JEFFERSON, THOMAS third
of the United of :he 771=
of Arneri:an
apostles of democracy. and cne ci the gre.a: liberals of
was born on Apr': a:
Virginia. Elis Fe:er • engineer who became a _:us:ice of :he peace. cf the militia and a burgess. served the
surveys. and married into one of the --
the Randolphs. Albemarle coun:y in the iron:.:: wilderness of the Blue Ridge. and was very from the lowland counties where a few broad-acred nated an open-handed. somewhat luxurious and assertive :17KOC racy. Unlike his Randolph connections. Peter Jeffers;: was a Whig and a thorough democrat ; from him, and from the frontier, his son came naturally by democracy.
He left the college of William and Mary at Williamsburg, in his 20th year, with a good knowledge of Latin, Greek and French, to which he soon added Spanish, Italian and Anglo-Saxon; and a familiarity with the higher mathematics (throughout life he made practical use of the calculus) and natural sciences only possessed, at his age, by men who have a rare natural taste and ability for those studies. He remained an ardent student throughout life, able to give and take in association with the many scholars, American and foreign, whom he numbered among his friends and correspondents. With a liberal Scotsman, Dr. William Small, then of the faculty of William and Mary and later a friend of Erasmus Darwin, and George Wythe (1726-1806), a very accomplished scholar and leader of the Virginia bar, he was an habitual member, while still in college, of a partie carree at the table of Francis Fauquier (c. 1720-68), the accomplished lieutenant-governor of Virginia. Jefferson was an expert violinist, a good singer and dancer, pro ficient in outdoor sports, and an excellent horseman. Thorough bred horses always remained to him a necessary luxury. When it is added that Fauquier was a passionate gambler, and that the gentry who gathered every winter at Williamsburg, the seat of provincial Government, were ruinously addicted to the same weak ness, and that Jefferson had a taste for racing, it does credit to his early strength of character that of his social environment he took only the good. He never used tobacco, never played cards, never gambled and was never party to a personal quarrel.
Soon after leaving college he entered Wythe's law office, and in 1767, after five years of close study, was admitted to the bar. His average income during seven years of practice, about £300, was large for that time. To his collecting zeal Virginia owes the preservation of a large part of her early statutes, and of such of her colonial reports as still survive. He left practice with a poor opinion of lawyers—"whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour." Moreover, industry and scholarship, not advocacy, for which he had neither the requisite voice nor temperament, were the secret of his success, which was such as to show that the profession had no rewards that were not fairly within his reach. Doubtless he saw and wished to reform the law's abuses. He turned, therefore, the more willingly to politics when his activity in the colonial cause compelled him to abandon practice in
Marriage and Home Life.—The death of his father had left him an estate of 1,900 ac., the income from which gave him the position of an independent country gentleman ; and he added to his farms after the ambitious Virginia fashion until, when he married in his 30th year, there were 5,000 ac., all paid for; and almost as much more (though subject to heavy debts) came to him in 1773 on the death of his father-in-law. On Jan. 1, 1772, he married Martha Wayles Skelton (1749-82), a childless widow of 23, very handsome and accomplished. Their married life was exceedingly happy, and he never remarried after her early death. Of six children born from their union two daughters alone survived infancy. Jefferson's affectionate, generous and devoted relations with his children and grandchildren are among the fine features of his character.
He began his public service as a justice of the peace. Later he was chosen a member of the Virginia house of burgesses in 1769, and of every succeeding assembly and convention of the colony until he entered the Conti nental Congress in 1775. He was prominent in all, and a fore most member of several, great deliberative bodies, yet he can fairly be said never to have made a speech. He hated the "morbid rage of debate," believing men were never convinced by argu ment, but only by reflection, through reading or unprovocative conversation; and this belief guided him through life. He was, however, as John Adams said of him in the Continental Congress, though a silent member, so "prompt, frank, explicit and decisive upon committees and in conversation (not even Samuel Adams was more so)" that he was soon acknowledged as one of the strongest members. A forceful, facile pen added greatly to his influence. Elected in 1774 to the first Virginia convention, called to consider the state of the colony and advance inter-colonial union, but prevented by illness from attending, he sent to the convention elaborate resolutions, which he proposed as instruc tions to the Virginia delegates to the Continental Congress that was to meet at Philadelphia in September. In the direct language of reproach and advice, these resolutions attacked the supremacy of Parliament and the errors of the king (with no disingenuous loading of the Crown's policy upon its agents), maintaining that "the relation between Great Britain and these colonies was exactly the same as that of England and Scotland after the acces sion of James and until the Union; and that our emigration to this country gave England no more rights over us than the emi gration of the Danes and Saxons gave to the present authorities of their mother country over England." This was cutting at the common root of allegiance, emigration and colonization; but such radicalism was too thorough-going for the immediate end. The resolutions were published, however, as a pamphlet, entitled A Summary View of the Rights of America, which was of immense influence. In England, after receiving such modifications—attrib uted to Burke—as adapted it to the purposes of the opposition, this pamphlet ran through many editions, and procured for its author, as he said, "the honour of having his name inserted in a long list of proscriptions enrolled in a bill of attainder commenced in one of the two houses of parliament, but suppressed in embryo by the hasty course of events." It placed Jefferson among the foremost leaders of revolution, and procured for him the honour of drafting, later, the Declaration of Independence, whose histori cal portions were, in large part, only a revised transcript of the Summary View. In June 1775 he took his seat in the Continental Congress, taking with him fresh credentials of radicalism in the shape of Virginia's answer, which he had drafted, to Lord North's conciliatory propositions. He soon drafted the reply of Congress to the same propositions. Reappointed to the next Congress, he signalized his service by the authorship of the Declaration of Independence (q.v.). Again reappointed, he surrendered his seat, and after refusing a proffered election to serve as a commissioner with Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane in France, he re-entered in Oct. 1776 the Virginia legislature, where he considered his services most needed.
