Thomas Jefferson
The Author of the Declaration of Independence
Not all the work of securing American independence was done by the able generals and the brave soldiers. The patriot cause in the Revolution owed much to men who never served in the army. One of these was Franklin, who secured for the colonies aid and recognition from France. Another was Thomas Jefferson, called “the pen of the Revolution,” who wrote the Declaration of Independence.
Thomas Jefferson was born in Virginia, in 1743; his father, a wealthy country gentleman, died when Thomas was about fourteen years old. The country boy divided his time between books and outdoor sports, and his mind was well-trained and his slender frame was as active and as tireless as an Indian’s. Then at seventeen he rode off to Williamsburg to enter William and Mary College.
At Williamsburg was formed the friendship with Patrick Henry which continued till after the Revolution; it was broken by differences in political opinions. It was on a flyleaf of one of Thomas Jefferson’s law books that Henry wrote his “resolutions.” Jefferson was one of the audience that listened entranced to the eloquent speech against the Stamp Act. When Jefferson was twenty-four, he was admitted to practice law at Williamsburg. He became an able and successful lawyer, though he had a weak voice and was never a pleasing speaker. In 1775 Jefferson heard Patrick Henry’s eloquent appeal to the people to arm for the inevitable conflict; Jefferson, Washington, and others were appointed to form plans to put Virginia on a military basis.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
Jefferson, who had already won reputation as author and scholar, was sent to Philadelphia to the Continental Congress. Though one of the youngest of its members, he was appointed to draft the Declaration of Independence. The paper was accepted and adopted in form slightly changed from that in which he presented it. The delegates who signed it well knew that they were signing their death warrants if the Revolution should prove a failure and they should fall into King George’s hands.
Hancock, the president of the Congress, said that the members must all hang together.
“Yes,” said Franklin, “we must hang together or we shall all hang separately.”
Four days later, the Declaration was read publicly, and its proclamation was received with enthusiasm throughout the colonies.
Jefferson was one of the five men that the Assembly selected to revise the Virginia laws; upon him devolved most of the work. It was due to him that severe laws were passed against dueling, and that there was repealed the old English law by which the eldest son inherited the father’s estate. For nine years he and other enlightened men fought for the repeal of the old intolerant laws about religion, and the passing of a statute securing religious liberty. Finally, all the old laws about tithes, compulsory worship, etc., were struck out and in their place was substituted this statute written by Jefferson:
“No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, ministry, or place whatsoever; nor shall he be enforced, restrained, molested or hindered in his body or his goods; nor shall he otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or beliefs; but all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion; and the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities.” We accept this as a matter of course, but in that day it was a great step forward.
Jefferson was elected governor of Virginia, but he resigned in 1781, feeling that in the emergency of the time the government could best be administered by having civil and military power in the same hands. He was asked by Congress to go with Franklin to France as ambassador but he refused because his wife was ill. After her death, two years later, he went as minister to France. No other American ambassador was ever so popular as Franklin, but Jefferson was liked and respected.
“You replace Dr. Franklin,” said a Frenchman.
“I merely succeed him; no one could replace him,” was the prompt reply.
Jefferson, like Franklin, was a many-sided man. The famous author of the Declaration of Independence, the scholar versed in the Greek, Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish languages, took a keen interest in practical matters and applied science. Under great difficulties, he procured some of the best rice of Italy and sent it to South Carolina; from this handful came the great rice crops produced in that state. From Europe Franklin sent to the United States the first announcement of Watt’s steam engine which he went from Paris to London to see. He wrote back that by it “a peck and a half of coal performs as much work as a horse in a day.” Jefferson himself had inventive talent; among his other inventions was a plow superior to any then in use, which in 1790 received a gold medal in France. He became the third president of the American Philosophical Society of which Franklin was the first president.
Jefferson returned to America in 1789 and served as Secretary of State under Washington. He had succeeded in getting our present coinage system adopted, urging successfully a decimal system to replace that of England which many people wished to retain. He tried to have introduced a system of measures founded on the same decimal plan, but in this he did not succeed. While he was Secretary of State the mint in Philadelphia was established by his advice; till then American money had been coined in Europe.
In 1793 Jefferson resigned the office of Secretary of State and returned to his beloved home, Monticello, one of the handsomest country seats in Virginia. His overseer said that in the twenty years he lived at Monticello, he saw Jefferson sitting unemployed only twice—both times he was too unwell to work. “At all other times he was either reading, writing, talking, working upon some model, or doing something else.” Once Jefferson’s little grandsons whom he urged to “learn” and “labor” replied that they would not need to work because they would be rich. He answered, “Ah, those that expect to get through the world without industry, because they are rich, will be greatly mistaken. The people that do the work will soon get possession of all their property.”
One of his grandsons tells another incident of these days: “On riding out with him when a lad we met a negro who bowed to us; he returned his bow, I did not. Turning to me he asked, ‘Do you permit a negro to be more of a gentleman than yourself?’”
The country did not permit Jefferson to remain long in retirement. He was elected Vice President in 1796 and President in 1801. He represented the party of the people; this was opposed to the Federalist party led by Hamilton which was in favor of a centralized government. The party led by Jefferson was called, first Republican, then Democratic-Republican, then Democratic—to express the idea that the power belonged to the people. Scholar and aristocrat as Jefferson was, he had confidence in the “government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” as a man of the people expressed it later. Throughout Jefferson’s life this was his main idea, and the one for which he always worked.
During his first administration he rendered a great service to the country; being instrumental in 1803 in purchasing from France for fifteen million dollars the Louisiana territory. This territory included not only Louisiana but the territory extending to Puget Sound. In a message to Congress, Jefferson asked for money to send an expedition to explore this great country and he selected two brave and hardy frontiersmen to lead it, Captain Lewis and Lieutenant Clarke. They spent two and a half years on the expedition and brought back information about the country and specimens of its products.
After he had served his country twice as president, Jefferson retired to his home at Monticello and there spent his old age, still occupied with schemes for the public welfare. He believed in America for Americans. In a letter to President Monroe he said, “Our first and fundamental maxim should be never to entangle ourselves in the broils of Europe. Our second never to suffer Europe to intermeddle with Cis-Atlantic affairs.”
He planned an educational system for Virginia which included a comprehensive free school system, and a university. He gave years of thought and study to planning the building, government, and course of study of this university. In 1818 the state legislature made a grant to establish the University of Virginia.
Jefferson gave practically his whole life to the service of his country. He was in office thirty-nine years, and spent more than twenty years revising the Virginia Statutes and laboring to establish the University of Virginia. Thus, he said, his public services occupied over sixty years. During this time, his private affairs were neglected. From wealth in youth, he was reduced in old age to straitened circumstances. He sold his library, thirteen thousand volumes, to Congress for $23,950, about one-half of its auction value, and the money went to his creditors.
In the summer of 1826 Jefferson was taken ill. At midnight July the third, he was heard to murmur, “This is the fourth of July.” About midday he died, fifty years after the Declaration of Independence was adopted. On the same day in Massachusetts was dying John Adams who had helped in the fight for the people’s rights. During his last hours, his thoughts turned to his great associate and he said, “Thomas Jefferson still lives.”
On Jefferson’s tombstone were recorded as he had requested—not the offices he had held nor the honors he had received—but the three things by which he wished to be remembered,—that he wrote the Declaration of Independence, the Virginia Statute for religious liberty, and founded the University of Virginia.