Thomas
Jefferson Biography
( 1743 – 1826 )
(born April 2 [April 13, New Style], 1743,
Shadwell, Virginia [U.S.]—died July 4, 1826, Monticello, Virginia,
U.S.) draftsman of the Declaration of Independence of the United States
and the nation's first secretary of state (1789–94), second
vice president (1797–1801), and, as the third president (1801–09),
the statesman responsible for the Louisiana Purchase. An early advocate
of total separation of church and state, he also was the founder and
architect of the University of Virginia and the most eloquent American
proponent of individual freedom as the core meaning of the American
Revolution. (For a discussion of the history and nature of the presidency,
presidency of the United States of America.)
Long
regarded as America's most distinguished “apostle of liberty,”
Jefferson has come under increasingly critical scrutiny within the
scholarly world. At the popular level, both in the United States and
abroad, he remains an incandescent icon, an inspirational symbol for
both major U.S. political parties, as well as for dissenters in communist
China, liberal reformers in central and eastern Europe, and aspiring
democrats in Africa and Latin America. His image within scholarly
circles has suffered, however, as the focus on racial equality has
prompted a more negative reappraisal of his dependence upon slavery
and his conviction that American society remain a white man's domain.
The huge gap between his lyrical expression of liberal ideals and
the more attenuated reality of his own life has transformed Jefferson
into America's most problematic and paradoxical hero. The Jefferson
Memorial in Washington, D.C., was dedicated to him on April 13, 1943,
the 200th anniversary of his birth.
Early
years
Albermarle county, where he was born, lay in the foothills of the
Blue Ridge Mountains in what was then regarded as a western province
of the Old Dominion. His father, Peter Jefferson, was a self-educated
surveyor who amassed a tidy estate that included 60 slaves. According
to family lore, Jefferson's earliest memory was as a three-year-old
boy “being carried on a pillow by a mounted slave” when
the family moved from Shadwell to Tuckahoe. His mother, Jane Randolph
Jefferson, was descended from one of the most prominent families in
Virginia. She raised two sons, of whom Jefferson was the eldest, and
six daughters. There is reason to believe that Jefferson's relationship
with his mother was strained, especially after his father died in
1757, because he did everything he could to escape her supervision
and had almost nothing to say about her in his memoirs. He boarded
with the local schoolmaster to learn his Latin and Greek until 1760,
when he entered the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg.
By
all accounts he was an obsessive student, often spending 15 hours
of the day with his books, 3 hours practicing his violin, and the
remaining 6 hours eating and sleeping. The two chief influences on
his learning were William Small, a Scottish-born teacher of mathematics
and science, and George Wythe, the leading legal scholar in Virginia.
From them Jefferson learned a keen appreciation of supportive mentors,
a concept he later institutionalized at the University of Virginia.
He read law with Wythe from 1762 to 1767, then left Williamsburg to
practice, mostly representing small-scale planters from the western
counties in cases involving land claims and titles. Although he handled
no landmark cases and came across as a nervous and somewhat indifferent
speaker before the bench, he earned a reputation as a formidable legal
scholar. He was a shy and extremely serious young man.
In
1768 he made two important decisions: first, to build his own home atop
an 867-foot- (264-metre-) high mountain near Shadwell that he eventually
named Monticello and, second, to stand as a candidate for the House
of Burgesses. These decisions nicely embodied the two competing impulses
that would persist throughout his life—namely, to combine an active
career in politics with periodic seclusion in his own private haven.
His political timing was also impeccable, for he entered the Virginia
legislature just as opposition to the taxation policies of the British
Parliament was congealing. Although he made few speeches and tended
to follow the lead of the Tidewater elite, his support for resolutions
opposing Parliament's authority over the colonies was resolute.
In
the early 1770s his own character was also congealing. In 1772 he
married Martha Wayles Skelton ( Martha Jefferson), an attractive and
delicate young widow whose dowry more than doubled his holdings in
land and slaves. In 1774 he wrote A Summary View of the Rights of
British America, which was quickly published, though without his permission,
and catapulted him into visibility beyond Virginia as an early advocate
of American independence from Parliament's authority; the American
colonies were tied to Great Britain, he believed, only by wholly voluntary
bonds of loyalty to the king.
