Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson,April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826 was the third President of the United States (1801–1809) and the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776). An influential Founding Father, Jefferson envisioned America as a great "Empire of Liberty" that would promote republicanism.

At the beginning of the American Revolution, Jefferson served in the Continental Congress, representing Virginia. He then served as the wartime Governor of Virginia (1779–1781), barely escaping capture by the British in 1781. After a controversial term, Jefferson failed to be reelected. From mid-178 through late 1789, Jefferson served as a diplomat. He was stationed in Paris, initially as a commissioner to help negotiate commercial treaties. In May 1785, he succeeded Benjamin Franklin as the United States Minister to France.

He was the first United States Secretary of State, (1789–1793). During the administration of President George Washington, Jefferson advised against a national bank and the Jay Treaty. He was the second Vice President, (1797–1801) under President John Adams. Winning on an anti-federalist platform, Jefferson took the oath of office and became President of the United States in 1801. As president he negotiated the Louisiana Purchase (1803), and sent the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–1806) to explore the vast new territory and lands further west. Jefferson always distrusted Britain as a threat to American security; he rejected a renewal of the Jay Treaty that his ambassadors had negotiated in 1806 with Britain and promoted aggressive action, such as the embargo laws, that contributed to the already escalating tensions with Britain and France leading to war with Britain in 1812 after he left office.

Jefferson idealized the independent yeoman farmer as exemplar of republican virtues, distrusted cities and financiers, and favored states' rights and a limited federal government. Jefferson supported the separation of church and state and was the author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1779, 1786). Jefferson's revolutionary view on individual religious freedom and protection from government authority have generated much interest with modern scholars. He was the eponym of Jeffersonian democracy and the co-founder and leader of the Democratic-Republican Party, which dominated American politics for 25 years.

Jefferson was born, and married into, prominent planter families; he was a loving husband to his wife Martha, who died in childbirth, and an affectionate father to their children. As a planter, Jefferson owned hundreds of slaves throughout his life; he held views on the racial inferiority of Africans common for this period in time. While historians long discounted accounts that, after his wife died, Jefferson had an intimate relationship with his slave Sally Hemings; since the late 1990s it has been commonly accepted that he did, and that he had six children by her.

Jefferson was a polymath who spoke five languages and could read two others. He was a major book collector with an enormous library, much of which he sold to the Library of Congress in 1814 after the British set fire to the Capitol which destroyed most of its works. He wrote more than sixteen thousand letters and was acquainted with nearly every influential person in America, and many throughout Europe. Jefferson is consistently rated by historical scholars as one of the greatest U.S. presidents.

Career

Jefferson handled many cases as a lawyer in colonial Virginia, and was very active from 1768 to 1773.Jefferson's client list included members of the Virginia's elite families, including members of his mother's family, the Randolphs.

In 1768 Thomas Jefferson started the construction of Monticello, a neoclassical mansion. Since childhood, Jefferson had always wanted to build a beautiful mountaintop home within sight of Shadwell.Jefferson fell greatly in debt by spending lavishly over the years on Monticello in what was a continuing project to create a neoclassical environment, based on his study of the architect Andrea Palladio and the classical orders. 

Besides practicing law, Jefferson represented Albemarle County in the Virginia House of Burgesses beginning in 1769. Wythe also served at the same time. Following the passage of the Coercive Acts by the British Parliament in 1774, he wrote a set of resolutions against the acts, which were expanded into A Summary View of the Rights of British America, his first published work. Previous criticism of the Coercive Acts had focused on legal and constitutional issues, but Jefferson offered the radical notion that the colonists had the natural right to govern themselves. 

Marriage and family

In 1772, at age 29 Jefferson married the 23-year-old widow Martha Wayles Skelton. They had six children, only two of whom survived to adulthood. Only their oldest daughter Martha lived beyond age 25.

Martha Washington Jefferson (1772–1836), who married Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr., future governor of Virginia. They had twelve children, eleven of whom survived to adulthood.

