Happy 263rd Birthday, Mr. Jefferson!

Posted by Eric F. Langborgh on 13 Apr 2006 at 08:51 am

Like many other founding craftsmen of the early American Republic, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) seemed patently aware of his place in history and sought to mold his legacy with one eye toward principle and the other toward posterity’s judgment. The result for the nation’s third president was a literary and professional record that, over the course of his nearly fifty years in public life, proved high on eloquence and ideals but often full of internal contradictions. Still, Jefferson’s vast contributions to the American founding continue to exert enormous influence in the United States and around the world, remaining highly revered.

Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743 in Shadwell, Virginia. His parents, Peter and Jane Randolph Jefferson, raised him on their plantation in the Virginia wilderness, where he began the study of books at an early age. After attending a boarding school and excelling in classical languages, he studied science, mathematics, rhetoric, philosophy, and literature at William and Mary College. Jefferson then studied law under the tutelage of George Wythe, who also taught Supreme Court Justice John Marshall and Kentucky Senator Henry Clay. He was recognized as one of America’s best legal minds by the time he was admitted to the Virginia Bar in April 1767, practicing law until 1774.

Jefferson married Martha Wayles Skelton on January 1, 1772, and they had six children. Unfortunately, only two reached adulthood. His wife died during childbirth on November 6, 1782. Jefferson never remarried.

 

The Declaration of Independence

Jefferson’s fame comes from a wide-range of achievements and roles — diplomat, secretary of state, governor, historian, philosopher, founder of a university — but he achieved greatness and secured his place in history most firmly with his primary authorship of the Declaration of Independence. In the midst of growing hostilities with the British on the eve of the Revolutionary War, the Second Continental Congress appointed Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston to draft the Declaration. The other four members deferred to thirty-three year old Jefferson, one of the youngest members of Congress, to write the document. They did this for two main reasons: 1) his brilliant and powerful writing style, and 2) his Virginia citizenship. As the largest and most influential southern colony, Virginia’s support for the revolutionary cause was indispensable for presenting a united front against the British.

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America, as it is officially titled, was signed on July 4, 1776 (though it passed on July 2). It was proclaimed to the public in Philadelphia on July 8.

Jefferson’s penmanship of the Declaration grew to legendary status by the time of his presidency. This drew the ire of Adams, whose vast patriotic credentials were now overshadowed by the document, leading him to decry it and the ideas it contained as “hackneyed,” utterly unoriginal. Jefferson agreed. He wrote of the Declaration, “Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind.”

Indeed, the arguments and principles contained in the Declaration of Independence — including, in some cases, the actual wording — were culled from various sources. For instance, it included Richard Henry Lee’s June 7, 1776, resolution for independence nearly in its entirety, including the phrase, “that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states.”

Other influences included George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights ( “all men are by nature equally free and independent”) and Jefferson’s own June 1774 pamphlet, “A Summary View of the Rights of British America.” The Summary was intended for delegates in the Virginia legislature, and rejected all British parliamentary authority whatsoever over the colonies, while acknowledging that allegiance was owed only to the king. Given that the king had no tax or legislative authority without Parliament, this allegiance was merely ceremonial and in effect represented virtual independence from Great Britain.

In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson sought to present the colonists’ grievances against the throne, citing numerous instances of British transgressions against their “rights as Englishmen” under common law, as were often asserted. These legal rights were not enough, though, to forge a bridge with other countries around the world who were uninterested in the “rights of Englishmen.” The enduring masterstroke for Jefferson was in finding that common ground through an appeal to natural law philosophy.

Like Mason and many other colonial leaders, Jefferson was greatly influenced by John Locke’s thoughts on natural law. He also revered fellow natural law philosopher Christian Wolff from Germany. Jefferson had a copy of Wolff’s Institutiones in his library, in which passages on the asserted right of revolutionary war were specifically marked. The Declaration’s philosophical paragraph on man’s inherent and inalienable equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness continues to exert influence and inspiration to this day.

 

Jefferson on Slavery

As notable for what the Declaration of Independence contains in final form is what is missing. Jefferson’s original list of grievances included a portion seemingly applying the logic of his work to black slaves. “He [George III] has waged cruel war against human nature itself,” wrote Jefferson, “violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur a miserable death in their transportation thither.” This paragraph was excised along with a few others at the insistence of the delegates from Georgia and South Carolina, as well as from some northern reluctance to condemn a trade promoted by their merchants.

