Dan Snow's History Hit - President Thomas Jefferson

Episode Date: September 19, 2023

Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, so how did it work out when he became the leader of this nation that he was so instrumental in founding?For the third episode in American History Hit's special series about the Presidents, we're exploring Jefferson's presidency. What challenges did he face during his time as President, and how did he mould the early years of the nation?Don is joined for this episode by Professor Frank Cogliano, direct from Thomas Jefferson's Monticello. Frank is a Professor of American History at the University of Edinburgh.Produced by Sophie Gee. Edited by Siobhan Dale. The senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world-renowned historians like Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Matt Lewis, Tristan Hughes and more. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code DANSNOW. Download the app or sign up here.PLEASE VOTE NOW! for Dan Snow's History Hit in the British Podcast Awards Listener's Choice category here. Every vote counts, thank you!We'd love to hear from you! You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. We've got an episode today from our sister podcast. It's featured in the top 10 on US iTunes podcasts recently. It's a smash hit. This episode's one that I've picked out because I am fascinated by Thomas Jefferson. What an extraordinary, extraordinary human being. As JFK once said to a big gathering of Nobel laureates in the White House, this is the greatest collection of intellectual firepower that this room has seen since Thomas Jefferson died in it alone, or worse to that effect. He was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence. He wrote beautifully. He was also an astonishingly important president who completed the Louisiana Purchase, which massively increased the size of

the USA and I think territorially set it on the path to regional, then global, superpowerdom. This is the third episode in American History. It's a special season about presidents. They're going through them all, folks. So if you love American presidents, that's where you want to get your content. Here's my friend Don Wildman with American History. Enjoy. Here's my friend Don Wildman with American History. Enjoy. It's the 4th of July, 1826 in Washington, D.C. People are gathered in their fineries to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

But more than 100 miles away in Virginia, at Monticello, curtains made of Parisian silk are drawn in Thomas Jefferson's bedroom. Sunshine still streams through the skylight, though, softly illuminating the pastel blue walls and dark wood doors and furnishings. Despite it being past noon on this very important day, our nation's most revered founding father is still in his bed, in a wide alcove between his bedchamber and his study, where his papers and communications are piled up on a desk, dormant. Thomas Jefferson is dying, 50 years to the day after his most famous document was first read in public, declaring our nation's independence. Oddly, remarkably, on this same day, far away in New England, his rival, his good friend and correspondent, John Adams, is dying as well. It is the end of an era, the end of so much, but most simply, here in Virginia, it is the end of a

life. For a statesman, a diplomat, a lawyer, an architect, an inventor, and a philosopher, and a president. To be continued... All too will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable, that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate would be oppression. Hello and welcome to American History Hit. And this, the third installment of our presidential series today involving that founding father paragon of American patriotism,

the visionary enlightened force of nature who scribed the very words that sparked a revolution, promoted most of the foundational groundwork that guaranteed the freedoms we all enjoy today. Thomas Jefferson, of course, third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809, one of our five founding father presidents, right in line after George Washington and John Adams, whose professional life in government and elsewhere stands on its own as a work of polymath genius. In the case of Thomas Jefferson, who stands at the summit of American political thought and philosophy, fundamental to it all, it is hard to separate out one part of his life from the others. But we have only about a half an hour to go here. So we must do our best and take on his presidency alone, both terms. And we do so in the company of

an expert voice, Dr. Frank Cagliano, a professor of American history at the University of Edinburgh, fellow of the Royal Historical Society, whose focus is on the political and intellectual history of the early United States. His most recent book, Emperor of Liberty, Thomas Jefferson's Foreign Policy, is a must read for all you Jeffersonians out there. Greetings, Frank. Welcome back to American History Hit. Hello, Don. It's great to be here. Thank you very much. Listen, I just have to say it to the audience. We are speaking to you as you are sitting at the very home of Thomas Jefferson. Am I right? Yes. I've just taken up a one-year post at the International Center for Jefferson Studies

at Monticello. So I'm in Charlottesville, Virginia right now, and I can actually see Jefferson's home, Monticello, from the window of my office. Get out of town. How close to the bone could we get here? Okay, Frank, this is actually take two of us. I'm giving the audience a little behind-the-curtain look here. We tried recording a Jefferson podcast before, only to realize that tackling this guy's life, liberty and general pursuits of happiness

