TWO FOUNDERS AND THE FOURTH OF JULY

 

On July 4, 1789, Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, and Gouverneur Morris, a prime drafter of the Constitution, were both in Paris. One of the most engaging aspects of working on Morris's time in France was the chance to compare the two men and their views of revolutions. For details about their diverging views, I immodestly refer you to my dissertation, Gouverneur Morris and the French Revolution,[1] but for this blog entry, I will excerpt the text, which provides insight into the character of these two very different men:

   On June 30, John Paradise and Elnathon Haskell,[2] two Americans living in Paris, called on Morris to ask him to join with them in a written “Fourth of July” tribute to Jefferson, a document which can only be described as sycophantic, calling Jefferson “a proper minister of that enlightened people whose cause is the cause of humanity,” and a man “whose dignity energy and elegance of thought and expression added a peculiar lustre to that declaratory act which announced to the world the existence of an empire.”[3] The signers included Samuel Blackden,[4] Joel Barlow, James Swan, Philip Mazzei,[5] Thomas Appleton, and Benjamin Jarvis.  Morris, repelled by the unctuousness of the piece, refused to sign and discouraged them from the project, believing that Jefferson would be equally displeased.   He told Jefferson that he had “prevented an Address to him,” and Jefferson told him he was grateful for it.[6]  In fact, Morris had not quashed the address:  the group presented it at Jefferson’s dinner party for Americans on the fourth of July, after Morris had already left.[7]   Morris made no comment in his diary, but the incident may have influenced his remark to Robert in a letter of 1791 that Jefferson was easily taken in and impressed by flatterers.[8]   The observation appears just:  despite Jefferson’s supposed thankfulness to Morris for attempting to thwart the project, there was more than a little gratification in the minister’s self-deprecating response to the authors of the epistle.  “My little transactions are not made for public detail,” he protested weakly.  “They are best in the shade:  the light of the picture is justly occupied by others.  To glide unnoticed thro’ a silent execution of duty, is the only ambition which becomes me, and it is the sincere desire of my heart.”[9]

                The editors of the Jefferson papers seem to have taken all of this, tribute and response, at face value, and comment that the only people who refused to sign -- Morris and Daniel Parker -- were associated “in one degree or another with Robert Morris and his commercial ventures,” and suggest that the fact that “Morris was claimed by the aristocrats in the National Assembly as sympathetic with their views may also have had influence.”  There is nothing in either Jefferson’s or Morris’s papers of this period to support this comment; quite the contrary, as Morris’s diary entries and letters establish their mutual liking and respect during this period.   Rather, the most straightforward interpretation is that, as the record of his life reflects, Morris had little taste for flattery of this sort,  and wrongly assumed that Jefferson would feel the same way. 

               

 

 

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[1] Melanie Randolph Miller (PhD diss., George Washington University, 2000), 65-66.

[2] Haskell was a business associate of Constable and was in Paris trying, among other things, to buy the American debt to France.  Haskell to Constable, 5/13/89, Constable-Pierrepont Collection, New York Public Library. 

[3] TJ Papers, 15:239-240.

[4] A business friend of Jefferson who was in Europe to sell Kentucky lands. Theodore Thomas Belote, “The Scioto Speculation and the French Settlement at Gallipolis,” University Studies of the University of Cincinnati, Sept.-Oct. 1907, Series 2, Vol. III, no. 3, p.24. Morris did not care for Blackden (whom he called “Blagdon” in his diary) and wondered why Jefferson was “so attentive to this Gentleman and Lady.”  Entry of 5/23/89, Diary, 1:87.

[5] A personal friend of Jefferson since 1773.  TJ Papers, 1:159n.

[6] Entry of 7/2/89, Beatrix Cary Davenport, A Diary of the French Revolution, 1:132.

[7] Editorial Note, TJ Papers, 15:241.

[8] GM to Robert Morris, 5/21/91, Commercial Letters.

[9] 7/5/89, TJ Papers, 15:242.