Louisiana and Beyond: The Story of America Series [Ep. 18]

On this episode of Our American Stories, Thomas Jefferson took huge steps toward the American life and frame of mind built since his time. One of these steps was toward the West.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
Up next, another installment in our series about us, the
Story of America series, with Hillsdale College professor and author
of the terrific book Land of Hope, Bill McLay. The
presidency of Thomas Jefferson marked a drastic change from that

(00:33):
of his predecessors, George Washington and John Adams. Jefferson was
a party man through and through, but some of his
best decisions were made by putting the country first. Let's
get into the story. Take it away, Bill.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
There's a saying, and it's usually said rather cynically, that
sometimes a politician has to rise above principle. It's supposed
to be a kind of humorous statement, but actually there's
truth to it. Sometimes statesmanship, the art of governing well,
which is an art and not a science. The art
of statesmanship requires one to rise above principle, one to

(01:11):
recognize that the time is not right, may never be
right for the implementation of the principles that one so
dearly loves. You can stay in opposition and be a
political voice, a voice crying in the wilderness, but a voice.
But if you want to be effective, if you want
to get things done, if you want to be a

(01:31):
practically good president, you have to come to terms with
the opposition. Thomas Jefferson was a very popular president.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
He was.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
Came into office in a very divided time and managed
to produce national unity, and he had a vision for
America's future. It was a different vision than the vision
that Alexander Hamilton had so influentially promoted, but he gave
voice to it, and in the process he learned a

(02:09):
very important lesson about politics, and that is that there's
a higher requirement incumbent on the great statesman, and that
is the well being of the polity itself. So Jefferson
understood all of this and he rose above principle. The

(02:30):
conflicts with the judiciary that we've described in a previous
episode we're very bitter pill to swallow, and he never
stopped swallowing it all the rest of his life. But
the other important violation of his principles led to his
greatest accomplishment, and that was the purchase of the Louisiana

(02:50):
territory from France. It was an accomplishment of great importance
for two reasons. One of them is defensive. It removed
a foreign presence from America's western border and in command
of the port city New Orleans, that governed commerce from

(03:13):
the mid section what would be the mid section of
the country, but it was the western most part of
the country. It freed New Orleans from being a choke
point that could the flick of a policy switch cripple
much of the American economy. So it freed things in
that way. But it also there's a second way that

(03:35):
it was a great accomplishment, and this is more expansive,
not less defensive than expansive. It redefined America in a
certain way, which had been a coastal nation with strong

(03:56):
ties both explicit and implicit to your Europe, with a
derivative culture from Europe. And it made it into a
continental republic, a sprawling continental republic, not yet from sea
to shining sea, but headed in that direction. It's it's
easy for us to see in retrospect, so from a

(04:17):
coastalation to a half of a continent nation with rich
farmland right for agricultural exploitation. In the years of head
and this was part of Jefferson's dream, his vision of America.

(04:40):
It was one heck of a land deal, probably the
greatest land deal in American history. It was the land
basically between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, from
the Gulf of Mexico to what today would be the
state of Montana, all for a mere fifteen million dollars,

(05:04):
which was worth worth more than fifteen million it would
be now, but still for that kind of land acquisition,
it was an amazing deal, and it was a dream
come true for Jefferson, whose vision of America was an
agricultural vision. He thought that those who labor in the
earth are the chosen people of God. If he had

(05:26):
a chosen people, he wasn't kidding. He thought agriculture was
a particularly effective school of virtue. They didn't live off
of the finagling and calculation of a paper economy based
on finance, the sort of thing that appealed to Hamilton. No,
an agricultural nation would be a much more down to

(05:49):
earth in every sense of the word nation. So the
acquisition of all this land meant that you could have
generations upon generations that would be able to find farmland.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
And to.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
Take up the man to of self sufficient farming and
create a uniquely virtuous people in the face of the earth.
But problem was, Jefferson had to violate his political principles
to get that deal done because it involved expanding the

(06:24):
president's executive power. And remember, he was very much the
strict constructionist with the King of the Constitution that government
governs best, that governs least. Strong presidencies were not his
cup of tea or his glass of wine. And Jefferson's case,
so he expanded the executive power way beyond anything that

