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Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743[a] – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, slaver, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was previously the nation's second vice president under John Adams and the first United States secretary of state under George Washington. The principal author of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson was a proponent of democracy, republicanism, and individual rights, motivating American colonists to break from the Kingdom of Great Britain and form a new nation. He produced formative documents and decisions at state, national, and international levels.

Thomas Jefferson
Portrait by Rembrandt Peale, 1800
3rd President of the United States
In office
March 4, 1801 – March 4, 1809
Vice President
Preceded byJohn Adams
Succeeded byJames Madison
2nd Vice President of the United States
In office
March 4, 1797 – March 4, 1801
PresidentJohn Adams
Preceded byJohn Adams
Succeeded byAaron Burr
1st United States Secretary of State
In office
March 22, 1790 – December 31, 1793
PresidentGeorge Washington
Preceded byJohn Jay (acting)
Succeeded byEdmund Randolph
2nd United States Minister to France
In office
May 17, 1785 – September 26, 1789
Appointed byConfederation Congress
Preceded byBenjamin Franklin
Succeeded byWilliam Short
Minister Plenipotentiary for Negotiating Treaties of Amity and Commerce
In office
May 12, 1784 – May 11, 1786
Appointed byConfederation Congress
Preceded byOffice established
Succeeded byOffice abolished
Delegate from Virginia to the Congress of the Confederation
In office
November 3, 1783 – May 7, 1784
Preceded byJames Madison
Succeeded byRichard Lee
2nd Governor of Virginia
In office
June 1, 1779 – June 3, 1781
Preceded byPatrick Henry
Succeeded byWilliam Fleming
Delegate from Virginia to the Continental Congress
In office
June 20, 1775 – September 26, 1776
Preceded byGeorge Washington
Succeeded byJohn Harvie
ConstituencySecond Continental Congress
Member of the Virginia House of Burgesses
In office
May 11, 1769[1] – June 1, 1775[2]
Preceded byEdward Carter[2]
Succeeded byOffice Abolished
ConstituencyAlbemarle County
Personal details
Born(1743-04-13)April 13, 1743
Shadwell, Virginia, British America
DiedJuly 4, 1826(1826-07-04) (aged 83)
Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S.
Resting placeMonticello, Virginia, U.S.
Political partyDemocratic-Republican
Spouse
(m. 1772; died 1782)
Children
Parents
Alma materCollege of William & Mary
Occupation
  • Politician
  • lawyer
Signature

Philosophy career
Notable workDeclaration of Independence (1776)
Notes on Virginia (1785)
Jefferson's Manual (1801)
Jefferson Bible (1820)
EraAge of Enlightenment
RegionWestern philosophy
American philosophy
SchoolClassical liberalism
(Radicalism)[3]
Deism
Enlightenment
Jeffersonianism
Republicanism
InstitutionsAmerican Philosophical Society
Main interests
Notable ideas
All men are created equal,
Empire of Liberty,
Entangling alliances,
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,
Separation of church and state,
Strict constructionism,
Ward republic,
Views on education,
Views on slavery,
Views on religion

During the American Revolution, Jefferson represented Virginia in the Continental Congress that adopted the Declaration of Independence. As a Virginia legislator, he drafted a state law for religious freedom. He served as the second Governor of Virginia from 1779 to 1781, during the Revolutionary War. In 1785, Jefferson was appointed the United States Minister to France, and subsequently, the nation's first secretary of state under President George Washington from 1790 to 1793. Jefferson and James Madison organized the Democratic-Republican Party to oppose the Federalist Party during the formation of the First Party System. With Madison, he anonymously wrote the provocative Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions in 1798 and 1799, which sought to strengthen states' rights by nullifying the federal Alien and Sedition Acts.

Jefferson and Federalist John Adams became friends as well as political rivals, serving in the Continental Congress and drafting the Declaration of Independence together. In the 1796 presidential election between the two, Jefferson came in second, which according to electoral procedure at the time, made him vice president to Adams. Jefferson challenged Adams again in 1800 and won the presidency. After his term in office, Jefferson eventually reconciled with Adams and they shared a correspondence that lasted fourteen years.

As president, Jefferson pursued the nation's shipping and trade interests against Barbary pirates and aggressive British trade policies. Starting in 1803, he promoted a western expansionist policy with the Louisiana Purchase which doubled the nation's claimed land area. To make room for settlement, Jefferson began the process of Indian tribal removal from the newly acquired territory. As a result of peace negotiations with France, his administration reduced military forces. He was re-elected in 1804, but his second term was beset with difficulties at home, including the trial of former vice president Aaron Burr. In 1807, American foreign trade was diminished when Jefferson implemented the Embargo Act in response to British threats to U.S. shipping. The same year, Jefferson signed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves.

Jefferson, while primarily a plantation owner, lawyer, and politician, mastered many disciplines, ranging from surveying and mathematics to horticulture and mechanics. He was also an architect in the Palladian tradition. Jefferson's keen interest in religion and philosophy led to his presidency of the American Philosophical Society; he shunned organized religion but was influenced by Christianity, Epicureanism,[4] and deism. Jefferson rejected fundamental Christianity, denying Christ's divinity. A philologist, Jefferson knew several languages. He was a prolific letter writer and corresponded with many prominent people, including Edward Carrington, John Taylor of Caroline, and James Madison. Among his books is Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), considered perhaps the most important American book published before 1800.[13] Jefferson championed the ideals, values, and teachings of the Enlightenment.

Over the course of his life, Jefferson owned more than 600 slaves. Since Jefferson's time, controversy has revolved around his relationship with Sally Hemings, a mixed-race enslaved woman and his late wife's half-sister.[14] According to 1998 DNA testing of Jefferson's and Hemings' descendants, combined with documentary and statistical evidence and oral history, Jefferson fathered at least six children with Hemings, including four that survived to adulthood.[15] Evidence suggests that Jefferson started the relationship with Hemings when they were in Paris, some time after she arrived there at the age of 14 or 15, when Jefferson was 44. By the time she returned to the United States at 16 or 17, she was pregnant.[16]

After retiring from public office, Jefferson founded the University of Virginia. He and John Adams both died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of U.S. independence. Presidential scholars and historians generally praise Jefferson's public achievements, including his advocacy of religious freedom and tolerance in Virginia, his peaceful acquisition of the Louisiana Territory from France without war or controversy, and his ambitious and successful Lewis and Clark Expedition. Some modern historians are critical of Jefferson's personal involvement with slavery. Jefferson is consistently ranked in the top ten presidents of American history.

Early life and career

Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743 (April 2, 1743, Old Style, Julian calendar), at the family's Shadwell Plantation in the British Colony of Virginia, the third of ten children.[17] He was of English, and possibly Welsh, descent and was born a British subject.[18] His father Peter Jefferson was a planter and surveyor who died when Jefferson was fourteen; his mother was Jane Randolph.[b] Peter Jefferson moved his family to Tuckahoe Plantation in 1745 upon the death of William Randolph III, the plantation's owner and Jefferson's friend, who in his will had named Peter guardian of Randolph's children. The Jeffersons returned to Shadwell in 1752, where Peter died in 1757; his estate was divided between his sons Thomas and Randolph.[20] John Harvie Sr. then became Thomas' guardian.[21] In 1753 he attended the wedding of his uncle Field Jefferson to Mary Allen Hunt, who became a close friend and early mentor.[22] Thomas inherited approximately 5,000 acres (2,000 ha; 7.8 sq mi) of land, including Monticello, and assumed full authority over his property at age 21.[23]

Education and early family life

 
Thomas Jefferson's Coat of Arms

Jefferson began his education together with the Randolph children by tutors at Tuckahoe.[24] Thomas' father Peter was self-taught, regretted not having a formal education, and entered Thomas into an English school at age five. In 1752, at age nine, he attended a local school run by a Scottish Presbyterian minister and also began studying the natural world, which he grew to love. At this time he began studying Latin, Greek, and French, while also learning to ride horses. Thomas also read books from his father's modest library.[25] He was taught from 1758 to 1760 by the Reverend James Maury near Gordonsville, Virginia, where he studied history, science, and the classics while boarding with Maury's family.[26][25] Jefferson then came to know and befriended various American Indians, including the famous Cherokee chief Ostenaco, who often stopped at Shadwell to visit on their way to Williamsburg to trade.[27][28] During the two years Jefferson was with the Maury family, he traveled to Williamsburg and was a guest of Colonel John Dandridge, father of Martha Washington. In Williamsburg the young Jefferson met and came to admire Patrick Henry, eight years his senior, and shared a common interest in violin playing.[29]

 
The Wren Building, at the College of William & Mary, where Jefferson studied

Jefferson entered the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia at age 16 and studied mathematics, metaphysics, and philosophy with Professor William Small. Under Small's tutelage, Jefferson encountered the ideas of the British Empiricists, including John Locke, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton. Small introduced Jefferson to George Wythe and Francis Fauquier. Small, Wythe, and Fauquier recognized Jefferson as a man of exceptional ability and included him in their inner circle, where he became a regular member of their Friday dinner parties where politics and philosophy were discussed. Jefferson later wrote that, while there, he "heard more common good sense, more rational & philosophical conversations than in all the rest of my life".[30] During his first year at the college he was given more to parties and dancing and was not very frugal with his expenditures; in his second year, regretting that he had squandered away much time and money, he dedicated himself to fifteen hours of study a day.[31] Jefferson improved his French and Greek and his skill at the violin. He graduated two years after starting in 1762. He read the law under Wythe's tutelage to obtain his law license while working as a law clerk in his office.[32] He also read a wide variety of English classics and political works.[33] Jefferson was well-read in a broad variety of subjects, which along with law and philosophy, included history, natural law, natural religion, ethics, and several areas in science, including agriculture. Overall, he drew very deeply on the philosophers. During the years of study under the watchful eye of Wythe, Jefferson authored a survey of his extensive readings in his Commonplace Book.[34] Wythe was so impressed with Jefferson that he later bequeathed his entire library to him.[35]

The year 1765 was an eventful one in Jefferson's family. In July, his sister Martha married his close friend and college companion Dabney Carr, which greatly pleased Jefferson. In October, he mourned his sister Jane's unexpected death at age 25 and wrote a farewell epitaph in Latin.[36] Jefferson treasured his books and amassed three libraries in his lifetime. The first, a library of 200 volumes started in his youth which included books inherited from his father and left to him by George Wythe,[37] was destroyed when his Shadwell home burned in a 1770 fire. Nevertheless, he had replenished his collection with 1,250 titles by 1773, and it grew to almost 6,500 volumes by 1814.[38] He organized his wide variety of books into three broad categories corresponding with elements of the human mind: memory, reason, and imagination.[39] After the British burned the Library of Congress during the Burning of Washington, he sold this second library to the U.S. government to jumpstart the Library of Congress collection, for the price of $23,950. Jefferson used a portion of the money secured by the sale to pay off some of his large debt, remitting $10,500 to William Short and $4,870 to John Barnes of Georgetown. However, he soon resumed collecting for his personal library, writing to John Adams, "I cannot live without books."[40][41] He began to construct a new library of his personal favorites and by the time of his death a decade later it had grown to almost 2,000 volumes.[42]

Lawyer and House of Burgesses

 
House of Burgesses in Williamsburg, Virginia, where Jefferson served 1769–1775

Jefferson was admitted to the Virginia bar in 1767, and lived with his mother at Shadwell.[43] He represented Albemarle County as a delegate in the Virginia House of Burgesses from 1769 until 1775.[44] He pursued reforms to slavery, with legislation in 1769 to give masters control over the emancipation of slaves, taking discretion away from the royal governor and General Court. He persuaded his cousin Richard Bland to spearhead the legislation's passage, but opposition was strong.[45]

Jefferson took seven cases for freedom-seeking slaves[46] and waived his fee for one who claimed that he should be freed before his minimum statutory age.[47] Jefferson invoked natural law to argue, "everyone comes into the world with a right to his own person and using it at his own will ... This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the author of nature, because it is necessary for his own sustenance." The judge cut him off and ruled against his client. As a consolation, Jefferson gave his client some money, conceivably used to aid his escape shortly thereafter.[47] He later incorporated this sentiment into the Declaration of Independence.[48] He also took on 68 cases for the General Court of Virginia in 1767, in addition to three notable cases: Howell v. Netherland (1770), Bolling v. Bolling (1771), and Blair v. Blair (1772).[49]

The British Parliament passed the Intolerable Acts in 1774, and Jefferson wrote a resolution calling for a "Day of Fasting and Prayer" in protest, as well as a boycott of all British goods. His resolution was later expanded into A Summary View of the Rights of British America, in which he argued that people have the right to govern themselves.[50]

Monticello, marriage, and family

 
Jefferson's home Monticello in Virginia

In 1768, Jefferson began constructing his primary residence Monticello (Italian for "Little Mountain") on a hilltop overlooking his 5,000-acre (20 km2; 7.8 sq mi) plantation.[c] He spent most of his adult life designing Monticello as architect and was quoted as saying, "Architecture is my delight, and putting up, and pulling down, one of my favorite amusements."[52] Construction was done mostly by local masons and carpenters, assisted by Jefferson's slaves.[53]

He moved into the South Pavilion in 1770. Turning Monticello into a neoclassical masterpiece in the Palladian style was his perennial project.[54] On January 1, 1772, Jefferson married his third cousin[55] Martha Wayles Skelton, the 23-year-old widow of Bathurst Skelton, and she moved into the South Pavilion.[56][57] She was a frequent hostess for Jefferson and managed the large household. Biographer Dumas Malone described the marriage as the happiest period of Jefferson's life.[58] Martha read widely, did fine needlework, and was a skilled pianist; Jefferson often accompanied her on the violin or cello.[59] During their ten years of marriage, Martha bore six children: Martha "Patsy" (1772–1836); Jane (1774–1775); an unnamed son who lived for only a few weeks in 1777; Mary "Polly" (1778–1804); Lucy Elizabeth (1780–1781); and another Lucy Elizabeth (1782–1784).[60][d] Only Martha and Mary survived to adulthood.[63]

 
Jefferson's daughter Martha

Martha's father John Wayles died in 1773, and the couple inherited 135 slaves, 11,000 acres (45 km2; 17 sq mi), and the estate's debts. The debts took Jefferson years to satisfy, contributing to his financial problems.[56]

Martha later suffered from ill health, including diabetes, and frequent childbirth further weakened her. Her mother had died young, and Martha lived with two stepmothers as a girl. A few months after the birth of her last child, she died on September 6, 1782, with Jefferson at her bedside. Shortly before her death, Martha made Jefferson promise never to marry again, telling him that she could not bear to have another mother raise her children.[64] Jefferson was grief-stricken by her death, relentlessly pacing back and forth, nearly to the point of exhaustion. He emerged after three weeks, taking long rambling rides on secluded roads with his daughter Martha, by her description "a solitary witness to many a violent burst of grief".[63][65]

After working as secretary of state (1790–1793), he returned to Monticello and initiated a remodeling based on the architectural concepts which he had acquired in Europe. The work continued throughout most of his presidency and was completed in 1809.[66][67]

Revolutionary War

Declaration of Independence

 
U.S. Declaration of Independence – 1823 facsimile of the engrossed copy

Jefferson was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence. The document's social and political ideals were proposed by Jefferson before the inauguration of Washington.[68] At age 33, he was one of the youngest delegates to the Second Continental Congress beginning in 1775 at the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, where a formal declaration of independence from Britain was overwhelmingly favored.[69] Jefferson chose his words for the Declaration in June 1775, shortly after the war had begun; the idea of independence from Britain had long since become popular among the colonies. He was inspired by the Enlightenment ideals of the sanctity of the individual, as well as the writings of Locke and Montesquieu.[70]

He sought out John Adams, an emerging leader of the Congress.[71] They became close friends and Adams supported Jefferson's appointment to the Committee of Five formed to draft a declaration of independence in furtherance of the Lee Resolution passed by the Congress, which declared the United Colonies independent. The committee initially thought that Adams should write the document, but Adams persuaded the committee to choose Jefferson.[e]

Jefferson consulted with other committee members over the next seventeen days and drew on his proposed draft of the Virginia Constitution, George Mason's draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, and other sources.[73] The other committee members made some changes, and a final draft was presented to Congress on June 28, 1776.[74]

The declaration was introduced on Friday, June 28, and Congress began debate over its contents on Monday, July 1,[74] resulting in the omission of a fourth of the text,[75] including a passage critical of King George III and "Jefferson's anti-slavery clause".[76][77] Jefferson resented the changes, but he did not speak publicly about the revisions.[f] On July 4, 1776, the Congress ratified the Declaration, and delegates signed it on August 2; in doing so, they were committing an act of treason against the Crown.[79] Jefferson's preamble is regarded as an enduring statement of human rights, and the phrase "all men are created equal" has been called "one of the best-known sentences in the English language" containing "the most potent and consequential words in American history".[76][80]

Virginia state legislator and governor

 
Governor's Palace, Governor Jefferson's residence in Williamsburg

At the start of the Revolution, Colonel Jefferson was named commander of the Albemarle County Militia on September 26, 1775.[81] He was then elected to the Virginia House of Delegates for Albemarle County in September 1776, when finalizing the state constitution was a priority.[82][83] For nearly three years, he assisted with the constitution and was especially proud of his Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, which prohibited state support of religious institutions or enforcement of religious doctrine.[84] The bill failed to pass, as did his legislation to disestablish the Anglican Church, but both were later revived by James Madison.[85]

In 1778, Jefferson was given the task of revising the state's laws. He drafted 126 bills in three years, including laws to streamline the judicial system. He proposed statutes that provided for general education, which he considered the basis of "republican government".[82] Jefferson also was concerned that Virginia's powerful landed gentry were becoming a hereditary aristocracy and he took the lead in abolishing what he called "feudal and unnatural distinctions."[86] He targeted laws such as entail and primogeniture by which a deceased landowner's oldest son was vested with all land ownership and power.[86] [g]

Jefferson was elected governor for one-year terms in 1779 and 1780.[88] He transferred the state capital from Williamsburg to Richmond, and introduced additional measures for public education, religious freedom, and inheritance.[89]

During General Benedict Arnold's 1781 invasion of Virginia, Jefferson escaped Richmond just ahead of the British forces, which razed the city.[90][91] He sent emergency dispatches to Colonel Sampson Mathews and other commanders in an attempt to repel Arnold's efforts.[92][93] Jefferson then visited with friends in the surrounding counties of Richmond, including William Fleming, a college friend of his in Chesterfield County.[94] General Charles Cornwallis that spring dispatched a cavalry force led by Banastre Tarleton to capture Jefferson and members of the Assembly at Monticello, but Jack Jouett of the Virginia militia thwarted the British plan. Jefferson escaped to Poplar Forest, his plantation to the west.[95] When the General Assembly reconvened in June 1781, it conducted an inquiry into Jefferson's actions which eventually concluded that Jefferson had acted with honor—but he was not re-elected.[96]

In April of the same year, his daughter Lucy died at age one. A second daughter of that name was born the following year, but she died at age three.[97]

In 1782, Jefferson refused a partnership offer by North Carolina Governor Abner Nash, in a profiteering scheme involving the sale of confiscated Loyalist lands.[98] Unlike some Founders in pursuit of land, Jefferson was content with his Monticello estate and the land he owned in the vicinity of Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. Jefferson thought of Monticello as an intellectual gathering place for his friends James Madison and James Monroe.[99]

Notes on the State of Virginia

In 1780, Jefferson received from French diplomat François Barbé-Marbois a letter of inquiry into the geography, history, and government of Virginia, as part of a study of the United States. Jefferson organized his responses in a book, Notes on the State of Virginia (1785).[100] He compiled the book over five years, including reviews of scientific knowledge, Virginia's history, politics, laws, culture, and geography.[101] The book explores what constitutes a good society, using Virginia as an exemplar. Jefferson included extensive data about the state's natural resources and economy and wrote at length about slavery and miscegenation; he articulated his belief that blacks and whites could not live together as free people in one society because of justified resentments of the enslaved.[102] He also wrote of his views on the American Indian, equating them to European settlers in body and mind.[103][104]

Notes was first published in 1785 in French and appeared in English in 1787.[105] Biographer George Tucker considered the work "surprising in the extent of the information which a single individual had been thus far able to acquire, as to the physical features of the state";[106] Merrill D. Peterson described it as an accomplishment for which all Americans should be grateful.[107]

Member of Congress

 
Independence Hall Assembly Room where Jefferson served in the Continental Congress

The United States formed a Congress of the Confederation following victory in the Revolutionary War and a peace treaty with Great Britain in 1783, to which Jefferson was appointed as a Virginia delegate. He was a member of the committee setting foreign exchange rates and recommended an American currency based on the decimal system which was adopted.[108] He advised the formation of the Committee of the States to fill the power vacuum when Congress was in recess.[109] The Committee met when Congress adjourned, but disagreements rendered it dysfunctional.[110]

In the Congress's 1783–1784 session, Jefferson acted as chairman of committees to establish a viable system of government for the new Republic and to propose a policy for the settlement of the western territories. He was the principal author of the Land Ordinance of 1784, whereby Virginia ceded to the national government the vast area that it claimed northwest of the Ohio River. He insisted that this territory should not be used as colonial territory by any of the thirteen states, but that it should be divided into sections that could become states. He plotted borders for nine new states in their initial stages and wrote an ordinance banning slavery in all the nation's territories. Congress made extensive revisions, and rejected the ban on slavery.[111][112] The provisions banning slavery, known as the "Jefferson Proviso," were modified and implemented three years later in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and became the law for the entire Northwest.[111]

Minister to France

 
Portrait of Thomas Jefferson while in London in 1786 at 43 by Mather Brown

On May 7, 1784, Jefferson was appointed by the Congress of the Confederation[h] to join Benjamin Franklin and John Adams in Paris as Minister Plenipotentiary for Negotiating Treaties of Amity and Commerce with Great Britain and other countries.[113][i] With his young daughter Patsy and two servants, he departed in July 1784, arriving in Paris the next month.[115][116] Jefferson had Patsy educated at the Pentemont Abbey. Less than a year later he was assigned the additional duty of succeeding Franklin as Minister to France. French foreign minister Count de Vergennes commented, "You replace Monsieur Franklin, I hear." Jefferson replied, "I succeed. No man can replace him."[117] During his five years in Paris, Jefferson played a leading role in shaping U.S. foreign policy.[118]

In 1786, he met and fell in love with Maria Cosway, an accomplished—and married—Italian-English musician of 27. They saw each other frequently over a period of six weeks. She returned to Great Britain, but they maintained a lifelong correspondence.[119]

During the summer of 1786, Jefferson arrived in London to meet with John Adams, the United States Ambassador to Britain. Adams had official access to George III and arranged a meeting between Jefferson and the king. Jefferson later described the king's reception of the men as "ungracious." According to Adams's grandson, George III turned his back on both Adams and Jefferson in a jesture of public insult. Jefferson returned to France in August.[120]

Jefferson sent for his youngest surviving child, nine-year-old Polly, in June 1787, who was accompanied on her voyage by a young slave from Monticello, Sally Hemings. He had taken her older brother James Hemings to Paris as part of his domestic staff and had him trained in French cuisine.[121] According to Sally's son, Madison Hemings, the 16-year-old Sally and Jefferson began a sexual relationship in Paris, where she became pregnant.[122] The son also indicated Hemings agreed to return to the United States only after Jefferson promised to free her children when they came of age.[122]

While in France, Jefferson became a regular companion of the Marquis de Lafayette, a French hero of the American Revolutionary War, and Jefferson used his influence to procure trade agreements with France.[123][124] As the French Revolution began, he allowed his Paris residence, the Hôtel de Langeac, to be used for meetings by Lafayette and other republicans. He was in Paris during the storming of the Bastille and consulted with Lafayette while the latter drafted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.[125] Jefferson often found his mail opened by postmasters, so he invented his own enciphering device, the "Wheel Cipher"; he wrote important communications in code for the rest of his career.[126][j] Unable to attend the 1787 Convention, Jefferson supported the Constitution but desired the addition of the promised bill of rights.[127] Jefferson left Paris for America in September 1789, intending to return to his home soon; however, President George Washington appointed him the country's first secretary of state, forcing him to remain in the nation's capital.[128] Jefferson remained a firm supporter of the French Revolution while opposing its more violent elements.[129] John Skey Eustace kept Jefferson informed of the events of the French Revolution.[130]

Secretary of State

 
Thomas Jefferson in 1791 at 48 by Charles Willson Peale

Soon after returning from France, Jefferson accepted Washington's invitation to serve as secretary of state.[131] Pressing issues at this time were the national debt and the permanent location of the capital. He opposed a national debt, preferring that each state retire its own, in contrast to Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, who desired consolidation of various states' debts by the federal government.[132] Hamilton also had bold plans to establish the national credit and a national bank, but Jefferson strenuously opposed this and attempted to undermine his agenda, which nearly led Washington to dismiss him from his cabinet. He later left the cabinet voluntarily.[133]

Jefferson's goals were to decrease American dependence on British commerce and to expand commercial trade with France. He sought to weaken Spanish colonialism of the trans-Appalachian West and British control in the North, believing this would aid in the pacification of Native Americans.[134]

The second major issue was the capital's permanent location. Hamilton favored a capital close to the major commercial centers of the Northeast, while Washington, Jefferson, and other agrarians wanted it located to the south.[135] After lengthy deadlock, the Compromise of 1790 was struck, permanently locating the capital on the Potomac River, and the federal government assumed the war debts of all thirteen states.[135]

While serving in the government in Philadelphia, Jefferson and political protegee Congressman James Madison founded the National Gazette in 1791, along with author Phillip Freneau, in an effort to counter Hamilton's Federalist policies, which Hamilton was promoting through the influential Federalist newspaper the Gazette of the United States. The National Gazette made particular criticism of the policies promoted by Hamilton, often through anonymous essays signed by the pen name Brutus at Jefferson's urging, which were actually written by Madison.[136] In the Spring of 1791, Jefferson and Madison took a vacation to Vermont. Jefferson had been suffering from migraines and he was tired of Hamilton in-fighting.[137]

In May 1792, Jefferson was alarmed at the political rivalries taking shape; he wrote to Washington, imploring him to run for re-election that year as a unifying influence.[138] He urged the president to rally the citizenry to a party that would defend democracy against the corrupting influence of banks and monied interests, as espoused by the Federalists. Historians recognize this letter as the earliest delineation of Democratic-Republican Party principles.[139] Jefferson, Madison, and other Democratic-Republican organizers favored states' rights and local control and opposed federal concentration of power, whereas Hamilton sought more power for the federal government.[140]

Jefferson supported France against Britain when the two nations fought in 1793, though his arguments in the Cabinet were undercut by French Revolutionary envoy Edmond-Charles Genêt's open scorn for President Washington.[141] In his discussions with British Minister George Hammond, he tried in vain to persuade the British to vacate their posts in the Northwest and to compensate the U.S. for slaves whom the British had freed at the end of the war. Jefferson sought a return to private life, and resigned the cabinet position in December 1793; he may also have wanted to bolster his political influence from outside the administration.[142]

After the Washington administration negotiated the Jay Treaty with Great Britain (1794), Jefferson saw a cause around which to rally his party and organized a national opposition from Monticello.[143] The treaty, designed by Hamilton, aimed to reduce tensions and increase trade. Jefferson warned that it would increase British influence and subvert republicanism, calling it "the boldest act [Hamilton and Jay] ever ventured on to undermine the government".[144] The Treaty passed, but it expired in 1805 during Jefferson's administration and was not renewed. Jefferson continued his pro-French stance; during the violence of the Reign of Terror, he declined to disavow the revolution: "To back away from France would be to undermine the cause of republicanism in America."[145]

Election of 1796 and vice presidency

 
1796 election results
 
Jefferson in 1799 at 56, painted by Charles Peale Polk

In the presidential campaign of 1796, Jefferson lost the electoral college vote to Federalist John Adams by 71–68 and was thus elected vice president. As presiding officer of the Senate, he assumed a more passive role than his predecessor John Adams. He allowed the Senate to freely conduct debates and confined his participation to procedural issues, which he called an "honorable and easy" role.[146] Jefferson had previously studied parliamentary law and procedure for 40 years, making him quite qualified to serve as presiding officer. In 1800, he published his assembled notes on Senate procedure as A Manual of Parliamentary Practice.[147] He cast only three tie-breaking votes in the Senate.