On the issue of slavery and race relations, Jefferson proved to contradict himself many times, both in word and in action, throughout the course of his public life. Opposition to the spread of slavery into the new territories marked his early political life. As chair of the Confederation Congress committee on dealing with the government of western lands, Jefferson proposed in 1784 that slavery should be banned in all western territories after 1800. The proposal was defeated by one vote, leading him to remark, “we see the fate of millions unborn hanging on the tongue of one man, and heaven was silent in that awful moment.” The Ordinance of 1787, though, prohibited slavery in the newly established Northwest Territory.

Jefferson inherited slaves from both his father and father-in-law, owning in a typical year two hundred. About eighty of these lived and worked at Monticello, the estate he began building at the age of twenty-six. Jefferson freed only two slaves during his lifetime, five in his will, and chose not to pursue two others who ran away — all of whom were mixed-race.

In his lone book, Notes on the State of Virginia (1782), Jefferson sought to develop a plan for the ultimate dismantling of the institution of slavery throughout the United States and its territories for slaves born after 1800. Later, he wrote Adams of his fear of a civil war on the magnitude of the ancient Greek “Peloponnesian War” if the slaves were to be freed. His ambivalence led to his support for the Missouri Compromise of 1820, though he regretted the divisive issue was raised at all. The Missouri Compromise allowed Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state and for slavery to flourish below the 36°30´ North latitude line in the states formed from the Louisiana Purchase.

Also outlined in Notes were Jefferson’s thoughts advocating many of his main passions through life, including religious freedom, universal education for white males, and the wide distribution of property to ensure a free and independent people by limiting hereditary land holdings.

 

Successes and Failures in Local Governance

Jefferson began his political career working in lower levels of government. He served as magistrate and as county lieutenant of Albemarle County, Virginia. At twenty-five he was elected to the House of Burgesses, where he served from 1769 to 1774. While there, he worked alongside Patrick Henry and other political agitators in the Virginia Committee of Correspondence, striving to oppose British domination of the colonies. These formative political years led to Jefferson’s lifelong emphasis on local government and popular sovereignty.

Jefferson served in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1776 to 1779, working alongside his old mentor, Wythe, and James Madison to overhaul many of Virginia’s laws. In 1776, he succeeded in abolishing entail, the practice of limiting inheritance of property or title to a limited succession of heirs. He had to wait until 1785, though, for his proposal to end primogeniture (the exclusive right of inheritance which belongs to the eldest son) to pass. Jefferson was thus successful in eradicating the last vestiges of feudal land holding from the Old Dominion. As he remarked, “these laws, drawn by myself, laid the axe to the foot of pseudoaristocracy.” By the early 1790s, all the former colonies had followed suit.

Though his efforts to create a free system of tax-funded education for non-slaves failed, he ultimately did succeed in getting his 1779 bill on religious freedom passed. His bill stated, “all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions on matters of religion, and that same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.” Largely due to the efforts of Madison the bill finally passed in 1786, making Virginia the first state to establish freedom of religion within its borders.

During the War, Jefferson served for two years as governor of Virginia (1779-1781). He was criticized for failing to call up the militia upon General Washington’s request, and for failing to adequately provide for the defense of Richmond when the British attacked. Jefferson’s detractors charged him with cowardice for fleeing to Monticello from the capital upon its invasion, leading him to resign. Soon afterwards, the Virginia Assembly launched an inquiry into his conduct, but exonerated him of all charges and even passed a resolution in appreciation for his service. The episode would follow him, however, throughout the rest of his political life.

 

Jefferson and the Bill of Rights

Jefferson went to France in 1784 as a treaty-negotiating commissioner, and then succeeded Benjamin Franklin as minister, the term then used for ambassador. By serving in France until 1789, Jefferson was not part of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, nor of the ratifying process. He reported to Madison, however, that though he was favorably disposed to the Constitution, he was alarmed at the omission of a bill of rights and the failure to place a term limit on the president.

Jefferson wrote to Madison on March 15, 1789 that the argument for a bill of rights was “the legal check which it puts into the hands of the judiciary.” It was “necessary by way of supplement” to the rights already protected within the Constitution. He believed that an independent court could check majority impulses by holding unconstitutional any acts violating a bill of rights. The Bill of Rights would be, in Jefferson’s mind, “the text whereby to try all acts of federal government.”