Jane Jefferson (1774–1775)

stillborn or unnamed son (1777)

Mary Wayles Jefferson (1778–1804), called Polly, married her cousin John Wayles Eppes, son of Martha's sister, Elizabeth Wayles Eppes. Mary died at age 25 after the birth of her third child; only their son Francis W. Eppes survived to adulthood. Jefferson made his grandson Francis Eppes the designated heir of Poplar Forest, originally intended for Mary. In 1829 Francis Eppes moved to Florida, where he had a cotton plantation until the Civil War.

Lucy Elizabeth Jefferson (1780–1781)

Lucy Elizabeth Jefferson (1782–1785); it was customary to name subsequent children after one who had died, particularly when the family was also trying to pass down family names. The second Lucy died while Jefferson was in Paris, prompting him to have his youngest living daughter Polly sent to him; she was then age nine.

Mrs. Jefferson died on September 6, 1782, a few months after the birth of her last child. Jefferson never remarried, as he promised her. He was at his wife's bedside when she died. Jefferson was deeply upset after her death, and often rode on secluded roads to mourn for his wife.

Notes on the State of Virginia

In the Fall of 1780, Gov. Thomas Jefferson was given a list of 22 questions, by Secretary of the French legation to the United States François Marbois, intended to gather pertinent information on the American colonies. Jefferson's responses to Marbois' "Queries" would become known as Notes on the State of Virginia. Jefferson, scientifically trained, was a member of the American Philosophical Society and had extensive knowledge of western lands from Virginia to Illinois. In a course of 5 years, Jefferson enthusiastically devoted his intellectual energy to the book, which discussed contemporary scientific knowledge, and Virginia's history, politics, and ethnography. Jefferson was aided by Thomas Walker, George R. Clark, and U.S. geographer Thomas Hutchins. The book was first published in France in 1785 and in England in 1787.

Member of Congress

Jefferson was a member of Congress at the time America had won its independence and signed the Treaty of Paris in 1783. The Virginia state legislature appointed Jefferson to the Congress of the Confederation on June 6 of that year, his term beginning on November 1. He was a member of the committee formed to set foreign exchange rates, and in that capacity he recommended that American currency should be based on the decimal system. Jefferson also recommended setting up the Committee of the States, to function as the executive arm of Congress when Congress was not in session. He left Congress when he was elected a minister plenipotentiary on May 7, 1784.

Presidency of Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson took the oath of Office on March 4, 1801, at a time when partisan strife between the Democratic-Republican and Federalist parties was growing to alarming proportions. Regarded as the 'People's President' news of Jefferson's election was well received in most parts of the new country and was marked by celebrations throughout the Union. He was sworn in by Chief Justice John Marshall at the new Capitol in Washington DC. In contrast to the preceding president John Adams, Jefferson exhibited a dislike of formal etiquette. Unlike Washington, who arrived at his inauguration in a stagecoach drawn by six cream colored horses, Jefferson arrived alone on horseback without guard or escort. He was dressed plainly and after dismounting, retired his own horse himself.

Jefferson's presidency is remembered for three major achievements. First came the purchase of the Louisiana territory from France in 1803, which doubled the size of the United States. A second accomplishment was the defeat of Mediterranean Sea pirates in the First Barbary War. The third occurred during Jefferson's second term, when he proposed legislation (approved by Congress) outlawing the importation of African slaves.

Views of slaves and blacks

Jefferson inherited slaves as a child, and owned upwards of 700 different people at one time or another. The historian Herbert E. Sloan says that Jefferson's debt prevented his freeing his slaves, but  Finkelman says that freeing slaves was "not even a mildly important goal" of Jefferson, who preferred to spend lavishly on luxury goods like wine and French chairs.

Isaac Jefferson, ca. 1847, a blacksmith who worked as a slave on Jefferson's plantation. His interview was later published in 1842 as Memoirs of a Monticello Slave. His account provided details to historians about life at Monticello.

According to historian Stephen Ambrose: "Jefferson, like all slaveholders and many others, regarded Negroes as inferior, childlike, untrustworthy and, of course, as property. He believed they were inferior to whites in reasoning, mathematical comprehension, and imagination. Jefferson thought these "differences" were "fixed in nature" and was not dependent on their freedom or education. He thought such differences created "innate inferiority of Blacks compared to Whites".