In four confidential talks with French consul Joseph Létombe in the spring of 1797, Jefferson attacked Adams and predicted that his rival would serve only one term. He also encouraged France to invade England, and advised Létombe to stall any American envoys sent to Paris by instructing him to "listen to them and then drag out the negotiations at length and mollify them by the urbanity of the proceedings."[148] This toughened the tone that the French government adopted toward the Adams administration. After Adams's initial peace envoys were rebuffed, Jefferson and his supporters lobbied for the release of papers related to the incident, called the XYZ Affair after the letters used to disguise the identities of the French officials involved.[149] However, the tactic backfired when it was revealed that French officials had demanded bribes, rallying public support against France. The U.S. began an undeclared naval war with France known as the Quasi-War.[150]

During the Adams presidency, the Federalists rebuilt the military, levied new taxes, and enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts. Jefferson believed these laws were intended to suppress Democratic-Republicans, rather than prosecute enemy aliens, and considered them unconstitutional.[151] To rally opposition, he and James Madison anonymously wrote the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, declaring that the federal government had no right to exercise powers not specifically delegated to it by the states.[152] The resolutions followed the "interposition" approach of Madison, in which states may shield their citizens from federal laws that they deem unconstitutional. Jefferson advocated nullification, allowing states to invalidate federal laws altogether.[153][k] He warned that, "unless arrested at the threshold", the Alien and Sedition Acts would "necessarily drive these states into revolution and blood".[155]

Historian Ron Chernow claims that "the theoretical damage of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions was deep and lasting, and was a recipe for disunion", contributing to the American Civil War as well as later events.[156] Washington was so appalled by the resolutions that he told Patrick Henry that, if "systematically and pertinaciously pursued", the resolutions would "dissolve the union or produce coercion."[157] Jefferson had always admired Washington's leadership skills but felt that his Federalist party was leading the country in the wrong direction. He decided not to attend Washington's funeral in 1799 because of acute differences with him while serving as secretary of state.[158]

Election of 1800

 
1800 election results

Jefferson contended for president once more against Adams in 1800. Adams's campaign was weakened by unpopular taxes and vicious Federalist infighting over his actions in the Quasi-War.[159] Democratic-Republicans pointed to the Alien and Sedition Acts and accused the Federalists of being secret pro-Britain monarchists, while Federalists charged that Jefferson was a godless libertine beholden to the French.[160] Historian Joyce Appleby said the election was "one of the most acrimonious in the annals of American history".[161]

The Democratic-Republicans ultimately won more electoral college votes, due in part to the electors that resulted from the addition of three-fifths of the South's slaves to the population calculation.[162] Jefferson and his vice-presidential candidate Aaron Burr unexpectedly received an equal total. Because of the tie, the election was decided by the Federalist-dominated House of Representatives.[163][l] Hamilton lobbied Federalist representatives on Jefferson's behalf, believing him a lesser political evil than Burr. On February 17, 1801, after thirty-six ballots, the House elected Jefferson president and Burr vice president. Jefferson became the second incumbent vice president to be elected president.[164]

The win was marked by Democratic-Republican celebrations throughout the country.[165] Some of Jefferson's opponents argued that he owed his victory over Adams to the South's inflated number of electors, due to the counting slaves under the Three-Fifths Compromise.[166] Others alleged that Jefferson secured James Asheton Bayard's tie-breaking electoral vote by guaranteeing the retention of various Federalist posts in the government.[164] Jefferson disputed the allegation, and the historical record is inconclusive.[167]

The transition proceeded smoothly, marking a watershed in American history. As historian Gordon S. Wood writes, "it was one of the first popular elections in modern history that resulted in the peaceful transfer of power from one 'party' to another."[164]

Presidency (1801–1809)

 
Thomas Jefferson, by Rembrandt Peale, 1805

Jefferson was sworn in by Chief Justice John Marshall at the new Capitol in Washington, D.C. on March 4, 1801. His inauguration was not attended by outgoing President Adams. In contrast to his predecessors, Jefferson exhibited a dislike of formal etiquette. Plainly dressed, he arrived alone, and walked to the Capitol with his friends.[168] His inaugural address struck a note of reconciliation and commitment to democratic ideology, declaring, "We have been called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists."[169][170] Ideologically, he stressed "equal and exact justice to all men", minority rights, and freedom of speech, religion, and press.[171] He said that a free and democratic government was "the strongest government on earth."[171] He nominated moderate Republicans to his cabinet: James Madison as secretary of state, Henry Dearborn as secretary of war, Levi Lincoln as attorney general, and Robert Smith as secretary of the navy.[170]

Widowed since 1782, Jefferson first used his two daughters as hostesses.[172] Starting in late May, 1801, he asked Dolley Madison, wife of his long-time friend James Madison, to be the permanent White House hostess. She accepted, realizing the diplomatic importance of the position. She was also in charge of the completion of the White House mansion. Dolley served as White House hostess for the rest of Jefferson's two terms and then eight more years as First Lady to President James Madison.[172]

Financial affairs

 
Albert Gallatin Jefferson's Treasury Secretary.
Stuart 1803

Jefferson's first official challenge was the $83 million national debt.[173] He began dismantling Hamilton's Federalist fiscal system with help from the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.[170] Gallatin devised a plan to eliminate the national debt in sixteen years by extensive annual appropriations and reduction in taxes.[174] The administration eliminated the whiskey excise and other taxes after closing "unnecessary offices" and cutting "useless establishments and expenses".[175][176]

Jefferson believed that the First Bank of the United States represented a "most deadly hostility" to republican government.[174] He wanted to dismantle the bank before its charter expired in 1811, but was dissuaded by Gallatin.[177] Gallatin argued that the national bank was a useful financial institution and set out to expand its operations.[178] Jefferson looked to other corners to address the growing national debt.[178] He shrank the Navy, for example, deeming it unnecessary in peacetime, and incorporated a fleet of inexpensive gunboats intended only for local defense to avoid provocation against foreign powers.[175] After two terms, he had lowered the national debt from $83 million to $57 million.[173]

Domestic affairs

Jefferson pardoned several of those imprisoned under the Alien and Sedition Acts.[179] Congressional Republicans repealed the Judiciary Act of 1801, which removed nearly all of Adams's "midnight judges" from office. A subsequent appointment battle led to the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Marbury v. Madison, asserting judicial review over executive branch actions.[180] Jefferson appointed three Supreme Court justices: William Johnson (1804), Henry Brockholst Livingston (1807), and Thomas Todd (1807).[181]

Jefferson strongly felt the need for a national military university, producing an officer engineering corps for a national defense based on the advancement of the sciences, rather than having to rely on foreign sources for top grade engineers with questionable loyalty.[182] He signed the Military Peace Establishment Act on March 16, 1802, thus founding the United States Military Academy at West Point. The Act documented in 29 sections a new set of laws and limits for the military. Jefferson was also hoping to bring reform to the Executive branch, replacing Federalists and active opponents throughout the officer corps to promote Republican values.[183]

Jefferson took great interest in the Library of Congress, which had been established in 1800. He often recommended books to acquire. In 1802, Congress authorized President Jefferson to name the first Librarian of Congress, and formed a committee to establish library rules and regulations. Congress also granted the president and vice president the right to use the library.[184]

Foreign affairs (1801–1805)

First Barbary War

 
Barbary Coast of North Africa 1806. Left is Morocco at Gibraltar, center is Tunis, and right is Tripoli.

American merchant ships had been protected from Barbary Coast pirates by the Royal Navy when the states were British colonies.[185] After independence, however, pirates often captured U.S. merchant ships, pillaged cargoes, and enslaved or held crew members for ransom. Jefferson had opposed paying tribute to the Barbary States since 1785. In 1801, he authorized a U.S. Navy fleet under Commodore Richard Dale to make a show of force in the Mediterranean, the first American naval squadron to cross the Atlantic.[186] Following the fleet's first engagement, he successfully asked Congress for a declaration of war.[186] The subsequent "First Barbary War" was the first foreign war fought by the U.S.[187]

Pasha of Tripoli Yusuf Karamanli captured the USS Philadelphia, so Jefferson authorized William Eaton, the U.S. Consul to Tunis, to lead a force to restore the pasha's older brother to the throne.[188] The American navy forced Tunis and Algiers into breaking their alliance with Tripoli. Jefferson ordered five separate naval bombardments of Tripoli, leading the pasha to sign a treaty that restored peace in the Mediterranean.[189] This victory proved only temporary, but according to Wood, "many Americans celebrated it as a vindication of their policy of spreading free trade around the world and as a great victory for liberty over tyranny."[190]

Louisiana Purchase

 
The 1803 Louisiana Purchase totaled 827,987 square miles (2,144,480 square kilometers), doubling the size of the United States.

Spain ceded ownership of the Louisiana territory in 1800 to the more predominant France. Jefferson was greatly concerned that Napoleon's broad interests in the vast territory would threaten the security of the continent and Mississippi River shipping. He wrote that the cession "works most sorely on the U.S. It completely reverses all the political relations of the U.S."[191] In 1802, he instructed James Monroe and Robert R. Livingston to negotiate with Napoleon to purchase New Orleans and adjacent coastal areas from France.[192] In early 1803, Jefferson offered Napoleon nearly $10 million for 40,000 square miles (100,000 square kilometers) of tropical territory.[193]

Napoleon realized that French military control was impractical over such a vast remote territory, and he was in dire need of funds for his wars on the home front. In early April 1803, he unexpectedly made negotiators a counter-offer to sell 827,987 square miles (2,144,480 square kilometers) of French territory for $15 million, doubling the size of the United States.[193] U.S. negotiators seized this unique opportunity and accepted the offer and signed the treaty on April 30, 1803.[173] Word of the unexpected purchase did not reach Jefferson until July 3, 1803.[173] He unknowingly acquired the most fertile tract of land of its size on Earth, making the new country self-sufficient in food and other resources. The sale also significantly curtailed the European presence in North America, removing obstacles to U.S. westward expansion.[194]

Most thought that this was an exceptional opportunity, despite Republican reservations about the Constitutional authority of the federal government to acquire land.[195] Jefferson initially thought that a Constitutional amendment was necessary to purchase and govern the new territory; but he later changed his mind, fearing that this would give cause to oppose the purchase, and he, therefore, urged a speedy debate and ratification.[196] On October 20, 1803, the Senate ratified the purchase treaty by a vote of 24–7.[197] Jefferson personally was humble about acquiring the Louisiana Territory, but he resented complainers who called the vast domain a "howling wilderness".[198]

After the purchase, Jefferson preserved the region's Spanish legal code and instituted a gradual approach to integrating settlers into American democracy. He believed that a period of the federal rule would be necessary while Louisianians adjusted to their new nation.[199][m] Historians have differed in their assessments regarding the constitutional implications of the sale,[201] but they typically hail the Louisiana acquisition as a major accomplishment. Frederick Jackson Turner called the purchase the most formative event in American history.[194]

Lewis and Clark Expedition (1803–1806)

 
Lewis and Clark on the Lower Columbia, by Charles Marion Russell, 1905

Jefferson anticipated further westward settlements due to the Louisiana Purchase and arranged for the exploration and mapping of the uncharted territory. He sought to establish a U.S. claim ahead of competing European interests and to find the rumored Northwest Passage.[202] Jefferson and others were influenced by exploration accounts of Le Page du Pratz in Louisiana (1763) and Captain James Cook in the Pacific (1784),[203] and they persuaded Congress in 1804 to fund an expedition to explore and map the newly acquired territory to the Pacific Ocean.[204]

Jefferson appointed Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to be leaders of the Corps of Discovery (1803–1806).[205] In the months leading up to the expedition, Jefferson tutored Lewis in the sciences of mapping, botany, natural history, mineralogy, and astronomy and navigation, giving him unlimited access to his library at Monticello, which included the largest collection of books in the world on the subject of the geography and natural history of the North American continent, along with an impressive collection of maps.[206]

The expedition lasted from May 1804 to September 1806 (see timeline) and obtained a wealth of scientific and geographic knowledge, including knowledge of many Indian tribes.[207]

Other expeditions

In addition to the Corps of Discovery, Jefferson organized three other western expeditions: the William Dunbar and George Hunter Expedition on the Ouachita River (1804–1805), the Thomas Freeman and Peter Custis Expedition (1806) on the Red River, and the Zebulon Pike Expedition (1806–1807) into the Rocky Mountains and the Southwest. All three produced valuable information about the American frontier.[208]

Native American affairs

 
Black Hoof, leader of the Shawnee, accepted Jefferson's Indian assimilation policies.

Jefferson's experiences with the American Indians began during his boyhood in Virginia and extended through his political career and into his retirement. He refuted the contemporary notion that Indians were inferior people and maintained that they were equal in body and mind to people of European descent.[209]

As governor of Virginia during the Revolutionary War, Jefferson recommended moving the Cherokee and Shawnee tribes, who had allied with the British, to west of the Mississippi River. But when he took office as president, he quickly took measures to avert another major conflict, as American and Indian societies were in collision and the British were inciting Indian tribes from Canada.[210][211] In Georgia, he stipulated that the state would release its legal claims for lands to its west in exchange for military support in expelling the Cherokee from Georgia. This facilitated his policy of western expansion, to "advance compactly as we multiply".[212]

In keeping with his Enlightenment thinking, President Jefferson adopted an assimilation policy toward American Indians known as his "civilization program" which included securing peaceful U.S. Indian treaty alliances and encouraging agriculture. Jefferson advocated that Indian tribes should make federal purchases by credit holding their lands as collateral for repayment. Various tribes accepted Jefferson's policies, including the Shawnees led by Black Hoof, the Creek, and the Cherokees. However, some Shawnees broke off from Black Hoof, led by Tecumseh, and opposed Jefferson's assimilation policies.[213]

Historian Bernard Sheehan argues that Jefferson believed that assimilation was best for American Indians; second best was removal to the west. He felt that the worst outcome of the cultural and resources conflict between American citizens and American Indians would be their attacking the whites.[211] Jefferson told Secretary of War General Henry Dearborn (Indian affairs were then under the War Department), "If we are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe, we will never lay it down until that tribe is exterminated or driven beyond the Mississippi."[214] Miller agrees that Jefferson believed that Indians should assimilate to American customs and agriculture. Historians such as Peter S. Onuf and Merrill D. Peterson argue that Jefferson's actual Indian policies did little to promote assimilation and were a pretext to seize lands.[215]

Re-election in 1804 and second term

 
1804 Electoral College vote

Jefferson's successful first term occasioned his re-nomination for president by the Republican party, with George Clinton replacing Burr as his running mate.[216] The Federalist party ran Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, John Adams's vice-presidential candidate in the 1800 election. The Jefferson-Clinton ticket won overwhelmingly in the electoral college vote, by 162 to 14, promoting their achievement of a strong economy, lower taxes, and the Louisiana Purchase.[216]

In March 1806, a split developed in the Republican party, led by fellow Virginian and former Republican ally John Randolph who viciously accused President Jefferson on the floor of the House of moving too far in the Federalist direction. In so doing, Randolph permanently set himself apart politically from Jefferson. Jefferson and Madison had backed resolutions to limit or ban British imports in retaliation for British seizures of American shipping. Also, in 1808, Jefferson was the first president to propose a broad Federal plan to build roads and canals across several states, asking for $20 million, further alarming Randolph and believers of limited government.[217]

Jefferson's popularity further suffered in his second term due to his response to wars in Europe. Positive relations with Great Britain had diminished, due partly to the antipathy between Jefferson and British diplomat Anthony Merry. After Napoleon's decisive victory at the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805, Napoleon became more aggressive in his negotiations over trading rights, which American efforts failed to counter. Jefferson then led the enactment of the Embargo Act of 1807, directed at both France and Great Britain. This triggered economic chaos in the U.S. and was strongly criticized at the time, resulting in Jefferson having to abandon the policy a year later.[218]

During the revolutionary era, the states abolished the international slave trade, but South Carolina reopened it. In his annual message of December 1806, Jefferson denounced the "violations of human rights" attending the international slave trade, calling on the newly elected Congress to criminalize it immediately. In 1807, Congress passed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves, which Jefferson signed.[219][220] The act established severe punishment against the international slave trade, although it did not address the issue domestically.[221]

In Haiti, Jefferson's neutrality had allowed arms to enable the slave independence movement during its Revolution, and blocked attempts to assist Napoleon, who was defeated there in 1803.[222] But he refused official recognition of the country during his second term, in deference to southern complaints about the racial violence against slave-holders; it was eventually extended to Haiti in 1862.[223]

Domestically, Jefferson's grandson James Madison Randolph became the first child born in the White House in 1806.[224]

Controversies

Burr conspiracy and trial

 
1802 portrait of Aaron Burr by John Vanderlyn

Following the 1801 electoral deadlock, Jefferson's relationship with his vice president, former New York Senator Aaron Burr, rapidly eroded. Jefferson suspected Burr of seeking the presidency for himself, while Burr was angered by Jefferson's refusal to appoint some of his supporters to federal office. Burr was dropped from the Republican ticket in 1804.

The same year, Burr was soundly defeated in his bid to be elected New York governor. During the campaign, Alexander Hamilton publicly made callous remarks regarding Burr's moral character.[225] Subsequently, Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel, mortally wounding him on July 11, 1804. Burr was indicted for Hamilton's murder in New York and New Jersey, causing him to flee to Georgia, although he remained President of the Senate during Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase's impeachment trial.[226] Both indictments quietly died and Burr was not prosecuted.[227] Also during the election, certain New England separatists approached Burr, desiring a New England federation and intimating that he would be their leader.[228] However, nothing came of the plot, since Burr had lost the election and his reputation was ruined after killing Hamilton.[228] In August 1804, Burr contacted British Minister Anthony Merry offering to cede U.S. western territory in return for money and British ships.[229]

After leaving office in April 1805, Burr traveled west and conspired with Louisiana Territory governor James Wilkinson, beginning a large-scale recruitment for a military expedition.[230] Other plotters included Ohio Senator John Smith and an Irishman named Harmon Blennerhassett.[230] Burr discussed a number of plots—seizing control of Mexico or Spanish Florida, or forming a secessionist state in New Orleans or the Western U.S. Historians remain unclear as to his true goal.[231][n]

In the fall of 1806, Burr launched a military flotilla carrying about 60 men down the Ohio River. Wilkinson renounced the plot, apparently from self-interested motives; he reported Burr's expedition to Jefferson, who immediately ordered Burr's arrest.[230][233][234] On February 13, 1807, Burr was captured in Louisiana's Bayou Pierre wilderness and sent to Virginia to be tried for treason.[229]

Burr's 1807 conspiracy trial became a national issue.[235] Jefferson attempted to preemptively influence the verdict by telling Congress that Burr's guilt was "beyond question", but the case came before his longtime political foe John Marshall, who dismissed the treason charge. Burr's legal team at one stage subpoenaed Jefferson, but Jefferson refused to testify, making the first argument for executive privilege. Instead, Jefferson provided relevant legal documents.[236] After a three-month trial, the jury found Burr not guilty, while Jefferson denounced his acquittal.[234][237][o][238] Jefferson subsequently removed Wilkinson as territorial governor but retained him in the U.S. military. Historian James N. Banner criticized Jefferson for continuing to trust Wilkinson, a "faithless plotter".[234]

General Wilkinson misconduct

Commanding General James Wilkinson was a holdover of the Washington and Adams administrations. Wilkinson was rumored to be a "skillful and unscrupolous plotter". In 1804, Wilkinson received 12,000 pesos from the Spanish for information on American boundary plans.[239] Wilkinson also received advances on his salary and payments on claims submitted to Secretary of War Henry Dearborn. This damaging information apparently was unknown to Jefferson. In 1805, Jefferson trusted Wilkinson and appointed him Louisiana Territory governor, admiring Wilkinson's work ethic. In January 1806, Jefferson received information from Kentucky U.S. Attorney Joseph Davies that Wilkinson was on the Spanish payroll. Jefferson took no action against Wilkinson, there being, at the time, a lack of evidence against Wilkinson.[240] An investigation by the House in December 1807 exonerated Wilkinson.[241] In 1808, a military court looked into Wilkinson but lacked evidence to charge Wilkinson. Jefferson retained Wilkinson in the Army and he was passed on by Jefferson to Jefferson's successor James Madison.[242] Evidence found in Spanish archives in the 20th century proved Wilkinson was, in fact, on the Spanish payroll.[239]

Foreign affairs (1805–1809)

Attempted annexation of Florida

In the aftermath of the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson attempted to annex West Florida from Spain, a nation under the control of Emperor Napoleon and the French Empire after 1804. In his annual message to Congress, on December 3, 1805, Jefferson railed against Spain over Florida border depredations.[243][244] A few days later Jefferson secretly requested a two million dollar expenditure to purchase Florida. Representative and floor leader John Randolph, however, opposed annexation and was upset over Jefferson's secrecy on the matter, and believed the money would land in the coffers of Napoleon.[245][244] The Two Million Dollar bill passed only after Jefferson successfully maneuvered to replace Randolph with Barnabas Bidwell as floor leader.[245][244] This aroused suspicion of Jefferson and charges of undue executive influence over Congress. Jefferson signed the bill into law in February 1806. Six weeks later the law was made public. The two million dollars was to be given to France as payment, in turn, to put pressure on Spain to permit the annexation of Florida by the United States. France, however, was in no mood to allow Spain to give up Florida and refused the offer. Florida remained under the control of Spain.[246][244] The failed venture damaged Jefferson's reputation among his supporters.[247][244]

ChesapeakeLeopard affair

 
HMS Leopard (right) firing upon USS Chesapeake

The British conducted seizures of American shipping to search for British deserters from 1806 to 1807; American citizens were thus impressed into the British naval service. In 1806, Jefferson issued a call for a boycott of British goods; on April 18, Congress passed the Non-Importation Acts, but they were never enforced. Later that year, Jefferson asked James Monroe and William Pinkney to negotiate with Great Britain to end the harassment of American shipping, though Britain showed no signs of improving relations. The Monroe–Pinkney Treaty was finalized but lacked any provisions to end the British policies, and Jefferson refused to submit it to the Senate for ratification.[248]

The British ship HMS Leopard fired upon the USS Chesapeake off the Virginia coast in June 1807, and Jefferson prepared for war.[249] He issued a proclamation banning armed British ships from U.S. waters. He presumed unilateral authority to call on the states to prepare 100,000 militia and ordered the purchase of arms, ammunition, and supplies, writing, "The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation [than strict observance of written laws]". The USS Revenge was dispatched to demand an explanation from the British government; it also was fired upon. Jefferson called for a special session of Congress in October to enact an embargo or alternatively to consider war.[250]

Embargo (1807–1809)

In December 1807, news arrived that Napoleon had extended the Berlin Decree, globally banning British imports. In Britain, King George III ordered redoubling efforts at impressment, including American sailors. But the war fever of the summer faded; Congress had no appetite to prepare the U.S. for war. Jefferson asked for and received the Embargo Act, an alternative that allowed the U.S. more time to build up defensive works, militias, and naval forces. Later historians have seen the irony in Jefferson's assertion of such federal power. Meacham said that the Embargo Act was a projection of power that surpassed the Alien and Sedition Acts, and R. B. Bernstein said that Jefferson "was pursuing policies resembling those he had cited in 1776 as grounds for independence and revolution".[251]

 
A political cartoon showing merchants dodging the "Ograbme", which is "Embargo" spelled backward (1807)

In November 1807, Jefferson, for several days, met with his cabinet to discuss the deteriorating foreign situation.[252] Secretary of State James Madison supported the embargo with equal vigor to Jefferson,[253] while Treasury Secretary Gallatin opposed it, due to its indefinite time frame and the risk that it posed to the policy of American neutrality.[254] The U.S. economy suffered, criticism grew, and opponents began evading the embargo. Instead of retreating, Jefferson sent federal agents to secretly track down smugglers and violators.[255] Three acts were passed in Congress during 1807 and 1808, called the Supplementary, the Additional, and the Enforcement acts.[249] The government could not prevent American vessels from trading with the European belligerents once they had left American ports, although the embargo triggered a devastating decline in exports.[249]

Most historians consider Jefferson's embargo to have been ineffective and harmful to American interests.[256] Appleby describes the strategy as Jefferson's "least effective policy", and Joseph Ellis calls it "an unadulterated calamity".[257] Others, however, portray it as an innovative, nonviolent measure which aided France in its war with Britain while preserving American neutrality.[258] Jefferson believed that the failure of the embargo was due to selfish traders and merchants showing a lack of "republican virtue." He maintained that, had the embargo been widely observed, it would have avoided war in 1812.[259]

In December 1807, Jefferson announced his intention not to seek a third term. He turned his attention increasingly to Monticello during the last year of his presidency, giving Madison and Gallatin almost total control of affairs.[260] Shortly before leaving office in March 1809, Jefferson signed the repeal of the Embargo. In its place, the Non-Intercourse Act was passed, but it proved no more effective.[249] The day before Madison was inaugurated as his successor, Jefferson said that he felt like "a prisoner, released from his chains".[261]

Cabinet

Post-presidency (1809–1826)

 
Portrait of Jefferson by Gilbert Stuart, 1821.

Following his retirement from the presidency, Jefferson continued his pursuit of educational interests; he sold his vast collection of books to the Library of Congress, and founded and built the University of Virginia.[262] Jefferson continued to correspond with many of the country's leaders (including his two protégées who succeeded him as president), and the Monroe Doctrine bears a strong resemblance to solicited advice that Jefferson gave to Monroe in 1823.[263] As he settled into private life at Monticello, Jefferson developed a daily routine of rising early. He would spend several hours writing letters, with which he was often deluged. In the midday, he would often inspect the plantation on horseback. In the evenings, his family enjoyed leisure time in the gardens; late at night, Jefferson would retire to bed with a book.[264] However, his routine was often interrupted by uninvited visitors and tourists eager to see the icon in his final days, turning Monticello into "a virtual hotel".[265]

University of Virginia

 
The University of Virginia, Jefferson's "Academical Village"

Jefferson envisioned a university free of church influences where students could specialize in many new areas not offered at other colleges. He believed that education engendered a stable society, which should provide publicly funded schools accessible to students from all social strata, based solely on ability.[266] He initially proposed his University in a letter to Joseph Priestley in 1800[267] and, in 1819, the 76-year-old Jefferson founded the University of Virginia. He organized the state legislative campaign for its charter and, with the assistance of Edmund Bacon, purchased the location. He was the principal designer of the buildings, planned the university's curriculum, and served as the first rector upon its opening in 1825.[268]

Jefferson was a strong disciple of Greek and Roman architectural styles, which he believed to be most representative of American democracy. Each academic unit, called a pavilion, was designed with a two-story temple front, while the library "Rotunda" was modeled on the Roman Pantheon. Jefferson referred to the university's grounds as the "Academical Village," and he reflected his educational ideas in its layout. The ten pavilions included classrooms and faculty residences; they formed a quadrangle and were connected by colonnades, behind which stood the students' rows of rooms. Gardens and vegetable plots were placed behind the pavilions and were surrounded by serpentine walls, affirming the importance of the agrarian lifestyle.[269] The university had a library rather than a church at its center, emphasizing its secular nature—a controversial aspect at the time.[270]

When Jefferson died in 1826, James Madison replaced him as rector.[271] Jefferson bequeathed most of his library to the university.[272] Only one other ex-president has founded a university, namely Millard Fillmore who founded the University at Buffalo.[273]

Reconciliation with Adams

 
In 1804, Abigail Adams attempted to reconcile Jefferson and Adams.

