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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 
 
 Chap. Copyri^;No. 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
(iCt)e J^iberi^ibe ^io0rapl[)ical ^ttit^ 
 
 ANDREW JACKSON, by W. G. Brown 
 JAMES B. EADS, by Louis How 
 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, by Paul E. More 
 PETER COOPER, by R. W. Raymond 
 THOMAS JEFFERSON, by H. C. Merwin 
 WILLIAM PENN, by George Hodges 
 GENERAL GRANT. {In Preparation) 
 LEWIS AND CLARK, by William R. Ligh- 
 ton. {In preparation) 
 
 Each about loo pages, i6mo, with photogravure 
 portrait, 75 cents ; School Edition, 50 cents, 
 net 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
 Boston and New York 
 
©tie HiUer0iDe Biographical ^eriesf 
 
 NUMBER 5 
 
 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY CHILDS MERWIN 
 
jy !..iSjtS^ ^^ 'gagg- -/Z- ■rJmi.AIS''' 
 
THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY CHILDS MERWIN 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 Boston : 4 Park Street ; New York : 11 East Seventeenth Street 
 Chicago: 378-388 Wabash Avenue 
 
Library of Conflreas 
 
 Iwo Copies Rcceiveo 
 FEB 4 1901 
 
 S' 
 
 Copyright antry 
 
 G 
 
 SECOND COPY 
 
 
 COPYRIGHT, I901, BY HENRY C. MERWIN 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. Youth and Training 
 II. Virginia in Jefferson's Day 
 
 III. MoNTICEIiLO AND ITS HOUSEHOLD 
 
 IV. Jefferson in the Revolution 
 V. Reform Work in Virginla. 
 
 VI. Governor of Virginia 
 Vn. Envoy at Paris 
 VIII. Secretary of State 
 IX. The Two Parties 
 X. President Jefferson . 
 XL Second Presidential Term . 
 XII. A Public Man in Private Life 
 
 1 
 
 16 
 
 28 
 
 36 
 
 45 
 
 59 
 
 71 
 
 82 
 
 98 
 
 114 
 
 130 
 
 149 
 
THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 YOUTH AND TRAINING 
 
 Thomas Jefferson was born upon a 
 frontier estate in Albemarle County, Vir- 
 ginia, April 13, 1743. His fatter, Peter 
 Jefferson, was of Welsh descent, not of aris- 
 tocratic birtli, but of that yeoman class which 
 constitutes the backbone of all societies. 
 The elder Jefferson had uncommon powers 
 both of mind and body. His strength was 
 such that he could simultaneously " head 
 up " — that is, raise from their sides to an 
 upright position — two hogsheads of tobacco, 
 weighing nearly one thousand pounds apiece. 
 Like Washington, he was a surveyor ; and 
 there is a tradition that once, while running 
 his lines through a vast wilderness, his as- 
 sistants gave out from famine and fatigue. 
 
2 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 and Peter Jefferson pushed on alone, sleep- 
 ing at night in hollow trees, amidst howling 
 beasts of prey, and subsisting on the flesh 
 of a pack mule which he had been obliged 
 to kill. 
 
 Thomas Jefferson inherited from his father 
 a love of mathematics and of literature. 
 Peter Jefferson had not received a classical 
 education, but he was a diligent reader of a 
 few good books, chiefly Shakespeare, The 
 Spectator, Pope, and Swift ; and in master- 
 ing these he was forming his mind on great 
 literature after the manner of many another 
 Virginian, — for the houses of that colony 
 held English books as they held English 
 furniture. The edition of Shakespeare (and 
 it is a handsome one) which Peter Jefferson 
 used is still preserved among the heirlooms 
 of his descendants. 
 
 It was probably in liis capacity of surveyor 
 that Mr. Jefferson made the acquaintance 
 of the Randolph family, and he soon became 
 the bosom friend of William Randolph, the 
 young proprietor of Tuckahoe. The Ran- 
 dolphs had been for ages a family of con- 
 
YOUTH AND TRAINING 3 
 
 sideration in the midland counties of Eng- 
 land, claiming descent from the Scotch Earls 
 of Murray, and connected by blood or mar- 
 riage with many of the English nobility. In 
 1735 Peter Jefferson established liimseK as 
 a planter by patenting a thousand acres of 
 land in Goochland County, his estate lying 
 near and partly including the outlying hills, 
 which form a sort of picket line for the 
 Blue Mountain range. At the same time 
 his friend William Randolph patented an 
 adjoining estate of twenty-four hundred 
 acres ; and inasmuch as there was no good 
 site for a house on Jefferson's estate, Mr. 
 Randolph conveyed to him four hundred 
 acres for that purpose, the consideration ex- 
 pressed in the deed, which is still extant, 
 being " Henry Weatherboiirne's biggest 
 bowl of Arrack punch." 
 
 Here Peter Jefferson built his house, and 
 here, three years later, he brought his bride, 
 — a handsome girl of nineteen, and a kins- 
 woman of William Randolph, being Jane, 
 oldest child of Isham Randolph, then Adju- 
 tant-General of Virginia. She was born in 
 
4 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 London, in the parish of Shadwell, and Shad- 
 well was the name given by Peter Jefferson 
 to his estate. This marriage was a fortunate 
 union of the best aristocratic and yeoman 
 strains in Virginia. 
 
 In the year 1744 the new County of Al- 
 bemarle was carved out of Goochland County, 
 and Peter Jefferson was appointed one of 
 the three justices who constituted the county 
 court and were the real rulers of the shire. 
 He was made also Surveyor, and later Colonel 
 of the county. This last office was regarded 
 as the chief provincial honor in Virginia, and 
 it was especially important when he held it, 
 for it was the time of the French war, and 
 Albemarle was in the debatable land. 
 
 In the midst of that war, in August, 
 1757, Peter Jefferson died suddenly, of a 
 disease which is not recorded, but which was 
 probably produced by fatigue and exposure. 
 He was a strong, just, kindly man, sought 
 for as a protector of the widow and the 
 orphan, and respected and loved by Indians 
 as well as white men. Upon his deathbed 
 he Left two injunctions regarding his son 
 
YOUTH AND TRAINING 5 
 
 Thomas : one, that he should receive a clas- 
 sical education ; the other, that he should 
 never be permitted to neglect the physical 
 exercises necessary for health and strength. 
 Of these dying commands his son often 
 spoke with gi-atitude ; and he used to say 
 that if he were obliged to choose between 
 the education and the estate which his father 
 gave him, he would choose the education. 
 Peter Jefferson left eight children, but only 
 one son besides Thomas, and that one died 
 in infancy. Less is Imown of Jefferson's 
 mother ; but he derived from her a love of 
 music, an extraordinary keenness of sus- 
 ceptibility, and a corresponding refinement 
 of taste. 
 
 His father's death left Jefferson his own 
 master. In one of his later letters he says : 
 " At fourteen years of age the whole care 
 and direction of myself were thrown on my- 
 self entirely, without a relative or a friend 
 qualified to advise or guide me." 
 
 The first use that he made of his liberty 
 was to change his school, and to become a 
 pupil of the Rev. James Maury, — an ex- 
 
6 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 cellent clergyman and scholar, of Huguenot 
 descent, who had recently settled in Albe- 
 marle County. With him young Jefferson 
 continued for two years, studjdng Greek and 
 Latin, and becoming noted, as a schoolmate 
 afterward reported, for scholarship, industry, 
 and shyness. He was a good runner, a 
 keen fox-hunter, and a bold and graceful 
 rider. 
 
 At the age of sixteen, in the spring of 
 1760, he set out on horseback for Williams- 
 burg, the capital of Virginia, where he pro- 
 posed to enter the college of William and 
 Mary. Up to this time he had never seen 
 a town, or even a village, except the hamlet 
 of Charlottesville, which is about four miles 
 from Shadwell. Williamsburg — described 
 in contemporary language as "the centre of 
 taste, fashion, and refinement " — was an 
 unpaved village, of about one thousand in- 
 habitants, surrounded by an expanse of dark 
 green tobacco fields as far as the eye could 
 reach. It was, however, well situated upon 
 a plateau midway between the York and 
 James rivers, and was swept by breezes 
 
YOUTH AND TRAINING 7 
 
 which tempered the heat of the summer sun 
 and kept the town free from mosquitoes. 
 
 Williamsburg was also well laid out, and 
 it has the honor of having served as a model 
 for the city of Washington. It consisted 
 chiefly of a single street, one hundred feet 
 broad and three quarters of a mile long, 
 with the capitol at one end, the college at 
 the other, and a ten-acre square with public 
 buildings in the middle. Here in his palace 
 lived the colonial governor. The town also 
 contained " ten or twelve gentlemen's fami- 
 lies, besides merchants and tradesmen." 
 These were the permanent inhabitants ; 
 and during the "season" — the midwinter 
 months — the planters' families came to 
 town in their coaches, the gentlemen on 
 horseback, and the little capital was then a 
 scene of gayety and dissipation. 
 
 Such was Williamsburg in 1760 when 
 Thomas Jefferson, the frontier planter's son, 
 rode slowly into town at the close of an early 
 spring day, surveying with the outward in- 
 difference, but keen inward curiosity of a 
 countryman, the place which was to be his 
 
8 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 residence for seven years, — in one sense the 
 most important, because the most formative, 
 period of his life. He was a tall stripling, 
 rather slightly built, — after the model of 
 the Randolphs, — but extremely well-knit, 
 muscular, and agile. His face was freckled, 
 and his features were somewhat pointed. His 
 hair is variously described as red, reddish, 
 and sandy, and the color of his eyes as blue, 
 gray, and also hazel. The expression of his 
 face was frank, cheerful, and engaging. He 
 was not handsome in youth, but " a very 
 \ good-looking man in middle age, and quite a 
 handsome old man." At maturity he stood 
 six feet two and a haK inches. " Mr. Jef- 
 ferson," said Mr. Bacon, at one time the 
 superintendent of his estate, " was well pro- 
 portioned and straight as a gun-barrel. He 
 was like a fine horse, he had no surplus flesh. 
 He had an iron constitution, and was very 
 strong." 
 -^ Jefferson was always the most cheerful and 
 optimistic of men. He once said, after re- 
 marking that something must depend " on 
 the chapter of events ; " "I am in the habit 
 
YOUTH AND TRAINING 9 
 
 of turning over the next leaf with hope, and, / 
 though it often fails me, there is still an- 
 other and another behind." No doubt this 
 sanguine trait was due in part at least to 
 his almost perfect health. He was, to use 
 his own language, " blessed with organs of 
 digestion which accepted and concocted, 
 without ever murmuring, whatever the pal- * 
 ate chose to consign to them." His habits 
 through life were good. He never smoked, 
 he drank wine in moderation, he went to 
 bed early, he was regular in taking exercise, 
 either by walking or, more commonly, by 
 riding on horseback. 
 
 The college of William and Mary in Jef- 
 ferson's day is described by Mr. Parton as 
 " a medley of college, Indian mission, and 
 grammar school, ill-governed, and distracted 
 by dissensions among its ruling powers." 
 But Jefferson had a thirst for knowledge 
 and a capacity for acquiring it, which made 
 him almost independent of institutions of 
 learning. Moreover, there was one profes- 
 sor who had a large share in the formation 
 of his mind. " It was my great good for- 
 
10 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 tune," he wrote in his brief autobiography, 
 "and what probably fixed the destinies of 
 my life, that Dr. William Small, of Scotland, 
 was then professor of mathematics ; a man 
 profound in most of the useful branches of 
 science, with a happy talent of communica- 
 ^^^ tion and an enlarged liberal mind. He, most 
 happily for me, soon became attached to me, 
 and made me his daily companion when not 
 engaged in the school ; and from his conver- 
 sation I got my first views of the expansion 
 of science, and of the system of things in 
 which we are placed." 
 
 Jefferson, hke all well-bred Virginians, 
 was brought up as an Episcopalian ; but as 
 a young man, perhaps owing in part to the 
 influence of Dr. Small, he ceased to believe 
 in Christianity as a religion, though he always 
 at home attended the Episcopal church, and 
 though his daughters were brought up in that 
 faith. If any theological term is to be ap- 
 plied to him, he should be called a Deist, 
 Upon the subject of his religious faith, 
 Jefferson was always extremely reticent. 
 To one or two friends only did he disclose 
 
YOUTH AND TRAINING 11 
 
 his creed, and that was in letters which were 
 published after his death. When asked, 
 even by one of his own family, for his opin- 
 ion upon any religious matter, he invariably 
 refused to express it, saying that every per- 
 son was bound to look into the subject for 
 himself, and to decide upon it conscientiously, 
 unbiased by the opinions of others. 
 
 Dr. Small introduced Jefferson to other 
 valuable acquaintances; and, boy though he 
 was, he soon became the fourth in a group 
 of friends which embraced the three most 
 notable men in the little metropolis. These 
 were, beside Dr. Small, Francis Fauquier, 
 the acting governor of the province, ap- 
 pointed by the crown, and George Wythe. 
 Fauquier was a courtly, honorable, highly 
 cultivated man of the world, a disciple of 
 Voltaire, and a confirmed gambler, who had 
 in this respect an unfortunate influence upon 
 the Virginia gentry, — not, however, upon 
 Jefferson, who, though a lover of horses, 
 and a frequenter of races, never in his life 
 gambled or even played cards. Wythe was 
 then just beginning a long and honorable 
 
12 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 career as lawyer, statesman, professor, and 
 judge. He remained always a firm and in- 
 timate friend of Jefferson, who spoke of him, 
 after liis death, as " my second father." It 
 is an interesting fact that Thomas Jefferson, 
 John Marshall, and Henry Clay were all, 
 in succession, law students in the office of 
 George Wythe. 
 
 Many of the government officials and 
 planters who flocked to Williamsburg in 
 the winter were related to Jefferson on his 
 mother's side, and they opened their houses 
 to him with Virginia hospitality. We read 
 also of dances in the " Apollo," the ball-room 
 of the old Raleigh tavern, and of musical 
 parties at Gov. Fauquier 's house, in which 
 Jefferson, who was a skilKul and enthusiastic 
 fiddler, always took part. " I suppose," he 
 remarked in his old age, " that during at 
 least a dozen years of my life, I played no 
 less than three hours a day." 
 
 At this period he was somewhat of a 
 dandy, very particular about his clothes and 
 equipage, and devoted, as indeed he remained 
 through life, to fine horses. Virginia im- 
 
YOUTH AND TRAINING 13 
 
 ported more thoroughbred horses than any- 
 other colony, and to this day there is prob- 
 ably a greater admixture of thoroughbred 
 blood there than in any other State. Dio- 
 med, winner of the first English Derby, 
 was brought over to Virginia in 1799, and 
 founded a family which, even now, is highly 
 esteemed as a source of speed and endurance. 
 Jefferson had some of his colts ; and both 
 for the saddle and for his carriage he always 
 used high-bred horses. 
 
 Referring to the Williamsburg period of 
 his life, he wrote once to a grandson : " When 
 I recollect the various sorts of bad company 
 with which I associated from time to time, I 
 am astonished I did not turn off with some of 
 them, and become as worthless to society as 
 they were. . . . But I had the good fortune 
 to become acquainted very early with some 
 characters of very high standing, and to feel 
 the incessant wish that I could ever become 
 what they were. Under temptations and dif- 
 ficulties, I would ask myself what would Dr. 
 Small, Mr. Wythe, Peyton Randolph do in 
 this situation ? What course in it will as- 
 
14 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 sure me their approbation? I am certain 
 that this mode of deciding on my conduct 
 tended more to correctness than any reason- 
 ing powers that I possesed." 
 
 This passage throws a light upon Jeffer- 
 son's character. It does not seem to occur to 
 him that a young man might require some 
 stronger motive to keep his passions in check 
 than could be furnished either by the wish 
 to imitate a good example or by his " rea- 
 soning powers." To Jefferson's well-regu- 
 lated mind the desire for approbation was a 
 sufficient motive. He was particularly sen- 
 ^ sitive, perhaps morbidly so, to disapproba- 
 tion. The respect, the good-will, the affec- 
 tion of his countrymen were so dear to him 
 that the desire to retain them exercised a 
 great, it may be at times, an undue influence 
 upon him. " I find," he once said, " the pain 
 / of a little censure, even when it is unfounded, 
 is more acute than the pleasure of much 
 praise." 
 
 During his second year at college, Jeffer- 
 son laid aside all frivolities. He sent home 
 his horses, contenting himself with a mile 
 
YOUTH AND TRAINING 15 
 
 run out and back at nightfall for exercise, 
 and studying, if we may believe the biogra- 
 pher, no less than fifteen hours a day. This 
 intense application reduced the time of his 
 college course by one haK; and after the 
 second winter at Williamsburg he went home 
 with a degree in his pocket, and a volume of 
 Coke upon Lytleton in his trunk. 
 
II 
 
 VIRGINIA IN Jefferson's day 
 
 To a young Virginian of Jefferson's stand- 
 ing but two active careers were open, law and 
 politics, and in almost every case these two, 
 sooner or later, merged in one. The condi- 
 tion of Virginia was very different from that 
 of New England, — neither the clerical nor 
 the medical profession was held in esteem. 
 There were no manufactures, and there was 
 no general commerce. 
 
 Nature has divided Virginia into two parts : 
 the mountainous region to the west and the 
 broad level plain between the mountains and 
 the sea, intersected by numerous rivers, in 
 which, far back from the ocean, the tide 
 ebbs and flows. In this tide-water region 
 were situated the tobacco plantations which 
 constituted the wealth and were inhabited by 
 the aristocracy of the colony. Almost every 
 planter lived near a river and had his own 
 
VIRGINIA IN JEFFERSON'S DAY 17 
 
 wharf, whence a schooner carried his tobacco 
 to London, and brought back wines, silks, 
 velvets, guns, saddles, and shoes. 
 
 The small proprietors of land were com- 
 paratively few in number, and the whole 
 constitution of the colony, political and so- 
 cial, was aristocratic. Both real estate and 
 slaves descended by force of law to the eldest 
 son, so that the great properties were kept 
 intact. There were no townships and no 
 town meetings. The political unit was the 
 parish ; for the Episcopal church was the es- 
 tablished church, — a state institution ; and 
 the parishes were of great extent, there being, 
 as a rule, but one or two parishes in a county. 
 
 The clergy, though belonging to an estab- 
 lishment, were poorly paid, and not revered as 
 a class. They held the same position of infe- 
 riority in respect to the rich planters which 
 the clergy of England held in respect to the 
 country gentry at the same period. Being 
 appointed by the crown, they were selected 
 without much regard to fitness, and they 
 were demoralized by want of supervision, 
 for there were no resident bishops, and, 
 
18 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 further, by the uncertain character of their 
 incomes, which, being paid in tobacco, were 
 subject to great fluctuations. A few were 
 men of learning and virtue who performed 
 their duties faithfully, and eked out their 
 incomes by taking pupils. " It was these 
 few," remarks Mr. Parton, " who saved civil- 
 ization in the colony." A few others be- 
 came cultivators of tobacco, and acquired 
 wealth. But the greater part of the clergy 
 were companions and hangers-on of the rich 
 planters, — examples of that type which 
 Thackeray so well describes in the character 
 of Parson Sampson in "The Virginians." 
 Strange tales were told of these old Virginia 
 parsons. One is spoken of as pocketing 
 annually a hundred dollars, the revenue of a 
 legacy for preaching four sermons a year 
 against atheism, gambling, racing, and swear- 
 ing, — for all of which vices, except the first, 
 he was notorious. 
 
 This period, the middle half of the eigh- 
 teenth century, was, as the reader need not 
 be reminded, that in which the English 
 church sank to its lowest point. It was the 
 
VIRGINIA IN JEFFERSON'S DAY 19 
 
 era when the typical country parson was a 
 convivial fox-hunter; when the Fellows of 
 colleges sat over their wine from four o'clock, 
 their dinner hour, till midnight or after; 
 when the highest type of bishop was a 
 learned man who spent more time in his 
 private studies than in the duties of his 
 office; when the cathedrals were neglected 
 and dirty, and the parish churches were 
 closed from Sunday to Sunday. In Eng- 
 land, the reaction produced Methodism, and, 
 later, the Tractarian movement ; and we are 
 told that even in Virginia, " swarms of Meth- 
 odists, Moravians, and New-Light Presbyte- 
 rians came over the border from Pennsylva- 
 nia, and pervaded the colony." 
 
 Taxation pressed with very unequal force 
 upon the poor, and the right of voting was 
 confined to freeholders. There was no sys- 
 tem of public schools, and the great mass 
 of the people were ignorant and coarse, but 
 morally and physically sound, — a good sub- 
 structure for an aristocratic society. Wealth 
 being concentrated mainly in the hands of a 
 few, Virginia presented striking contrasts of 
 
20 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 luxury and destitution, whereas in the neigh- 
 boring colony of Pennsylvania, where wealth 
 was more distributed and society more de- 
 mocratic, thrift and prosperity were far more 
 common. 
 