His
reputation thus enhanced, the Virginia legislature appointed him a
delegate to the Second Continental Congress in the spring of 1775.
He rode into Philadelphia—and into American history—on
June 20, 1775, a tall (slightly above 6 feet 2 inches [1.88 metres])
and gangly young man with reddish blond hair, hazel eyes, a burnished
complexion, and rock-ribbed certainty about the American cause. In
retrospect, the central paradox of his life was also on display, for
the man who the following year was to craft the most famous manifesto
for human equality in world history arrived in an ornate carriage
drawn by four handsome horses and accompanied by three slaves.
Declaring
independence
Jefferson's inveterate shyness prevented him from playing a significant
role in the debates within the Congress. John Adams, a leader in those
debates, remembered that Jefferson was silent even in committee meetings,
though consistently staunch in his support for independence. His chief
role was as a draftsman of resolutions. In that capacity, on June
11, 1776, he was appointed to a five-person committee, which also
included Adams and Benjamin Franklin, to draft a formal statement
of the reasons why a break with Great Britain was justified. Adams
asked him to prepare the first draft, which he did within a few days.
He later claimed that he was not striving for “originality of
principle or sentiment,” only seeking to provide “an expression
of the American mind”; that is, putting into words those ideas
already accepted by a majority of Americans. This accurately describes
the longest section of the Declaration of Independence, which lists
the grievances against George III. It does not, however, describe
the following 55 words, which are generally regarded as the seminal
statement of American political culture:
We
hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal;
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights;
that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that
to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving
their just powers from the consent of the governed.
On July 3–4 the Congress debated and edited Jefferson's draft,
deleting and revising fully one-fifth of the text. But they made no
changes whatsoever in this passage, which over succeeding generations
became the lyrical sanction for every liberal movement in American
history. At the time, Jefferson himself was disconsolate that the
Congress had seen fit to make any changes in his language. Nevertheless,
he was not regarded by his contemporaries as the author of the Declaration,
which was seen as a collective effort by the entire Congress. Indeed,
he was not known by most Americans as the principal author until the
1790s. ( primary source document: Declaration of Independence.)
He
returned to Virginia in October 1776 and immediately launched an extensive
project for the reform of the state's legal code to bring it in line
with the principles of the American Revolution. Three areas of reform
suggest the arc of his political vision: first, he sought and secured
abolition of primogeniture, entail, and all those remnants of feudalism
that discouraged a broad distribution of property; second, he proposed
a comprehensive plan of educational reform designed to assure access
at the lowest level for all citizens and state support at the higher
levels for the most talented; third, he advocated a law prohibiting
any religious establishment and requiring complete separation of church
and state. The last two proposals were bitterly contested, especially
the statute for religious freedom, which was not enacted until 1786.
( primary source documents: An American Education for American Youth,
The Education of Women, and The Sphere of Religion.)
Taken
together, these legal reforms capture the essence of Jefferson's political
philosophy, which was less a comprehensive body of thought than a
visionary prescription. He regarded the past as a “dead hand”
of encrusted privileges and impediments that must be cast off to permit
the natural energies of individual citizens to flow freely. The American
Revolution, as he saw it, was the first shot in what would eventually
became a global battle for human liberation from despotic institutions
and all coercive versions of government.
At
the end of what was probably the most creative phase of his public
career, personal misfortune struck in two successive episodes. Elected
governor of Virginia in 1779, he was caught off-guard by a surprise
British invasion in 1780 against which the state was defenseless.
His flight from approaching British troops was described in the local
press, somewhat unfairly, as a cowardly act of abdication. (Critics
would recall this awkward moment throughout the remainder of his long
career.) Then, in September 1782, his wife died after a difficult
delivery in May of their third daughter. These two disasters caused
him to vow that he would never again desert his family for his country.
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