Jefferson and John Adams had been good friends in the first decades of their political careers, serving together in the Continental Congress in the 1770s and in Europe in the 1780s. The Federalist/Republican split of the 1790s divided them, however, and Adams felt betrayed by Jefferson's sponsorship of partisan attacks, such as those of James Callender. Jefferson, on the other hand, was angered at Adams for his appointment of "midnight judges".[274] The two men did not communicate directly for more than a decade after Jefferson succeeded Adams as president.[275] A brief correspondence took place between Abigail Adams and Jefferson after Jefferson's daughter Polly died in 1804, in an attempt at reconciliation unknown to Adams. However, an exchange of letters resumed open hostilities between Adams and Jefferson.[274]

As early as 1809, Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence, desired that Jefferson and Adams reconcile and began to prod the two through correspondence to re-establish contact.[274] In 1812, Adams wrote a short New Year's greeting to Jefferson, prompted earlier by Rush, to which Jefferson warmly responded. Thus began what historian David McCullough calls "one of the most extraordinary correspondences in American history".[276] Over the next fourteen years, the former presidents exchanged 158 letters discussing their political differences, justifying their respective roles in events, and debating the revolution's import to the world.[277] When Adams died, his last words included an acknowledgment of his longtime friend and rival: "Thomas Jefferson survives", unaware that Jefferson had died several hours before.[278][279]

Autobiography

In 1821, at the age of 77, Jefferson began writing his autobiography, in order to "state some recollections of dates and facts concerning myself".[280] He focused on the struggles and achievements he experienced until July 29, 1790, where the narrative stopped short.[281] He excluded his youth, emphasizing the revolutionary era. He related that his ancestors came from Wales to America in the early 17th century and settled in the western frontier of the Virginia colony, which influenced his zeal for individual and state rights. Jefferson described his father as uneducated, but with a "strong mind and sound judgement". His enrollment in the College of William and Mary and election to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1775 were included.[280]

He also expressed opposition to the idea of a privileged aristocracy made up of large landowning families partial to the King, and instead promoted "the aristocracy of virtue and talent, which nature has wisely provided for the direction of the interests of society, & scattered with equal hand through all its conditions, was deemed essential to a well-ordered republic".[280]

Jefferson gave his insight into people, politics, and events.[280] The work is primarily concerned with the Declaration and reforming the government of Virginia. He used notes, letters, and documents to tell many of the stories within the autobiography. He suggested that this history was so rich that his personal affairs were better overlooked, but he incorporated a self-analysis using the Declaration and other patriotism.[282]

Greek War of Independence

Thomas Jefferson was a philhellene who sympathized with the Greek War of Independence.[283][284] He has been described as the most influential of the Founding Fathers who supported the Greek cause,[284][285] viewing it as similar to the American Revolution.[286] By 1823, Jefferson was exchanging ideas with Greek scholar Adamantios Korais.[284] Jefferson advised Korais on building the political system of Greece by using classical liberalism and examples from the American governmental system, ultimately prescribing a government akin to that of a U.S. state.[287] He also suggested the application of a classical education system for the newly founded First Hellenic Republic, where public education would be made available and pupils would be taught history, Latin, and Greek.[288] Jefferson's philosophical instructions were welcomed by the Greek people.[288] Korais became one of the designers of the Greek constitution and urged his associates to study Jefferson's works and other literature from the American Revolution.[288]

Lafayette's visit

 
Lafayette in 1824, portrait by Ary Scheffer, hanging in U.S. House of Representatives

In the summer of 1824, the Marquis de Lafayette accepted an invitation from President James Monroe to visit the country. Jefferson and Lafayette had not seen each other since 1789. After visits to New York, New England, and Washington, Lafayette arrived at Monticello on November 4.[268]

Jefferson's grandson Randolph was present and recorded the reunion: "As they approached each other, their uncertain gait quickened itself into a shuffling run, and exclaiming, 'Ah Jefferson!' 'Ah Lafayette!', they burst into tears as they fell into each other's arms." Jefferson and Lafayette then retired to the house to reminisce.[289] The next morning Jefferson, Lafayette, and James Madison attended a tour and banquet at the University of Virginia. Jefferson had someone else read a speech he had prepared for Lafayette, as his voice was weak and could not carry. This was his last public presentation. After an 11-day visit, Lafayette bid Jefferson goodbye and departed Monticello.[290]

Final days, death, and burial

 
Jefferson's gravesite

Jefferson's approximately $100,000 of debt weighed heavily on his mind in his final months, as it became increasingly clear that he would have little to leave to his heirs. In February 1826, he successfully applied to the General Assembly to hold a public lottery as a fundraiser.[291] His health began to deteriorate in July 1825, due to a combination of rheumatism from arm and wrist injuries, as well as intestinal and urinary disorders[268] and, by June 1826, he was confined to bed.[291] On July 3, Jefferson was overcome by fever and declined an invitation to Washington to attend an anniversary celebration of the Declaration.[292]

During the last hours of his life, he was accompanied by family members and friends. Jefferson died on July 4 at 12:50 p.m. at age 83, the same day as the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. His last recorded words were "No, doctor, nothing more," refusing laudanum from his physician, but his final significant words are often cited as "Is it the Fourth?" or "This is the Fourth."[293] When John Adams died later that same day, his last words included an acknowledgment of his longtime friend and rival: "Thomas Jefferson survives," though Adams was unaware that Jefferson had died several hours before.[294][295][296][297] The sitting president was Adams's son, John Quincy Adams, and he called the coincidence of their deaths on the nation's anniversary "visible and palpable remarks of Divine Favor."[298]

Shortly after Jefferson had died, attendants found a gold locket on a chain around his neck, where it had rested for more than 40 years, containing a small faded blue ribbon that tied a lock of his wife Martha's brown hair.[299]

Jefferson's remains were buried at Monticello, under an epitaph that he wrote:

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.[300]

In his advanced years, Jefferson became increasingly concerned that people understand the principles in, and the people responsible for writing, the Declaration of Independence, and he continually defended himself as its author. He considered the document one of his greatest life achievements, in addition to authoring the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom and his founding of the University of Virginia. Plainly absent from his epitaph were his political roles, including President of the United States.[301]

Jefferson died deeply in debt, unable to pass on his estate freely to his heirs.[302] He gave instructions in his will for disposal of his assets,[303] including the freeing of Sally Hemings's children;[304] but his estate, possessions, and slaves were sold at public auctions starting in 1827.[305] In 1831, Monticello was sold by Martha Jefferson Randolph and the other heirs.[306]

Political, social, and religious views

Jefferson subscribed to the political ideals expounded by John Locke, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton, whom he considered the three greatest men who ever lived.[7][8] He was also influenced by the writings of Gibbon, Hume, Robertson, Bolingbroke, Montesquieu, and Voltaire.[9] Jefferson thought that the independent yeoman and agrarian life were ideals of republican virtues. He distrusted cities and financiers, favored decentralized government power, and believed that the tyranny that had plagued the common man in Europe was due to corrupt political establishments and monarchies. He supported efforts to disestablish the Church of England,[307] wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, and he pressed for a wall of separation between church and state.[308] The Republicans under Jefferson were strongly influenced by the 18th-century British Whig Party, which believed in limited government.[309] His Democratic-Republican Party became dominant in early American politics, and his views became known as Jeffersonian democracy.[310][311]

Philosophy, society, and government

Jefferson wrote letters and speeches prolifically, and these show him to be conversant and well-read in the philosophical literature of his day and of antiquity. Nevertheless, some scholars do not take Jefferson seriously as a philosopher mainly because he did not produce a formal work on philosophy. However, he has been described as one of the most outstanding philosophical figures of his time because his work provided the theoretical background to, and the substance of, the social and political events of the revolutionary years and the period of the development of the American Constitution in the 1770s and 1780s.[312] Jefferson continued to attend to more theoretical questions of natural philosophy and subsequently left behind a rich philosophical legacy in the form of presidential messages, letters to philosophically minded people, and public papers.[313]

Jefferson described himself as an Epicurean and, although he adopted the Stoic belief in intuition and found comfort in the Stoic emphasis on the patient endurance of misfortune, he rejected most aspects of Stoicism with the notable exception of Epictetus' works.[314][315] He rejected the Stoics' doctrine of a separable soul and their fatalism, and was angered by their misrepresentation of Epicureanism as mere hedonism.[315] Jefferson knew Epicurean philosophy from original sources, but also mentioned Pierre Gassendi's Syntagma philosophicum as an influential source for his ideas on Epicureanism.[316]

According to Jefferson's philosophy, citizens have "certain inalienable rights" and "rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will, within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others."[317] A staunch advocate of the jury system to protect people's liberties, he proclaimed in 1801, "I consider [trial by jury] as the only anchor yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution."[318] Jeffersonian government not only prohibited individuals in society from infringing on the liberty of others, but also restrained itself from diminishing individual liberty as a protection against tyranny from the majority.[319] Initially, Jefferson favored restricted voting to those who could actually have the free exercise of their reason by escaping any corrupting dependence on others. He advocated enfranchising a majority of Virginians, seeking to expand suffrage to include "yeoman farmers" who owned their own land while excluding tenant farmers, city day laborers, vagrants, most American Indians, and women.[320]

He was convinced that individual liberties were the fruit of political equality, which was threatened by the arbitrary government.[321] Excesses of democracy in his view were caused by institutional corruption rather than human nature. He was less suspicious of a working democracy than many contemporaries.[320] As president, Jefferson feared that the federal system enacted by Washington and Adams had encouraged corrupting patronage and dependence. He tried to restore a balance between the state and federal governments more nearly reflecting the Articles of Confederation, seeking to reinforce state prerogatives where his party was in a majority.[320]

Jefferson was steeped in the British Whig tradition of the oppressed majority set against a repeatedly unresponsive court party in the Parliament. He justified small outbreaks of rebellion as necessary to get monarchial regimes to amend oppressive measures compromising popular liberties. In a republican regime ruled by the majority, he acknowledged "it will often be exercised when wrong."[322] But "the remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them."[323] As Jefferson saw his party triumph in two terms of his presidency and launch into a third term under James Madison, his view of the U.S. as a continental republic and an "empire of liberty" grew more upbeat. On departing the presidency in 1809, he described America as "trusted with the destines of this solitary republic of the world, the only monument of human rights, and the sole depository of the sacred fire of freedom and self-government."[324]

Democracy

 
Thomas Jefferson at age 78. Portrait by Thomas Sully hanging at West Point, commissioned by Faculty and Cadets, 1821.

Jefferson considered democracy to be the expression of society and promoted national self-determination, cultural uniformity, and education of all males of the commonwealth.[325] He supported public education and a free press as essential components of a democratic nation.[326]

After resigning as secretary of state in 1795, Jefferson focused on the electoral bases of the Republicans and Federalists. The "Republican" classification for which he advocated included "the entire body of landholders" everywhere and "the body of laborers" without land.[327] Republicans united behind Jefferson as vice president, with the election of 1796 expanding democracy nationwide at grassroots levels.[328] Jefferson promoted Republican candidates for local offices.[329]

Beginning with Jefferson's electioneering for the "revolution of 1800," his political efforts were based on egalitarian appeals.[330] In his later years, he referred to the 1800 election "as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of '76 was in its form," one "not effected indeed by the sword ... but by the ... suffrage of the people."[331] Voter participation grew during Jefferson's presidency, increasing to "unimaginable levels" compared to the Federalist Era, with turnout of about 67,000 in 1800 rising to about 143,000 in 1804.[332]

At the onset of the Revolution, Jefferson accepted William Blackstone's argument that property ownership would sufficiently empower voters' independent judgement, but he sought to further expand suffrage by land distribution to the poor.[333] In the heat of the Revolutionary Era and afterward, several states expanded voter eligibility from landed gentry to all propertied male, tax-paying citizens with Jefferson's support.[334] In retirement, he gradually became critical of his home state for violating "the principle of equal political rights"—the social right of universal male suffrage.[335] He sought a "general suffrage" of all taxpayers and militia-men, and equal representation by population in the General Assembly to correct preferential treatment of the slave-holding regions.[336]

Religion

 
The Jefferson Bible featuring only the words of Jesus from the evangelists, in parallel Greek, Latin, French and English
 
Jefferson by Gilbert Stuart in 1805

Baptized in his youth, Jefferson became a governing member of his local Episcopal Church in Charlottesville, which he later attended with his daughters.[337] Jefferson, however, spurned Biblical views of Christianity.[338] Influenced by Deist authors during his college years, Jefferson abandoned orthodox Christianity after his review of New Testament teachings.[339][340] Jefferson has sometimes been portrayed as a follower of the liberal religious strand of Deism that values reason over revelation.[341] Nonetheless, in 1803, Jefferson asserted, "I am Christian, in the only sense in which [Jesus] wished any one to be."[220]

Jefferson later defined being a Christian as one who followed the simple teachings of Jesus. Influenced by Joseph Priestley,[341] Jefferson selected New Testament passages of Jesus' teachings into a private work he called The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, known today as the Jefferson Bible, never published during his lifetime.[342][343] Jefferson believed that Jesus' message had been obscured and corrupted by Paul the Apostle, the Gospel writers and Protestant reformers.[341] Peterson states that Jefferson was a theist "whose God was the Creator of the universe ... all the evidences of nature testified to His perfection; and man could rely on the harmony and beneficence of His work."[344] In a letter to John Adams, Jefferson wrote that what he believed was genuinely Christ's, found in the Gospels, was "as easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill".[338] By omitting miracles and the resurrection, Jefferson made the figure of Jesus more compatible with a worldview based on reason.[338]

Jefferson was firmly anticlerical, writing in "every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty ... they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon."[345] The full letter to Horatio Spatford can be read at the National Archives.[346] Jefferson once supported banning clergy from public office but later relented.[347] In 1777, he drafted the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. Ratified in 1786, it made compelling attendance or contributions to any state-sanctioned religious establishment illegal and declared that men "shall be free to profess ... their opinions in matters of religion."[348] The Statute is one of only three accomplishments he chose to have inscribed in the epitaph on his gravestone.[349][350] Early in 1802, Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Connecticut Baptist Association, "that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man and his God." He interpreted the First Amendment as having built "a wall of separation between Church and State."[351] The phrase 'Separation of Church and State' has been cited several times by the Supreme Court in its interpretation of the Establishment Clause.

Jefferson donated to the American Bible Society, saying the Four Evangelists delivered a "pure and sublime system of morality" to humanity. He thought Americans would rationally create "Apiarian" religion, extracting the best traditions of every denomination.[352] And he contributed generously to several local denominations near Monticello.[353] Acknowledging organized religion would always be factored into political life for good or ill, he encouraged reason over supernatural revelation to make inquiries into religion. He believed in a creator god, an afterlife, and the sum of religion as loving God and neighbors. But he also controversially rejected fundamental Christian beliefs, denying the conventional Christian Trinity, Jesus's divinity as the Son of God and miracles, the Resurrection of Christ, atonement from sin, and original sin.[354][355][343] Jefferson believed that the original sin was a gross injustice and that God did not condemn all of humanity by the transgression of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.[343]

Jefferson's unorthodox religious beliefs became an important issue in the 1800 presidential election.[356] Federalists attacked him as an atheist. As president, Jefferson countered the accusations by praising religion in his inaugural address and attending services at the Capitol.[356]

Banks

 
Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, national bank proponent and Jefferson's adversary

Jefferson distrusted government banks and opposed public borrowing, which he thought created long-term debt, bred monopolies, and invited dangerous speculation as opposed to productive labor.[357] In one letter to Madison, he argued each generation should curtail all debt within 19 years, and not impose a long-term debt on subsequent generations.[358]

In 1791, President Washington asked Jefferson, then secretary of state, and Hamilton, the secretary of the treasury, if the Congress had the authority to create a national bank. While Hamilton believed Congress had the authority, Jefferson and Madison thought a national bank would ignore the needs of individuals and farmers, and would violate the Tenth Amendment by assuming powers not granted to the federal government by the states.[359] Hamilton successfully argued that the implied powers given to the federal government in the Constitution supported the creation of a national bank, among other federal actions.

Jefferson used agrarian resistance to banks and speculators as the first defining principle of an opposition party, recruiting candidates for Congress on the issue as early as 1792.[360] As president, Jefferson was persuaded by Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin to leave the bank intact but sought to restrain its influence.[361][p]

Slavery

 
Jefferson's 1795 Farm Book, page 30, lists 163 slaves at Monticello.

Jefferson lived in a planter economy largely dependent upon slavery, and as a wealthy landholder, used slave labor for his household, plantation, and workshops. He first recorded his slaveholding in 1774, when he counted 41 enslaved people.[363] Over his lifetime he owned about 600 slaves; he inherited about 175 people while most of the remainder were people born on his plantations.[364] Jefferson purchased some slaves in order to reunite their families. He sold approximately 110 people for economic reasons, primarily slaves from his outlying farms.[364][365] In 1784 when the number of slaves he owned likely was approximately 200, he began to divest himself of many slaves, and by 1794 he had divested himself of 161 individuals.[366][q]

Approximately 100 slaves lived at Monticello at any given time. In 1817, the plantation recorded its largest slave population of 140 individuals.[367]

Jefferson once said, "My first wish is that the labourers may be well treated".[364] Jefferson did not work his slaves on Sundays and Christmas and he allowed them more personal time during the winter months.[368] Some scholars doubt Jefferson's benevolence,[369] however, noting cases of excessive slave whippings in his absence. His nail factory was staffed only by enslaved children. Many of the enslaved boys became tradesmen. Burwell Colbert, who started his working life as a child in Monticello's Nailery, was later promoted to the supervisory position of butler.[370]

Jefferson felt slavery was harmful to both slave and master but had reservations about releasing slaves from captivity, and advocated for gradual emancipation.[371][372][373] In 1779, he proposed gradual voluntary training and resettlement to the Virginia legislature, and three years later drafted legislation allowing slaveholders to free their own slaves.[74] In his draft of the Declaration of Independence, he included a section, stricken by other Southern delegates, criticizing King George III for supposedly forcing slavery onto the colonies.[374] In 1784, Jefferson proposed the abolition of slavery in all western U.S. territories, limiting slave importation to 15 years.[375] Congress, however, failed to pass his proposal by one vote.[375] In 1787, Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance, a partial victory for Jefferson that terminated slavery in the Northwest Territory. Jefferson freed his slave Robert Hemings in 1794 and he freed his cook slave James Hemings in 1796.[376] Jefferson freed his runaway slave Harriet Hemings in 1822.[377] Upon his death in 1826, Jefferson freed five male Hemings slaves in his will.[378]

During his presidency, Jefferson allowed the diffusion of slavery into the Louisiana Territory hoping to prevent slave uprisings in Virginia and to prevent South Carolina secession.[379] In 1804, in a compromise on the slavery issue, Jefferson and Congress banned domestic slave trafficking for one year into the Louisiana Territory.[380] In 1806 he officially called for anti-slavery legislation terminating the import or export of slaves. Congress passed the law in 1807.[371][381][382]

In 1819, Jefferson strongly opposed a Missouri statehood application amendment that banned domestic slave importation and freed slaves at the age of 25 on grounds it would destroy the union.[383] In Notes on the State of Virginia, he created controversy by calling slavery a moral evil for which the nation would ultimately have to account to God.[384] Jefferson wrote of his "suspicion" that Black people were mentally and physically inferior to Whites, but argued that they nonetheless had innate human rights.[371][385][386] He therefore supported colonization plans that would transport freed slaves to another country, such as Liberia or Sierra Leone, though he recognized the impracticability of such proposals.[387]

During his presidency, Jefferson was for the most part publicly silent on the issue of slavery and emancipation,[388] as the Congressional debate over slavery and its extension caused a dangerous north–south rift among the states, with talk of a northern confederacy in New England.[389][r] The violent attacks on white slave owners during the Haitian Revolution due to injustices under slavery supported Jefferson's fears of a race war, increasing his reservations about promoting emancipation at that time.[371][390] After numerous attempts and failures to bring about emancipation,[391] Jefferson wrote privately in an 1805 letter to William A. Burwell, "I have long since given up the expectation of any early provision for the extinguishment of slavery among us." That same year he also related this idea to George Logan, writing, "I have most carefully avoided every public act or manifestation on that subject."[392]

Historical assessment

Scholars remain divided on whether Jefferson truly condemned slavery and how he changed.[377][393] Francis D. Cogliano traces the development of competing emancipationist then revisionist and finally contextualist interpretations from the 1960s to the present. The emancipationist view, held by the various scholars at the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Douglas L. Wilson, John Ferling, and others, maintains Jefferson was an opponent of slavery all his life, noting that he did what he could within the limited range of options available to him to undermine it, his many attempts at abolition legislation, the manner in which he provided for slaves, and his advocacy of their more humane treatment.[394][395][396][s][397]

One month before the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves came into effect, in his annual message to Congress, Jefferson denounced the "violations of human rights." He said:

I congratulate you, fellow-citizens, on the approach of the period at which you may interpose your authority constitutionally, to withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights which have been so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the morality, the reputation, and the best interests of our country, have long been eager to proscribe.[398]

The revisionist view, advanced by Paul Finkelman and others, criticizes him for holding slaves, and for acting contrary to his words. Jefferson never freed most of his slaves, and he remained silent on the issue while he was president.[388][399] Contextualists such as Joseph J. Ellis emphasize a change in Jefferson's thinking from his emancipationist views before 1783, noting Jefferson's shift toward public passivity and procrastination on policy issues related to slavery. Jefferson seemed to yield to public opinion by 1794 as he laid the groundwork for his first presidential campaign against Adams in 1796.[400]

Historian Henry Wiencek said Jefferson "rationalized an abomination to the point where an absolute moral reversal was reached and he made slavery fit into America's national enterprise."[401]

Jefferson–Hemings controversy

 
Jefferson depicted as a rooster, and Hemings as a hen

Claims that Jefferson fathered Sally Hemings's children have been debated since 1802. That year James T. Callender, after being denied a position as postmaster, alleged Jefferson had taken Hemings as a concubine and fathered several children with her.[402] In 1998, a panel of researchers conducted a Y-DNA study of living descendants of Jefferson's uncle, Field, and of a descendant of Hemings's son, Eston Hemings. The results, released in November 1998, showed a match with the male Jefferson line.[403][404] Subsequently, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation (TJF) formed a nine-member research team of historians to assess the matter.[404] In January 2000 (revised 2011),[404] the TJF report concluded that "the DNA study ... indicates a high probability that Thomas Jefferson fathered Eston Hemings."[404][405][t] The TJF also concluded that Jefferson likely fathered all of Hemings's children listed at Monticello.[404][u]

In July 2017, the TJF announced that archeological excavations at Monticello had revealed what they believe to have been Sally Hemings's quarters, adjacent to Jefferson's bedroom.[407][408] In 2018, the TJF said that it considered the issue "a settled historical matter."[409] Since the results of the DNA tests were made public, the consensus among most historians has been that Jefferson had a sexual relationship with Sally Hemings and that he was the father of her son Eston Hemings.[410]

Still, a minority of scholars maintain the evidence is insufficient to prove Jefferson's paternity conclusively. Based on DNA and other evidence, they note the possibility that additional Jefferson males, including his brother Randolph Jefferson and any one of Randolph's four sons, or his cousin, could have fathered Eston Hemings or Sally Hemings's other children.[411] In 2002, historian Merrill Peterson said: "in the absence of direct documentary evidence either proving or refuting the allegation, nothing conclusive can be said about Jefferson's relations with Sally Hemings."[412] Concerning the 1998 DNA study Peterson said: "the results of the DNA testing of Jefferson and Hemings descendants provided support for the idea that Jefferson was the father of at least one of Sally Hemings's children."[412]

After Thomas Jefferson's death, although not formally manumitted, Sally Hemings was allowed by Jefferson's daughter Martha to live in Charlottesville as a free woman with her two sons until her death in 1835.[413][v] The Monticello Association refused to allow Sally Hemings' descendants the right of burial at Monticello.[415]

Interests and activities

 
Virginia State Capitol, designed by Jefferson (wings added later)

Jefferson was a farmer, obsessed with new crops, soil conditions, garden designs, and scientific agricultural techniques. His main cash crop was tobacco, but its price was usually low and it was rarely profitable. He tried to achieve self-sufficiency with wheat, vegetables, flax, corn, hogs, sheep, poultry, and cattle to supply his family, slaves, and employees, but he lived perpetually beyond his means[416] and was always in debt.[417]

In the field of architecture, Jefferson helped popularize the Neo-Palladian style in the United States utilizing designs for the Virginia State Capitol, the University of Virginia, Monticello, and others.[418] It has been speculated that he was inspired by the Château de Rastignac in south-west France—the plans of which he saw during his ambassadorship—to convince the architect of the White House to modify the South Portico to resemble the château.[419] Jefferson mastered architecture through self-study, using various books and classical architectural designs of the day. His primary authority was Andrea Palladio's 1570 The Four Books of Architecture, which outlines the principles of classical design.[420]

He was interested in birds and wine, and was a noted gourmet; he was also a prolific writer and linguist, and spoke several languages.[421] As a naturalist, he was fascinated by the Natural Bridge geological formation, and in 1774 successfully acquired the Bridge by a grant from George III.[422]

American Philosophical Society

Jefferson was a member of the American Philosophical Society for 35 years, beginning in 1780. Through the society he advanced the sciences and Enlightenment ideals, emphasizing that knowledge of science reinforced and extended freedom.[423] His Notes on the State of Virginia was written in part as a contribution to the society.[424] He became the society's third president on March 3, 1797, a few months after he was elected Vice President of the United States.[424][425] In accepting, Jefferson stated: "I feel no qualification for this distinguished post but a sincere zeal for all the objects of our institution and an ardent desire to see knowledge so disseminated through the mass of mankind that it may at length reach even the extremes of society, beggars and kings."[423]

Jefferson served as APS president for the next eighteen years, including through both terms of his presidency.[424] He introduced Meriwether Lewis to the society, where various scientists tutored him in preparation for the Lewis and Clark Expedition.[424][426] He resigned on January 20, 1815, but remained active through correspondence.[427]

Linguistics

Jefferson had a lifelong interest in linguistics, and could speak, read, and write in a number of languages, including French, Greek, Italian, and German. In his early years, he excelled in classical language while at boarding school[428] where he received a classical education in Greek and Latin.[429] Jefferson later came to regard the Greek language as the "perfect language" as expressed in its laws and philosophy.[430] While attending the College of William & Mary, he taught himself Italian.[431] Here Jefferson first became familiar with the Anglo-Saxon language, especially as it was associated with English Common law and system of government and studied the language in a linguistic and philosophical capacity. He owned 17 volumes of Anglo-Saxon texts and grammar and later wrote an essay on the Anglo-Saxon language.[428]

Jefferson claimed to have taught himself Spanish during his nineteen-day journey to France, using only a grammar guide and a copy of Don Quixote.[432] Linguistics played a significant role in how Jefferson modeled and expressed political and philosophical ideas. He believed that the study of ancient languages was essential in understanding the roots of modern language.[433] He collected and understood a number of American Indian vocabularies and instructed Lewis and Clark to record and collect various Indian languages during their Expedition.[434] When Jefferson moved from Washington after his presidency, he packed 50 Native American vocabulary lists in a chest and transported them on a riverboat back to Monticello along with the rest of his possessions. Somewhere along the journey, a thief stole the heavy chest, thinking it was full of valuables, but its contents were dumped into the James River when the thief discovered it was only filled with papers. Subsequently, 30 years of collecting were lost, with only a few fragments rescued from the muddy banks of the river.[435]

Jefferson was not an outstanding orator and preferred to communicate through writing or remain silent if possible. Instead of delivering his State of the Union addresses himself, Jefferson wrote the annual messages and sent a representative to read them aloud in Congress. This started a tradition that continued until 1913 when President Woodrow Wilson (1913–1921) chose to deliver his own State of the Union address.[436]

Inventions

Jefferson invented many small practical devices and improved contemporary inventions, including a revolving book-stand and a "Great Clock" powered by the gravitational pull on cannonballs. He improved the pedometer, the polygraph (a device for duplicating writing),[437] and the moldboard plow, an idea he never patented and gave to posterity.[438] Jefferson can also be credited as the creator of the swivel chair, the first of which he created and used to write much of the Declaration of Independence.[439] He first opposed patents and later supported them. In 1790–1793, as Secretary of State, he was the ex officio head of the three-person patent review board (the Secretary of War and the Attorney General being the other two patent reviewers). He drafted reforms of US patent law which lead to him being relieved of this duty in 1793, and also drastically changed the patent system.[440]

As Minister to France, Jefferson was impressed by the military standardization program known as the Système Gribeauval, and initiated a program as president to develop interchangeable parts for firearms. For his inventiveness and ingenuity, he received several honorary Doctor of Law degrees.[441]

Legacy

Historical reputation

Jefferson is an icon of individual liberty, democracy, and republicanism, hailed as the author of the Declaration of Independence, an architect of the American Revolution, and a renaissance man who promoted science and scholarship.[442] The participatory democracy and expanded suffrage he championed defined his era and became a standard for later generations.[443] Meacham opined that Jefferson was the most influential figure of the democratic republic in its first half-century, succeeded by presidential adherents James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, and Martin Van Buren.[444] Jefferson is recognized for having written more than 18,000 letters of political and philosophical substance during his life, which Francis D. Cogliano describes as "a documentary legacy ... unprecedented in American history in its size and breadth."[445]

Jefferson's reputation declined during the American Civil War, due to his support of states' rights. In the late 19th century, his legacy was widely criticized; conservatives felt that his democratic philosophy had led to that era's populist movement, while Progressives sought a more activist federal government than Jefferson's philosophy allowed. Both groups saw Alexander Hamilton as vindicated by history, rather than Jefferson, and President Woodrow Wilson even described Jefferson as "though a great man, not a great American".[446]

In the 1930s, Jefferson was held in higher esteem; President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933–1945) and New Deal Democrats celebrated his struggles for "the common man" and reclaimed him as their party's founder. Jefferson became a symbol of American democracy in the incipient Cold War, and the 1940s and 1950s saw the zenith of his popular reputation.[447] Following the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, Jefferson's slaveholding came under new scrutiny, particularly after DNA testing in the late 1990s supported allegations that he had fathered multiple children with Sally Hemings.[448]

Noting the huge output of scholarly books on Jefferson in recent years, historian Gordon Wood summarizes the raging debates about Jefferson's stature: "Although many historians and others are embarrassed about his contradictions and have sought to knock him off the democratic pedestal ... his position, though shaky, still seems secure."[449]

The Siena Research Institute poll of presidential scholars, begun in 1982, has consistently ranked Jefferson as one of the five best U.S. presidents,[450] and a 2015 Brookings Institution poll of American Political Science Association members ranked him as the fifth greatest president.[451]

In 2020, historian Annette Gordon-Reed said that Jefferson's "vision of equality" did not include all people, as it primarily excluded both blacks and women. Jefferson believed that Native peoples could be citizens, as long as they agreed to assimilate into white society. According to her, Jefferson put little effort into obtaining freedom for black slaves, as he did for white colonists from Britain. She also said that Jefferson was doubtful of the intellectual capacity of blacks, compared to whites and also was hesitant to advocate or examine the equality of women.[452] The assertion in the Declaration of Independence that it was "self-evident" that "all men are created equal" inspired women, men, blacks, and whites to pursue equality.[452] Others contend that Jefferson included women as well as men when he wrote that "all men are created equal" and that he believed in women's natural equality as expressed in Notes on the State of Virginia.[453]

Memorials and honors

Jefferson has been memorialized with buildings, sculptures, postage, and currency. In the 1920s, Jefferson, together with George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln, was chosen by sculptor Gutzon Borglum and approved by President Calvin Coolidge to be depicted in stone at the Mount Rushmore Memorial.[454]

