Jefferson, Thomas

JEFFERSON, THOMAS. (1743–1826). Virginia legislator, wartime governor, diplomat, author of the Declaration of Independence, third president of the United States. Thomas Jefferson was born on 13 April 1743 in Albemarle County, the son of Peter Jefferson, a farmer and surveyor, and Jane Randolph, a member of one of Virginia's most prominent families. Peter Jefferson died in 1759, leaving his son about five thousand acres. To this inheritance Thomas Jefferson added eleven thousand acres acquired through his wife, Martha Wayles Skelton, whom he married on 1 January 1772. The latter estate brought with it the heavy indebtedness of his father-in-law, which Jefferson struggled unsuccessfully over a lifetime to extinguish. Although he expressed reservations about the institution of slavery and proposed legislation in Congress to prohibit it in the western territories, Jefferson showed little compunction about slavery. At one time posessing 185 slaves (50 of his own, and 135 belonging to his wife), he did free a few of them toward the end of his life. Jefferson received his elementary education at a plantation school, graduated from the College of William and Mary, read law with George Wythe, was admitted to the bar in 1767, and practiced as an attorney until 1774.

After serving as justice of the peace and parish vestryman, Jefferson was elected to the House of Burgesses in 1769. He served in every succeeding assembly and convention of his province until he was elected to the Continental Congress in 1775. His Summary View of the Rights of America, written initially for the benefit of delegates to the First Virginia Convention in 1774 and printed as a pamphlet in the same year, was widely read. This direct attack on the crown did not find much approval at the time, but it placed Jefferson among the leaders of the Revolution. In England his pamphlet was somewhat modified, probably by Edmund Burke, and widely circulated by friends of America. Cutting at the common root of allegiance, emigration, and colonization—shunning the indirect approach of blaming the ministry for the king's errors—Jefferson's awakening call maintained that:

the relation between Great Britain and these colonies was exactly the same as that of England and Scotland after the accession of James and until the Union (1707): and that our emigration to this country gave England no more rights over us than the emigration of the Danes and Saxons gave to the present authorities of their mother country over England.

The pamphlet ignored the claim that the mother country had protected the colonies during the colonial wars and maintained that since the earlier support had been only with a view to commercial return it could be repaid in trade privileges.

Taking his seat in the Continental Congress in June 1775, Jefferson drafted several appeals that were rejected as being too anti-British at a time when hope of conciliation still existed. After hostilities had broken out at Lexington and Concord, he and John Dickinson wrote the Congressional Resolution justifying armed resistance: "A Declaration of the Causes and Necessities of Taking Up Arms" (6 July 1775).

Following his absence from 28 December 1775 until 14 May 1776-he was called home for personal reasons and was appointed commander of Albemarle militia on 26 September—Jefferson was named by Congress on 11 June 1776 to a committee to draft a declaration of independence. Although changes were made by John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, who, along with Roger Sherman and Robert R. Livingston, were the other committee members, and some by Congress, the Declaration remained essentially his.

Although reelected to Congress, Jefferson felt that his presence was more valuable in Virginia, where he wanted to take part in revising the state's laws. He surrendered his seat in Congress, declined election as a commissioner to serve in Paris with Franklin and Silas Deane, and entered the House of Delegates on 7 October 1776. The four corners of Jefferson's frame for republican government were: abolition of landholding in fee-tail (inheritance limited to a particular class of heirs); abolition of primogeniture; separation of church and state; and a system of public education. Elected to the board of five men to revise the laws of Virginia, Jefferson, George Wythe, and Edmund Pendleton were the only ones to serve to the end. On 18 June 1778 they submitted 126 bills, at least 100 of which were ultimately enacted in substance. Jefferson's education bills failed almost entirely; by 1786 his other three ideals had been achieved.

As a legislator, despite concern for greater equality and democracy, Jefferson showed little regard for protection of civil liberties. His reputation is tarnished by his role in the case of Josiah Philips. Jefferson drew up and introduced in the House of Delegates a bill of attainder against Philips, who as the head of a Tory band in the southeastern counties of Virginia robbed citizens and allegedly committed at least one murder. The bill of attainder, becoming law on 30 May 1778, called for apprehending Philips and putting him to death without legal process. Philips did not surrender during a grace period. Rather than the bill of attainder being invoked, Philip and several associates, when caught, were tried and convicted in a court, not for treason or murder, but for theft of some felt hats and twine. Even many years after this episode, Jefferson insisted that the hanging of Philips under a bill of attainder would have been justified on grounds of expediency during wartime.

On 1 June 1779 Jefferson succeeded Patrick Henry as governor. He was reelected for another single term (1780–1781). As wartime governor Jefferson had little executive authority to compel prosecution of the war effort. He lacked veto power. Fortunately, however, Virginia had a state office for military administration, headed by a commissioner of war (first George Muter and then the very able William Davies). Jefferson as governor had responsibility for activating militia as a home guard, which he found difficult to achieve given the rapid mobility of enemy armies invading his state.