The local work to which Jefferson attributed such importance was the formulation of Vir ginia's constitution and a revision of her laws. Various of his proposals for the former (limiting the acquisition of public lands, regulating suffrage and legislative apportionment) were too radical for adoption at that time, and some were never adopted. Of the proposed statutory reforms he says : "I considered four . . . as forming a system by which every trace would be eradicated of ancient or future aristocracy, and a foundation laid for a govern ment truly republican"—the repeal of the laws of entail ; the aboli tion of primogeniture and the unequal division of inheritances (Jefferson was himself an eldest son) ; the guarantee of freedom of conscience and relief of the people from supporting, by taxa tion, an established church; and a system of general education. The first object was embodied in law in 1776, the second in 1785, the third—the first law of its kind in Christendom, although not the earliest practice of such liberty in America—in 1786. The last two were parts of a body of codified laws prepared (1776-79) by a commission, but very largely by Jefferson. Not so fortunate were his ambitious schemes of education. District, grammar and classical schools, a free State library and a State college, were all included in his plan. He was the first American statesman to make education by the State a fundamental article of democratic faith. His bill for elementary education he regarded as the most im portant part of the code, but Virginia had no strong middle class and the planters would not assume the burden of educating the poor. In 1779 he founded at William and Mary the first profes sorship of law in America.
At this time Jefferson championed the natural right of expatri ation and gradual emancipation of all slaves. His earliest legislative effort, in 1769, had been marked by an effort to secure to masters freedom to manumit their slaves without removing them from the State. It was unsuccessful, and the more radical measure he now favoured was more impossible of attainment ; but a bill he introduced to prohibit the importation of slaves was passed in 1778. Finally he endeavoured, though unsuccessfully, to secure the introduction of juries into the courts of chancery, and—a generation and more before the fruition of the labours of Romilly and his co-workers in England—aided in securing a humanitarian revision of the penal code, which, though lost by one vote in 1785, was sustained by public sentiment and adopted in 1796. Capital punishment was confined to treason and mur der; the former was not to be attended by corruption of blood, drawing or quartering ; all other felonies were made punishable by confinement and hard labour, save a few to which was applied, against Jefferson's desire, the principle of retaliation. Jefferson is of course not entitled to sole credit for all these services: Wythe, George Mason and James Madison, in particular, were his devoted lieutenants, and—after his departure for France—princi pals in the struggle; moreover, an approving public opinion must receive large credit. But Jefferson was throughout the chief inspirer and most ardent worker.
Governor of Virginia.—In 1779, at almost the gloomiest stage of the war in the Southern States, he succeeded Patrick Henry as the governor of Virginia. In his second term (r780-81) the State was overrun by British expeditions, and Jefferson was blamed for the ineffectual resistance. Though he cannot be said to have been eminently fitted for the task that devolved upon him in such a crisis, most of the criticism of his administration was undoubtedly grossly unjust. He declined the renomination for the governorship, but was unanimously returned to the State legislature ; and on the day previously set for legislative inquiry he received, by unanimous vote of the house, a declaration of thanks and confidence. He wished, however, to retire permanently from public life, a wish strengthened by the illness and death of his wife. At this time he composed his Notes on Virginia, a semi statistical work full of humanitarian liberalism.
Services in Congress.—Congress twice offered him an appoint ment as one of the plenipotentiaries to negotiate peace with Eng land, and he accepted the second offer, but the business was so far advanced before he could sail that his appointment was recalled. The following winter (1783), again in Congress, he headed the committee appointed to consider the treaty of peace. In the succeeding session his service was marked by a report from which resulted the present U.S. monetary system (its deci mal basis being due, however, to Gouverneur Morris) ; and by the honour of reporting the first definitely formulated plan for the government of the Western Territories, that embodied in the ordinance of 1784. For the cession by Virginia to the United States of the vast territory north-west of the Ohio, consummated in that year, Jefferson had long laboured. Its importance to national unity was immense. His ordinance was notable for a provision that slavery should not exist after 1800, defeated in 1784 but adopted in 1787 for the Northwest Territory—a step. which is very often said to have saved the Union in the Civil War; the Southwest Territory (out of which were later formed Mississippi, Alabama, etc.) being given over to slavery. To this anti-slavery clause of 1784 (though preceded by unofficial proposals to the same end) belongs rightly some special honour as setting a precedent for Federal control of slavery in the Territories, which later proved of such enormous consequence. His anti-slavery opinions grew in strength with years. Not only justice but patriotism pleaded with him the cause of the negroes, for he realized the dire political dangers of slavery, and foresaw the certainty that the slaves must some day, in some way, be freed; and could any feasible plan of emancipation and re-migra tion have been suggested he would have regarded its cost as a mere bagatelle. It is true that of his slaves (at one time he owned above 15o) he manumitted but a few at his death; and had he fully realized his insolvency doubtless he would have deprived his creditors of none. It is also true that he opposed the Missouri Compromise of 182o—whether rightly or wrongly may be dis puted—but at any rate for reasons (reflecting old political strug gles) that are unsatisfying.