The Jefferson Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C. in 1943, on the 200th anniversary of Jefferson's birth. The interior of the memorial includes a 19-foot (6 m) statue of Jefferson by Rudulph Evans and engravings of passages from Jefferson's writings. Most prominent are the words inscribed around the monument near the roof: "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."[455]

In October 2021, in response to lobbying by activists, the New York City Public Design Commission voted unanimously to remove a statue of the former president from the New York City Council chamber where it had stood for more than a century.[456] The statue was taken down in November 2021.[457]

Writings

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Old Style: April 2, 1743
  2. ^ Jefferson personally showed little interest in his ancestry; on his father's side, he only knew of the existence of his grandfather.[18][19] Malone writes that Jefferson vaguely knew that his grandfather "had a place on the Fluvanna River which he called Snowden after a mountain in Wales near which the Jeffersons were supposed to have once lived".[18] See also Peter Jefferson#Ancestry.
  3. ^ His other properties included Shadwell, Tufton, Lego, Pantops, and his retreat Poplar Forest. He also owned the unimproved mountaintop Montalto, and the Natural Bridge.[51]
  4. ^ While the news from Francis Eppes, with whom Lucy was staying, did not reach Jefferson until 1785, in an undated letter,[61] it is clear that the year of her death was 1784 from another letter to Jefferson from James Currie dated November 20, 1784.[62]
  5. ^ Adams recorded his exchange with Jefferson on the question. Jefferson asked, "Why will you not? You ought to do it." To which Adams responded, "I will not—reasons enough." Jefferson replied, "What can be your reasons?" and Adams responded, "Reason first, you are a Virginian, and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. Reason second, I am obnoxious, suspected, and unpopular. You are very much otherwise. Reason third, you can write ten times better than I can." "Well," said Jefferson, "if you are decided, I will do as well as I can." Adams concluded, "Very well. When you have drawn it up, we will have a meeting."[72]
  6. ^ Franklin, seated beside the author, observed him "writhing a little under the acrimonious criticisms on some of its parts."[78]
  7. ^ The entail laws made it perpetual: the one who inherited the land could not sell it, but had to bequeath it to his oldest son. As a result, increasingly large plantations, worked by white tenant farmers and by black slaves, gained in size and wealth and political power in the eastern ("Tidewater") tobacco areas.[86] During the Revolutionary era, all such laws were repealed by the states that had them.[87]
  8. ^ the immediate successor to the Second Continental Congress
  9. ^ These included Russia, Austria, Prussia, Denmark, Saxony, Hamburg, Spain, Portugal, Naples, Sardinia, The Papal States, Venice, Genoa, Tuscany, the Sublime Porte, Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli.[114]
  10. ^ An example can be seen at the Library of Congress website.
  11. ^ Jefferson's Kentucky draft said: "where powers are assumed which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy: that every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact, (casus non fœderis) to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits."[154]
  12. ^ This electoral process problem was addressed by the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1804, which provided separate votes for presidential and vice-presidential candidates.[164]
  13. ^ Louisiana nevertheless gained statehood nine years later in 1812.[200]
  14. ^ Further complicating matters, Wilkinson was posthumously revealed to have been in the simultaneous pay of the British, French, and Spanish.[232]
  15. ^ Burr then left for Europe and eventually returned to practicing law.
  16. ^ The First Bank of the U.S. was eventually abolished in 1811 by a heavily Republican Congress.[362]
  17. ^ The 135 slaves, which included Betty Hemings and her ten children, that Jefferson acquired from Wayles's estate made him the second-largest slave owner in Albemarle County with a total of 187 slaves. The number fluctuated from around 200 slaves until 1784 when he began to give away or sell slaves. By 1794 he had gotten rid of 161 individuals.[366]
  18. ^ Aaron Burr was offered help in obtaining the governorship of New York by Timothy Pickering if he could persuade New York to go along, but the secession effort failed when Burr lost the election.
  19. ^ For examples of each historian's view, see Wilson, Douglas L., Thomas Jefferson and the Issue of Character, The Atlantic, November 1992. Finkelman, 1994 "Thomas Jefferson and Antislavery: The Myth Goes On" and Joseph J. Ellis, 1996, American Sphinx: the character of Thomas Jefferson
  20. ^ The minority report authored by White Wallenborn concluded "the historical evidence is not substantial enough to confirm nor for that matter to refute his paternity of any of the children of Sally Hemings. The DNA studies certainly enhance the possibility but ... do not prove Thomas Jefferson's paternity".[406]
  21. ^ Sally Heming's children recorded at Monticello included: "Harriet (born 1795; died in infancy); Beverly (born 1798); an unnamed daughter (born 1799; died in infancy); Harriet (born 1801); Madison (born 1805); and Eston (born 1808)".[404]
  22. ^ Annette Gordon-Reed notes that it would have been legally challenging to free Sally Hemings, due to Virginia laws mandating the support of older slaves and requiring special permission for freed slaves to remain within the state.[414]

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  336. ^ Wilentz, 2005, p. 200.
  337. ^ Randall, 1994, p. 203.
  338. ^ a b c Cunningham (December 28, 2020)
  339. ^ TJF: "Jefferson's Religious Beliefs"
  340. ^ Onuf, 2007, pp. 139–168.
  341. ^ a b c "People and Ideas: Early America's Formation". Public Broadcasting Service. Retrieved April 30, 2022. Like other Founding Fathers, Jefferson was considered a Deist, subscribing to the liberal religious strand of Deism that values reason over revelation and rejects traditional Christian doctrines, including the Virgin Birth, original sin and the resurrection of Jesus. While he rejected orthodoxy, Jefferson was nevertheless a religious man. [...] Influenced by the British Unitarian Joseph Priestley, Jefferson set his prodigious intellect and energy on the historical figure at the center of the Christian faith: Jesus of Nazareth. Jefferson became convinced that Jesus' message had been obscured and corrupted by the apostle Paul, the Gospel writers and Protestant reformers.
  342. ^ Jefferson Bible, 1820
  343. ^ a b c Thomas Jefferson's Religion
  344. ^ Peterson, 1970, ch. 2 [e-book].
  345. ^ Wood, 2010, p. 577.
  346. ^ U.S. Gov: National Archives
  347. ^ Finkelman, 2006, p. 921.
  348. ^ Yarbrough, 2006, p. 28.
  349. ^ Peterson, 2003, p. 315.
  350. ^ W. W. Hening, ed., Statutes at Large of Virginia, vol. 12 (1823): 84–86.
  351. ^ Meacham, 2012, pp. 369–370.
  352. ^ Meacham, 2012, pp. 472–473.
  353. ^ Randall, 1994, p. 555.
  354. ^ Meacham, 2012, pp. 471–473.
  355. ^ Sanford, 1984, pp. 85–86.
  356. ^ a b Wood, 2010, p. 586.
  357. ^ Malone, 1981, pp. 140–143.
  358. ^ Meacham, 2012, pp. 224–225.
  359. ^ Bailey, 2007, p. 82; Wood, 2010, p. 144; Meacham, 2012, p. 249.
  360. ^ Ferling, 2013, pp. 221–222.
  361. ^ Wood, 2010, pp. 293–295.
  362. ^ Wood, 2010, pp. 295–296.
  363. ^ Cogliano, 2006, p. 219; Onuf, 2007, p. 258.
  364. ^ a b c TJF: Slavery at Monticello – Property
  365. ^ Gordon-Reed, 2008, p. 292.
  366. ^ a b Stanton, Lucia Cinder. "The Slaves' Story – Jefferson's "family" – Jefferson's Blood – Frontline". www.pbs.org. Retrieved December 30, 2019.
  367. ^ Wiencek, 2012, p. 13
  368. ^ TJF: Slavery at Monticello – Work
  369. ^ Wiencek, 2012, pp. 114, 122.
  370. ^ TJF: Thomas Jefferson's Monticello – Nailery,
    Wiencek, 2012, p. 93.
  371. ^ a b c d TJF: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
  372. ^ Ferling, 2000, p. 161.
  373. ^ Howe, 2009, p. 74.
  374. ^ Meacham, 2012, p. 475.
  375. ^ a b Ferling 2000, p. 287.
  376. ^ Finkelman, 1994, p. 215.
  377. ^ a b Finkelman, 1994, p. 215; Finkelman, 2012
  378. ^ Finkelman, 1994, pp. 220–221.
  379. ^ Freehling, 2005, p. 70.
  380. ^ Wiencek, 2012, pp. 257–258.
  381. ^ Du Bois, 1904, pp. 95–96.
  382. ^ Ferling, 2000, p. 288.
  383. ^ Ferling, 2000, pp. 286, 294.
  384. ^ Ellis, 1997, p. 87.
  385. ^ Appleby, 2003, pp. 139–140.
  386. ^ Walker, Clarence E. (2001). We Can't Go Home Again: An Argument About Afrocentrism. Oxford University Press. p. 38. ISBN 0195357302.
  387. ^ Peterson, 1970, pp. 998–999; Meacham, 2012, p. 478; Helo, 2013, p. 105.
  388. ^ a b TJF:Jefferson's Antislavery Actions
  389. ^ DiLorenzo, 1998, Yankee Confederates
  390. ^ Meacham, 2012, pp. 255, 275–278.
  391. ^ Ferling, 2000, p. 287.
  392. ^ TJF: Quotations on slavery (May 11, 1805)
  393. ^ Davis, 1999, p. 179; Alexander, 2010.
  394. ^ TJF – Thomas Jefferson's Monticello "Slave Dwellings"
  395. ^ Landscape of Slavery – Mulberry Row at Monticello: Treatment
  396. ^ Cogliano, 2008, p. 209.
  397. ^ Ferling, 2004, p. 161.
  398. ^ John Paul Kaminski (1995). A Necessary Evil?: Slavery and the Debate Over the Constitution. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 256. ISBN 9780945612339.
  399. ^ Finkelman, 2012
  400. ^ Cogliano, 2008, pp. 218–220.
  401. ^ Wiencek 2012, p. 11
  402. ^ In 1853, William Wells Brown published a novel called Clotel; or, The President's Daughter alluding to Jefferson. This is the first novel in America published by anyone of African descent.Hyland, 2009, pp. ix, 2–3.
  403. ^ Foster et al., 1998
  404. ^ a b c d e f Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings A Brief Account.
  405. ^ TJF: Report of the Research Committee on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings – Conclusions
  406. ^ TJF: Minority Report of the Monticello Research Committee on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings
  407. ^ Cottman, Michael (July 3, 2017). "Historians Uncover Slave Quarters of Sally Hemings at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello". NBC News. Retrieved February 4, 2018.
  408. ^ Thompson, Krissah (February 18, 2017). "For decades they hid Jefferson's relationship with her. Now Monticello is making room for Sally Hemings". The Washington Post. Retrieved February 4, 2018.
  409. ^ "Monticello Affirms Thomas Jefferson Fathered Children with Sally Hemings". Thomas Jefferson Foundation. June 6, 2018. Retrieved July 5, 2018.
  410. ^
    • Wilkinson, A. B. (2019). "Slave Life at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello". American Quarterly. 71: 247–264. doi:10.1353/aq.2019.0017. S2CID 150519408. The general consensus among historians now agrees with Madison Hemings's version of the relationship between his mother and father ...
    • Lepore, Jill (September 22, 2008). "President Tom's Cabin: Jefferson, Hemings, and a Disclaimed Lineage". The New Yorker. Retrieved November 21, 2019. [T]oday most historians agree with the conclusion of a research committee convened by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, at Monticello: Jefferson 'most likely was the father of all six of Sally Hemings's children.'
    • Ellis, Joseph J. (2000). "Jefferson: Post-DNA". The William and Mary Quarterly. 57 (1): 125–138. doi:10.2307/2674361. JSTOR 2674361. PMID 18271151. [T]he new scholarly consensus is that Jefferson and Hemings were sexual partners ... Whether Jefferson fathered all of Hemings's children is still unclear.
    • "Updating a Life: The Case of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings". Library of America. December 9, 2011. Most historians now agree that a preponderance of evidence—genetic, circumstantial, and oral historical—suggests that Jefferson was the father of all of Sally Hemings's children.
  411. ^ Hyland, 2009, pp. 30–31, 79; Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society
  412. ^ a b Peterson (2002), p. 43
  413. ^ Gordon-Reed, 1997, pp. 657–660.
  414. ^ Gordon-Reed, 1997, pp. 658–659.
  415. ^ CBSNews2019.
  416. ^ "Debt". Thomas Jefferson Foundation. Retrieved October 9, 2018.
  417. ^ Hayes, 2008, p. 100; McEwan, 1991, pp. 20–39.
  418. ^ Tucker, 1837, v. 2, p. 202; Berstein, 2003, p. 193.
  419. ^ Johnson, Michael (September 15, 2006). "A chateau fit for a president". The New York Times. Retrieved July 28, 2012.
  420. ^ Brodie, 1974, pp. 87–88; Bernstein, 2003, p. 9.
  421. ^ Hayes, 2008, pp. 135–136.
  422. ^ Kastning, 2014, p. 8.
  423. ^ a b Hayes, 2008, p. 432.
  424. ^ a b c d TJF: "American Philosophical Society"
  425. ^ Bernstein, 2003, pp. 118–119.
  426. ^ Ambrose, 1996, p. 126.
  427. ^ Tucker, 1837, v. 2, p. 399.
  428. ^ a b Univ. Virginia archives: Miller Center
  429. ^ Andresen, 2006, Chap. 1.
  430. ^ Bober, 2008, p. 16.
  431. ^ TJF: Italy – Language
  432. ^ TJF: Spanish Language
  433. ^ Hellenbrand, 1990, pp. 155–156.
  434. ^ Frawley, 2003, p. 96.
  435. ^ American Philosophical Society, 2016: Gathering voices
  436. ^ TJF: "Public speaking"
  437. ^ Univ. Virginia archives
  438. ^ Malone, 1962, pp. 213–215.
  439. ^ Kaplan, 1993, p. 315.
  440. ^ Martin, Russell L. (April 1989). "Patents". Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia. Thomas Jefferson Foundation. Retrieved September 20, 2022.; source also links to two related 21st-century sources
  441. ^ Peterson, 1970, pp. 335–336.
  442. ^ Peterson, 1960, pp. 5, 67–69, 189–208, 340.
  443. ^ Appleby, 2003, p. 149.
  444. ^ Meacham, 2012, p. xix.
  445. ^ Cogliano, 2008, p. 75.
  446. ^ Appleby, 2003, pp. 132–133; Bernstein, 2003, pp. 191–192.
  447. ^ Appleby, 2003, pp. 135–136; Bernstein, 2003, pp. 192–194.
  448. ^ Appleby, 2003, pp. 136, 140; Bernstein, 2003, pp. 194–197; Cogliano, 2008, p. 12.
  449. ^ Wood., Gordon S. (June 23, 2016). "Revealing the Total Jefferson". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved January 7, 2022.{{cite magazine}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  450. ^ SRI, 2010.
  451. ^ Brookings, 2015
  452. ^ a b Gordon-Reed (February 20, 2020)
  453. ^ Jayne 2014, p. 125.
  454. ^ NPS: Mt. Rushmore
  455. ^ Peterson, 1960, p. 378.
  456. ^ O'Brien, Brendan (October 19, 2021). "Thomas Jefferson Statue to be Removed from New York City Council Chamber". Reuters. Retrieved November 9, 2021.
  457. ^ Luscombe, Richard (November 23, 2021). "New York city hall removes Thomas Jefferson statue". The Guardian. Retrieved January 7, 2022.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  458. ^ Jefferson, Thomas (1914). Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1790: Together with a Summary of the Chief Events in Jefferson's Life. G.P. Putnam's Sons. Retrieved January 9, 2023.

