A dinner at Monticello

Jefferson has been president for a year and has moved into the house he designed on his mountain. He keeps a generous table and a strict rule of no precedence, so that the company sits wherever it likes and the talk is free.

Madison, his secretary of state, has been negotiating the purchase of Louisiana from France; Hamilton, out of office but not out of politics, has come as a guest and an adversary. They disagree about almost everything — the bank, the debt, the scope of federal power — but Jefferson wants to hear him, and the evening is courteous. They eat pickled oysters, a Brunswick stew, sweet potato pone, and pecan pie, and drink madeira punch as the candles burn down.