Our Founding Father Thomas Jefferson

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Text Box: Thomas Jefferson was the third President of the United States, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, and – for his promotion of the ideals of republicanism in the United States – one of the most influential Founding Fathers. Jefferson envisioned America as the force behind a great “Empire of Liberty” that would promote republicanism and counter the imperialism of the British Empire.   Major events during his presidency include the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark Expedition as well as escalating tensions with both Britain and France that led to war with Britain in 1812, after he left office. As a political philosopher, Jefferson was a man of the Enlightenment and knew many intellectual leaders in Britain and France. He idealized the independent yeoman farmer as exemplar of republican virtues, distrusted cities and financiers, and favored states’ rights and a strictly limited federal government. Jefferson was the author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. He was the eponym of Jeffersonian democracy and the cofounder and leader of the Democratic-Republican Party, which dominated American politics for 25 years. Jefferson served as the wartime Governor of Virginia, first United States Secretary of State, and second Vice President.   A polymath, Jefferson achieved distinction as, among other things, a horticulturist, political leader, architect, archaeologist, paleontologist, inventor, and founder of the University of Virginia. To date, Jefferson is the only president to serve two full terms in office without vetoing a single bill of Congress.   Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743 in Albemarie County, VA, into a family closely related to some of the most prominent individuals in Virginia, the third of ten children. Two died in childhood. His mother was Jane Randolph, daughter of Isham Randolph, a ship’s captain and sometime planter, first cousin to Peyton Randolph, and granddaughter of wealthy English gentry. Jefferson’s father was Peter Jefferson, a planter and surveyor in Albemarle County (Shadwell, then Edge Hill, VA). He was of Welsh descent. When Colonel William Randolph, an old friend of Peter Jefferson, died in 1745, Peter assumed executorship and personal charge of William Randolph’s estate in Tuckahoe as well as his infant son, Thomas Mann Randolph, JR. That year the Jeffersons relocated to Tuckahoe where they would remain for the next seven years before returning to their home in Albemarle. Peter Jefferson was then appointed to the Colonelcy of the county, an important position at the time. In 1752, Jefferson began attending a local school run by William Douglas, a Scottish minister. At the age of nine, Jefferson began studying Latin, Greek and French. In 1757, when he was 14 years old, his father died. Jefferson inherited about 5,000 acres of land and dozens of slaves. He built his home there, which eventually became known as Monticello.

“Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass.  They are inherently independent of all but moral law.”  

Text Box: After his father’s death, he was taught at the school of the learned minister James Maury from 1758 to 1760. The school was in Fredericksville Parish near Gordonsville, VA, twelve miles from Shadwell, and Jefferson boarded with Maury’s family. There he received a classical education and studied history and science.   In 1760 Jefferson entered the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg at the age of 16; he studied there for two years, graduating with highest honors in 1762. At William & Mary, he enrolled in the philosophy school and studied mathematics, metaphysics, and philosophy under Professor William Small, who introduced the enthusiastic Jefferson to the writings of the British Empiricists, including John Locke, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton (Jefferson called them the “three greatest men in the world had ever produced”).   He also perfected his French, carried his Greek grammar book wherever he went, practiced the violin, and read Tacitus and Homer. A keen and diligent student, Jefferson displayed an avid curiosity in all fields and, according to the family tradition, frequently studied fifteen hours a day. His closest college friend, John Page of Rosewell, reported that Jefferson “could tear himself away from his dearest friends to fly to his studies.” While in college, Jefferson was a member of a secret organization called the FHC Society. He lodged and boarded at the College in the building known today as the Sir Christopher Wren Building, attending communal meals in the Great Hall, and morning and evening prayers in the Wren Chapel. Jefferson often attended the lavish parties of royal governor Francis Fauquier, where he played his violin and developed an early love for wines. After graduating in 1762 with highest honors, he read law with George Wythe and was admitted to the Virginia bar in 1767.   On October 1, 1765, Jefferson’s oldest sister Jane died at the age of 25. Jefferson fell into a period of deep mourning, as he was already saddened by the absence of his sisters Mary, who had been married several years to Thomas Bolling, and Martha, who had wed earlier in July to Dabney Carr. Both had moved to their husbands’ residences, leaving younger siblings Elizabeth, Lucy, and the two toddlers as his companions. Jefferson was not comforted by the presence of Elizabeth or Lucy as they did not provide him with the same intellectual stimulation as his older siblings had.   