was going to be too much for a single conversations or one that anyone could bear to listen to. So we agreed to meet again this time only to focus on the presidential years alone, which changed the whole idea of our series. Thomas Jefferson guides us still. That's right, Don. So as you say, I mean, well, it'll be like the basement tape version. Somebody will hear that tape someday, I hope, because we were all over the place and his life touched on so many things and things we talked about, like the Declaration of Independence and slavery and so on. But we're concentrating on the presidency today. I understand. He vibrates at the middle of it all. This is worth pointing out even before we get into the presidency. If you sit around and

think about America and think about what's unique about this place, you can't get much further than Jefferson in terms of finding uniqueness of the thought process behind this place. I mean, this man stands alone in terms of the vibrating ideas that created the place. It's all in him. A lot of it's in him. I think some of my colleagues might object if we said it's all in him. But I think that what one thinks about the man who articulated the American Creed in the Declaration of Independence, of course, he had help from others in doing that, but also the number of roles he fulfilled. The first secretary of state, he was a vice president. He was governor of Virginia. He helped establish the University of Virginia. He helped redraft the laws of Virginia after independence. You know, he was also a two-term president. That's what we're here to discuss today. He did a lot of things.

So he's 60 years old, or almost 60 years old, when he becomes president. In this nation, he named himself. He has been so much for so long, the presidency seems almost superfluous. And yet he must have had his idea, his design on this office right from the beginning. I mean, he lost to John Adams in the third election for president, serves as Adams' vice president, and then defeats him after Adams' one term in office. Jefferson takes over in 1801 with lofty plans, I imagine, to steer the nation back to his original vision of this. And let's tackle this first. The motto is Jeffersonian republicanism. What does it mean? And how far had the United States wandered from Thomas Jefferson's vision at this early point? You're starting me off with an easy one. Thanks.

So the Jeffersonian republicans, as they're called, are sometimes just the republicans, although we shouldn't confuse them with the republicans who emerged in the 1850s or the modern republican party. So there were two political parties that emerged in the United States in the 1790s, the federalists, and George Washington was a Federalist, John Adams was a Federalist, and the Republicans or Jeffersonian Republicans. The Federalists grew out of those individuals who were the strongest supporters of the Constitution. They supported the creation of a strong federal state. That's where they get that name. And the Republicans emerged as the opposition to that. The Republicans emerged as the opposition to that. Alexander Hamilton, who'll be well known to people who are familiar with the musical, advocated a sort of consolidation of federal power and the creation of what historians call a fiscal military state, which is modeled on the British Empire. Jefferson and the Jeffersonian Republicans are concerned about that, and they want there to be more checks and balances on federal power. Sure. And what we see in the election of 1800, you're absolutely right that in 1796, Adams and Jefferson ran against each other. Adams prevailed. And according to the way the Constitution operated then,

the loser in the presidential election became the vice president to the winner. We can only imagine what subsequent American history would have looked like if they hadn't changed that rule. So Jefferson serves unhappily as Adams' vice president for four years. They run against each other again in 1800. There's a very confused and confusing election in 1800. It's deadlocked in the Electoral College, and it goes to the House of Representatives to decide in what Jefferson will call the Revolution of 1800. The House of Representatives, the outgoing Federalist-dominated House of Representatives in 1801, will pick the president, and they have to choose between Jefferson and his running mate, Aaron Burr of New York, who was also a Jeffersonian Republican, and they opt for Jefferson. And so Jefferson becomes president in 1801. As far as what he stood for, the Republicans want a more agrarian republic.

They want an extensive republic geographically. Jefferson lionizes farmers as God's chosen people, is the phrase he uses in one of his writings. He said, I don't know whether God has chosen people, but if he does, it's those who till the earth. And so Jefferson believes that farmers, in this context, he's talking about free white men who own their own property, should become the kind of model citizens for the United States because they're independent. They're not like people who live in cities. They're not subject to corruption. And so his is a more agricultural vision for the future of the

country. He doesn't want people to be subsistence farmers, you know, scraping a living by. He wants them to trade. So trade's a key element to this, but he would like manufacturing to remain in Europe, for example. So American farmers should be prosperous, but they should trade. And so that's his vision. As far as what he changes or how different that is from the Federalists, in his inaugural address in March of 1801, he actually is quite conciliatory. He famously says the line everybody remembers from that first inaugural address is, we are all Federalists, we are all Republicans. And it's a call for Americans to come together, especially after a contentious election, when we've seen the first peacetime transfer of power in American history.

