Thomas Jefferson

American philosopher and statesman Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was the third president of the United States. A man of broad interests and activity, he exerted an immense influence on the political and intellectual life of the new nation.

Thomas Jefferson was born at Shadwell, Va., on April 13, 1743. His father had been among the earliest settlers in this wilderness country, and his position of leadership descended to his eldest son, together with 5,000 acres of land.

Jefferson became one of the best-educated Americans of his time. At the age of 17 he entered the College of William and Mary, where he got exciting first glimpses of "the expansion of science, and of the system of things in which we are placed." Nature destined him to be a scientist, he often said; but there was no opportunity for a scientific career in Virginia, and he took the path of the law, studying it under the tutelage of George With as a branch of the history of mankind. He read widely in the law, in the sciences, and in both ancient and modern history, philosophy, and literature. Jefferson was admitted to the bar in 1767; his successful practice led to a wide circle of influence and to cultivated intellectual habits that would prove remarkably creative in statesmanship. When the onrush of the American Revolution forced him to abandon practice in 1774, he turned these legal skills to the rebel cause.

Jefferson's public career began in 1769, when he served as a representative in the Virginia House of Burgesses. About this time, too, he began building Monticello, the lovely home perched on a densely wooded summit that became a lifelong obsession. He learned architecture from books, above all from the Renaissance Italian Andrea Palladio. Yet Monticello, like the many other buildings Jefferson designed over the years, was a uniquely personal creation. Dissatisfied with the first version, completed in 12 years, Jefferson later rebuilt it. Monticello assumed its ultimate form about the time he retired from the presidency.

His Philosophy

Jefferson rose to fame in the councils of the American Revolution. Insofar as the Revolution was a philosophical event, he was its most articulate spokesman, having absorbed the thought of the 18th-century Enlightenment. He believed in a beneficent natural order in the moral as in the physical world, freedom of inquiry in all things, and man's inherent capacity for justice and happiness, and he had faith in reason, improvement, and progress.

Jefferson's political thought would become the quintessence of Enlightenment liberalism, though it had roots in English law and government. The tradition of the English constitution gave concreteness to American patriot claims, even a color of legality to revolution itself, that no other modern revolutionaries have possessed. Jefferson used the libertarian elements of the English legal tradition for ideological combat with the mother country. He also separated the principles of English liberty from their corrupted forms in the empire of George III and identified these principles with nascent American ideals. In challenging the oppressions of the empire, Americans like Jefferson came to recognize their claims to an independent nationality.

Jefferson's most important contribution to the revolutionary debate was A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774). He argued that Americans, as sons of expatriate Englishmen, possessed the same natural rights to govern themselves as their Saxon ancestors had exercised when they migrated to England from Germany. Only with the reign of George III had the violations of American rights proved to be "a deliberate, systematical plan of reducing us to slavery." Though the logic of his argument pointed to independence, Jefferson instead set forth the theory of an empire of equal self-governing states under a common king and appealed to George III to rule accordingly.

Declaration of Independence

The Revolution had begun when Jefferson took his seat in the Second Continental Congress, at Philadelphia, in June 1775. He brought to the Congress, as John Adams recalled, "a reputation for literature, science, and a happy talent for composition." It was chiefly as a legislative draftsman that he would make his mark. His great work was the Declaration of Independence. In June 1776 he was surprised to find himself at the head of the committee to prepare this paper. He submitted a rough draft to Adams and Benjamin Franklin, two of the committee, who suggested only minor changes, revised it to Jefferson's satisfaction, and sent it to Congress. Congress debated it line by line for 2 1/2 days. Though many changes were made, the Declaration that emerged on July 4 bore the unmistakable stamp of Jefferson. It possessed that "peculiar felicity of expression" for which he was noted.

The Declaration of Independence crisply set forth the bill of particular grievances against the reigning sovereign and compressed a whole cosmology, a political philosophy, and a national creed in one paragraph. The truths declared to be "self-evident" were not new; as Jefferson later said, his purpose was "not to find out new principles, or new arguments …, but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject." But here, for the first time in history, these truths were laid at the foundation of a nation. Natural equality, the inalienable rights of man, the sovereignty of the people, the right of revolution—these principles endowed the American Revolution with high purpose united to a theory of government.

In Virginia

Jefferson returned to Virginia and to his seat in the reconstituted legislature. A constitution had been adopted for the commonwealth, but it was distressingly less democratic than the one Jefferson had drafted and dispatched to Williamsburg. He sought now to achieve liberal reforms by ordinary legislation. Most of these were contained in his comprehensive Revision of the Laws. Although the code was never enacted in entirety, the legislature went over the bills one by one. Of first importance was the Statute for Religious Freedom. Enacted in 1786, the statute climaxed the long campaign for separation of church and state in Virginia. Though Jefferson was responsible for the abolition of property laws that were merely relics of feudalism, his bill for the reform of Virginia's barbarous criminal code failed, and for the sake of expediency he withheld his plan for gradual emancipation of the slaves. Jefferson was sickened by the defeat of his Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge. A landmark in the history of education, it proposed a complete system of public education, with elementary schools available to all, the gifted to be educated according to their ability.

Jefferson became Virginia's governor in June 1779. The Revolutionary War had entered a new phase. The British decision to "unravel the thread of rebellion from the southward" would, if successful, have made Virginia the crucial battleground. Jefferson struggled against enormous odds to aid the southern army. He was also handicapped by the weakness of his office under the constitution and by his personal aversion to anything bordering on dictatorial rule.

Early in 1781 the British invaded Virginia from the coast, slashed through to Richmond, and put the government to flight. Jefferson acted with more vigor than before, still to no avail. In May, Gen. Charles Cornwallis marched his army into Virginia. The government moved to safer quarters at Charlottesville. The Redcoats followed, and 2 days after his term of office expired but before a successor could be chosen, Jefferson was chased from Monticello. The General Assembly resolved to inquire into Jefferson's conduct, and months after the British surrender at Yorktown, he attended the legislature on this business. But no inquiry was held, the Assembly instead voting him resolution of thanks for his services.

Nevertheless, wounded by the criticism, Jefferson resolved to quit public service. A series of personal misfortunes, culminating in his wife's death in September 1782, plunged him into gloom. Yet her death finally returned him to his destiny. The idealized life he had sought in his family, farms, and books was suddenly out of reach. That November he eagerly accepted congressional appointment to the peace commission in Paris. He never sailed, however, and wound up in Congress instead.

During his retirement Jefferson had written his only book, Note on the State of Virginia. The inquiry had begun simply, but it grew as Jefferson worked. He finally published the manuscript in a private edition in Paris (1785). Viewed in the light of 18th-century knowledge, the book is work of natural and civil history, uniquely interesting as a guide to Jefferson's mind and to his native country. He expressed opinions on a variety of subjects, from cascades and caverns to constitutions and slavery. An early expression of American nationalism, the book acted as a catalyst in several fields of intellectual activity. It also ensured Jefferson a scientific and literary reputation on two continents.

Service in Congress

In Congress from November 1783 to the following May, Jefferson laid the foundations of national policy in several areas. His proposed decimal system of coinage was adopted. He drafted the first ordinance of government for the western territory, wherein free and equal republican states would be created out of the wilderness; and his land ordinance, adopted with certain changes in 1785, projected the rectilinear survey system of the American West.

Jefferson also took a leading part in formulating foreign policy. The American economy rested on foreign commerce and navigation. Cut adrift from the British mercantile system, Congress had pursued free trade to open foreign markets, but only France had been receptive. The matter became urgent in 1783-1784. Jefferson helped reformulate a liberal commercial policy, and in 1784 he was appointed to a three-man commission (with Adams and Franklin) to negotiate treaties of commerce with the European powers.

Minister to France

In Paris, Jefferson's first business was the treaty commission; in 1785 he succeeded Franklin as minister to France. The commission soon expired, and Jefferson focused his commercial diplomacy on France. In his opinion, France offered imposing political support for the United States in Europe as well as an entering wedge for the free commercial system on which American wealth and power depended. Louis XVI's foreign minister seemed well disposed, and influential men in the French capital were ardent friends of the American Revolution. Jefferson won valuable concessions for American commerce; however, because France realized few benefits in return, Britain maintained its economic ascendancy.

His duties left Jefferson time to haunt bookstores, frequent fashionable salons, and indulge his appetite for art, music, and theater. He toured the south of France and Italy, England, and the Rhineland. He interpreted the New World to the Old. Some of this activity had profound effects. For instance, his collaboration with a French architect in the design of the classical Roman Capitol of Virginia inaugurated the classical revival in American architecture.