 " In Pennsylvania," relates a foreign trav- 
 eler, " one sees great numbers of wagons 
 drawn by four or more fine fat horses. . . . 
 In the slave States we sometimes meet a 
 ragged black boy or girl driving a team con- 
 sisting of a lean cow and a mule ; and I have 
 seen a mule, a bull, and a cow, each miserable 
 in its appearance, composing one team, with 
 a half-naked black slave or two riding or 
 driving as occasion suited." And yet be- 
 tween Richmond and Fredericksburg, "in 
 the afternoon, as our road lay through the 
 woods, I was surprised to meet a family 
 party traveling along in as elegant a coach 
 as is usually met with in the neighborhood 
 of London, and attended by several gayly 
 dressed footmen." 
 
 Virginia society just before the Revolution 
 perfectly illustrated Buckle's remark about 
 leisure : " Without leisure, science is impos- 
 
VIRGINIA IN JEFFERSON'S DAY 21 
 
 sible ; and when leisure has been won, most 
 of the class possessing it will waste it in the 
 pursuit of pleasure, and a few will employ 
 it in the pursuit of knowledge." Men like 
 Jefferson, George Wythe, and Madison used 
 their leisure for the good of their fellow- 
 beino-s and for the cultivation of their minds ; 
 whereas the greater part of the planters — 
 and the poor whites imitated them — spent 
 their ample leisure in sports, in drinking, and 
 in absolute idleness. " In spite of the Vir- 
 ginians' love for dissipation," wrote a famous 
 French traveler, "the taste for reading is 
 commoner among men of the first rank than 
 in any other part of America ; but the popu- 
 lace is perhaps more ignorant there than 
 elsewhere." "The Virginia virtues," says 
 Mr. Henry Adams, " were those of the field 
 and farm — the simple and straightforward 
 mind, the notions of courage and truth, the 
 absence of mercantile sharpness and quick- 
 ness, the rusticity and open-handed hospi- 
 tality." Virginians of the upper class were 
 remarkable for their high-bred courtesy, — a 
 trait so inherent that it rarely disappeared 
 
22 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 even in the bitterness of political disputes 
 and divisions. This, too, was the natural 
 product of a society based not on trade or 
 commerce, but on land. " I blush for my 
 own people," wrote Dr. Channing, from Vir- 
 ginia, in 1791, "when I compare the selfish 
 
 / prudence of a Yankee with the generous con- 
 fidence of a Virginian. Here I find great 
 vices, but greater virtues than I left behind 
 me." There was a largeness of temper and 
 of feeling in the Virginia aristocracy, which 
 seems to be inseparable from people living 
 in a new country, upon the outskirts of civ- 
 ilization. They had the pride of birth, but 
 they recognized other claims to considera- 
 tion, and were as far as possible from esti- 
 
 j mating a man according to the amount of 
 
 ^ his wealth. 
 
 Slavery itself was probably a factor for 
 good in the character of such a man as Jef- 
 ferson, — it afforded a daily exercise in the 
 virtues of benevolence and self-control. How 
 he treated the blacks may be gathered from 
 a story, told by his superintendent, of a slave 
 named Jim who had been caught stealing 
 
VIRGINIA IN JEFFERSON'S DAY 23 
 
 nails from the nail-factory : " When Mr. 
 Jefferson came, I sent for Jim, and I never 
 saw any person, white or black, feel as badly 
 as he did when he saw his master. The tears 
 streamed down his face, and he begged for 
 pardon over and over again. I felt very 
 badly myself. Mr. Jefferson turned to me 
 and said, ' Ah, sir, we can't punish him. He 
 has suffered enough already.' He then talked 
 to him, gave him a heap of good advice, and 
 sent him to the shop. . . . Jim said : ' Well 
 I 'se been a-seeking religion a long time, but 
 I never heard anything before that sounded 
 so, or made me feel so, as I did when Master 
 said, " Go, and don't do so any more," and 
 now I 'se determined to seek religion till I 
 find it ; ' and sure enough he afterwards 
 came to me for a permit to go and be bap- 
 tized. . . . He was always a good servant 
 afterward." 
 
 Another element that contributed to the 
 efficiency and the high standard of the early 
 Virginia statesman was a good, old-fashioned 
 classical education. They were familiar, to 
 use Matthew Arnold's famous expression, ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
24 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 " with the best that has ever been said or 
 done." This was no small advantage to men 
 who were called upon to act as founders of 
 a republic different indeed from the repub- 
 lics of Greece and Rome, but still based upon 
 the same principles, and demanding an 
 exercise of the same heroic virtues. The 
 American Revolution would never have cut 
 quite the figure in the world which history 
 assigns to it, had it not been conducted with 
 a kind of classic dignity and decency ; and 
 to this result nobody contributed more than 
 Jefferson. 
 
 Such was Virginia in the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, — at the base of society, the slaves ; 
 next, a lower class, rough, ignorant, and 
 somewhat brutal, but still wholesome, and 
 possessing the primitive virtues of courage 
 and truth ; and at the top, the landed gen- 
 try, luxurious, proud, idle and dissipated 
 for the most part, and yet blossoming into 
 a few characters of a tyj)e so high that the 
 world has hardly seen a better. Had he 
 been born in Europe, Jefferson would doubt- 
 less have devoted himself to music, or to 
 
VIRGINIA IN JEFFERSON'S DAY 25 
 
 architecture, or to literature, or to science, 
 — for in all these directions his taste was 
 nearly equally strong ; but these careers be- 
 ing closed to him by the circumstances of 
 the colony, he became a lawyer, and then, 
 under pressure of the Revolution, a politician 
 and statesman. 
 
 During the four years following his grad- 
 uation, Jefferson spent most of the winter 
 months at Williamsburg, pursuing his legal 
 and other studies, and the rest of the year 
 upon the family plantation, the management 
 of which had devolved upon him. Now, as 
 always, he was the most industrious of men. 
 He lived, as Mr. Parton remarks, " with a 
 pen in his hand." He kept a garden book, 
 a farm book, a weather book, a receipt book, 
 a cash book, and, while he practiced law, a 
 fee book. Many of these books are still pre- 
 served, and the entries are as legible now as 
 when they were first written down in Jef- 
 ferson's small but clear and graceful hand, — 
 the hand of an artist. Jefferson, as one of 
 his old friends once remarked, hated super- 
 ficial knowledge ; and he dug to the roots of 
 
26 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 the common law, reading deeply in old re- 
 ports written in law French and law Latin, 
 and especially studying Magna Charta and 
 Bracton. 
 
 He found time also for riding, for music, 
 and dancing ; and in his twentieth year he 
 became enamored of Miss Rebecca Burwell, 
 a Williamsburg belle more distinguished, 
 tradition reports, for beauty than for clever- 
 ness. But Jefferson was not yet in a posi- 
 tion to marry, — he even contemplated a 
 foreign tour; and the girl, somewhat ab- 
 ruptly, married another lover. The wound 
 seems not to have been a deep one. Jeffer- 
 son, in fact, though he found his cliief happi- 
 ness in family affection, and though capable 
 of strong and lasting attachments, was not 
 the man for a romantic passion. He was a 
 philosopher of the reasonable, eighteenth- 
 century type. No one was more kind and 
 just in the treatment of his slaves, but he 
 did not free them, as George Wythe, perhaps 
 foolislily, did; and he was even cautious 
 about promulgating his views as to the folly 
 and wickedness of slavery, though he did his 
 
VIRGINIA IN JEFFERSON'S DAY 27 
 
 best to promote its abolition by legislative 
 measures. There was not in Jefferson the 
 material for a martyr or a Don Quixote ; 
 but that was Nature's fault, not his. It may 
 be said of every particular man that there 
 is a certain depth to which he cannot sink, 
 and there is a certain height to which he 
 cannot rise. Within the intermediate zone 
 there is ample exercise for free-will ; and no 
 man struggled harder than Jefferson to ful- 
 fill all the obligations which, as he conceived, 
 were laid upon him. 
 
Ill 
 
 MONTICELLO AND ITS HOUSEHOLD 
 
 In April, 1764, Jefferson came of age, 
 and his first public act was a characteristic 
 one. For the benefit of the neighborhood, 
 he procured the passage of a statute to au- 
 thorize the dredging of the Rivanna River 
 upon which his own estate bordered in part. 
 He then by private subscriptions raised a 
 sum sufficient for carrying out this purpose ; 
 and in a short time the stream, upon which 
 before a bark canoe would hardly have 
 floated, was made available for the transpor- 
 tation of farm produce to the James River, 
 and thence to the sea. 
 
 In 1766, he made a journey to Philadel- 
 phia, in order to be inoculated for smallpox, 
 traveling in a light gig drawn by a high- 
 spirited horse, and narrowly escaping death 
 by drowning in one of the numerous rivers 
 which had to be forded between Charlottes- 
 
MONTICELLO AND ITS HOUSEHOLD 29 
 
 ville and Philadelphia. In the following 
 year, about the time of his twenty-fourth 
 birthday, he was admitted to the bar, and 
 entered almost immediately upon a large 
 and lucrative practice. He remained at the 
 bar only seven years, but during most of 
 this time his professional income averaged 
 more than <£2500 a year ; and he increased 
 his paternal estate from 1900 acres to 5000 
 acres. He argued with force and fluencj^, 
 but his voice was not suitable for public 
 speaking, and soon became husky. More- 
 over, Jefferson had an intense repugnance 
 to the arena. He shrank with a kind of 
 nervous horror from a personal contest, and 
 hated to be drawn into a discussion. The 
 turmoil and confusion of a public body were 
 hideous to him ; — it was as a writer, not as 
 a speaker, that he won fame, first in the 
 Virginia Assembly, and afterward in the 
 Continental Congress. 
 
 In October, 1768, Jefferson was chosen 
 to represent Albemarle County in the House 
 of Burgesses of Virginia; and thus began 
 his long political career of forty years. A 
 
l/ 
 
 30 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 resolution which he formed at the outset is 
 stated in the following letter written in 1792 
 to a friend who had offered him a share in 
 an undertaking which promised to be profit- 
 able : — 
 
 " When I first entered on the stage of 
 public life (now twenty-four years ago) I 
 came to a resolution never to engage, while 
 in public office, in any kind of enterprise for 
 the improvement of my fortune, nor to wear 
 any other character than that of a farmer. 
 I have never departed from it in a single 
 instance ; and I have in multiplied instances 
 found myself happy in being able to decide 
 and to act as a public servant, clear of all 
 interest, in the multiform questions that 
 have arisen, wherein I have seen others em- 
 barrassed and biased by having got them- 
 selves in a more interested situation." 
 
 During the next few years there was a 
 lull in political affairs, — a sullen calm be- 
 fore the storm of the Revolution ; but they 
 were important years in Mr. Jefferson's life. 
 In February, 1770, the house at Shad well, 
 where he lived with his mother and sisters, 
 
MONTICELLO AND ITS HOUSEHOLD 31 
 
 was bui'ned to the ground, while the family 
 were away. " Were none of my books 
 saved ? " Jefferson asked of the negro who 
 came to him, breathless, with news of the 
 disaster. " No, master," was the reply, 
 " but we saved the fiddle." 
 
 In giving his friend Page an account of 
 the fire, Jefferson wrote : " On a reasonable 
 estimate, I calcidate the cost of the books 
 burned to have been £200. Would to God 
 it had been the money, — then had it never 
 cost me a sigh ! " Beside the books, Jeffer- 
 son lost most of his notes and papers ; but 
 no mishap, not caused by his own fault, ever 
 troubled his peace of mind. 
 
 After the fire, his mother and the children 
 took temporary refuge in the home of an 
 overseer, and Jefferson repaired to Monti- 
 cello, — as he had named the elevated spot 
 on the paternal estate where he had already 
 begun to build the house which was his 
 home for the remainder of his life. 
 
 Monticello is a smaU outlying peak, upon 
 the outskirts of the mountainous part of 
 Virginia, west of the tide-water region, and 
 
^ J- 
 
 32 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 rising 580 feet above tlie plain at its foot. 
 Upon its summit there is a space of about 
 six acres, leveled partly by nature and partly 
 by art ; and here, one hundred feet back 
 from the brow of the liill, Jefferson built his 
 house. It is a long, low building, — still 
 standing, — with a Grecian portico in front, 
 surmounted by a cupola. The road by 
 which it is approached winds round and 
 round, so as to make the ascent less diffi- 
 cult. In front of the house three long ter- 
 races, terminating in small pavilions, were 
 constructed ; and upon the northern terrace, 
 or in its pavilion, Jefferson and his friends 
 used to sit on summer nights gazing off 
 toward the Blue Ridge, some eighty miles 
 distant, or upon the nearer peaks of the Rag- 
 ged Mountains. The altitude is such that 
 neither dew nor mosquitoes can reach it. 
 
 To this beautiful but as yet uncompleted 
 mountain home, Jefferson, in January, 1772, 
 brought his bride. She was Martha Skel- 
 ton, who had been left a widow at nineteen, 
 and was now twei;ity-two, a daughter of John 
 Wayles, a leading and opulent lawyer. 
 
MONTICELLO AND ITS HOUSEHOLD 33 
 
 Martha Skelton was a tall, beautiful, tiglily 
 educated young woman, of graceful carriage, 
 with hazel eyes, literary in her tastes, a 
 skillful performer upon the spinnet, and a 
 notable housewife whose neatly kept account 
 books are still preserved. They were mar- 
 ried at " The Forest," her father's estate in 
 Charles City County, and immediately set 
 out for Monticello. 
 
 Two years later, in 1774, died Dabney 
 Carr, a brilliant and patriotic young lawyer, 
 Jefferson's most intimate friend, and the 
 husband of his sister Martha. Dabney 
 Carr left six small children, whom, with 
 their mother, Jefferson took under his wing, 
 and they were brought up at Monticello as 
 if they had been his own children. Jeffer- 
 son loved children, and he had, in common 
 with that very different character, Aaron 
 Burr, an instinct for teaching. While still 
 a young man himself, he was often called 
 upon to direct the studies of other young 
 men, — Madison and Monroe were in this 
 sense his pupils ; and the founding of the 
 University of Virginia was an achievement 
 
34 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 long anticipated by him and enthusiastically 
 performed. 
 
 Jefferson was somewhat unfortunate in his 
 own children, for, of the six that were born 
 to him, only two, Martha and Maria, lived 
 to grow up. Maria married but died young, 
 leaving one child. Martha, the first-born, 
 was a brilliant, cheerfid, wholesome woman. 
 She married Thomas Mann Randolph, after- 
 ward governor of Virginia. " She was just 
 like her father, in this respect," says Mr. 
 Bacon, the superintendent, — "she was al- 
 ways busy. If she was n't reading or writ- 
 ing, she was always doing something. She 
 used to sit in Mr. Jefferson's room a great 
 deal, and sew, or read, or talk, as he would 
 be busy about something else." John Ran- 
 dolph of Roanoke once toasted her — and it 
 was after his quarrel with her father — as 
 the sweetest woman in Virginia. She left 
 ten children, and many of her descendants 
 are still living. 
 
 To her, and to his other daughter, Maria, 
 who is described as being more beautiful 
 and no less amiable than her sister, but not 
 
MONTICELLO AND ITS HOUSEHOLD 35 
 
 SO intellectual, Jefferson owed the chief hap- 
 piness of his life. Like many another man 
 who has won fame and a high position in the 
 world, he counted these things but as dust 
 and ashes in comparison with family affec- 
 tion. 
 
IV 
 
 JEFFERSON IN THE REVOLUTION 
 
 Shortly after Mr. Jefferson's marriage, 
 tlie preliminary movements of the Kevolu- 
 tion began, and tliougli he took an active 
 part in them it was not without reluctance. 
 Even after the battle of Bunker HiU, namely, 
 in November, 1775, he wrote to a kinsman 
 that there was not a man in the British 
 Empire who more cordially loved a union 
 with Great Britain than he did. John Jay 
 said after the Revolution : " During the 
 course of my life, and until the second peti- 
 tion of Congress in 1775, I never did hear 
 any American of any class or description 
 express a wish for the independence of the 
 colonies." 
 
 But these friendly feelings were first out- 
 raged and then extinguished by a long series 
 of ill-considered and oppressive acts, cover- 
 ing, with some intermissions, a period of 
 
JEFFERSON IN THE REVOLUTION 37 
 
 about twelve years. Of these the most note- 
 worthy were the Stamp Act, which amounted 
 to taxation without representation, and the 
 impost on tea, which was coupled with a 
 provision that the receipts should be applied 
 to the salaries of officers of the crown, thus 
 placing them beyond the control of the local 
 assemblies. The crown officers were also 
 authorized to grant salaries and pensions at 
 their discretion ; and a board of revenue 
 commissioners for the whole country was es- 
 tablished at Boston, and armed with despotic 
 powers. These proceedings amounted to a 
 deprivation of liberty, and they were aggra- 
 vated by the king's contemptuous rejection 
 of the petitions addressed to him by the 
 colonists. We know what followed, — the 
 burning of the British war schooner, Gaspee, 
 by leading citizens of Providence, and the 
 famous tea-party in Boston harbor. 
 
 Meanwhile Virginia had not been inactive. 
 In March, 1772, a few young men, members 
 of the House of Burgesses, met at the Ka- 
 leigh Tavern in Williamsburg. They were 
 Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee and his 
 
38 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 brother, Thomas Jefferson, and a few others. 
 They drew up several resolutions, the most 
 important of which called for the ajDpoint- 
 ment of a standing committee and for an 
 invitation to the other colonies to appoint 
 like committees for mutual information and 
 assistance in the struggle against the crown. 
 A similar resolution had been adopted in 
 Massachusetts two years before, but without 
 any practical result. The Virginia resolu- 
 tion was passed the next day by the House 
 of Burgesses, and it gave rise to those pro- 
 ceedmgs which ushered in the Revolution. 
 
 The first Continental Congress was to meet 
 in Philadelphia, in September, 1774 ; and 
 Jefferson, in anticipation, prepared a draft 
 of instructions for the delegates who were to 
 be elected by Virginia. Being taken ill 
 himself, on his way to the convention, he 
 sent forward a copy of these instructions. 
 They were considered too drastic to be 
 adopted by the convention ; but some of the 
 members caused them to be published under 
 the title of " A Summary View of the Rights 
 of America." The pamplilet was extensively 
 
JEFFERSON IN THE REVOLUTION 39 
 
 read in this country, and a copy which had 
 been sent to London falling into the hands 
 of Edmund Burke, he had it reprinted in 
 England, where it ran through edition after 
 edition. Jefferson's name thus became 
 known throughout the colonies and in Eng- 
 land. 
 
 The " Summary View " is in reality a 
 political essay. Its author wasted no time 
 in discussing the specific legal and consti- 
 tutional questions which had arisen between 
 the colonies and the crown ; but he went to 
 the root of the matter, and with one or two 
 generalizations as bold and original as if 
 they had been made by Rousseau, he cut the 
 Gordian knot, and severed America from the 
 Parliament of Great Britain. He admitted 
 some sort of dependence upon the crown, 
 but his two main principles were these : (1) 
 that the soil of this country belonged to the 
 people who had settled and improved it, and 
 that the crown had no right to sell or give it 
 away ; (2) that the right of self-government 
 was a right natural to every people, and that 
 Parliament, therefore, had no authority to 
 
40 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 make laws for America. Jefferson was 
 always about a century in advance of his 
 time ; and tlie " Summary View " substan- 
 tially anticipated what is now the acknow- 
 ledged relation of England to her colonies. 
 
 Jefferson was elected a member of the 
 Continental Congress at its second session ; 
 and he made a rapid journey to Philadelphia 
 in a chaise, with two led horses behind, 
 reaching there the night before Washington 
 set out for Cambridge. The Congress was 
 composed mainly of young men. Frankhn, 
 the oldest member, was seventy-one, and a 
 few others were past sixty. Washington 
 was forty-three ; John Adams, forty ; Patrick 
 Henry, a year or two younger ; John Rut- 
 ledge, thirty-six ; his brother, twenty-six ; 
 John Langdon and WiUiam Paca, thirty-five, 
 John Jay, thirty ; Thomas Stone, thirty-two, 
 and Jefferson, thirty-two. 
 
 Jefferson soon became intimate with John 
 Adams, who in later years said of him ; 
 " Though a silent member of Congress, he 
 was so prompt, frank, explicit, and decisive 
 upon committees and in conversation — not 
 
JEFFERSON IN THE REVOLUTION 41 
 
 even Samuel Adams was more so — that he 
 soon seized upon my heart." 
 