This is such early days. It's amazing that they're already drawing these lines and having conflicts. And the broadsides in those days are so loud and brutal. How comfortable was Jefferson with the idea of parties? I mean, Washington wasn't. This was a legit idea that we should not have these things. And yet Jefferson seems to promote it, right? Yes. And this is one of the paradoxes of this period. It's one reason Don Wyatt's such a fascinating period for me to study, at least. Both sides believe there shouldn't be political parties. The ideal was that gentlemen would serve their country. They would be virtuous. So they

would take up office because they were virtuous and wanted to serve the public. They wouldn't do so because they were ambitious personally, and they would just serve the public good. And if we all pulled together for the public good, there would be no parties. The political parties are a symptom of a system that's not working. Well, of course, what we know, and as you alluded to, there are parties almost from the outset, because it turns out even well-meaning, sometimes virtuous political gentlemen disagreed with each other on the future of the country. There were real questions about the differences between Alexander Hamilton's fiscal program and what the Republicans stood for, for example. So parties arose. But the reason the rhetoric is so vitriolic in this period is they don't

accept the legitimacy of parties. So they don't see their opponents as being the kind of modern phrase, the loyal opposition, but rather they see their opponents as threatening the kind of modern phrase, the loyal opposition, but rather they see their opponents as threatening the very existence of the republic. You know, we're right, they're wrong. Does this sound familiar to you? And they couldn't kind of comprehend that. It's not until the kind of Jacksonian period that we see the kind of party system emerge as we know it. And there's a kind of understanding that parties are an actual feature of Republican government. We'll get to that in Martin Van Buren's term. It's true. The party becomes a sort of tool to preserving democracy in the area of good feelings time. But right now,

they're just pretty vicious about it. All right. So he enters office and let's talk about those first days. What is he facing right off the bat? It's not a good economic period, right? Well, it's a period of a great deal of instability. There's international instability because of the wars of the French Revolution. There's real domestic tension, the economic situation. It's improving slightly because of those wars, because the United States is trading with both Britain and France and their allies during wartime. So that's profitable. But it is a period of great instability. The other thing to bear in mind is it's still a small country. It's big geographically, but it's only got 5 million people in 1800, or slightly more than 5 million, in an

area that encompasses all the territory east of the Mississippi River today. So it's a big country. It's a country with a great deal of potential, but most of that is yet to be realized, I think. I've always wondered, because he is such a unique, you know, genius mind, how much he saw the future. Did he see the map ahead of him in terms of what he could do as a president? It's, first of all, interesting to me that he even wants to be president, given his feelings about federal government. I mean, that seems odd to me. That's a kind of a paradox. It is a paradox.

And, you know, we think of the presidency as the ultimate goal in political life in the United States. And it's become that. But it wasn't necessarily that in the beginning. I mean, Jefferson famously said, you know, no man leaves the presidency with the reputation he brought to it. He says, you know, this is going to be a misery and I hope I do okay. Some of that's false modesty, but it wasn't necessarily seen as the pinnacle of achievement. The federal bureaucracy, the entire government had about

3,000 employees in 1801. It's not huge. That's excluding the military. You know, it's not huge, but he does have a vision. I mean, you asked, well, does he see the future? In some ways, I mean, we'll talk about the, assume we're going to get to the Louisiana Purchase in the next few minutes. So he's committed to the geographic expansion of the country. There's no doubt about that. And he does foresee that. He's not always the best prophet. After Louisiana Purchase is completed, he famously says, well, that'll take care of our land needs for a thousand generations. Well, that wouldn't prove true. He also predicted during his presidency, every man born today will die a Unitarian. He totally missed the second great awakening, which was on the

horizon. So he doesn't get everything right when he predicts. But I think both of these statements suggest he is thinking of the future and he is thinking in the macro. So to some extent, nobody's going to get everything right. And it's a little bit unfair 200 years after the fact to say, oh, well, you got that wrong. He is thinking in kind of big picture terms. Yeah. When he assumes office, I'm going to review something you just said, which is important. When he assumes office, he is sworn in by his cousin, Chief Justice John Marshall at the new Capitol building in Washington, D.C. March 4th, 1801. He dresses modestly. He strikes a conciliatory tone in his inaugural address. As you said, we are all Republicans. We are all Federalists. But he means to reverse the machine