About Europe generally, Jefferson expressed ambivalent feelings. But on balance, the more he saw of Europe, the dearer his own country became. "My God!" he exclaimed. "How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy. I confess I had no idea of it myself…."

Secretary of State

On Jefferson's return to America in 1789, President Washington prevailed upon him to become secretary of state. For the next 3 years he was chiefly engaged in fruitless negotiations with the European powers. With Spain he sought to fix the southern United States boundary and secure free navigation of the Mississippi River through Spanish territory to the Gulf of Mexico. With Britain he sought removal of English troops from the Northwest and settlement of issues left over from the peace treaty. In this encounter he was frustrated by the secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, whose ascendancy in the government also checked Jefferson's and James Madison's efforts for commercial discrimination against Britain and freer trade with France. In Jefferson's opinion, Hamilton's fiscal system turned on British trade, credit, and power, while his own system turned on commercial liberation, friendship with France, and the success of the French Revolution. Hamilton's measures would enrich the few at the expense of the many, excite speculation and fraud, concentrate enormous power in the Treasury, and break down the restraints of the Constitution. To combat these tendencies, Jefferson associated himself with the incipient party opposition in Congress.

Developing Political Parties

As the party division deepened, Jefferson was denounced by the Federalists as the "generalissimo" of the Republican party, a role he neither possessed nor coveted but, finally, could not escape. When war erupted between France and Britain in 1793, the contrary dispositions of the parties toward these nations threatened American peace. Jefferson attempted to use American neutrality to force concessions from Britain and to improve cooperation between the embattled republics of the Atlantic world. In this he was embarrassed by Edmond Genet, the French minister to the United States, and finally had to abandon him altogether. The deterioration of Franco-American relations did irreparable damage to Jefferson's political system.

Jefferson resigned his post at the end of 1793, again determined to quit public life. But in 1796 the Republicans made him their presidential candidate against John Adams. Losing by three electoral votes, Jefferson became vice president. When the "XYZ affair" threatened to plunge the United States into war with France in 1798, Jefferson clung to the hope of peace and, in the developing war hysteria, rallied the Republicans around him. Enactment of the Alien and Sedition Laws convinced him that the Federalists aimed to annihilate the Republicans and that the Republicans' only salvation lay in political intervention by the state authorities. On this basis he drafted the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, in which he elaborated the theory of the Union as a compact among the several states, declared the Alien and Sedition Laws unconstitutional, and prescribed the remedy of state "nullification" for such assumptions of power by the central government. Kentucky did not endorse this specific doctrine, but the defense of civil liberties was now joined to the defense of state rights. Though the celebrated resolutions did not force a change of policy, by contributing to the rising public clamor against the administration they achieved their political purpose.

President of the United States

Republicans doubled their efforts to elect the "man of the people" in the unusually bitter campaign of 1800. Jefferson topped Adams in the electoral vote. But because his running mate, Aaron Burr, received an equal number of votes, the final decision went to the House of Representatives. Only after 36 ballots was Jefferson elected.

Jefferson became president on March 4, 1801, in the new national capital, Washington, D.C. His inaugural address—a political touchstone for a century or longer— brilliantly summed up the Republican creed and appealed for the restoration of harmony and affection. "We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all republicans: we are all federalists." Jefferson extended the hand of friendship to the Federalists and, although Federalists monopolized the Federal offices, he attempted to limit his removals of them. Even after party pressures forced him to revise this strategy, moderation characterized his course.

Reform was the order of the day. Working effectively with Congress, Jefferson restored freedom of the press; lowered the residency period of the law of naturalization to 5 years; scaled down the Army and Navy (despite a war against Barbary piracy); repealed the partisan Judiciary Act of 1801; abolished all internal taxes, together with a host of revenue offices; and began the planned retirement of the debt. The Jeffersonian reformation was bottomed on fiscal policy; by reducing the means and powers of government, it sought to further peace, equality, and individual freedom.

The President's greatest triumph—and his greatest defeat—came in foreign affairs. Spain's cession of Louisiana and the port of New Orleans to France in 1800 posed a serious threat to American security, especially to the aspirations of the West. Jefferson skillfully negotiated this crisis. With the Louisiana Purchase (1803), America gained an uncharted domain of some 800,000 square miles, doubling its size, for $11,250,000. Even before the treaty was signed, Jefferson planned an expedition to explore this country. The Lewis and Clark expedition, like the Louisiana Purchase, was a spectacular consummation of Jefferson's western vision.

Easily reelected in 1804, Jefferson soon encountered foreign and domestic troubles. His relations with Congress degenerated as Republicans quarreled among themselves. Especially damaging was the insurgency of John Randolph, formerly Republican leader in the House. And former vice president Aaron Burr mounted an insurgency in the West; but Jefferson crushed this and, with difficulty, maintained control of Congress. The turbulence of the Napoleonic Wars, with American ships and seamen ravaged in the neutral trade, proved too difficult. France was not blameless, but Britain was the chief aggressor.

Finally there appeared to be no escape from war except by withdrawing from the oceans. In December 1807 the President proposed, and Congress enacted, a total embargo on America's seagoing commerce. More than an alternative to war, the embargo was a test of the power of commercial coercion in international disputes. On the whole, it was effectively enforced, but it failed to bring Britain or France to justice, and the mounting costs at home led to its repeal by Congress in the waning hours of Jefferson's presidency.

Active Retirement

In retirement Jefferson became the "Sage of Monticello," the most revered—by some the most hated—among the remaining Revolutionary founders. He maintained a large correspondence and intellectual pursuits on a broad front. Unfinished business from the Revolution drew his attention, such as revision of the Virginia constitution and gradual emancipation of slaves. But the former would come only after his death, and the failure of the latter would justify his worst fears. He revived his general plan of public education. Again the legislature rejected it, approving, however, a major part, the state university. Jefferson was the master planner of the University of Virginia in all its parts, from the grounds and buildings to the curriculum, faculty, and rules of governance. He died at Monticello on the fiftieth anniversary of American independence, July 4, 1826.

Further Reading

There are several editions of Jefferson's writings: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, edited by Paul Leicester Ford (10 vols., 1892-1899); The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, edited by Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh (20 vols. in 10; 1905); and Papers, edited by Julian P. Boyd and others (17 vols., 1950-1965). The Boyd work, though complete only to November 1790, is the best edition; a good companion piece is The Family Letters of Thomas Jefferson, edited by Edwin Morris Betts and James Adam Bear, Jr. (1966).

The major biography is Dumas Malone, Jefferson and His Time (4 vols., 1948-1970), complete to 1805 and still in process. Less comprehensive is Merrill D. Peterson, Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation (1970). Accounts of Jefferson's elections are given in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ed., History of American Presidential Elections (4 vols., 1971). Jefferson as president is brilliantly, if not quite fairly, portrayed in the first four volumes of Henry Adams, History of the United States of America during the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison (9 vols., 1889-1891).

Other studies of Jefferson's life and thought include Fiske Kimball, Thomas Jefferson: Architect (1916); Roy J. Honeywell, The Educational Work of Thomas Jefferson (1931); Adrienne Koch, The Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson (1943); Karl Lehman, Thomas Jefferson: American Humanist (1947); Daniel J. Boorstin, The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson (1948); Edwin T. Martin, Thomas Jefferson: Scientist (1952); Caleb Perry Patterson, The Constitutional Principles of Thomas Jefferson (1953); Phillips Russell, Jefferson: Champion of the Free Mind (1956); and Merrill D. Peterson, The Jefferson Image in the American Mind (1960). Merrill D. Peterson, ed., Thomas Jefferson: A Profile (1967), collects essays by historians of Jefferson's era as well as modern ones. Jonathan Daniels, Ordeal of Ambition: Jefferson, Hamilton, Burr (1970), an account of the intertwining political careers of these three, is part biography and part history. □

Jefferson, Thomas

WORK BY JEFFERSON

SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY

Thomas Jefferson (174–1826), premier philosopher of American democracy, was born in Shadwell, Virginia. The first son of a leading planter, he grew up in a simple society a stage removed from the frontier and was educated to the responsibilities of leadership in the Virginia manner. He attended the College of William and Mary, 1760–1762, and thereafter studied law with the learned George Wythe at the provincial capital of Williamsburg, being admitted to the bar in 1767. He became a proficient scholar in English law and also in the Greek and Roman classics. The latter, together with his study of modern rationalists (Locke, Bolingbroke, Shaftesbury, Lord Kames, and others, primarily English and Scottish) undermined his inherited Anglican faith and converted him to a deistic natural religion. Natural religion, English law, and ancient philosophy were the well-springs of his political thought.