 Jefferson, as we have seen, was not fitted 
 to shine as an orator, still less in debate. 
 But as a writer he had that capacity for style 
 which comes, if it comes at all, as a gift of 
 nature ; which needs to be supplemented, but 
 which cannot be supplied, by practice and 
 study. In some of his early letters there 
 are slight reminders of Dr. Johnson's man- 
 ner, and still more of Sterne's. Sterne in- 
 deed was one of his favorite authors. How- 
 ever, these early traces of imitation were 
 absorbed very quickly ; and, before he was 
 thirty, Jefferson became master of a clear, 
 smooth, polished, picturesque, and individual 
 style. To him, therefore, his associates natu- 
 rally turned when they needed such a pro- 
 clamation to the world as the Declaration of 
 Independence ; and that document is very 
 characteristic of its author. It was imasfina- 
 tion that gave distinction to Jefferson both 
 as a man and as a writer. He never dashed 
 off a letter which did not contain some play 
 of fancy ; and whether he was inventing a 
 
 / 
 
42 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 plough or forecasting the destinies of a great 
 Democracy, imagination qualified the per- 
 formance. 
 
 One of the most effective forms in which 
 imagination displays itself in prose is by the 
 use of a common word in such a manner and 
 context that it conveys an uncommon mean- 
 ing. There are many examples of this rhe- 
 torical art in Jefferson's writings, but the 
 most notable one occurs in the noble first 
 paragraph of the Declaration of Independ- 
 ence : " When, in the course of human 
 events, it becomes necessary for one people 
 to dissolve the political bands which have 
 connected them with another, and to assume 
 among the powers of the earth the separate 
 and equal station to which the Laws of 
 Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a 
 decent respect to the opinions of mankind 
 requires that they should declare the causes 
 which impel them to the separation." 
 
 Upon this paragraph Mr. Parton elo- 
 quently observes : " The noblest utterance of 
 the whole composition is the reason given 
 for making the Declaration, — ^A decent 
 
JEFFERSON IN THE REVOLUTION 43 
 
 respect for the opinions of manhind,^ Tliis 
 touclies the heart. Among the best emotions 
 that human nature knows is the veneration 
 of man for man. This recognition of the 
 public opinion of the world — the sum of hu- 
 man sense — as the final arbiter in all such 
 controversies is the single phrase of the docu- 
 ment which Jefferson alone, perhaps, of all 
 the Congress, could have originated ; and in 
 point of merit it was worth all the rest." 
 
 Franklin and John Adams, who were on 
 the committee with Jefferson, made a few 
 verbal changes in his draught of the De- 
 claration, and it was then discussed and re- 
 viewed by Congress for three days. Congress 
 made eighteen suppressions, six additions, 
 and ten alterations ; and it must be admitted 
 that most of these were improvements. For 
 example, Jefferson had framed a paragraph 
 in which the king was severely censured for 
 opposing certain measures looldng to the sup- 
 pression of the slave trade. This would have 
 come with an ill grace from the Americans, 
 since for a century New England had been 
 enriching herseK by that trade, and the south- 
 ern colonies had subsisted upon the labor 
 
44 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 which it brought them. Congress wisely 
 struck out the paragraph. 
 
 The Declaration of Independence was re- 
 ceived with rapture throughout the country. 
 Everywhere it was read aloud to the people 
 who gathered to hear it, amid the booming 
 of guns, the ringing of bells, and the display 
 of fireworks. In Philadelphia, after the read- 
 ing, the late king's coat of arms was burned 
 in Independence Square ; in New York the 
 leaden statue, in Bowling Green, of George 
 lY. was " laid prostrate in the dust," and 
 ordered to be run into bullets. Virginia had 
 already stricken the king's name from her 
 prayer-book ; and Rhode Island now forbade 
 her people to pray for the king, as king, 
 under a penalty of one hundred thousand 
 pounds ! The Declaration of Independence, 
 both as a political and literary document, has 
 stood the test of time. It has all the classic 
 qualities of an oration by Demosthenes ; and 
 ^ even that passage in it which has been criti- 
 ^V^-^ "cised — that, namely, which pronounces all 
 men to be created equal — is true in a sense, 
 the truth of which it will take a century or 
 two yet to develop. 
 
 '■^- 
 
V 
 
 KEFORM WORK IN VIRGINIA 
 
 In September, 1776, Jefferson, having 
 resigned liis seat in Congress to engage in 
 duties nearer home, returned to Monticello. 
 A few weeks later, a messenger from Con- 
 gress arrived to inform him that he had 
 been elected a joint commissioner with Dr. 
 Franklin and Silas Deane to represent at 
 Paris the newly formed nation. His heart 
 had long been set upon foreign travel ; but 
 he felt obliged to decline this appointment, 
 first on account of the ill health of his wife, 
 and secondly, because he was needed in Vir- 
 ginia as a legislator. Not since Lycurgus 
 gave laws to the Spartans had there been 
 such an opportunity as then existed in the 
 United States. John Adams declared : 
 " The best lawgivers of antiquity would re- 
 joice to live at a period like this when, for 
 the first time in the history of the world, 
 
46 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 ! three millions of people are deliberately 
 / choosing their government and institutions." 
 Of all the colonies, Virginia offered the 
 best field for reform, because, as we have 
 already seen, she had by far the most aristo- 
 cratic political and social system ; and it is 
 extraordinary how quickly the reform was 
 effected by Jefferson and his friends. In 
 ordinary times of peace the task would have 
 > been impossible ; but in throwing off the 
 
 t 
 
 ' Enghsh yoke, the colonists had opened their 
 minds to new ideas; change had become 
 familiar to them, and in the general upheaval 
 I the rights of the people were recognized. A 
 year later, Jefferson wrote to Franklin : 
 " With respect to the State of Virginia, in 
 particular, the people seem to have laid 
 aside the monarchical and taken up the 
 republican government with as much ease 
 as would have attended their throwing off 
 an old and putting on a new set of clothes." 
 
 / Jefferson's greatness lay in this, that he 
 was the first statesman who trusted the mass 
 of the people. He alone had divined the 
 fact that they were competent, morally and 
 
REFORM WORK IN VIRGINIA 47 
 
 mentally, for self-government. It is almost 
 impossible for us to appreciate Jefferson's 
 originality in this respect, because the bold 
 and untried theories for which he contended 
 are now regarded as commonplace maxims. 
 He may have derived his political ideas in 
 part from the French philosophical writers 
 of the eighteenth century, although there is 
 no evidence to that effect ; but he was cer- 
 tainly the first statesman to grasp the idea 
 of democracy as a form of government, just 
 as, at a later day, Walt Whitman was the 
 first poet to grasp the idea of equality as a 
 social system. Hamilton, John Adams, 
 Pinckney, Gouverneur Morris, even Wash- 
 ington himself, all believed that popular 
 government would be unsafe and revolu- 
 tionary unless held in check by a strong 
 executive and by an aristocratic senate. 
 
 Jefferson in his lifetime was often charged 
 with gross inconsistency in his political 
 views and conduct ; but the inconsistenc;y 
 was more apparent than real. At times he 
 strictly construed, and at times he almost 
 set aside the Constitution ; but the clue to 
 
48 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 his conduct can usually be found in the 
 fundamental principle that the only proj^er 
 function of government or constitutions is to 
 express the will of the people, and that the 
 people are morally and mentally competent to 
 / / govern . "I am sure , " he wrote in 1 7 9 6 , " that 
 the mass of citizens in these United States 
 mean well, and I firmly believe that they 
 will always act well, whenever they can obtain 
 a right understanding of matters." And 
 Jefferson's lifelong endeavor was to enable 
 the people to form this " right understand- 
 ing" by educating them. His ideas of the 
 scope of public education went far beyond 
 those which prevailed in his time, and con- 
 siderably beyond those which prevail even 
 now. For example, a free university course 
 for the most apt pupils graduated at the 
 grammar schools made part of his scheme, 
 — an idea most nearly realized in the West- 
 ern States ; and those States received their 
 impetus in educational matters from the Or- 
 I dinance of 1787, which was largely the pro- 
 duct of Jefferson's foresight. 
 
 Happily for Virginia, she did not become 
 
REFORM WORK IN VIRGINIA 49 
 
 a scene of war until the year 1779, and, 
 meanwhile, Jefferson and his friends lost no 
 time in remodeling her constitution. There 
 were no common schools, and the mass of 
 the people were more ignorant and rough 
 than their contemporaries in any other / 
 colony. Elections were scenes of bribery, 
 intimidation, and riot, surpassing even those 
 which Hogarth depicted in England. Elka- 
 nah Watson, of Massachusetts, describes 
 what he saw at Hanover Court House, Pat- 
 rick Henry's county, in 1778 : " The whole 
 county was assembled. The moment I 
 alighted, a wretched, pug-nosed fellow as- 
 sailed me to swap watches. I had hardly 
 shaken him off, when I was attacked by a 
 wild Irishman who insisted on my swap- 
 ping horses with him. . . . With him I 
 came near being involved in a boxing- 
 match, the Irishman swearing, I ' did not 
 trate him like a jintleman.' I had hardly 
 escaped this dilemma when my attention 
 was attracted by a light between two very 
 unwieldy fat men, foaming and puffing like 
 two furies, until one succeeded in twisting 
 
50 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 a forefinger in a sidelock of the other's 
 hair, and in the act of thrusting by this 
 purchase his thumb into the latter's eye, he 
 bawled out, ' King's Cruise,' equivalent in 
 technical language to ' Enough.' " 
 
 Quakers were put in the pillory, scolding 
 women were ducked, and it is said that a 
 woman was burned to death in Princess 
 Anne County for witchcraft. The English 
 church, as we have seen, was an estabhshed 
 church ; and all taxpayers, dissenters as 
 well as churchmen, were compelled to con- 
 tribute to its support. Baptist preachers 
 were arrested, and fined as disturbers of 
 the peace. The law of entail, both as re- 
 spects land and slaves, was so strict that 
 their descent to the eldest son could not be 
 prevented even by agreement between the 
 owner and his heir. 
 
 In his reformation of the laws, Jefferson 
 was supported by Patrick Henry, now gov- 
 ernor, and inhabiting what was still called 
 the palace ; by George Mason, a patriotic 
 lawyer who drew the famous Virginia Bill 
 of Rights ; by George "VYythe, his old pre- 
 
REFORM WORK IN VIRGINIA 51 
 
 ceptor, and by James Madison, Jefferson's 
 friend, pupil, and successor, who in this year 
 began his political career as a member of the 
 House of Burgesses. 
 
 Opposed to them were the conservative 
 party led by R. C. Nicholas, head of the 
 Virginia bar, a stanch churchman and gen- 
 tleman of the old school, and Edward Pen- 
 dleton, whom Jefferson described as " full 
 of resource, never vanquished ; for if he 
 lost the main battle he returned upon you, 
 and regained so much of it as to make it a 
 drawn one, by dexterous manoeuvres, skir- 
 mishes in detail, and the recovery of small 
 advantages, which, little singly, were impor- 
 tant all together. You never knew when 
 you were clear of him." 
 
 Intense as the controversy was, fundamen- 
 tal as were the points at issue, the speakers 
 never lost that courtesy for which the Vir- 
 ginians were remarkable ; John Randolph 
 being perhaps the only exception. Even 
 Patrick Henry — though from his humble 
 origin and impetuous oratory one might 
 have expected otherwise — was never guilty 
 
52 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 of any rudeness to his opponents. What 
 
 Jefferson said of Madison was true of the 
 
 Virginia orators in general, — " soothing 
 
 / always the feelings of his adversaries by 
 
 / civilities and softnesses of expression." 
 
 Jefferson struck first at the system of 
 entail. After a three weeks' struggle, land 
 and slaves were put upon the same footing 
 as all other property, — they might be sold 
 or bequeathed according to the will of the 
 possessor. Then came a longer and more 
 bitter contest. Jefferson was for abolishing 
 all connection between church and state, and 
 for establishing complete freedom of religion. 
 ? Nine years elapsed before Virginia could be 
 brought to that point ; but at this session 
 he procured a repeal of the law which im- 
 posed penalties for attendance at a dis- 
 senting meeting-house, and also of the law 
 compelling dissenters to pay tithes. The 
 fight was, therefore, substantially won ; and 
 in 1786, Jefferson's " Act for establishing 
 religion " became the law of Virginia.^ 
 
 ^ It is to be remembered that the support of public 
 worship was compulsory in Massachusetts — the inhabit- 
 
REFORM WORK IN VIRGINIA 53 
 
 Another far-reaching law introduced by 
 Jefferson at this memorable session of 1776 
 provided for the naturalization of foreigners 
 in Virginia, after a two years' residence in 
 the State, and upon a declaration of their 
 intention to become American citizens. The 
 bill provided also that the minor children 
 of naturalized parents should be citizens of 
 the United States when they came of age. 
 The principles of this measure were after- 
 ward embodied in the statutes of the United 
 States, and they are in force to-day. 
 
 At this session Jefferson also drew an act 
 for establishing courts of law in Virginia, 
 the royal courts having necessarily passed 
 out of existence when the Declaration of 
 Independence was adopted. Moreover, he 
 set on foot a revision of all the statutes of 
 Virginia, a committee with him at the head 
 being appointed for this purpose ; and 
 finally he procured the removal of the capi- 
 tal from Williamsburg to Richmond. 
 
 ants of certain cities excepted — down to the year 1833. 
 An attempt to free the people from this burden, led by 
 Dr. Childs, of Berkshire County, was defeated at the Con- 
 stitutional Convention of 1820. 
 
54 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 All this was accomplished, mainly by 
 Jefferson's efforts ; and yet the two bills 
 upon which he set most store failed entirely. 
 These were, first, a comprehensive measure 
 of state education, running up through 
 primary schools and grammar schools to a 
 state university, and, secondly, a bill pro- 
 viding that all who were born in slavery 
 after the passage of the bill should be free. 
 
 This was Jefferson's second ineffectual 
 attempt to promote the abolition of slavery. 
 During the year 1768, when he first became 
 a member of the House of Burgesses, he had 
 endeavored to procure the passage of a law 
 enabling slave-owners to free their slaves, 
 He induced Colonel Bland, one of the ablest, 
 oldest, and most respected members to pro- 
 pose the law, and he seconded the proposal ; 
 but it was overwhelmingly rejected. " I, as 
 a younger member," related Jefferson after- 
 ward, " was more spared in the debate ; but 
 he was denounced as an enemy to his coun- 
 try, and was treated with the greatest inde- 
 corum." 
 
 In 1778 Jefferson made another attempt: 
 
REFORM WORK IN VIRGINIA 55 
 
 / — he brought in a bill forbidding the further 
 importation of slaves in Virginia, and this 
 [ was passed without opposition. Again, in 
 1784, when Virginia ceded to the United 
 States her immense northwestern territory, 
 Jefferson drew up a scheme of government 
 for the States to be carved out of it which 
 included a provision " that after the year 
 1800 of the Christian Era, there shall be 
 neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in 
 any of the said States, otherwise than in., 
 punishment of crimes." The provision was 
 rejected by Congress. 
 
 In his " Notes on Virginia, " written in the 
 year 1781, but published in 1787, he said : 
 " The whole commerce between master and 
 slave is a perpetual exercise of the most bois- 
 terous passions, the most unremitting despot- 
 ism, on the one part, and degrading submis- 
 sion on the other. Our children see this, and 
 learn to imitate it. . . . With the morals 
 of the people their industry also is destroyed. 
 For in a warm climate no one will labor 
 for himself who can make another labor for 
 him. . . . Indeed, I tremble for my country 
 
56 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 when I reflect that God is just ; that his 
 justice cannot sleep forever. . . . The Al- 
 mighty has no attribute which can take sides 
 with us in such a contest." 
 
 When the Missouri Compromise question 
 came up, in 1820, Jefferson rightly predicted 
 that a controversy had begun which would 
 end in disruption ; but he made the mistake 
 of supposing that the Northern party were 
 actuated in that matter solely by political 
 motives. April 22, 1820, he wrote : " This 
 momentous question, like a fire-bell in the 
 night, awakened and filled me with terror. 
 I considered it at once as the knell of the 
 Union. ... A geographical line, coinciding 
 with a marked principle, moral and political, 
 once conceived and held up to the angry pas- 
 sions of men, will never be obliterated ; and 
 every new irritation will mark it deeper and 
 deeper. . . . The cession of that kind of pro- 
 perty, for so it is misnamed, is a bagatelle 
 which would not cost me a second thought 
 if, in that way, a general emancipation and 
 expatriation could be effected ; and gradually 
 and with due sacrifices I think it might be. 
 
REFORM WORK IN VIRGINIA 57 
 
 But as it is, we have the wolf by the ears, 
 and we can neither hold him nor safely let 
 him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-pre- 
 servation in the other." 
 
 « 
 
 And later, he wrote of the Missouri Com- 
 promise, as a '' question having just enough 
 of the semblance of morality to throw dust 
 into the eyes of the people. . . . The Fed- 
 eralists, unable to rise again under the old 
 division of Whig and Tory, have invented a 
 geographical division which gives them four- 
 teen States against ten, and seduces their old 
 opponents into a coalition with them. Real 
 morality is on the other side. For while the 
 removal of the slaves from one State to 
 another adds no more to their numbers than 
 their removal from one country to another, 
 the spreading them over a larger surface adds 
 to their happiness, and renders their future 
 emancipation more practicable." 
 
 These misconceptions as to Northern mo- 
 tives might be ascribed to Jefferson's ad- 
 vanced age, for, as he liimseK graphically 
 expressed it, he then had " one foot in the 
 grave, and the other lifted to follow it ; " but 
 
68 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 it would probably be more just to say that 
 they were due, in part, to his prejudice against 
 the New England people and especially the 
 New England clergy, and in part to the fact 
 that his long retirement in Virginia had some- 
 what contracted his views and sympathies. 
 Jefferson was a man of intense local attach- 
 ments, and he took color from his surround- 
 ings. He never ceased, however, to regard 
 slavery as morally wrong and socially ruin- 
 ous ; and in the brief autobiography which he 
 left behind him he made these predictions : 
 " Nothing is more certainly written in the 
 book of fate than that these people are to 
 be free. Nor is it less certain that the two 
 races, equally free, cannot live in the same 
 government." 
 
 History has justified the second as well as 
 the first of these declarations, for, excepting 
 that brief period of anarchy known as " the 
 carpet-bag era," it cannot be maintained that 
 the colored race in the Southern States have 
 been at any time, even since their emancipa- 
 tion, " equally free," in the sense of politically 
 free, with their white fellow citizens. 
 
VI 
 
 GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA 
 
 For three years Jefferson was occupied 
 with the legislative duties already described, 
 and especially with a revision of the Virginia 
 statutes, and then, in June, 1779, he suc- 
 ceeded Patrick Henry as governor of the 
 State. It has often been remarked that he 
 was, aU through life, a lucky man, but in 
 this case fortune did not favor him, for the 
 ensuing two years proved to be, so far as 
 Virginia was concerned, by much the worst 
 period of the war. 
 
 The French alliance, though no doubt an 
 ultimate benefit to the colonies, had at first 
 two bad effects : it relaxed the energy of the 
 Americans, who trusted that France would 
 fight their battles for them ; and it stimulated 
 the British to increased exertions. The Brit- 
 ish commissioners announced that hence- 
 forth England would employ, in the prosecu- 
 
60 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 tion of the war, all those agencies which 
 " God and nature had placed in her hands." 
 This meant that the ferocity of the Indians 
 would be invoked, a matter of special mo- 
 ment to Virginia, since her western frontier 
 swarmed with Indians, the bravest of their 
 race. 
 
 The colony, it must be remembered, w^as 
 then of immense extent ; for beside the pre- 
 sent Virginia and West Virginia, Kentucky 
 and the greater part of Ohio, Indiana, and 
 Illinois were embraced in it. It stretched, 
 in short, from the Atlantic Ocean to the 
 Mississippi River. Upon the seaboard Vir- 
 ginia was especially vulnerable, the tide-water 
 region being penetrated by numerous bays 
 and rivers, which the enemy's ships could 
 easily ascend, for they were undefended by 
 forts or men. The total navy of the colony 
 was four vessels, mounting sixty-two guns, 
 and a few armed boats. The flower of the 
 Virginia soldiery, to the number of ten thou- 
 sand, were in Washington's army, and sup- 
 phes of men, of arms, of ammunition and 
 food were urgently called for by General 
 
GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA 61 
 
 Gates, wlio was battling against Cornwallis 
 in North Carolina. The militia were sup- 
 posed to number fifty thousand, which in- 
 cluded every man between sixteen and fifty 
 years of age ; but this was only one man for 
 every square mile of territory in the present 
 State of Virginia, and of these militiamen it 
 was estimated that, east of the Blue Ridge, 
 only about one in five was armed with a gun. 
 The treasury was practically bankrupt, and 
 there was a dearth of every kind of warlike 
 material. 
 
