Washington [489]
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Hercules in the Field
THE WINTER OF 1793-94 was a cold and dreary one in Philadelphia; the Delaware River was so choked with ice floes that vessels could not navigate. After the yellow fever epidemic, the capital remained a ghostly place, with the usual diversions of theater and dancing still temporarily taboo. “We have been very dull here all winter,” wrote Martha Washington, lapsing into the general funk. “There has been two assemblies and it is said that the players are to be here soon. If they come and open the new theater, I suppose it will make a very great change.”1
On December 31, 1793, Thomas Jefferson resigned as secretary of state, thereby liberating himself from the intolerable company of Alexander Hamilton. For all their pronounced differences, Washington and Jefferson had experienced parallel frustrations with public service. Both men gave the impression of serving under duress, yearned to regain the domestic pleasures of their plantations, and disclaimed political ambition, however dubious that notion seemed to impartial observers. A worn-out Jefferson could not wait to return to the repose of Monticello, telling one correspondent in late November, “I hope to spend the remainder of my days in occupations infinitely more pleasing than those to which I have sacrificed 18 years of the prime of my life.”2 Since the political animosity toward him had spilled over into Federalist-dominated high society, he wished to retire “from the hated occupations of politics and sink into the bosom of my family, my farm, and my books.”3 In a parting shot as secretary of state, Jefferson proposed to Congress a series of trade restrictions designed to throttle commerce with Great Britain. In Hamilton’s scornful opinion, Jefferson “threw this firebrand of discord” on congressional desks “and instantly decamped to Monticello.”4 Outwardly, Washington’s parting with Jefferson was amicable enough, and he sent him a civil farewell letter, but privately he felt that Jefferson had betrayed him by deserting him at a troubling moment in foreign affairs.
Jefferson’s preferred self-image was that of a bookish, unworldly fellow, more at home with intellectual pursuits than in the hurly-burly of politics. Once back at Monticello, he presented himself as a monkish stranger to all political striving, as if it were a youthful folly he had outgrown. “The little spice of ambition, which I had in my younger days,” he told Madison, “has long since evaporated . . . The question is forever closed to me.”5 To less friendly observers, however, the matter was far from closed. As early as 1792 Hamilton claimed to penetrate the secret workings of Jefferson’s mind and discover it was worm-eaten with ambition: “ ’Tis evident beyond a question, from every movement, that Mr. Jefferson aims with ardent desire at the presidential chair.”6 He interpreted Jefferson’s withdrawal from the scene as a temporary maneuver until the time had ripened for his triumphant return. Similarly, John Adams dismissed gruffly Jefferson’s pose of philosophical detachment, declaring upon the latter’s exit from Philadelphia: “A good