Jefferson commented on many aspects of a proposed bill of rights. On the right to arms and a “well-regulated militia,” his proposed state constitution stated, “No freeman should be debarred the use of arms.” Harkening back to the Declaration of Independence and his criticism of the Crown’s large standing armies without the consent of colonial legislatures, Jefferson argued that the state militias should be well prepared for public defense under the centralized federal authority.

On speech and the free press, Jefferson never protested seditious libel, even under the Adams Administration’s Sedition Act controversy. He focused his protest against national — as opposed to state — prosecution of verbal crimes. In his 1783 draft constitution for Virginia, he proposed that the press “shall be subject to no other restraint than liableness to legal prosecution for false facts printed and published.” He opposed the prosecution of accurate information, as in fact the Sedition Act had.

On religion, he strongly supported the free exercise of religion while opposing state mandated religious belief or practice. His one exception for free exercise: “[It] shall not be held to justify any seditious preaching or conversation against the authority of the civil government.”

On habeas corpus, he wrote to Madison from Paris asking why the writ should be suspended in times of insurrections and rebellions, as was proposed. He reasoned that rebels, like any person charged with a public crime, could be arrested and held on less evidence than shows probable cause if the public safety required it. He proposed that definite limits on this in terms of time of confinement be placed in the habeas corpus clause in the Constitution.

On bills of attainder (the governmental act of pronouncing a person guilty of a heinous crime without trial, thus subjecting that person to capital punishment), however, he stood squarely opposed to the Constitution’s provision in word and action. Although his proposed Virginia constitution of 1783 barred the passing of any bill of attainder, he as governor in 1778 wrote one against Josiah Phillips, reputed to be a Tory cutthroat conducting insurrectionist activities. Legislative outlawry and attainder were justifiable, Jefferson contended, when a person charged with a crime withdrew from justice or forcibly resisted. Despite having his reputation stained by the Phillips incident, Jefferson strongly defended his action upon careful reflection in comments he made in 1815.

 

Leader of the Republican Opposition

George Washington asked Jefferson to serve as his first Secretary of State in 1790. Differences with Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton’s centralized national bank and Washington’s handling of the Whiskey Rebellion caused him to resign on December 31,1793.

Jefferson differed with Hamilton and the Federalist Party over foreign policy and the role of the federal government under the Constitution. Whereas Hamilton favored a pro-British approach to foreign policy in relation to the ongoing struggle for power, Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans saw in the French Revolution the continuation of the “spirit of ‘76.” Jefferson viewed Washington’s policy of neutrality as being pro-British, especially on the heel of John Jay’s Treaty in 1796. For Jefferson, the British represented the last refuge of the old order tyranny of the monarchy. The French and their revolution was the way of the future: “This ball of liberty, I believe most piously, is now so well in motion that it will roll around the globe,” he proclaimed.

Jefferson ran against Federalist Adams for President in 1796, losing by three electoral votes. Under the original electoral system, this made Jefferson the Vice-President.

Jefferson secretly led the charge of the Republican opposition instead of acting as loyal lieutenant under Adams. He forcefully opposed much of the Federalist agenda, including the Alien and Sedition Acts, which he equated with British restrictions on the colonial press.

In August and September 1798, Jefferson ghostwrote the Kentucky Resolution alongside Madison’s Virginia Resolution. In it, he asserted that the Sedition Act was unconstitutional and therefore null and void, because it breached the power over domestic affairs that was reserved to the states and the people. “[If Congress fails to rescind the Sedition Act,] we should sever ourselves from that union we so much value,” Jefferson penned, “rather than give up our rights of self-government which we have reserved.”

Ultimately the Kentucky legislature deleted the section on secession, but Jefferson’s arguments provided the underpinning for the Confederacy’s later appeal to the Compact Theory of government during the Civil War. Jefferson later softened his stand following a visit from Madison in September 1799, “because we should never think of separation but for respected and enormous violations” — or, as he wrote in the Declaration, after “a long train of abuses.”

 

America’s Third President

Jefferson defeated Adams for the presidency in 1800, though for a while his fate was up in the air. In a fluke in the original electoral process, later corrected by the Twelfth Amendment, he tied his running mate, Aaron Burr. After dozens of ballots, a small group of Federalists in Congress threw their weight behind Jefferson, giving him the victory. His election bears special note for it marked the first transfer of power from one party to another, establishing the peaceful precedent that has been devoutly followed since.