 Such was the situation which confronted, 
 as Mr Par ton puts it, "a lawyer of thirty- 
 six, with a talent for music, a taste for art, 
 a love of science, literature, and gardening." 
 The task was one calling rather for a soldier 
 than a statesman ; but Mr. Jefferson faced it 
 with courage, and on the whole with suc- 
 cess. In retaliating the cruel measures of the 
 British, he showed a firmness which must 
 have been especially difficult for a man of 
 his temperament. He put in irons and con- 
 fined in a dungeon Colonel Henry Hamilton 
 and two subordinate officers who had com- 
 
62 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 mitted atrocities upon American prisoners. 
 He caused a prison-ship, like the ships of 
 infamous memory which were employed as 
 prisons by the British at New York, to be 
 prepared ; and the exchange of captives be- 
 tween Virginia and the British was stopped. 
 " Humane conduct on our part," wrote Jef- 
 ferson, "was found to produce no effect. 
 The contrary, therefore, is to be tried. Iron 
 will be retaliated by iron, prison-ships for 
 prison-ships, and like for like in general," 
 But in November, 1779, notice was received 
 that the English, under their new leader. Sir 
 Henry Clinton, had adopted a less barbarous 
 system of warfare ; and fortunately Jeffer- 
 son's measures of reprisal became unneces- 
 sary. 
 
 Hampered as he was by want of men and 
 money, Jefferson did all that he could to sup- 
 ply the needs of the Virginia soldiers with 
 Washington, of the army in North Carolina, 
 led by Gates, and of George Rogers Clarke, 
 the heroic commander who put down the 
 Indian uprising on the western frontier, and 
 captured the English officer who instigated 
 
GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA 63 
 
 it, — that same Colonel Hamilton of whom 
 mention has already been made. The story 
 
 of Clarke's adventures in the wilderness, 
 
 he was a neighbor of Jefferson, only twenty- 
 six years old, — of his forced marches, of 
 his masterful dealing with the Indians, and 
 finally of his capture of the British force, 
 forms a thrilling chapter in the history of the y 
 American Revolution. 
 
 Many indeed of Jefferson's constituents 
 censured him as being over-zealous in his 
 support of the army of Gates. He stripped 
 Virginia, they said, of troops and resources 
 which, as it proved afterward, were needed 
 at home. But if Cornwallis were not de- 
 feated in North Carolina, it was certain that 
 he would overrun the much more exposed 
 Virginia. If he could be defeated anywhere, 
 it would be in the Carolinas. Jefferson's 
 course, it is sufficient to say, was that recom- ^ 
 mended by Washington ; and his exertions 
 in behalf of the Continental armies were 
 commended in the highest terms not only by ^ 
 Washington, but also by Generals Gates, 
 Greene, Steuben, and Lafayette. The mili- 
 
64 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 tia were called out, leaving behind only so 
 many men as were required to cultivate the 
 land, wagons were impressed, including two 
 belonging to the governor, and attempts were 
 even made — extraordinary for Virginia — 
 to manufacture certain much-needed articles. 
 " Our smiths," wrote Jefferson, " are making 
 five hundred axes and some tomahawks for 
 General Gates." 
 
 Thus fared the year 1779, and in 1780 
 tilings went from bad to worse. In April 
 came a letter from Madison, saying that 
 Washington's army was on the verge of 
 dissolution, being only half-clothed, and in a 
 way to be starved. The public treasury was 
 empty and the public credit gone. In Au- 
 gust occurred the disastrous defeat of General 
 Gates at Camden, which left Virginia at the 
 mercy of Cornwallis. In October a British 
 fleet under Leslie ravaged the country about 
 Portsmouth, but failing to effect a juncture 
 with Cornwallis, who was detained in North 
 Carolina by illness among his troops, did no 
 further harm. Two months later, however, 
 Benedict Arnold sailed up the James River 
 
GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA 65 
 
 with another fleet, and, after committing 
 some depredations at Richmond, sailed down 
 again, escaping by the aid of a favorable 
 wind, which hauled from east to west just 
 in the nick of time for him. 
 
 In June, 1781, Cornwallis invaded Vir- 
 ginia, and no one suffered more than Jef- 
 ferson from his depredations. Tarleton was 
 dispatched to seize the governor at Monti- 
 cello ; but the latter was forewarned by a 
 citizen of Charlotteville, who, being in a 
 tavern at Louisa when Tarleton and his 
 troop swept by on the main road, immedi- 
 ately guessed their destination, and mount- 
 ing his horse, a fleet Virginia thoroughbred, 
 rode by a short cut through the woods 
 straight to Monticello, arriving there about 
 three hours ahead of Tarleton. 
 
 Jefferson took the matter coolly. He 
 first dispatched his family to a place of 
 safety, sent his best horse to be shod at a 
 neighboring smithy, and then proceeded to 
 sort and separate his papers. He left the 
 house only about five minutes before the 
 soldiers entered it. 
 
66 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 Two slaves, Martin, Mr. Jefferson's body 
 servant, and Caesar, were engaged in hid- 
 ing plate and other articles under the floor 
 of the portico, a single plank having been 
 raised for that purpose. As Martin, above, 
 handed the last article to Caesar under the 
 floor, the tramp of the approaching cavalry 
 was heard. Down went the plank, shutting 
 in Csesar, and there he remained, without 
 making any outcry, for eighteen hours, in 
 darkness, and of course without food or 
 water. One of the soldiers, to try Martin's 
 nerve, clapped a pistol to his breast, and 
 threatened to fire unless he would tell which 
 way his master had fled. "Fire away, 
 then," retorted the black, fiercely answering 
 glance for glance, and not receding a hair's 
 breath. 
 
 Tarleton and his men scrupulously re- 
 frained from injuring Jefferson's property. 
 CornwaUis, on the other hand, who encamped 
 on Jefferson's estate of Elk Hill, lying oppo- 
 site Elk Island in the James River, destroyed 
 the growing crops, burned all the barns and 
 fences, carried off — " as was to be expected," 
 
GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA 67 
 
 said Mr. Jefferson — the cattle and horses, 
 and committed the barbarity of killing the 
 colts that were too young to be of service. 
 He carried off, also, about thirty slaves. 
 " Had this been to give them freedom," 
 wrote Jefferson, " he would have done right ; 
 but it was to consign them to inevitable 
 death from the smallpox and putrid fever, 
 then raging in his camp." 
 
 " Some of the miserable wretches crawled 
 home to die," Mr. Randall relates, " and 
 giving information where others lay perishing 
 in hovels or in the open air, by the wayside, 
 these were sent for by their generous master ; 
 and the last moments of all of them were 
 made as comfortable as could be done by 
 proper nursing and medical attendance." 
 
 These dreadful scenes, added to the agita- 
 tion of having twice been obhged, at a mo- 
 ment's notice, to flee from the enemy, to say 
 nothing of the anxieties which she must have 
 endured on her husband's accoimt, were too 
 much for Mrs. Jefferson's already enfeebled 
 constitution. She died on September 6, 
 1782. 
 
68 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 Six slave women who were household ser- 
 vants enjoyed for thirty years a kind of 
 humble distinction at Monticello as " the 
 servants who were in the room when Mrs. 
 Jefferson died ; " and the fact that they 
 were there attests the affectionate relations 
 which must have existed between them and 
 their master and mistress. " They have 
 often told my wife," relates Mr. Bacon, 
 " that when Mrs. Jefferson died they stood 
 around the bed. Mr. Jefferson sat by her, 
 and she gave him directions about a good 
 many things that she wanted done. When 
 she came to the children, she wept, and could 
 not speak for some time. Finally she held 
 up her hand, and, spreading out her four 
 fingers, she told him she could not die happy 
 if she thought her four children were ever to 
 have a stepmother brought in over them. 
 Holding her other hand in his, Mr. Jeffer- 
 son promised her solemnly that he would 
 never marry again ; " and the promise was 
 kept. 
 
 After his wife's death Jefferson sank into 
 what he afterward described as " a stupor of 
 
GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA 69 
 
 mind ; " and even before that he had been, 
 for the first and last time in his life, in a 
 somewhat morbid mental condition. He was 
 an excessively sensitive man, and reflections 
 upon his conduct as governor, during the 
 raids into Virginia by Arnold and Cornwallis, 
 coming at a time when he was overwrought, 
 rankled in his mind. He refused to serve 
 again as governor, and desiring to defend 
 his course when in that office, became a 
 member of the House of Burgesses in 1781, 
 in order that he might answer his critics 
 there ; but not a voice was raised agfainst 
 him. In 1782, he was again elected to the 
 House, but he did not attend ; and both 
 Madison and Monroe endeavored in vain to 
 draw him from his seclusion. To Monroe 
 lie replied : " Before I ventured to declare 
 to my countrymen my determination to re- 
 tire from public employment, I examined 
 well my heart to know whether it were 
 thoroughly cured of every principle of polit- 
 ical ambition, whether no lurking particle 
 remained which might leave me uneasy, when 
 reduced wdthin the limits of mere private 
 
70 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 life. I became satisfied that every fibre of 
 that passion was thoroughly eradicated." 
 
 Jefferson was an impulsive man, — in 
 some respects a creature of the moment ; 
 certainly often, in his own case, mistaking, 
 as a permanent feeling, what was really a 
 transitory impression. His language to 
 Monroe must, therefore, be taken as the 
 sincere deliverance of a man who, at that 
 time, had not the remotest expectation of 
 receiving, or the least ambition to attain, 
 the highest offices in the gift of the Ameri- 
 can people. 
 
VII 
 
 ENVOY AT PARIS 
 
 Two years after his wife's death, namely, 
 in 1784, eTeiferson was chosen by Congress 
 to serve as envoy at Paris, with John Adams 
 and Benjamin Franklin. The appointment 
 came at an opportune moment, when his 
 mind was beginning to recover its tone, and 
 he gladly accepted it. It was deemed neces- 
 sary that the new Confederacy should make 
 treaties with the various governments of 
 Europe, and as soon as the envoys reached 
 Paris, they drew up a treaty such as they 
 hoped might be negotiated. It has been 
 described as " the first serious attempt ever 
 made to conduct the intercourse of nations 
 on Christian principles ; " and, on that ac- 
 count, it failed. To this failure there was, 
 however, one exception. " Old Frederick of 
 Prussia," as Jefferson styled him, " met us 
 
72 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 cordially ; " and with him a treaty was soon 
 concluded. 
 
 In May, 1785, Franklin returned to the 
 United States, and Jefferson was appointed 
 minister. " You replace Dr, Franldin," 
 said the Count of Yergennes when Jefferson 
 announced his appointment. " I succeed, — 
 no one can replace him," was the reply. 
 
 Jefferson's residence in Paris at this criti- 
 cal period was a fortunate occurrence. It 
 would be a mistake to suppose that he de- 
 rived his political principles from France : 
 — he carried them there ; but he was con- 
 firmed in them by witnessing the injustice 
 and misery which resulted to the common 
 people from the monarchical governments of 
 Kurope. To James Monroe he wrote in 
 June, 1785 : " The pleasure of the trip [to 
 Europe] will be less than you expect, but 
 the utility greater. It will make you adore 
 your own country, — its soil, its climate, its 
 equality, laws, people, and manners. My 
 God ! how little do my countrjonen know 
 what precious blessings they are in posses- 
 sion of and which no other people on earth 
 
ENVOY AT PARIS 73 
 
 enjoy ! I confess I had no idea of it my- 
 self." 
 
 To George Wythe he wrote in August, 
 1786 : " Preach, my dear sir, a crusade 
 against ignorance; establish and improve 
 the law for educating the common people. 
 Let our countrymen know that the people 
 alone can protect us against these evils ; and 
 that the tax which will be paid for this pur- 
 pose is not more than the thousandth part 
 of what will be paid to kings, priests, and 
 nobles, who will rise up among us if we 
 leave the people in ignorance." To Madi- 
 son, he wrote in January, 1787 : " This is a 
 goverment of wolves over sheep." Jefferson 
 took the greatest pains to ascertain the con- 
 dition of the laboring classes. In the course 
 of a journey in the south of France, he wrote 
 to Lafayette, begging him to survey the con- 
 dition of the people for himself. "To do 
 it most effectually," he said, " you must be 
 absolutely incognito; you must ferret the 
 people out of their hovels, as I have done ; 
 look into their kettles ; eat their bread ; loll 
 on their beds on pretense of resting your- 
 
74 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 self, but in fact to find if they are soft. 
 You will feel a sublime pleasure in the 
 course of the investigation, and a sublimer 
 one hereafter, when you shall be able to 
 apply your knowledge to the softening of 
 their beds, or the throwing a morsel of meat 
 into their kettle of vegetables." 
 
 These excursions among the French pea- 
 santry, who, as Jefferson well knew, were ruin- 
 ously taxed in order to support an extrava- 
 gant court and an idle and insolent nobility, 
 made him a fierce Republican. " There is 
 not a crowned head in Europe," he wrote to 
 General Washington, in 1788, "whose tal- 
 ents or merits would entitle him to be elected 
 a vestryman by the people of America." 
 
 But for the French race Jefferson had an 
 affinity. He was glad to live with people 
 among whom, as he said, "a man might pass 
 a life without encountering a single rude- 
 ness." He liked their polished manners and 
 gay disposition, their aptitude for science, for 
 philosophy, and for art ; even their wines 
 and cookery suited his taste, and his prefer- 
 ence in this respect was so well known that 
 
ENVOY AT PARIS 75 
 
 Patrick Henry once humorously stigmatized 
 him as " a man who had abjured his native 
 victuals." 
 
 Jefferson's stay in Paris corresponded 
 exactly with the " glorious " period of the 
 French Revolution. He was present at the 
 Assembly of the Notables in 1787, and he 
 witnessed the destruction of the Bastille in 
 1789. 
 
 " The change in this country," he wrote 
 in March, 1789, "is such as you can form 
 no idea of. The frivolities of conversation | 
 have given way entirely to politics. Men, 
 women, and children talk nothing else. ... 
 and mode has acted a wonderful part in the 
 present instance. All the handsome young 
 women, for example, are for the tiers etat^ and 
 this is an army more powerful in France 
 than the 200,000 men of the king." 
 
 The truth is that an intellectual and 
 moral revolution preceded in France the ^ 
 outbreak of the populace. There was an 
 interior conviction that the government of 
 the country was excessively unjust and op- 
 pressive. A love of liberty, a feeling of 
 
76 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 fraternity, a passion for equality moved the 
 intellect and even the aristocracy of France. 
 In this crisis the reformers looked toward 
 America, for the United States had just 
 trodden the path upon which France was 
 entering. " Our proceedings," wrote Jef- 
 ferson to Madison in 1789, "have been 
 viewed as a model for them on every occa- 
 sion. . . . Our [authority] has been treated 
 like that of the Bible, open to explanation, 
 but not to question." 
 
 Jefferson's advice was continually sought 
 by Lafayette and others ; and his house, 
 maintained in the easy, liberal style of Vir- 
 ginia, was a meeting place for the Revolu- 
 tionary statesmen. Jefferson dined at three 
 or four o'clock ; and after the cloth had been 
 removed he and his guests sat over their 
 wine till nine or ten in the evening. 
 
 In July, 1789, the National Assembly 
 appointed a committee to draught a consti- 
 tution, and the committee formally invited 
 the American minister to assist at their ses- 
 sions and favor them with his advice. Tliis 
 function he felt obliged to dechne, as being 
 
ENVOY AT PARIS 77 
 
 inconsistent with his post of minister to the 
 king. No man had a nicer sense of pro- i./ 
 priety than Jefferson ; and he punctiliously 
 observed the requirements of his somewhat 
 difficult situation in Paris. 
 
 What gave Mr. Jefferson the greatest 
 anxiety and trouble, was our relations with 
 the piratical Barbary powers who held the 
 keys of the Mediterranean and sometimes 
 extended their depredations even into the 
 Atlantic. It was a question of paying trib- 
 ute or going to war ; and most of the Euro- 
 pean powers paid tribute. In 1784, for 
 example, the Dutch contributed to "the 
 high, glorious, mighty, and most noble, 
 King, Prince, and Emperor of Morocco," 
 a mass of material which included thirty 
 cables, seventy cannon, sixty-nine masts, 
 twenty-one anchors, fifty dozen sail-needles, 
 twenty-four tons of pitch, two hundred and 
 eighty loaves of sugar, twenty-four China 
 punch-bowls, three clocks, and one "very 
 large watch." 
 
 Jefferson ascertained that the pirates 
 would require of the United States, as the 
 
u 
 
 78 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 price of immunity for its commerce, a trib- 
 ute of about three hundred thousand dollars 
 per annum. " Surely," he wrote home, " our 
 people will not give this. Would it not be 
 better to offer them an equal treaty? If 
 they refuse, why not go to war with them ? " 
 And he pressed upon Mr. Jay, who held the 
 secretaryship of foreign affairs, as the office 
 was then called, the immediate establishment 
 of a navy. But Congress would do nothing ; 
 and it was not till Jefferson himself became 
 President that the Barbary pirates were dealt 
 with in a wholesome and stringent manner. 
 During the whole term of his residence at 
 Paris he was negotiating with the Mediterra- 
 nean powers for the release of unfortunate 
 Americans, many of whom spent the best 
 part of their lives in horrible captivity. 
 
 Mr. Jefferson's self-imposed duties were 
 no less arduous. He kept four colleges in- 
 formed of the most valuable new inventions, 
 discoveries, and books. He had a Yankee 
 talent for mechanical improvements, and he 
 was always on the alert to obtain anything 
 of this nature which he thought might be 
 
ENVOY AT PARIS 79 
 
 useful at home. Jefferson himself, by the 
 way, invented the revolving armchair, the 
 buggy-top, and a mould board for a plough. 
 He bought books for Franklin, Madison, 
 Monroe, Wythe, and himself. He informed 
 one correspondent about Watt's engine, an- 
 other about the new system of canals. He 
 smuggled rice from Turin in his coat pock- 
 ets ; and he was continually dispatching to 
 agricultural societies in America seeds, roots, 
 nuts, and plants. Houdin was sent over by 
 him to make the statue of Washington ; 
 and he forwarded designs for the new capi- 
 tol at Kichmond. For Buffon he procured 
 the skin of an American panther, and also 
 the bones and hide of a New Hampshire 
 moose, to obtain which Governor Sullivan 
 of that State organized a hunting-party in 
 the depth of winter and cut a road through 
 the forest for twenty miles in order to bring 
 out his quarry. 
 
 Jefferson was the most indefatigable of 
 men, and he did not relax in Paris. He 
 had rooms at a Carthusian monastery to 
 which he repaired when he had some special 
 
80 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 work on hand. He kept a carriage and 
 horses, but could not afford a saddle horse. 
 Instead of riding, he took a walk every 
 afternoon, usually of six or seven miles, oc- 
 casionally twice as long. It was while re- 
 turning with a friend from one of these 
 excursions that he fell and fractured his 
 right wrist ; and the fracture was set so im- 
 perfectly that it troubled him ever after- 
 ward. It was characteristic of Jefferson 
 that he said nothing to his friend as to the 
 injury until they reached home, though his 
 suffering from it was great ; and, also, that 
 he at once began to write with the other 
 hand, making numerous entries, on the very 
 night of the accident, in a writing which, 
 though stiff, was, and remains, perfectly 
 clear. 
 
 Mr. Jefferson's two daughters had been 
 placed at a convent school near Paris, and 
 he was surprised one day to receive a note 
 from Martha, the elder, asking his permis- 
 sion to remain in the convent for the rest 
 of her life as a nun. For a day or two she 
 received no answer. Then her father called 
 
ENVOY AT PARIS 81 
 
 in his carriage, and after a short interview 
 with the abbess took his daughters away ; 
 and thenceforth Martha presided, so far as 
 her age permitted, over her father's house- 
 hold. Not a word upon the subject of her 
 request ever passed between them ; and long 
 afterward, in telling the story to her own 
 children, she praised Mr. Jefferson's tact in 
 dealing with what she described as a tran- 
 sient impulse. 
 
 After this incident, Jefferson, thinking y 
 that it was time to take his daughters home, 
 obtained leave of absence for six months; 
 and the little family landed at Norfolk, No- 
 vember 18, 1789. They journeyed slowly 
 homeward, stopping at one friend's house 
 after another, and, two days before Christ- 
 mas, arrived at Monticello, where they were 
 rapturously greeted by the slaves, who took 
 the four horses from the carriage and drew \ 
 it up the steep incline themselves ; and • 
 when he alighted, Mr. Jefferson, in spite of 
 himself, was carried into the house on the 
 arms of his black servants and friends. 
 