Minister to France.—From 1784 to 1789 he was in France, first under an appointment to assist Benjamin Franklin and John Adams in negotiating treaties of commerce with European States, and then as Franklin's successor (1785-89) as minister to France. In these years he travelled widely in western Europe. Though the commercial principles of the United States were far too liberal for acceptance, as such, by powers holding colonies in America, Jefferson won some specific concessions to American trade. He was exceedingly popular as a minister.
Religious and Political Theories.—The criticism is even to-day current with the uninformed that Jefferson took his man ners (Patrick Henry semi-humorously charged, because he fa voured French cooking, that he had "abjured his native victuals"), his morals, "irreligion" and political philosophy from his French residence; and it cannot be wholly ignored. It may therefore be said that there is nothing except scandal to contradict the con clusion, which abundant evidence supports, that Jefferson's morals, mind and tongue were pure. He was not an atheist, but a sincere deist. His attitude toward religion was deeply reverent, but he regarded it as so purely a matter of individual conscience that he was reluctant to discuss it even with his family or friends.
"I am a Christian," he wrote in 1823, "in the only sense in which he (Jesus) wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doc trines in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence and believing he never claimed any other." Religion was only "evidenced, as concerns the world, by each one's daily life." He compiled from the New Testament a volume of Jesus' teachings which still survives, and has been published as "Jefferson's bible." He was necessarily an enemy of any State church, since he demanded absolute freedom of private judg ment, and regarded creeds as "the bane and ruin of the Christian church." To-day he would be a Unitarian, or a member of an ethical culture society.
His political theories had a deep and broad basis in English Whiggism ; and though he may well have found at least confirma tion of his own ideas in French writers—and notably in Condorcet —he did not read sympathetically the writers commonly named, Rousseau and Montesquieu ; besides, although he was deeply inter ested in all the events leading up to the French Revolution, and all his ideas were coloured by his experience of the five seething years passed in Paris, his democracy was seasoned, and he was rather a teacher than a student of revolutionary politics, when he went there. The Notes on Virginia, which were widely read in France, undoubtedly had some influence in forwarding the dis solution of the doctrines of divine right and passive obedience among the cultivated classes. On June 3, 1789, he proposed to the leaders of the third estate a compromise between the king and the nation. In July he received the extraordinary honour of being invited to assist in the deliberations of the committee appointed by the National Assembly to draft a constitution. This honour his official position compelled him, of course, to decline, for he sedulously observed official proprieties.
Secretary of State.—When he returned to America President Washington tendered him the secretaryship of State in the new Federal Government, and he reluctantly accepted. His only essential objection to the Constitution—the absence of a bill of rights—was soon met, at least partially, by amendments. Alexan der Hamilton (q.v.) was secretary of the Treasury. These two men, antipodal in temperament and political belief, clashed in irreconcilable hostility; and in the conflict of public sentiment, first on the financial measures of Hamilton, and then on questions with regard to France and Great Britain, Jefferson's sympathies being predominantly with the former, Hamilton's with the latter, they formed about themselves the two parties of Democrats and Federalists. The schools of thought for which they stood have since contended for mastery in American politics : Hamilton's gradually strengthened by the necessities of stronger administra tion, as time gave widening amplitude and increasing weight to the specific powers—and so to Hamilton's great doctrine of the "implied powers"—of the general government of a growing coun try; Jefferson's rooted in colonial life, and still firmly buttressed by the hopes and convictions of American democracy.
The most perplexing questions treated by Jefferson as secretary of State arose out of the policy of neutrality adopted by the United States toward France, to whom she was bound by treaties and by a heavy debt of gratitude. Separation from European politics—the doctrine of "America for Americans" that was em bodied later in the Monroe declaration—was a tenet cherished by Jefferson as by other leaders (not, however, Hamilton) and by none cherished more firmly; for by nature he was peculiarly opposed to war, and peace was a fundamental part of his politics. However deep, therefore, his French sympathies, he drew the same safe line as did Washington between French politics and American politics, and handled the Genet complications in a manner that should have satisfied even the most partisan Federalists. He expounded, as a very high authority has said, "with remarkable clearness and power the nature and scope of neutral duty," and gave a "classic" statement of the doctfine of recognition (John Bassett Moore).