and undo the wrongs that have occurred. OK, first of all, the national debt, which under Washington Adams had grown considerably. I saw figures like eighty three million dollars. Quite honestly, I couldn't figure out if that was old dollars or new dollars. But suffice to say, a huge debt had been accrued at this point. His idea is to take this thing down. He's already dealing with the problem which he faced with, you know, all of his contentious conversations with Hamilton over this national bank. He wants to take this down. But his own secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin, doesn't agree with him, does he? That's right. You have to remember, Jefferson's a Virginia planter, and he's speaking for the agricultural interest in the country more generally. Farmers and planters are often in debt and associate debt with problems. And indeed, Jefferson himself will die indebted, and that will be a huge problem in terms of his legacy. So he's got a fear of debt. Hamilton and the Hamiltonian program was based on debt. Hamilton says, look, Britain's massive growth during the 18th century was made possible in part because

Britain was willing to take on substantial public debt. And we should do the same thing. So for Hamilton, debt's not necessarily a problem. In fact, he says it's a good way to bind the states together because they'll all have this commitment together. Jefferson's very skeptical about that. He is debt averse, despite the fact he dies heavily indebted or perhaps because of that. But you're absolutely correct on his treasury secretary, Albert Gallatin, who's probably after Hamilton, the most gifted secretary of the treasury we've ever had. He says, look, I'm not sure where I would have started with this system, but given what we've got, we ought to keep it and we can manage the debt and we need to think carefully before we disrupt the economy too much.

And Gallatin's a very interesting figure, and he kind of tempers this. And this signals a lot of what's going to happen during Jefferson's presidency, which is he has to overcome some of his own scruples and or concerns that he brought to the presidency, because it turns out exercising power is very different from criticizing those who exercise power. And he will come to learn what I mentioned earlier, that fiscal military state has its uses. And I don't think this is often pointed to as hypocrisy on his part. I think that's a little too facile. I think he grows in the job. He comes to realize that things aren't necessarily what they

seem when you're not in office. Domestically, he's about tightening things up, not just financially. That's right. He wants to start institutions. He wants to get this country on its feet as far as moving forward into the more modern era. It's no coincidence that a brand new century has begun at this time. Interestingly, he starts a military academy for training officers in engineering. The Army Corps of Engineers already existed, I believe, but he founds a military academy called West Point in New York, which is still with us today. Yes. And most people probably don't know that West Point was established by Thomas Jefferson. We don't think of Jefferson as a militarist necessarily. And I don't mention that just to say, you know, randomly he starts this thing. It's in order to create the officers who will build this nation's military and have

engineering training to create more certain fortifications, right? That's right. He wants them to have scientific training. He's a firm believer, of course, in the power of education. He will subsequently found the University of Virginia during his retirement, but he's committed. So he wants a professional military. He thinks it should be small. He's looking across at Europe. He says, look, we're not going to compete. We're not going to have an army the size of France's or a navy the size of Britain's, but we do need a competent military establishment, and therefore it needs to be more efficient.

He's a product of the Enlightenment, the age of reason. He's committed to the application of reason to solving problems and engineering. He's a very keen amateur engineer himself, an architect, and he wants the military to be trained along those lines. He wants a modern, efficient military. It's in foreign relations that he will really excel, which seems completely in keeping with the fact that he was, you know, so active internationally in earlier years as a secretary of state and foreign minister and so forth. He understands the world as few Americans do. He understands the European powers, I suppose I could say. Benjamin Franklin might be an equivalent, but that's about it. When the Constitutional

Convention was being held in 1787, 14 years after he assumes office, he lives in France as the U.S. minister. He is able to see what needs to happen for the United States to compete with these groups. This is going to be a big focus of his presidency, isn't it? It is. And he learned several lessons from his years in Europe. One is he describes Americans as being the lowest of the diplomatic tribe at the court of Versailles. He receives a lesson in humility in the sense that he's told in no uncertain terms, both

explicitly and implicitly, you guys don't matter very much. I mean, yeah, that Republican experiment you've got, that's cute and all, but you're not that powerful. Now, that's not entirely true, but that is one message. He doesn't have necessarily an exalted opinion of the immediate power of the United States. He believed in a lot. He has a strong belief in the potential of the United States, but he recognizes he's been to Europe, he's seen Paris, he's seen London, he's seen the military establishments in Britain and France. He recognizes how relatively weak the United States is. Now, there's a really important qualifier to that. And he says this in his second inaugural address in 1805. He makes a reference to

the United States being the strongest country on earth because it's a republic. And it's a country where citizens will rise up, meet the standard of the nation if the nation is threatened. And this is something that's not true in empires and monarchies. So he believes in the incipient power of the United States, but he's made in what I guess we would call real politique. He understands that the United States, it's not a great power yet. It's just not a great power. But as you say, his biggest achievements as president will be in the foreign policy realm. I'm Dr. Eleanor Janaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings.