Jefferson would go on to handle many cases as a lawyer in colonial Virginia, managing more than a hundred cases each year between 1768 and 1773 in General Court alone, while acting as counsel in hundreds of cases. Jefferson’s client list included members of the Virginia’s elite families, including members of his mother’s family, the Randolphs. In 1768 Thomas Jefferson started the construction of Monticello, a neoclassical mansion. Starting in childhood, Jefferson had always wanted to build a beautiful mountaintop home within site of Shadwell. Jefferson went greatly in debt on Monticello by spending lavishly on his Monticello Estate to create a neoclassical environment, based on his study of the brilliant architect Andrea Palladio and the Orders.   Besides practicing law, Jefferson represented Albemarle County in the Virginia House of Burgesses beginning in 1769. Following the passage of the Coercive Acts by the British Parliament in 1774, he wrote a set of resolutions against the acts, which were expanded into A Summary View of the Rights of British America, his first published work. Previous criticism of the Coercive Acts had focused on legal and constitutional issues, but Jefferson offered the radical notion that the colonists had the natural right to govern themselves. Jefferson also argued that parliament was the legislature of Great Britain only, and had no legislative authority in the colonies. The paper was intended to serve as instructions for the Virginia delegation of the First Continental Congress, but Jefferson’s ideas proved to be too radical for that body. Nevertheless, the pamphlet helped provide the theoretical framework for American independence, and marked Jefferson as one of the most thoughtful patriot spokesmen.   Jefferson served as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress beginning in June 1775, soon after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. When Congress began considering a resolution of independence in June 1776, Jefferson was appointed to a five-man committee to prepare a declaration to accompany the resolution. The committee selected Jefferson to write the first draft probably because of his reputation as a writer. The assignment was considered routine; no one at the time thought that it was a major responsibility. Jefferson completed a draft in consultation with other committee members, drawing on his own proposed draft of the Virginia Constitution, George Mason’s draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, and other sources.   Jefferson showed his draft to the committee, which made some final revisions, and then presented it to Congress on June 28, 1776. After voting in favor of the resolution of independence on July 2, Congress turned its attention to the declaration. Over several days of debate, Congress made a few changes in wording and deleted nearly a fourth of the text, most notably a passage critical of the slave trade, changes that Jefferson resented. On July 4, 1776, the wording of the Declaration of Independence was approved. The Declaration would eventually become Jefferson’s major claim to fame, and his eloquent preamble became an enduring statement of human rights.   In September 1776, Jefferson returned to Virginia and was elected to the new Virginia House of Delegates. During his term in the House, Jefferson set out to reform and update Virginia’s system of laws to reflect its new status as a democratic state. He drafted 126 bills in three years, including laws to abolish primogeniture, establish freedom of religion, and streamline the judicial system. In 1778, Jefferson’s “Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge” led to several academic reforms at his alma mater, including an elective system of study – the first in an American university. While in the state legislature Jefferson proposed a bill to eliminate capital punishment for all crimes except murder and treason. His effort to reform the death penalty law was defeated by just one vote, and such crimes as rape remained punishable by death in Virginia until the 1960s. He succeeded in passing an act prohibiting the importation of slaves but not slavery itself.   Jefferson served as governor of Virginia from 1779-1781. As governor, he oversaw the transfer of the state capital from Williamsburg to the more central location of Richmond in 1780. He continued to advocate educational reforms at the College of William and Mary, including the nation’s first student-policed honor code. In 1779, at Jefferson’s behest, William & Mary appointed George Wythe to be the first professor of law in an American university. Dissatisfied with the rate of changes he wanted to push through, he later became the founder of the University of Virginia, which was the first university in the United States at which higher education was completely separate from religious doctrine.   Virginia was invaded twice by the British led first by Benedict Arnold and then by Lord Cornwallis during Jefferson’s term as governor. He, along with Patrick Henry and other leaders of Virginia, were but ten minutes away from being captured by Banastre Tarleton, a British colonel leading a cavalry column that was raiding the area in June 1781. Public disapproval of his performance delayed his future political prospects, and he was never again elected to office in Virginia. He was, however, appointed by the state legislature to Congress in 1783.   