UpDate - Vol. 15, No. 25, Page 1
March 21, 1996
New book examines ties between early presidents

     James Morton Smith, retired professor of history and director
emeritus of Winterthur Museum, has a different idea about what
retirement should be, compared to many people.
     Instead of travel, recreation and relaxation, he launched an
ambitious, 10-year project of assembling and editing the
correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and putting
the letters into historical context.
     The result is a three-volume work, The Republic of Letters: The
Correspondence Between Jefferson and Madison, 1176-1826, published by
W. W. Norton & Co.
     Describing his retirement project in the preface, he writes, "I
headed straight for the Morris Library and a research carrel at the
University of Delaware, where I have since had the privilege of
sharing my work days with Messrs. Jefferson and Madison."
     The Republic of Letters received the prestigious American
Revolution Round Table Prize, awarded in February at Fraunces Tavern
in New York, for the best book on that era to be published in 1995.
The Round Table cited Smith, not only for his editing of the 1,250
surviving letters, but also for his "brilliantly insightful commentary
on them."
     Jefferson and Madison first met in Williamsburg in 1776 when
Jefferson was 33 and Madison was 25, but they did not know each other
well until 1779 when Jefferson was governor of Virginia and Madison
served on his executive council.
     The 50-year friendship ended with Jefferson's death in 1826, and
it was to Madison that Jefferson entrusted his reputation after he
died, saying "take care of me when dead," a charge that Madison
respected and took seriously.
     Although the men differed in personality and
perspectives-Jefferson a visionary and Madison the more practical
realist-they balanced each other and were united in their abiding
concern for the fledgling nation they were instrumental in founding.
     On his gravestone, Jefferson listed himself as "Author of the
Declaration of Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious
Freedom and the Father of the University of Virginia."
     Smith writes that "had Madison written with similar simplicity an
epitaph for his obelisk at Montpellier, he could have listed 'Father
of the Constitution of the United States and the Federal Bill of
Rights, Author of the Memorial and Remonstrance for Religious Freedom,
and Co-Founder of the University of Virginia.' "
     Their letters are a window on the early years of United States,
and Smith gives an ongoing historical background of what was occurring
when they were written. Although the men were close friends, their
correspondence was formal. Neither man kept a diary, and both were
aware that they were writing for posterity and archived the letters,
Smith said.
     As he writes, "They were historical-minded and knew that they
were building in the New World a republican system of representative
government unlike anything in recorded history...."
     The first letters were about the Revolutionary War, with Madison
writing to Jefferson, "General Washington has found it of the utmost
difficulty to repress the mutinous spirit engendered by hunger and a
want of pay."
     The correspondence was carried on when Jefferson was minister to
France, throughout Jefferson's presidency when Madison was secretary
of state and during Madison's subsequent presidency. Issues involved
dealing with internal problems, such as their opposition to Alexander
Hamilton's policies, and foreign policy in the early 1800s, as well as
more personal exchanges.
     Their last letters are concerned with the founding of the
University of Virginia, where Madison succeeded Jefferson as rector.
Jefferson wrote about the students, "Two thirds therefore being of 19
and upwards we may hope are of sufficient discretion to govern
themselves, and that the younger 3d. by their example as well as by
moderate coercion will not be very difficult to keep in order."
     However, a group of unruly students staged a riot of sorts, and
in one of their last public appearances together, Jefferson and
Madison, along with James Monroe, attended a university meeting at the
Rotunda to restore order.
     Smith's in-depth paper chase for the letters and research for his
book has taken him taken him far afield.
     He traveled to places associated with Jefferson and Madison. He
worked as an independent scholar at the Center for Advanced Study at
the Institute of Early American History and Culture in Williamsburg.
The following year he carried out research at the Henry E. Huntington
Library's Center for Advanced Study in California, which houses a
collection of Jefferson papers. He wrote much of his commentary and
background material at the Bellagio Study Center of the Rockefeller
Foundation on Lake Como, Italy.
     His research was supported by a grant from the National Endowment
for the Humanities, and he also was a Woodrow Wilson National
Foundation Fellow.
     Smith also is the author of Politics and Society in American
History; George Washington, A Profile; Seventeeth-Century America:
Essays in Colonia History; Liberty and Justice: A Historical Record of
American Constitutional Development; and Freedom's Fetters: The Alien
and Sedition Laws and American Civil Liberties.
                                                   -Sue Swyers Moncure