decided it was time to listen to the voice of the people,” as there was “no longer any need for secrecy.” Fleming acknowledges that “there was an explosion of fury from North to Sought and East to West” once the treaty was made public (208). Is this not a barefaced instance of Washington’s duplicity?
Furthermore, when French ambassador Genêt captured a British ship The Little Sarah and intended to use it as a warship, Secretary Jefferson, Fleming says, was nowhere to be found. Concerning his absence, he sent Washington a note in which he complained of a fever. The note, Fleming insists, is Jefferson mocking Washington for the president’s “bouts of fever.” Fleming then accuses Jefferson of projection, because Jefferson writes in his Anas that Washington wished his cabinet would have decided to fire on The Little Sarah, though he would not have made such a decision himself (171). Why the statement is projection and cannot be taken at face-value is unclear.
Moreover, Fleming discusses with sang froid the Alien and Sedition Acts of the Adams’ administration as if they were needed measures for a country presumably about to be invaded by France (259–67). There is conveniently little discussion that the Sedition Act had the consequence of incarcerating many prominent republicans, including Benjamin Franklin Bache, editor of the Aurora, and Matthew Lyon, congressman from Vermont and author of a “seditious” article in the Vermont Journal. Were all such outspoken critics of the Adams’ administration in cahoots with the French government to overthrow the nation?
Chapters 25 to 33 concern events after the death of Washington. Thus, they do little to develop or support Fleming’s thesis. They are mostly composed to denigrate Jefferson. For instance, chapter 26 begins with Jefferson’s description of his presidency as “the Revolution of 1800,” a stark revelation of his “envy of George Washington” (288). Chapters 30, 31, and 32 show that the failures that defined Jefferson’s second term are characteristic of Jefferson’s incapabilities as president. Fleming writes of the man as a dying duck, not as a lame duck. “Well before the end of his second term, [Jefferson] virtually withdrew from the duties and responsibilities of his high office. He shipped his books and furniture back to Monticello and wrote self-pitying letters to his daughter Martha” (366).
At book’s end, readers are left asking themselves this: What exactly was the conflict between Washington and Jefferson that “defined a nation”? Given that Fleming notes often that Washington sided politically with Jefferson at least as much as he did with Hamilton—that is to be acknowledged—it is difficult to believe that there were key axial political differences between the two. Yet the parting paragraph of chapter 32 is suggestive. Fleming says that Jefferson, “deeply conflicted man,” was a quixotic, head-in-the-clouds prophet. Washington, in contrast, was a leader with a real vision. “Like [Washington], our greatest presidents have valued the visionary side of our heritage, but resisted the demands and pretensions of ideologies as well as the envies and angers of party politics [characteristic of Jefferson]” (367).
Such parting words, prior to the final chapter explicating Madison’s defection to Washingtonian politics, depict greatly different (and, in Fleming’s hands, greatly skewed) characters; they do not describe or point to any particular conflict. Thus, readers are left furhoodled. In contrast to the avowed conflict between Washington and Jefferson, the political tensions between Hamilton and Jefferson were profound and caused by antagonistic visions of the budding American nation—e.g., thick versus thin government, Anglophilia versus Francophilia, and commercial urbanism versus georgic Arcadianism. That conflict was the conflict that defined America.
Very odd, indeed. I have Fleming’s “A Disease In The Public Mind”. I did not like it much. It seems that he is a bit “idealistic”. hehe
Colonel Holowchak, it’s good that those attempting to eradicate Thomas Jefferson are devoid of any real curiosity, being interested only in the script. They might discover proof, in the Frankfort Advice, that Jefferson is unworthy as a Founder. In that case, they get two for one as George Washington is exposed also…. and with Richard Henry Lee as a bonus.
Thank you, both. I see the main conflict not between TJ and GW, as I noted. Scholars always talk of their mutual hatred, late in life. I do not see any hatred. Each much frustrated the other and often, but there was ever mutual respect. GW, though lacking the education of a TJ or JA, surrounded himself by intelligent men and always listened to them, though he made his own decisions. TJ always respected that.
Leaving aside the actual divisions and who believed what ~ things that in themselves do not make an individual “good” or “bad,” “worthy” or “unworthy,” there is what that individual does to achieve his “ends.” At no time did Washington EVER do anything underhanded or intentionally unworthy of a moral, CHRISTIAN man (and, yes, Washington was a Christian). Indeed, his greatest fear was that his actions might be seen as unworthily motivated. His rage (and sorrow) at his treatment at the hands of men like Jefferson and eventually even Madison and Monroe was that they either presented him as dishonest or incompetent usually with age as the explanation. He could accept their differences, but he could not understand how an honest man would predicate those differences upon amoral or immoral grounds.
Jefferson, on the other hand, was distinctly DISHONEST. He intentionally brought a French agent into the infant Department of State as a “translator” for a man who was fluent in French, a man who constantly attacked Washington is his “newspaper” and his constant, albeit behind the scenes, attacks on the President eventually destroyed their relationship. It is known that the two men were estranged after Washington left the presidency and, indeed, there is the story of Jefferson visiting Mount Vernon and Martha’s response to this attempt to once again, cloak himself in his dead enemy’s reputation.
No, when it comes to both actions and motivations, in this particular “war,” Washington wins hands down.
Other that an oblique reference to GW in his letter to Mazzei, I would like to see anything where TJ speaks illy of GW.
I read Fleming’s, “Illusion of Victory”, which depicted the Wilson Administration and America’s entry into WWI.
I found it to be a great read and much of what he wrote can be corroborated through other texts on the subject.
However, I have found Fleming’s works to be a bit uneven in their perceptions on the topics he wrote on. For example, he wrote the book, “Truman”, which praised this president for what he accomplished during his administration. Considering that Truman was considered a party “hack’ and disliked by Roosevelt, who replaced the peace-oriented Wallace as his VP with Truman as a result of party pressures along with his criminal bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I couldn’t square Fleming’s bias towards this man.
As a result, I wrote to Fleming in the matter and surprisingly received a reply. He was quite honest about his biases towards Truman. He said that when he was a youth, as a result of his father’s position in the government, he spent man hours at the Truman Whitehouse and found both he and his wife to be loving people.
A very odd perspective for a historian…