During Jefferson's governorship, four British armies invaded Virginia: General Alexander Leslie's incursion into the Tidewater area, approaching near Williamsburg, from 20 October to 22 November 1780 (Leslie withdrew to take his army to join forces with Cornwallis in the Carolinas); General Benedict Arnold's invasion, beginning December 30, a lightning strike at Richmond on 4 and 5 January 1781; General William Phillips, also invading central Virginia, in April and May 1781; and Cornwallis leaving North Carolina for Virginia in May 1781 and continuing in the state until the siege of Yorktown. Jefferson came in for criticism for being dilatory and lacking in initiative and boldness, particularly in his responses to the Arnold invasion, during which the governor was unable to protect from destruction much of the military stores and documents at the capital. An effort in the legislature to conduct an inquiry into Jefferson's actions during the Arnold invasion failed, and instead he was thanked for his endeavors. Ironically General Phillips, before returning to Virginia with an army, had been one of the prisoners of war (from the British surrender at Saratoga) interned at barracks near Charlottesville and had frequently, along with other captured British officers, been a guest of Jefferson. As governor, Jefferson promoted the western expeditions of George Rogers Clark. Jefferson faced criticism for temporarily holding a prisoner of Clark's—Henry Hamilton, the "Hair Buyer" governor of Detroit—in a dungeon of the Williamsburg jail and in irons.

Jefferson was chased from his home at Monticello on 4 June 1781, one day after his term as governor expired, by the British Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton and his dragoons. Jefferson's successor, Thomas Nelson, did not assume office until 12 June. Jefferson, frustrated by his experiences in public life, intended to enjoy private pursuits. During a brief retirement he wrote Notes on the State of Virginia, a compendium of useful information about Virginia presented in response to queries posed to Jefferson by François Marbois, the French minister to America; this work was first published in Paris in 1785.

The death on 6 September 1782 of his beloved wife, Martha, brought Jefferson out of his retirement. (Only three of their six children survived Martha, and only two, Martha and Mary, reached maturity.) On 12 November 1782 Jefferson was appointed peace commissioner, but negotiations progressed so that his presence was unnecessary before he could sail for France, and the appointment was withdrawn. Elected to Congress, Jefferson served November 1783 to May 1784, being a member of almost every important committee. Among the thirty or more state papers he drafted, Americans should be particularly grateful for his "Notes on the Establishment of a Money Unit," which spared the New World the absurdity of English pounds, shillings, and pence. In his report of 22 March 1784, second only to the Declaration of Independence among his state papers, Jefferson set down practically all the features of the epoch-making Ordinance of 1787, which provided government for the Northwest territory.

On 6 August 1784 Jefferson reached Paris to assist Franklin and John Adams in drawing up treaties of commerce, instructions for which he had himself drafted. In 1785 he succeeded Franklin as minister to France. With the assistance of the Marquis de Lafayette he achieved some commercial concessions. He negotiated a commercial treaty with Prussia in 1785. Early the next year he joined Adams in London to negotiate a similar treaty, but their efforts failed. In October 1789 Jefferson sailed for America on leave of absence to settle private business and to take home his two daughters. With some reluctance he accepted Washington's appointment as secretary of state, being sworn in on 22 March 1790. Jefferson subsequently served as vice president and two terms as the third U.S. president; his Democratic-Republicans opened the way for a two-party system by providing an alternative to the Federalists.

Always intellectually curious, Jefferson pursued a lifetime of scientific studies. In particular he excelled as an architect, helping to bring neoclassicism to America. He designed his mansion at Monticello, near Charlottesville, moving into his new home in 1772, and was also the architect for other Virginia houses. Jefferson, with the help of Charles-Louis Clérisseau, provided the plans for the new state capitol in Richmond, replicating an extant Roman temple, the Maisson Carrée, in Nimes, France; the legislature moved to this edifice in 1788.

Thomas Jefferson died on the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, a few hours before John Adams. He wrote his own epitaph, in which he asked to be remembered for only three things: "Here was buried/Thomas Jefferson/Author of the Declaration of American Independence/of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom/and Father of the University of Virginia."

SEE ALSO Adams, John; Declaration of Independence; Franklin, Benjamin; Lafayette, Marquis de; Tarleton's Virginia Raid of 9-24 July 1781; Washington, George.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Becker, Carl L. The Declaration of Independence: A Study of the History of Political Ideas. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1925.

Berkhofer, Robert F. "Jefferson, the Ordinance of 1784, and the Origins of the American Territorial System." William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 29 (1972): 231-262.

Boyd, Julian P., ed. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. Vols. 1-6. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1950–1952.

Henderson, H. James. Party Politics in the Continental Congress. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974.

Malone, Dumas. Jefferson the Virginian. Boston: Little, Brown, 1948.

Levy, Leonard W. Jefferson and Civil Liberties. Reprint, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1989.

Selby, John E. The Revolution in Virginia, 1775–1783. Williamsburg, Va.: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1988.

Trent, W. T. "The Case of Josiah Philips." American Historical Review 1 (1895–1896): 444-454.

Ward, Harry M., and Harold E. Greer Jr. Richmond during the Revolution, 1775–1783. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1977.

Wills, Garry. Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1978.

                        revised by Harry M. Ward