First elected to the Virginia legislature in 1769, Jefferson played a prominent part in the coming of the American Revolution. His “Summary View of the Rights of British America,” 1774, was one of the earliest denials of the English Parliament’s right to legislate for the American colonies. In 1776, as a Virginia delegate to the Continental Congress, he drafted the Declaration of Independence, a brilliant first statement of the principles of American government and, indeed, of democratic revolution the world over. The Declaration appealed to “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” for justification of American independence.

The fundamental principles of Jefferson’s political theory were included in the philosophical second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. The principles were not original. They were Lockean by and large, and so generally accepted by American patriots in 1776 that Jefferson himself later said he had only attempted “to place before mankind the common sense of the subject” (letter to Henry Lee, May 8, 1825, inThe Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 16, p. 118). But the founding of American independence upon the philosophy of the rights of man helped to make the first great colonial revolt of modern times the first great democratic revolution as well.

Jefferson is not to be considered primarily as a political theorist but rather as an enlightened statesman engaged in the practical task of implementing liberal principles in the government of the new nation. Political philosophers, although they had written of “the sovereignty of the people,” had not considered the mundane means and contrivances necessary to realize it. Jefferson joined with other American leaders in working out the solution to this problem. It was found, basically, in the constitutional convention, a product not of abstract theory but of developing practice in the American states under the trying conditions of the Revolutionary War. In 1776 Jefferson drafted a constitution for his native state. The reforms it sought, its notably democratic provisions for suffrage and representation, were in advance of republican opinion, and it had little influence on the frame of government ultimately adopted. Subsequently, as a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, 1776–1779, he achieved a number of far-reaching reforms in connection with a general revision of the laws of the commonwealth. The laws of entail and primogeniture were abolished, the criminal code liberalized, the Anglican church disestablished, and religion freed of all state connection. Jefferson wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, finally passed in 1786 under the auspices of his good friend and closest political associate, James Madison. Religious freedom he regarded as an absolute right. Its exercise, being wholly a matter of private conscience, injured no one and admitted neither protection nor support from the state. He rejected toleration, which implied an official or preferred religion, and demanded complete religious liberty together with entire separation of church and state. Despite the anticlerical tone of his argument, its animus was friendly, not hostile, to religion and thus unlike the anticlericalism of European liberals. Religious freedom was ostensibly the subject of the famous statute; actually, however, Jefferson widened its scope and made it a ringing manifesto of freedom of inquiry in all fields of intellectual endeavor.

Jefferson’s faith in democracy and human progress was one with his faith in education. The people were the only safe depositories of their liberties and happiness, always provided they were sufficiently educated. And he wrote characteristically: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be” (letter to Colonel Charles Yancey, January 6, 1816, in ibid., vol. 14, p. 384). Education is, therefore, a paramount responsibility of republican government. His Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge, 1779, provided for three distinct grades of education, the whole system rising like a pyramid from its base in the elementary schools of the local communities to its summit in the state university. (The bill was rejected by the Virginia legislature.) In his theory and plan of public education, Jefferson made one of his most enduring contributions to the democratic polity.

Jefferson was governor of Virginia during two difficult war years, 1779–1781. Then he retired for a few years and completed most of his only book, Notes on the State of Virginia, first published in Paris in 1785. Although primarily a work of natural history, which established his reputation as a scientist and philosopher on two continents, it also circulated his political ideas. He was elected to Congress from his state in 1783. There he drafted the Ordinance of 1784, the first plan of government for the immense western domain extending to the Mississippi River. It called for the organization of these lands into many new republican states; after progressing through easy stages of “territorial” government, they would be admitted to the Union on equal footing with the original states. Reflecting the anticolonialism of the new nation, Jefferson’s plan laid the basis for an expanding nation—“an empire of liberty”—in the multiplication of self-governing states.

Jefferson’s statesmanship was often informed by the reason of the Enlightenment. His plan for the introduction of the decimal system in the nation’s coinage, adopted in 1785, was a landmark in world monetary history. Later, as secretary of state, he followed up the principles earlier enunciated in his report on weights and measures of 1790. Here he proposed a comprehensive system of weights, measures, and currency, all based on a universal standard derived from nature and grounded in the simplest arithmetic. The idea was a commonplace of the Enlightenment, but seldom had statesmen acted as natural philosophers. Congress did not adopt Jefferson’s plan; only revolutionary France, by adopting the metric system, registered progress in this area.

As American minister to France, 1785–1789, Jefferson witnessed the coming of the French Revolution. Closely associated with liberal circles in Paris, he sympathized with their aspirations for reform of the Bourbon monarchy but did not believe France was ready for a republican government on the American model. His observation of French society convinced him that although the principles of human rights were universally valid, the form of government must be tailored to the conditions of a given society. The main effect of his experience abroad was to make him better aware of the unique advantages of American society and to strengthen his commitment to the national union as an instrument of American power and freedom in a hostile world. Yet the progress of the French Revolution also tended to give greater intellectual organization to his political beliefs; and this was eventually reflected in the ideology of the Democratic Republican party which he later led.

In 1789, in the midst of revolutionary ferment, he wrote a long epistolary disquisition on the idea “’that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living’ that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it” (letter to James Madison, September 6, 1789, Jefferson [1760–1826] 1904–1905, vol. 6, pp. 3–4). It was evidently a favorite idea of Jefferson’s Paris physician, an elderly Englishman and friend of philosophes, Dr. Richard Gem. But it had been germinating in Jefferson’s mind for some time, primarily as a response to the European situation, where the laws of property had so far trespassed upon human rights as to make misery an endemic disease, to negate the “sovereignty of the living generation,” and to invite violent revolution as the only remedy. Consulting the mortality tables, he calculated the life of a generation (19 years) and then argued that none could impose its constitution and laws upon another, or contract debts to be paid by another, or bind its successors by obligations of any kind. This formulation of the principle that generations, as well as individuals, have natural rights, together with the mathematical application of it to the fundamental conditions of civil society, was at once the most original and the most radical of Jefferson’s political ideas. Thomas Paine took it up, perhaps independently, and employed it in his famous controversy with Edmund Burke on the French Revolution. Although he was addressing a foreign situation, Jefferson advocated the doctrine for America as well. It became a permanent fixture of his thought and, while never applied with any exactitude, it entered into the progressive spirit of American institutions.

As the first secretary of state, 1790–1793, under the new national government, Jefferson made important contributions to the law of nations. Believing that sovereign nations are bound by the same moral code as individuals, he worked for the establishment of liberal rules of conduct and the extension of free and pacific intercourse in international affairs. From the principle of popular sovereignty he deduced a new test of the legitimacy of a government: The will of the nation substantially declared. He considered expatriation a natural right, advocated a system of mutual naturalization, worked for free trade, sought concerted action against piratical enemies of mankind, and, in 1793, defined the rights and duties of neutrals more clearly than had been done before. All this expressed his sense of the bonds among nations. His hopes for international cooperation were disappointed, of course, and increasingly he himself was forced to curtail the international references of his political creed and to concentrate on securing the peace and independence of the United States against the dangers of European war and politics.

He was elected president in 1800 after a bitter partisan campaign between Federalists and Democratic Republicans. As vice-president from 1797 to 1801 he had become the acknowledged head of the Republicans in opposition to policies, so he believed, of centralization, economic privilege, war, and political coercion in the Federalist administration. The passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798 provoked him to draft the Kentucky Resolutions, which asserted the right of a state to “nullify” unconstitutional acts of the federal government. He had long associated responsible republican government with the decentralization and diffusion of political power, involving in the United States strict adherence to the federal constitution and protection of the reserved rights of the states. The Kentucky Resolutions were an extreme statement of this “states’ rights” doctrine. Directed against oppressive legislation, they were fraught with unfortunate consequences for the American Union that Jefferson did not anticipate in 1798 [seeConstitutional law]. His party leadership had more constructive effects. The Federalist party was a “government party,” narrowly based on elite groups and intolerant of opposition. Jefferson and his friends went outside the government to build a more broadly based political organization. The success of the Democratic Republicans in 1800 was revolutionary in the sense that it set the course for continuing democratic change in the American political system. Through agitation of public opinion, party organization, and popular elections, change without destruction became possible. The significance, both historical and theoretical, of this development is not lessened by the fact that it was largely unconscious and only brought to completion at a later day.

Jefferson’s presidency, 1801–1809, is chiefly memorable for, first, the Louisiana Purchase, 1803, which gave vast new scope to the “empire of liberty,” and, second, the Embargo Act, 1807–1809, which employed economic coercion on an unprecedented national scale to enforce American claims upon the belligerent European powers. It failed, although not without demonstrating the utility of “peaceable coercion” in international disputes.