Jefferson’s first term was highly successful. He believed in a “wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring each other,” but that would not do much else. He worked to minimize the influence of the federal government, slash the number of public employees, and cut military spending while decreasing the national debt. Perhaps ironically, the landmark event of his first term seemed to go against his political philosophy when he orchestrated the Louisiana Purchase for $15 million from Napoleon. Jefferson himself argued that the 1803 agreement was probably unconstitutional, but it was necessary to move quickly to take advantage of the deal. His commissioning of Lewis and Clark to explore the West out to the Pacific provided for many scientific and geographic advances in the continuing growth of the young republic. This also established the U.S. claim to the Oregon Territory.

On the foreign policy front, Jefferson became the first president to use military force overseas. To ensure the safety of American ships on the high seas, he attempted to put an end to bribes the U.S. had been paying the Barbary states in northern Africa for over fifty years. This resulted in the Tripolitan War, forcing Jefferson to use the U.S. Navy and rethink his policy of reducing the military.

His first term successes led Jefferson to a landslide election victory in 1804. Increasing foreign hostilities linked with unpopular domestic policy, however, marked his second term. The continued impressment of American sailors into the British navy and their attacks on U.S. ships led Jefferson to pass the Embargo Act of 1807 in an effort to avert war and exert American rights. This plunged the American economy into a depression, especially in New England, which threatented secession, and ultimately led to war with England under Jefferson’s successor, Madison, in 1812. Violations of civil liberties, particularly search and seizure in the effort to enforce the Embargo Act, compared to the worst of the Federalists’ measures under the Sedition Act.

The landmark Supreme Court case Marbury v. Madison (1803), represented another setback to the Jefferson Administration. The decision pronounced the doctrine of judicial review while derailing his attempts to impeach Federalist judges opposed to his Republican programs.

Jefferson’s popularity hit an all-time low at the end of his second term, possibly leading him to forego a third term.

 

Views on the French Revolution

The policies Jefferson pursued, especially on the foreign policy front, followed his changing views about the French Revolution. Indeed, many historians note that his presidency took on a definite “Federalist” flavor, as he embraced many of the policies and methods of governing he once deplored. As he ran for office in 1800, Jefferson seemed at his most radical, earning the derogatory title “leader of the American Directory” from his enemies for his support of the French Revolution. For instance, though he lamented the growing bloodshed and random violence that characterized the events in France, he viewed it as a necessary act in the larger movement toward triumphant global revolution against the old caste. “Were there but an Adam and Eve left in every country, and left free,” Jefferson wrote in 1793, “it would be better than it is now.” Jefferson had embraced “ideology,” a new French word coined by radical philosophe Destutt de Tracy, over pragmatism, and was labeled by Federalist critics as “a man of party” over principle.

Reality soon changed his perspective. As he later conceded to Adams, “I did not, in ‘89, believe [the convulsions in France] would have lasted so long, nor have cost so much blood.” Adams had predicted the rise of military dictatorship in France, and Napoleon’s rise to power fulfilled the prophecy, much to Jefferson’s chagrin. Jefferson remained optimistic about America, however, stating, “whatever the fate of republicanism there, we are able to preserve it inviolate here.” Jefferson now embraced the neutrality policy of Washington and Adams he had hitherto condemned as a betrayal of the Spirit of ‘76.

 

A Fruitful Retirement

Jefferson retired to his Monticello home, continuing to pursue and make innovations in his diverse interests in science, natural history, philosophy, and even in architecture. He continued to expand and upgrade Monticello until his death, pioneering many home amenities.

His proudest post-political achievement was the founding of the University of Virginia at Charlottesville in 1825. Education always was a passion for Jefferson, and he put all his creative energies into the project. He conceived, planned, designed, and supervised both the construction of the University of Virginia and the hiring of its original faculty.

Following a long and fascinating correspondence with his old friend Adams over the course of nearly 15 years, Jefferson died the same day as Adams on July 4, 1826 — exactly fifty years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. His final words were “Is it the fourth?” as he lapsed into coma the evening before. Even in the last hours of his life, Jefferson was focused on his legacy.

On his tombstone he had the words, “author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia” inscribed. Jefferson designed his own headstone as carefully as he tried to craft his political life. His legacy has been well preserved.

© 2004-2008 Eric F. Langborgh