VIII 
 
 SECRETARY OF STATE 
 
 Mr. Jefferson had a strong desire to 
 resume his post as minister to France, but 
 he yielded to Washington's earnest request 
 that he should become Secretary of State in 
 the new government. He lingered long 
 enough at MonticeUo to witness the mar- 
 riage of his daughter Martha to Thomas 
 Mann Randolph, and then set out upon a 
 cold, wet journey of twenty-one days, reach- 
 ing New York, which was then the seat of 
 government, late in March, 1790. He hired 
 a small house at No. 57 Maiden Lane, and 
 immediately attacked the arrears of work 
 which had been accumulating for six months. 
 The unusual confinement, aggravated, per- 
 haps, by a homesickness, clearly revealed in 
 his letters, for his daughters and for Monti- 
 cello, brought on what seems to have been a 
 
SECRETARY OF STATE 83 
 
 neuralgic headache which lasted for three 
 weeks. It may have been caused in part 
 by the climate of New York, as to which 
 Mr. Jefferson observed : " Spring and fall 
 they never have, so far as I can learn. They 
 have ten months of winter, two of summer, 
 with some winter days interspersed." But 
 there were other causes beside homesickness 
 and headache which made Jefferson unhappy 
 in his new position. Long afterward he 
 described them as follows : — 
 
 " I had left France in the first year of 
 her Revolution, in the fervor of natural 
 rights and zeal for reformation. My con- 
 scientious devotion to those rights could not 
 be heightened, but it had been aroused and 
 excited by daily exercise. The President 
 received me cordially, and my colleagues 
 and the circle of principal citizens apparently 
 with welcome. The courtesies of dinners 
 given to me, as a stranger newly arrived 
 among them, placed me at once in their fa- 
 miliar society. But I cannot describe the 
 wonder and mortification with which the 
 table conversations filled me. Politics were 
 
84 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 the chief topic, and a preference of kingly 
 over republican government was evidently 
 the favorite sentiment. An apostate I 
 could not be, nor yet a hypocrite ; and I 
 found myself for the most part the only ad- 
 vocate on the republican side of the ques- 
 tion, unless among the guests there chanced 
 to be some member of that party from the 
 legislative houses." 
 
 It must be remembered that Jefferson's 
 absence in France had been the period of 
 the Confederacy, when the inability of Con- 
 gress to enforce its laws and to control the 
 States was so evident and so disastrous that 
 the need of a stronger central government 
 had been impressed on men's minds. The 
 new Constitution had been devised to supply 
 that need, but it was elastic in its terms, and 
 it avoided all details. Should it be construed 
 in an aristocratic or in a democratic spirit, 
 and should the new nation be given an aris- 
 tocratic or a democratic twist ? This was a 
 burning question,' and it gave rise to that 
 long struggle led by Hamilton on one side 
 and by Jefferson on the other, which ended 
 
SECRETARY OF STATE 85 
 
 with the election of Jefferson as President 
 in the year 1800. 
 
 Hamilton and his party utterly disbelieved 
 in government by the people.^ John Adams 
 declared that the English Constitution, bar- 
 ring its element of corruption, was an ideal 
 constitution. Hamilton went farther and 
 asserted that the English form of govern- 
 ment, corruption and all, was the best prac- 
 ticable form. An aristocratic senate, chosen 
 for a long term, if not for life, was thought 
 to be essential even by Mr. Adams. Ham- 
 ilton's notion was that mankind were inca- 
 pable of self-government, and must be gov- 
 erned in one or two ways, — by force or by 
 fraud. Property was, in his view, the ideal 
 basis of government ; and he was inclined to 
 fix the possession of ^' a thousand Spanish 
 dollars " as the proper qualification for a 
 voter. 
 
 The difference between the Hamiltonian 
 and the Jeffersonian view arises chiefly from 
 
 1 The father of Miss Catherine Sedgwick was a lead- 
 ing Federalist, and his daughter records that, though a 
 most kind-hearted man, he habitually spoke of the peo- 
 ple as " Jacobins" and " miscreants." 
 
86 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 a different belief as to the connection between 
 / education and morality. All aristocratic sys- 
 tems must, in the last analysis, be founded 
 either upon brute force or else upon the 
 assumption that education and morality go 
 hand-in-hand, and that the well-to-do and 
 f best educated class is morally superior to the 
 V less educated. Jefferson rejected this as- 
 sumption, and all real believers in democracy 
 must take their stand with him. He once 
 stated his creed upon this point in a letter as 
 follows : - 
 
 "The moral sense or conscience is as 
 much a part of man as his leg..or arm. . . . 
 It may be strengthened by exercise, as may 
 any particular limb of the body. This sense 
 is submitted, indeed, in some degree to the 
 guidance of reason, but it is a small stock 
 which is required for this, even a less one 
 than what we call common sense. State a 
 moral case to a ploughman and a professor. 
 The former will decide it as well and often 
 better than the latter, because he has not 
 been led astray by artificial rules." 
 
 This is sound philosophy. The great prob- 
 
SECRETARY OF STATE 87 
 
 lems in government, whether they relate to 
 matters external or internal, are moral, not 
 intellectual. There - are, indeed, purely in- 
 tellectual problems, such as the question be- 
 tween free silver and a gold standard ; and as 
 to these problems, the people may go wrong. 
 But they are not vital. No nation ever yet 
 achieved glory or incurred destruction by tak- 
 ing one course rather than another in a matter 
 of trade or finance. The crucial questions 
 are moral questions, and experience ,has 
 shown that as to such matters the people 
 can be trusted. As Jefferson himself said, 
 " The will of the majority, the natural law 
 of every society, is the only sure guardian of 
 the rights of man. Perhaps even this may 
 sometimes err ; but its errors are honest, soli- 
 tary, and short-lived." 
 
 Washington's cabinet was made up on the 
 theory that it should represent not the party 
 in power, but both parties, — for two parties 
 already existed, the Federalists and the anti- 
 Federalists, who, under Jefferson's influence, 
 soon became kno\vn by the better name of 
 Republicans. The cabinet consisted oi four 
 
88 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 members, Jefferson, Secretary of State, Ham- 
 ilton, Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Knox, 
 Secretary of War, and Edmund Randolph, 
 Attorney-General. 
 
 Knox sided almost always with Hamilton, 
 and Randolph was an inconstant supporter 
 of Jefferson. Though an able and learned 
 man, he was given to hair-splitting and hesi- 
 tation, and, in allusion to his habit of arguing 
 on one side, but finally voting upon the other, 
 Jefferson once remarked that he usually gave 
 the shell to his friends, and reserved the 
 oyster for his opponents. 
 
 The political opinions of Jefferson and 
 Hamilton were so diametrically opposed that 
 the cabinet was soon torn by dissension. 
 Hamilton was for a strong government, for 
 surrounding the President with pomp and 
 etiquette, for a central authority as against 
 the authority of the States. In pursuance of 
 these ideas, he brought forward his famous 
 measures for assumption of the state debts 
 by the national government, for the fimding 
 of the national debt, and finally for the crea- 
 tion of a national bank. Jefferson opposed 
 
SECRETARY OF STATE 89 
 
 these measures, and, although the assumption 
 and the funding laws had grave faults, and 
 led to speculation, and in the case of many- 
 persons to financial ruin, yet it must be admit- 
 ted that Jefferson never appreciated their 
 merits. 
 
 The truth is that both Hamilton and Jef- 
 ferson were essential to the development of 
 this country ; and the principles of each have 
 been adopted in part, and rejected in part. 
 Hamilton's conception of a central govern- 
 ment predominating over the state govern- 
 ments has been realized, though not nearly 
 to the extent to which he would have carried 
 it. On the other hand, his various schemes 
 for making the government into an aristo- 
 cracy instead of a democracy have all been 
 abandoned, or, like the Electoral College, 
 turned to a use the opposite of what he in- 
 tended. So, Jefferson's view of state rights 
 has not strictly been maintained ; but his 
 fundamental principles of popular govern- 
 ment and popular education have made the 
 United States what it is, and are destined, 
 we hope, when fully developed, to make it 
 something better yet. 
 
90 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 No less an authority than that of Wash- 
 ington, who appreciated the merits of both 
 men, could have kept the peace between 
 them. Hamilton under an assumed name 
 attacked Jefferson in the public prints. Jef- 
 ferson never published a line unsigned ; but 
 he permitted Philip Freneau, who had slight 
 employment as a translator in his depart- 
 ment, and the trifling salary of f 250 a year, 
 to wage war against Hamilton in the gazette 
 which Freneau published ; and he even stood 
 by while Freneau attacked Washington. 
 Washington indeed once gave Jefferson a 
 hint on this subject, which the latter refused 
 to take. " He was evidently sore and warm," 
 wrote Jefferson, " and I took his intention to 
 be that I should interfere in some way with 
 Freneau, perhaps withdraw his appointment 
 of translating clerk to my office. But I will 
 not do it. His paper has saved our consti- 
 tution, which was galloping fast into monar- 
 chy. . . . And the President has not, . . . 
 with his usual good sense and sang froid^ 
 . . . seen that, though some bad things had 
 passed through it to the public, yet the good 
 have predominated immensely." 
 
SECRETARY OF STATE 91 
 
 In the spring of 1792, Jefferson, who had 
 now been two years in office, was extremely 
 anxious to retire, not only because his sit- 
 uation at Washington was unpleasant, but 
 because his affairs at home had been so neg- 
 lected during his long absences that he was 
 in danger of bankruptcy. His estate was 
 large, but it was incumbered by a debt to 
 EngHsh creditors of §13,000. Some years 
 before he had sold for cash a farm near 
 Monticello in order to discharge this debt ; 
 but at that time the Revolutionary war had 
 begun, and the Virginia legislatiu'e passed 
 an act inviting all men owing money to Eng- 
 lish creditors to deposit the same in the state 
 treasury, the State agreeing to pay it over to 
 the English creditors after the war. Jeffer- 
 son accordingly deposited the $13,000 in gold 
 which he had just received. Later, however, 
 this law was rescinded, and the money re- 
 ceived under it was paid back, not in gold, 
 but in paper money of the State, which was 
 then so depreciated as to be almost worth- 
 less. In riding by the farm thus disposed 
 of, Jefferson in after years would sometimes 
 
92 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 point to it and say : " That farm I once sold 
 for an overcoat ; " — the price of the over- 
 coat having been the $13,000 in paper money. 
 Cornwallis, as we have seen, destroyed Jef- 
 ferson's property to an amount more than 
 double this debt, which might be considered 
 as a second payment of it; but Jefferson 
 finally paid it the third time, — and this 
 time into the hands of the actual creditor. 
 Meanwhile, he wrote : " The torment of 
 mind I endure till the moment shall arrive 
 when I shall not owe a shilling on earth is 
 such really as to render life of little value." 
 Urged by all these motives, Jefferson had 
 resolved to resign his office in 1792, not- 
 withstanding the remonstrances of Wash- 
 ington ; but the attacks made upon him by 
 the Federalists, especially those made in the 
 newspapers, were so violent that a retire- 
 ment at that time would have given the pub- 
 lic cause to believe that he had been driven 
 from office by his enemies. Jefferson, 
 therefore, concluded to remain Secretary of 
 State a few months longer ; and those few, 
 as it happened, were the most important of 
 the whole term. 
 
SECRETARY OF STATE 93 
 
 On January 21, 1793, King Louis of 
 France was executed, and within a week 
 thereafter England was at war with the new 
 rulers of the French. Difficult questions at 
 once arose under our treaties with France. 
 The French people thought that we were in 
 honor bound to assist them in their struggle 
 against Great Britain, as they had assisted 
 us ; and they sent over as minister " Citi- 
 zen " Genet, in the frigate L'Embuscade. 
 The frigate, carrying forty gims and three 
 hundred men, sailed into the harbor of 
 Charleston, April 8, 1795, with a hberty-cap 
 for her figure-head, and a British prize in 
 her wake. Citizen Genet, even for a French- 
 man, was a most indiscreet and hot-headed 
 person, and before he had been a week on 
 shore he had issued commissions to priva- 
 teers manned by American citizens. L'Em- 
 buscade then proceeded to Philadelphia, 
 where, as in Charleston, Citizen Genet was 
 welcomed with the utmost enthusiasm. His 
 coming was hailed by the Republicans gener- 
 ally with rapture ; and their cry was for 
 war. " I wish," wrote Jefferson, in a con- 
 
94 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 fidential letter to Monroe, " that we may be 
 able to repress the people within the limits 
 of a fair neutrality." 
 
 This was the position taken also by 
 Washington and the whole cabinet ; and it 
 is a striking example of Jefferson's wisdom, 
 justice, and firmness, that, although the 
 bulk of the Republicans were carried off 
 their feet by sympathy with France and 
 with Genet, he, the very person in the United 
 States who most loved the French and best 
 understood the causes and motives of the 
 French Revolution, withstood the storm, and 
 kept his eye fixed upon the interests of his 
 own country. England, contrary to the 
 treaty which closed the Revolutionary War, 
 still retained her military posts in the west ; 
 and she was the undisputed mistress of the 
 sea. War with her would therefore have 
 been suicidal for the United States. The 
 time for that had not yet come. Moreover, 
 if the United States had taken sides with 
 France, a war with Spain also would inev- 
 itably have followed ; and Spain then held 
 Florida and the mouth of the Mississippi. 
 
SECRETARY OF STATE 95 
 
 Nevertheless, there were different ways of 
 preserving neutrality : there were the offen- 
 sive way and the friendly way. Hamilton, 
 whose extreme bias toward England made 
 him bitter against France, was always for 
 the one ; Jefferson for the other. A single 
 example will suffice as an illustration. M. 
 Genet asked as a favor that the United 
 States should advance an installment of its 
 debt to France. Hamilton advised that the 
 request be refused without a word of expla- 
 nation. Jefferson's opinion was that the 
 request should be granted, if that were law- 
 ful, and if it were found to be unlawful, them 
 that the refusal should be explained. Mr. 
 Jefferson's advice was followed. 
 
 Mr. Jefferson, also, though he firmly with- 
 stood the many illegal and unwarrantable 
 acts attempted by Genet, did so in such a 
 manner as not to lose the friendship of the 
 minister or even a degree of control over 
 him. To Madison Jefferson wrote of Genet : 
 " He renders my position immensely difficult. 
 He does me justice personally ; and giving 
 him time to vent himself and become more 
 
96 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 cool, I am on a footing to advise liim freely, 
 and lie respects it ; but he will break out 
 again on tbe very first occasion." 
 
 Finally Citizen Genet, becoming desper- 
 ate, fitted out one of L'Embuscade's prizes 
 as a frigate to be used against England, 
 which amounted on the part of the United 
 States to a breach of neutrahty ; and being 
 hindered in sending her to sea, he threat- 
 ened to appeal from the President to the 
 people of the United States. Thereupon 
 the question arose, what shall be done with 
 Genet ? and upon this question the cabinet 
 divided with more than usual acrimony. 
 Knox was for sending him out of the coun- 
 try without ceremony ; Hamilton for pub- 
 lishing the whole correspondence between 
 him and the government, with a statement 
 of his proceedings. Jefferson was for send- 
 ins: an account of the affair to the French 
 government, with copies of the correspond- 
 ence, and a request for Genet's recall. 
 Meanwhile the whole country was thrown 
 into a state of tumultuous excitement. There 
 was a riot in Philadelphia ; and even the 
 
SECRETARY OF STATE 97 
 
 sacred character of Wasliington was assailed 
 in prose and verse. 
 
 The President decided to adopt the course 
 proposed by Jefferson; France appointed 
 another minister, and the Genet episode 
 ended by his marriage to a daughter of 
 George Clinton, governor of New York, in 
 which State he lived thereafter as a respect- 
 able citizen and a patron of agriculture. 
 He died in the year 1834. 
 
 The summer of delirium at Philadelphia 
 culminated in the panic and desolation of 
 the yellow fever, and every member of the 
 government fled from the city, Jefferson be- 
 ing the last to depart. 
 
 When, in the next year, the correspond- 
 ence between Genet and Jefferson, and be- 
 tween the English minister and Jefferson, 
 was published, the Secretary was seen to 
 have conducted it on his part with so much 
 ability, discretion, and tact, and with so 
 true a sense of what was due to each nation 
 concerned, that he may be said to have re- 
 tired to his farm in a blaze of glory. 
 
IX 
 
 iHE TWO PAETIES 
 
 When Jefferson at last found himself at 
 Monticello, having resigned his office as 
 Secretary of State, he declared and believed 
 that he had done with politics forever. To 
 various correspondents he wrote as follows : 
 "I think that I shall never take another 
 newspaper of any sort. I find my mind 
 totally absorbed in my rural occupations. 
 . . . No circumtances, my dear sir, will ever 
 more tempt me to engage in anything public. 
 ... I would not give up my retirement for 
 the empire of the universe." 
 
 When Madison wrote in 1795, soliciting 
 him to accept the Republican nomination 
 for the presidency, Mr. Jefferson replied : 
 " The little spice of ambition which I had 
 in my younger days has long since evapo- 
 rated, and I set still less store by a post- 
 humous than present fame. The question 
 
THE TWO PARTIES 99 
 
 is forever closed with me." Nevertheless, 
 within a few months Mr. Jefferson accepted 
 the nomination, chiefly, it isprobable,because, 
 with his usual sagacity, he foresaw that the 
 Republican candidate would be defeated as 
 President, but elected as Vice-President. It 
 must be remembered that at that time the 
 candidate receiving the next to the highest 
 number of electoral votes was declared to be 
 Vice-President ; so that there was always a 
 probability that the presidential candidate 
 of the party defeated would be chosen to the 
 second office. 
 
 There were several reasons why Jefferson 
 would have been glad to receive the office of 
 Vice-President. It involved no disagreeable 
 responsibility ; it called for no great expen- 
 diture of money in the way of entertain- 
 ments ; it carried a good salary ; it required 
 only a few months' residence at Washington. 
 " Mr. Jefferson often told me," remarks 
 Mr. Bacon, " that the office of Vice-President 
 was far preferable to that of President." 
 
 Mr. Jefferson therefore became the Repub- 
 lican nominee for President, and, as he doubt- 
 
100 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 less expected, was elected Vice-President, 
 the vote standing as follows : Adams, 71 ; 
 Jefferson, 68 ; Pinckney, 59 ; Burr, 30. 
 
 It is significant of Mr. Jefferson's high 
 standing in the country that many people 
 believed that he would not deign to accept 
 the office of Vice-President ; and Madison 
 wrote advising him to come to Washington 
 on the 4th of March, and take the oath of 
 office, in order that this belief might be dis- 
 pelled. Jefferson accordingly did so, bring- 
 ing with him the bones of a mastodon, lately 
 discovered, and a little manuscript book writ- 
 ten in his law-student days, marked " Parlia- 
 mentary Pocket-Book." This was the basis 
 of that careful and elaborate " Manual of 
 Parliamentary Practice " which Jefferson left 
 as his legacy to the Senate. 
 
 Upon receiving news of the election Jef- 
 ferson had written to Madison : " If Mr. 
 Adams can be induced to administer the gov- 
 ernment on its true principles, and to relin- 
 quish his bias to an English Constitution, it 
 is to be considered whether it would not be, 
 on the whole, for the public good to come to 
 
THE TWO PARTIES 101 
 
 a good understanding with him as to his . 
 future elections. He is perhaps the only 
 sure barrier against Hamilton's getting in." 
 
 Mr. Adams, indeed, at the outset of his 
 administration, was inclined to be confiden- 
 tial with Mr. Jefferson ; but soon, by one of 
 those sudden turns not infrequent with him, 
 he took a different course, and thenceforth 
 treated the Vice-President with nothing more 
 than bare civility. 
 
 It was a time, indeed, when cordial relations 
 between Federalist and Republican were al- 
 most impossible. In a letter written at this 
 period to Mr. Edward Rutledge, Jefferson 
 said : " You and I have formerly seen warm 
 debates, and high political passions. But 
 (gentlemen of different politics would then 
 speak to each other, and separate the business 
 of the Senate from that of society. It is not 
 so now. Men who have been intimate all 
 their lives cross the street to avoid meeting, 
 and turn their heads another way, lest they 
 should be obliged to touch their hats." 
 
 These party feelings were intensified in the 
 year 1798 by what is known as the X Y Z 
 
102 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 business. Mr. Adams had sent three com- 
 missioners to Paris to negotiate a treaty. 
 Talleyrand, the French Minister for Foreign 
 Affairs, held aloof from them ; but they were 
 informed by certain mysterious agents that 
 a treaty could be had on three conditions, 
 (1) that the President should apologize for 
 certain expressions in his recent message to 
 Congress ; (2) that the United States should 
 loan a large sum of money to the French 
 government ; (3) that a douceur of $25,000 
 should be given to Talleyrand's agents. 
 