Jefferson retired to Monticello—the superb architectural expression of his genius—in 1809. A Virginia farmer and agriculturist, he owned and worked several plantations. His last years were devoted to the establishment of the University of Virginia, which he conceived, planned, and supervised in every detail. He died at Monticello on the fiftieth anniversary of American independence, July 4, 1826.

Merrill D. Peterson

[See alsoDemocracy; Presidential government.]

WORK BY JEFFERSON

(1760’1826) 1950— Papers. Vols. 1—. Edited by Julian P. Boyd. Princeton Univ. Press. → To be published in 60 volumes.

(1760–1826) 1904–1905 Writings of Thomas Jefferson. Collected and edited by Paul L. Ford. 12 vols. New York: Putnam. → Known as The Federal edition.

The Writings of Thomas Jefferson. 20 vols. Edited by Andrew A. Lipscomb and A. Ellery Bergh. Washington: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States, 1905.

SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY

Boorstin, Daniel J. 1948 The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson. New York: Holt.

Chinard, Gilbert (1929) 1939 Thomas Jefferson: The Apostle of Americanism. 2d ed. rev. Boston: Little. → A paperback edition was published in 1952 by the University of Michigan Press.

Koch, Adrienne (1943) 1957 The Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson. Gloucester, Mass.: Smith.

Lehmann, Karl 1947 Thomas Jefferson: American Humanist. New York: Macmillan.

Malone, Dumas 1948–1962 Jefferson and His Time. 3 vols. Boston: Little. → Volume 1: Jefferson the Virginian. Volume 2: Jefferson and the Rights of Man. Volume 3: Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty.

Peterson, Merrill D. 1960 The Jefferson Image in the American Mind. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. → A paperback edition was published in 1962.

Wiltse, Charles M. 1935 The Jeffersonian Tradition in American Democracy. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press. → A paperback edition was published in 1960 by Hill & Wang.

Jefferson, Thomas

(b. Goochland [now Albemarle] County, Virginia, 13 April 1743; d. Albemarle County, 4 July 1826)

agriculture, botany, cartography, diplomacy, ethnology, meteorology, paleontology, surveying, technology.

Jefferson was the elder son of Peter Jefferson, a land developer and surveyor, and of Jane Randolph, a member of a distinguished Virginia family. He was born at Shadwell, Peter Jefferson’s home on the edge of western settlement, and spent part of his early life there. Seven years of his boyhood were spent at Tuckahoe, William Randolph’s estate, which Peter Jefferson administered after Randolph’s death.

Jefferson received his early schooling, including instruction in Latin, Greek, French, and mathematics, from the Reverend William Douglas and later from the Reverend James Maury, grandfather of Matthew Fontaine Maury. In March 1760 he entered the school of philosophy of the College of William and Mary, where he continued his interest in mathematics as well as other sciences in hiscourse of studies with the Reverend William Small, professor of natural philosophy. Small exercised considerable influence over Jefferson’s academic interests as well as the direction of his future. The warm friendship that developed between them brought Jefferson into close association with George Wythe, a lawyer, and with the lieutenant-governor of the province, Francis Fauquier. He shared many common interests, including science, with each of them.

In 1762 Jefferson left the College of William and Mary to read for the law in Wythe’s law office at Williamsburg for the next five years. The close contact that he maintained with his three friends during this period was marred only by Small’s return to England in 1764;and it was this association which led Jefferson into his pursuit of the sciences. He was admitted to the bar in 1767 and successfully practiced law at Williamsburg until 1769, when he was elected to the House of Burgesses. In 1770 he was appointed county lieutenant of Albemarle, and on 1 January 1772 he was married to Martha Wayles Skelton. During the next decade they had six daughters, only three of whom survived their mother, who died in 1782. Jefferson never remarried.

In 1773 Jefferson was appointed county surveyor of Albemarle County, with the right to name a deputy. This appears to have been a political appointment, for although he made a number of surveys of his own properties and those of friends during his life, there is no evidence that he practiced as a professional surveyor.

Jefferson served in the House of Burgesses until it ceased to function in 1775, and he was gradually drawn into the historic events that finally led to a call to arms. He was among those who drew up the resolves forming the provincial Committee of Correspondence, of which he was a member. Although he was unable to attend the Virginia Convention in 1774, he prepared a paper entitled “A Summary View of the Rights of British America,” which was later published and widely distributed although not adopted by the Convention. He was appointed to the Continental Congress in 1775 as Peyton Randolph’s alternate. Following the introduction of the resolution in the Congress by Richard Henry Lee on 7 June 1776, Jefferson was delegated with four others to draft a declaration of independence. Although it was subsequently modified by Franklin, Adams, and the Congress itself, the language of the document remained primarily Jefferson’s. In September 1776 he left the Congress to enter the House of Delegates, in which he served until 1 June 1779, when he was elected governor of Virginia. He served as governor for two terms, until 1 June 1781, then resigned and retired to his estate at Monticello. The following period of frustration and sadness was marked by the invasion of Monticello by British troops under Colonel Tarleton, an investigation by the Assembly into his administration as governor, the death of his wife in 1782, and finally his fall from a horse.

During this period Jefferson compiled his Notes on the State of Virginia from memoranda that he had been assembling for some time in reply to a series of questions about Virginia prepared by Barbé de Marbois, French representative to the United States. In his work he included statistics and descriptions of the geography, climate, flora and fauna, topography, ethnology, population, commercial production, and other aspects of the region. He took this opportunity also to combat assumptions made by the French naturalist Buffon concerning American animals and aborigines. Jefferson presented facts and arguments to refute Buffon’s conclusions and had the Notes printed in France in 1784-1785. An unauthorized French version was published in 1786;and the work was published in London and philadelphia in 1788. The Notes received wide acclaim as the first comprehensive study of any part of the United States and as one of the most important works derived from America to that time.

In June 1783 Jefferson was elected to the Continental Congress, in which he was active for the next two years. Among his most significant contributions of this period were a proposal entitled “Notes on the Establishment of a Money Unit” and his reports on the western territory, which were subsequently used as a basis for the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.

In 1784 Jefferson was appointed with John Adams to assist Franklin in the negotiation of commerce treaties at Paris; and upon Franklin’s retirement in 1785 he succeeded him as minister to France, a post he retained until late 1789. During this period he was able to fulfill a dream of his youth and tour Europe. He observed the state of the sciences and new advances in technology, noting agricultural and mechanical innovations and labor-saving devices, all of which he reported to correspondents in America and a number of which he adapted for his own use at Monticello. He reported to James Madison the new “phosphoretic matches,” the invention of the Argand lamp, and various applications of steam power that had come to his attention. He envisaged steam not as the means to achieve an industrial revolution but rather as a supplementary source of power. He considered its primary application to be in navigation and for powering gristmills and small manufactures whichs would liberate manpower for increased agricultural pursuits.

The type of plough used by French peasants led Jefferson to design an improved moldboard, which he subsequently had constructed and tested successfully at Monticello. His moldboard achieved distinction in France and England and was widely used in America. He introduced dry rice to North Carolina and brought the olive tree and Merino sheep to America-he considered these among his major achievements. He was intrigued with the first French balloon ascensions and manufacture withy inter-changeable parts, and wrote of them to correspondents in America.

In 1790 Jefferson was appointed secretary of state by President Washington. He became the leader of the Republicans, a group opposed to Alexander Hamilton’s policies affecting foreign policy, national banking, and other major issues. During this period he was closely involved with President Washington in the survey of the Federal Territory for a national capital at Washington. He initiated measures for the establishment of a decimal system for a standard coinage and a system of weights and measures. He was instrumental in developing a system for granting patents; and when the law authorizing the issuance of patents was passed in 1790, he served as a member of the tribunal reviewing applications and was the keeper of records of patents granted.

Elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1780, Jefferson served on its committee to study the Hessian fly and in 1781 was elected a councillor. He became the Society’s vice-president in 1791 and in 1797 was elected its third president, succeeding David Rittenhouse. He was reelected each year until 1815, and remained a member of the Society until his death. His interest in paleontological studies developed with his acquisition and study of the fossilized bones of a ground sloth, which he named the Megalonyx; he presented a paper on them to the Society in 1797. The following year he read a paper on his moldboard. Both papers were subsequently published in the Society’s Transactions.

Jefferson became involved in the development of a plan for distribution of public lands in the west that was subsequently embodied in the Land Act of 1796.