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thomas, jefferson, this, article, about, third, president, united, states, other, uses, disambiguation, april, 1743, july, 1826, american, statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, slaver, founding, father, served, third, president, united, states, . This article is about the third president of the United States For other uses see Thomas Jefferson disambiguation Thomas Jefferson April 13 1743 a July 4 1826 was an American statesman diplomat lawyer architect philosopher slaver and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809 He was previously the nation s second vice president under John Adams and the first United States secretary of state under George Washington The principal author of the Declaration of Independence Jefferson was a proponent of democracy republicanism and individual rights motivating American colonists to break from the Kingdom of Great Britain and form a new nation He produced formative documents and decisions at state national and international levels Thomas JeffersonPortrait by Rembrandt Peale 18003rd President of the United StatesIn office March 4 1801 March 4 1809Vice PresidentAaron Burr 1801 1805 George Clinton 1805 1809 Preceded byJohn AdamsSucceeded byJames Madison2nd Vice President of the United StatesIn office March 4 1797 March 4 1801PresidentJohn AdamsPreceded byJohn AdamsSucceeded byAaron Burr1st United States Secretary of StateIn office March 22 1790 December 31 1793PresidentGeorge WashingtonPreceded byJohn Jay acting Succeeded byEdmund Randolph2nd United States Minister to FranceIn office May 17 1785 September 26 1789Appointed byConfederation CongressPreceded byBenjamin FranklinSucceeded byWilliam ShortMinister Plenipotentiary for Negotiating Treaties of Amity and CommerceIn office May 12 1784 May 11 1786Appointed byConfederation CongressPreceded byOffice establishedSucceeded byOffice abolishedDelegate from Virginia to the Congress of the ConfederationIn office November 3 1783 May 7 1784Preceded byJames MadisonSucceeded byRichard Lee2nd Governor of VirginiaIn office June 1 1779 June 3 1781Preceded byPatrick HenrySucceeded byWilliam FlemingDelegate from Virginia to the Continental CongressIn office June 20 1775 September 26 1776Preceded byGeorge WashingtonSucceeded byJohn HarvieConstituencySecond Continental CongressMember of the Virginia House of BurgessesIn office May 11 1769 1 June 1 1775 2 Preceded byEdward Carter 2 Succeeded byOffice AbolishedConstituencyAlbemarle CountyPersonal detailsBorn 1743 04 13 April 13 1743Shadwell Virginia British AmericaDiedJuly 4 1826 1826 07 04 aged 83 Charlottesville Virginia U S Resting placeMonticello Virginia U S Political partyDemocratic RepublicanSpouseMartha Wayles m 1772 died 1782 wbr Children6 with Martha Wayles including Martha Jefferson Randolph Mary Jefferson Eppes Up to 6 with Sally Hemings including Madison Hemings Eston HemingsParentsPeter Jefferson father Jane Randolph mother Alma materCollege of William amp MaryOccupationPoliticianlawyerSignaturePhilosophy careerNotable workDeclaration of Independence 1776 Notes on Virginia 1785 Jefferson s Manual 1801 Jefferson Bible 1820 EraAge of EnlightenmentRegionWestern philosophyAmerican philosophySchoolClassical liberalism Radicalism 3 DeismEnlightenmentJeffersonianismRepublicanismInstitutionsAmerican Philosophical SocietyMain interestsPolitics Ethics Religion PhilologyNotable ideasAll men are created equal Empire of Liberty Entangling alliances Life Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness Separation of church and state Strict constructionism Ward republic Views on education Views on slavery Views on religionInfluences Confucius Epicurus Jesus Epictetus Bacon Locke Newton Bolingbroke Montesquieu Voltaire Hume Robertson Wythe Blackstone Paine Gibbon Beccaria Tracy 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Influenced Madison Taylor Monroe Randolph Tucker Nock Strauss Hitchens 12 During the American Revolution Jefferson represented Virginia in the Continental Congress that adopted the Declaration of Independence As a Virginia legislator he drafted a state law for religious freedom He served as the second Governor of Virginia from 1779 to 1781 during the Revolutionary War In 1785 Jefferson was appointed the United States Minister to France and subsequently the nation s first secretary of state under President George Washington from 1790 to 1793 Jefferson and James Madison organized the Democratic Republican Party to oppose the Federalist Party during the formation of the First Party System With Madison he anonymously wrote the provocative Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions in 1798 and 1799 which sought to strengthen states rights by nullifying the federal Alien and Sedition Acts Jefferson and Federalist John Adams became friends as well as political rivals serving in the Continental Congress and drafting the Declaration of Independence together In the 1796 presidential election between the two Jefferson came in second which according to electoral procedure at the time made him vice president to Adams Jefferson challenged Adams again in 1800 and won the presidency After his term in office Jefferson eventually reconciled with Adams and they shared a correspondence that lasted fourteen years As president Jefferson pursued the nation s shipping and trade interests against Barbary pirates and aggressive British trade policies Starting in 1803 he promoted a western expansionist policy with the Louisiana Purchase which doubled the nation s claimed land area To make room for settlement Jefferson began the process of Indian tribal removal from the newly acquired territory As a result of peace negotiations with France his administration reduced military forces He was re elected in 1804 but his second term was beset with difficulties at home including the trial of former vice president Aaron Burr In 1807 American foreign trade was diminished when Jefferson implemented the Embargo Act in response to British threats to U S shipping The same year Jefferson signed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves Jefferson while primarily a plantation owner lawyer and politician mastered many disciplines ranging from surveying and mathematics to horticulture and mechanics He was also an architect in the Palladian tradition Jefferson s keen interest in religion and philosophy led to his presidency of the American Philosophical Society he shunned organized religion but was influenced by Christianity Epicureanism 4 and deism Jefferson rejected fundamental Christianity denying Christ s divinity A philologist Jefferson knew several languages He was a prolific letter writer and corresponded with many prominent people including Edward Carrington John Taylor of Caroline and James Madison Among his books is Notes on the State of Virginia 1785 considered perhaps the most important American book published before 1800 13 Jefferson championed the ideals values and teachings of the Enlightenment Over the course of his life Jefferson owned more than 600 slaves Since Jefferson s time controversy has revolved around his relationship with Sally Hemings a mixed race enslaved woman and his late wife s half sister 14 According to 1998 DNA testing of Jefferson s and Hemings descendants combined with documentary and statistical evidence and oral history Jefferson fathered at least six children with Hemings including four that survived to adulthood 15 Evidence suggests that Jefferson started the relationship with Hemings when they were in Paris some time after she arrived there at the age of 14 or 15 when Jefferson was 44 By the time she returned to the United States at 16 or 17 she was pregnant 16 After retiring from public office Jefferson founded the University of Virginia He and John Adams both died on July 4 1826 the 50th anniversary of U S independence Presidential scholars and historians generally praise Jefferson s public achievements including his advocacy of religious freedom and tolerance in Virginia his peaceful acquisition of the Louisiana Territory from France without war or controversy and his ambitious and successful Lewis and Clark Expedition Some modern historians are critical of Jefferson s personal involvement with slavery Jefferson is consistently ranked in the top ten presidents of American history Contents 1 Early life and career 1 1 Education and early family life 1 2 Lawyer and House of Burgesses 1 3 Monticello marriage and family 2 Revolutionary War 2 1 Declaration of Independence 2 2 Virginia state legislator and governor 2 3 Notes on the State of Virginia 3 Member of Congress 4 Minister to France 5 Secretary of State 6 Election of 1796 and vice presidency 6 1 Election of 1800 7 Presidency 1801 1809 7 1 Financial affairs 7 2 Domestic affairs 7 3 Foreign affairs 1801 1805 7 3 1 First Barbary War 7 3 2 Louisiana Purchase 7 4 Lewis and Clark Expedition 1803 1806 7 5 Native American affairs 7 6 Re election in 1804 and second term 7 7 Controversies 7 7 1 Burr conspiracy and trial 7 7 2 General Wilkinson misconduct 7 8 Foreign affairs 1805 1809 7 8 1 Attempted annexation of Florida 7 8 2 Chesapeake Leopard affair 7 8 3 Embargo 1807 1809 7 9 Cabinet 8 Post presidency 1809 1826 8 1 University of Virginia 8 2 Reconciliation with Adams 8 3 Autobiography 8 4 Greek War of Independence 8 5 Lafayette s visit 8 6 Final days death and burial 9 Political social and religious views 9 1 Philosophy society and government 9 2 Democracy 9 3 Religion 9 4 Banks 9 5 Slavery 9 5 1 Historical assessment 9 5 2 Jefferson Hemings controversy 10 Interests and activities 10 1 American Philosophical Society 10 2 Linguistics 10 3 Inventions 11 Legacy 11 1 Historical reputation 11 2 Memorials and honors 12 Writings 13 See also 14 Notes 15 References 16 Bibliography 16 1 Scholarly studies 16 1 1 Thomas Jefferson Foundation sources 16 1 2 Primary sources 16 1 3 Web site sources 16 2 Teaching methods 17 External linksEarly life and careerMain article Early life and career of Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13 1743 April 2 1743 Old Style Julian calendar at the family s Shadwell Plantation in the British Colony of Virginia the third of ten children 17 He was of English and possibly Welsh descent and was born a British subject 18 His father Peter Jefferson was a planter and surveyor who died when Jefferson was fourteen his mother was Jane Randolph b Peter Jefferson moved his family to Tuckahoe Plantation in 1745 upon the death of William Randolph III the plantation s owner and Jefferson s friend who in his will had named Peter guardian of Randolph s children The Jeffersons returned to Shadwell in 1752 where Peter died in 1757 his estate was divided between his sons Thomas and Randolph 20 John Harvie Sr then became Thomas guardian 21 In 1753 he attended the wedding of his uncle Field Jefferson to Mary Allen Hunt who became a close friend and early mentor 22 Thomas inherited approximately 5 000 acres 2 000 ha 7 8 sq mi of land including Monticello and assumed full authority over his property at age 21 23 Education and early family life Thomas Jefferson s Coat of Arms Jefferson began his education together with the Randolph children by tutors at Tuckahoe 24 Thomas father Peter was self taught regretted not having a formal education and entered Thomas into an English school at age five In 1752 at age nine he attended a local school run by a Scottish Presbyterian minister and also began studying the natural world which he grew to love At this time he began studying Latin Greek and French while also learning to ride horses Thomas also read books from his father s modest library 25 He was taught from 1758 to 1760 by the Reverend James Maury near Gordonsville Virginia where he studied history science and the classics while boarding with Maury s family 26 25 Jefferson then came to know and befriended various American Indians including the famous Cherokee chief Ostenaco who often stopped at Shadwell to visit on their way to Williamsburg to trade 27 28 During the two years Jefferson was with the Maury family he traveled to Williamsburg and was a guest of Colonel John Dandridge father of Martha Washington In Williamsburg the young Jefferson met and came to admire Patrick Henry eight years his senior and shared a common interest in violin playing 29 The Wren Building at the College of William amp Mary where Jefferson studied Jefferson entered the College of William amp Mary in Williamsburg Virginia at age 16 and studied mathematics metaphysics and philosophy with Professor William Small Under Small s tutelage Jefferson encountered the ideas of the British Empiricists including John Locke Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton Small introduced Jefferson to George Wythe and Francis Fauquier Small Wythe and Fauquier recognized Jefferson as a man of exceptional ability and included him in their inner circle where he became a regular member of their Friday dinner parties where politics and philosophy were discussed Jefferson later wrote that while there he heard more common good sense more rational amp philosophical conversations than in all the rest of my life 30 During his first year at the college he was given more to parties and dancing and was not very frugal with his expenditures in his second year regretting that he had squandered away much time and money he dedicated himself to fifteen hours of study a day 31 Jefferson improved his French and Greek and his skill at the violin He graduated two years after starting in 1762 He read the law under Wythe s tutelage to obtain his law license while working as a law clerk in his office 32 He also read a wide variety of English classics and political works 33 Jefferson was well read in a broad variety of subjects which along with law and philosophy included history natural law natural religion ethics and several areas in science including agriculture Overall he drew very deeply on the philosophers During the years of study under the watchful eye of Wythe Jefferson authored a survey of his extensive readings in his Commonplace Book 34 Wythe was so impressed with Jefferson that he later bequeathed his entire library to him 35 The year 1765 was an eventful one in Jefferson s family In July his sister Martha married his close friend and college companion Dabney Carr which greatly pleased Jefferson In October he mourned his sister Jane s unexpected death at age 25 and wrote a farewell epitaph in Latin 36 Jefferson treasured his books and amassed three libraries in his lifetime The first a library of 200 volumes started in his youth which included books inherited from his father and left to him by George Wythe 37 was destroyed when his Shadwell home burned in a 1770 fire Nevertheless he had replenished his collection with 1 250 titles by 1773 and it grew to almost 6 500 volumes by 1814 38 He organized his wide variety of books into three broad categories corresponding with elements of the human mind memory reason and imagination 39 After the British burned the Library of Congress during the Burning of Washington he sold this second library to the U S government to jumpstart the Library of Congress collection for the price of 23 950 Jefferson used a portion of the money secured by the sale to pay off some of his large debt remitting 10 500 to William Short and 4 870 to John Barnes of Georgetown However he soon resumed collecting for his personal library writing to John Adams I cannot live without books 40 41 He began to construct a new library of his personal favorites and by the time of his death a decade later it had grown to almost 2 000 volumes 42 Lawyer and House of Burgesses House of Burgesses in Williamsburg Virginia where Jefferson served 1769 1775 Jefferson was admitted to the Virginia bar in 1767 and lived with his mother at Shadwell 43 He represented Albemarle County as a delegate in the Virginia House of Burgesses from 1769 until 1775 44 He pursued reforms to slavery with legislation in 1769 to give masters control over the emancipation of slaves taking discretion away from the royal governor and General Court He persuaded his cousin Richard Bland to spearhead the legislation s passage but opposition was strong 45 Jefferson took seven cases for freedom seeking slaves 46 and waived his fee for one who claimed that he should be freed before his minimum statutory age 47 Jefferson invoked natural law to argue everyone comes into the world with a right to his own person and using it at his own will This is what is called personal liberty and is given him by the author of nature because it is necessary for his own sustenance The judge cut him off and ruled against his client As a consolation Jefferson gave his client some money conceivably used to aid his escape shortly thereafter 47 He later incorporated this sentiment into the Declaration of Independence 48 He also took on 68 cases for the General Court of Virginia in 1767 in addition to three notable cases Howell v Netherland 1770 Bolling v Bolling 1771 and Blair v Blair 1772 49 The British Parliament passed the Intolerable Acts in 1774 and Jefferson wrote a resolution calling for a Day of Fasting and Prayer in protest as well as a boycott of all British goods His resolution was later expanded into A Summary View of the Rights of British America in which he argued that people have the right to govern themselves 50 Monticello marriage and family Jefferson s home Monticello in Virginia In 1768 Jefferson began constructing his primary residence Monticello Italian for Little Mountain on a hilltop overlooking his 5 000 acre 20 km2 7 8 sq mi plantation c He spent most of his adult life designing Monticello as architect and was quoted as saying Architecture is my delight and putting up and pulling down one of my favorite amusements 52 Construction was done mostly by local masons and carpenters assisted by Jefferson s slaves 53 He moved into the South Pavilion in 1770 Turning Monticello into a neoclassical masterpiece in the Palladian style was his perennial project 54 On January 1 1772 Jefferson married his third cousin 55 Martha Wayles Skelton the 23 year old widow of Bathurst Skelton and she moved into the South Pavilion 56 57 She was a frequent hostess for Jefferson and managed the large household Biographer Dumas Malone described the marriage as the happiest period of Jefferson s life 58 Martha read widely did fine needlework and was a skilled pianist Jefferson often accompanied her on the violin or cello 59 During their ten years of marriage Martha bore six children Martha Patsy 1772 1836 Jane 1774 1775 an unnamed son who lived for only a few weeks in 1777 Mary Polly 1778 1804 Lucy Elizabeth 1780 1781 and another Lucy Elizabeth 1782 1784 60 d Only Martha and Mary survived to adulthood 63 Jefferson s daughter MarthaMartha s father John Wayles died in 1773 and the couple inherited 135 slaves 11 000 acres 45 km2 17 sq mi and the estate s debts The debts took Jefferson years to satisfy contributing to his financial problems 56 Martha later suffered from ill health including diabetes and frequent childbirth further weakened her Her mother had died young and Martha lived with two stepmothers as a girl A few months after the birth of her last child she died on September 6 1782 with Jefferson at her bedside Shortly before her death Martha made Jefferson promise never to marry again telling him that she could not bear to have another mother raise her children 64 Jefferson was grief stricken by her death relentlessly pacing back and forth nearly to the point of exhaustion He emerged after three weeks taking long rambling rides on secluded roads with his daughter Martha by her description a solitary witness to many a violent burst of grief 63 65 After working as secretary of state 1790 1793 he returned to Monticello and initiated a remodeling based on the architectural concepts which he had acquired in Europe The work continued throughout most of his presidency and was completed in 1809 66 67 Revolutionary WarDeclaration of Independence U S Declaration of Independence 1823 facsimile of the engrossed copy Main article United States Declaration of Independence Jefferson was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence The document s social and political ideals were proposed by Jefferson before the inauguration of Washington 68 At age 33 he was one of the youngest delegates to the Second Continental Congress beginning in 1775 at the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War where a formal declaration of independence from Britain was overwhelmingly favored 69 Jefferson chose his words for the Declaration in June 1775 shortly after the war had begun the idea of independence from Britain had long since become popular among the colonies He was inspired by the Enlightenment ideals of the sanctity of the individual as well as the writings of Locke and Montesquieu 70 He sought out John Adams an emerging leader of the Congress 71 They became close friends and Adams supported Jefferson s appointment to the Committee of Five formed to draft a declaration of independence in furtherance of the Lee Resolution passed by the Congress which declared the United Colonies independent The committee initially thought that Adams should write the document but Adams persuaded the committee to choose Jefferson e Jefferson consulted with other committee members over the next seventeen days and drew on his proposed draft of the Virginia Constitution George Mason s draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights and other sources 73 The other committee members made some changes and a final draft was presented to Congress on June 28 1776 74 The declaration was introduced on Friday June 28 and Congress began debate over its contents on Monday July 1 74 resulting in the omission of a fourth of the text 75 including a passage critical of King George III and Jefferson s anti slavery clause 76 77 Jefferson resented the changes but he did not speak publicly about the revisions f On July 4 1776 the Congress ratified the Declaration and delegates signed it on August 2 in doing so they were committing an act of treason against the Crown 79 Jefferson s preamble is regarded as an enduring statement of human rights and the phrase all men are created equal has been called one of the best known sentences in the English language containing the most potent and consequential words in American history 76 80 Virginia state legislator and governor Governor s Palace Governor Jefferson s residence in Williamsburg At the start of the Revolution Colonel Jefferson was named commander of the Albemarle County Militia on September 26 1775 81 He was then elected to the Virginia House of Delegates for Albemarle County in September 1776 when finalizing the state constitution was a priority 82 83 For nearly three years he assisted with the constitution and was especially proud of his Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom which prohibited state support of religious institutions or enforcement of religious doctrine 84 The bill failed to pass as did his legislation to disestablish the Anglican Church but both were later revived by James Madison 85 In 1778 Jefferson was given the task of revising the state s laws He drafted 126 bills in three years including laws to streamline the judicial system He proposed statutes that provided for general education which he considered the basis of republican government 82 Jefferson also was concerned that Virginia s powerful landed gentry were becoming a hereditary aristocracy and he took the lead in abolishing what he called feudal and unnatural distinctions 86 He targeted laws such as entail and primogeniture by which a deceased landowner s oldest son was vested with all land ownership and power 86 g Jefferson was elected governor for one year terms in 1779 and 1780 88 He transferred the state capital from Williamsburg to Richmond and introduced additional measures for public education religious freedom and inheritance 89 During General Benedict Arnold s 1781 invasion of Virginia Jefferson escaped Richmond just ahead of the British forces which razed the city 90 91 He sent emergency dispatches to Colonel Sampson Mathews and other commanders in an attempt to repel Arnold s efforts 92 93 Jefferson then visited with friends in the surrounding counties of Richmond including William Fleming a college friend of his in Chesterfield County 94 General Charles Cornwallis that spring dispatched a cavalry force led by Banastre Tarleton to capture Jefferson and members of the Assembly at Monticello but Jack Jouett of the Virginia militia thwarted the British plan Jefferson escaped to Poplar Forest his plantation to the west 95 When the General Assembly reconvened in June 1781 it conducted an inquiry into Jefferson s actions which eventually concluded that Jefferson had acted with honor but he was not re elected 96 In April of the same year his daughter Lucy died at age one A second daughter of that name was born the following year but she died at age three 97 In 1782 Jefferson refused a partnership offer by North Carolina Governor Abner Nash in a profiteering scheme involving the sale of confiscated Loyalist lands 98 Unlike some Founders in pursuit of land Jefferson was content with his Monticello estate and the land he owned in the vicinity of Virginia s Shenandoah Valley Jefferson thought of Monticello as an intellectual gathering place for his friends James Madison and James Monroe 99 Notes on the State of Virginia Main article Notes on the State of Virginia In 1780 Jefferson received from French diplomat Francois Barbe Marbois a letter of inquiry into the geography history and government of Virginia as part of a study of the United States Jefferson organized his responses in a book Notes on the State of Virginia 1785 100 He compiled the book over five years including reviews of scientific knowledge Virginia s history politics laws culture and geography 101 The book explores what constitutes a good society using Virginia as an exemplar Jefferson included extensive data about the state s natural resources and economy and wrote at length about slavery and miscegenation he articulated his belief that blacks and whites could not live together as free people in one society because of justified resentments of the enslaved 102 He also wrote of his views on the American Indian equating them to European settlers in body and mind 103 104 Notes was first published in 1785 in French and appeared in English in 1787 105 Biographer George Tucker considered the work surprising in the extent of the information which a single individual had been thus far able to acquire as to the physical features of the state 106 Merrill D Peterson described it as an accomplishment for which all Americans should be grateful 107 Member of Congress Independence Hall Assembly Room where Jefferson served in the Continental Congress The United States formed a Congress of the Confederation following victory in the Revolutionary War and a peace treaty with Great Britain in 1783 to which Jefferson was appointed as a Virginia delegate He was a member of the committee setting foreign exchange rates and recommended an American currency based on the decimal system which was adopted 108 He advised the formation of the Committee of the States to fill the power vacuum when Congress was in recess 109 The Committee met when Congress adjourned but disagreements rendered it dysfunctional 110 In the Congress s 1783 1784 session Jefferson acted as chairman of committees to establish a viable system of government for the new Republic and to propose a policy for the settlement of the western territories He was the principal author of the Land Ordinance of 1784 whereby Virginia ceded to the national government the vast area that it claimed northwest of the Ohio River He insisted that this territory should not be used as colonial territory by any of the thirteen states but that it should be divided into sections that could become states He plotted borders for nine new states in their initial stages and wrote an ordinance banning slavery in all the nation s territories Congress made extensive revisions and rejected the ban on slavery 111 112 The provisions banning slavery known as the Jefferson Proviso were modified and implemented three years later in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and became the law for the entire Northwest 111 Minister to France Portrait of Thomas Jefferson while in London in 1786 at 43 by Mather Brown On May 7 1784 Jefferson was appointed by the Congress of the Confederation h to join Benjamin Franklin and John Adams in Paris as Minister Plenipotentiary for Negotiating Treaties of Amity and Commerce with Great Britain and other countries 113 i With his young daughter Patsy and two servants he departed in July 1784 arriving in Paris the next month 115 116 Jefferson had Patsy educated at the Pentemont Abbey Less than a year later he was assigned the additional duty of succeeding Franklin as Minister to France French foreign minister Count de Vergennes commented You replace Monsieur Franklin I hear Jefferson replied I succeed No man can replace him 117 During his five years in Paris Jefferson played a leading role in shaping U S foreign policy 118 In 1786 he met and fell in love with Maria Cosway an accomplished and married Italian English musician of 27 They saw each other frequently over a period of six weeks She returned to Great Britain but they maintained a lifelong correspondence 119 During the summer of 1786 Jefferson arrived in London to meet with John Adams the United States Ambassador to Britain Adams had official access to George III and arranged a meeting between Jefferson and the king Jefferson later described the king s reception of the men as ungracious According to Adams s grandson George III turned his back on both Adams and Jefferson in a jesture of public insult Jefferson returned to France in August 120 Jefferson sent for his youngest surviving child nine year old Polly in June 1787 who was accompanied on her voyage by a young slave from Monticello Sally Hemings He had taken her older brother James Hemings to Paris as part of his domestic staff and had him trained in French cuisine 121 According to Sally s son Madison Hemings the 16 year old Sally and Jefferson began a sexual relationship in Paris where she became pregnant 122 The son also indicated Hemings agreed to return to the United States only after Jefferson promised to free her children when they came of age 122 While in France Jefferson became a regular companion of the Marquis de Lafayette a French hero of the American Revolutionary War and Jefferson used his influence to procure trade agreements with France 123 124 As the French Revolution began he allowed his Paris residence the Hotel de Langeac to be used for meetings by Lafayette and other republicans He was in Paris during the storming of the Bastille and consulted with Lafayette while the latter drafted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen 125 Jefferson often found his mail opened by postmasters so he invented his own enciphering device the Wheel Cipher he wrote important communications in code for the rest of his career 126 j Unable to attend the 1787 Convention Jefferson supported the Constitution but desired the addition of the promised bill of rights 127 Jefferson left Paris for America in September 1789 intending to return to his home soon however President George Washington appointed him the country s first secretary of state forcing him to remain in the nation s capital 128 Jefferson remained a firm supporter of the French Revolution while opposing its more violent elements 129 John Skey Eustace kept Jefferson informed of the events of the French Revolution 130 Secretary of StateSee also First Party System Thomas Jefferson in 1791 at 48 by Charles Willson Peale Soon after returning from France Jefferson accepted Washington s invitation to serve as secretary of state 131 Pressing issues at this time were the national debt and the permanent location of the capital He opposed a national debt preferring that each state retire its own in contrast to Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton who desired consolidation of various states debts by the federal government 132 Hamilton also had bold plans to establish the national credit and a national bank but Jefferson strenuously opposed this and attempted to undermine his agenda which nearly led Washington to dismiss him from his cabinet He later left the cabinet voluntarily 133 Jefferson s goals were to decrease American dependence on British commerce and to expand commercial trade with France He sought to weaken Spanish colonialism of the trans Appalachian West and British control in the North believing this would aid in the pacification of Native Americans 134 The second major issue was the capital s permanent location Hamilton favored a capital close to the major commercial centers of the Northeast while Washington Jefferson and other agrarians wanted it located to the south 135 After lengthy deadlock the Compromise of 1790 was struck permanently locating the capital on the Potomac River and the federal government assumed the war debts of all thirteen states 135 While serving in the government in Philadelphia Jefferson and political protegee Congressman James Madison founded the National Gazette in 1791 along with author Phillip Freneau in an effort to counter Hamilton s Federalist policies which Hamilton was promoting through the influential Federalist newspaper the Gazette of the United States The National Gazettemade particular criticism of the policies promoted by Hamilton often through anonymous essays signed by the pen name Brutus at Jefferson s urging which were actually written by Madison 136 In the Spring of 1791 Jefferson and Madison took a vacation to Vermont Jefferson had been suffering from migraines and he was tired of Hamilton in fighting 137 In May 1792 Jefferson was alarmed at the political rivalries taking shape he wrote to Washington imploring him to run for re election that year as a unifying influence 138 He urged the president to rally the citizenry to a party that would defend democracy against the corrupting influence of banks and monied interests as espoused by the Federalists Historians recognize this letter as the earliest delineation of Democratic Republican Party principles 139 Jefferson Madison and other Democratic Republican organizers favored states rights and local control and opposed federal concentration of power whereas Hamilton sought more power for the federal government 140 Jefferson supported France against Britain when the two nations fought in 1793 though his arguments in the Cabinet were undercut by French Revolutionary envoy Edmond Charles Genet s open scorn for President Washington 141 In his discussions with British Minister George Hammond he tried in vain to persuade the British to vacate their posts in the Northwest and to compensate the U S for slaves whom the British had freed at the end of the war Jefferson sought a return to private life and resigned the cabinet position in December 1793 he may also have wanted to bolster his political influence from outside the administration 142 After the Washington administration negotiated the Jay Treaty with Great Britain 1794 Jefferson saw a cause around which to rally his party and organized a national opposition from Monticello 143 The treaty designed by Hamilton aimed to reduce tensions and increase trade Jefferson warned that it would increase British influence and subvert republicanism calling it the boldest act Hamilton and Jay ever ventured on to undermine the government 144 The Treaty passed but it expired in 1805 during Jefferson s administration and was not renewed Jefferson continued his pro French stance during the violence of the Reign of Terror he declined to disavow the revolution To back away from France would be to undermine the cause of republicanism in America 145 Election of 1796 and vice presidencyFurther information 1796 United States presidential election and Democratic Republican Party 1796 election results Jefferson in 1799 at 56 painted by Charles Peale Polk In the presidential campaign of 1796 Jefferson lost the electoral college vote to Federalist John Adams by 71 68 and was thus elected vice president As presiding officer of the Senate he assumed a more passive role than his predecessor John Adams He allowed the Senate to freely conduct debates and confined his participation to procedural issues which he called an honorable and easy role 146 Jefferson had previously studied parliamentary law and procedure for 40 years making him quite qualified to serve as presiding officer In 1800 he published his assembled notes on Senate procedure as A Manual of Parliamentary Practice 147 He cast only three tie breaking votes in the Senate In four confidential talks with French consul Joseph Letombe in the spring of 1797 Jefferson attacked Adams and predicted that his rival would serve only one term He also encouraged France to invade England and advised Letombe to stall any American envoys sent to Paris by instructing him to listen to them and then drag out the negotiations at length and mollify them by the urbanity of the proceedings 148 This toughened the tone that the French government adopted toward the Adams administration After Adams s initial peace envoys were rebuffed Jefferson and his supporters lobbied for the release of papers related to the incident called the XYZ Affair after the letters used to disguise the identities of the French officials involved 149 However the tactic backfired when it was revealed that French officials had demanded bribes rallying public support against France The U S began an undeclared naval war with France known as the Quasi War 150 During the Adams presidency the Federalists rebuilt the military levied new taxes and enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts Jefferson believed these laws were intended to suppress