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Wherever you get your podcasts. The Barbary Wars are fascinating to me. This is an obscure chapter of American history that most people don't even understand happened under Jefferson, let alone if it happened at all. But it's a huge headline of this administration, not least because it is the second line of the Marines hymn, which I find very important, to the shores of Tripoli. That's where that comes from. The engagement that famous line refers to is in a podcast episode of The Future, I promise you. What prompted this engagement so early in his presidency? It was all about a system of paying tribute that Jefferson found despicable, right? Yes, that's right. And I'm glad you asked me about this, Don. What happened was traditionally,

European powers, great and small, paid tribute. There were four Barbary states in North Africa that used to capture ships of other foreign countries, hold their crews hostage until they paid a ransom. And what happened was a lot of powers just negotiated annual treaties where they said, okay, don't bother taking our sailors hostage. We'll just pay you annual tribute to leave them alone. It's basically a protection racket. And the United States prior to independence, its ships or American ships had been protected by the Royal Navy. After independence, of course, that no longer applied. In fact, the British encouraged the Barbary states of North Africa to attack American shipping. One of the problems Jefferson tries to solve when he's in Paris in the 1780s, tries to get the smaller powers of Europe. And again,

that's where America fits, to get together the Kingdom of Naples, the United States, etc., and form a kind of league to protect their interests. And he can't think the United States should emulate Britain. He becomes president. Treaties that the Federalists had negotiated with the Barbary powers had run out. They'd expired in the meantime. And one of the first things his cabinet has to do at the end of March, early April, 1801, so he's just become president, is make a decision about what to do if and when Tripoli, which was the leading Barbary state at this point, declared war on the United States or attacked the United States. It's a very interesting moment, I would argue, because what he does is he decides, with the support of his cabinet, to send a flotilla, to send the Navy, which he previously

opposed, to the Mediterranean to protect American interests with orders to use force to defend American interests if necessary. So what we see here, I would argue, one of the first instances of a president using deadly force, it's the first time they're using it beyond North America, to be sure, but doing so without the approval of Congress. He doesn't have a declaration of war to do this. He's using what we subsequently will call war powers. And his argument is, you got to do this. He's using what we subsequently will call war powers. And his argument is you got to do this in a crisis. We can't wait for them to attack us, then go to Congress. We have to authorize the captain of this fleet to do what he needs to do. So it's very interesting, the origins of this. Yeah, I think that the theme of this conversation will be how

unlikely so many of the actions Jefferson took as president are. It would seem to violate so many of the precepts of his ideal of what this country should be. Certainly shouldn't be having a president taking independent actions. I mean, that has King written all over it. And the endeavors should not be as bold as they are. It's really a remarkable change for him, isn't it? It is. But you have to remember, OK, his main constituency are all those farmers, right? And those farmers, as I said earlier, aren't meant to be subsistence farmers. They're meant to trade. All of this fits together in the sense that the Barbary Straits are a threat to American trade. And if the United States can't trade, its economic and ultimately political

well-being will come in under threat and the republic itself could be at stake. So he thinks the stakes are incredibly high. I just think that it seems to be the story with all these presidents, or at least most of them. Once in office, they realize that they have these levers of power and they need to use them if they're going to leave any kind of legacy behind or do good things anyway, you know?

Nor bad things, Don. I mean, it's a story as old as time with political leadership. You know, do as I say, not as I do. The big, big, big headline of the Jefferson administration will of course be the Louisiana purchase. So let's clear this thing up.

It's always been cloudy for me. We buy this whole territory from the French, but it was the Spanish who had the original claim. How did it work that it became Lewis's land, Louisiana, when it was actually Spanish? OK, I'll give it to you as quickly as I can, but it's complicated. So Louisiana, which is much vaster than the modern state of Louisiana, it's basically most of the territory west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains, with the exception of Texas, the boundary in Texas is unclear. Louisiana, for most of the 17th and first half of the 18th century, was claimed by France. At the end of the Seven Years

War, which Americans know as the French and Indian War, it is given to Spain as part of the diplomatic settlement in 1763 that ended that conflict. It remained Spanish until about 1799, 1800, when Napoleon secretly forces Spain to return it to France. However... groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, kings and popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Because Napoleon and France are otherwise occupied waging war in Europe, the French never actually reestablish their presence there in governmental terms.

