Chapter 4: A New Divide

Wulf’s assessment of Thomas Jefferson continues in Chapter 4. Jefferson has now become the U.S. Secretary of State, working in Philadelphia, and then later in New York. This is a job that he seems to have not wanted to begin with. Wolf explains how Jefferson hatted living in New York due to not being able to have a garden.

It amazes me the amount of passion that Jefferson had for his garden at Monticello. With all of his duties as Secretary of State, he seemed more interested in how his garden was doing than for his job. The one thing that struck me as crazy with this weeks reading was that while Jefferson was away he left his daughters at Monticello. Everyday Jefferson would write the girls asking for detailed accounts of what how his garden was doing. At one point he even calls them “too lazy to fulfill his botanical requests” after he believes that his daughter Mary failed to report that the frost his killed some fruit. This showed that Jefferson trusted only himself with tending to his land.

After Hamilton’s bank plan passes, Jefferson and Madison revert back to what Jefferson and Adams had done in Europe. They decided to take a trip to see the landscape of the Northeastern States. This trip quickly becomes both politically motivated and pleasurable.  

Something that I thought was interesting about this trip was that Jefferson wanted so badly to cut off all ties with England that he goes as far as trying to convince a large distillery owner that wine imported from France would produce better sprits than the molasses from the British West Indies. Jefferson goes on to do this once again when he tries to concoct a plan to produce sugar from the Sugar Maple instead of importing British West Indies Sugarcane.

While his efforts to create a country that is nothing like that of England is plentiful, he never actually is able to make this a reality. Hamilton has plans to turn the U.S. into a country that is centralized on industry, while Jefferson on is still in the mindset that Agriculture is the future of this nation. This great divide between a country centered on industry, and one centered on agriculture along with Hamilton’s bank plan leads to the formation of the first political parties.

This Chapter was an amazing insight into how the first political parties were formed and what led to the creation of Jefferson and Madison’s life-long friendship. As I read this chapter, I wondered what this country would have been like if Jefferson had his way. Would there be no federal banking system, or even no industrial revolution in the U.S.?  Why would Jefferson continue to work as Secretary of State, and later President, if he would much rather have just been a farmer? I believe that Wulf shows Jefferson as loving his country, but does this love outweigh his love of the garden and Monticello? Perhaps he trusted only himself when it came to ensuring liberty and freedom.