Democratic Republicans rather than prosecute enemy aliens and considered them unconstitutional 151 To rally opposition he and James Madison anonymously wrote the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions declaring that the federal government had no right to exercise powers not specifically delegated to it by the states 152 The resolutions followed the interposition approach of Madison in which states may shield their citizens from federal laws that they deem unconstitutional Jefferson advocated nullification allowing states to invalidate federal laws altogether 153 k He warned that unless arrested at the threshold the Alien and Sedition Acts would necessarily drive these states into revolution and blood 155 Historian Ron Chernow claims that the theoretical damage of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions was deep and lasting and was a recipe for disunion contributing to the American Civil War as well as later events 156 Washington was so appalled by the resolutions that he told Patrick Henry that if systematically and pertinaciously pursued the resolutions would dissolve the union or produce coercion 157 Jefferson had always admired Washington s leadership skills but felt that his Federalist party was leading the country in the wrong direction He decided not to attend Washington s funeral in 1799 because of acute differences with him while serving as secretary of state 158 Election of 1800 1800 election results Main article 1800 United States presidential election Jefferson contended for president once more against Adams in 1800 Adams s campaign was weakened by unpopular taxes and vicious Federalist infighting over his actions in the Quasi War 159 Democratic Republicans pointed to the Alien and Sedition Acts and accused the Federalists of being secret pro Britain monarchists while Federalists charged that Jefferson was a godless libertine beholden to the French 160 Historian Joyce Appleby said the election was one of the most acrimonious in the annals of American history 161 The Democratic Republicans ultimately won more electoral college votes due in part to the electors that resulted from the addition of three fifths of the South s slaves to the population calculation 162 Jefferson and his vice presidential candidate Aaron Burr unexpectedly received an equal total Because of the tie the election was decided by the Federalist dominated House of Representatives 163 l Hamilton lobbied Federalist representatives on Jefferson s behalf believing him a lesser political evil than Burr On February 17 1801 after thirty six ballots the House elected Jefferson president and Burr vice president Jefferson became the second incumbent vice president to be elected president 164 The win was marked by Democratic Republican celebrations throughout the country 165 Some of Jefferson s opponents argued that he owed his victory over Adams to the South s inflated number of electors due to the counting slaves under the Three Fifths Compromise 166 Others alleged that Jefferson secured James Asheton Bayard s tie breaking electoral vote by guaranteeing the retention of various Federalist posts in the government 164 Jefferson disputed the allegation and the historical record is inconclusive 167 The transition proceeded smoothly marking a watershed in American history As historian Gordon S Wood writes it was one of the first popular elections in modern history that resulted in the peaceful transfer of power from one party to another 164 Presidency 1801 1809 Main article Presidency of Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson by Rembrandt Peale 1805 Jefferson was sworn in by Chief Justice John Marshall at the new Capitol in Washington D C on March 4 1801 His inauguration was not attended by outgoing President Adams In contrast to his predecessors Jefferson exhibited a dislike of formal etiquette Plainly dressed he arrived alone and walked to the Capitol with his friends 168 His inaugural address struck a note of reconciliation and commitment to democratic ideology declaring We have been called by different names brethren of the same principle We are all Republicans we are all Federalists 169 170 Ideologically he stressed equal and exact justice to all men minority rights and freedom of speech religion and press 171 He said that a free and democratic government was the strongest government on earth 171 He nominated moderate Republicans to his cabinet James Madison as secretary of state Henry Dearborn as secretary of war Levi Lincoln as attorney general and Robert Smith as secretary of the navy 170 Widowed since 1782 Jefferson first used his two daughters as hostesses 172 Starting in late May 1801 he asked Dolley Madison wife of his long time friend James Madison to be the permanent White House hostess She accepted realizing the diplomatic importance of the position She was also in charge of the completion of the White House mansion Dolley served as White House hostess for the rest of Jefferson s two terms and then eight more years as First Lady to President James Madison 172 Financial affairs Albert Gallatin Jefferson s Treasury Secretary Stuart 1803 Jefferson s first official challenge was the 83 million national debt 173 He began dismantling Hamilton s Federalist fiscal system with help from the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin 170 Gallatin devised a plan to eliminate the national debt in sixteen years by extensive annual appropriations and reduction in taxes 174 The administration eliminated the whiskey excise and other taxes after closing unnecessary offices and cutting useless establishments and expenses 175 176 Jefferson believed that the First Bank of the United States represented a most deadly hostility to republican government 174 He wanted to dismantle the bank before its charter expired in 1811 but was dissuaded by Gallatin 177 Gallatin argued that the national bank was a useful financial institution and set out to expand its operations 178 Jefferson looked to other corners to address the growing national debt 178 He shrank the Navy for example deeming it unnecessary in peacetime and incorporated a fleet of inexpensive gunboats intended only for local defense to avoid provocation against foreign powers 175 After two terms he had lowered the national debt from 83 million to 57 million 173 Domestic affairs Jefferson pardoned several of those imprisoned under the Alien and Sedition Acts 179 Congressional Republicans repealed the Judiciary Act of 1801 which removed nearly all of Adams s midnight judges from office A subsequent appointment battle led to the Supreme Court s landmark decision in Marbury v Madison asserting judicial review over executive branch actions 180 Jefferson appointed three Supreme Court justices William Johnson 1804 Henry Brockholst Livingston 1807 and Thomas Todd 1807 181 Jefferson strongly felt the need for a national military university producing an officer engineering corps for a national defense based on the advancement of the sciences rather than having to rely on foreign sources for top grade engineers with questionable loyalty 182 He signed the Military Peace Establishment Act on March 16 1802 thus founding the United States Military Academy at West Point The Act documented in 29 sections a new set of laws and limits for the military Jefferson was also hoping to bring reform to the Executive branch replacing Federalists and active opponents throughout the officer corps to promote Republican values 183 Jefferson took great interest in the Library of Congress which had been established in 1800 He often recommended books to acquire In 1802 Congress authorized President Jefferson to name the first Librarian of Congress and formed a committee to establish library rules and regulations Congress also granted the president and vice president the right to use the library 184 Foreign affairs 1801 1805 First Barbary War Main article First Barbary War Barbary Coast of North Africa 1806 Left is Morocco at Gibraltar center is Tunis and right is Tripoli American merchant ships had been protected from Barbary Coast pirates by the Royal Navy when the states were British colonies 185 After independence however pirates often captured U S merchant ships pillaged cargoes and enslaved or held crew members for ransom Jefferson had opposed paying tribute to the Barbary States since 1785 In 1801 he authorized a U S Navy fleet under Commodore Richard Dale to make a show of force in the Mediterranean the first American naval squadron to cross the Atlantic 186 Following the fleet s first engagement he successfully asked Congress for a declaration of war 186 The subsequent First Barbary War was the first foreign war fought by the U S 187 Pasha of Tripoli Yusuf Karamanli captured the USS Philadelphia so Jefferson authorized William Eaton the U S Consul to Tunis to lead a force to restore the pasha s older brother to the throne 188 The American navy forced Tunis and Algiers into breaking their alliance with Tripoli Jefferson ordered five separate naval bombardments of Tripoli leading the pasha to sign a treaty that restored peace in the Mediterranean 189 This victory proved only temporary but according to Wood many Americans celebrated it as a vindication of their policy of spreading free trade around the world and as a great victory for liberty over tyranny 190 Louisiana Purchase Main article Louisiana Purchase The 1803 Louisiana Purchase totaled 827 987 square miles 2 144 480 square kilometers doubling the size of the United States Spain ceded ownership of the Louisiana territory in 1800 to the more predominant France Jefferson was greatly concerned that Napoleon s broad interests in the vast territory would threaten the security of the continent and Mississippi River shipping He wrote that the cession works most sorely on the U S It completely reverses all the political relations of the U S 191 In 1802 he instructed James Monroe and Robert R Livingston to negotiate with Napoleon to purchase New Orleans and adjacent coastal areas from France 192 In early 1803 Jefferson offered Napoleon nearly 10 million for 40 000 square miles 100 000 square kilometers of tropical territory 193 Napoleon realized that French military control was impractical over such a vast remote territory and he was in dire need of funds for his wars on the home front In early April 1803 he unexpectedly made negotiators a counter offer to sell 827 987 square miles 2 144 480 square kilometers of French territory for 15 million doubling the size of the United States 193 U S negotiators seized this unique opportunity and accepted the offer and signed the treaty on April 30 1803 173 Word of the unexpected purchase did not reach Jefferson until July 3 1803 173 He unknowingly acquired the most fertile tract of land of its size on Earth making the new country self sufficient in food and other resources The sale also significantly curtailed the European presence in North America removing obstacles to U S westward expansion 194 Most thought that this was an exceptional opportunity despite Republican reservations about the Constitutional authority of the federal government to acquire land 195 Jefferson initially thought that a Constitutional amendment was necessary to purchase and govern the new territory but he later changed his mind fearing that this would give cause to oppose the purchase and he therefore urged a speedy debate and ratification 196 On October 20 1803 the Senate ratified the purchase treaty by a vote of 24 7 197 Jefferson personally was humble about acquiring the Louisiana Territory but he resented complainers who called the vast domain a howling wilderness 198 After the purchase Jefferson preserved the region s Spanish legal code and instituted a gradual approach to integrating settlers into American democracy He believed that a period of the federal rule would be necessary while Louisianians adjusted to their new nation 199 m Historians have differed in their assessments regarding the constitutional implications of the sale 201 but they typically hail the Louisiana acquisition as a major accomplishment Frederick Jackson Turner called the purchase the most formative event in American history 194 Lewis and Clark Expedition 1803 1806 Main article Lewis and Clark Expedition Lewis and Clark on the Lower Columbia by Charles Marion Russell 1905 Jefferson anticipated further westward settlements due to the Louisiana Purchase and arranged for the exploration and mapping of the uncharted territory He sought to establish a U S claim ahead of competing European interests and to find the rumored Northwest Passage 202 Jefferson and others were influenced by exploration accounts of Le Page du Pratz in Louisiana 1763 and Captain James Cook in the Pacific 1784 203 and they persuaded Congress in 1804 to fund an expedition to explore and map the newly acquired territory to the Pacific Ocean 204 Jefferson appointed Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to be leaders of the Corps of Discovery 1803 1806 205 In the months leading up to the expedition Jefferson tutored Lewis in the sciences of mapping botany natural history mineralogy and astronomy and navigation giving him unlimited access to his library at Monticello which included the largest collection of books in the world on the subject of the geography and natural history of the North American continent along with an impressive collection of maps 206 The expedition lasted from May 1804 to September 1806 see timeline and obtained a wealth of scientific and geographic knowledge including knowledge of many Indian tribes 207 Other expeditionsMain articles Dunbar Hunter Expedition Red River Expedition 1806 and Pike Expedition In addition to the Corps of Discovery Jefferson organized three other western expeditions the William Dunbar and George Hunter Expedition on the Ouachita River 1804 1805 the Thomas Freeman and Peter Custis Expedition 1806 on the Red River and the Zebulon Pike Expedition 1806 1807 into the Rocky Mountains and the Southwest All three produced valuable information about the American frontier 208 Native American affairs Main article Thomas Jefferson and Native Americans Black Hoof leader of the Shawnee accepted Jefferson s Indian assimilation policies Jefferson s experiences with the American Indians began during his boyhood in Virginia and extended through his political career and into his retirement He refuted the contemporary notion that Indians were inferior people and maintained that they were equal in body and mind to people of European descent 209 As governor of Virginia during the Revolutionary War Jefferson recommended moving the Cherokee and Shawnee tribes who had allied with the British to west of the Mississippi River But when he took office as president he quickly took measures to avert another major conflict as American and Indian societies were in collision and the British were inciting Indian tribes from Canada 210 211 In Georgia he stipulated that the state would release its legal claims for lands to its west in exchange for military support in expelling the Cherokee from Georgia This facilitated his policy of western expansion to advance compactly as we multiply 212 In keeping with his Enlightenment thinking President Jefferson adopted an assimilation policy toward American Indians known as his civilization program which included securing peaceful U S Indian treaty alliances and encouraging agriculture Jefferson advocated that Indian tribes should make federal purchases by credit holding their lands as collateral for repayment Various tribes accepted Jefferson s policies including the Shawnees led by Black Hoof the Creek and the Cherokees However some Shawnees broke off from Black Hoof led by Tecumseh and opposed Jefferson s assimilation policies 213 Historian Bernard Sheehan argues that Jefferson believed that assimilation was best for American Indians second best was removal to the west He felt that the worst outcome of the cultural and resources conflict between American citizens and American Indians would be their attacking the whites 211 Jefferson told Secretary of War General Henry Dearborn Indian affairs were then under the War Department If we are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe we will never lay it down until that tribe is exterminated or driven beyond the Mississippi 214 Miller agrees that Jefferson believed that Indians should assimilate to American customs and agriculture Historians such as Peter S Onuf and Merrill D Peterson argue that Jefferson s actual Indian policies did little to promote assimilation and were a pretext to seize lands 215 Re election in 1804 and second term Further information 1804 United States presidential election 1804 Electoral College vote Jefferson s successful first term occasioned his re nomination for president by the Republican party with George Clinton replacing Burr as his running mate 216 The Federalist party ran Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina John Adams s vice presidential candidate in the 1800 election The Jefferson Clinton ticket won overwhelmingly in the electoral college vote by 162 to 14 promoting their achievement of a strong economy lower taxes and the Louisiana Purchase 216 In March 1806 a split developed in the Republican party led by fellow Virginian and former Republican ally John Randolph who viciously accused President Jefferson on the floor of the House of moving too far in the Federalist direction In so doing Randolph permanently set himself apart politically from Jefferson Jefferson and Madison had backed resolutions to limit or ban British imports in retaliation for British seizures of American shipping Also in 1808 Jefferson was the first president to propose a broad Federal plan to build roads and canals across several states asking for 20 million further alarming Randolph and believers of limited government 217 Jefferson s popularity further suffered in his second term due to his response to wars in Europe Positive relations with Great Britain had diminished due partly to the antipathy between Jefferson and British diplomat Anthony Merry After Napoleon s decisive victory at the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805 Napoleon became more aggressive in his negotiations over trading rights which American efforts failed to counter Jefferson then led the enactment of the Embargo Act of 1807 directed at both France and Great Britain This triggered economic chaos in the U S and was strongly criticized at the time resulting in Jefferson having to abandon the policy a year later 218 During the revolutionary era the states abolished the international slave trade but South Carolina reopened it In his annual message of December 1806 Jefferson denounced the violations of human rights attending the international slave trade calling on the newly elected Congress to criminalize it immediately In 1807 Congress passed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves which Jefferson signed 219 220 The act established severe punishment against the international slave trade although it did not address the issue domestically 221 In Haiti Jefferson s neutrality had allowed arms to enable the slave independence movement during its Revolution and blocked attempts to assist Napoleon who was defeated there in 1803 222 But he refused official recognition of the country during his second term in deference to southern complaints about the racial violence against slave holders it was eventually extended to Haiti in 1862 223 Domestically Jefferson s grandson James Madison Randolph became the first child born in the White House in 1806 224 Controversies Burr conspiracy and trial Further information Burr Hamilton duel and Burr conspiracy 1802 portrait of Aaron Burr by John Vanderlyn Following the 1801 electoral deadlock Jefferson s relationship with his vice president former New York Senator Aaron Burr rapidly eroded Jefferson suspected Burr of seeking the presidency for himself while Burr was angered by Jefferson s refusal to appoint some of his supporters to federal office Burr was dropped from the Republican ticket in 1804 The same year Burr was soundly defeated in his bid to be elected New York governor During the campaign Alexander Hamilton publicly made callous remarks regarding Burr s moral character 225 Subsequently Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel mortally wounding him on July 11 1804 Burr was indicted for Hamilton s murder in New York and New Jersey causing him to flee to Georgia although he remained President of the Senate during Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase s impeachment trial 226 Both indictments quietly died and Burr was not prosecuted 227 Also during the election certain New England separatists approached Burr desiring a New England federation and intimating that he would be their leader 228 However nothing came of the plot since Burr had lost the election and his reputation was ruined after killing Hamilton 228 In August 1804 Burr contacted British Minister Anthony Merry offering to cede U S western territory in return for money and British ships 229 After leaving office in April 1805 Burr traveled west and conspired with Louisiana Territory governor James Wilkinson beginning a large scale recruitment for a military expedition 230 Other plotters included Ohio Senator John Smith and an Irishman named Harmon Blennerhassett 230 Burr discussed a number of plots seizing control of Mexico or Spanish Florida or forming a secessionist state in New Orleans or the Western U S Historians remain unclear as to his true goal 231 n In the fall of 1806 Burr launched a military flotilla carrying about 60 men down the Ohio River Wilkinson renounced the plot apparently from self interested motives he reported Burr s expedition to Jefferson who immediately ordered Burr s arrest 230 233 234 On February 13 1807 Burr was captured in Louisiana s Bayou Pierre wilderness and sent to Virginia to be tried for treason 229 Burr s 1807 conspiracy trial became a national issue 235 Jefferson attempted to preemptively influence the verdict by telling Congress that Burr s guilt was beyond question but the case came before his longtime political foe John Marshall who dismissed the treason charge Burr s legal team at one stage subpoenaed Jefferson but Jefferson refused to testify making the first argument for executive privilege Instead Jefferson provided relevant legal documents 236 After a three month trial the jury found Burr not guilty while Jefferson denounced his acquittal 234 237 o 238 Jefferson subsequently removed Wilkinson as territorial governor but retained him in the U S military Historian James N Banner criticized Jefferson for continuing to trust Wilkinson a faithless plotter 234 General Wilkinson misconduct Commanding General James Wilkinson was a holdover of the Washington and Adams administrations Wilkinson was rumored to be a skillful and unscrupolous plotter In 1804 Wilkinson received 12 000 pesos from the Spanish for information on American boundary plans 239 Wilkinson also received advances on his salary and payments on claims submitted to Secretary of War Henry Dearborn This damaging information apparently was unknown to Jefferson In 1805 Jefferson trusted Wilkinson and appointed him Louisiana Territory governor admiring Wilkinson s work ethic In January 1806 Jefferson received information from Kentucky U S Attorney Joseph Davies that Wilkinson was on the Spanish payroll Jefferson took no action against Wilkinson there being at the time a lack of evidence against Wilkinson 240 An investigation by the House in December 1807 exonerated Wilkinson 241 In 1808 a military court looked into Wilkinson but lacked evidence to charge Wilkinson Jefferson retained Wilkinson in the Army and he was passed on by Jefferson to Jefferson s successor James Madison 242 Evidence found in Spanish archives in the 20th century proved Wilkinson was in fact on the Spanish payroll 239 Foreign affairs 1805 1809 Attempted annexation of Florida In the aftermath of the Louisiana Purchase Jefferson attempted to annex West Florida from Spain a nation under the control of Emperor Napoleon and the French Empire after 1804 In his annual message to Congress on December 3 1805 Jefferson railed against Spain over Florida border depredations 243 244 A few days later Jefferson secretly requested a two million dollar expenditure to purchase Florida Representative and floor leader John Randolph however opposed annexation and was upset over Jefferson s secrecy on the matter and believed the money would land in the coffers of Napoleon 245 244 The Two Million Dollar bill passed only after Jefferson successfully maneuvered to replace Randolph with Barnabas Bidwell as floor leader 245 244 This aroused suspicion of Jefferson and charges of undue executive influence over Congress Jefferson signed the bill into law in February 1806 Six weeks later the law was made public The two million dollars was to be given to France as payment in turn to put pressure on Spain to permit the annexation of Florida by the United States France however was in no mood to allow Spain to give up Florida and refused the offer Florida remained under the control of Spain 246 244 The failed venture damaged Jefferson s reputation among his supporters 247 244 Chesapeake Leopard affair Main article Chesapeake Leopard affair HMS Leopard right firing upon USS Chesapeake The British conducted seizures of American shipping to search for British deserters from 1806 to 1807 American citizens were thus impressed into the British naval service In 1806 Jefferson issued a call for a boycott of British goods on April 18 Congress passed the Non Importation Acts but they were never enforced Later that year Jefferson asked James Monroe and William Pinkney to negotiate with Great Britain to end the harassment of American shipping though Britain showed no signs of improving relations The Monroe Pinkney Treaty was finalized but lacked any provisions to end the British policies and Jefferson refused to submit it to the Senate for ratification 248 The British ship HMS Leopard fired upon the USS Chesapeake off the Virginia coast in June 1807 and Jefferson prepared for war 249 He issued a proclamation banning armed British ships from U S waters He presumed unilateral authority to call on the states to prepare 100 000 militia and ordered the purchase of arms ammunition and supplies writing The laws of necessity of self preservation of saving our country when in danger are of higher obligation than strict observance of written laws The USS Revenge was dispatched to demand an explanation from the British government it also was fired upon Jefferson called for a special session of Congress in October to enact an embargo or alternatively to consider war 250 Embargo 1807 1809 Further information Embargo Act of 1807 In December 1807 news arrived that Napoleon had extended the Berlin Decree globally banning British imports In Britain King George III ordered redoubling efforts at impressment including American sailors But the war fever of the summer faded Congress had no appetite to prepare the U S for war Jefferson asked for and received the Embargo Act an alternative that allowed the U S more time to build up defensive works militias and naval forces Later historians have seen the irony in Jefferson s assertion of such federal power Meacham said that the Embargo Act was a projection of power that surpassed the Alien and Sedition Acts and R B Bernstein said that Jefferson was pursuing policies resembling those he had cited in 1776 as grounds for independence and revolution 251 A political cartoon showing merchants dodging the Ograbme which is Embargo spelled backward 1807 In November 1807 Jefferson for several days met with his cabinet to discuss the deteriorating foreign situation 252 Secretary of State James Madison supported the embargo with equal vigor to Jefferson 253 while Treasury Secretary Gallatin opposed it due to its indefinite time frame and the risk that it posed to the policy of American neutrality 254 The U S economy suffered criticism grew and opponents began evading the embargo Instead of retreating Jefferson sent federal agents to secretly track down smugglers and violators 255 Three acts were passed in Congress during 1807 and 1808 called the Supplementary the Additional and the Enforcement acts 249 The government could not prevent American vessels from trading with the European belligerents once they had left American ports although the embargo triggered a devastating decline in exports 249 Most historians consider Jefferson s embargo to have been ineffective and harmful to American interests 256 Appleby describes the strategy as Jefferson s least effective policy and Joseph Ellis calls it an unadulterated calamity 257 Others however portray it as an innovative nonviolent measure which aided France in its war with Britain while preserving American neutrality 258 Jefferson believed that the failure of the embargo was due to selfish traders and merchants showing a lack of republican virtue He maintained that had the embargo been widely observed it would have avoided war in 1812 259 In December 1807 Jefferson announced his intention not to seek a third term He turned his attention increasingly to Monticello during the last year of his presidency giving Madison and Gallatin almost total control of affairs 260 Shortly before leaving office in March 1809 Jefferson signed the repeal of the Embargo In its place the Non Intercourse Act was passed but it proved no more effective 249 The day before Madison was inaugurated as his successor Jefferson said that he felt like a prisoner released from his chains 261 Cabinet The Jefferson cabinetOfficeNameTermPresidentThomas Jefferson1801 1809Vice PresidentAaron Burr1801 1805George Clinton1805 1809Secretary of StateJames Madison1801 1809Secretary of the TreasurySamuel Dexter1801Albert Gallatin1801 1809Secretary of WarHenry Dearborn1801 1809Attorney GeneralLevi Lincoln Sr 1801 1805John Breckinridge1805 1806Caesar Augustus Rodney1807 1809Secretary of the NavyBenjamin Stoddert1801Robert Smith1801 1809Post presidency 1809 1826 Further information Thomas Jefferson and education Portrait of Jefferson by Gilbert Stuart 1821 Following his retirement from the presidency Jefferson continued his pursuit of educational interests he sold his vast collection of books to the Library of Congress and founded and built the University of Virginia 262 Jefferson continued to correspond with many of the country s leaders including his two protegees who succeeded him as president and the Monroe Doctrine bears a strong resemblance to solicited advice that Jefferson gave to Monroe in 1823 263 As he settled into private life at Monticello Jefferson developed a daily routine of rising early He would spend several hours writing letters with which he was often deluged In the midday he would often inspect the plantation on horseback In the evenings his family enjoyed leisure time in the gardens late at night Jefferson would retire to bed with a book 264 However his routine was often interrupted by uninvited visitors and tourists eager to see the icon in his final days turning Monticello into a virtual hotel 265 University of Virginia Main article University of Virginia The University of Virginia Jefferson s Academical Village Jefferson envisioned a university free of church influences where students could specialize in many new areas not offered at other colleges He believed that education engendered a stable society which should provide publicly funded schools accessible to students from all social strata based solely on ability 266 He initially proposed his University in a letter to Joseph Priestley in 1800 267 and in 1819 the 76 year old Jefferson founded the University of Virginia He organized the state legislative campaign for its charter and with the assistance of Edmund Bacon purchased the location He was the principal designer of the buildings planned the university s curriculum and served as the first rector upon its opening in 1825 268 Jefferson was a strong disciple of Greek and Roman architectural styles which he believed to be most representative of American democracy Each academic unit called a pavilion was designed with a two story temple front while the library Rotunda was modeled on the Roman Pantheon Jefferson referred to the university s grounds as the Academical Village and he reflected his educational ideas in its layout The ten pavilions included classrooms and faculty residences they formed a quadrangle and were connected by colonnades behind which stood the students rows of rooms Gardens and vegetable plots were placed behind the pavilions and were surrounded by serpentine walls affirming the importance of the agrarian lifestyle 269 The university had a library rather than a church at its center emphasizing its secular nature a controversial aspect at the time 270 When Jefferson died in 1826 James Madison replaced him as rector 271 Jefferson bequeathed most of his library to the university 272 Only one other ex president has founded a university namely Millard Fillmore who founded the University at Buffalo 273 Reconciliation with Adams In 1804 Abigail Adams attempted to reconcile Jefferson and Adams Jefferson and John Adams had been good friends in the first decades of their political careers serving together in the Continental Congress in the 1770s and in Europe in the 1780s The Federalist Republican split of the 1790s divided them however and Adams felt betrayed by Jefferson s sponsorship of partisan attacks such as those of James Callender Jefferson on the other hand was angered at Adams for his appointment of midnight judges 274 The two men did not communicate directly for more than a decade after Jefferson succeeded Adams as president 275 A brief correspondence took place between Abigail Adams and Jefferson after Jefferson s daughter Polly died in 1804 in an attempt at reconciliation unknown to Adams However an exchange of letters resumed open hostilities between Adams and Jefferson 274 As early as 1809 Benjamin Rush signer of the Declaration of Independence desired that Jefferson and Adams reconcile and began to prod the two through correspondence to re establish contact 274 In 1812 Adams wrote a short New Year s greeting to Jefferson prompted earlier by Rush to which Jefferson warmly responded Thus began what historian David McCullough calls one of the most extraordinary correspondences in American history 276 Over the next fourteen years the former presidents exchanged 158 letters discussing their political differences justifying their respective roles in events and debating the revolution s import to the world 277 When Adams died his last words included an acknowledgment of his longtime friend and rival Thomas Jefferson survives unaware that Jefferson had died several hours before 278 279 Autobiography In 1821 at the age of 77 Jefferson began writing his autobiography in order to state some recollections of dates and facts concerning myself 280 He focused on the struggles and achievements he experienced until July 29 1790 where the narrative stopped short 281 He excluded his youth emphasizing the revolutionary era He related that his ancestors came from Wales to America in the early 17th century and settled in the western frontier of the Virginia colony which influenced his zeal for individual and state rights Jefferson described his father as uneducated but with a strong mind and sound judgement His enrollment in the College of William and Mary and election to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1775 were included 280 He also expressed opposition to the idea of a privileged aristocracy made up of large landowning families partial to the King and instead promoted the aristocracy of virtue and talent which nature has wisely provided for the direction of the interests of society amp scattered with equal hand through all its conditions was deemed essential to a well ordered republic 280 Jefferson gave his insight into people politics and events 280 The work is primarily concerned with the Declaration and reforming the government of Virginia He used notes letters and documents to tell many of the stories within the autobiography He suggested that this history was so rich that his personal affairs were better overlooked but he incorporated a self analysis using the Declaration and other patriotism 282 Greek War of Independence Thomas Jefferson was a philhellene who sympathized with the Greek War of Independence 283 284 He has been described as the most influential of the Founding Fathers who supported the Greek cause 284 285 viewing it as similar to the American Revolution 286 By 1823 Jefferson was exchanging ideas with Greek scholar Adamantios Korais 284 Jefferson advised Korais on building the political system of Greece by using classical liberalism and examples from the American governmental system ultimately prescribing a government akin to that of a U S state 287 He also suggested the application of a classical education system for the newly founded First Hellenic Republic where public education would be made available and pupils would be taught history Latin and Greek 288 Jefferson s philosophical instructions were welcomed by the Greek people 288 Korais became one of the designers of the Greek constitution and urged his associates to study Jefferson s works and other literature from the American Revolution 288 Lafayette s visit Main article Visit of the Marquis de Lafayette to the United States Lafayette in 1824 portrait by Ary Scheffer hanging in U S House of Representatives In the summer of 1824 the Marquis de Lafayette accepted an invitation from President James Monroe to visit the country Jefferson and Lafayette had not seen each other since 1789 After visits to New York New England and Washington Lafayette arrived at Monticello on November 4 268 Jefferson s grandson Randolph was present and recorded the reunion As they approached each other their uncertain gait quickened