There are French speakers, there are Francophone people there, of course. And so the Spanish continue to actually govern it and to have soldiers there, but it's nominally French when this crisis unfolds. And what the crisis that starts during the Jefferson presidency starts when the Spanish, not the French, close the Mississippi River or close access to the port of New Orleans, deny it to Americans. And so those American farmers in the West can't get their goods to market of the port of New Orleans at the mouth of the Mississippi River. And that starts a political crisis for Jefferson. And he goes to Congress to get authorization

to purchase not Louisiana, but New Orleans from France. He sends James Monroe, right, over to Paris and start investigating this idea? He does. But actually, Robert Livingston is the American ambassador there who does most of the negotiating in the early stages. Monroe's unbelievably lucky because he turns up for reasons that have very little to do with the negotiations. Napoleon changes his mind. It's largely due to the revolt of enslaved people in Haiti during the 1790s. Napoleon fails to suppress that revolt. He ultimately gives up on North America. It's a long, complicated story. He decides to sell Louisiana because he needs money to wage war in Europe. James Monroe turns up literally the day before that Napoleon makes this decision.

So he arrives just as the Franks say, yeah, we'll sell you not just New Orleans, but all of Louisiana to the United States. Extraordinary. And so Monroe kind of lucks into this. Yeah. I've often thought that the founders of this nation founded it because anything better than the complications of Europe could only be a good idea. Like, let's just simplify this whole idea of a nation because everything in Europe is so complicated and so Byzantine. That is one of the lessons that Jefferson draws from his time in Europe.

He has a wonderful letter. It's very amusing where he critiques all the monarchs of Europe and basically describes all their flaws and why they're just awful and says, you know, any kind of vestryman, a kind of local officeholder in America would be better than any of these monarchs because they've all degenerated over time. Monarchy is terrible, etc. The purchase price is considerable, but it ain't nothing for what you're getting. I mean, this is the best real estate deal in the history of real estate.

Yes. How was it that it was such a bargain? In part because nobody knows what they're actually buying or selling. You have to remember, although France nominally claims this territory and it's recognized in international law by treaty as France's, it's largely occupied by indigenous people who, of course, weren't involved in the negotiations. So to some extent, Napoleon is selling the right to this territory rather than the territory itself to the United States. However, you're right. It's something like 900,000 square miles. It's 11 modern states. It works. It's $15 million. It depends. You see different prices. It was a combination of the United States paying off debt that it owed to France, but also the price. The figure one normally sees is about $15 million. It's an extremely good deal. I think one figure is it's 11 cents an acre. And it's a very, very good deal. Jefferson is troubled a

little bit by it. He finds out that this deal has been agreed. It's agreed in April of 1803, but he doesn't learn about it until July. In fact, it becomes public on the 4th of July, 1803. And he's worried that he doesn't have the constitutional authority to make this deal. And he has real scruples about it. And he toys with and even attempts to draft a constitutional amendment, you know, legitimating the Louisiana Purchase. James Madison, who's his Secretary of State and will be his successor as president, says to him, look, you can't delay on this because Napoleon might change his mind. We don't have time for a constitutional amendment, which will be too cumbersome. So you need to act pretty quickly. And what Jefferson finally concludes is, well, if the Senate ratifies the treaty, which is required to do by the Constitution, and the House of Representatives appropriates the money to pay for it, which is required by the Constitution, that will make the deal constitutional.

I think he's probably on pretty sound ground there. He doesn't need a constitutional amendment for this because the other organs of government are going to act according to the Constitution to legitimate that deal. So is there a day when they sit down and sign this deal? I mean, is there a closing deal? There is a closing and it's really bizarre. It happens at the end of 1803, beginning of 1804, when there's a moment when the Spanish take down the Spanish flag in New Orleans, put up the French flag because it's French, then take down the French flag and put up the American flag. But it's not that simple because the Spanish are upset because when they were forced to give Louisiana back

to France, they'd signed the treaty with France. And in that treaty had a clause that said, you can't sell this on to anybody else, meaning the United States. And France was clearly violating that. And so the Spanish were really upset and threatened to go to war over this. And Jefferson actually authorizes the army and authorizes the calling out the militia in states like Tennessee and Kentucky, if necessary, to go to war with Spain to seal this deal. In the end, it didn't happen. So that was a road not taken.

