Jefferson soon realized the tremendous degree to which the compromise helped expedite Hamilton’s financial agenda and permanently solidify federal power.
I was duped into by the Secretary of the Treasury, and made a tool for forwarding his schemes, not then sufficiently understood by me; and of all the errors of my political life, this has occasioned me the deepest regret. |
Jefferson portrayed himself as a political naif in his later accounts:
I answered that I had been so long absent from my country that I had lost a familiarity with it’s affairs, and being but lately returned had not yet got into the train of them, that the fiscal system being out of my department, I had not yet undertaken to consider and understand it, that the assumption had struck me in an unfavorable light, but still not having considered it sufficiently I had not concerned in it … - 1792
I told him that I was really a stranger to the whole subject; that not having yet informed myself of the system of finances adopted, I knew not how far this was a necessary sequence - 1818 |
The discussion took place. I could take no part in it, but an exhortatory one, because I was a stranger to the circumstances which should govern it. - 1818 |
In reality, this was a misrepresentation: only a day before his run-in with Hamilton, Jefferson had written to George Mason detailing his own solution to the funding issue.
Perhaps it's opponents would be wiser to be less confident in their success, & to compromise by agreeing to assume the state debts still due to individuals, on condition of assuming to the states at the same time what they have paid to individuals, so as to put the states in the shoes of those of their creditors whom they have paid off. |
Jefferson purposely undermined his own role in the bargain to exonerate himself of any blame for helping transform Hamilton’s economic vision into reality.
"This is the real history of the assumption, about which many erroneous conjectures have been published. It was unjust, in itself oppressive to the states, and was acquiesced in merely from a fear of disunion, while our government was still in it’s most infant state. It enabled Hamilton so to strengthen himself by corrupt services to many, that he could afterwards carry his bank scheme, and every measure he proposed in defiance of all opposition: in fact it was a principal ground whereon was reared up that Speculating phalanx … ” - 1792