Jefferson did not believe that African Americans could live in American society as free people together with whites. For a long-term solution, he thought that slaves should be freed after reaching maturity and having repaid their owner's investment; afterward, he thought they should be sent to African colonies in what he considered "repatriation", despite their being American-born. Otherwise, he thought the presence of free blacks would encourage a violent uprising by slaves' looking for freedom.

Thomas Jefferson and religion

Jefferson rejected the orthodox Christianity of his day and was especially hostile to the Catholic Church as he saw it operate in France. Throughout his life Jefferson was intensely interested in theology, biblical study, and morality. As a landowner he played a role in governing his local Episcopal Church; in terms of belief he was inclined toward Unitarianism and the religious philosophy of Deism. Under the influence of several of his college professors, he converted to the deist philosophy. Dulles concludes:

“ "Jefferson was a deist because he believed in one God, in divine providence, in the divine moral law, and in rewards and punishments after death, but did not believe in supernatural revelation. He was a Christian deist because he saw Christianity as the highest expression of natural religion and Jesus as an incomparably great moral teacher. He was not an orthodox Christian because he rejected, among other things, the doctrines that Jesus was the promised Messiah and the incarnate Son of God." ”

In private letters, Jefferson refers to himself as "Christian" (1803): "To the corruptions of Christianity I am, indeed, opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence.

Native American policy

Between 1776 and 1779, while governor of Virginia during the Revolutionary War, Jefferson recommended forcibly moving Cherokee and Shawnee tribes that fought on the British side to lands west of the Mississippi River. Later, Jefferson was the first President to propose the idea of Indian Removal. He laid out an approach to Indian removal in a series of private letters that began in 1803 (for example, see letter to William Henry Harrison below). His first such act as president was to make a deal with the state of Georgia: if Georgia were to release its legal claims to discovery in lands to its west, the U.S. military would help forcefully expel the Cherokee people from Georgia. At the time, the Cherokee had a treaty with the United States government which guaranteed them the right to their lands, which was violated by Jefferson's deal with Georgia.

Acculturation and assimilation

Jefferson's original plan was for Natives to give up their own cultures, religions, and lifestyles in favor of western European culture, Christian religion, and a European-style agricultural lifestyle.

Jefferson believed that their assimilation into the European-American economy would make them more dependent on trade with white Americans, and would eventually thereby be willing to give up land that they would otherwise not part with, in exchange for trade goods or to resolve unpaid debts. In an 1803 letter to William Henry Harrison, Jefferson wrote:

To promote this disposition to exchange lands, which they have to spare and we want, for necessaries, which we have to spare and they want, we shall push our trading uses, and be glad to see the good and influential individuals among them run in debt, because we observe that when these debts get beyond what the individuals can pay, they become willing to lop them off by a cession of lands.... In this way our settlements will gradually circumscribe and approach the Indians, and they will in time either incorporate with us as citizens of the United States, or remove beyond the Mississippi. The former is certainly the termination of their history most happy for themselves; but, in the whole course of this, it is essential to cultivate their love. As to their fear, we presume that our strength and their weakness is now so visible that they must see we have only to shut our hand to crush them, and that all our liberalities to them proceed from motives of pure humanity only. Should any tribe be foolhardy enough to take up the hatchet at any time, the seizing the whole country of that tribe, and driving them across the Mississippi, as the only condition of peace, would be an example to others, and a furtherance of our final consolidation.

Death

Jefferson' health began to deteriorate by July 1825, and by June 1826 he was confined to bed. He likely died from uremia, severe diarrhea, and pneumonia.Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and a few hours before John Adams.

Though born into a wealthy slave-owning family, Jefferson had many financial problems, and died deeply in debt. After his death, his possessions, including his slaves, were sold, as was Monticello in 1831. Thomas Jefferson is buried in the family cemetery at Monticello. The cemetery only is now owned and operated by the Monticello Association, a separate lineage society that is not affiliated with the Thomas Jefferson Foundation that runs the estate.

Jefferson wrote his own epitaph, which reads:

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.