But the French question had another side in its reaction on American parties. Jefferson did not read excesses in Paris as warnings against democracy, but as warnings against the abuses of monarchy ; nor did he regard Bonaparte's coup d'etat as revealing the weakness of republics, but rather as revealing the danger of standing armies; he did not look on the war of the coalitions against France as one of mere powers, but as one between forms of government ; and though the immediate fruits of the Revolution belied his hopes, as they did those of ardent humanitarians the world over, he had faith that a success ful reformation of government in France would insure "a general reformation through Europe, and the resurrection to a new life of their people." Three of these statements could be reversed as regards Hamilton. It is the key to an understanding of the times to remember that the Revolutionary War had disjointed society; and democracy—which Jefferson had proclaimed in the Declara tion of Independence and enthroned in Virginia—after strengthen ing its rights by the sword had run to excesses of speech (and of acts in the Shays rebellion) that produced a conservative reac tion. To this reaction Hamilton explicitly appealed in the Consti tutional Convention of 1787; and of this reaction various features of the Constitution, and Hamiltonian Federalism generally, were direct fruits. Moreover, independently of special incentives to the alarmist and the man of property, the opinions of many Americans turned again, after the war, into a current of sympathy for England, as naturally as American commerce returned to English ports.
however, far from America in these years and un exposed to reactionary influences, came back with undiminished fervour of democracy, and the talk he heard of praise for England, and fearful recoil before even the beginning of the revolution in France, disheartened him, and filled him with suspicion. It was at this period of his life that he gave expression to some of the opinions for which he has been most severely criticized. For the Shays rebellion he felt little abhorrence, and wrote : "A little re bellion now and then is a good thing . . . an observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government." Again, "Can history produce an instance of rebellion so honorably conducted? . . . God forbid that we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. . . . What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants : It is its natural manure." And again: "Societies exist under three forms—(i) without government, as among our Indians; (2) under govern ments wherein the will of everyone has a just influence. . . . (3) under governments of force. . . . It is a problem not clear in my mind that the first condition is not the best" (Writings, Ford. ed., iv. 362-63, 467).
Hating as he did feudal class institutions and Tudor-Stuart traditions of arbitrary rule (he turned law students from Black stone's toryism to Coke's political localism) his attitude can be imagined toward Hamilton's oft-avowed partialities—and Jeffer son assumed, his intrigues—for British class-government. In short, Hamilton took from recent years the lesson of the evils of lax government ; whereas Jefferson clung to the other lesson, which crumbling colonial governments had illustrated, that gov ernments derived their strength (and the Declaration had pro claimed that they derived their just rights) from the will of the governed. Each built his system accordingly : the one on the basis of order, the other on individualism. The two men and the fate of the parties they led are understandable only by regarding one as the leader of reaction, the other as in line with American ten dencies. The educated classes characteristically furnished Fed eralism with a remarkable body of alarmist leaders; whereas Jefferson, because he had a thorough trust and confidence in the people, became the idol of American democracy.
Hamilton was some what officious and very combative, and Jefferson, although uncon tentious, was very suspicious. As both men held inflexibly to their opinions, cabinet harmony became impossible when the two had formed about themselves parties whose differences were carried into the newspapers; and Washington abandoned perforce his idea "if parties did exist to reconcile them." Partly from discontent with a position in which he did not feel that he enjoyed the absolute confidence of the president, and partly because of financial embarrassments, Jefferson repeatedly sought to resign, and finally on Dec. 31, 1793, with Washington's reluctant consent, retired to his home at Monticello, near Charlottesville.
There he remained (having refused a foreign mission) until elected vice-president in 1796. He was never truly happy except in the country. He loved gardening, experimented enthusiastically in varieties and rotations of crops, and kept meteorological tables with diligence. For eight years he tabulated with painful accuracy the earliest and latest appearance of 37 vegetables in the Wash ington market. When abroad he sought out varieties of grasses, trees, rice and olives for American experiment, and after his return from France received yearly for 23 years, from his old friend the superintendent of the Jardin des plantes, a box of seeds, which he distributed to public and private gardens throughout the United States. Jefferson seems to have been the first discoverer of an exact formula for the construction of mould-boards of least resistance for ploughs. He was remarkably apt in the practical application of mechanical principles.
In 1796 John Adams, the Federalist candidate for the presidency, became pres ident; and Jefferson, the Republican candidate, became vice president. At first the French reign of terror and the X.Y.Z. disclosures strengthened the Federalists, until these, mistaking popular resentment against France for a reaction against democ racy—an equivalence in their own minds—passed the Alien and Sedition laws. In answer to those odious measures Jefferson and Madison prepared and procured the passage of the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions. These resolutions later acquired pernicious prominence in the elaboration of the States' Rights doctrine. It is, however, unquestionably true that as a startling protest against measures "to silence," in Jefferson's words, "by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of our agents," they served a useful purpose. As a counterblast against Hamiltonian principles of centralization they were probably very salutary; while even as pieces of constitutional interpretation it is to be remembered that they did not contemplate nullification by any single State (all "the co-States recurring to their natural rights in cases not made federal"). Moreover, they are not to be judged by consti tutional principles established later by courts and war. Jefferson's particularism increased as he grew older; owing mainly, without doubt, to his increasing fear of Chief Justice John Marshall, as that great scion of Federalism developed its doctrines in the decisions of the Supreme Court.