itself into a shuffling run and exclaiming Ah Jefferson Ah Lafayette they burst into tears as they fell into each other s arms Jefferson and Lafayette then retired to the house to reminisce 289 The next morning Jefferson Lafayette and James Madison attended a tour and banquet at the University of Virginia Jefferson had someone else read a speech he had prepared for Lafayette as his voice was weak and could not carry This was his last public presentation After an 11 day visit Lafayette bid Jefferson goodbye and departed Monticello 290 Final days death and burial Jefferson s gravesite Jefferson s approximately 100 000 of debt weighed heavily on his mind in his final months as it became increasingly clear that he would have little to leave to his heirs In February 1826 he successfully applied to the General Assembly to hold a public lottery as a fundraiser 291 His health began to deteriorate in July 1825 due to a combination of rheumatism from arm and wrist injuries as well as intestinal and urinary disorders 268 and by June 1826 he was confined to bed 291 On July 3 Jefferson was overcome by fever and declined an invitation to Washington to attend an anniversary celebration of the Declaration 292 During the last hours of his life he was accompanied by family members and friends Jefferson died on July 4 at 12 50 p m at age 83 the same day as the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence His last recorded words were No doctor nothing more refusing laudanum from his physician but his final significant words are often cited as Is it the Fourth or This is the Fourth 293 When John Adams died later that same day his last words included an acknowledgment of his longtime friend and rival Thomas Jefferson survives though Adams was unaware that Jefferson had died several hours before 294 295 296 297 The sitting president was Adams s son John Quincy Adams and he called the coincidence of their deaths on the nation s anniversary visible and palpable remarks of Divine Favor 298 Shortly after Jefferson had died attendants found a gold locket on a chain around his neck where it had rested for more than 40 years containing a small faded blue ribbon that tied a lock of his wife Martha s brown hair 299 Jefferson s remains were buried at Monticello under an epitaph that he wrote 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 300 In his advanced years Jefferson became increasingly concerned that people understand the principles in and the people responsible for writing the Declaration of Independence and he continually defended himself as its author He considered the document one of his greatest life achievements in addition to authoring the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom and his founding of the University of Virginia Plainly absent from his epitaph were his political roles including President of the United States 301 Jefferson died deeply in debt unable to pass on his estate freely to his heirs 302 He gave instructions in his will for disposal of his assets 303 including the freeing of Sally Hemings s children 304 but his estate possessions and slaves were sold at public auctions starting in 1827 305 In 1831 Monticello was sold by Martha Jefferson Randolph and the other heirs 306 Political social and religious viewsJefferson subscribed to the political ideals expounded by John Locke Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton whom he considered the three greatest men who ever lived 7 8 He was also influenced by the writings of Gibbon Hume Robertson Bolingbroke Montesquieu and Voltaire 9 Jefferson thought that the independent yeoman and agrarian life were ideals of republican virtues He distrusted cities and financiers favored decentralized government power and believed that the tyranny that had plagued the common man in Europe was due to corrupt political establishments and monarchies He supported efforts to disestablish the Church of England 307 wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom and he pressed for a wall of separation between church and state 308 The Republicans under Jefferson were strongly influenced by the 18th century British Whig Party which believed in limited government 309 His Democratic Republican Party became dominant in early American politics and his views became known as Jeffersonian democracy 310 311 Philosophy society and government Jefferson wrote letters and speeches prolifically and these show him to be conversant and well read in the philosophical literature of his day and of antiquity Nevertheless some scholars do not take Jefferson seriously as a philosopher mainly because he did not produce a formal work on philosophy However he has been described as one of the most outstanding philosophical figures of his time because his work provided the theoretical background to and the substance of the social and political events of the revolutionary years and the period of the development of the American Constitution in the 1770s and 1780s 312 Jefferson continued to attend to more theoretical questions of natural philosophy and subsequently left behind a rich philosophical legacy in the form of presidential messages letters to philosophically minded people and public papers 313 Jefferson described himself as an Epicurean and although he adopted the Stoic belief in intuition and found comfort in the Stoic emphasis on the patient endurance of misfortune he rejected most aspects of Stoicism with the notable exception of Epictetus works 314 315 He rejected the Stoics doctrine of a separable soul and their fatalism and was angered by their misrepresentation of Epicureanism as mere hedonism 315 Jefferson knew Epicurean philosophy from original sources but also mentioned Pierre Gassendi s Syntagma philosophicum as an influential source for his ideas on Epicureanism 316 According to Jefferson s philosophy citizens have certain inalienable rights and rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others 317 A staunch advocate of the jury system to protect people s liberties he proclaimed in 1801 I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution 318 Jeffersonian government not only prohibited individuals in society from infringing on the liberty of others but also restrained itself from diminishing individual liberty as a protection against tyranny from the majority 319 Initially Jefferson favored restricted voting to those who could actually have the free exercise of their reason by escaping any corrupting dependence on others He advocated enfranchising a majority of Virginians seeking to expand suffrage to include yeoman farmers who owned their own land while excluding tenant farmers city day laborers vagrants most American Indians and women 320 He was convinced that individual liberties were the fruit of political equality which was threatened by the arbitrary government 321 Excesses of democracy in his view were caused by institutional corruption rather than human nature He was less suspicious of a working democracy than many contemporaries 320 As president Jefferson feared that the federal system enacted by Washington and Adams had encouraged corrupting patronage and dependence He tried to restore a balance between the state and federal governments more nearly reflecting the Articles of Confederation seeking to reinforce state prerogatives where his party was in a majority 320 Jefferson was steeped in the British Whig tradition of the oppressed majority set against a repeatedly unresponsive court party in the Parliament He justified small outbreaks of rebellion as necessary to get monarchial regimes to amend oppressive measures compromising popular liberties In a republican regime ruled by the majority he acknowledged it will often be exercised when wrong 322 But the remedy is to set them right as to facts pardon and pacify them 323 As Jefferson saw his party triumph in two terms of his presidency and launch into a third term under James Madison his view of the U S as a continental republic and an empire of liberty grew more upbeat On departing the presidency in 1809 he described America as trusted with the destines of this solitary republic of the world the only monument of human rights and the sole depository of the sacred fire of freedom and self government 324 Democracy Thomas Jefferson at age 78 Portrait by Thomas Sully hanging at West Point commissioned by Faculty and Cadets 1821 Jefferson considered democracy to be the expression of society and promoted national self determination cultural uniformity and education of all males of the commonwealth 325 He supported public education and a free press as essential components of a democratic nation 326 After resigning as secretary of state in 1795 Jefferson focused on the electoral bases of the Republicans and Federalists The Republican classification for which he advocated included the entire body of landholders everywhere and the body of laborers without land 327 Republicans united behind Jefferson as vice president with the election of 1796 expanding democracy nationwide at grassroots levels 328 Jefferson promoted Republican candidates for local offices 329 Beginning with Jefferson s electioneering for the revolution of 1800 his political efforts were based on egalitarian appeals 330 In his later years he referred to the 1800 election as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of 76 was in its form one not effected indeed by the sword but by the suffrage of the people 331 Voter participation grew during Jefferson s presidency increasing to unimaginable levels compared to the Federalist Era with turnout of about 67 000 in 1800 rising to about 143 000 in 1804 332 At the onset of the Revolution Jefferson accepted William Blackstone s argument that property ownership would sufficiently empower voters independent judgement but he sought to further expand suffrage by land distribution to the poor 333 In the heat of the Revolutionary Era and afterward several states expanded voter eligibility from landed gentry to all propertied male tax paying citizens with Jefferson s support 334 In retirement he gradually became critical of his home state for violating the principle of equal political rights the social right of universal male suffrage 335 He sought a general suffrage of all taxpayers and militia men and equal representation by population in the General Assembly to correct preferential treatment of the slave holding regions 336 Religion Main article Religious views of Thomas Jefferson The Jefferson Bible featuring only the words of Jesus from the evangelists in parallel Greek Latin French and English Jefferson by Gilbert Stuart in 1805 Baptized in his youth Jefferson became a governing member of his local Episcopal Church in Charlottesville which he later attended with his daughters 337 Jefferson however spurned Biblical views of Christianity 338 Influenced by Deist authors during his college years Jefferson abandoned orthodox Christianity after his review of New Testament teachings 339 340 Jefferson has sometimes been portrayed as a follower of the liberal religious strand of Deism that values reason over revelation 341 Nonetheless in 1803 Jefferson asserted I am Christian in the only sense in which Jesus wished any one to be 220 Jefferson later defined being a Christian as one who followed the simple teachings of Jesus Influenced by Joseph Priestley 341 Jefferson selected New Testament passages of Jesus teachings into a private work he called The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth known today as the Jefferson Bible never published during his lifetime 342 343 Jefferson believed that Jesus message had been obscured and corrupted by Paul the Apostle the Gospel writers and Protestant reformers 341 Peterson states that Jefferson was a theist whose God was the Creator of the universe all the evidences of nature testified to His perfection and man could rely on the harmony and beneficence of His work 344 In a letter to John Adams Jefferson wrote that what he believed was genuinely Christ s found in the Gospels was as easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill 338 By omitting miracles and the resurrection Jefferson made the figure of Jesus more compatible with a worldview based on reason 338 Jefferson was firmly anticlerical writing in every age the priest has been hostile to liberty they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon 345 The full letter to Horatio Spatford can be read at the National Archives 346 Jefferson once supported banning clergy from public office but later relented 347 In 1777 he drafted the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom Ratified in 1786 it made compelling attendance or contributions to any state sanctioned religious establishment illegal and declared that men shall be free to profess their opinions in matters of religion 348 The Statute is one of only three accomplishments he chose to have inscribed in the epitaph on his gravestone 349 350 Early in 1802 Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Connecticut Baptist Association that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man and his God He interpreted the First Amendment as having built a wall of separation between Church and State 351 The phrase Separation of Church and State has been cited several times by the Supreme Court in its interpretation of the Establishment Clause Jefferson donated to the American Bible Society saying the Four Evangelists delivered a pure and sublime system of morality to humanity He thought Americans would rationally create Apiarian religion extracting the best traditions of every denomination 352 And he contributed generously to several local denominations near Monticello 353 Acknowledging organized religion would always be factored into political life for good or ill he encouraged reason over supernatural revelation to make inquiries into religion He believed in a creator god an afterlife and the sum of religion as loving God and neighbors But he also controversially rejected fundamental Christian beliefs denying the conventional Christian Trinity Jesus s divinity as the Son of God and miracles the Resurrection of Christ atonement from sin and original sin 354 355 343 Jefferson believed that the original sin was a gross injustice and that God did not condemn all of humanity by the transgression of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden 343 Jefferson s unorthodox religious beliefs became an important issue in the 1800 presidential election 356 Federalists attacked him as an atheist As president Jefferson countered the accusations by praising religion in his inaugural address and attending services at the Capitol 356 Banks Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton national bank proponent and Jefferson s adversary Jefferson distrusted government banks and opposed public borrowing which he thought created long term debt bred monopolies and invited dangerous speculation as opposed to productive labor 357 In one letter to Madison he argued each generation should curtail all debt within 19 years and not impose a long term debt on subsequent generations 358 In 1791 President Washington asked Jefferson then secretary of state and Hamilton the secretary of the treasury if the Congress had the authority to create a national bank While Hamilton believed Congress had the authority Jefferson and Madison thought a national bank would ignore the needs of individuals and farmers and would violate the Tenth Amendment by assuming powers not granted to the federal government by the states 359 Hamilton successfully argued that the implied powers given to the federal government in the Constitution supported the creation of a national bank among other federal actions Jefferson used agrarian resistance to banks and speculators as the first defining principle of an opposition party recruiting candidates for Congress on the issue as early as 1792 360 As president Jefferson was persuaded by Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin to leave the bank intact but sought to restrain its influence 361 p Slavery Main article Thomas Jefferson and slavery Jefferson s 1795 Farm Book page 30 lists 163 slaves at Monticello Jefferson lived in a planter economy largely dependent upon slavery and as a wealthy landholder used slave labor for his household plantation and workshops He first recorded his slaveholding in 1774 when he counted 41 enslaved people 363 Over his lifetime he owned about 600 slaves he inherited about 175 people while most of the remainder were people born on his plantations 364 Jefferson purchased some slaves in order to reunite their families He sold approximately 110 people for economic reasons primarily slaves from his outlying farms 364 365 In 1784 when the number of slaves he owned likely was approximately 200 he began to divest himself of many slaves and by 1794 he had divested himself of 161 individuals 366 q Approximately 100 slaves lived at Monticello at any given time In 1817 the plantation recorded its largest slave population of 140 individuals 367 Jefferson once said My first wish is that the labourers may be well treated 364 Jefferson did not work his slaves on Sundays and Christmas and he allowed them more personal time during the winter months 368 Some scholars doubt Jefferson s benevolence 369 however noting cases of excessive slave whippings in his absence His nail factory was staffed only by enslaved children Many of the enslaved boys became tradesmen Burwell Colbert who started his working life as a child in Monticello s Nailery was later promoted to the supervisory position of butler 370 Jefferson felt slavery was harmful to both slave and master but had reservations about releasing slaves from captivity and advocated for gradual emancipation 371 372 373 In 1779 he proposed gradual voluntary training and resettlement to the Virginia legislature and three years later drafted legislation allowing slaveholders to free their own slaves 74 In his draft of the Declaration of Independence he included a section stricken by other Southern delegates criticizing King George III for supposedly forcing slavery onto the colonies 374 In 1784 Jefferson proposed the abolition of slavery in all western U S territories limiting slave importation to 15 years 375 Congress however failed to pass his proposal by one vote 375 In 1787 Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance a partial victory for Jefferson that terminated slavery in the Northwest Territory Jefferson freed his slave Robert Hemings in 1794 and he freed his cook slave James Hemings in 1796 376 Jefferson freed his runaway slave Harriet Hemings in 1822 377 Upon his death in 1826 Jefferson freed five male Hemings slaves in his will 378 During his presidency Jefferson allowed the diffusion of slavery into the Louisiana Territory hoping to prevent slave uprisings in Virginia and to prevent South Carolina secession 379 In 1804 in a compromise on the slavery issue Jefferson and Congress banned domestic slave trafficking for one year into the Louisiana Territory 380 In 1806 he officially called for anti slavery legislation terminating the import or export of slaves Congress passed the law in 1807 371 381 382 In 1819 Jefferson strongly opposed a Missouri statehood application amendment that banned domestic slave importation and freed slaves at the age of 25 on grounds it would destroy the union 383 In Notes on the State of Virginia he created controversy by calling slavery a moral evil for which the nation would ultimately have to account to God 384 Jefferson wrote of his suspicion that Black people were mentally and physically inferior to Whites but argued that they nonetheless had innate human rights 371 385 386 He therefore supported colonization plans that would transport freed slaves to another country such as Liberia or Sierra Leone though he recognized the impracticability of such proposals 387 During his presidency Jefferson was for the most part publicly silent on the issue of slavery and emancipation 388 as the Congressional debate over slavery and its extension caused a dangerous north south rift among the states with talk of a northern confederacy in New England 389 r The violent attacks on white slave owners during the Haitian Revolution due to injustices under slavery supported Jefferson s fears of a race war increasing his reservations about promoting emancipation at that time 371 390 After numerous attempts and failures to bring about emancipation 391 Jefferson wrote privately in an 1805 letter to William A Burwell I have long since given up the expectation of any early provision for the extinguishment of slavery among us That same year he also related this idea to George Logan writing I have most carefully avoided every public act or manifestation on that subject 392 Historical assessment Scholars remain divided on whether Jefferson truly condemned slavery and how he changed 377 393 Francis D Cogliano traces the development of competing emancipationist then revisionist and finally contextualist interpretations from the 1960s to the present The emancipationist view held by the various scholars at the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Douglas L Wilson John Ferling and others maintains Jefferson was an opponent of slavery all his life noting that he did what he could within the limited range of options available to him to undermine it his many attempts at abolition legislation the manner in which he provided for slaves and his advocacy of their more humane treatment 394 395 396 s 397 One month before the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves came into effect in his annual message to Congress Jefferson denounced the violations of human rights He said I congratulate you fellow citizens on the approach of the period at which you may interpose your authority constitutionally to withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights which have been so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa and which the morality the reputation and the best interests of our country have long been eager to proscribe 398 The revisionist view advanced by Paul Finkelman and others criticizes him for holding slaves and for acting contrary to his words Jefferson never freed most of his slaves and he remained silent on the issue while he was president 388 399 Contextualists such as Joseph J Ellis emphasize a change in Jefferson s thinking from his emancipationist views before 1783 noting Jefferson s shift toward public passivity and procrastination on policy issues related to slavery Jefferson seemed to yield to public opinion by 1794 as he laid the groundwork for his first presidential campaign against Adams in 1796 400 Historian Henry Wiencek said Jefferson rationalized an abomination to the point where an absolute moral reversal was reached and he made slavery fit into America s national enterprise 401 Jefferson Hemings controversy Main article Jefferson Hemings controversy See also Sally Hemings Jefferson depicted as a rooster and Hemings as a hen Claims that Jefferson fathered Sally Hemings s children have been debated since 1802 That year James T Callender after being denied a position as postmaster alleged Jefferson had taken Hemings as a concubine and fathered several children with her 402 In 1998 a panel of researchers conducted a Y DNA study of living descendants of Jefferson s uncle Field and of a descendant of Hemings s son Eston Hemings The results released in November 1998 showed a match with the male Jefferson line 403 404 Subsequently the Thomas Jefferson Foundation TJF formed a nine member research team of historians to assess the matter 404 In January 2000 revised 2011 404 the TJF report concluded that the DNA study indicates a high probability that Thomas Jefferson fathered Eston Hemings 404 405 t The TJF also concluded that Jefferson likely fathered all of Hemings s children listed at Monticello 404 u In July 2017 the TJF announced that archeological excavations at Monticello had revealed what they believe to have been Sally Hemings s quarters adjacent to Jefferson s bedroom 407 408 In 2018 the TJF said that it considered the issue a settled historical matter 409 Since the results of the DNA tests were made public the consensus among most historians has been that Jefferson had a sexual relationship with Sally Hemings and that he was the father of her son Eston Hemings 410 Still a minority of scholars maintain the evidence is insufficient to prove Jefferson s paternity conclusively Based on DNA and other evidence they note the possibility that additional Jefferson males including his brother Randolph Jefferson and any one of Randolph s four sons or his cousin could have fathered Eston Hemings or Sally Hemings s other children 411 In 2002 historian Merrill Peterson said in the absence of direct documentary evidence either proving or refuting the allegation nothing conclusive can be said about Jefferson s relations with Sally Hemings 412 Concerning the 1998 DNA study Peterson said the results of the DNA testing of Jefferson and Hemings descendants provided support for the idea that Jefferson was the father of at least one of Sally Hemings s children 412 After Thomas Jefferson s death although not formally manumitted Sally Hemings was allowed by Jefferson s daughter Martha to live in Charlottesville as a free woman with her two sons until her death in 1835 413 v The Monticello Association refused to allow Sally Hemings descendants the right of burial at Monticello 415 Interests and activities Virginia State Capitol designed by Jefferson wings added later Jefferson was a farmer obsessed with new crops soil conditions garden designs and scientific agricultural techniques His main cash crop was tobacco but its price was usually low and it was rarely profitable He tried to achieve self sufficiency with wheat vegetables flax corn hogs sheep poultry and cattle to supply his family slaves and employees but he lived perpetually beyond his means 416 and was always in debt 417 In the field of architecture Jefferson helped popularize the Neo Palladian style in the United States utilizing designs for the Virginia State Capitol the University of Virginia Monticello and others 418 It has been speculated that he was inspired by the Chateau de Rastignac in south west France the plans of which he saw during his ambassadorship to convince the architect of the White House to modify the South Portico to resemble the chateau 419 Jefferson mastered architecture through self study using various books and classical architectural designs of the day His primary authority was Andrea Palladio s 1570 The Four Books of Architecture which outlines the principles of classical design 420 He was interested in birds and wine and was a noted gourmet he was also a prolific writer and linguist and spoke several languages 421 As a naturalist he was fascinated by the Natural Bridge geological formation and in 1774 successfully acquired the Bridge by a grant from George III 422 American Philosophical Society Jefferson was a member of the American Philosophical Society for 35 years beginning in 1780 Through the society he advanced the sciences and Enlightenment ideals emphasizing that knowledge of science reinforced and extended freedom 423 His Notes on the State of Virginia was written in part as a contribution to the society 424 He became the society s third president on March 3 1797 a few months after he was elected Vice President of the United States 424 425 In accepting Jefferson stated I feel no qualification for this distinguished post but a sincere zeal for all the objects of our institution and an ardent desire to see knowledge so disseminated through the mass of mankind that it may at length reach even the extremes of society beggars and kings 423 Jefferson served as APS president for the next eighteen years including through both terms of his presidency 424 He introduced Meriwether Lewis to the society where various scientists tutored him in preparation for the Lewis and Clark Expedition 424 426 He resigned on January 20 1815 but remained active through correspondence 427 Linguistics Jefferson had a lifelong interest in linguistics and could speak read and write in a number of languages including French Greek Italian and German In his early years he excelled in classical language while at boarding school 428 where he received a classical education in Greek and Latin 429 Jefferson later came to regard the Greek language as the perfect language as expressed in its laws and philosophy 430 While attending the College of William amp Mary he taught himself Italian 431 Here Jefferson first became familiar with the Anglo Saxon language especially as it was associated with English Common law and system of government and studied the language in a linguistic and philosophical capacity He owned 17 volumes of Anglo Saxon texts and grammar and later wrote an essay on the Anglo Saxon language 428 Jefferson claimed to have taught himself Spanish during his nineteen day journey to France using only a grammar guide and a copy of Don Quixote 432 Linguistics played a significant role in how Jefferson modeled and expressed political and philosophical ideas He believed that the study of ancient languages was essential in understanding the roots of modern language 433 He collected and understood a number of American Indian vocabularies and instructed Lewis and Clark to record and collect various Indian languages during their Expedition 434 When Jefferson moved from Washington after his presidency he packed 50 Native American vocabulary lists in a chest and transported them on a riverboat back to Monticello along with the rest of his possessions Somewhere along the journey a thief stole the heavy chest thinking it was full of valuables but its contents were dumped into the James River when the thief discovered it was only filled with papers Subsequently 30 years of collecting were lost with only a few fragments rescued from the muddy banks of the river 435 Jefferson was not an outstanding orator and preferred to communicate through writing or remain silent if possible Instead of delivering his State of the Union addresses himself Jefferson wrote the annual messages and sent a representative to read them aloud in Congress This started a tradition that continued until 1913 when President Woodrow Wilson 1913 1921 chose to deliver his own State of the Union address 436 Inventions Jefferson invented many small practical devices and improved contemporary inventions including a revolving book stand and a Great Clock powered by the gravitational pull on cannonballs He improved the pedometer the polygraph a device for duplicating writing 437 and the moldboard plow an idea he never patented and gave to posterity 438 Jefferson can also be credited as the creator of the swivel chair the first of which he created and used to write much of the Declaration of Independence 439 He first opposed patents and later supported them In 1790 1793 as Secretary of State he was the ex officio head of the three person patent review board the Secretary of War and the Attorney General being the other two patent reviewers He drafted reforms of US patent law which lead to him being relieved of this duty in 1793 and also drastically changed the patent system 440 As Minister to France Jefferson was impressed by the military standardization program known as the Systeme Gribeauval and initiated a program as president to develop interchangeable parts for firearms For his inventiveness and ingenuity he received several honorary Doctor of Law degrees 441 LegacyHistorical reputation Jefferson is an icon of individual liberty democracy and republicanism hailed as the author of the Declaration of Independence an architect of the American Revolution and a renaissance man who promoted science and scholarship 442 The participatory democracy and expanded suffrage he championed defined his era and became a standard for later generations 443 Meacham opined that Jefferson was the most influential figure of the democratic republic in its first half century succeeded by presidential adherents James Madison James Monroe Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren 444 Jefferson is recognized for having written more than 18 000 letters of political and philosophical substance during his life which Francis D Cogliano describes as a documentary legacy unprecedented in American history in its size and breadth 445 Jefferson s reputation declined during the American Civil War due to his support of states rights In the late 19th century his legacy was widely criticized conservatives felt that his democratic philosophy had led to that era s populist movement while Progressives sought a more activist federal government than Jefferson s philosophy allowed Both groups saw Alexander Hamilton as vindicated by history rather than Jefferson and President Woodrow Wilson even described Jefferson as though a great man not a great American 446 In the 1930s Jefferson was held in higher esteem President Franklin D Roosevelt 1933 1945 and New Deal Democrats celebrated his struggles for the common man and reclaimed him as their party s founder Jefferson became a symbol of American democracy in the incipient Cold War and the 1940s and 1950s saw the zenith of his popular reputation 447 Following the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s Jefferson s slaveholding came under new scrutiny particularly after DNA testing in the late 1990s supported allegations that he had fathered multiple children with Sally Hemings 448 Jefferson Memorial Washington D C Thomas Jefferson Memorial Statue by Rudulph Evans 1947 Jefferson on the 2 bill Jefferson s BirthplaceNoting the huge output of scholarly books on Jefferson in recent years historian Gordon Wood summarizes the raging debates about Jefferson s stature Although many historians and others are embarrassed about his contradictions and have sought to knock him off the democratic pedestal his position though shaky still seems secure 449 The Siena Research Institute poll of presidential scholars begun in 1982 has consistently ranked Jefferson as one of the five best U S presidents 450 and a 2015 Brookings Institution poll of American Political Science Association members ranked him as the fifth greatest president 451 In 2020 historian Annette Gordon Reed said that Jefferson s vision of equality did not include all people as it primarily excluded both blacks and women Jefferson believed that Native peoples could be citizens as long as they agreed to assimilate into white society According to her Jefferson put little effort into obtaining freedom for black slaves as he did for white colonists from Britain She also said that Jefferson was doubtful of the intellectual capacity of blacks compared to whites and also was hesitant to advocate or examine the equality of women 452 The assertion in the Declaration of Independence that it was self evident that all men are created equal inspired women men blacks and whites to pursue equality 452 Others contend that Jefferson included women as well as men when he wrote that all men are created equal and that he believed in women s natural equality as expressed in Notes on the State of Virginia 453 Memorials and honors Further information List of places named for Thomas Jefferson Mount Rushmore National Memorial by Gutzon Borglum left to right George Washington Thomas Jefferson Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln Jefferson has been memorialized with buildings sculptures postage and currency In the 1920s Jefferson together with George Washington Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln was chosen by sculptor Gutzon Borglum and approved by President Calvin Coolidge to be depicted in stone at the Mount Rushmore Memorial 454 The Jefferson Memorial was dedicated in Washington D C in 1943 on the 200th anniversary of Jefferson s birth The interior of the memorial includes a 19 foot 6 m statue of Jefferson by Rudulph Evans and engravings of passages from Jefferson s writings Most prominent are the words inscribed around the monument near the roof I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man 455 In October 2021 in response to lobbying by activists the New York City Public Design Commission voted unanimously to remove a statue of the former president from the New York City Council chamber where it had stood for more than a century 456 The statue was taken down in November 2021 457 WritingsA Summary View of the Rights of British America 1774 Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms 1775 Declaration of Independence 1776 Memorandums taken on a journey from Paris into the southern parts of France and Northern Italy in the year 1787 Notes on the State of Virginia 1781 Plan for Establishing Uniformity in the Coinage Weights and Measures of the United States A report submitted to Congress 1790 An Essay Towards Facilitating Instruction in the Anglo Saxon and Modern Dialects of the English Language 1796 Manual of Parliamentary Practice for the Use of the Senate of the United States 1801 Autobiography 1821 458 Jefferson Bible or The Life and Morals of Jesus of NazarethSee alsoList of presidents of the United States List of presidents of the United States by previous experience List of presidents of the United States who owned slaves Declaration of independence United States Declaration of Independence Memorial to the 56 Signers of the Declaration of Independence Founders Online List of abolitionist forerunners Jefferson Monroe Levy Clotel or The President s Daughter an 1853 novel by William Wells Brown Seconds pendulumNotes Old Style April 2 1743 Jefferson personally showed little interest in his ancestry on his father s side he only knew of the existence of his grandfather 18 19 Malone writes that Jefferson vaguely knew that his grandfather had a place on the Fluvanna River which he called Snowden after a mountain in Wales near which the Jeffersons were supposed to have once lived 18 See also Peter Jefferson