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
20 Jefferson Recommends the Rope
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Eleven days after Congress declared war, Jefferson acknowledges Madison's copy of the declaration and reports the war “entirely popular here.” Federalist opponents are “poor devils… not worthy of notice” — and then comes the passage that gives the episode its title: “A barrel of tar to each state South of the Patomac will keep all in order, & that will be freely contributed without troubling government. To the North they will give you more trouble. You may there have to apply the rougher drastics of Govr. Wright, hemp and confiscation.” Tarring and feathering for southern dissenters, delivered by neighbors at no cost to the state; the rope and seizure of property for northern ones, in a phrase borrowed from Representative Robert Wright of Maryland. Jefferson then turns to keeping the war popular — conquering Canada to “stop Indian barbarities,” and finding markets for a record wheat crop being cut that very day, since a harvest rotting in the barn “would soon sicken him of war.” He proposes lining the coast with armed vessels of pilot-boat construction, a design he believes the British cannot copy, then defers: “these however are the ideas of a landsman only.” The letter closes by asking Madison to give his “safest conveyance” to a bill of exchange for General Kościuszko.
Key Themes
• Tar and hemp: political violence against Americans, treated as logistics and prescribed by region
• The dark echo of Episode 2 — the apostle of “a little rebellion,” now in power
• A war lost in a barn: the record wheat crop and the farmer's patience
• The navy he never built: pilot-boat hulls, carronades, and the coasting trade
• Counsel then deference, again — “the ideas of a landsman only”
• The ledger: Kościuszko's bill of exchange, and the trust Jefferson would decline in 1819
Welcome! I'm Charlie Jett coming to you from my 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 is verified against the original manuscripts at Founders Online, the Digital Archive of the National Archives. Well it is June twenty ninth, eighteen twelve, and the country is at war for the first time under its Constitution. Congress declared eleven days ago the closest war vote in American history and not one Federalist voted for it. On the twenty second, Madison sent Jefferson a copy of the Declaration itself. It has come the ninety miles to Monticello, and Jefferson is answering. The mood in Virginia is high. Nobody yet knows that in New England the war will be called a crime, that Massachusetts and Connecticut will refuse their militia, that in two and a half years men will meet at Hartford to talk about the terms on which their states remain in the Union. Nobody yet knows that the conquest of Canada, the thing everyone assumes will be quick, begins in seven weeks with an American general surrendering in Detroit without firing a shot. And nobody in America knows the largest fact of all that six days after the declaration in London, the ministry withdrew the orders in council that caused the war. That news is on the ocean. At Monticello it is harvest time. Jefferson is sixty nine. The wheat crop is the best he has ever seen, and they begin to cut it today. Stand in the field for a moment before you open this. The wheat is standing, the harvest starts this morning, and the letter goes out today, and it's going to be the hardest thing this series has read aloud. What follows is an extract, and I'll summarize the rest. Jefferson opens with the declaration in hand and the mood around him. He writes It is entirely popular here, the only opinion being that it should have been issued the moment the season admitted the militia to enter Canada. Then the opposition dismissed. The Federalists indeed are open mouthed against the Declaration, but they are poor devils here, not worthy of notice. And then the sentence A barrel of tar to each state south of the potomac will keep all in order, and that will freely contribute without troubling government. A barrel of tar that is tarring and feathering, hot pitch on a man's skin. And read the second half again because it is the colder half. It will be done voluntarily by the neighbors, so the government need not be involved at all. Then he turns to the north. To the north they will give you more trouble. You may there have to apply the rougher drastics of Governor Wright, hemp and confiscation. Drastics a doctor's word for a strong dose. He is prescribing. Tar is the mild medicine. Hemp is the strong one. Hemp is the rope. Confiscation is taking a man's property, and the phrase is not his own. Robert Wright of Maryland had said it in Congress seven weeks earlier that treason would be radically cured by hemp and confiscation. Jefferson is not inventing the remedy, he is endorsing it, and assigning it to a region. Then without a pause, the practical work of keeping a war popular. Two things are needed. The first to stop Indian barbarities, the conquest of Canada will do this. The second is markets, for flour, since tobacco is already given up and seemingly without reluctance. And here the letter turns toward the field outside the window. Never was such a crop on the ground as that which we generally begin to cut this day. It would be mortifying to the farmer to see an old one like this rot in his barn. It would soon sicken him of war. A war can be lost in a barn. He wants neutral ships and enemy ships under neutral flags, which I would wink at. But the coasting trade matters more, because there both the seller and buyer are Americans. And now the strangest passage in the letter. So he writes Why should we not then line our coast with vessels of pilot boat construction filled with