 These insulting proposals were indignantly 
 rejected by the commissioners, and being re- 
 ported in this country, they aroused a storm 
 of popular indignation. Preparations for war 
 were made forthwith. General Washing- 
 ton, though in failing health, was appointed 
 commander-in-chief, — the real command be- 
 ing expected to devolve upon Hamilton, who 
 was named second ; men and supplies were 
 voted ; letters of marque were issued, and war 
 actually prevailed upon the high seas. The 
 situation redounded greatly to the advantage 
 of the Federalists, for they were always as 
 
THE TWO PARTIES 103 
 
 eager to go to war with France as they were 
 reluctant to go to war with England. The 
 newly appointed officers were drawn almost, 
 if not quite, without exception from the Fed- 
 eralist party, and Hamilton seemed to be on 
 the verge of that military career which he 
 had long hoped for. He trusted, as his most 
 intimate friend, Gouverneur Morris, said after 
 his death, " that in the changes and chances 
 of time we would be involved in some war 
 which might strengthen our union and nerve 
 our executive." So late as 1802, Hamilton 
 wrote to Morris, " there must be a systematic 
 and persevering endeavor to establish the 
 future of a great empire on foundations much 
 firmer than have yet been devised." At this 
 very time he was negotiating with Miranda 
 and with the British government, his design 
 being to use against Mexico the army raised 
 in expectation of a war with France. 
 
 Hamilton was not the man to overturn 
 the government out of personal ambition, 
 nor even in order to set up a monarchy in 
 place of a republic. But he had convinced 
 himself that the republic must some day fall 
 
104 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 of its own weight. He was always antici- 
 pating a " crisis," and this word is repeated 
 over and over again in his correspondence. 
 It even occurs in the crucial sentence of that 
 pathetic document which he wrote on the eve 
 of his fatal duel. When the " crisis " came, 
 Hamilton meant to be on hand ; and, if pos- 
 sible, at the head of an army. 
 
 However, the X Y Z affair ended peace- 
 fully. The warlike spirit shown by the people 
 of the United States had a wholesome effect 
 upon the French government ; and at their 
 suggestion new envoys were sent over by the 
 President, by whom a treaty was negotiated. 
 This wise and patriotic act upon the part of 
 Mr. Adams was a benefit to his country, but 
 it aroused the bitter anger of the Federalists 
 and ruined his position in that party. 
 
 But what was Mr. Jefferson's attitude 
 during this business ? He was not for war, 
 and he contended that a distinction should 
 be made between the acts of Talleyrand and 
 his agents, and the real disposition of the 
 French people. He wrote as follows ; " In- 
 experienced in such manoeuvres, the people 
 
THE TWO PARTIES 105 
 
 did not permit themselves even to suspect 
 that the turpitude of private swindlers might 
 mingle itself unobserved, and give its own 
 hue to the communications of the French 
 government, of whose participation there was 
 neither proof nor probability." And again: 
 " But as I view a peace between France and 
 England the ensuing winter to be certain, 
 I have thought it would have been better for 
 us to have contrived to bear from France 
 through the present summer what we have 
 been bearing both from her and from Eng- 
 land these four years, and still continue to 
 bear from England, and to have required in- 
 demnification in the hour of peace, when, I 
 firmly believe, it woidd have been yielded 
 by both." 
 
 But this is bad political philosophy. A 
 nation cannot obtain justice by submitting 
 to wrongs or insults even for a time. Jef- 
 ferson himself had written long before : "I ^'' 
 think it is our interest to punish the first 
 insult, because an insult unpunished is the 
 parent of many others." It is possible that 
 he was misled at this juncture by his liking 
 
106 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 for France, and by his dislike of the Feder- 
 alists and of their British proclivities. It is 
 true that the bribe demanded by Talley- 
 rand's agents might be considered, to use 
 Mr. Jefferson's words, as " the turpitude of 
 private swindlers ; " but the demand for a 
 loan and for a retraction could be regarded 
 only as national acts, being acts of the 
 French government, although the bulk of 
 the French people might repudiate them. 
 
 Whether Jefferson was right or wrong in 
 the position which he took, he maintained it 
 with superb self-confidence and aplomb. For 
 the moment, the Federalists had everything 
 their own way. They carried the election. 
 Hamilton's oft-anticipated " crisis " seemed 
 to have arrived at last. But Jefferson coolly 
 waited till the storm should blow over. " Our 
 countrymen," he wrote to a friend, " are es- 
 sentially Republicans. They retain unadul- 
 terated the principles of '76, and those who 
 are conscious of no change in themselves 
 have nothing to fear in the long run." 
 
 And so it proved. The ascendency of 
 the Federalists was soon destroyed, and de- 
 
THE TWO PARTIES' 107 
 
 stroyed forever, by the political crimes and 
 follies which they committed ; and especially 
 by the alien and sedition laws. The reader 
 need hardly be reminded that the alien law 
 gave the President authority to banish from 
 the country "all such aliens as lie should 
 judge dangerous to the peace and safety 
 of the United States," — a despotic power 
 which no king of England ever possessed. 
 The sedition act made it a crime, punishable 
 by fine and imprisonment, to speak or write 
 anything " false, scandalous, and malicious," 
 with intent to excite against either House of 
 Congress or against the President, " the hatred 
 of the good people of the United States." 
 It can readily be seen what gross oppression 
 was possible under this elastic law, inter- 
 preted by judges who, to a man, were mem- 
 bers of the Federal party. Matthew Lyon, of 
 Vermont, ventured to read aloud at a politi- 
 cal meeting a letter which he had received 
 expressing astonishment that the President's 
 recent address to the House of Representa- 
 tives had not been answered by "an order 
 to send him to a mad-house." For this Mr. 
 
108 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 Lyon was fined $1,000, and imprisoned in a 
 veritable dungeon. 
 
 These unconstitutional and un-American 
 laws were vigorously opposed by Jefferson 
 and Madison. In October, 1798, Jefferson 
 wrote : " For my own part I consider those 
 laws as merely an experiment on the Ameri- 
 can mind to see how far it will bear an 
 avowed violation of the Constitution. If 
 this goes down, we shall immediately see 
 attempted another act of Congress declaring 
 that the President shall continue in office 
 during life, reserving to another occasion 
 the transfer of the succession to his heirs, 
 and the establishment of the Senate for 
 life. " 
 
 Jefferson also prepared the famous Ken- 
 tucky resolutions, which were adopted by 
 the legislature of that State, — the author- 
 ship, however, being kept secret till Jeffer- 
 son avowed it, twenty years later. These 
 much-discussed resolutions have been said 
 to have originated the doctrine of nullifica- 
 tion, and to contain that principle of seces- 
 sion upon which the South acted in 1861. 
 
THE TWO PARTIES 109 
 
 They may be summed up roughly as fol- 
 lows : The source of all political power is in 
 the people. The people have, by the compact 
 known as the Constitution, granted certain 
 specified powers to the federal government ; 
 all other powers, if not granted to the sev- 
 eral state governments, are retained by the 
 people. The alien and sedition laws assume 
 the exercise by the federal government of 
 powers not granted to it by the Constitu- 
 tion. They are therefore void. 
 
 Thus far there can be no question that 
 Jefferson's argument was sound, and its 
 soundness would not be denied, even at the 
 present day. But the question then arose : 
 what next? May the laws be disregarded 
 and disobeyed by the States or by individu- 
 als, or must they be obeyed until some com- 
 petent authority has pronounced them void ? 
 and if so, what is that authority ? We un- 
 derstand now that the Supreme Court has 
 sole authority to decide upon the constitu- 
 tionality of the acts of Congress. It was so 
 held, for the first time, in the year 1803, in 
 the case of Marbury v. Madison, by Chief 
 
no THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 Justice Marshall and his associates ; and that 
 decision, though resisted at the time, has 
 long been accepted by the country as a 
 whole. But this case did not arise until 
 several years after the Kentucky Resolutions 
 were written. Moreover, Marshall was an 
 extreme Federalist, and his view was by no 
 means the commonly accepted view. Jeffer- 
 son scouted it. He protested all his life 
 against the assumj)tion that the Supreme 
 Court, a body of men appointed for life, and 
 thus removed from all control by the peo- 
 ple, should have the enormous power of con- 
 struing the Constitution and of passing upon 
 the validity of national laws. In a letter 
 written in 1804, he said: "You seem to 
 think it devolved on the judges to decide 
 the validity of the sedition law. But no- 
 thing in the Constitution has given them a 
 right to decide for the executive more than 
 the executive to decide for them. But the 
 opinion which gives to the judges the right 
 to decide what laws are constitutional and 
 what not — not only for themselves in their 
 own sphere of action, but for the legislature 
 
THE TWO PARTIES 111 
 
 and executive also in their spheres — would 
 make the judiciary a despotic branch." i 
 
 In the Kentucky resolutions, Jefferson 
 argued, first, that the Constitution was a 
 compact between the States; secondly, that 
 no person or body had been appointed by 
 the Constitution as a common judge in re- 
 spect to questions arising under the Consti- 
 tution between any one State and Congress, 
 or between the people and Congress ; and 
 thirdly, " as in all other cases of compact 
 among powers having no common judge, 
 each party has an equal right to judge for 
 itself, as well of infractions as of the mode 
 and measure of redress." It was open to 
 him to take this view, because it had not 
 yet been decided that the Supreme Court 
 was the " common judge " appointed by the 
 Constitution ; and the Constitution itself 
 
 ^ Abraham Lincoln said in his first inaugural address : 
 — "But if the policy of the government upon a vital 
 question affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably 
 fixed by the decisions of the Supreme Court, the moment 
 they are made, the people will cease to be their own 
 masters ; having to that extent resigned their govern- 
 ment into the hands of that eminent tribunal." 
 
112 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 was not explicit upon the point. Moreover, 
 the laws in question had not been passed 
 upon by the Supreme Court, — they expired 
 by limitation before that stage was reached. 
 
 It must be admitted, then, that the Ken- 
 tucky resolutions do contain the principles 
 of nullification. But at the time when they 
 were written, nullification was a permissible 
 doctrine, because it was not certainly ex- 
 cluded by the Constitution. In 1803, as we 
 have seen, the Constitution was interpreted 
 by the Supreme Court as excluding this 
 doctrine ; and that decision having been re- 
 affirmed repeatedly, and having been acqui- 
 esced in by the nation for fifty years, may 
 fairly be said to have become by the year 
 1861 the law of the land. 
 
 Jefferson, however, by no means intend.ed 
 to push matters to their logical conclusion. 
 His resolutions were intended for moral 
 effect, as he explained in the following let- 
 ter to Madison : — 
 
 " I think we should distinctly affirm all 
 the important principles they contain, so as 
 to hold to that ground in future, and leave 
 
' THE TWO PARTIES 113 
 
 the matter in such a train that we may not 
 be committed absolutely to push the matter 
 to extremities, and yet may be free to push 
 as far as events will render prudent." 
 
 As to the charge that the Kentucky Keso- 
 lutions imply the doctrine of secession, as 
 well as that of nullification, it has no basis. 
 The two doctrines do not stand or fall to- 
 gether. There is nothing in the resolutions 
 which implies the right of secession. Jeffer- 
 son, like most Americans of his day, contem- 
 plated with indifference the possibility of an 
 ultimate separation of the region beyond the 
 Mississippi from the United States. But 
 nobody placed a higher value than he did on 
 what he described " as our union, the last 
 anchor of our hope, and that alone which is 
 to prevent this heavenly country from becom- 
 ing an arena of gladiators." 
 
X 
 
 PRESIDENT JEFFERSON 
 
 For tlie presidential election of 1800, 
 Adams was again the candidate on the Fed- 
 eral side, and Jefferson on the Republican 
 side. Jefferson, by interviews, by long and 
 numerous letters, by the commanding force 
 of his own intellect and character, had at 
 last welded the anti-Federal elements into a 
 compact and disciplined Republican party. 
 The contest was waged with the utmost bit- 
 terness, and especially with bitterness against 
 Jefferson. For this there were several causes. 
 Jefferson had deeply offended two powerful 
 classes in Virginia, the old aristocratic and 
 Tory element, and — excluding the dissent- 
 ers — the religious element ; the former, by 
 the repeal of the law of entail, and the latter 
 by the statute for freedom of religion in Vir- 
 ginia. These were among the most meri- 
 torious acts of his life, but they produced an 
 
PRESIDENT JEFFERSON 115 
 
 intense enmity which lasted till his death 
 and even beyond his death. Jefferson, also, 
 though at times over-cautious, was at times 
 rash and indiscreet, and the freedom of his 
 comments upon men and measures often got 
 him into trouble. His career will be mis- 
 understood unless it is remembered that he 
 was an impulsive man. His judgments were 
 intuitive, and though usually correct, yet 
 sometimes hasty and ill-considered. 
 
 Above all, Jefferson was both for friends 
 and foes the embodiment of Republicanism. 
 He represented those ideas which the Feder- 
 alists, and especially the New England law- 
 yers and clergy, really believed to be subver- 
 sive of law and order, of government and 
 religion. To them he figured as " a fanatic 
 in politics, and an atheist in religion ; " and 
 they were so disposed to believe everything 
 bad of him that they swallowed whole the 
 worst slanders which the political violence 
 of the times, far exceeding that of the pre- 
 sent day, could invent. We have seen with 
 what tenderness Jefferson treated his wid- 
 owed sister, Mrs. Carr, and her children. 
 
116 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 It was In reference to this very family that 
 the Rev. Mr. Cotton Mather Smith, of Con- 
 necticut, declared that Jefferson had gained 
 his estate by robbery, namely, by robbing a 
 widow and her children of £10,000, "all of 
 which can be proved." 
 
 Jefferson, as we have said, was a deist. 
 He was a religious man and a daily reader 
 of the Bible, far less extreme in his notions, 
 less hostile to orthodox Christianity than 
 John Adams. Nevertheless, — partly, per- 
 haps, because he had procured the disestab- 
 lishment of the Virginia Church, partly on 
 account of his scientific tastes and his lik- 
 ing for French notions, — the Federalists 
 had convinced themselves that he was a vio- 
 lent atheist and anti-Christian. It was a 
 humorous saying of the time that the old 
 women of New England hid their Bibles in 
 the well when Jefferson's election in 1800 
 became known. 
 
 The vote was as follows : — Jefferson, 73, 
 Burr, 73 ; Adams, 65 ; C. C. Pinckney, 64 ; 
 Jay, 1. There being a tie between Jefferson 
 and Burr, the Republican candidate for 
 
PRESIDENT JEFFERSON 117 
 
 Vice-President, the election was thrown 
 into the House of Kepresentatives, voting by 
 States. In that House the Federalists were 
 in the majority, but they did not have a ma- 
 jority by States. They could not, therefore, 
 elect Adams ; but it was possible for them 
 to make Burr President instead of Jefferson. 
 At first, the leaders were inclined to do 
 this, some believing that Burr's utter want 
 of principle was less dangerous than the per- 
 nicious principles which they ascribed to 
 Jefferson, and others thinking that Burr, if 
 elected by Federal votes, would pursue a 
 Federal policy. It was feared that Jefferson 
 would wipe out the national debt, abolish 
 the navy, and remove every Federal office- 
 holder in the land. He was approached from 
 many quarters, and even President Adams 
 desired him to give some intimation of his 
 intended policy on these points, but Jeffer- 
 son firmly refused. 
 
 As to one such interview, with Gouverneur 
 Morris, Jefferson wrote afterward : " I told 
 him that I should leave the world to judge 
 of the course I meant to pursue, by that 
 
118 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 which I had pursued hitherto, believing it 
 to be my duty to be passive and silent dur- 
 ing the present scene ; that 1 should certainly 
 make no terms ; should never go into the 
 office of President by capitulation, nor with 
 my hands tied by any conditions which 
 would hinder me from pursuing the measures 
 which I should deem for the public good." 
 
 The Federalists had a characteristic plan : 
 they proposed to pass a law devolving the 
 Presidency upon the chairman of the Senate, 
 in case the office of President should become 
 vacant ; and this vacancy they would be able 
 to bring about by prolonging the election 
 until Mr. Adams's term of office had expired. 
 The chairman of the Senate, a Federalist, of 
 course, would then become President. This 
 scheme Jefferson and his friends were pre- 
 pared to resist by force. " Because," as he 
 afterward explained, "that precedent once 
 set, it would be artificially reproduced, and 
 would soon end in a dictator." 
 
 Hamilton, to his credit, be it said, strongly 
 advocated the election of Jefferson ; and 
 finally, through the action of Mr. Bayard, 
 
PRESIDENT JEFFERSON 119 
 
 of Delaware, a leading Federalist, who had 
 sounded an intimate friend of Mr. Jefferson 
 as to his views upon the points already men- 
 tioned, Mr. Jefferson was elected President, 
 and the threatening civil war was averted. 
 
 Mr. Adams, who was deeply chagrined by 
 his defeat, did not attend the inaugura- 
 tion of his successor, but left Washinaton 
 in his carriage, at sunrise, on the fourth of 
 March ; and Jefferson rode on horseback to 
 the Capitol, unattended, and dismounting 
 fastened his horse to the fence with his own 
 hands. The inaugural address, brief, and 
 beautifully worded, surprised most of those 
 who heard it by the moderation and liberality 
 of its tone. " Let us," said the new Presi- 
 dent, " restore to social intercourse that har- 
 mony and affection without which liberty, 
 and even life itself, are but dreary things." 
 
 Jefferson served two terms, and he was 
 succeeded first by Madison, and then by 
 Monroe, both of whom were his friends and 
 disciples, and imbued with his ideas. They, 
 also, were reelected. For twenty-four years, 
 therefore, Jefferson and Jeffersonian Pe- 
 
120 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 mocracy predominated in the government of 
 the United States, and the period was an 
 exceedingly prosperous one. Not one of the 
 dismal forebodings of the Federalists was 
 fulfilled ; and the practicability of popular 
 government was proved. 
 
 The first problem with which Jefferson 
 had to deal was that of appointments to 
 office. The situation was much like that 
 which afterward confronted President Cleve- 
 land when he entered upon his first term, — 
 that is, every place was filled by a member 
 of the party opposed to the new administra- 
 tion. The principle which Mr. Jefferson 
 adopted closely resembles that afterward 
 adopted by Mr. Cleveland, namely, no office- 
 holder was to be displaced on account of his 
 political belief ; but if he acted aggressively 
 in politics, that was to be sufficient ground 
 for removal. " Electioneering activity " was 
 the phrase used in Mr. Jefferson's time, and 
 "offensive partisanship" in Mr. Cleveland's. 
 
 The following letter from President Jef- 
 ferson to the Secretary of the Treasury will 
 show how the rule was construed by him ; — 
 
PRESIDENT JEFFERSON 121 
 
 " The allegations against Pope [collector] 
 of New Bedford are insufficient. Although 
 meddling in political caucuses is no part of 
 that freedom of personal suffrage which 
 ought to be allowed him, yet his mere pre- 
 sence at a caucus does not necessarily in- 
 volve an active and official influence in oppo- 
 sition to the government which employs 
 Mm." 
 
 There were some lapses, but, on the whole, 
 Mr. Jefferson's rule was adhered to ; and it 
 is difficult to say whether he received more 
 abuse from the Federalists on account of the 
 removals which he did make, or from a fac- 
 tion in his own party on account of the 
 removals which he refused to make. 
 
 His principle was thus stated in a letter : 
 " If a due participation of office is a matter 
 of right, how are vacancies to be obtained ? 
 Those by death are few ; by resignation, 
 none. ... It would have been to me a 
 circumstance of great relief, had I found a 
 moderate participation of office in the hands 
 of the majority. I should gladly have left 
 to time and accident to raise them to their 
 
122 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 just share. But their total exclusion calls 
 for prompter corrections. I shall correct 
 the procedure ; but that done, disdain to 
 follow it. I shall return with joy to that 
 state of things when the only questions con- 
 f cerning a candidate shall, be, Is he honest? 
 Is he capable ? Is he faithful to the Con- 
 stitution ? " 
 
 The ascendency of Jefferson and of the 
 Republican party produced a great change 
 in the government and in national feeling, 
 but it was a change the most important part 
 of which was intangible, and is therefore 
 hard to describe. It was such a change as 
 takes place in the career of an individual, 
 when he shakes off some controlling force, 
 and sets up in life for himself. The common 
 people felt an independence, a pride, an elan^ 
 which sent a thrill of vigor through every 
 department of industry and adventure. 
 / The simplicity of the forms which Presi- 
 dent Jefferson adopted were a symbol to the 
 I national imagination of the change which 
 / had taken place. He gave up the royal cus- 
 tom of levees ; he stopped the celebration 
 
PRESIDENT JEFFERSON 123 
 
 of the President's birthday ; he substituted 
 a written message for the speech to Con- 
 gress delivered in person at the Capitol, and 
 the reply by Congress, delivered in person 
 at the White House. The President's resi- 
 dence ceased to be called the Palace. He 
 cut down the army and navy. He intro- 
 duced economy in all the departments of the 
 government, and paid off thirty-three mil-; . 
 lions of the national debt. He procured the! 
 abolition of internal taxes and the repeal of I '^ 
 the bankruptcy law — two measures which j ( 
 greatly decreased his own patronage, and / 1 
 which called forth John Randolph's enco-j \ 
 mium long afterward : " I have never seen \ j 
 but one administration which seriously and ' 
 in good faith was disposed to give up its 
 patronage, and was willing to go farther 
 than Congress or even the people themselves 
 . . . desired; and that was the first ad- 
 ministration of Thomas Jefferson." 
 
