Regarding the authorship of the Declaration of Independence, whose opening lines Josiah attributes to George Mason, Jefferson is not the only great writer in America in that period to be indebted to the prose of others. In the Virginia Declaration of Rights, George Mason writes “that all men . . . have certain inherent rights . . . namely the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.” Others in state declarations of human rights used some of Mason’s prose, just as Jefferson did, and Mason in turn was indebted to the Bill of Rights in 1689. Besides, one can argue that Jefferson’s version was more pithy and eloquent than Mason’s: “that all men . . . are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Many of Jefferson’s colleagues, while suppressing their criticism and for the most part their jealousy of Washington, were, as with Hamilton, more open about their ill feelings toward Jefferson. Along with praise, Adams said that “Jefferson thinks . . . to get a reputation as a humble, modest, meek man, wholly without ambition or vanity. He may even have deceived himself in this belief, but if the prospect opens, the world will see and he will feel that he is as ambitious as Oliver Cromwell” (Edward J. Larson, A Magnificent Catastrophe, 29).
Jefferson replied in kind about his rival, Adams, comparing him to “poisonous weeds” and describing him as “vain, irritable, stubborn” and “endowed with excessive self-love” (David McCullough, John Adams, 318, 489).
With Washington, Jefferson was unstinting in his praise through most of Jefferson’s career, especially when addressing Washington. “The moderation and virtue of a single character has probably prevented this revolution from being closed, as most others have been, by a subversion of that liberty it was intended to establish,” Jefferson wrote in 1784 (Richard Kohn, William and Mary Quarterly, 1970, 220). But as Jefferson tried to prepare for his own presidential accession in 1796, he started to let slip criticisms of Washington, among them that he believed Washington was lucky and overrated. He also ridiculously lumped Washington in with Jefferson’s opponents as a pro-English “apostate.” (Jefferson’s allies reprinted fake British letters accusing Washington of being a British sympathizer.) Jefferson, as Josiah notes, publicly avoided the ceremonies surrounding Washington’s funeral. (See Edward J. Larson, A Magnificent Catastrophe, 39, 55.) But after Washington’s death, Jefferson, influenced either by public opinion or his own more objective second thoughts, was saying that Washington “was a wise, a good, and a great man.” Jefferson visited Lady Washington at Mount Vernon to make amends; he also hung a painting of Washington and displayed a bust of the General at Monticello. (See Ron Chernow, Washington, 600.)
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, PAGES 68-69
Benjamin Franklin, he whose electric rod transformed the earth; Patrick Henry, he who spoke “as Homer wrote”; and George Washington were probably the three most famous Americans at the time of the Revolution. As such, the first two seemed immune to any feelings of jealousy toward Washington, although Henry bore ill feelings toward Jefferson, which were reciprocated. (For two descriptions of this conflict, see Richard Beeman, Patrick Henry, 131 et seq., and Dumas Malone, Jefferson, The Virginian, 382.) One can attribute Franklin’s oft-expressed admiration of Washington to his diplomatic skills, but Franklin was quite capable of rendering balanced, critical judgments of many with whom he served. His portrayals of Adams were devastating. Franklin wrote to Washington after his Yorktown triumph that it will “brighten the glory that surrounds your name and that must accompany it to our latest posterity. No news could possibly make me more happy” (Thomas Fleming, Perils of Peace, 162).
Franklin had become wary of representing a Congress that was held in low esteem by the French. While French generals considered Washington one of the “greatest captains” of the age, French ministers were contemptuous of a Congress that defaulted on its financial obligations and spent French loans not to secure military victory but to pay off domestic debts. Franklin realized that, with the possible exception of himself, Washington was the only American whose reputation was immune from attack by Americans or the French. Washington’s reputation, wrote Franklin, was “free from those little shades that the jealousy and envy of a man’s countrymen and contemporaries are ever endeavoring to cast over living merit” (Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin, 391).
JOHN AND ABIGAIL ADAMS, PAGES 69-71
John Adams, like George Washington, was much concerned about his reputation, perhaps even more so, and certainly more openly. This is a man who early in life said, “Reputation ought to be the perpetual subject of my thoughts, and the aim of my behavior” and “How shall I gain a reputation . . . shall I look out for a cause to speak to, and exert all the soul and body I own to cut a flash? In short shall I walk a lingering, heavy pace or shall I take one bold determined leap?” (See Edward J. Larson, A Magnificent Catastrophe, 11, 13.)
Unlike Washington, Adams, as Josiah observes, saw himself threatened by, and was jealous of, the reputation of others. Adams bemoaned the pain of seeing another “wear the laurels which I have sown” (Barry Schwartz, Washington: Making of an American Symbol, 22). Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, being the most famous Americans of the time, were natural wearers of the laurels and targets of Adams’s jealousy. Benjamin Rush’s words summed up Adams’s feelings:
[T]he history of our Revolution will be one continued lie from one end to another. The essence of the whole will be that Dr. Franklin’s electrical rod smote the earth and out sprang General Washington. That Franklin electrified him with his rod—and thence forward these two conducted all the policy, negotiations, legislatures and war. (See Barry Schwartz, George Washington, The Making of an American Symbol, 87)
While Adams often praised Washington’s attributes, the praise was often mixed with apprehension of Washington’s potential power. Thus, Adams gloried “in the character of Washington because I know him to be the exemplification of the American character” yet belittled that character as “a character of convention” (Barry Schwartz, The Making of an American Symbol, 5, 179).
Along with Jefferson, Adams disparaged the celebration of Washington’s birthday and what he believed was the idolizing of Washington. “Among the national sins of our country [is] the idolatrous worship paid to the name of George Washington . . . ascribed in scripture only to God and Jesus Christ” (Schwartz, 194).
Adams attributed his own feelings of envy and fear toward Washington to sizable elements of the American people who he claimed joined him in wishing Washington would retire for fear he would otherwise be set up as king. Adams took very seriously the threat posed in this novel, and later wrote: