In the struggle between the executive and legislative branches, Gerhard Casper writes in his new book, Thomas Jefferson generally took a broad view of congressional power. But he was accused of trying to expand presidential authority during the 1803 debate on the Louisiana Purchase.
Was Jefferson turning into a "monarch" after all? Hardly, although he persistently tended to exaggerate the differences between "the monarchist" Hamilton and himself. There can be little question that, on the whole, Jefferson strove to abide by the letter and spirit of the Constitution. While he was the most forceful chief executive yet, he worried more than Hamilton about his accountability to the people whose agent he was. It was that agency relationship rather than Hamiltonian confidence in Hamiltonian "sound judgment" that offered Jefferson the hope of "indemnity," of ultimate vindication for legal trespasses. For the interpretation of that agency relationship, the written "instructions"--that is, the Constitution--remained of prime importance to Jefferson throughout his life. However, Jefferson saw his role as "the case of a guardian, investing the money of his ward in purchasing an important adjacent territory; & saying to him when of age, I did this for your good; I pretend to no right to bind you: you may disavow me, and I must get out of the scrape as I can: I thought it my duty to risk myself for you."
The analogy of the guardian was rather maladroit. After all, the president, the Congress, and the judiciary are not the guardians of a minor, but the agents of a sovereign. The 1780 constitution of Massachusetts had formulated the principle: "All power residing originally in the people, and being derived from them, the several magistrates and officers of government, vested with authority, whether legislative, executive, or judicial, are their substitutes and agents, and are at all times accountable to them." But then Jefferson's reference to guardianship was perhaps no more than a metaphorical expression of his lifelong ambivalence about the pursuits and burdens of public life that "had nothing in them agreeable," as he had said to Washington back in 1792.
To Jefferson, being president felt like being "in a scrape." He used an even more dramatic simile when, in 1809, he did get out of the scrape for good, believing, or maybe only hoping, that on the whole the people had approved of his agency. During his last days in office, he wrote P.S. DuPont de Nemours: "Never did a prisoner, released from his chains, feel such relief as I shall on taking off the shackles of power . . . I thank God for the opportunity of retiring from [political passions] without censure, and carrying with me the most consoling proofs of public approbation." The "shackles of power" Jefferson shook off were not the chains imposed by constitutional constraints, such as those incident to the separation of powers, but to his mind it was power itself that had chained him. "Mr." Jefferson did indeed, as a president should, think of himself as an agent rather than as a principal.
