RC (DLC).

Joel Barlow of Connecticut—“an admirable man, of an excellent Character, and his Intentions are most pure,” John Adams had written on 4 Sep. 1787 in explaining to the Russian ambassador that Barlow wanted to present a copy of the Vision of Columbus to the Empress (AMT:MHi)—arrived at Le Havre on 24 June 1788, ambitious to make his fame in literary circles and also to promote land sales for the Ohio Company. He remained in Europe seventeen years, achieved more success in the former object than in the latter, and emerged as a full-blown libertarian, as symbolized by the fact that it was he who, on Paine’s imprisonment in Paris, took the manuscript of The Age of Reason and saw to its publication. He was the guardian on this trip of George Washington Greene, son of Genl. Greene and godson of Washington, who was on his way, at Lafayette’s desire, to be educated in France, just as Lafayette’s Indian protégé, Peter Otsiquette, was returning to America. TJ, Short, Barlow, and Lafayette planned the education of young Greene, who was placed in the Pension Lemoine, across the street from the Hôtel de Langeac, where Crèvecoeur’s two sons were already enrolled. Lafayette hoped that his own son, also a namesake and godson of Washington, would complete his education in America, but this well-intended cultural interchange had disappointing results: the turbulence of French politics detained young Lafayette, Greene was killed in a hunting accident soon after returning to America, and Peter Otsiquette soon sloughed off the astonishing veneer of French, English, and music that he had acquired, returned to the ways of his people, and became a hard drinker (Gottschalk, Lafayette, 1783–89, p. 404–5).—A more enduring part of American thought and culture that Barlow brought to Paris was the first of the two-volume collection of essays by Messrs. Madison, Jay and Hamilton,—The Federalist. The copy of this first volume that Carrington sent (see TJ’s comment to Madison, 18 Nov. 1788), if it survives, is not now identifiable; the copy that remains among TJ’s books in DLC is one with an interesting provenance, for it bears on its two title-pages the signature of Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, wife of Alexander Hamilton, and above one of these signatures has the inscription: “For Mrs. Church from her sister.” On a fly-leaf of this volume TJ wrote the following which may have been based upon conversations with Madison, but which is not wholly in accord either with Madison’s claims or with the findings of historians:

“No.2.3.4.5.64. by Mr. Jay. No.10.14.17.18.19.21.37.38.39.40.41. 42.43.44.45.46.47.48.49.50.51.52.53. 54.55.56.57.58.62.63. by Mr. Madison.

The rest of the work by Alexander Hamilton”

(see Sowerby, description begins Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, compiled with annotations by E. Millicent Sowerby, Washington, 1952–55 description ends No. 3021 for a description and for illustrations showing Mrs. Hamilton’s signature on one title-page and TJ’s annotations). Alexander Hamilton, two days before his duel with Burr, “concealed,” in a volume of The Federalist in Egbert Benson’s office, being certain that it would be found, a list in his own handwriting containing his own attributions of authorship, though a few months earlier, in the full vigor of life and of political expectations, he had opposed the idea of identifying the author of each number in a new edition of The Federalist; this list reads: “Nos. 2,3,4,5,54, by J. Nos. 10,14,37, to 48 inclusive, M. Nos. 18, 19, 20, M.& H. jointly. All the others by H.” On the basis of this Benson list, The Federalist was issued in 1810 as the second and third volumes of the collected works of Hamilton, assigning major credit to him for originating and executing the idea of Publius’ essays and attributing to him authorship of sixty-three out of the total of eighty-five essays. Madison himself claimed, in a “true distribution of the numbers of the Federalist among the three writers,” furnished by him in 1818 to Jacob Gideon who brought out an edition of The Federalist that year, to be author of twenty-nine of the essays, instead of the fourteen attributed to him in the Benson list. Ten editions published between 1818 and 1857 followed the Madison rather than the Hamilton designations, but with the Civil War the great classic suffered another sea-change as it had in the years immediately following Hamilton’s death: Hamilton’s list, rejected for forty years, was again restored to favor, a fact “directly correlated with the see-saw of prestige between these two interpreters of the Constitution, depending upon whether agrarian or capitalistic interests were politically dominant in the country,” but helped along in the process by the prodding hand of Henry Cabot Lodge as editor of The Works of Alexander Hamilton (1884), whose acceptance of the Benson list was characterized by “self-contradiction, distortion of his data, and sins of documentary omission.” Lodge’s conclusion that “Hamilton’s authority is shown to be six times as good as that of Madison” was, in spite of these defects and in spite of E. G. Bourne’s shattering blows as early as 1896, nevertheless accepted by some usually careful modern scholars. This is no longer possible in the light of the brilliant essay by Douglass Adair, “The Authorship of the Disputed Federalist Papers,” WMQ description begins William and Mary Quarterly description ends , 3rd ser., i (1944), 97–122, 235–64), from which the foregoing facts and quotations are drawn. Adair concludes that Publius “spoke with a Virginia accent in the controversial essays, and that James Madison undoubtedly wrote every number he claimed in the Gideon list.” His conclusions, supported by irrefutable evidence and objective reasoning, should set at rest permanently the long, politically-tinged controversy. See also Madison to TJ, 10 Aug. 1788.