(06:47):
he'd ever imagined, in ways that he'd argued against vehemently
in the past. And yet he had to do this.
He had to operate this way in order to be
able to take the deal that was offered while he
was on the table. So again he opposed things that
he ended up doing after he'd taken the oath of office,

(07:11):
but he didn't do so out of lack of principle.
He rose above principle. Political necessity was in play.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
One week. Come back more of the story of Thomas
Jefferson's presidency. Here on our American stories. This is Lee Hibibe,
and this is our American stories, and all of our
history stories are brought to us by our generous sponsors,
including Hillsdale College, where students go to learn all the

(07:44):
things that are beautiful in life and all the things
that matter in life. If you can't get to Hillsdale,
Hillsdale will come to you with their free and terrific
online courses. Go to Hillsdale dot edu. That's Hillsdale dot edu.

(08:09):
And we continue here with our American stories and our
series about us, the Story of America series. When we
last left off, Bill McLay was telling us about how
Thomas Jefferson put country over party when buying the Louisiana
territory from France. Let's return to the story. Here again
is Bill McClay.

Speaker 2 (08:36):
After the Louisiana purchase was completed, Jefferson was very, very
excited about the whole thing. Dever, Jefferson, among his many
interests and talents, was a great scientist. He had a
great scientific curiosity. He was curious about what sort of
animals are there in this territory, what sort of flora

(08:58):
are there, you know, what sort of growing things, what
sort of people? And so he commissioned very quickly an
exploratory mission called the Corps of Discovery Expedition. We usually
call it the Lewis and Clark Expedition after Captain Meriwether Lewis,
who was Jefferson's private secretary, and second Lieutenant William Clark.

(09:23):
Lewis and Clark these were Army officers who were seasoned
in the sense that they'd had experience on the frontier,
which made them perfect candidates for the job at hand.
And the job was the big job. Survey the area's geography,
study the plant and animal life, establish relations with native tribes,

(09:49):
track the natural resources of the newly purchased land. A
very big task. You could consider that the Lewis and
Clark expedition was the greatest road trip in American history.
They left Saint Louis, the city of Saint Louis on

(10:10):
the Mississippi River, in May of eighteen oh four, just
a year after less a year after the actual purchase occurs,
so Jefferson didn't waste any time. And it was a group.
It was really a party. The road trip with a party,
a group of fifty men traveling up the Missouri River,

(10:33):
crossing the Continental Divide, and making their way along the
Columbia River to the Pacific to what's close to Portland, Oregon.
By November of eighteen o five, so they were on
the road for a long time May of eighteen oh four, departure,

(10:54):
arrival in Portland November of eighteen oh five, and returning
home September of eighteen o six, So over two years
on the road. That's quite a road trip. And something
many of you may not know. There is a gateway arch,
beautiful object of kind of public sculpture almost in the

(11:18):
city of Saint Louis, which everyone thinks of as being
related to Saint Louis as the gateway to the West. Well, yes,
but it was directly to commemorate and honor the pioneering,
adventurous spirit of Lewis and Clark, the core of discovery,
and ultimately Jefferson himself. But there were problems at home,

(11:45):
things less exciting to the scientific minded Jefferson actually, the
kinds of things that made politics such a frustrating business
for him. Once again, America found itself caught in a
battle between the two great European powers of the time,
the British and the French. The British former foes, the

(12:07):
French former allies, maybe to some extent still allies, but
not entirely. Both were waging war on each other, and
their weapon was economic warfare. America tried to stay neutral,
but the British ignored these claims. They captured American seamen

(12:33):
and sailors and forced them to serve in the Royal Navy.
This practice went by rather and a dying name. It
was called impressing, but nobody on our side was impressed
by it. It was a hostile act against America and Americans,
and kidnapping, plain and simple, at least from the American

(12:56):
point of view. Jefferson, who remember, had not wanted to
be a great world power. He didn't want to have
a big navy. In fact, that Jefferson would have been
happy to have a navy that was the equivalent in
today's terms of a fleet of pt boats, just to
guard the coastal areas of the country, but otherwise stay