 The two most important measures of the 
 first administration were, however, the re- 
 pression of the Barbary pirates and the 
 acquisition of Louisiana. Mr. Jefferson's 
 
124 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 ineffectual efforts, while he was minister to 
 France, to put down by force Mediterranean 
 piracy have already been rehearsed. During 
 Mr. Adams's term, two million dollars were 
 expended in bribing the bucaneers. One 
 item in the account was as follows, " A frig- 
 ate to carry thirty-six guns for the Dey of 
 Algiers ; " and this frigate went crammed 
 with a hundred thousand dollars' worth of 
 powder, lead, timber, rope, canvas, and other 
 means of piracy. One hundred and twenty- 
 two captives came home in that year, 1796, 
 of whom ten had been held in slavery for 
 eleven years. 
 
 Jefferson's first important act as President 
 was to dispatch to the Mediterranean three 
 frigates and a sloop-of-war to overawe the 
 pirates, and to cruise in protection of Ameri- 
 can commerce. Thus began that series of 
 events which finally rendered the commerce 
 of the world as safe from piracy in the 
 Mediterranean as it was in the British chan- 
 nel. How brilliantly Decatur and his gallant 
 comrades carried out this policy, and how at 
 last the tardy naval powers of Europe fol- 
 
PRESIDENT JEFFERSON 125 
 
 lowed an example which they ought to have 
 set, every one is supposed to know. 
 
 The second. important event was the acqui- j^J^^v^vlo 
 sition of Louisiana. Louisiana meant the ' ^'^ 
 
 whole territory from the Mississippi River to 
 the Pacific Ocean, embracing about one mil- 
 lion square miles. All this region belonged 
 to Spain by right of discovery ; and early 
 in the year 1801 news came from the Ameri- 
 can minister at Paris that Spain had ceded 
 or was about to cede it to France. The 
 Spanish ownership of the mouth of the Mis- 
 sissippi had long been a source of annoyance 
 to the settlers on the Mississippi River ; and 
 it had begun to be felt that the United States 
 must control New Orleans at least. If this 
 vast territory should come into the hands of 
 France, and Napoleon should colonize it, as 
 was said to be his intention, — France then 
 being the greatest power in Europe, — the 
 United States would have a powerful rival on 
 its borders, and in control of a seaport abso- 
 lutely necessary for its commerce. We can 
 see this now plainly enough, but even so able 
 a man as Mr. Livingston, the American 
 
126 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 minister at Paris, did not see it then. On 
 the contrary, he wrote to the government at 
 Washington :"...! have, however, on all 
 occasions, declared that as long as France 
 conforms to the existing treaty between us 
 and Spain, the government of the United 
 States does not consider itself as having any 
 interest in opposing the exchange." 
 
 Mr. Jefferson's very different view was 
 expressed in the following letter to Mr. 
 Livingston : " . . . France, placing herself 
 in that door, assumes to us the attitude of 
 defiance. Spain might have retained it quietly 
 for years. Her pacific disposition, her feeble 
 state would induce her to increase our facili- 
 ties there. . . . Not so can it ever be in the 
 hands of France ; the impetuosity of her 
 temper, the energy and restlessness of her 
 character, placed in a point of eternal fric- 
 tion with us and our character, which, 
 though quiet and loving peace and the pur- 
 suit of wealth, is high-minded, despising 
 wealth in competition with insult or injury, 
 enterprising and energetic as any nation on 
 earth, — these circumstances render it im- 
 
PRESIDENT JEFFERSON 127 
 
 possible that France and the United States 
 can continue long friends when they meet 
 in so irritable a position. . . . The day that 
 France takes possession of New Orleans fixes 
 the sentence which is to restrain her forever 
 within her low-water mark. . . . From that 
 moment we must marry ourselves to the 
 British fleet and nation." 
 
 Thus, at a moment's notice, and in obedi- 
 ence to a vital change in circumstance, Jef- 
 ferson threw aside the policy of a lifetime, 
 suppressed his liking for France and his dis- 
 like for England, and entered upon that 
 radically new course which, as he foresaw, 
 the interests of the United States would re- 
 quire. 
 
 Livingston, thus primed, began negotia- 
 tions for the purchase of New Orleans ; and 
 Jefferson hastily dispatched Monroe, as a 
 special envoy, for the same purpose, armed, 
 it is supposed, with secret verbal instructions, 
 to buy, if possible, not only New Orleans, 
 but the whole of Louisiana. Monroe had 
 not a word in writing to show that in pur- 
 chasing Louisiana — if the act should be 
 
.128 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 repudiated by the nation — he did not ex- 
 ceed his instructions. But, as Mr. Henry 
 
 1 Adams remarks, " Jefferson's friends always 
 
 Urusted him perfectly." 
 
 The moment was most propitious, for 
 England and France were about to close in 
 that terrific struggle which ended at Water- 
 loo, and Napoleon was desperately in need of 
 money. After some hagghng the bargain 
 was concluded, and, for the very moderate 
 sum of fifteen million dollars, the United 
 States became possessed of a territory which 
 more than doubled its area. 
 
 The purchase of Louisiana was confessedly 
 an unconstitutional, or at least an extra-con- 
 stitutional act, for the Constitution gave no 
 authority to the President to acquire new 
 territory, or to pledge the credit of the 
 United States in payment. Jefferson him- 
 self thought that the Constitution ought to 
 be amended in order to make the purchase 
 legal ; but in this he was overruled by his 
 advisers. 
 
 Thus, Jefferson's first administration ended 
 with a brilliant achievement ; but this public 
 
PRESIDENT JEFFERSON 129 
 
 glory was far more than outweighed by a pri- 
 vate loss. The President's younger daugh- 
 ter, Mrs. Eppes, died in April, 1804 ; and 
 in a letter to his old friend, John Page, 
 he said : " Others may lose of their abun- 
 dance, but I, of my wants, have lost even 
 the half of all I had. My evening prospects 
 now hang on the slender thread of a single 
 life. Perhaps I may be destined to see even 
 this last cord of parental affection broken. 
 The hope with which I have looked forward 
 to the moment when, resigning pubhc cares 
 to younger hands, I was to retire to that 
 domestic comfort from which the last great 
 step is to be taken, is fearfully blighted.'* 
 
XI 
 
 SECOND PRESIDENTIAL TERM 
 
 The purchase of Louisiana increased Jef- 
 ferson's popularity, and in 1805, at the age 
 of sixty-two, he was elected to his second term 
 as President by an overwhelming majority. 
 Even Massachusetts was carried by the Ke- 
 publicans, and the total vote in the electoral 
 college stood : 162 for Jefferson and Clin- 
 ton ; 14 for C. C. Pinckney and Rufus 
 King, the Federal candidates. 
 
 This result was due in part to the fact 
 that Jefferson had stolen the thunder of the 
 Federalists. His Louisiana purchase, though 
 bitterly opposed by the leading Federalists, 
 who were blinded by their hatred of the 
 President, was far more consonant with Fed- 
 eral than with Republican principles ; and in 
 his second inaugural address Jefferson went 
 even farther in the direction of a strong cen- 
 tral government, for he said : " Redemption 
 
SECOND PRESIDENTIAL TERM 131 
 
 once effected, the revenue thereby liberated 
 may, by a just repartition among the States, 
 and a corresponding amendment of the Con- 
 stitution, be applied in time of peace to 
 rivers, canals, roads, arts, manufactures, edu- 
 cation, and other great objects within each 
 State. In time of war, . . . aided by other 
 measures reserved for that crisis, it may meet 
 within the year all the expenses of the year 
 without encroaching on the rights of future 
 generations by burdening them with the debts 
 of the past." 
 
 This proposal flatly contradicted what the 
 President had said in his first inaugural ad- 
 dress, and was in strange contrast with his 
 criticism made years before upon a similar 
 Federal scheme of public improvement, that 
 the mines of Peru would not supply the 
 moneys which would be wasted on this ob- 
 ject. In later years, after his permanent 
 retirement to Monticello, Jefferson seems to 
 have reverted to his earlier views, and he 
 condemned the measures of John Quincy 
 Adams for making public improvements with 
 national funds. 
 
132 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 But tlie President was no longer to enjoy 
 a smooth course. One domestic affair gave 
 him much annoyance, and our foreign rela- 
 tions were a continual source of anxiety and 
 mortification. 
 
 Aaron Burr had been a brilliant .soldier 
 of the Revolution, a highly successful lawyer 
 and politician, and finally, during Mr. Jef- 
 ferson's first administration, Vice-President 
 of the United States. But in the year 1805 
 he found himseK, owing to a complication of 
 causes, most of which, however, could be 
 traced to his own moral defects, a bankrupt 
 in reputation and in purse. Such being his 
 condition, he applied to the President for 
 a foreign appointment ; and Mr. Jefferson 
 very properly refused it, frankly explaining 
 that Burr, whether justly or unjustly, had 
 lost the confidence of the public. 
 
 Burr took this rebuff with the easy good- 
 humor which characterized him, dined with 
 the President a few days later, and then 
 started westward to carry out a scheme which 
 he had been preparing for a year. His plans 
 were so shrouded in mystery that it is diffi- 
 
SECOND PRESIDENTIAL TERM 133 
 
 cult to say exactly what they were, but it is 
 certain that he contemplated an expedition 
 against Mexico, with the intention of mak- 
 ins: himself the ruler of that country ; and 
 it is possible that he hoped to capture New 
 Orleans, and, after dividing the United 
 States, to annex the western half to his 
 Mexican empire. Burr had got together a 
 small supply of men and arms, and he floated 
 down the Ohio, gathering recruits as he went. 
 Jefferson, with his usual good sense, per- 
 ceived the futility of Burr's designs, which 
 were based upon a false belief as to the want 
 of loyalty among the western people ; but he 
 took all needful precautions. General Wil- 
 kinson was ordered to protect New Orleans, 
 Burr's proceedings were denounced by a 
 proclamation, and finally Burr himself was 
 arrested in Alabama, and brought to Rich- 
 mond for trial. 
 
 The trial at once became a political affair, 
 the Federahsts, to spite the President, mak- 
 ing Burr's cause their own, though he had 
 killed Alexander Hamilton but three years 
 before, and pretending to regard him as an 
 
134 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 innocent man persecuted by the President 
 for political reasons. Jefferson himself took 
 a hand in the prosecution to the extent of 
 writing letters to the district attorney full of 
 advice and suggestions. It would have been 
 more dignified had he held aloof, but the 
 provocation which he received was very great. 
 Burr and his counsel used every possible 
 means of throwing odium upon the President ; 
 and in this they were assisted by Chief 
 Justice Marshall, who presided at the trial. 
 Marshall, though in the main a just man, 
 was bitterly opposed to Jefferson in political 
 affairs, and in this case he harshly blamed 
 the executive for not procuring evidence with 
 a celerity which, under the circumstances, 
 was impossible. He also summoned the 
 President into court as a witness. The Presi- 
 dent, however, declined to attend, and the 
 matter was not pressed. Burr was acquitted, 
 chiefly on technical grounds. 
 
 The Burr affair, however, was but a trifle 
 compared with the difficulties arising from 
 our relations with England. That country 
 had always asserted over the United States 
 
SECOND PRESIDENTIAL TERM 135 
 
 the right of impressment, a right, namely, to 
 search American ships, and to take therefrom 
 any Englishmen found among the crew. In 
 many cases, EngHshmen who had been natu- 
 ralized in the United States were thus taken. 
 This alleged right had always been denied 
 by the United States, and British persever- 
 ance in it finally led to the war of 1812. 
 
 Another source of contention was the neu- 
 tral trade. During the European wars in 
 the early part of the century the seaport 
 towns of the United States did an immense 
 and profitable business in carrying goods to 
 European ports, and from one European port 
 to another. Great Britain, after various 
 attempts to discourage American commerce 
 with her enemies, undertook to put it down 
 by confiscating vessels of the United States 
 on the ground that their cargoes were not 
 neutral but belligerent property, — the pro- 
 perty, that is, of nations at war with Great 
 Britain. And, no doubt, in some cases this 
 was the fact, — foreign merchandise having 
 been imported to this country to get a neu- 
 tral name for it, and thence exported to a 
 
136 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 country to which it could not have been 
 shipped directly from its place of origin. In 
 April, 1806, the President dispatched Mr. 
 Monroe to London in order, if possible, to 
 settle these disputed matters by a treaty. 
 Monroe, in conjunction with Mr. Pinckney, 
 our minister to England, sent back a treaty 
 which contained no reference whatever to 
 the matter of impressments. It was the best 
 treaty which they could obtain, but it was 
 silent upon this vital point. 
 
 The situation was a perilous one ; Eng- 
 land had fought the battle of Trafalgar the 
 year before ; and was now able to carry 
 everything before her upon the high seas. 
 Nevertheless, the President's conduct was 
 bold and prompt. The treaty had been ne- 
 gotiated mainly by his own envoy and friend, 
 Monroe, and great pressure was exerted in 
 favor of it, — especially by the merchants 
 and shipowners of the east. But Jefferson 
 refused even to lay it before the Senate, 
 and at once sent it back to England. His 
 position, and history has justified it, was 
 that to accept a treaty which might be con- 
 
SECOND PRESIDENTIAL TERM 137 
 
 strued as tacitly admitting the right of im- 
 pressment would be a disgrace to the coun- 
 try. The other questions at issue were more 
 nearly legal and technical, but this one 
 touched the national honor ; and with the 
 same right instinct which Jefferson showed 
 in 1807, the people of the United States, 
 five years later, fixed upon this grievance, 
 out of the fog in which diplomacy had en- 
 veloped our relations with England, as the 
 true and sufficient cause of the war of 1812. 
 
 Nevertheless, Jefferson treated Monroe 
 with the greatest consideration. At this 
 period Monroe and Madison were both 
 candidates for the Republican nomination 
 for the presidency. Jefferson's choice was 
 Madison, but he remained impartial between 
 them ; and he withheld Monroe's treaty from 
 publication at a time when to publish it would 
 have given a fatal blow to Monroe's prospects. 
 In every way, in fact, he exerted himself to 
 disguise and soften Monroe's discredit. 
 
 The wisdom of Jefferson's course as to the 
 treaty was shown before three months had 
 elapsed by an act of British aggression, which, 
 
138 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 had the Monroe treaty been accepted, might 
 fairly have been laid to its door. In June, 
 1807, the British frigate Leopard, having 
 been refused permission to search the Ameri- 
 can frigate Chesapeake, fired upon the Ches- 
 apeake, which was totally unprepared for 
 action, and, after kilhng three men and 
 wounding eighteen, refused to accept the 
 surrender of the ship, but carried off three 
 alleged deserters. 
 
 This event roused a storm of indignation, 
 which never quite subsided until the insult 
 had been effaced by the blood which was 
 shed in the war of 1812. " For the first 
 time in their history," says Mr. Henry Adams, 
 " the people of the United States learned in 
 June, 1807, the feeling of a true national 
 emotion." " Never since the battle of Lex- 
 ington," wrote Jefferson, " have I seen this 
 country in such a state of exasperation as at 
 present." 
 
 War might easily have been precipitated, 
 had Jefferson been carried away by the popu- 
 lar excitement. He immediately dispatched 
 a frigate to England demanding reparation, 
 
SECOND PRESIDENTIAL TERM 139 
 
 and he issued a proclamation forbidding all 
 British men-of-war to enter the waters of the 
 United States, unless in distress or bearing 
 dispatches. Jefferson expected war, but he 
 meant to delay it for a while. 
 
 To his son-in-law, John Eppes, he wrote : 
 " Reason and the usage of civilized nations 
 require that we should give them an oppor- 
 tunity of disavowal and reparation. Our 
 own interests, too, the very means of making 
 war, require that we should give time to our 
 merchants to gather in their vessels and 
 property and our seamen now afloat." 
 
 Gallatin, the Secretary of the Treasury, 
 even criticised the President's annual message 
 at this time as being too warhke and " not 
 in the style of the proclamation, which has 
 been ahnost universally approved at home 
 and abroad." It cannot truly be said, there- 
 fore, that Jefferson had any unconquerable 
 aversion to war. 
 
 Mr. Canning, the British Foreign Minister, 
 went through the form of expressing his 
 regrets for the Chesapeake affair, and sent a 
 special envoy to Washington to settle the 
 
140 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 difficulty. Reparation was made at last, but 
 not till the year 1811. 
 
 In the mean time, both Great Britain and 
 France had given other causes of offense, 
 which may be summarized as follows : In 
 May, 1806, Great Britain declared the 
 French ports from Brest to the Elbe closed to 
 American as to all other shipping. In the 
 following November, Napoleon retorted with 
 a decree issued from Berlin, prohibiting all 
 commerce with Great Britain. That power 
 immediately forbade the coasting trade be- 
 tween one port and another in the possession 
 of her enemies. And in November, 1807, 
 Great Britain issued the famous Orders in 
 Council, which forbade all trade whatsoever 
 with France and her allies, except on payment 
 of a tribute to Great Britain, each vessel to 
 pay according to the value of its cargo. Then 
 followed Napoleon's Milan decree prohibiting 
 trade with Great Britain, and declaring that 
 all vessels which paid the tribute demanded 
 were lawful prizes to the French marine. 
 
 Such was the series of acts which assailed 
 the foreign commerce of the United States, 
 
SECOND PRESIDENTIAL TERM 141 
 
 and wounded the national honor by attempt- 
 ing to prostrate the country at the mercy of 
 the European powers. Diplomacy had been 
 exhausted. The Chesapeake affair, the right 
 of impressment, the British decrees and orders 
 directed against our commerce, — all these 
 causes of offense had been tangled into a 
 complication which no man could unravel. 
 Retaliation on our part had become absolutely 
 necessary. What form should it take ? Jef- 
 ferson rejected war, and proposed an em- 
 bargo which prohibited commerce between 
 the United States and Europe. The mea- 
 sure was bitterly opposed by the New Eng- 
 land Federalists ; but the President's influ- 
 ence was so great that Congress adopted it 
 ahnost without discussion. 
 
 Jefferson's design, to use his own words, 
 was " to introduce between nations another 
 umpire than arms ; " and he expected that 
 England would be starved into submission. 
 The annual British exports to the United 
 States amounted to 150,000,000. Cutting 
 off this trade meant the throwing out of 
 work of thousands of British sailors and tens 
 
142 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 of thousands of Britisli factory hands, who 
 had no other means of livelihood. Mr. Jef- 
 ferson felt confident that the starvation of 
 this class would brin^ such pressure to bear 
 upon the English government, then engaged 
 in a death struggle with Bonaparte, that it 
 would be forced to repeal the laws which 
 obstructed American commerce. It is pos- 
 sible that this would have been the result 
 had the embargo been observed faithfully 
 by all citizens of the United States. Jeffer- 
 son maintained till the day of his death that 
 such would have been the case ; and Madi- 
 son, no enthusiast, long afterward asserted 
 that the American state department had 
 proofs that the English government was on 
 the point of yielding. The embargo pressed 
 hardest of all upon Virginia, for it stopped 
 the exportation of her staples, — wheat and 
 tobacco. It brought about, by the way, the 
 financial ruin of Jefferson himself and of his 
 son-in-law. Colonel Randolph. But the Vir- 
 ginians bore it without a murmur. " They 
 drained the poison which their own Presi- 
 dent held obstinately to their lips." 
 
SECOND PRESIDENTIAL TERM 143 
 
 It was otherwise in New England. There 
 the disastrous effect of the embargo was not 
 only indirect but direct. The New Eng- 
 land farmers, it is true, could at least exist 
 upon the produce of their farms ; but the 
 mariners, the sea-captains, and the merchants 
 of the coast towns, saw a total suspension of 
 the industry by which they lived. New 
 England evaded the embargo by smuggling, 
 and resisted it tooth and nail. Some of the 
 Federal leaders in that section beKeving, or 
 pretending to believe, that it was a pro- 
 French measure, were in secret correspond- 
 ence with the British government, and medi- 
 tated a secession of the eastern States from 
 the rest of the country. They went so far, 
 in private conversation at least, as to main- 
 tain the British right of impressment ; and 
 even the Orders in Council were defended 
 by Gardenier, a leading Federahst, and a 
 member of Congress. 
 
 The present generation has witnessed a 
 similar exhibition of anglomania, when, upon 
 the assertion of the Monroe doctrine in re- 
 spect to Venezuela, by President Cleveland, 
 
144 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 liis attitude was criticised more severely by 
 a group in New York and Boston tlian it 
 was by the English themselves. 
 