In 1797 Jefferson became vice-president; and in 1801 he became the third president of the United States, the first to be inaugurated in Washington. During his two terms in office he repeatedly sponsored governmental support of science for the common good. Following the Louisiana Purchase, which he negotiated in 1803 and which nearly doubled the national area, he supported several expeditions to explore and report on unsettled lands. In 1803 he was responsible for a survey of Mississippi by Isaac Briggs, and in the same year he launched the Lewis and Clark expedition. Jefferson was personally involved in many aspects of the preparations for Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and providing detailed instructions for the selection of scientific equipment provided Jefferson and his administration with the support required to sponsor a second expedition, under Zebulon M. Pike, to explore the sources of the Mississippi River and western Louisiana. These projects, followed by other expeditions, led to the formation of the U. S> Geological Survey in 1879.

Shortly after Lewis and Clark returned, Jefferson directed his attention to a survey of American coasts, for which he submitted a recommendation to Congress in 1806. The Congress authorized the survey, which resulted in the formation of the United States Coast Survey (later the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey).

At the end of his second presidential term, Jefferson retired to Monticello. He dedicated himself to the improvement of education in Virginia, advocating a statewide system based on a proposal that he had initiated many years earlier. He worked to create the University of Virginia, which was finally chartered in 1819 and which opened in 1825. Jefferson played an important role in defining the university, and his efforts were a decisive factor in its establishment. He served on the first board of visitors and was elected rector, a position which he retained until his death. He was responsible in large part for the planning of the buildings and grounds, the organization of the schools within the university, and its curriculum of studies, in which the practical sciences were emphasized.

Jefferson died at the age of eighty-three, at 12:50 P.M. on 4 July 1826, several hours before the death of his friend John Adams. He was survived by only one of his daughters, Martha Randolph, and by eleven grandchildren and their progeny. He was interred in the family burial ground at Monticello, in a grave marked by a stone obelisk inscribed with words of his own choosing: “Here was buried Thomas Jefferson Author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom & Father of the University of Virginia.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Jefferson was the author of one book and of two papers, which were read before the American Philosophical Society and published in its Transactions: Notes on the State of Virginia. . .(Paris, 1782; not published until 1784-1785), French trans. by M.J.as Observations sur la Virginie (Paris, 1786); later eds. of English version were:(London, 1787, 1788), (Philadelphia, 1788, 1792, 1794, 1801, 1812, 1815, 1825), (Baltimore, 1800), (New York, 1801, 1804), (Newark, 1810), (Bostson, 1801, 1802, 1829, 1832), (Trenton, 1803, 1812), (Richmond, 1853); “A Memoir of the Discovery of Certain Bones of an Unknown Quadruped, of the Clawed Kind, in the Western Part of Virginia,” in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 4 (1799), 246-260; and “The Description of a Mould-Board of the Least Resistance and of the Easiest and Most Certain Certain Construction,” ibid., 313-322.

Two volumes based on Jefferson’s notes on specific subjects have also been published: Edwin M. Betts, ed., Thomas Jefferson’s Garden Book, Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, XXII (Philadelphia, 1944); and Thomas Jefferson’s Farm Book, Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, XXXV (Philadelphia, 1953).

Collected writings include Julian P. Boyd and Lyman C. Butterfield, eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 18 vols. (Princeton, 1950- ); Paul Leicester Ford, ed., The Works of Thomas Jefferson, 12 vols. (New York, 1904);Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, eds., Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 20 vols. (Washington, D. C., 1903-1905); and H. A. Washington, ed., Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 9 vols. (Washington, D. C., 1853-1854).

II. Secondary Literature. Works on Jefferson’ scientific pursuits include Daniel J. Boorstin, The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1948); William Elerey Curtis, The True Thomas Jefferson (Philadelphia, 1901), ch. 12; Edwin T. Martin, Thomas Jefferson, Scientist (New York, 1952); and Saul K. Padover, ed., Thomas Jefferson and the Nation’s Capital (Washington, D.C., 1946).

Silvio A. Bedini

Thomas Jefferson 1743–1826, 3d President of the United States (1801–9), author of the Declaration of Independence, and apostle of agrarian democracy.

Early Life

Jefferson was born on Apr. 13, 1743, at "Shadwell," in Goochland (now in Albemarle) co., Va. The vicinity, at that time considered a western outpost, was to remain his lifelong home, and from boyhood he absorbed the democratic views of his Western countrymen. After graduating from the College of William and Mary (1762), he studied law under George Wythe .

Revolutionary Leader

In the colonial house of burgesses Jefferson was (1769–75) a leader of the patriot faction. He was a founding member of the Virginia Committee of Correspondence, and in A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774), prepared for the First Virginia Convention, he brilliantly expounded the view that Parliament had no authority in the colonies and that the only bond with England was voluntary allegiance to the king. Although never an effective public speaker, he won a reputation as a draftsman of resolutions and addresses.

A delegate to the Second Continental Congress (1775–76), he served as a member of the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence . That document, except for minor alterations by John Adams and Benjamin Franklin and some others made on the floor of Congress, was wholly the work of Jefferson. In spirit it reflects his debt to English political theorists, particularly John Locke , and to French and other continental philosophers.

Jefferson returned to the Virginia legislature in the hope of being able to translate his ideals into reality in the establishment of a new state government. He urged the abolition of entail and primogeniture to prevent the continuance of an aristocracy; both practices were abolished, although primogeniture existed until 1785. His bill for establishing religious freedom, grounded in the belief that a person's opinions cannot be coerced, was not successful until 1786, when James Madison was able to carry part of the Jeffersonian program to completion.

In 1779, Jefferson succeeded Patrick Henry as governor of Virginia. He served through the trying last years of the American Revolution when Virginia was invaded by the British, and, hampered by lack of financial and military resources, experienced great difficulty. His conduct as governor was investigated in 1781, but he was completely vindicated.

Postwar Republican Leader

In 1783–84 he was again in the Continental Congress , where he drafted a plan for a decimal system of coinage and drew up a proposed ordinance for the government of the Northwest Territory , which, although not then adopted, was the basis for the Ordinance of 1787 . In 1785 he succeeded Franklin as minister to France, and witnessed the beginning (1789) of the French Revolution , to which he was sympathetic. His unsuccessful attempt, with John Adams, to negotiate a trade treaty with England left him convinced of that country's essential selfishness. On his return he became (1790) Secretary of State.

Though absent when the Constitution was drafted and adopted, Jefferson gave his support to a stronger central government and to the Constitution, particularly with the addition of the Bill of Rights. He failed to realize the power that conservatives had attained in his absence, and he did not seem aware at first of the threat to agrarian interests posed by measures advocated by Alexander Hamilton . He would call himself neither a Federalist nor an Anti-Federalist, and was anxious to secure unity and cooperation in the new government.

Jefferson did not begin to differ with Hamilton until they clashed as to the way to persuade England to release the Northwest Territory forts, still held in violation of the 1783 Treaty of Paris. Jefferson favored the application of economic pressure by forbidding imports from England, but Hamilton objected, fearing that the resulting loss of revenue would endanger his plans for the nation's financial structure. Jefferson next opposed Hamilton by declaring against his Bank of the United States scheme on the ground that the Constitution did not specifically authorize it, rejecting the doctrine of "implied powers," invoked by Hamilton's supporters. In both these encounters Hamilton, to Jefferson's chagrin, emerged the victor.

Fearing a return to monarchist ideals, if not to actual monarchy, Jefferson became virtual leader of the Anti-Federalist forces. He drew to himself a group of like-minded men who began to call themselves Republicans—a group to which the present Democratic party traces its origin. An organization was developed, and the National Gazette, edited by Philip Freneau , was established (1791) to disseminate Republican sentiments.

Jefferson and Hamilton, from being suspicious of each other, became openly antagonistic, and President George Washington was unable to reconcile them. In 1793, Jefferson left the cabinet. Later he bitterly criticized Jay's Treaty , which compromised the issues with Great Britain in ways outlined by Hamilton.

Jefferson's party was able to elect him Vice President in 1796, when that office was still filled by the person who ran second in the presidential race. He took little part in the administration but presided over the Senate and wrote A Manual of Parliamentary Practice (1801). His followers kept up their agitation and under Jefferson's direction extended the party's following both territorially and numerically, while the Federalists drifted into dissension. The passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts immensely stimulated newspaper discussion, and Jefferson drafted, in protest against these laws, the Kentucky Resolutions (see Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions ), the first statement of the states' rights interpretation of the Constitution.