(13:18):
aloof from the world. He did not want a war.
He did not want to war with the great European powers,
either one of them, let alone both, and that was
not likely to happen. But he hoped that he could
stem the tide seemingly moving towards warfare by getting the

(13:39):
Congress to pass the Embargo Act of eighteen o seven
and that he thought the Embargo Act would do that
because it would prohibit American ships from an entry into
foreign ports, which meant that those ships could not engage
in commerce either to or from foreign nations. And you

(14:05):
know that would keep them out of harm's way. To
make a long story short, the Embargo was a failure,
a complete and utter failure. It caused more economic pain
and home than it did in England. That's my definition
of a policy failure in wartime. So Jefferson had little
choice but to repeal the Embargo, which he did, leaving

(14:28):
a very bitter taste in his mouth. Of course, no
president likes to not only have his policies defeated, but
to be humiliated over them. Still, he could have probably
served another term. Jefferson had so debilitated the capacity of
the Federalist Party to govern, kind of driven them crazy,

(14:51):
So there was no barrier constitutionally speaking, or limit to
the number of terms Jefferson could serve. After two terms
in office, he took the example of Washington, his fellow Virginian,
and retired. This wasn't just out of veneration for Washington.

(15:12):
He had begun his eight years with a resounding victory
at a very, very, very tense time in national life.
I want to impress that upon you. How how the
election of eighteen hundred looked to many people like the
end of the constitutional public barely getting started before dying

(15:32):
in its cradle, and Jefferson calmed the waters so he'd
begun with this resounding victory. But he ended very weary
and discourage. Obviously the failure of the Bargo Act one
of the chief sources of that, but not the only one.
He was worn down by a multitude of political battles

(15:54):
that he couldn't win and problems he couldn't solve, and
he was beginning to have health problems rheumatism, headaches, so
he was able to return to his beloved home Monticello
in Charlottesville. He would refer to his time in office
as splendid misery, and he came to wonder whether he

(16:18):
was just not suited for public office. He'd had that
same wondering when he was a much younger man as
governor of Virginia, and has returned a since maybe I'm
not cut out for this, he said this to a friend.
Never did a prisoner release from his chains feel such

(16:39):
relief as I shall on shaking off the shackles of power.
Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science by
rendering them my supreme delight. But the enormities of the
times in which I have lived and forced me to
commit myself on the boisterous ocean of political passion, I

(17:01):
thank God for the opportunity of retiring from them. So
once he was back in Charlottesville, he went to work
on what was perhaps his biggest, boldest, most enduring project
next to the Declaration, of course, he established the University

(17:21):
of Virginia. He played a central role not merely in
the founding of the school, but the magnificent design of
the school. It's an architectural design that followed straight through
to the landscape, and it's really one of the great
architectural accomplishments of American history, not only of his time,

(17:43):
even today.

Speaker 1 (17:46):
When we come back more of the story of Thomas
Jefferson's presidency and what came after here on our American Stories,

(18:08):
and we returned to our American stories in our series
about Us, the Story of America series, we also returned
to the final portion of our story on Thomas Jefferson,
telling it is Hillsdale College professor and author of Land
of Hope, Bill McLay. When we last left off, Jefferson
had left office after losing his love, his appetite for politics.

(18:31):
It had been a bitter eight years in office for him,
and soon he'd reach out to an old friend. Let's
return to the story.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
You couldn't ask for. I mean, if Hollywood had invented this,
we would have said it's unbelievable, but it actually happened.
Jefferson died on July fourth, eighteen, twelve twenty, the fiftieth

(19:02):
anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, and
the day that John Adams died as well. This is
enormously powerful symbol. People looked at this and they were
in awe. How can this be? These two founding fathers

(19:23):
of the American experiment, who for much of their careers,
as to their lives, were bitterly antagonistic and ran against
one another for the highest office in the land. But
in the latter part of their lives began a correspondence
that's one of the classic works of American history. Everyone

(19:43):
should read the Adams Jefferson Correspondence. They had a period
of being friendly, and then a period of bitterness, and
then they restored their friendship and reflected on a very
deep level about what were the requirements of leadership, of virtue,
of all manner of things relating to the conditions for