Ancestry His other properties included Shadwell Tufton Lego Pantops and his retreat Poplar Forest He also owned the unimproved mountaintop Montalto and the Natural Bridge 51 While the news from Francis Eppes with whom Lucy was staying did not reach Jefferson until 1785 in an undated letter 61 it is clear that the year of her death was 1784 from another letter to Jefferson from James Currie dated November 20 1784 62 Adams recorded his exchange with Jefferson on the question Jefferson asked Why will you not You ought to do it To which Adams responded I will not reasons enough Jefferson replied What can be your reasons and Adams responded Reason first you are a Virginian and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business Reason second I am obnoxious suspected and unpopular You are very much otherwise Reason third you can write ten times better than I can Well said Jefferson if you are decided I will do as well as I can Adams concluded Very well When you have drawn it up we will have a meeting 72 Franklin seated beside the author observed him writhing a little under the acrimonious criticisms on some of its parts 78 The entail laws made it perpetual the one who inherited the land could not sell it but had to bequeath it to his oldest son As a result increasingly large plantations worked by white tenant farmers and by black slaves gained in size and wealth and political power in the eastern Tidewater tobacco areas 86 During the Revolutionary era all such laws were repealed by the states that had them 87 the immediate successor to the Second Continental Congress These included Russia Austria Prussia Denmark Saxony Hamburg Spain Portugal Naples Sardinia The Papal States Venice Genoa Tuscany the Sublime Porte Morocco Algiers Tunis and Tripoli 114 An example can be seen at the Library of Congress website Jefferson s Kentucky draft said where powers are assumed which have not been delegated a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy that every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact casus non fœderis to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits 154 This electoral process problem was addressed by the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1804 which provided separate votes for presidential and vice presidential candidates 164 Louisiana nevertheless gained statehood nine years later in 1812 200 Further complicating matters Wilkinson was posthumously revealed to have been in the simultaneous pay of the British French and Spanish 232 Burr then left for Europe and eventually returned to practicing law The First Bank of the U S was eventually abolished in 1811 by a heavily Republican Congress 362 The 135 slaves which included Betty Hemings and her ten children that Jefferson acquired from Wayles s estate made him the second largest slave owner in Albemarle County with a total of 187 slaves The number fluctuated from around 200 slaves until 1784 when he began to give away or sell slaves By 1794 he had gotten rid of 161 individuals 366 Aaron Burr was offered help in obtaining the governorship of New York by Timothy Pickering if he could persuade New York to go along but the secession effort failed when Burr lost the election For examples of each historian s view see Wilson Douglas L Thomas Jefferson and the Issue of Character The Atlantic November 1992 Finkelman 1994 Thomas Jefferson and Antislavery The Myth Goes On and Joseph J Ellis 1996 American Sphinx the character of Thomas Jefferson The minority report authored by White Wallenborn concluded the historical evidence is not substantial enough to confirm nor for that matter to refute his paternity of any of the children of Sally Hemings The DNA studies certainly enhance the possibility but do not prove Thomas Jefferson s paternity 406 Sally Heming s children recorded at Monticello included Harriet born 1795 died in infancy Beverly born 1798 an unnamed daughter born 1799 died in infancy Harriet born 1801 Madison born 1805 and Eston born 1808 404 Annette Gordon Reed notes that it would have been legally challenging to free Sally Hemings due to Virginia laws mandating the support of older slaves and requiring special permission for freed slaves to remain within the state 414 References McDonnell Michael Jefferson Thomas as Governor of Virginia Encyclopedia Virginia Retrieved October 13 2022 a b Virginia Historical Society April 1897 House of Burgesses 1766 to 1775 Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 4 4 380 86 JSTOR 4241983 Retrieved October 13 2022 Matthews Richard K 1984 The radical politics of Thomas Jefferson a revisionist view Lawrence Kan University Press of Kansas p 18 ISBN 0 7006 0256 9 OCLC 10605658 a b From Thomas Jefferson to William Short 31 October 1819 May 24 2019 Archived from the original on May 24 2019 Retrieved January 3 2022 Burstein Andrew October 2007 Review Jefferson in Confucian Relief JSTOR 25096753 a href Template Cite journal html title Template Cite journal cite journal a Cite journal requires journal help Thompson Kirill October 2015 Traditional Chinese Concepts and 17th 18th Century Enlightenment Ideals Reflections on the IHS Conference on Freedom Equality Democracy and the Rise of Market Economy October 2015 Retrieved January 1 2021 a b Hayes 2008 p 10 a b Cogliano 2008 p 14 a b Cogliano 2008 p 26 Dahl Robert 1998 On Democracy New Haven CT Yale University Press p 104 ISBN 9780300076271 John D Bessler The Birth of American Law An Italian Philosopher and the American Revolution Durham NC Carolina Academic Press Hitchens Christopher October 13 2009 Thomas Jefferson Author of America Harper Collins ISBN 9780061753978 Archived from the original on November 6 2021 Retrieved March 19 2021 Bernstein Richard B May 6 2004 Thomas Jefferson The Revolution of Ideas Oxford University Press p 78 Meacham 2013 p 522 Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings A Brief Account Retrieved October 28 2020 Gordon Reed Annette 1997 Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings An American Controversy University of Virginia Press pp 111 112 ISBN 978 0813918334 Tucker 1837 v 1 p 18 a b c Malone 1948 pp 5 6 Brodie 1974 pp 33 34 Malone 1948 pp 31 33 Woods Edgar 1901 Albemarle County in Virginia Charlottesville VA The Michie Company printers p 225 Bernstein Richard B 2003 Thomas Jefferson New York Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0195169119 OCLC 51854624 Malone 1948 pp 437 440 Tucker 1837 v 1 p 19 a b Bowers 1945 pp 12 13 Peterson 1970 pp 7 9 Bowers 1945 p 13 Meacham 2012 p 36 Bowers 1945 pp 14 15 Bowers 1945 p 25 Boles 2017 p 17 Bowers 1945 pp 22 23 Boles 2017 p 18 Meacham 2012 pp 29 39 Meacham 2012 pp 19 28 29 Chinard 1926 book cover Bowers 1945 pp 32 34 Boles 2017 p 19 Meacham 2012 p 37 Tucker 1837 v 1 p 42 Ferling 2000 p 43 Murray S 2009 The library An illustrated history Skyhorse Publishing p 163 Library of Congress Boles 2017 p 458 Root Daniel October 12 2015 I cannot live without books UWIRE Text Meacham 2012 pp 11 49 Tucker 1837 v 1 p 40 Meacham 2012 pp 47 49 Gordon Reed 2008 p 348 a b Gordon Reed 2008 pp 99 100 Meacham 2012 p 49 Konig David T Encyclopedia Virginia Meacham 2012 pp 71 73 Bear 1967 p 51 Building Monticello Retrieved April 21 2020 TJF Monticello House FAQ Who built the house Ellis 1996 pp 142 144 They Did What 15 Famous People Who Actually Married Their Cousins Retrieved August 24 2019 a b Tucker 1837 v 1 p 47 Roberts 1993 Malone 1948 p 53 Malone 1948 pp 47 158 Lucy Jefferson 1782 1784 Thomas Jefferson s Monticello Retrieved February 17 2020 Boyd Julian P ed 1953 To Thomas Jefferson from Francis Eppes 14 October 1784 The Papers of Thomas Jefferson vol 7 March 2 1784 February 25 1785 Princeton NJ Princeton University Press pp 441 442 Retrieved September 29 2019 via Founders Online National Archives Boyd Julian P ed 1953 To Thomas Jefferson from James Currie 20 November 1784 The Papers of Thomas Jefferson vol 7 March 2 1784 February 25 1785 Princeton NJ Princeton University Press pp 538 539 Retrieved September 29 2019 via Founders Online National Archives a b White House Archives Gordon Reed 2008 p 145 Meacham 2012 p 53 Halliday 2009 pp 48 53 TJF Monticello Construction Bernstein 2003 p 109 Bowers 1945 p v Tucker 1837 v 1 p 77 Meacham 2012 pp 103 104 Peterson 1970 p 87 Meacham 2012 p 102 Maier 1997 p 104 a b c Meacham 2012 p 105 Shipler David K The Paragraph Missing From The Declaration of Independence The Shipler Report July 4 2020 a b Ellis 1996 p 50 Williams Yohuru June 29 2020 Why Thomas Jefferson s Anti Slavery Passage Was Removed from the Declaration of Independence Why was the Declaration s anti slavery passage removed History Archived from the original on July 2 2020 Retrieved July 2 2020 Tucker 1837 p 90 Meacham 2012 p 110 Ellis 2008 pp 55 56 Brodie 1974 p 112 a b Peterson 1970 pp 101 102 114 140 Ferling 2004 p 26 Tucker 1837 v 1 p 102 Bernstein 2003 p 42 Peterson 1970 pp 134 142 Bernstein 2003 pp 68 69 a b c Brewer Holly 1997 Entailing Aristocracy in Colonial Virginia Ancient Feudal Restraints and Revolutionary Reform William and Mary Quarterly 54 2 307 346 doi 10 2307 2953276 JSTOR 2953276 Morris Richard B 1927 Primogeniture and Entailed Estates in America Columbia Law Review 27 1 24 51 doi 10 2307 1113540 JSTOR 1113540 Tucker 1837 v 1 p 134 Tucker 1837 v 1 p 137 Peterson 1970 pp 234 238 Ellis 1996 p 66 Gordon Reed 2008 pp 136 137 Meacham 2012 pp 133 135 Boyd Julian P ed 1951 From Thomas Jefferson to Sampson Mathews 12 January 1781 The Papers of Thomas Jefferson vol 4 October 1 1780 February 24 1781 Princeton NJ Princeton University Press p 343 Retrieved July 11 2019 via Founders Online National Archives Bryan Charles October 25 2014 Richmond s Benedict Arnold Richmond Times Dispatch Richmond VA Retrieved July 11 2019 Ethridge Harrison M October 1988 Summerville A Vanished Plantation The Messenger 14 5 Tucker 1837 v 1 p 157 Meacham 2012 pp 140 142 Tucker 1837 v 1 p 263 The Founders and the Pursuit of Land The Lehrman Institute Retrieved March 25 2022 The Founders and the Pursuit of Land Tucker 1837 v 1 pp 165 166 Shuffelton 1999 Notes on the State of Virginia p 149 Burstein 2006 p 146 Notes on the State of Virginia 1853 Query XI TJF Thomas Jefferson s Enlightenment and American Indians Bernstein 2004 p 78 Tucker 1837 v 1 p 166 Peterson 1970 ch 5 Tucker 1837 v 1 pp 172 173 Peterson 1970 p 275 Rayner 1834 p 207 a b Peterson 1960 pp 189 190 Finkelman 1989 pp 21 51 Peterson 1970 pp 286 Boyd Julian P ed 1953 Enclosure I Commission for Negotiating Treaties of Amity and Commerce 16 May 1784 The Papers of Thomas Jefferson vol 7 March 2 1784 February 25 1785 Princeton NJ Princeton University Press pp 262 265 Retrieved June 13 2018 via Founders Online National Archives Stewart 1997 p 39 Meacham 2012 p 180 McCullough 2001 p 330 Bowers 1945 pp vii viii TJF Maria Cosway Engraving The Meeting of Thomas Jefferson John Adams and George III engagement virginia edu July 7 2019 Retrieved June 23 2022 Gordon Reed 2008 pp 156 164 168 a b Memoirs of Madison Hemings Frontline Public Broadcasting Service WGBH Boston Retrieved November 29 2011 Bowers 1945 p 328 Burstein 2010 p 120 Meacham 2012 pp 222 223 TJF Coded Messages Peterson 2002 pp 40 41 Ellis 1996 pp 116 117 Ellis 1996 p 110 Wood 2010 pp 179 181 The Papers of Thomas Jefferson Volume 22 6 August 31 December 1791 Tucker 1837 v 1 p 334 Tucker 1837 v 1 pp 364 369 Chernow 2004 p 427 Peterson 2002 pp 40 41 a b Cooke 1970 pp 523 545 Bernstein 2003 p 96 Randall 1996 p 1 Tucker 1837 v 1 p 429 Greider 2010 p 246 Wood 2010 pp 145 149 Wood 2010 pp 186 188 Tucker 1837 v 1 p 523 Ellis 1996 p 119 Meacham 2012 pp 283 284 Meacham 2012 pp 293 294 Peterson 1970 ch 8 e book Yarbrough 2006 p xx Meacham 2012 p 305 Bernstein 2003 pp 117 118 Elkins 1994 p 566 Chernow 2004 p 550 Meacham 2012 p 312 Tucker 1837 v 2 p 54 Wood 2010 pp 269 271 Meacham 2012 p 318 Thomas Jefferson Resolutions Relative to the Alien and Sedition Acts 1798 Onuf 2000 p 73 Chernow 2004 p 574 Chernow 2004 p 587 Meacham 2012 p 323 McCullough 2001 p 556 Bernstein 2003 pp 126 128 McCullough 2001 pp 543 544 Appleby 2003 pp 27 28 The Corrupt Bargain Eric Foner The London Review of Books Vol 42 No 10 May 21 2020 accessed November 3 2020 Tucker 1837 v 2 p 75 Wood 2010 p 278 a b c d Wood 2010 pp 284 285 Meacham 2012 pp 340 341 Ferling 2004 p 208 Meacham 2012 pp 337 338 Peterson 2002 p 39 Meacham 2012 pp 348 350 a b c Peterson 2002 p 41 a b Peterson 2002 p 40 a b Hendricks 2015 pp 21 22 a b c d Meacham 2012 p 387 a b Peterson 2002 pp 43 44 a b Wood 2010 p 293 Bailey 2007 p 216 Wills 2002 pp 50 51 a b Peterson 2002 p 44 Meacham 2012 p 357 Meacham 2012 p 375 Urofsky 2006 p viii Scythes 2014 pp 693 694 Scythes 2014 pp 422 423 Murray Stuart 2009 The Library An Illustrated History Skyhorse Publishing p 156 ISBN 978 0838909911 Fremont Barnes 2006 p 32 a b Meacham 2012 pp 364 365 Herring 2008 p 97 Wood 2010 p 638 Bernstein 2003 p 146 Wood 2010 p 639 Meacham 2012 pp 383 384 Wood 2010 p 368 a b Freehling 2005 p 69 a b Ellis 2008 pp 207 208 Wilentz 2005 p 108 Meacham 2012 pp 389 390 Tucker 1837 v 2 pp 152 154 Peterson 2002 p 47 Peterson 1970 p 777 Ellis 2008 p 230 Wood 2010 p 372 Wood 2010 p 373 Ellis 2008 pp 231 232 Ambrose 1996 pp 76 418 Ambrose 1996 p 154 Rodriguez 2002 pp xxiv 162 185 Rodriguez 2002 pp 112 186 Ambrose 1996 pp 54 80 Ambrose 1996 pp 154 409 512 Berry 2006 p xi TJF American Indians Miller 2008 p 90 a b Sheehan 1974 pp 120 121 Peterson 1970 ch 9 TJF President Jefferson and the Indian Nations The Life and Writings of Thomas Jefferson pp 265 266 Miller 2008 p 94 a b Meacham 2012 pp 405 406 Meacham 2012 pp 415 417 Tucker 1837 v 2 pp 291 294 Miller 1980 pp 145 146 a b Randall 1994 p 583 Kaplan 1999 p 407 Jefferson Haiti The Journal of Southern History 61 no 2 May 1995 p 221 Bernstein 2003 pp 146 147 Malone 1981 p 11 Chernow 2004 p 714 Wood 2010 pp 385 386 Banner 1974 p 34 a b Banner 1974 pp 34 35 a b The Burr Conspiracy 2000 a b c Peterson 2002 p 50 Wood 2010 pp 385 386 Meacham 2012 pp 420 422 Bernstein 2003 pp 161 162 Meacham 2012 p 420 a b c Banner 1974 p 37 Appleby 2003 p 100 Bernstein 2003 p 162 Bernstein 2003 pp 163 164 Meacham 2012 pp 422 423 Bernstein 2003 p 165 Appleby 2003 p 101 a b Banner 1974 p 35 Banner 1974 pp 35 36 Banner 1974 p 36 Banner 1974 pp 36 37 Banner 1974 pp 37 38 a b c d e Peterson 2002 p 49 a b Banner 1974 p 38 Banner 1974 pp 38 39 Banner 1974 p 39 Hayes 2008 pp 504 505 a b c d TJF Embargo of 1807 Meacham 2012 pp 425 429 Bernstein 2003 p 168 Meacham 2012 p 430 Peterson 2002 pp 52 53 Burstein 2010 pp 497 498 Meacham 2012 p 430 Tucker 1990 v 1 pp 204 209 232 Cogliano 2008 p 250 Meacham 2012 p 475 Ellis 1996 p 237 Appleby 2003 p 145 Kaplan 1999 pp 166 168 Hayes 2008 pp 504 505 Peterson 1960 pp 289 290 Hayes 2008 pp 504 505 Ellis 1996 p 238 Appleby 2003 pp 128 129 Ellis 1996 p 238 Tucker 1837 v 2 p 479 Meacham 2012 pp 481 482 TJF I Rise with the Sun Ellis 1996 p 232 Meacham 2012 pp 463 465 U Va Library Adams 1888 p 48 a b c Peterson 1970 ch 11 e book Hogan 1987 pp 28 29 Gordon Reed 2008 p 649 TJF James Madison Crawford 2008 p 235 Millard Fillmore University Of Buffalo Retrieved November 24 2022 a b c Freeman 2008 p 12 Ellis 2003 pp 207 209 McCullough 2001 pp 603 605 Ellis 2003 pp 213 230 McCullough 2001 p 646 Ellis 2003 p 248 a b c d Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson 1743 1790 Berstein 2003 p 179 Hamelman 2002 Journal Kaufman amp Macpherson 2005 p 427 a b c Jacavone 2017 p 17 Earle 1927 p 49 Jacavone 2017 p 29 Jacavone 2017 p 18 a b c Jacavone 2017 p 19 Mapp 1991 p 328 Malone 1981 pp 403 404 Brodie 1998 p 460 Crawford 2008 pp 202 203 a b Ellis 1996 pp 287 288 Tucker 1837 v 2 p 551 Martin Russell L June 7 1988 Jefferson s Last Words Monticello Retrieved February 2 2019 McCullough 2001 p 646 Ellis 2003 p 248 Rayner 1834 pp 428 429 Bernstein 2003 p 189 Meacham 2012 p 496 Donaldson 1898 p 49 Thomas Jefferson Foundation Thomas Jefferson A Brief Biography Legacy Thomas Jefferson Library of Congress gov April 24 2000 Retrieved June 15 2019 Bernstein 2003 p xii Tucker 1837 v 2 p 556 Meacham 2012 p 495 Ellis 1996 p 289 Thomas Jefferson Foundation Sale of Monticello Ferling 2000 p 158 Mayer 1994 p 76 Wood 2010 p 287 Tucker 1837 v 2 pp 559 567 Smith 2003 p 314 Marsoobian Armen T Ryder John 2008 The Blackwell Guide to American Philosophy John Wiley amp Sons p 4 ISBN 978 1 4051 4296 0 Thomas Jefferson stanford edu Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy December 16 2019 Retrieved June 17 2022 Letter Thomas Jefferson to William Short Monticello October 31 1819 a b Richard Carl J 2006 The Battle for the American Mind A Brief History of a Nation s Thought Rowman amp Littlefield p 94 ISBN 978 0 7425 3436 0 Sanford Charles B 1984 The Religious Life of Thomas Jefferson University of Virginia Press p 39 ISBN 978 0 8139 1131 1 Bassani 2010 p 113 Wilson 2012 p 584 Mayer 1994 p 328 a b c Wood 2011 pp 220 227 Peterson 1960 p 340 Golden amp Golden 2002 p 60 Meacham 2012 p 213 The full letter to William S Smith can be seen at the Library of Congress Bober 2008 p 264 Wood 2010 p 277 Appleby 2003 pp 57 58 84 Meacham 2012 p 298 Wilentz 2005 p 85 Meacham 2012 p 308 Wilentz 2005 pp 97 98 Wilentz 2005 p 97 Wilentz 2005 p 138 Keyssar 2009 p 10 Ferling 2004 p 286 Keyssar 2009 p 37 Wilentz 2005 p 200 Randall 1994 p 203 a b c Cunningham December 28 2020 TJF Jefferson s Religious Beliefs Onuf 2007 pp 139 168 a b c People and Ideas Early America s Formation Public Broadcasting Service Retrieved April 30 2022 Like other Founding Fathers Jefferson was considered a Deist subscribing to the liberal religious strand of Deism that values reason over revelation and rejects traditional Christian doctrines including the Virgin Birth original sin and the resurrection of Jesus While he rejected orthodoxy Jefferson was nevertheless a religious man Influenced by the British Unitarian Joseph Priestley Jefferson set his prodigious intellect and energy on the historical figure at the center of the Christian faith Jesus of Nazareth Jefferson became convinced that Jesus message had been obscured and corrupted by the apostle Paul the Gospel writers and Protestant reformers Jefferson Bible 1820 a b c Thomas Jefferson s Religion Peterson 1970 ch 2 e book Wood 2010 p 577 U S Gov National Archives Finkelman 2006 p 921 Yarbrough 2006 p 28 Peterson 2003 p 315 W W Hening ed Statutes at Large of Virginia vol 12 1823 84 86 Meacham 2012 pp 369 370 Meacham 2012 pp 472 473 Randall 1994 p 555 Meacham 2012 pp 471 473 Sanford 1984 pp 85 86 a b Wood 2010 p 586 Malone 1981 pp 140 143 Meacham 2012 pp 224 225 Bailey 2007 p 82 Wood 2010 p 144 Meacham 2012 p 249 Ferling 2013 pp 221 222 Wood 2010 pp 293 295 Wood 2010 pp 295 296 Cogliano 2006 p 219 Onuf 2007 p 258 a b c TJF Slavery at Monticello Property Gordon Reed 2008 p 292 a b Stanton Lucia Cinder The Slaves Story Jefferson s family Jefferson s Blood Frontline www pbs org Retrieved December 30 2019 Wiencek 2012 p 13 TJF Slavery at Monticello Work Wiencek 2012 pp 114 122 TJF Thomas Jefferson s Monticello Nailery Wiencek 2012 p 93 a b c d TJF Thomas Jefferson and Slavery Ferling 2000 p 161 Howe 2009 p 74 Meacham 2012 p 475 a b Ferling 2000 p 287 Finkelman 1994 p 215 a b Finkelman 1994 p 215 Finkelman 2012 Finkelman 1994 pp 220 221 Freehling 2005 p 70 Wiencek 2012 pp 257 258 Du Bois 1904 pp 95 96 Ferling 2000 p 288 Ferling 2000 pp 286 294 Ellis 1997 p 87 Appleby 2003 pp 139 140 Walker Clarence E 2001 We Can t Go Home Again An Argument About Afrocentrism Oxford University Press p 38 ISBN 0195357302 Peterson 1970 pp 998 999 Meacham 2012 p 478 Helo 2013 p 105 a b TJF Jefferson s Antislavery Actions DiLorenzo 1998 Yankee Confederates Meacham 2012 pp 255 275 278 Ferling 2000 p 287 TJF Quotations on slavery May 11 1805 Davis 1999 p 179 Alexander 2010 TJF Thomas Jefferson s Monticello Slave Dwellings Landscape of Slavery Mulberry Row at Monticello Treatment Cogliano 2008 p 209 Ferling 2004 p 161 John Paul Kaminski 1995 A Necessary Evil Slavery and the Debate Over the Constitution Rowman amp Littlefield p 256 ISBN 9780945612339 Finkelman 2012 Cogliano 2008 pp 218 220 Wiencek 2012 p 11 In 1853 William Wells Brown published a novel called Clotel or The President s Daughter alluding to Jefferson This is the first novel in America published by anyone of African descent Hyland 2009 pp ix 2 3 Foster et al 1998 a b c d e f Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings A Brief Account TJF Report of the Research Committee on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings Conclusions TJF Minority Report of the Monticello Research Committee on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings Cottman Michael July 3 2017 Historians Uncover Slave Quarters of Sally Hemings at Thomas Jefferson s Monticello NBC News Retrieved February 4 2018 Thompson Krissah February 18 2017 For decades they hid Jefferson s relationship with her Now Monticello is making room for Sally Hemings The Washington Post Retrieved February 4 2018 Monticello Affirms Thomas Jefferson Fathered Children with Sally Hemings Thomas Jefferson Foundation June 6 2018 Retrieved July 5 2018 Wilkinson A B 2019 Slave Life at Thomas Jefferson s Monticello American Quarterly 71 247 264 doi 10 1353 aq 2019 0017 S2CID 150519408 The general consensus among historians now agrees with Madison Hemings s version of the relationship between his mother and father Lepore Jill September 22 2008 President Tom s Cabin Jefferson Hemings and a Disclaimed Lineage The New Yorker Retrieved November 21 2019 T oday most historians agree with the conclusion of a research committee convened by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello Jefferson most likely was the father of all six of Sally Hemings s children Ellis Joseph J 2000 Jefferson Post DNA The William and Mary Quarterly 57 1 125 138 doi 10 2307 2674361 JSTOR 2674361 PMID 18271151 T he new scholarly consensus is that Jefferson and Hemings were sexual partners Whether Jefferson fathered all of Hemings s children is still unclear Updating a Life The Case of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings Library of America December 9 2011 Most historians now agree that a preponderance of evidence genetic circumstantial and oral historical suggests that Jefferson was the father of all of Sally Hemings s children Hyland 2009 pp 30 31 79 Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society a b Peterson 2002 p 43 Gordon Reed 1997 pp 657 660 Gordon Reed 1997 pp 658 659 CBSNews2019 Debt Thomas Jefferson Foundation Retrieved October 9 2018 Hayes 2008 p 100 McEwan 1991 pp 20 39 Tucker 1837 v 2 p 202 Berstein 2003 p 193 Johnson Michael September 15 2006 A chateau fit for a president The New York Times Retrieved July 28 2012 Brodie 1974 pp 87 88 Bernstein 2003 p 9 Hayes 2008 pp 135 136 Kastning 2014 p 8 a b Hayes 2008 p 432 a b c d TJF American Philosophical Society Bernstein 2003 pp 118 119 Ambrose 1996 p 126 Tucker 1837 v 2 p 399 a b Univ Virginia archives Miller Center Andresen 2006 Chap 1 Bober 2008 p 16 TJF Italy Language TJF Spanish Language Hellenbrand 1990 pp 155 156 Frawley 2003 p 96 American Philosophical Society 2016 Gathering voices TJF Public speaking Univ Virginia archives Malone 1962 pp 213 215 Kaplan 1993 p 315 Martin Russell L April 1989 Patents Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia Thomas Jefferson Foundation Retrieved September 20 2022 source also links to two related 21st century sources Peterson 1970 pp 335 336 Peterson 1960 pp 5 67 69 189 208 340 Appleby 2003 p 149 Meacham 2012 p xix Cogliano 2008 p 75 Appleby 2003 pp 132 133 Bernstein 2003 pp 191 192 Appleby 2003 pp 135 136 Bernstein 2003 pp 192 194 Appleby 2003 pp 136 140 Bernstein 2003 pp 194 197 Cogliano 2008 p 12 Wood Gordon S June 23 2016 Revealing the Total Jefferson The New York Review of Books Retrieved January 7 2022 a href Template Cite magazine html title Template Cite magazine cite magazine a CS1 maint url status link SRI 2010 Brookings 2015 a b Gordon Reed February 20 2020 Jayne 2014 p 125 NPS Mt Rushmore Peterson 1960 p 378 O Brien Brendan October 19 2021 Thomas Jefferson Statue to be Removed from New York City Council Chamber Reuters Retrieved November 9 2021 Luscombe Richard November 23 2021 New York city hall removes Thomas Jefferson statue The Guardian Retrieved January 7 2022 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint url status link Jefferson Thomas 1914 Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson 1743 1790 Together with a Summary of the Chief Events in Jefferson s Life G P Putnam s Sons Retrieved January 9 2023 BibliographyMain article Bibliography of Thomas Jefferson Scholarly studies Adams Herbert Baxter 1888 Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia U S Government Printing Office Alexander Leslie 2010 Encyclopedia of African American History American Ethnic Experience ABC CLIO ISBN 978 1851097692 Ambrose Stephen E 1996 Undaunted Courage Meriwether Lewis Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West Simon and Schuster ISBN 978 0684811079 Andresen Julie 2006 Linguistics in America 1769 1924 A Critical History Routledge ISBN 978 1134976119 Andrews Stuart Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution History Today May 1968 Vol 18 Issue 5 pp 299 306 Appleby Joyce Oldham 2003 Thomas Jefferson The American Presidents Series The 3rd President 1801 1809 Henry Holt and Company ISBN 978 0805069242 Bailey Jeremy D 2007 Thomas Jefferson and Executive Power Twenty First Century Books ISBN 978 1139466295 Banner James M Jr 1974 C Vann Woodward ed Responses of the Presidents to Charges of Misconduct Delacorte Press Dell Publishing Co Inc ISBN 978 0440059233 Banning Lance The Jeffersonian persuasion evolution of a party ideology 1978 online Bassani Luigi Marco 2010 Liberty State amp Union The Political Theory of Thomas Jefferson Mercer University Press ISBN 978 0881461862 Bear James Adam 1967 Jefferson at Monticello University of Virginia Press ISBN 978 0813900223 1974 The Last Few Days in the Life of Thomas Jefferson Magazine of Albemarle County History 32 77 Bernstein Richard B 2003 Thomas Jefferson Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0195181302 2004 The Revolution of Ideas Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0195143683 Berry Trey Beasley Pam Clements Jeanne 2006 The Forgotten Expedition 1804 1805 The Louisiana Purchase Journals of Dunbar and Hunter LSU Press ISBN 978 0807131657 Bober Natalie 2008 Thomas Jefferson Draftsman of a Nation University of Virginia Press ISBN 978 0813927329 Boles John B 2017 Jefferson Architect of American Liberty Basic Books 626 pages ISBN 978 0465094691 Brodie Fawn 1974 Thomas Jefferson An Intimate History W W Norton amp Company ISBN 978 0393317527 Bowers Claude 1945 The Young Jefferson 1743 1789 Houghton Mifflin Company Burstein Andrew 2006 Jefferson s Secrets Death and Desire at Monticello Basic Books ISBN 978 0465008131 Isenberg Nancy 2010 Madison and Jefferson Random House ISBN 978 1400067282 2015 Democracy s Muse How Thomas Jefferson Became an FDR Liberal a Reagan Republican and a Tea Party Fanatic All the While Being Dead University of Virginia Press ISBN 978 0813937229 Chernow Ron 2004 Alexander Hamilton Penguin Press ISBN 978 1594200090 Jefferson Thomas 1926 Chinard Gilbert ed The Commonplace Book of Thomas Jefferson A Repertory of His Ideas on Government with an Introduction and Notes by Gilbert Chinard Volume 2 ISBN 978 1400860098 Cogliano Francis D 2008 Thomas Jefferson Reputation and Legacy Edinburgh University Press ISBN 978 0748624997 Cooke Jacob E 1970 The Compromise of 1790 William and Mary Quarterly 27 4 523 545 doi 10 2307 1919703 JSTOR 1919703 Cunningham Vinson December 28 2020 What Thomas Jefferson Could Never Understand About Jesus newyorker com Retrieved April 28 2022 Crawford Alan Pell 2008 Twilight at Monticello The Final Years of Thomas Jefferson Random House Digital ISBN 978 1400060795 Davis David Brion 1999 The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution 1770 1823 Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0199880836 Du Bois William Edward Burghardt 1904 The suppression of the African slave trade to the United States of America Longmans Green and Co ISBN 978 0722272848 Earle Edward Mead 1927 American Interest in the Greek Cause 1821 1827 The American Historical Review 33 1 44 63 doi 10 2307 1838110 ISSN 0002 8762 JSTOR 1838110 Elkins Stanley M McKitrick Eric L 1993 The Age of Federalism Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0195068900 Ellis Joseph J 1996 American Sphinx The Character of Thomas Jefferson Alfred A Knopf ISBN 978 0679444909 online free 2000 Thomas Jefferson Genius of Liberty Viking Studio ISBN 978 0670889334 2003 Founding Brothers The Revolutionary Generation Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group ISBN 978 1400077687 2008 American Creation Triumphs and Tragedies in the Founding of the Republic Random House LLC ISBN 978 0307263698 Ferling John 2000 Setting the World Ablaze Washington Adams Jefferson and the American Revolution Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0195134094 2004 Adams vs Jefferson The Tumultuous Election of 1800 Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0195167719 2013 Jefferson and Hamilton the rivalry that forged a nation Bloomsbury Press ISBN 978 1608195428 Finkelman Paul 1989 Evading the Ordinance The Persistence of Bondage in Indiana and Illinois Journal of the Early Republic 9 1 21 51 doi 10 2307 3123523 JSTOR 3123523 Finkelman Paul ed 2006 The Encyclopedia of American Civil Liberties A F Index Vol 1 Taylor amp Francis Group ISBN 978 1135947040 Finkelman Paul April 1994 Thomas Jefferson and Antislavery The Myth Goes On PDF The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography Vol 102 no 2 Virginia Historical Society pp 193 228 Foster Eugene A et al November 5 1998 Jefferson fathered slave s last child Nature 396 6706 27 28 Bibcode 1998Natur 396 27F doi 10 1038 23835 PMID 9817200 S2CID 4424562 Frawley William J ed 2003 International Encyclopedia of Linguistics 4 Volume Set International Encyclopedia of Linguistics Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0195139778 Freehling William W 2005 Levinson Sanford Sparrow Bartholomew H eds The Louisiana Purchase and American Expansion 1803 1898 The Louisiana Purchase and the Coming of the Civil War New York Rowman amp Littlefield Publishers Inc pp 69 82 ISBN 978 0742549838 Freeman Joanne B 2008 Shuffelton Frank ed The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Jefferson Cambridge amp New York Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0521867313 Gish Dustin and Daniel Klinghard Thomas Jefferson and the Science of Republican Government A Political Biography of Notes on the State of Virginia Cambridge University Press 2017 excerpt Fremont Barnes Gregory 2006 The Wars of the Barbary Pirates To the Shores of Tripoli The Rise of the US Navy and Marines Osprey Publishing ISBN 978 1846030307 Golden James L Golden Alan L 2002 Thomas Jefferson and the Rhetoric of Virtue Rowman amp Littlefield ISBN 978 0742520806 Gordon Reed Annette 1997 Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings An American Controversy University Press of Virginia ISBN 978 0813916989 2008 The Hemingses of Monticello An American Family W W Norton amp Company ISBN 978 0393064773 Gordon Reed Annette Onuf Peter S April 13 2016 Most Blessed of the Patriarchs Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination ISBN 978 1631490781 online review Gordon Reed Annette February 20 2020 Thomas Jefferson s Vision of Equality Was Not All Inclusive But It Was Transformative Retrieved March 11 2022 Greider William 2010 Who Will Tell the People Simon amp Schuster ISBN 978 1439128749 Halliday E M 2009 Understanding Thomas Jefferson Harper Collins ISBN 978 0060197933 Hamelman Steven January 1 2002 Autobiography and Archive Franklin Jefferson and the Revised Self Midwest Quarterly Harrison John Houston 1935 Settlers by the Long Grey Trail Some Pioneers to Old Augusta County Virginia and Their Descendants of the Family of Harrison and Allied Lines Genealogical Publishing Com ISBN 978 0806306643 Hart Charles Henry 1899 Browere s Life Masks of Great Americans De Vinne Press for Doubleday and McClure Company Hayes Kevin J 2008 The Road to Monticello The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0195307580 Hellenbrand Harold 1990 The Unfinished Revolution Education and Politics in the Thought of Thomas Jefferson Associated University Presse ISBN 978 0874133707 Helo Ari 2013 Thomas Jefferson s Ethics and the Politics of Human Progress The Morality of a Slaveholder Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 1107435551 Hendricks Nancy 2015 America s First Ladies Santa Barbara CA ABC CLIO LLC ISBN 978 1610698832 Herring George C 2008 From Colony to Superpower U S Foreign Relations since 1776 Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0199743773 Hogan Pendleton 1987 The Lawn A Guide to Jefferson s University University Press of Virginia ISBN 978 0813911090 Horton Andrew S 1976 Jefferson and Korais The American Revolution and the Greek Constitution Comparative Literature Studies 13 4 323 329 ISSN 0010 4132 JSTOR 40246007 Howe Daniel Walker 2009 Making the American Self Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0199740796 Hyland William G 2009 In Defense of Thomas Jefferson The Sally Hemings Sex Scandal Carolina Academic Press ISBN 978 0890890851 Jacavone Jared 2017 The Paid Vote America s Neutrality During the Greek War for Independence MA thesis University of Rhode Island doi 10 23860 thesis jacavone jared 2017 Jayne Allen 2014 Jefferson s Declaration of Independence Origins Philosophy and Theology University Press of Kentucky ISBN 978 0 8131 4836 6 Johnson Jeffrey K 2010 The Countryside Triumphant Jefferson s Ideal of Rural Superiority in Modern Superhero Mythology The Journal of Popular Culture 43 4 720 737 doi 10 1111 j 1540 5931 2010 00767 x Kaplan Lawrence S 1999 Thomas Jefferson Westward the Course of Empire Rowman amp Littlefield ISBN 978 0842026307 Kaufman Will Macpherson Heidi Slettedahl 2005 Britain and the Americas Culture Politics and History ABC CLIO ISBN 978 1 85109 431 8 Keyssar Alexander 2009 The Right to Vote The Contested History of Democracy in the United States Basic Books ISBN 978 0465010141 Maier Pauline 1997 American Scripture Making the Declaration of Independence Knopf ISBN 978 0679454922 Malone Dumas ed 1933 Jefferson Thomas Dictionary of American Biography Vol 10 Charles Scribner s Sons pp 17 35 Malone Dumas Jefferson 6 vol 1948 1981 1948 Jefferson The Virginian Jefferson and His Time Vol 1 Little Brown OCLC 1823927 Ebook 1951 Jefferson and the Rights of Man Jefferson and His Time Vol 2 Little Brown 1962 Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty Jefferson and His Time Vol 3 Little Brown ISBN 978 0316544757 1970 Jefferson the President First Term 1801 1805 Jefferson and His Time Vol 4 Little Brown 1974 Jefferson the President Second Term 1805 1809 Jefferson and His Time Vol 5 Little Brown OCLC 1929523 1981 The Sage of Monticello Jefferson and His Time Vol 6 Little Brown ISBN 978 0316544788 Mapp Alf J 1991 Jefferson Passionate Pilgrim Rowman amp Littlefield ISBN 978 0517098882 Mayer David N 1994 The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson Constitutionalism and Democracy University of Virginia Press ISBN 978 0813914855 Mayer David 2008 Jefferson Thomas 1743 1826 In Hamowy Ronald ed The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism Thousand Oaks CA Sage Cato Institute pp 262 263 doi 10 4135 9781412965811 n158 ISBN 978 1412965804 LCCN 2008009151 OCLC 750831024 McCullough David 2001 John Adams Simon amp Schuster ISBN 978 1471104527 McDonald Robert M S 2004 Thomas Jefferson s Military Academy Founding West Point Jeffersonian America University of Virginia Press ISBN 978 0813922980 McEwan Barbara 1991 Thomas Jefferson Farmer McFarland ISBN 978 0899506333 Meacham Jon 2012 Thomas Jefferson The Art of Power Random House LLC ISBN 978 0679645368 2013 Thomas Jefferson The Art of Power Paperback Random House Trade Paperbacks ISBN 978 0812979480 Miller John Chester 1980 The Wolf by the Ears Thomas Jefferson and Slavery University of Virginia Press ISBN 978 0452005303 Miller Robert J 2008 Native America Discovered and Conquered Thomas Jefferson Lewis amp Clark and Manifest Destiny University of Nebraska Press ISBN 978 0803215986 Onuf Peters S 2000 Jefferson s Empire The Language of American Nationhood U of Virginia Press ISBN 978 0813922041 2007 The Mind of Thomas Jefferson University of Virginia Press ISBN 978 0813926117 Peterson Merrill D 1960 The Jefferson Image in the American Mind University of Virginia Press ISBN 978 0813918518 1970 Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation a Biography Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0195000542 2002 Thomas Jefferson In Graff Henry ed The Presidents A Reference History 7th ed Charles Scribner s Sons pp 39 56 Phillips Julieanne 1997 Northwest Ordinance 1787 In Rodriguez Junius ed The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery ABC CLIO pp 473 474 ISBN 978 0874368857 Randall Willard Sterne 1994 Thomas Jefferson A Life Harper Collins ISBN 978 0060976170 Randall Willard Sterne 1996 Thomas Jefferson Takes A Vacation American Heritage Vol 47 no 4 Rodriguez Junius 2002 The Louisiana Purchase a historical and geographical encyclopedia ABC CLIO ISBN 978 1576071885 Stewart John J 1997 Thomas Jefferson Forerunner to the Restoration Cedar Fort ISBN 978 0 88290 605 8 Sheehan Bernard 1974 Seeds of Extinction Jeffersonian Philanthropy and the American Indian W W Norton amp Company ISBN 978 0393007169 Scythes James 2014 Tucker Spencer C ed The Encyclopedia of the Wars of the Early American Republic 1783 1812 A Political Social and Military History Santa Barbara CA ABC CLIO ISBN 978 1598841565 Shuffelton Frank 1974 Introduction In Jefferson Thomas ed Notes on the State of Virginia Penguin ISBN 978 0140436679 Smith Robert C 2003 a, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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