President

The Republicans triumphed easily at the polls in what is sometimes called "the Revolution of 1800," but in the Electoral College vote, Aaron Burr (who had been slated for the office of Vice President) was found to have tied Jefferson for President. The choice was automatically left to the House of Representatives, where Jefferson was elected after a long deadlock, largely because Hamilton advised the Federalists to support Jefferson as less dangerous than Burr.

Jefferson was the first President inaugurated in Washington, D.C., a city he had helped to plan. He instituted a republican simplicity in the new capital, cut expenditures in all branches of government, replaced Federalist appointees with Republicans, and sought to curb the powers of the judiciary, where he felt that the Federalists were attempting to entrench their philosophy. He believed that the federal government should be concerned mostly with foreign affairs, leaving the states and local governments free to administer local matters.

Despite his contention that the Constitution must be interpreted strictly, he pushed through the Louisiana Purchase , even though such an action was nowhere expressly authorized. His eager interest in the West and in exploration had already led him to plan and organize the Lewis and Clark expedition . He held that West Florida was included in the Louisiana Purchase, but his attempts to secure Spanish agreement caused rifts in the party and made him the butt of sarcastic attacks by John Randolph in Congress.

During his second administration, however, the chief difficulties resulted from attacks on neutral American shipping by warring Britain and Napoleonic France. Jefferson placed his faith in diplomacy backed by economic pressure as represented first by the Nonimportation Act (1806) and then by the Embargo Act of 1807 . To enforce them, unfortunately, meant the impoverishment of classes that had supported him and the infringement of the individual liberty he cherished. Shortly before he left office a rebellious people forced him to yield in his aims, although he maintained that the embargo had not been in effect long enough to achieve its objective.

Retirement

After 1809, Jefferson lived in retirement at his beloved Monticello , although he often advised his successors, Madison and James Monroe . One of his cherished ambitions was attained when he was able to bring about the founding of the Univ. of Virginia (see Virginia, Univ. of ). President of the American Philosophical Society (1797–1815), Jefferson was a scientist, an architect, and a philosopher-statesman, vitally interested in literature, the arts, and every phase of human activity. He passionately believed that a people enlightened by education, which must be kept free, could govern themselves better under democratic-republican institutions than under any other system.

After the death (1784) of his wife Martha Wayles Skelton, Jefferson did not remarry. During his White House years, Dolley Madison served as his First Lady. In the 1990s long-repeated rumors that he had fathered a child or children by the slave Sally Hemings, his wife's half-sister, appeared to be supported by DNA research. Although the subject remained controversial, in 2000 the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation concluded after an exhaustive study that Jefferson was almost certainly the father of one and quite probably of all six of Hemings's children. Some admirers of Jefferson hold that his younger brother, Randolph, is the more likely father of Hemings's descendants.

Bibliography

A 60-volume definitive edition of Jefferson's complete works (ed. by J. P. Boyd et al., 1950–) is being published by Princeton Univ. Press. The multivolume Jefferson and His Time (6 vol., 1948–82) by D. Malone is the definitive biography. See Jefferson's Autobiography (new ed. 1959), and a selection of his writings in Jefferson Himself, ed. by B. Mayo (1942); biographies by G. Chinard (1929, repr. 1957), N. Schachner (1951), A. J. Nock (1956, repr. 1960), F. M. Brodie (1974), N. E. Cunningham. Jr. (1988), R. B. Bernstein (2003), and C. Hitchens (2005).

Jefferson, Thomas (1743–1826), third president of the United States.Born in Virginia on the western edges of settlement, Jefferson would always feel a closeness to the land and to an agrarian way of life, and he built his own home, Monticello, in Albemarle County, not far from his birthplace. Although his public career repeatedly drew him away, he eagerly returned to Monticello whenever possible.

Entering the College of William and Mary in 1760, Jefferson absorbed the ideas of the Enlightenment and became a devoted disciple of the Age of Reason and he subscribed to its preferred religious position, Deism. He followed his college studies by reading law with George Wythe in Williamsburg. Here, in Virginia's colonial capital, Jefferson encountered the political world that would enlist his lifelong participation. Visiting the House of Burgesses in 1765, he heard Patrick Henry's memorable Give me liberty or give me death speech against the Stamp Act.

Elected to the House of Burgesses in 1769, at age twenty‐six, Jefferson began the political career that would continue until he retired from the presidency forty years later. The young Jefferson actively supported colonial rights in the developing conflict with the British. His Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774) protested British policies and actions, insisting that “the British Parliament has no right to exercise authority over us.” This pamphlet circulated among delegates to the First Continental Congress, making its author well known when he took his seat in the Second Continental Congress in June 1775. A year later, appointed to the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson achieved enduring fame as its principal author.

As a delegate in the Virginia Assembly, Jefferson was active in revising the laws of his state. His draft statute for religious freedom was eventually adopted in 1786. Elected governor of Virginia in 1779, Jefferson served during a trying period of the Revolutionary War, when the British invaded the state. In June 1781 he barely escaped capture when the British raided Monticello. After two years as governor, Jefferson decided to retire from politics.

In his private life, Jefferson married Martha Wayles Skelton in 1772, and they had three children who survived infancy. Martha's death in 1782, following the birth of their last child, left Jefferson severely depressed. Recovering from his grief, Jefferson was again willing to leave Monticello and return to politics.

Although he inherited slaves from his father and from his wife, Jefferson was opposed to slavery. In the revision of the laws of Virginia, he proposed gradual emancipation; and in his Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), he vigorously condemned the institution. Yet he failed to win support in Virginia for ending slavery and remained a slaveholder for the rest of his life.

Reports that Jefferson fathered children by his slave Sally Hemings (1773–1835), based on oral traditions among Hemings's descendants, have long been controversial. DNA analysis conducted in 1998 of the blood of descendants of Jefferson's uncle and descendants of Sally Hemings led some historians to conclude that Jefferson was the father of at least one of Hemings's children. Other historians, however, argued that such DNA analysis was not conclusive because Jefferson had a brother, Randolph, who with his five sons lived within easy distance of Monticello and visited Jefferson.

Jefferson was U.S. minister to France from 1785 to 1789 and thus did not participate in drafting or ratifying the U.S. Constitution. In Paris at the outbreak of the French Revolution, he welcomed the struggle as following in the path of the American Revolution and remained sympathetic to the French revolutionary cause after returning to the United States late in 1789.

Jefferson served as the first secretary of state under President George Washington from 1790 through 1793. In this post he played a major role not only in the direction of foreign affairs but also in the emerging political divisions between the Federalists and their Republican opponents. Opposing the fiscal policies of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, he was recognized as the Republican leader. While Hamilton's policies favored business development and urban commercial interests, Jefferson remained suspicious of cities and saw yeoman farmers as the backbone of American democracy.

After three years in retirement during which he extensively remodeled Monticello, Jefferson was elected vice president in 1796, having come in second to Federalist John Adams at a time when there was no separate balloting for vice president. Presiding over the Senate, he increasingly opposed the policies of the Federalists, who controlled Congress. In 1800, he accepted the Republican nomination for president to oppose Adams's reelection bid. In the electoral vote, Jefferson tied with his vice presidential running mate, Aaron Burr, throwing the election to the House of Representatives, which chose Jefferson as president and Burr as vice president. (The Twelfth Amendment, adopted in 1804, revised electoral college procedures to prevent such an outcome in the future.)

Jefferson's first term proved remarkably successful. Reversing Federalist policies that had produced the repressive Alien and Sedition Acts, Jefferson also reduced military expenditures and set a tone of simplicity and frugality. The capstone of his first term was the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. A strong president who provided leadership for Congress, Jefferson closely supervised his administration, drafting his own messages to Congress, wrestling with appointments, and working closely with his cabinet whom he involved in the decision‐making process. Secretary of State James Madison, a longtime friend and political ally, provided advice and support.

Defeating the Federalist Charles Cotesworth Pinckney to win reelection in 1804, President Jefferson faced increasing difficulties in his second term, including the British attack on the USS Chesapeake; the conspiracy trial of his former vice president, Aaron Burr; and the Napoleonic wars in Europe, which left American commerce caught in the conflict between Great Britain and France. Jefferson's embargo policy, enacted in 1807, forbade U.S. trading vessels to leave port for any foreign destination. Deeply unpopular with merchants, traders, seamen, and farmers growing crops for export, the Embargo Act was repealed in 1809.