The Federalist party had ruined itself, and it lost the presidential election of i800. The Republi can candidates, Jefferson and Aaron Burr (q.v.), receiving equal votes, it devolved upon the House of Representatives, in accord ance with the system which then obtained, to make one of the two president, the other vice-president. Party feeling in America has probably never been more dangerously impassioned than in the three years preceding this election ; discount as one will the contrary obsessions of Hamilton and Jefferson, the time was fateful. In the end Hamilton—who very rightly judged Burr
wholly undependable, and Jefferson, in addition to being honour able, more radical in theory than in practice—used his influence in favour of the latter, and he became president, entering upon his duties on March 4, i8oi. Republicans who had affiliated with the Federalists at the time of the X.Y.Z. disclosures returned; very many of the Federalists Jefferson placated and drew over. "Believing," he wrote, "that (excepting the ardent monarchists) all our citizens agreed in ancient Whig principles I thought it advisable to define and declare them, and let them see the ground on which we can rally." This he did in his inaugural, which, though somewhat rhetorical, is a splendid and famous statement of democracy.' His conciliatory policy produced a mild schism in his own party, but proved eminently wise, and the State elections of 18oi fulfilled his prophecy of 1791 that the policy of the Federalists would leave them "all head and no body." In 1804 he was re elected by 162 out of 176 votes. Even John Adams voted for him, as a Republican elector in Massachusetts.
Jefferson's administra tions were distinguished by the simplicity that marked his conduct in private life. He eschewed the pomp and ceremonies, natural inheritances from English origins, that had been an innocent setting to the office of his two predecessors. His dress was of "plain cloth" on the day of his inauguration. Instead of driving to the Capitol in a coach and six, he walked without a guard or servant from his lodgings (or, as a rival tradition has it, he rode, and hitched his horse to a neighbouring fence), attended by a crowd of citizens. Instead of opening Congress with a speech to which a formal reply was expected, he sent in a written message by a private hand. He discontinued the practice of sending min isters abroad in public vessels. Between himself and the governors of States he recognized no difference in rank. He would not have his birthday celebrated by State balls. The weekly levee was practically abandoned. Even such titles as "Excellency," "Hon ourable," "Mr." were distasteful to him. It was formally agreed in cabinet meeting that "when brought together in society all are perfectly equal, whether foreign or domestic, titled or untitled, in or out of office." Thus diplomatic grades were ignored in social precedence, and foreign relations were seriously compromised by dinner-table complications. One minister who appeared in gold lace and dress sword for his first official call on the president, was received by Jefferson—as he insisted with studied purpose—in negligent undress and slippers down at the heel. In truth, all this was in part premeditated system, indicative of his purpose to re publicanize government and public opinion, which was the dis tinguishing feature of his administration ; but it was also the nature of the man. In the company he chose by preference, honesty and knowledge were his only tests. He knew absolutely no social distinctions. "If it be possible," he said, "to be certainly conscious of anything, I am conscious of feeling no difference between writing to the highest and lowest being on earth." The Louisiana Purchase.—The supreme achievement of his first administration was the Louisiana purchase (q.v.), following which Lewis and Clark, sent by him, conducted their famous exploring expedition across the continent to the Pacific. The purchase, judged by his professed principles of constitutional construction (and also by earlier expressions of policy—made, however, long before Napoleon's acquisition of the territory con fronted the United States with one of the gravest crises of its history) was the greatest "inconsistency" of his career ; although also an illustration, in corresponding degree, of his essential prac ticality and statesmanship. "This advocate of strict economy had spent on his own executive authority an amount equal to almost three-fourths of the debt which Hamilton had assumed for the States with the sanction of Congress. This champion of the letter 'See also Jefferson to E. Gerry, Jan. 26, 1799 (Writings, vii. 325), and to Du Pont de Nemours (x. 23). Cf. Hamilton to J. Dayton, 1799 (Works, x. 329).
of the Constitution had exercised the power of acquiring foreign territory and promising foreigners admission to the citizenship of the United States, for which no clause could be found among the `enumerated powers.' This opponent of the extension of the `general Government' had stretched its power far beyond any point the Federalists had reached, and laid the foundation, in the crea tion of an immense national territory in the West, for that definitive triumph of the nation over the States which his 'coun trymen' [Southerners] of the second generation fought so des perately to avert" (Muzzey).
It was consistent, however, with his past attitude toward England and Spain, respectively strong and weak, as western neighbours. It was consistent with his attitude toward American expansion westward, revealed in his writings and acts since 1776 (for 20 years before he sent Lewis and Clark he had been trying to initiate exploration of the trans-Mississippi region). Realizing fully the significance of the purchase he wrote to his envoy, James Monroe (and this when he did not dream of acquiring all of Louisiana) : "The future destinies of our country hang on the event of this negotiation." In truth no other act or event in American history has been of vaster consequence. Jefferson's greatness, in statesmanship, is due to the fact that he embodied the frontier experience of colonial times, the tendencies of mind which (as Frederick J. Turner long since convinced students of history) had created American democracy. The words of Mc Laughlin are profoundly true : "Jefferson was not first of all, through and through, a States' Rights man, a strict constructionist, a sympathizer with France, an ambitious leader of men; he was a frontiersman or half-frontiersman. . . . Jeffersonism treated not as a spirit, but as a mode of constitutional interpre tation or as a system of administration, is not Jeffersonism at all" (Amer. Hist. Rev., 20: 266).
It is often said that Jefferson established the "spoils system" by his changes in the civil service. He was the innovator, because for the first time there was opportunity for innovation. But justice requires atten tion to the fact that incentive to that innovation, and excuse for it, were found in the one-party monopoly maintained by the Federalists. Moreover, Jefferson's ideals were high; his reasons for changes were in general excellent ; he at least so far resisted the great pressure for office—producing by his resistance dissatis faction within his party—as not to lower, apparently, the person nel of the service; and there were no such blots on his administration as President Adams's "midnight judges." Never theless, his record here showed regrettable inconsistencies'.