The Virginia state legislature appointed Jefferson to the Congress of the Confederation on June 6, 1783, his term beginning on November 1. He was a member of the committee set up to set foreign exchange rates, and in that capacity he recommended that the American currency should be based on the decimal system. Jefferson also recommended setting up the Committee of the States, to function as the executive arm of Congress when Congress was in session. He left Congress when he was elected a minister plenipotentiary on May 7, 1784. He became Minister to France in 1785.   Because Jefferson served as minister to France from 1785 to 1789, he was not able to attend the Philadelphia Convention. He generally supported the new constitution despite the lack of a bill of rights and was kept informed by his correspondence with James Madison. From 1784 to 1785, Jefferson was one of the architects of trade relations between the United States and Prussia. The Prussian ambassador Friedrich Wilhelm von Thulemeyer and John Adams, both living in the Hague, and Benjamin Franklin in Paris, were also involved. Despite his numerous friendships with the social and noble elite, when the French Revolution began in 1789, Jefferson sided with the revolutionaries.   After returning from France Jefferson served as the first Secretary of State under George Washington. Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton began sparring over national fiscal policy, especially the funding of the debts of the war, with Hamilton believing that the debts should be equally shared, and Jefferson believing that each state should be responsible for its own debt (Virginia had not accumulated much debt during the Revolution). In further sparring with the Federalists, Jefferson came to equate Hamilton and the rest of the Federalists with Tories and monarchists who threatened to undermine republicanism. He equated Federalism with “Royalism,” and made a point to state that “Hamiltonians were panting after . . . And itching for crowns, coronets and mitres.” Jefferson and James Madison founded and led the Democratic-Republican Party. He worked with Madison and his campaign manager John J Beckley to build a nationwide network of Republican allies to combat Federalists across the country.   Jefferson strongly supported France against Britain when war broke out between those nations in 1793. The arrival in 1793 of an aggressive new French minister, Edmond-Charles Genet, caused a crisis for the Secretary of State, as he watched Genet try to violate American neutrality, manipulate public opinion, and even go over Washington’s head in appealing to the people; projects that Jefferson helped to thwart. Jefferson still clung to his sympathies with France and hoped for the success of her arms abroad and a cordial compact with her at home. He was afraid that any French reverses on the European battlefields would give “wonderful vigor to our monocrats, and unquestionably affect the tone of administering our government. Indeed, I fear that if this summer should prove disastrous to the French, it will damp that energy of republicanism in our new Congress, from which I had hoped so much reformation.   Jefferson at the end of 1793 retired to Monticello where he continued to orchestrate opposition to Hamilton and Washington. However, the Jay Treaty of 1794, orchestrated by Hamilton, brought peace and trade with Britain – while Madison, with strong support from Jefferson, wanted, Miller says, “to strangle the former mother country” without going to war. “It will became an article of faith among Republicans that ‘commercial weapons’ would suffice to bring Great Britain to any terms the United States chose to dictate.” Jefferson, in retirement, strongly encouraged Madison.   As the Democratic-Republican candidate in 1796 he lost to John Adams, but had enough electoral votes to become Vice President. He wrote a manual of parliamentary procedure, but otherwise avoided the Senate. Working closely with Aaron Burr of New York, Jefferson rallied his party, attacking the new taxes especially, and ran for the Presidency in 1800. Consistent with the traditions of the times, he did not formally campaign for the position. Before the passage of the Twelfth Amendment, a problem with the new union’s electoral system arose. He tied with Burr for first place in the electoral college, leaving the House of Representatives (where the Federalists still had some power) to decide the election. After lengthy debate with the Federalist-controlled House, Hamilton convinced his party that Jefferson would be a better political evil than Burr and that such scandal within the electoral process would undermine the still-young regime. The issue was resolved by the House, on February 17, 1801, after thirty-six ballots, when Jefferson was elected President and Burr Vice President. Burr’s refusal to remove himself from consideration created ill will with Jefferson, who dropped Burr from the ticket in 1804 after Burr killed Hamilton in a duel.   