Jefferson's retirement years at Monticello were filled with activity. An intellectual with wide‐ranging interests, from music, painting, and architecture to political philosophy and natural history, he served as president of the American Philosophical Society from 1797 to 1815. His extensive correspondence included a long series of letters with John Adams in which the onetime political rivals explored their differing views of politics and human nature. His most important retirement project was the founding of the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville. He not only rallied legislative support for the enterprise but also assumed the role of planner, architect, and director of building, together with establishing the curriculum and hiring professors. Jefferson lived to see the opening of the university on 7 March 1825. He died a year later on 4 July 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. In keeping with his instructions, his epitaph identifies him only as the author of the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, and father of the University of Virginia.
See also Early Republic, Era of the; Embargo Acts; Federal Government, Executive Branch: The Presidency; Republicanism.

Bibliography

Dumas Malone , Jefferson and His Time, 6 vols., 1948–1981.
Merrill D. Peterson , Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation: A Biography, 1970.
John C. Miller , The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery, 1977.
Noble E. Cunningham Jr. , The Process of Government under Jefferson, 1978.
Noble E. Cunningham Jr. , In Pursuit of Reason: The Life of Thomas Jefferson, 1987.
William Howard Adams , The Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson, 1997.
Joseph J. Ellis , American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson, 1997.
Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation , Report of the Research Committee on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, January 2000.
Philip Ranslet , Communication, William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 57, no. 3 (July 2000): 728.

Noble E. Cunningham Jr.

JEFFERSON, THOMAS

Thomas Jefferson served as an American Revolutionary and political theorist and as the third president of the United States. Jefferson, who was a talented architect, writer, and diplomat, played a profound role in shaping U.S. government and politics.

Jefferson was born April 13, 1743, at Shadwell, in Albemarle County, Virginia. His father was a plantation owner and his mother belonged to the Randolph family, whose members were leaders of colonial Virginia society. Jefferson graduated from the College of William and Mary in 1762, and worked as a surveyor before studying law with george wythe. He was admitted to the Virginia bar in 1767.

His interest in colonial politics led to his election to the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1769. In the legislature he became closely aligned with patrick henry, Richard Henry Lee, and Francis Lightfoot Lee, all of whom espoused the belief that the British Parliament had no control over the American colonies. He helped form the Virginia Committee of Correspondence, which protested legislation imposed on the colonies by Great Britain.

In 1774 Jefferson wrote A Summary View of the Rights of British America, a pamphlet that denied the power of Parliament in the colonies and stated that any loyalty to England and the king was to be given by choice. He attended the Second continental congress in 1775 and drafted the Reply to Lord North, in which Congress rejected the British prime minister's proposal that Parliament would not tax the colonists if they agreed to tax themselves.

After the Revolutionary War began, Jefferson and four others were asked to draft a declaration of independence. Jefferson actually wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1776, which stated the arguments justifying the position of the American Revolutionaries. It also affirmed the natural rights of all people and affirmed the

right of the colonists to "dissolve the political bands" with the British government.

Jefferson served in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1776 to 1779 and became governor of Virginia in 1779. He was responsible for many changes in Virginia law, including the abolition of religious persecution and the end to entail (inheritance of land through a particular line of descent) and primogeniture (inheritance only by the eldest son). Jefferson also disestablished the Anglican Church as the state-endorsed religion. Jefferson's term as governor expired in 1781, the same year the British invaded Virginia. He was at first blamed for the

state's lack of resistance but later cleared after an official investigation.

From 1783 to 1784, he was a member of the Continental Congress, where he contributed a monetary program, and secured approval of the treaty of paris, which ended the Revolutionary War. As a member of that congress he also drafted a decree for a system of government for the Northwest Territory, which lay west of the Appalachian Mountains. This decree was later incorporated into the northwest ordinance of 1787.

Jefferson served as minister to France from 1784 to 1789. In 1790 he reentered politics as secretary of state in the cabinet of President george washington. Jefferson soon became embroiled in conflict with alexander hamilton, the secretary of the treasury. Jefferson did not share Hamilton's Federalist views, which he believed favored the interests of business and the upper class. Jefferson, a proponent of agricultural interests, disliked the Federalist's desire to expand the power of the federal government.

The chief dispute between them was over the bank of the united states, which Hamilton approved of and Jefferson attacked as unconstitutional. Hamilton won the issue, and Jefferson and his supporters began to form a group known as Republicans, which evolved into the current democratic party. In 1791 editor Philip M. Freneau published Republican views in the National Gazette, which increased the agitation between Jefferson and Hamilton. Jefferson resigned his position in 1793.

After john adams was elected president in 1796, Jefferson served as his vice president and presiding officer in the Senate. In 1798 he opposed Congress's adoption of the alien and sedition acts (1 Stat. 570, 596), which provided for the deportation or imprisonment of any citizen or alien judged dangerous to the U.S. government. As a result Jefferson and james madison drafted the kentucky resolutions, which denounced the constitutionality of these acts. These resolutions, which were adopted by the Kentucky and Virginia legislatures, declared that the federal government could not extend its powers over the states unless the Constitution expressly granted authority. The resolutions were the first affirmation of states' rights and were central to Jefferson's belief that state and local governments were the most democratic political institutions.

The presidential election in 1800 ended in a tie between Jefferson and aaron burr. The House of Representatives decided the election. Hamilton, who despised Burr even more than Jefferson, lobbied the Federalists in the House to elect Jefferson. Jefferson won the election and became the first president to be sworn into office in Washington, D.C.

As president, Jefferson reduced spending and appointed Republicans to assume former Federalist positions. He made a lasting contribution to legislative procedure when he composed in 1801 A Manual of Parliamentary Practice, which is still used today. He approved the louisiana purchase from France in 1803, and supported the Lewis and Clark Expedition to explore the West from 1803 to 1806. He supported the repeal of the Judiciary Act of 1801, which would have created federal courts of appeals and would have encouraged appeals from state courts.

Jefferson also expressed concern about the decision in marbury v. madison, 5 U.S. 137, 2 L. Ed. 60 (1803), which declared that the Supreme Court could review the constitutionality of acts of Congress. The concept of judicial review, which is not described in the Constitution, expanded the power of the judiciary. Jefferson and the Republicans worried that Federalist-appointed judges would use judicial review to strike down Republican legislation.

After he was reelected in 1805, Jefferson encountered the problem of attacks on independent U.S. ships by England and France, which were engaged in war. To discourage these attacks, Congress passed the Nonimportation Act of 1806 (2 Stat. 315), forbidding the importation of British goods, and the embargo act of 1807 (2 Stat. 451), prohibiting the exportation of U.S. goods to England and France. These measures proved to be detrimental to U.S. commerce.

After the end of his second presidential term, Jefferson retired to his estate, Monticello. He served as president of the American Philosophical Society from 1797 to 1815 and helped found the University of Virginia in 1819.

"That government is the strongest of which every man himself feels a part."
—Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, published in 1784 and 1785, remain an important historical resource. Written to a French correspondent, the book contains social, political, and economic reflections that show Jefferson to be a person committed to rational thought. The book also reveals that Jefferson, a slaveholder, believed that African Americans were inferior to whites. Throughout his life Jefferson defended the institution of slavery, casting a cloud over his professed belief in human dignity.

Jefferson died July 4, 1826, at Monticello, near Charlottesville, Virginia.

further readings

Bernstein, R.B. 2003. Thomas Jefferson. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

——. 2003. "Wrestling with Jefferson: The Struggles of a Biographer." New York Law School Journal of International and Comparative Law 22 (spring-summer): 387–404.

Dougherty, Richard J. 2001. "Thomas Jefferson and the Rule of Law: Executive Power and American Constitutionalism." Northern Kentucky Law Review 28 (summer): 513–35.

Reiss, David. 2002. "Jefferson and Madison as Icons in Judicial History: A Study of Religion Clause Jurisprudence." Maryland Law Review 6 (winter): 94–176.

Schwartz, Bernard, with Barbara Wilcie Kern and R. B. Bernstein. 1997. Thomas Jefferson and Bolling v. Bolling : Law and the Legal Profession in Pre-revolutionary America. San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library.

cross-references

Marshall, John.

Jefferson, Thomas (b. Shadwell [now Albemarle County], Va., 13 Apr. 1743; d. Monticello, Va., 4 July 1826), statesman and president of the United States, 1801–1809. Thomas Jefferson exerted a profound influence on the Supreme Court and the course of American constitutional development. As political leader and president, his thoughts on the role of judges and on the federal system provided a significant contrast to the nationalizing ideas of Alexander Hamilton, John Marshall, and Joseph Story.