But they were willing to use force to make sure the Louisiana Purchase went through. Honestly, it doubles the size of the United States at that point. It's an insane expansion. I've always wondered why there isn't a holiday for it. I mean, it's just such an incredible thing that happened for this country and under him. But what's out there is a big question. I mean, the most delicious things about this country are these adventures out there to find out scientifically, geographically, what are we talking about? You know, it makes my palms sweaty as an ex-backpacker,

et cetera, to, you know, fantasize about what it must have been like for Lewis and Clark. That expedition is one of many that Jefferson undertakes. And this was his mission to really try to figure out how this whole thing was going to be settled, I suppose, right? That's right. So imagine buying a house without a survey and doing the survey after you bought the house. I mean, on one hand, we can interpret it that way. On the other, actually, the planning for the Lewis and Clark expedition went on before the Louisiana Purchase was agreed. So he already had his eye on that territory. And he approached the Spanish to say, hey, is it okay if I send these explorers out to the West?

It's just a scientific expedition. You know, could you give them passports for this? Because in the old days, the country you were going to issued you a passport. It was permission for you to visit. Essentially like a visa today. Spain said, yeah, we don't think so. No, they can't come. Now, Jefferson sent the expedition anyway.

And during the time between when that expedition was kind of launched and it finished, the Louisiana Purchase was completed. So they found themselves exploring this newly acquired territory of the United States. But they actually went beyond the United States because they, of course, went all the way to the Pacific, which was not U.S. territory, according to the Louisiana Purchase Treaty. Right. That's in the British hands and will become a drama of its own. That's right.

That's one for another day. But there are other expeditions as well. That was very surprising to me. Lewis and Clark steal the headline, but there's a bunch of them that go almost every year during his presidency. He's constantly getting this news

of what's out there. And that's really about him. I mean, that's about his interest and curiosity about this scientifically, I suppose. It is his scientific curiosity. And so he sends Zebulon Pike of Pike's Peak fame up to explore the headwaters of the Mississippi River, for example, at approximately the same time. There are numerous other expeditions, but they're not just scientific expeditions,

Don, because he's also seeking to assert an American claim to this territory as well. You know, he wants to acquire information about indigenous people. He wants to acquire information about their languages. He wants to acquire information about the flora and fauna and the people who lived in the Trans-Mississippi West. But he's also making a statement that this territory, he's seeking to warn off the British in particular, will be the United States in the future. He's dealt with Native American tribe issues already. He certainly needs to know how this works out there, because as this nation now expands, it's going to run into that very thorny issue of how do we deal with Native American tribes? And I suppose this was a big part of the mission. The Lewis and Clark expedition is interesting because it enjoyed

relatively harmonious relations with most of the indigenous people it encountered. Not entirely. In part, that's down to one of the guides who was with the expedition, Sacagawea, who was a Shoshone woman married to a French-Canadian trapper who also guided them. But they were both fortunate and careful. I mean, Jefferson wanted them to establish diplomatic relations if possible. Of course, the subsequent history of that relationship wasn't always great. When you're not moving people off their land, they tend to be a lot nicer to you.

Indeed. I mean, one of the consequences or two of the consequences of the Louisiana Purchase need to be borne in mind. And we haven't really touched on these in great detail, but they do bear reminding about, which is, of course, this was indigenous land and much of it, at least the southern part of the purchase, would be opened up to slave-based agriculture. So this is incredibly consequential for the subsequent development of the United States, but it's not entirely positive. His attitude, his outlook on these issues was twofold, either assimilation into American life, I suppose, or you need to move away. I mean, he does have these ideas that are going to become, you know, very explosive just a few years away. That's right. I mean, he believes that Native Americans are kind of morally and intellectually the equivalent of Europeans and European Americans, but they're at a different stage of development.

And they're given enough time they could achieve kind of equality with them. However, he doesn't think there's going to be enough time. And so the requirement is that they must assimilate into the broader Euro-American culture. He doesn't have the same view towards people of African descent, but that's a different discussion. When you get to Jefferson these days, you know, you can't even get out the door before someone asks you about slavery. I mean, it's really a huge issue because his relationship to the institution is so complicated. I do want to point out that important things happen during his presidency with regard to slavery. And what were they?