Another charge frequently made against Jefferson is that he was inconsistent in his treatment of the Indians. It is true. On one hand he voiced, sincerely beyond doubt, the most noble—and alas, in view of the character of American frontiersmen, imprac ticable—humanism in their behalf. On the other hand his efforts to extinguish Indian titles justify the harsh judgment of Henry Adams that "his greed for land equalled that of any settler on the border"; and in gratifying it he displayed in a few instances an unmoral opportunism that is incapable of condonation. It is, however, to be said in his defence, that in his mind the acquisition of Louisiana was associated with the idea (soon adopted, and fol lowed as a national policy until very recent years) of removing the Indians to reservations of secure hunting grounds—which he (rightly) believed would end frontier wars. To crowd them from their homes east of the Mississippi was therefore, in his system, far removed from the dominant frontier view that Indians were without rights to land or life. Here again—as usually is true— Jefferson's inconsistency of acts turns out to be a lesser incon sistency of principle; and here again, as usually, he made no contemporary explanations, but left the matter to later judg ment of the records.
'See C. R. Fish, The Civil Service and the Patronage, ch. ii. (New York, 1905), and G. Hunt, in Amer. Hist. Rev., 3: 27o-291. He would not, he said, retain in office extreme Federalists, because he believed them a danger to the country. Theoretically this left a safe zone for moderates ; but the importunity of Republican office-seekers made it impossible to maintain the distinction between Jefferson's principle and mere partisanship.
His second term derives most of its historical interest from the unsuccessful efforts to convict Aaron Burr of treasonable acts in the South-West, and from the efforts made to maintain, without war, the rights of neutrals on the high seas. In his first term he carried out a policy he had urged upon the government when minister to France and when vice-president, by dispatching naval forces to coerce Tripoli into a decent respect for the trade of his country—the first in Christendom to gain honourable immunity from tribute or piracy in the Mediterranean. Against greater powers he showed no such intrepidity. In his diplomacy with Napoleon and Great Britain he betrayed a painful incorrigibility of optimism. One writer has very justly said that what chiefly affects one in the whole matter is the pathos of it—"a philosopher and a friend of peace struggling with a despot of superhuman genius, and a Tory cabinet of superhuman insolence and stolidity" (Trent). All the charges against him of timidity and vacillation, so far as they have any basis, rest upon his foreign policy. In 1807 he was willing to rely chiefly on little gunboats—kept under sheds ashore except when actually needed, and then manned by a sort of naval militia!—and wrote (soon after the British "Leopard" had wrecked and searched the "Chesapeake") of "the ruinous folly of a navy!" It is fair to note, however, that Commodores Barron and Preble approved the gunboat policy. And the embargo, if dispassionately considered, must be pronounced not only amply justified by the contempt for neutral rights displayed equally by France and Great Britain, but quite as logical as the continental blockade.
Jefferson's statesmanship had the limitations of an agrarian outlook. The extreme to which he carried his advocacy of diplomatic isolation, his opposition to the creation of an adequate navy, his estimate of cities as "sores upon the body politic," his prejudice against manufactures, trust in farmers, and political distrust of the artisan class, reflect them. Jefferson favoured the wide distribution of the public land as the basis of personal independence and democracy (Hz :Hilton might well have favoured it, in the interest of taxation and ultimate conservatism, but in fact he opposed it). In 1776 he wished to exclude from purchasing public land any man already holding 5o acres. In 1785 he wrote : "It is too soon yet . . . to say that every man who cannot find employment, but who can find uncultivated land, shall be at liberty to cultivate it, paying a moderate rent. But it is not too soon to provide by every possible means that as few as possible shall be without a little portion of land. The small landowners are the most precious portion of the State." It is probably fair to say that cheap land was the chief basis of his political philosophy (see C. Beard, Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy, ch. xiv. ; also pp. 328, 342, 347, 358).
When, on March 4, 1809, he retired from the presidency he had been almost continuously in the public service for 4o years. He refused to be elected for a third time, though requested by the legislatures of five States to be a candidate ; and thus, with Wash ington's prior example, helped to establish a precedent deemed by him to be of great importance under a democratic government. His influence was little lessened in his retirement. Madison and Monroe, his immediate successors—neighbours and devoted friends, whom he had advised in their early education and led in their maturer years—consulted him on all great questions (though there were few in the latter's peaceful terms) ; and thus there was no break of principles in the 24 years of the "Jeffersonian system." Jefferson the Political Leader.—Jefferson was one of the greatest political managers his country has known. He had a quick eye for character, was genuinely amiable, uncontentious, tactful, masterful; and it may be assumed from his success that he was shrewd to a degree. Full explanations do not remove from some important transactions in his political life an impression of indirectness. This is mainly because he would not himself mix in debate, pamphleteering or other controversy, while urging his doctrines upon followers who did so. Nor would he, except in conversations and letters, explain his principles and apply them to his conduct although certainly, unless tested by principles, his acts were often strikingly inconsistent ; and, even when so tested, sometimes remain so. But reasonable judgment must find very unjust the stigma of duplicity put upon him by the Federal ists. Again, there were philosophic elements in his political faith which have led some to class him as a visionary and fanatic. But although he certainly indulged at times in dreams at which one may still smile, he was not, properly speaking, a visionary—look ing backward his political prescience seems remarkable ; nor can he with justice be pronounced a fanatic. He did have the full courage of his convictions. Extreme as were some of his prin ciples, his independence in expressing and pertinacity in adher ing to them were equally extreme. He felt fervently, was not afraid to risk all on the conclusions to which his heart and his mind led him and declared himself with openness and energy ; he spoke and even wrote his conclusions, however bold or abstract, without troubling to detail his reasoning or clip his offhand speculations. Certain it is that there is much in his utterances at which less robust democrats will always cavil—though some of the ideas at which they hesitate are at last receiving consideration : e.g., his doctrine that one generation should not and cannot bind another by paper documents. But be his doctrines and aims ever so radical, in their attainment he proceeded, as Hamilton recog nized, conservatively. Indeed, when practicality so counselled he was always content to wait for time and education to do his work. Soar as he might, he was essentially not a doctrinaire but an empiricist ; his mind was objective. Though he remained to the end firm in his belief that there had been an active monarchist party, this obsession did not carry him out of touch with the realities of human nature and of his time. He built with surety on the colonial past, and had a better reasoned view of the actual future than had any of his contemporaries.
