An analysis and historical context surrounding Thomas Jefferson’s private correspondence to Bishop James Madison (president of the College of William & Mary and cousin of future President James Madison) in defense of Adam Weishaupt’s ideals written from Philadelphia on 31 January 1800 against Abbé Barruel’s Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism. Occurring during the height of the “Illuminati scare” in the United States (1798-1800), this was a period of intense partisan and religious anxiety in the early republic. Jefferson had not yet become president, and he was serving as Vice President under Federalist John Adams while leading the opposition Democratic-Republican Party. Jefferson defended negative associations of republicanism with anarchy as the basis of Enlightenment ideals of human progress against conservative Federalist and clerical attacks that portrayed rationalist philosophy as a dangerous international conspiracy.
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