DURING THE WINTER OF 1860-1861, PRESIDENT JAMES BUCHANAN, facing what prove to be the great crisis of the Union, argued, on the one hand, secession was illegal and unconstitutional and, on the other, the federal government had no constitutional right to coerce the seceded states back into the Union. Even if coercion were constitutional, Buchanan argued, it violate the spirit of the Union for the remaining states to make war on the others. The Union had to remain alive in the affections of the people, and their support could not be forced by arms. (1) Buchanan's argument paid silent homage to Thomas Jefferson's original notion of a voluntary union based on consent, affection, and interest rather than force. (2) So it seems natural to assume Buchanan's response to the crisis approximate Jefferson's own, had he lived to see it. Many historians go further and suggest, with Joseph J. Ellis, had he lived, gone with the Confederacy. (3) Of course, there is no DNA test to reconcile the counterfactual problem of what Jefferson would have done. But it seems worth reevaluating Jefferson's views based on his response to some of the greatest crises of union during his own lifetime. Admittedly, these episodes were less consequential than the crisis of 1860-1861, because disunion ultimately failed in the earlier examples. Nevertheless, Jefferson's response to them, as well as his conception of union generally, suggests a different conclusion than the standard view: Jefferson believed the executive had the duty to enforce federal law throughout the Union and the Union had a natural right to coerce seceding states and force them back into the fold. To be sure, Jefferson's Kentucky Resolutions been understood as giving sanction to later secession movements, and it is not always a simple matter to reconcile Jefferson's views on coercion with his stance in the 1790s. Nevertheless, the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions did not advocate--or even broach--secession, and there were substantial qualitative differences between them and the later claims made by some New England Federalists and South Carolina nullifiers, despite the claims to Jefferson's legacy made by the latter group in particular. (4) Much of the way we thought about and understood the 1790s has been distorted by our viewing period through the lens of later events, particularly those of the 1830s and, especially, 1860-1861. (5) This essay will focus more narrowly, then, on Jefferson's reflections on the right of the Union to coerce what he sometimes called refractory sister states and on what he actually did in the face of perceived threats to union. (6) Jefferson's thought on the problem of union first took shape during the Confederation period, during and after the Revolution. Jefferson spent a good deal of this period out of the country as American minister to France, attempting to gain commercial concessions. But he was continuously frustrated by the inability of Congress to formulate a coherent commercial policy make such a treaty attractive to the French. Repeatedly during this time, Jefferson argued the Union had the right to coerce states, by force if necessary, to provide revenue to Congress. The inability of the Confederation government to compel states to provide revenue was one of the problems lead to the writing of the Constitution. But Jefferson argued the Confederation simply needed to act on its natural right to collect taxes. It has been so often said, as to be generally believed, he complained to Edward Carrington in 1787, that Congress no power by the confederation to enforce any thing, e.g. contributions of money. But, Jefferson argued, [i]t was not necessary to give them power expressly; they it by the law of nature. Jefferson explained his reasoning: When two nations make a compact, there results to each a power of compelling the other to execute it. …
Read full abstract
Aug 1, 2024
William Stephenson 
