‘A Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business'

From the time that his neighbours in Albemarle County elected Thomas Jefferson to serve in the Virginia House of Burgesses (at age 26), it was his habit to make notes of his reading in the field of parliamentary procedure.

Jefferson’s father carved out a prodigious reputation as a surveyor of Vir­ginia’s unsettled lands, its back country. Twelve years after his father’s death - Thomas was 14 at the time - the younger Jefferson won election to the lower house of Virginia’s legislature (1769). Aided by his family’s contacts among the landed gentry, that body selected Jefferson to represent Virginia as a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1775. Eventually he was elected to serve the Commonwealth of Virginia as its Governor. He served two one-year terms (1779-81). British forces and loyalist militias raided patriot homes and waged war on its state government in 1781. Jefferson’s principal accomplishment as Governor may have been to outride Col. Tarleton’s par­tisans, an episode related in the previous chapter.²

Franklin launched a charm offensive of trans-Atlantic proportions on his arrival in Paris as the American envoy to the court of Louis XVI (21 Decem­ber 1776). No praise was too extravagant, however, when Doctor Franklin greeted Voltaire in Paris on 15 February 1778. ‘The meeting of Franklin and Voltaire, democracy shaking hands with theism’, Andre Maurois supplied the apotheosis, ‘was the Revolution’s dawning’. ‘If I were forty’, Voltaire proclaimed, ‘I should go and settle in your happy fatherland’.³

Within 18 months after Franklin’s arrival, France declared war on Great Britain.

Arriving in Paris on 6 August 1784, Jefferson thrived on the comparison with his illustrious predecessor.⁴ In launching his own charm offensive, Jef­ferson’s love of all things French eased his way into Parisian society. After set­tling into his lodgings on the Champs-Elysees and within a year of his arrival, he polished his Notes on the State of Virginia. This work duly appeared in both English and French editions (1785, 1786). Thanks to the soft rollout of his Notes, Jefferson offered himself to Parisians as a celebrity author whose eager public clamoured for his books. He published two full-length works in his lifetime. These were his Notes on the State of Virginia - another edition appeared in London (1787) - and his Manual of Parliamentary Practice for the Use of the Senate of the United States (Washington, 1801, rev. ed. 1812). The latter work drew on the research notes he entered in his Pocket-Book.⁵

It most certainly was the Jeffersonian touch to be born in Virginia of landed gentry, endowed with farms and orchards tended by enslaved labour. Jefferson was not ashamed of having others work for him. At least in his own mind, Jefferson worked for humanity. As ambassador to the French court, he acquired contacts ready to promote his career as America’s lead­ing contributor to the Enlightenment. It never troubled Jefferson to have Franklin plough the ground ahead of him, whether as inventor or diplomat. Jefferson became known early on - and throughout his eight years’ service as President - as a man who preferred to do his best work in private.

Jefferson staged double-breasted dinner parties at the President’s Palace. (The residence became permanently known as the ‘White House’ following the Second War for American Independence.) It was his practice to wine and dine the friends of his administration and, on the night following, to entertain his administration’s loyal opponents. His cellar offered vintages shipped across the Atlantic. On arrival in the United States, Jefferson’s pri­vate label, Cuvee TJ, graced the table he laid out for his guests. Jefferson the connoisseur lavished a considerable portion of his presidential salary - $25,000 per annum - playing the genial host over his eight years and two terms in presidential office. He died over $100,000 in debt.⁶

Second only to George Washington, Jefferson offered himself to the new republic as everyone’s honoured Virginian and America’s first interna­tional literary superstar. Jefferson took literary production to be an ambi­tion framed by the obligations of state-craft. Jefferson preferred to hollow out a literary space bounded by official duty and construct a monument that suited his personal taste. This effort required considerable risk-taking. Jefferson rang changes on aspirational themes in his opening draft of the Declaration of Independence; this inspired John Adams to put his oar into Jefferson’s work. ‘Jefferson proposed to me to make the draft’, Adams recorded the exchange.

I said, “I will not,” “You should do it.” “Oh! no.” “Why will you not? You ought to do it.” “I will not.” “Why?” “Reasons enough.” “What

‘I have begun a sketch’ 79 can be your reasons?” “Reason first, you are a Virginian, and a Virgin­ian ought to appear at the head of this business. Reason second, I am obnoxious, suspected, and unpopular. You are very much otherwise. Reason third, you can write ten times better than I can.” “Well,” said Jefferson, “if you are decided, I will do as well as I can.”⁷

Adams red-lined passages where, in his opinion, Jefferson’s draft faltered.

Lacking an Adams to nip at his heels, Jefferson - as I will show - supplied his own monumental pendent to the Manual as a work of specialised knowl­edge. As a prose-writer in service to the nation, Jefferson wound up his presidential career competing only against himself.

Jefferson’s study of parliamentary procedure and practice falls into three dis­tinct phases. The first interval ran from his service in the Virginia legislature and continued to 1797. Jefferson’s inauguration as Vice-President (4 March 1797) marked a watershed in both his scholarly research and in his public life.⁸ By virtue of this result, he took office as President of the Senate (15 May 1797). Jefferson’s retirement from the Presidency (4 March 1809) marked the begin­ning of the third phase. At home in Monticello (Charlottesville, Virginia) he revised and republished his final version of the Manual (1812).

The first 441 paragraphs of the Pocket-Book were composed before the spring of 1797. Paragraph 442 contains the text of the Senate’s 28 pro­cedural rules. Diligent and exhaustive, Jefferson’s practice of writing his footnotes in advance of his Manual enabled him to cite his British sources to effect in the two editions of the Manual (1801, 1812) that he sent to press. Jefferson’s service in the rough-and-tumble of the Virginia House of Bur­gesses (1769-74) would have taught him that politics was a messy business. The potential for violence among members was always present in legislative assemblies: Jefferson made the readers of his Manual aware of the ‘dangers of a decision by the sword. The Speaker took the chair, the mace was forci­bly laid on the table; whereupon, the members retiring to their places’.⁹ Jefferson certainly knew what his audience sought in a work offering spe­cialised knowledge which might appear, to say the least, boring. American legislators fell in love with the Manual. Jefferson’s work appeared in 143 editions by the time his underlying research material - the Parliamentary Pocket-Book - made its first appearance in print (1988).¹⁰