Events soon appraised the Federalist judgment of American democracy, so tersely expressed by Fisher Ames as "like death . . . only the dismal passport to a more dismal hereafter"; and, with it, appraised Jefferson's word in his first inaugural for those who, "in the full tide of successful experi ment," were ready to abandon a government that had so far kept them "free and firm, on the visionary fear that it might by possi bility lack energy to preserve itself." Time too is still testing his principle that that Government must prove the strongest on earth "where every man . . . would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern." He summed up as follows the difference between himself and the Hamiltonian group : "One feared most the ignorance of the people; the other the selfishness of rulers independent of them"; one sect "believing that the executive is the branch of our government which most need (ed) support ; the other, that, like the analogous branch in the British government, it (was) already too strong for the republican parts of the Constitution." Jefferson, in short, had unlimited faith in the honesty of the people ; a large faith in their common sense ; believed that all is to be won by appealing to the reason of voters; that by education their ignorance can be eliminated; that human nature is indefinitely perfectible; that majorities rule, therefore, not only by virtue of force (which was Locke's ultimate justification of them), but of right. His importance as a maker of modern America can scarcely be overstated, for the ideas he advocated have become the very foundations of American repub licanism. No other man's ideas have had anything like an equal influence upon the institutions of the country. So competent a scholar as Andrew D. White put him alone in each of the three groups of men who did most to found, to build, and to brace the republic (Atlantic Monthly, Jan. 1862). His administrations ended the possibility, probability or certainty—measure it as one will—of a calculated development of Federalism in the direction of class government. Thus by his own labours he vindicated his faith in the experiment of self-government.
His last years were devoted to the establishment of the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, near his home. He planned the buildings and oversaw to the minutest details their construction ; and he is to-day—for this work and the construction of Monticello and other buildings—recognized as notable in the history of American architecture. He gathered the faculty—mainly from abroad and shaped the organization. "A system," he wrote, "of public instruction . . . as it was the earliest so it will he the latest, of all the public concerns in which I shall permit myself to take an interest." The university was doubtless the most liberal insti tution of learning in the world at that time : the curriculum was wholly elective; there were no religious tests or practices; the faculty were all equals, under a rotating and elective chairman ; students were under the honour system in all tests and discipline; agriculture and political science were first provided for in Ameri can education. In short many of the ideas of administration and curriculum that dominate American universities in the 20th century were anticipated by him.
His financial affairs in these last years gave him grave concern. He had left the presidency with debts of $20,000, contracted in an over-generous maintenance of his representative position. After the destruction of the library of Congress by the British in 1814 he sold to the nation for $23,950 some 13,000 volumes of his own collection. But this gave only temporary relief. Relatives, invited guests, and strangers filled Monticello (frequently beds were made for a score and more, sometimes for fifty) ; they stayed for days, weeks, even months, drank his choice French wines, kept their horses in his stables. For solitude he had to retire to a second home, constructed as a refuge. Threatened with bankruptcy, a national subscription in 1826 (of $16,500) enabled him to die in peace, but a few months later his furniture, silver, pictures and Monticello, which is to-day a national memorial, were sold to pay his debts.