(20:07):
American democracy to prosper. Here's an example letter written. It's
his final letter actually to atoms. So that's poignant in itself.
And here Jefferson's words, may it be to the world
what I believe it will be to some parts sooner,

(20:27):
to other parts later, but finally to all the signal
of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish
ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves and
to assume the blessings and security of self government. And

(20:47):
he's talking about the American Revolution, the declaration, the whole
kitkaboole of what the spirit of seventy six was about.
Let me repeat it again. May be to the world
what I believe it will be to some parts sooner,

(21:08):
to others later, But finally to all the signal of
arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance
and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves and to
assume the blessings and security of self government. The form

(21:28):
which we have substituted restores the free right to the
unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes
are opened or opening to the rights of man. The
general spread of the lights of science has already laid
open to every view the palpable truth that the mass

(21:50):
of man has not been born with saddles on their backs,
nor a favored few, booted and spurred, ready to ride
them legitimately the grace of God. Oh that's fantactic. These
are grounds of hope for others, for ourselves. Let the
annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of

(22:12):
these rights and an undiminished devotion to them. Before you
go on, I do want to mention one thing. Jefferson
had his opinions, and when he mentions the chains under
which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind
themselves in that first sentence, he is talking about religion here,

(22:35):
and he's probably mainly talking about the Roman Catholic Church,
although he sort of had this opinion more generally about
organized Christian religion. And you know, you just have to
take that that's part of who Jefferson was. He was
a man devoted to the Enlightenment, to the age of reason,
to the notion that reason has a kind of competence

(23:00):
to address itself to all things, because we live in
a world governed by a nature couple n nature that
has its laws, that has an intelligible order. In my
say intelligible, I mean we can understand it, we can
get what nature is about. Modern contemporary physics today is

(23:22):
a little more tangled than that the Newtonian physics of
Thomas Jefferson's day. But at any rate, he had great
confidence and reason, and I take that, more than his
swipes at organized religion, to be the essential character of Jefferson.
I also want to point out how wonderful this image is.

(23:44):
The mass of mankind has not been born with settles
on their backs, nor favor of few, booted and spurred
ready to ride them legitimately by the grace of God.
You can feel some of that American republicanism stirring your
own heart. I think when you hear those words, the
idea that some people are born to rule and some

(24:07):
people are born to be ruled over, that's not American.
That's anesthetical to what we believe we are, to the
belief that we have that anyone ideally should be able
to go as far as his or her talents can
take them. That's what America is about. One final note
on Jefferson. He was a man who was conscious of

(24:29):
his own importance, his fame. And you might think that
Jefferson when he designs his own tombstone, which being Jefferson
and always wanting to design things, when he did this,
he chose very carefully the words engraved in stone on
that tombstone, which you can go see in Monticello, well

(24:50):
worth the visit. And here's the entire epitaph. Here was
buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of his Independence,
of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom, and father
of the University of Virginia. That's a beautiful resume. But

(25:13):
what does it leave out. Well, it leaves out two
terms as the third President of the United States. He
leaves it out. He leaves out all his other political accomplishments,
being Secretary of State, being Governor of Virginia, his ambassadorial roles,

(25:33):
all of that is left out. All of these in
his mind relate to this mission of enlightenment, of allowing
the human mind the freedom, the latitude to express itself
freely in the world, to worship or not worship God,

(25:56):
and to establish an institution as a pattern for other
institutions who develop the power of reason. I remember this
is not the first university in America, the first college,
but the others, Harvard, Yale, these are all founded to
be seminaries. They're founded for religious instructions. Not so the

(26:18):
University of Virginia. The University of Virginia wasn't about training ministers.
It was about training free minds. And that has turned
out to be more the future of American higher education
than the other. And it's also a very good description
of who and what Thomas Jefferson was in our national life.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Monte Montgomery himself a Hillsdale College graduate,
and a special thanks to Professor Bill McLay, who teaches
history at Hillsdale College. Special thanks to Hillsdale College responsoring
this show as well and being such a fundamental part
of it. The story of Thomas Jefferson as told by

(27:08):
Bill McLay, his terrific book, Land of Hope. Get it
wherever you can. Here on our American stories