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
15 Jefferson on the 36th Ballot and the Vow He Had to Break
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
One day after the House of Representatives elected him President on the thirty-sixth ballot, Jefferson breaks his three-week-old vow of epistolary silence: “Notwithstanding the suspected infidelity of the post, I must hazard this communication.” The letter reconstructs the Federalist endgame — including their reported certainty that “a legislative usurpation would be resisted by arms” — details the blanks and withdrawals that gave Jefferson ten states, brands the holdouts' conduct “a declaration of war,” and marvels that the crisis has swung the mass of Federalists behind the administration “as a child of their own.” Adams “embarrasses” the transition with vacant offices and a stream of judicial appointments “under the new system,” while Jefferson closes by booking Madison a room at Conrad's boardinghouse — the new government beginning as a lodging arrangement between friends.
Key Themes
• The 36th ballot: how close the first transfer of power came to arms and a new convention
• “A declaration of war” vs. “a child of their own” — two futures in one paragraph
• The midnight judiciary materializing in real time
• Transition without norms: vacant offices, a hostile Senate call, no courtesies
• Government as household: the room at Conrad's
Welcome! I'm Charlie Jett coming to you from our studio in beautiful downtown Chicago. This is the Jefferson Madison Letters, a history lesson from the Founders One Letter at a Time. Fifty years of correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, and every word you'll hear from them is verified against the original manuscripts at Founders Online, the Digital Archive of the National Archives. Well it is february eighteenth, eighteen oh one, the morning after. For a week the House has balloted an exhausting deadlock, eight states for Jefferson, six for Burr, two defided, one state short thirty five times in a row. Members sleep in the chamber. One is carried in on a sick bed to vote. Outside the chamber, harder talk circulates. What happens if the Federalists simply run out the clock to march fourth and install a president by law? Yesterday on the thirty sixth ballot the dam broke. Federalists in key states stood down, withdrew, or cast blanks, and ten states fell to Jefferson. The first contested transfer of power in the Republic's history has resolved without a shot. But the government Jefferson inherits is being fortified against him even now. Five days ago, President Adams signed the new Judiciary Act, the very bill Jefferson told Madison he dreaded above all. And the nominations of new Federalist judges are flowing to the Senate by day. Madison is still at Montpelier, ill, his father sinking. The President elect needs his Secretary of State, and there are two weeks until the inauguration. The outcome is one day old, the ink on it barely dry, and Jefferson picks up his pen to do the thing he swore off doing. Whether the peace holds, whether the beaten party accepts the results as final, no one yet knows. It is the morning after and the first act of the president elect is to break a promise. What follows is an extract. I'll summarize the rest. He begins by acknowledging the broken vow in the same breath as a danger. Notwithstanding the suspected infidelity of the post, I must hazard this communication. Then he reconstructs the Federalist Minority's final calculation and listened to what was on their table. They saw, as he writes, the impossibility of electing B, the certainty that a legislator usurpation would be resisted by arms, and a recourse to a convention to reorganize and amend the government. Resistance by arms a new constitutional convention This is how close it came. In Jefferson's own accounting, their dilemma was whether it would be better for them to come over in a body and go with the tide of the times, or by a negative conduct suffer the election to be made by a bare majority, keeping their body entire and unbroken to act in phalanx on such ground of opposition as circumstances shall offer. Then the mechanics of the break, precisely as a tally sheet. Morris of Vermont withdrawing four Maryland Federalist casting blanks South Carolina and Delaware blank. So there were ten, ten states for one candidate, four for another, and two blanks, and his verdict on the holdouts. We consider this therefore as a declaration of war on the party of this band a declaration of war on the day after victory, but in the same paragraph the opposite current. But their conduct appears to have brought us over to the whole body of Federalists, who, being alarmed with the danger of a dissolution of the government, had been made most anxiously to wish the very administration they had opposed and to view it when obtained as a child of their own. Even, he marvels, even Hamilton and Higginson have been zealous partisans for us. Then the problems Mr A embarrasses us. Adams keeps the offices of state and war vacant, names Bayard Minister to France, calls the Senate for March fourth. New judges are pouring through Theophilus Parsons for Attorney General, Charles Lee and Keith Taylor, cum multis alias, with many others, appointed judges under the new system. And amid it all, the sentence that turns the government into a household. Come to Conrad's, where I will bespeak lodgings for you. The administration of Thomas Jefferson begins as a room reservation at a boarding house two hundred paces from the Capitol. Salutations to Mrs. Madison, and once more, no signature. So what does the author assume? He assumes that force was genuinely on the table. He reports resisted by arms at a new convention not as his threats, but as facts the Federalists weighed, which tells us both sides assume the Union could break over this. He assumes reconciliation is now the play. The astonished note that defeated Federalists view the incoming administration as a child of their own is the seed of the inaugural line he will speak in two weeks. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists, and he assumes Madison is coming. The whole letter leans toward the room at Conrad's. So what does the author fear? The band the irreconcilable core that kept its body entire and unbroken to fight again on better ground. Notice the severity of his reading. The same facts, Federalists standing down rather than voting for him, could be read as concession, even as patriotism. Jefferson reads it as a declaration of war, and the standing fear, the courts again. The judges arriving under the new system are the freehold appointments he dreaded in December, now materializing by name while he watches powerless for two more weeks. So what do they take for granted that we no longer do? That a transition is adversarial to the last hour, the outgoing president filling courts, naming ministers, summoning a sentence the new man doesn't control, with no norm to say otherwise. The machinery of a peaceful transfer exists. The courtesies around it do not. They also take for granted the strange arithmetic of the House election itself, blanks and withdrawals as legitimate instruments, and a capital so small that forming a government means asking a friend to hold a room. So what's missing? Triumph. There is no exaltation anywhere in this letter. The victory paragraph is a threat assessment, the tone and after action report. Missing again is burr, reduced to a single initial even in victory. Missing is any word for the men who blinked. Bayard of Delaware, whose loan vote was his state's whole ballot, gets no credit here for standing down. We know from the balcony that he refused a French ministry rather than hold office at Jefferson's pleasure. A scrupulous letter has no room for. And missing is any sense of where the judicial flood ends. We know. It ends in a suit over one undelivered commission with the name Madison on the wrong side of the V. The case that will define the court's power arrives in this letter as a personal note. Well in closing, the tie broke, the vow broke with it, and the first presidential act of Thomas Jefferson was, in effect, a letter home. Count the states, watch the courts, book a room at Conrad's. Republics, it turns out, run on exactly this arithmetic, vigilance, and a friend on the way. Well that's our episode. These letters remind us that the peaceful transfer of power was not born a tradition. It was built ballot by ballot by people who chose the tide of the times over the phalanx. So stay informed, stay engaged, and above all, stay curious. Like the others, today's letter is verified against Founders Online. The Papers of James Madison. I'm Charlie Jett, and I thank you for listening to the city.