The Jefferson Madison Letters
For fifty years, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison wrote to each other — across an ocean, across a revolution, across the whole experiment of building a republic. Theirs was the most consequential friendship in American history, and most of it survives on paper: nearly 1,250 letters, written between 1776 and Jefferson's death in 1826.
We can't read all 1,250 together. So I've chosen thirty — the ones that carry the essentials: the argument that produced the Bill of Rights, the exchange over whether the earth belongs to the living, the building of a political party, two presidencies, the Missouri crisis, and the founding of the University of Virginia.
This is not a series about two men arguing. It is a series about two men building. When they disagreed — over a bill of rights, over how far one generation may bind the next — they did it as allies who trusted each other completely. And we do not look away from the contradiction at the center of it: they built a republic of liberty while living inside a republic of slavery.
In each episode, host Charlie Jett reads a single letter, sets its scene, and asks what it still has to teach us. A history lesson, from the founders themselves — one letter at a time.
The Jefferson Madison Letters
02 Jefferson Defends a Rebellion
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Writing from Paris on January 30, 1787, Thomas Jefferson responds to news of Shays's Rebellion — the armed uprising of debt-burdened Massachusetts farmers that alarmed the American political class. Where others saw proof that the union was failing, Jefferson saw a healthy sign of a free people's vigilance. He lays out a three-part theory of government (no government; government by consent; government by force), defends the "turbulence" inherent in free societies, and delivers his famous verdict: "a little rebellion now and then is a good thing... It is a medecine necessary for the sound health of government." The same letter warns against ceding Mississippi navigation to Spain, offers candid character sketches — written in cipher — of John Adams and other public men, and ships Madison a pocket telescope and a portable copying machine of Jefferson's own design, with an itemized bill for 132 livres. The episode also restores the letter to its true moment: the Springfield arsenal attack came five days before the letter's dateline, and the decisive suppression at Petersham came the day before Jefferson's February 5 postscript — news that had not yet crossed the ocean. His famous calm rested on weeks-old information. The episode lands on the eve of the Constitutional Convention, framing Jefferson's counsel as a warning to Madison not to let fear of disorder produce an overcorrection toward force.
Key Themes.
● Disorder as a sign of health, not failure, in a free society
● The greater danger of frightened rulers overcorrecting toward force
● Jefferson's three-part theory of how societies are governed
● The idealist (Jefferson) writing to the builder (Madison) on the eve of the Convention
● The modern distance from Jefferson's tolerance of political violence
● The transatlantic news lag: Jefferson's serenity rests on weeks-old information
Hello and welcome to the Jefferson Madison Letters. I'm Charlie Jett coming to you from our studio in beautiful downtown Chicago. One letter at a time, we're following the 50-year friendship that helped build a republic. So it's January 30th, 1787. Thomas Jefferson is 43 years old in his third year in Paris. Madison is thirty-five, elected again to Congress and bound for New York, though he has not yet taken his seat. Jefferson, working from letters that took two months to cross, believes that he already has. He writes, as you are now returned to Congress. Well a convention has been called for Philadelphia in May, and Virginia has already named its delegates, Madison among them. No one yet knows whether enough states will show up or whether the meeting will really amount to anything at all. But between them sits a crisis. Since the autumn in western Massachusetts, farmers crushed by debt and taxes, many of them veterans of the Revolution, have been rising up under a former captain by the name of Daniel Shays, shutting down courthouses to stop the foreclosures. To men like Washington and Adams, the news is proof that the weak government under the Articles of Confederation is failing, that the Republic might collapse into anarchy. And the crisis is still unfolding as Jefferson writes. Five days before he dates this letter, though he cannot know it because the news takes two months to cross the ocean, Shay's men marched on the Federal arsenal at Springfield and were driven off by cannon. Five days after he dates it, a militia paid for by private subscription of Boston merchants, will scatter the last of them in a night march through a blizzard. The rebellion Jefferson is about to shrug at is not a settled autumn disturbance. It is at its climax this very week, and he has no idea. Jefferson, three thousand miles away and reading weeks old news, sees it completely differently from the frightened men at home. And in this letter he tells Madison why. Remember the timing. Jefferson is, in effect, sending his closest ally toward Philadelphia with a warning. Don't overcorrect. Don't let fear of a little disorder talk you into too much order. Neither man knows the rebellion is already ending. Neither knows what the summer will build, or whether it will build anything at all. Now set aside for a moment everything you know about how this turns out. Right now it's just a letter crossing an ocean, written by the one man in the founding generation who is not alarmed. A note before I read this is a long letter. After the passage I'll read in full, Jefferson turns to the Mississippi Navigation Crisis, sends Madison candid sketches of the public men he will now have to deal with, including John Adams, and closes by shipping him a pocket telescope and a copying machine. Those I'll summarize. The heart of it I'll read in full. Every word is Jefferson's from the manuscript at the Library of Congress. Jefferson begins almost casually, telling Madison the troubles don't alarm him at all. He writes So far as I have yet seen, they do not appear to threaten serious consequences. This uneasiness has produced acts absolutely unjustifiable, but I hope they will provoke no severities from their governments. Then Jefferson widens the lens and lays out the whole theory of government. There are, he