men, armed with cannonades, and only so much larger as to ensure the mastery of a pilot boat. Cannonades short, heavy, close range guns, and the reason it will work, he writes, the British cannot counterwork us by building similar ones, because the fact is, however unaccountable, that our builders alone understand that construction. Then exactly as in our last episode the bow. These, however, are the ideas of a landsman only. Mr Hamilton's judgment will test their soundness. Paul Hamilton, Secretary of the Navy, not the other one. He adds a note about the malicious fear of a summer posting at Norfolk and asks the governor to send acclimated men in the hot months. And then the last paragraph, which is the favor between friends. I trouble you with a letter from General Coyusko. It covers a bill of exchange from Mr Barnes for him, and is therefore of great importance to him, hoping you will have the goodness so far to befriend the general as to give it your safest conveyance. I commit it to you with the assurance of my sincere affections. Your safest conveyance. Remember that care. We'll come back to it later. So what does the author assume? That dissent in wartime is a disease with a treatment. The whole passage is medical, drastics, doses, a cure by region, and there is no argument in it because none is felt to be needed. He assumes Canada falls easily and that taking it ends the fighting on the frontier. He assumes the war will be won or lost on whether a farmer can sell his flour, which is genuinely a shrewd read of a republic at war. And he assumes American shipwrights hold a secret the Royal Navy cannot copy. Our builders alone understand that construction. So what does he fear? The barn, not defeat, the harvest rotting. Ours is the only country on earth where war is an instantaneous and total suspension of all the objects of his industry and support, and a farmer who watches the best crop of his life spoil will soon sicken of war. He fears the coastline, remembering what fast little boats did to American commerce thirty years earlier. And beneath both he fears the North, not its armies, its unwillingness. So what does he take for granted that we no longer do? That political violence against your own countrymen is a matter of logistics, one barrel per state, contributed freely without troubling government. He is not calling for a mob, he is assuming one, budgeting for it, and noting with satisfaction that it costs the treasury nothing. Set that against episode number two in Paris, January 1787, when he says a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. That was written to warn this same man not to let fear of disorder build a cage. Twenty-five years later, with his party in power and a war on, the storms have become a disease and the treatment is tar and rope. We do not have to decide whether that is hypocrisy or experience. We have only to notice that both sentences are his, and that the second one is about Americans. So what is missing? What's missing is that any sense the Federalists have a case. They are poor devils not worthy of notice. And in New England they are a majority. Missing too is the word slave, though the letter is soaked in the labor that produced the crop he is about to cut. And missing is any doubt about Canada, which within seven weeks is answered by General Hull surrendering Detroit without a battle. But the thing this letter cannot see is in its final paragraph, and it is the hardest thing in the series so far. Fourteen years before this, Tadius Koskuko left America. Before he sailed, he wrote out a will in his own hand and put it in Jefferson's keeping. It directed that his entire American estate be used to purchase enslaved people from among his own or any other thing, to give them liberty, to educate them in trades, to prepare them for citizenship. He named Jefferson executor. Jefferson managed the money and remitted the interest to him in Europe. The bill of exchange in this letter is that money. This is the estate moving under Jefferson's careful hand of great importance to him, your safest conveyance. Kuziusko died in eighteen seventeen. In May of eighteen nineteen the will was proved in the Albemarle County Court, and the record states what happened next in the clerk's flat language. Thomas Jefferson, the executor therein named, refused to take upon himself the burden of the execution of the said will. He had written the year before that it would take many more years to complete than I have to live. The estate went into thirty years of litigation, and in eighteen fifty two the Supreme Court gave what remained to European heirs. No one person was freed by it. So the ledger one more time The white inhabitants of the Louisiana draft, my laboring people delaying a journey, that class which in fact composes the nation, and now a man taking exceptional care with the safe conveyance of a fund that had been left entrust to him to buy the freedom of the people working in his own fields, a trust he would decline. He is not being cynical here. That is the difficulty. He is being conscientious about the wrong half of it. Well in closing Tar for the South, hemp for the North, a hull designed for the coast and a friend's money forwarded with the greatest care. Every instinct in this letter is competent. Not one of them is turned toward the people cutting the wheat. Well that's our episode. These letters were not written to make anyone comfortable, and this series does not read the easy ones only. What we owe the founders is attention, the whole page, not the quotable half. So stay informed, stay engaged, and above all, stay curious. As before, today's letter is verified against Founders Online, the papers of James Madison Presidential Series. I'm Charlie Jett, and I thank you for listening.