Jefferson and James Madison produced the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798–1799, which supported the compact theory of the Constitution and denied that the Supreme Court alone had authority to determine if the laws of Congress were constitutional. Jefferson argued that the Court was a creation of the Constitution and to give it the power of judicial review would make “its discretion and not the Constitution the measure of its powers.” He argued that when the federal government assumed a power not granted to it by the Constitution, each state, as a party to the constitutional compact, had a right to declare the law unconstitutional (see State Sovereignty and States' Rights). He also believed that each branch of the federal government had a coordinate right to resolve questions of constitutionality.

As president, Jefferson confronted Federalist judges of the Supreme and lower federal courts who enjoyed tenure during good behavior. He did not support radicals in his party who wished to amend the Constitution to eliminate the federal judiciary and who favored a broad construction of the impeachment clause of Articles I, II, and III in order to remove judges for political reasons (see Impeachment). But he resisted Federalist attempts to broaden the powers of the national courts and to politicize them. He promoted repeal of the Judiciary Act of 1801, which had increased the number of federal judgeships and expanded the jurisdiction of the circuit courts. Jefferson did not overreact to the Court's decision in Marbury v. Madison (1803), although he found Chief Justice Marshall's reproof distasteful. Rather, he ignored the decision because he had gotten his way: the Court did not order the administration to deliver the commissions. Though Marshall claimed for the Court the power to interpret the Constitution, he did not explicitly claim that its power to do so was either exclusive or final. Jefferson helped initiate impeachment proceedings in 1803 against John Pickering, an alcoholic and insane district court judge, and worked behind the scenes for his conviction. But he did not support impeachment proceedings against Justice Samuel Chase, who was eventually acquitted in 1805. In the treason trial of Aaron Burr (1806), Jefferson refused to obey Marshall's subpoena to testify but accepted Burr's acquittal.

After his retirement in 1809, Jefferson criticized Marshall and the Supreme Court more directly. He opposed such nationalist decisions as Martin v. Hunter's Lessee (1816), McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), and Cohens v. Virginia (1821). He encouraged Spencer Roane and John Taylor to criticize the Court publicly. In private correspondence, Jefferson raised a number of important questions about the Supreme Court's power. Could the Court claim to be the final arbiter in conflicts between the states and the federal government, since this power was not explicitly granted in the Constitution? Could the Supreme Court arrogate this power to itself? What is the relationship of the Court to the will of the people, especially since its members are appointed during good behavior? Should the Court hold its discussions in secret and hide internal dissent by handing down unanimous decisions? Could the Court be an impartial arbiter in disputes between the federal government and the states, since it was a part of the federal government and its judges' salaries were paid by that government?

These questions do not lend themselves to easy answers, even today when we generally accept the idea of judicial supremacy on constitutional issues. As a consequence, Jefferson's criticism of the Supreme Court has resonated throughout American history and has formed the theoretical basis of the positions taken by presidents such as Andrew Jackson and Franklin Roosevelt, as well as other critics of an activist Court, who have attempted to confine the force of its decisions (see Judicial Self‐Restraint).

See also History of the Court: Establishment of the Union.

Bibliography

Richard Ellis , The Jeffersonian Crisis: Courts and Politics in the Young Republic (1971).

Richard E. Ellis

Jefferson, Thomas (1743–1826). Able American self-taught architect of the late C18, he excelled in many things, and was one of the founding fathers and third President of the USA (1801–9). It is known he had a fine library of architectural books, and it was largely from these (e.g. Gibbs and Leoni) that he acquired his skills. One of his first buildings was Monticello, his own house near Charlottesville, VA (1768–82—remodelled 1796–1809), the plans of which were a variation on a design in Robert Morris's Select Architecture (1755), with additional elements derived from Gibbs, and a dash of Palladio taken from Leoni's edition of the Quattro Libri. Indeed, Monticello was Palladian in layout, intelligently altered to accommodate the most convenient internal arrangements, but in its final version it suggested the Antique villa transformed by French Neo-Classicism (e.g. Hôtel de Salm, Paris, of 1783).

In 1784 Jefferson was appointed Second American Minister to Paris, a stroke of good luck enabling him to absorb up-to-date architectural ideas at first hand. He was also conveniently placed to visit England, which he did in 1786, expressly to study Picturesque gardens that attracted the admiration of Europe at that time. In France he admired the top-lighting at the Château de Chaville (1764–6—destroyed) by Boullée, as well as Legrand and Molinos's dome of the Halle au Blé, Paris (1782–3).

When it was decided to build a State Capitol in Richmond, VA, Jefferson chaired the Committee charged with arranging for this, and he himself proposed a building based on the Corinthian Roman temple, the Maison Carrée, Nîmes (16 bc—to which building he had been introduced by Clérisseau's Antiquités de France (1778), and which he greatly admired): thus he was the first to reintroduce the rectangular temple-form into public architecture (as opposed to small garden fabriques, e.g. at Stowe, Bucks.) in the West since Classical Antiquity. In the event, the State Capitol (1785–99), which was designed by Jefferson with Clérisseau as adviser, employed the Ionic Order with angular capitals of the Scamozzi type, and had pilasters rather than engaged columns as on the cella of the Maison Carrée.

From 1789, when he returned to the USA, becoming Secretary of State in Washington's Government, he involved himself in the planning and architecture of the new Federal capital, promoting French ideas when he could. Jefferson's greatest architectural achievement, however, was the University of Virginia, Charlottesville (1817–26), a series of porticoed pavilions (each with an Order from a different Roman building) linked by colonnades, on either side of a long rectangular lawn (the first campus plan) with a scaled-down version of the Pantheon in Rome on the long axis at one end. While Latrobe helped Jefferson with this design, the main scheme was Jefferson's own, though possibly based on Marly-le-Roi, the château of Louis XIV. The Rotunda at the University contained the most remarkable elliptical rooms in America, an arrangement possibly derived from the Doric column-base in the Désert de Retz near Paris, which Jefferson had seen. The University is arguably the most beautiful architectural ensemble in the American Continent. Like Monticello and the Virginia Capitol, it was more than a fine work of Classical architecture: all three were intended as exemplars from which Americans would learn the rules of architecture and civil design.

Bibliography

W. Adams (1976, 1983);
J. Boyd (ed.) (from 1950);
Brawne (1994);
Kimball (1966, 1968);
Lehman (1980);
Malone (1948–74);
Mayo (ed.) (1970);
Nichols (ed.) (1978);
Nichols & and Bear (1967);
Nichols & Griswold(1978);
O'Neal (1960);
Placzek (ed.) (1982);
Jane Turner (1996)

Jefferson, Thomas (1743–1826), secretary of state, vice president, and third president of the United States.Thomas Jefferson believed that a large military establishment would both increase the nation's debt and threaten American liberty. As the first secretary of state (1789–93), he urged neutrality in the war between England and France; as president (1801–09), he pursued a policy of “peace, commerce, and honest friendship” with all nations, but “entangling alliances with none.” Jefferson's administration cut military spending drastically, from over $3 million annually to $1.9 million, although his administration also founded the U.S. Military Academy, first proposed by Washington, at West Point, New York, in 1802. Neutrality, though, was not isolation: Jefferson sent the U.S. Fleet to the Mediterranean in 1801, and cooperated with Sweden, Portugal, Naples, and other neutral powers in a multinational alliance against Tripoli. To replace the expensive frigates built by the Federalist administrations, Jefferson built 180 gunboats, 50 feet long, with crews of 20 and cannon mounted in bow and stern, primarily to defend American harbors. Instead of military force, the United States would use economic pressure in international affairs. The Europeans, he reasoned, depended on American grain and fish to feed their large armies and overtaxed populations. When both France and England attacked American commercial policy in 1807, Jefferson closed U.S. ports, depriving the belligerent Europeans of American goods. Though the embargo of 1808–09 did not force France or England to negotiate, Jefferson did not lose faith in economic power as the most potent weapon in the American arsenal.
[See also Academies, Service: U.S. Military Academy; Economy and War; Hamilton, Alexander; Tripolitan War.]

Bibliography

Merrill Peterson , Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation, 1970.
Reginald C. Stuart , The Half‐Way Pacifist: Thomas Jefferson's View of War, 1978.
Drew R. McCoy , The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America, 1980.
Robert W. Tucker and and David C. Hendrickson , Empire of Liberty: The Statecraft of Thomas Jefferson, 1990.

Robert J. Allison

Jefferson, Thomas (1743–1826) US Democratic Republican statesman, 3rd President of the USA (1801–09). Jefferson was the principal drafter of the Declaration of Independence (1776) and played a key role in the American leadership during the War of Independence. He advocated decentralization and the restrained use of presidential power, in defiance of Alexander Hamilton. While President, Jefferson secured the Louisiana Purchase (1803), by which the western part of the Mississippi valley was sold to the USA by France.