This is an important achievement for him, is the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. So the transatlantic slave trade or American participation in the transatlantic slave trade is outlawed in 1807 with effect from 1808. This was a compromise made at the Constitutional Convention back in 1787. But, you know, Jefferson enacts it, Jefferson supports it. This is actually a pretty major step in terms of abolition. We mustn't give him too much credit, but he certainly supported that legislation and signed that legislation into law, and it's significant. Interestingly, the United States acts slightly before Britain did. And so both Britain and the United States take action to prohibit their citizens from participating in

the transatlantic slave trade in 1807 and 1808, respectively. And this is a big step by him. And that needs to be noted. As you say, however, where slavery is concerned, Jefferson's legacy is a complicated one. He relies on enslaved labor throughout his life. His first memory, according to his autobiography, is of being carried on a pillow by an enslaved person. His last moment before he died on July 4th, 1826, was asking an enslaved person to adjust his pillow on his deathbed. So his life is bracketed by this institution. He opposed it, or claimed to oppose it and wrote eloquently condemning it, but he never took meaningful action against it, except for this act when

he was president, signing the law that outlawed the transatlantic slave trade. And I want to be clear, this is a discussion that absolutely needs in-depth, detailed conversation. And we don't have time for this right now. It's a very fascinating, very important conversation, especially given his place in the founding of this nation. I mean, he really does tee up so much and his position on slavery and the practice of it in his own life is one of those dilemmas of all time. There's a lot of this kind of like, oh, my Godness about Thomas Jefferson. And you can dive down a rabbit hole anywhere you go, which is truly a statement of the breadth of this man's mind and spirit. But it's also the good and the bad. It's an amazing

thing. Everything we've talked about pretty much happened in the first term of his presidency. I mean, that's an amazing four years that this country goes through. He comes out the other end. The second term isn't as monumental as the first, and he ends up rather unpopular, doesn't he? The election of 1800 was a bit of a cliffhanger, and it's very messy. The election of 1804 is not. He wins handily in 1804. But his second term is more problematic, largely because of international matters. So what happens is the war between Britain and France, and Britain and its allies in France and its allies really heats up during Jefferson's second term. And the United States is increasingly buffeted and caught between

the two great Atlantic powers. And as a result of that, there are a series of crises that bedevil his second term. And war with Britain seems very likely. There's something called the Chesapeake Leopard Affair that occurs in 1807 when the HMS Leopard, a British Royal Navy ship, fires on the USS Chesapeake, a US Navy ship, just off the coast of Virginia in international waters, killing several sailors. And there's a clamor for war in the United States. And Jefferson recognizes that the United States is not then in any position to go to war with Britain, but he wants to prepare the United States for war. And so Congress, at his urging, adopts something called the Embargo Act, which is essentially

the United States, which is incredibly important by this point, as a neutral shipper, a carrier of neutral trade, says, okay, we're not trading with anybody. We're taking our ships and we're going home. Everybody come back. We're not going to trade with anybody. It's an economic disaster for the United States. And Jefferson's term, his second term, is bedeviled by both international challenges, the economic consequences of the Embargo Act, which really kind of put a damper on his second term and the end of his presidency. One of the first things that James Madison will do when he succeeds Jefferson is sponsor the legislation to repeal the embargo.

I wonder how much he ends his presidency thinking about his good friend George Washington's wisdom in his departure address, his farewell address about disentangling from foreign powers. We assume they opposed each other, but actually by the end of his presidency, Jefferson thought there was a lot of wisdom in what Washington had to say. It's an endless discussion, which is what's fun about it. You've made it a big part of your scholarly career. You're at Monticello now and writing new things. What's a new book that's coming out? Thanks, Don. I've just finished a book. In fact, I sent my corrected copy edits off this morning called A Revolutionary Friendship, Washington, Jefferson, and the American Republic. And it's about the 30-year relationship between Jefferson and Washington that had its ups

and downs, to be sure. The Harvard University Press is publishing it, and it will be out next February. It'll be out for President's Day. Tell me the title again. A Revolutionary Friendship, Washington, Jefferson, and the American Republic. I'm your first customer. Dr. Frank Cogliano, thank you so much for your time and your shared endeavor here of figuring out how to talk about these mammoth careers. I really appreciate it. My pleasure, Don. Thank you. Thank you for joining us on another episode of American History Hit. Please hit like and follow wherever you get your podcasts and feel free to leave a glowing review.

We'll be examining every presidency in America's history with a new episode every two weeks. If you have any ideas for episodes on different subjects, we'd love to hear from you. Send us an email at ahh.historyhit.com. See you next time. you