Jefferson was 6 ft. 2 in. in height, large-boned, slim, erect and sinewy. He had angular features, a very ruddy complexion, sandy hair, and hazel-flecked grey eyes. Age lessened the unattractiveness of his exterior. His carriage was somewhat loose and undignified. There was grace, nevertheless, in his manners ; and his frank and earnest address, his quick sympathy (yet he seemed cold to strangers), his vivacious, varied, informing talk, gave him an engaging charm. Beneath a quiet surface he was aglow with intense convictions and an emotional temperament. Yet he seems to have acted habitually, in great and little things, on system. His mind, no less trenchant and subtle than Hamilton's, was the most impressible, the most receptive, mind of his time in America. The range of his interests —in geography, geology, botany, zoology, ethnology, agriculture, plantation, medicine and surgery, mathematics, aeronautics, in vention, government, education, languages and literature, religion— is astounding. For many years he was president of the American Philosophical Society. Though it is a tradition that he lacked wit, Moliere and Don Quixote seem to have been his favourites; and though the utilitarian wholly crowds romanticism out of his writings, -he had enough of that quality in youth to prepare to learn Gaelic in order to translate Ossian, and sent to Macpherson for the originals! His interest in art was evidently intellectual. He was singularly sweet-tempered, and shrank from the impas sioned political bitterness that raged about him ; bore with relative equanimity a flood of coarse and malignant abuse of his motives, morals, religion, personal honesty and decency; cherished very few personal animosities ; and better than any of his great antag onists cleared political opposition of ill-blooded personality. In short, his kindness of heart rose above all social, religious or political differences, and nothing destroyed his confidence in men and his sanguine views of life. Complex as was his life in interests and incidents, it can be summed up in a single word : Freedom— freedom in creed, government, thought and speech. "I have sworn," he wrote in 180o, "upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." He died on July 4, 1826, the 5oth anniversary of the Declara tion of Independence, on the same day as John Adams. For his tomb he chose the epitaph: "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." BIBLIOGRAPHY.-See the editions of Jefferson's Writings by H. A. Washington (9 vol., New York, 2853-54, and later reprints), by Paul Leicester Ford (the best collection, so vol. New York, 1892-99) ; also Works, "Federal" ed., 12 vol., New York,
; and A. A. Lips comb, several editions of different name in 20 vol. (Washington, 1903 04), "Definitive" ed., 20 in io vol. (1905) ; T. J. Randolph, Memoir, Correspondence and Miscellanies (Charlottesville, 1829) ; a small selection from the largest collection of his private letters (his public papers were sold to the Government in 1848) is given in Mass. Hist. Society, Collections, ser. 7, vol. i. All these overlap, none is exhaustive of printed sources; a great body of mss. remains unprinted ; there are 135 vol. of papers in the Library of Congress, new letters come fre quently to light, several small collections have been published. J. P. Foley, The Jefferson Cyclopedia (New York, 19oo), S. E. Forman, The Life and Writings of Thomas Jefferson, including all his Important Utterances on Public Questions (Indianapolis, 190o) ; and G. Chinard, The Commonplace Book of Thomas Jefferson, a Repertory of his Ideas on Government (Baltimore, 1926), are useful. Sarah N. Ran dolph, Domestic Relations of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1872), and H. W. Pierson, Jefferson at Monticello: the Private Life of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1862), embody family traditions, and are indis pensable for personal sidelights. Of extreme importance for an appre ciation of his political opinions is C. Beard, Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy (New York, 1915) ; and indispensable on for eign affairs are Henry Adams, History of the United States (New York, 1889-91) ; and the sketch by S. F. Bemis in The American Sec retaries of State and their Diplomacy, vol. ii. (New York, 1927). Special studies include: G. Chinard, Jefferson et les Ideologues, d'apres sa correspondance avec Destutt de Tracy, Cabanis, J. B. Say, et Auguste Comte (Baltimore, 1925), Volney et L'Amerique d'aPres . . . sa correspondance avec Jefferson (Baltimore, 1923), which tend to over-emphasize French connections ; W. A. Robinson, Jeffersonian Democracy in New England (New Haven, 1916) ; L. M. Sears, Jeffer son and the Embargo (Durham, 1927) ; C. Becker, The Declaration of Independence (New York, 1922) ; C. E. Merriam, A History of Ameri can Political Theories, ch. iv. (New York, 1903) ; H. B. Adams, Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia (Washington, 1888) ; W. A. Lambeth and W. H. Manning, Thomas Jefferson as an Architect and a Designer of Landscape (Boston, 1913) ; F. Kimball, Thomas Jefferson, Architect : Original Designs (privately printed, Boston, 1916). J. T. Morse, Thomas Jefferson (Boston, 1883), mainly political, is the only important biography hostile to its subject ; but the writers on Alexander Hamilton (q.v.) supply any necessary corrective. Other biographies, all sympathetic, are: G. Tucker, Life of Thomas Jefferson (Philadelphia, 1837), based in part on local sources not utilized by other students; H. S. Randall, Life of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1853), able, and exhaustive for its time, but sharing Jefferson's obses sions regarding "monocrats" and otherwise partisan, still the leading source of information; J. Parton, Life of Thomas Jefferson (Boston, 5874), brilliant, less ably reasoned; J. Schouler, Thomas Jefferson (Boston, 2883) ; J. S. Williams, Thomas Jefferson: His Permanent Influence on American Institutions (New York, 1913), hurried and unfinished, by a very able Southern senator ; T. E. Watson, The Life and Times of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1903), vivid, very partisan, by a Southern Populist; D. S. Muzzey, Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1918), balanced and excellent; C. G. Bowers, Jefferson and Hamilton: the Struggle for Democracy in America (1925), bril liant and important ; A. J. Nock, Jefferson (1926), a study of charac ter and opinions, particularly economic; F. W. Hirst, Life and Letters of Thomas Jefferson (1926), a friendly English view. There is an illuminating appreciation by W. P. Trent in his Southern Statesman of the Old Regime (1897) ; another by John Fiske, in Essays, Historical and Literary, vol. i. (1902), has lesser merits. See also P. Wilstach, Jefferson and Monticello; Gilbert Chinard, Thomas Jefferson: the Apostle of Americanism (1929). (F. S. P.)