says, three kinds of society one, without government as among our Indians. two under governments wherein the will of everyone has a just influence, as is the case in England in a slight degree, and in our states is a great one. three under governments of force, as is the case in all other monarchies and in most of the other republics. To have an idea of the curse of existence under these last, they must be seen. It is a government of wolves over sheep. The second kind, government by consent, is the one worth having. But it comes with a cost, and Jefferson names it honestly when he writes It has its evils too, the principle of which is the turbulence to which it is subject. But weigh this against the oppressions of monarchy, and it becomes nothing. Then he writes, and I quote, I prefer dangerous liberty to peaceful servitude. And then the famous line which is not a shrug but a conclusion. Jefferson writes Even this evil is productive of good. It prevents the degeneracy of government and nourishes a general attention to the public affairs. I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. And he doesn't stop at the slogan, he adds a darker observation, that crushing a rebellion too thoroughly only entrenches the abuses that caused it, and draws the lesson for people in power. He writes, and I quote Unsuccessful rebellions indeed generally establish the encroachments on the rights of people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest Republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government. The rest of the letter turns practical and personal and remarkable. There is a sharp warning that abandoning the Mississippi to Spain would be, and I quote, an act of separation between the eastern and western country. There are candid portraits of the public men Madison will now deal with, including John Adams, whom Madison has never met, vain, irritable, and yet so amicable that I pronounce you will love him if you ever became acquainted with him. And here is the detail I can't get over. Jefferson writes these portraits in cipher. The candor is dangerous, a letter defending rebellion, with its gossip locked in code. Then, almost as an afterthought, he packs up a pocket telescope, a walking stick, and a portable copying machine of his own design. He planned it in England, had it built, and the Paris workmen now making them can hardly keep up with the demand. And because even founders keep accounts, he sends Madison the bill ninety six Livres for the machine, twenty four for the attachments, twelve for paper and ink. one hundred thirty two Livres itemized between the two men designing a republic. One more thing about this letter. Jefferson added a postscript on february fifth. Small news a returned courier shipping details. He could not know that the day before in a Massachusetts snowstorm, the rebellion that he had just shrugged at was broken for good. The most famous defense of rebellion in American history was sealed the day after the rebellion died, and its author would not learn of it for weeks. So what does Jefferson assume? He assumes disorder is survivable, even useful. Where his contemporaries saw Shay's rebellion as a fire alarm, Jefferson saw weather. He writes as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Storms are not a sign that the system is broken. They're a sign that it's alive. Behind that is a deeper assumption, that the people, even when they are when they riot, are fundamentally to be trusted, and that the greater danger comes not from an unruly populace, but from frightened rulers who overreact. He assumes you should worry more about the cure than the disease. So what does Jefferson fear? Not rebellion, over correction. Read the line about governors again. Punish rebellions so mildly as to not discourage them too much. He's afraid that men who've just had a scare will use it as a license to clamp down, to train liberty for order, to conclude in his words that nature has formed men insusceptible of any other government but that of force. That's the real fear in this letter, and the timing makes it pointed. Madison is walking into a convention full of men who just had exactly that scare. Jefferson is trying to inoculate his friend against their panic. So what do they take for granted that we no longer do? Well, that a little political violence is a tolerable price for liberty. This is the hardest part of the letter for a modern listener, and we shouldn't soften it. Jefferson is, in a real sense, defending an armed uprising, and elsewhere in this same period he wrote things far more startling about the blood of patriots and tyrants. We live downstream of two centuries that taught us how catastrophic political violence can become. Jefferson, writing in the dawn of the experience, could afford a romance about turbulence that we no longer can. It's worth sitting with that distance rather than explaining it away. So what's missing? What's missing is Madison's answer, and the friendship's genius is in the gap. Jefferson is the one who sends the bold, beautiful, slightly dangerous idea across the ocean. Madison is the one who will sit in the actual room with the actual frightened men, and build a government that has to work on Tuesday morning. This letter is one half of a conversation, and the series is the other half. Notice too what's not here, any sense that disorder might fall hardest on the powerless, or that a little rebellion looks different to those it's aimed at. Jefferson writes from Paris at a clean distance. That distance is part of what lets him be so serene. It's a stunning thing to send a friend on an eve of a constitutional convention. Don't be so afraid of the storm that you build a cage to keep it out. Madison would spend the summer building a structure strong enough to hold a republic together, and flexible enough to let it shake. Both men were right. The argument between them is the argument America has been having ever since. Well that's our second letter. Next time the Constitution arrives, and Madison writes Jefferson with the first crack of opposition, a fatal objection from a man who refused to sign. Today's letter is verified against Founders Online, the National Archives edition of the Founders' Papers. Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, January 30th, 1787, in the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, volume eleven. You can read every word for yourself. So thank you for joining us. I'm Charlie Jett. Until next time, stay informed, stay engaged, and stay curious.