 Jefferson's effort to enforce the embargo 
 and his calm resistance to New England 
 fury showed extraordinary firmness of will 
 and tenacity of purpose. In August, 1808, 
 he wrote to General Dearborn, Secretary of 
 War, who was then in Maine : " The Tories 
 of Boston openly threaten insurrection if 
 their importation of flour is stopped. The 
 next post will stop it." 
 
 Blood was soon shed ; but Jefferson did 
 not shrink. The army was stationed along 
 the Canadian frontier, to prevent smuggling ; 
 gunboats and frigates patrolled the coast. 
 The embargo failed ; but Mr. Henry Adams, 
 the ablesl^and fairest historian of this period, 
 declares that it " was an experiment in poli- 
 tics well worth making. In the scheme of 
 President Jefferson, non-intercourse was the 
 substitute for war. . . . Failure of the em- 
 bargo meant in his mind not only a recur- 
 rence to the practice of war, but to every 
 political and social evil that war had always 
 
 ■3^ 
 
SECOND PRESIDENTIAL TERM 145 
 
 brought in its train. In such a case the 
 crimes and corruptions of Europe, which 
 had been the object of his political fears, 
 must, as he believed, sooner or later, teem 
 in the fat soil of America. To avert a dis- 
 aster so vast was a proper motive for states- 
 manship, and justified disregard for smaller 
 interests." Mr. Parton observes, with al- 
 most as much truth as humor, that the 
 embargo was approved by the two highest 
 authorities in Europe, namely, Napoleon 
 Bonaparte and the " Edinburgh Review." 
 
 Perhaps the fundamental error in Jeffer- 
 son's theory was that nations are governed 
 mainly by motives of self-interest. He 
 thought that England would cease to legis- 
 late against American commerce, when it 
 was once made plain tliat such a course was 
 prejudicial to her own interests. But na- 
 tions, like individuals, are influenced in their 
 relations to others far more by pride and 
 patriotism, and even by prejudice, than by 
 material self-interest. The only way in 
 which America could win respect and fair 
 treatment from Europe was by fighting, or 
 
146 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 at least by showing a perfect readiness to 
 fight. This she did by the war of 1812. 
 
 The embargo was an academic policy, — 
 the policy of a philosopher rather than that 
 of a practical man of affairs. Turreau, the 
 French ambassador, wrote to Talleyrand, 
 in May, 1806, that the President " has little 
 energy and still less of that audacity which 
 is indispensable in a place so eminent, what- 
 ever may be the form of government. The 
 slightest event makes him lose his balance, 
 and he does not even know how to disguise 
 the impression which he receives . . . He 
 has made himself ill, and has grown ten 
 years older." 
 
 Jefferson had energy and audacity, — but 
 he was energetic and audacious only by fits 
 and starts. He was too sensitive, too full of 
 ideas, too far-sighted, too conscious of all 
 possible results for a man of action. During 
 the last three months of his term he made 
 no attempt to settle the difficulties in which 
 the country was involved, declaring that he 
 felt bound to do nothing which might em- 
 barrass his successor. But it may be doubted 
 
SECOND PRESIDENTIAL TERM 147 
 
 if he did not unconsciously decline the task 
 rather from its difficulty than because he 
 felt precluded from undertaking it. Self- 
 knowledge was never Mr. Jefferson's strong 
 point. 
 
 But he had done his best, and if his 
 scheme had failed, the failure was not an 
 ignoble one. He was still the most beloved, 
 as well as the best hated man in the United 
 States ; and he could have had a third term, 
 if he would have taken it. 
 
 He retired, permanently, as it proved, to 
 Monticello, wearied and harassed, but glad 
 to be back on his farm, in the bosom of his 
 family, and among his neighbors. His fel- 
 low-citizens of Albemarle County desired to 
 meet the returning President, and escort 
 him to his home ; but Mr. Jefferson, charac- 
 teristically, avoided this demonstration, and 
 received instead an address, to which he 
 made a reply that closed in a fit and pa- 
 thetic manner his public career. "... The 
 part which I have acted on the theatre of 
 pubHc life has been before them [his coun- 
 trymen] , and to their sentence I submit it ; 
 
148 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 but the testimony of my native county, of 
 the individuals who have known me in 
 private life, to my conduct in its various 
 duties and relations, is the more grateful as 
 proceeding from eyewitnesses and observers, 
 from triers of the vicinage. Of you, then, 
 my neighbors, I may ask in the face of the 
 world, ' whose ox have I taken, or whom 
 have I defrauded ? Whom have I oppressed, 
 or of whose hand have I received a bribe to 
 blind mine eyes therewith ? ' On your ver- 
 dict I rest with conscious security." 
 
XII 
 
 A PUBLIC MAN IN PRIVATE LIFE 
 
 Jefferson's second term as President 
 ended March 4, 1809, and during the rest 
 of his life he lived at Monticello, with occa- 
 sional visits to his more retired estate at Pop- 
 lar Forest, and to the homes of his friends, 
 but never going beyond the confines of Vir- 
 ginia. Just before leaving Washington, he 
 had written : " Never did a prisoner released 
 from his chains feel such relief as I shall on 
 shaking off the shackles of power. Nature 
 intended me for the tranquil pursuits of sci- 
 ence by rendering them my supreme delight. 
 But the enormities of the times in which 
 I have lived have forced me to take a part 
 in resisting them, and to commit myself on 
 the boisterous ocean of political passions." 
 
 Though no longer in office, Jefferson re- 
 mained till his death the chief personage in 
 the United States, and his authority continued 
 
150 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 to be almost supreme among the leaders as 
 well as among the rank and file of the Ke- 
 publican party. Madison first, and Monroe 
 afterward, consulted him in all the most 
 important matters which arose during the 
 sixteen years of their double terms as Presi- 
 dent. Long and frequent letters passed be- 
 tween them ; and both Madison and Monroe 
 often visited Jefferson at Monticello. 
 
 The Monroe doctrine, as it is called, was 
 first broached by Jefferson. In a letter of 
 August 4, 1820, to Wilham Short, he 
 said ; " The day is not far distant, when we 
 may formally require a meridian through 
 the ocean which separates the two hemi- 
 spheres^ on the hither side of which no 
 European gun shall ever be heard, nor an 
 American on the other ; " and he spoke of 
 "the essential policy of interdicting in the 
 seas and territories of both Americas the 
 ferocious and sanguinary contests of Europe." 
 Later, when applied to by Monroe himself, 
 in October, 1823, Jefferson wrote to him : 
 " Our first and fundamental maxim should 
 be never to entangle ourselves in the broils 
 
A PUBLIC MAN IN PRIVATE LIFE 151 
 
 of Europe. Our second, never to suffer 
 Europe to meddle in cisatlantic affairs." 
 The whole letter, a long one, deserves to be 
 read as the first exposition of what has since 
 become a famous doctrine. 
 
 The darling object of Mr. Jefferson's last 
 years was the founding of the University of 
 Virginia at Charlottesville. For this pur- 
 pose he gave $1000 ; many of his neighbors 
 in Albemarle County joined him with gifts ; 
 and through Jefferson's mfluence, the legis- 
 lature appropriated considerable sums. But 
 money was the least of Jefferson's endowment 
 of the University. He gave of the matur- 
 ity of his judgment and a great part of 
 his time. He was made regent. He drew 
 the plans for the buildings, and overlooked 
 their construction, riding to the University 
 grounds almost every day, a distance of four 
 miles, and back, and watching with pater- 
 nal solicitude the laying of every brick and 
 stone. His design was the perhaps over- 
 ambitious one of displaying in the Univer- 
 sity buildings the various leading styles of 
 architecture ; and certain practical inconven- 
 
152 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 iences, such as the entire absence of closets 
 from the houses of the professors, marred 
 the result. Some offense also was given to 
 the more religious people of Virginia, by the 
 selection of a Unitarian as the first professor. 
 However, JMerson's enthusiasm, ingenuity, 
 and thoroughnbss carried the scheme through 
 with success ; and the University still stands 
 as a monument to its founder. 
 
 It should be recorded, moreover, that 
 under Jefferson's regency the University of 
 Virginia adopted certain reforms, which even 
 Harvard, the most progressive of eastern 
 imiversities, did not attain till more than 
 half a century later. These were, an elective 
 system of studies ; the abolition of rules and 
 penalties for the preservation of order, and 
 the abolition of compulsory attendance at 
 religious services. 
 
 Mr. Jefferson's daily life was simple and 
 methodical. He rose as soon as it was light 
 enough for him to see the hands of a clock 
 which was opposite his bed. Till break- 
 fast time, which was about nine o'clock, he 
 employed himself in writing. The whole 
 
-r 
 
 A PUBLIC MAN IN PRIVATE LIFE 153 
 
 morning was devoted to an immense corre- 
 spondence ; the discharge of which was not 
 only mentally, but physically distressing, 
 inasmuch as his crippled hands, each wrist 
 having been fractured, could not be used 
 without pain. In a letter to his old friend, 
 John Adams, he wrote : "I can read by 
 candle-light only, and stealing long hours 
 from my rest ; nor would that time be in- 
 dulged to me could I by that light see to 
 write. From sunrise to one or two o'clock, 
 and often from dinner to dark, I am drudg- 
 ing at the writing-table. And all this to 
 answer letters, in which neither interest nor 
 inclination on my part enters ; and often 
 from persons whose names I have never 
 before heard. Yet writing civilly, it is hard 
 to refuse them civil answers." At his death 
 Jefferson left copies of 16,000 letters, being 
 only a part of those written by himself, and 
 26,000 letters written by others to him. 
 
 At one o'clock he set out upon horseback, 
 and was gone for one or two hours, — never 
 attended by a servant, even when he became 
 old and infii'm. He continued these rides 
 
154 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 until he had become so feeble that he had 
 to be lifted to the saddle ; and his mount 
 was always a fiery one. Once, in Mr. Jef- 
 ferson's old age, news came that a serious 
 accident had happened in the neighboring 
 village to one of his grandsons. Immedi- 
 ately he ordered his horse to be brought 
 round, and though it was night and very 
 dark, he mounted, despite the protests of 
 the household, and, at a run, dashed down 
 the steep ascent by which Monticello is 
 reached. The family held their breath till 
 the tramp of his horse's feet, on the level 
 ground below, could faintly be heard. 
 
 At half past three or four he dined ; and 
 at six he returned to the drawing-room, 
 where coffee was served. The evening was 
 spent in reading or conversation, and at 
 nine he went to bed. '' His diet," relates a 
 distinguished visitor, Daniel Webster, " is 
 simple, but he seems restrained only by his 
 taste. His breaM ast is tea and coffee, bread 
 always fresh from the oven, of which he 
 does not seem afraid, with at times a slight 
 accompaniment of cold meat. He enjoys 
 
A PUBLIC MAN IN PRIVATE LIFE 155 
 
 his dinner well, taking with his meat a large 
 proportion of vegetables." The fact is that 
 he used meat only as a sort of condiment to 
 vegetables. " He has a strong preference 
 for the wines of the continent, of which he 
 has many sorts of excellent quality. . . . 
 Dinner is served in half Virginian, half 
 French style, in good taste and abundance. 
 No wine is put on the table till the cloth is 
 removed. In conversation, Mr. Jefferson is 
 easy and natural, and apparently not ambi- 
 tious ; it is not loud as challenging general 
 attention, but usually addressed to the person 
 next him." His health remained good till 
 within a few months of his death, and he 
 never lost a tooth. 
 
 Scarcely less burdensome than his corre- 
 spondence was the throng of visitors at Mon- 
 ticello, of all nationalities, from every State 
 in the Union, some coming from veneration, 
 some from curiosity, some from a desire to 
 obtain free quarters. Groups of people often 
 stood about the house and in the halls to see 
 Jefferson pass from his study to his dining- 
 room. It is recorded that " a female once 
 
156 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 punched through a window-pane of the house 
 with her parasol to get a better view of him." 
 As many as fifty guests sometimes lodged 
 in the house. "As a specimen of Vir- 
 ginia life," relates one biographer, "we will 
 mention that a friend from abroad came to 
 Monticello, with a family of six persons, and 
 remained ten months. . . . Accomphshed 
 young kinswomen habitually passed two or 
 three of the summer months there, as they 
 would now at a fashionable watering-place. 
 They married the sons of Mr. Jefferson's 
 friends, and then came with their families." 
 The immense expense entailed by these 
 hospitalities, added to the debt, amounting 
 to 120,000, which Mr. Jefferson owed when 
 he left Washington, crippled him financially. 
 Moreover, Colonel Randolph, who managed 
 his estate for many years, though a good 
 farmer, was a poor man of business. It was 
 a common saying in the neighborhood that 
 nobody raised better crops or got less money 
 for them than Colonel Randolph. The em- 
 bargo, and the period of depression which 
 followed the war of 1812, went far to impov- 
 
A PUBLIC MAN IN PRIVATE LIFE 157 
 
 erish the Virginia planters. Monroe died 
 a bankrupt, and Madison's widow was left 
 almost in want of bread. Jefferson himself 
 wrote in 1814 : " What can we raise for the 
 market ? Wheat ? we can only give it to our 
 horses, as we have been doing since harvest. 
 Tobacco? It is not worth the pipe it is 
 smoked in. Some say whiskey, but all man- 
 kind must become drunkards to consume it." 
 Jefferson, also, was so anxious lest his slaves 
 should be overworked, that the amount of 
 labor performed upon his plantation was 
 much less than it should have been. And, 
 to cap the climax of his financial troubles, he 
 lost $20,000 by indorsing to that amount 
 for his intimate friend, Governor Nicholas, 
 an honorable but unfortunate man. It 
 should be added that Mr. Nicholas, in his last 
 hours, " declared with unspeakable emotion 
 that Mr. Jefferson had never by a word, by 
 a look, or in any other way, made any allu- 
 sion to his loss by him." 
 
 In 1814, Mr. Jefferson sold his library 
 to Congress for $23,950, about one haK its 
 cost ; and in the very year of his death he 
 
k 
 
 158 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 requested of the Virginia legislature that a 
 law might be passed permitting him to sell 
 some of his farms by means of a lottery, 
 — the times being such that they could be 
 disposed of in no other way. He even pub- 
 lished some " Thoughts on Lotteries," — by 
 way of advancing this project. The legis- 
 lature granted his request, with reluctance ; 
 but in the mean time his necessities became 
 known throughout the country, and subscrip- 
 tions were made for his rehef. The lottery 
 was suspended, and Jefferson died in the 
 belief that Monticello would be saved as a 
 home for his family. 
 
 In March, 1826, Mr. Jefferson's health 
 Ijegan to fail; but so late as June 24 he 
 was well enough to write a long letter in 
 reply to an invitation to attend the fiftieth 
 celebration, at Washington, of the 4th of 
 July. During the 3d of July he dozed hour 
 after hour under the influence of opiates, 
 rousing occasionally, and uttering a few 
 words. It was evident that his end was 
 very near. His family and he himself fer- 
 vently desired that he might live till the 4tli 
 
A PUBLIC MAN IN PRIVATE LIFE 159 
 
 of July. At eleven in the evening of July 3 
 he whispered to Mr. Trist, the husband of 
 one of his granddaughters, who sat by him : 
 " This is the fourth ? " Not bearing to dis- 
 appoint him, Mr. Trist remained silent ; and 
 Mr. Jefferson feebly asked a second time : 
 " This is the fourth ? " Mr. Trist nodded as- 
 sent. " Ah ! " he breathed, and sank into a 
 slumber from which he never awoke ; but his 
 end did not come till half past twelve in the 
 afternoon of Independence Day. On the 
 same day, at Quincy, died John Adams, his 
 last words being, " Thomas Jefferson still 
 lives ! " 
 
 The double coincidence made a strong im- 
 pression upon the imagination of the Ameri- 
 can people. " When it became known," says 
 Mr. Parton, " that the author of the Decla- 
 ration and its most powerful defender had 
 both breathed their last on the Fourth of 
 July, the fiftieth since they had set it apart 
 from the roll of common days, it seemed as 
 if Heaven had given its visible and unerring 
 sanction to the work which they had done." 
 
 Jefferson's body was buried at Monticello, 
 
160 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 and on the tombstone is inscribed, as he 
 desired, the following : " Here was buried 
 Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration 
 of American Independence, of the Statute of 
 Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father 
 of the University of Virginia." 
 
 Jefferson's expectation that Monticello 
 would remain the property of his descend- 
 ants was not fulfilled. His debts were paid 
 to the uttermost farthing by his executor 
 and grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph ; 
 but Martha Randolph and her family were 
 left homeless and penniless. When this be- 
 came known, the legislatures of South Caro- 
 lina and Louisiana each voted to Mrs. Ran- 
 dolph a gift of $10,000. She died suddenly, 
 in 1836, at the age of sixty-three. Monti- 
 cello passed into the hands of strangers. 
 
 Jefferson had his faults and defects. As 
 a statesman and ruler, he showed at times 
 irresolution, want of energy and of audacity, 
 and a misunderstanding of human nature ; 
 and at times his judgment was clouded by 
 the political prejudices which were common 
 in his day. His attitude in the X Y Z 
 
A PUBLIC MAN IN PRIVATE LIFE 161 
 business, his embargo policy, and his policy 
 or want of policy after the failure of the 
 embargo, — in these cases, and perhaps m 
 these alone, his defects are exhibited. It 
 is certain also that although at times frank 
 and outspoken to a fault, he was at other 
 times over-complaisant and insincere. To 
 Aaron Burr, for example, he expressed him- 
 self in terms of friendship which he could 
 hardly have felt ; and, once, in writing to a 
 minister of the gospel he implied, upon his 
 own part, a belief in revelation which he did 
 not really feel. It seems to be true also that 
 Jefferson had an overweening desire to win 
 the approbation of his fellow-countrymen; 
 and at times, though quite unconsciously to 
 himself, this motive led him into courses 
 which were rather selfish than patriotic. 
 This was the case, perhaps, in his negotia- 
 tions with the English minister after the fail- 
 ure of the embargo. It is charged against 
 him, also, that he avoided unpleasant situa- 
 tions ; and that he said or did nothing to 
 check the E^publican slanders which were 
 cast upon Washington and upon John 
 
 ^ 
 
162 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 Adams. But when this much has been 
 said, all has been said. As a citizen, hus- 
 band, father, friend, and master, Jefferson 
 was almost an ideal character. No man was 
 ever more kind, more amiable, more tender, 
 more just, more generous. To her children, 
 Mrs. Randolph declared that never, never 
 had she witnessed a particle of injustice in 
 her father, — never had she heard him say a 
 word or seen him do an act which she at the 
 time or afterward regretted. ^ He was mag- 
 nanimous, — as when he frankly forgave 
 John Adams for the injustice of his mid- 
 night appointments. 'M'hough easily pro- 
 voked, he never bore malice. In matters of 
 business and in matters of politics he was 
 punctiliously honorable. How many times 
 he paid his British debt has already been re- 
 lated. On one occasion he drew his cheque 
 to pay the duties on certain imported wines 
 which might have come in free, — yet made 
 no merit of the action, for it never came to 
 light until long after his death. In the pre- 
 sidential campaigns when he was a candi- 
 date, he never wrote a letter or made a sign 
 
A PUBLIC MAN IN PRIVATE LIFE 163 
 
 to influence the result. He would not say 
 a word by way of promise in 1801, when a 
 word would have given him the presidency, 
 and when so honorable a man as John Adams 
 thought that he did wrong to withhold it. 
 There was no vanity or smallness in his 
 character. It was he and not Dickinson 
 who wrote the address to the King, set forth 
 by the Continental Congress of 1775 ; but 
 Dickinsonenjoyed the fame of it throughout 
 Jefferson's lifetime. ^ 
 
 Above all, he was patriotic and con- j | 
 scientious. ^ When he lapsed, it was in some 
 subordinate matter, and because a little self- 
 deception clouded his sight. -^ But in all im- 
 portant matters, in all emergencies, he stood 
 firm as a rock for what he considered to 
 be right, unmoved by the entreaties of his 
 friends or by the jeers, threats, and taunts of 
 his enemies. He shrank with almost fem- 
 inine repugnance from censure and turmoil, 
 but when the occasion demanded it, he 
 faced even these with perfect courage and 
 resolution. His course as Secretary of State, 
 and his enforcement of the embargo, are I 
 examples. 
 
 < 
 
164 y THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 " Jefferson's political career was bottomed 
 upon a great principle which he never, for 
 one moment, lost sight of or doubted, no 
 matter how difficult the present, or how dark 
 the future. He believed in the people, in 
 their capacity for self-government, and in their 
 right to enjoy it. This belief shaped his 
 course, and, in spite of minor inconsistencies, 
 made it consistent. ;!*-J[t was on account of 
 this belief, and of the faith and courage with 
 which he put it in practice, that he became 
 the idol of his countrymen, and attained a 
 unique position in the history of the world. 
 
ElectrotyPed and printed by H. O. Houghton dr* Co. 
 Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A. 
 
Feb.QOiQOl /^l7 
 
FEB 4 1901 
 

 
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