However, Jefferson’s win over the Federalist John Adams in the general election was derided in its time for how the electoral college was set up under the three-fifths compromise at the constitutional convention. Jefferson owed part of his election to the South’s inflated number of Electors due to slave-holdings, which meant that twelve of Jefferson’s electoral votes – his margin of victory – were derived from citizenry who were denied the vote and their full humanity. After his election in 1800, Jefferson was derided as the “Negro President”, with critics like the Mercury and New-England Palladium of Boston writing on January 20, 1801, that Jefferson had the gall to celebrate his election as a victory for democracy when he won “the temple of Liberty on the shoulders of slaves.”   Jefferson repealed many federal taxes, and sought to rely mainly on customs revenue. He pardoned people who had been imprisoned under the Alien and Sedition acts, passed in John Adams’ term, which Jefferson believed to be unconstitutional. He repealed the Judiciary Act of 1801 and removed many of Adams’ midnight judges” from office, which led to the Supreme Court deciding the important case of Marbury v. Madison. He began and won the First Barbary War (1801-1805), America’s first significant overseas war, and established the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1802. In 1803, despite his misgivings about the constitutionality of Congress’s power to buy land, Jefferson bought Louisiana from France, doubling the size of the United States. The land thus acquired amounts to 23 percent of the United States today. In 1807 his former vice president, Aaron Burr, was tried for treason on Jefferson’s order, but was acquitted. During the trial Chief Justice John Marshall subpoenaed Jefferson, who invoked executive privilege and claimed that as president he did not need to comply. When Marshall held that the constitution did not provide the president with any exception to the duty to obey a court order, Jefferson backed down.   Jefferson’s reputation was damaged by the Embargo Act of 1807, which was ineffective and was repealed at the end of his second term. In 1803, President Jefferson signed into law a bill that excluded blacks from carrying the US mail. On March 3, 1807, Jefferson signed a bill making slave importation illegal in the United States. After leaving the Presidency, Jefferson continued to be active in public affairs. He also became increasingly concerned with founding a new institution of higher learning, specifically one free of church influences where students could specialize in many new areas not offered at other universities. Jefferson believed educating people was a good way to establish an organized society, and felt schools should be paid for by the general public, so less wealthy people could obtain student membership as well. A letter to Joseph Priestley, in January 1800, indicated that he had been planning the University for decades before its establishment.   His dream was realized in 1819 with the founding of the University of Virginia. Upon its opening in 1825, it was then the first university to offer a full slate of elective courses to its students. One of the largest construction projects to that time in North America, it was notable for being centered about a library rather than a church. No campus chapel was included in his original plans. Until his death, Jefferson invited students and faculty of the school to his home. The University was designed as the capstone of the educational system of Virginia. In his vision, any citizen of the state could attend school with the sole criterion being ability.   Jefferson was a thin, tall, man, sandy-haired and freckles, who stood at approximately six feet and remarkably straight. “The Sage of Monticello” cultivated an image that earned him the other nickname, “Man of the People.” He affected a popular air by greeting White House guests in homespun attire like a robe and slippers. Dolly Madison, wife of James Madison (Jefferson’s secretary of state), and Jefferson’s daughters relaxed White House protocol and turned formal state dinners into more casual and entertaining social events. Although a foremost defender of a free press, Jefferson at times sparred with partisan newspapers and appealed to the people. Jefferson’s writing were utilitarian and evidenced great intellect, and he had an affinity with languages. He learned Gaelic to translate Oscine, and sent to James Macpherson for the originals. Jefferson, together with George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, was chosen by sculptor Gutzon Borglum and approved by President Calvin Coolidge to be depicted in stone at the Mount Rushmore Memorial.   In 1772, at age 20 Jefferson married the 23-year-old widow Martha Wayles Skelton. They had six children: Martha Jefferson Randolph (1772-1836), Jane Randolph (1774-1775), a stillborn or unnamed son (1777), Mary Jefferson Eppes (1778-1804), Lucy Elizabeth (1780-1781), and another Lucy Elizabeth (1782-1785). Martha died on September 6, 1782, after the birth of her last child. Jefferson never remarried.   Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. He died a few hours before John Adams, his compatriot in their quest for independence, then great political rival, and later friend and correspondent. Adams is often rumored to have referenced Jefferson in his last words, unaware of his passing. Thomas Jefferson is buried on his Monticello estate, in Charlottesville, VA. In his will, he left Monticello to the United States to be used as a school for orphans of navy officers.

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