By Edwin Cooney
Thomas Jefferson wasn't merely born in Virginia, he was OF Virginia. It's important to remember when evaluating people who lived throughout the Eighteenth Century and even into the late Nineteenth, that most men and women were born and died within about 15 square miles between those two points of mortal transition. It's also important that we who judge the characters of historic figures keep in mind that the one factor we all have in common is that we have no control of the era into which we were born. Hence, Mr. Jefferson was born a slaveholder and ultimately had to educate himself as to the social significance of that "peculiar institution." Finally, it's significant to note that election to the state legislature was as great an honor as election to the federal Congress. A number of congressmen including James Madison went with honor, rather than disgrace, from Congress back to the state legislature's House of Delegates from 1799 to 1800.
Thomas Jefferson was born on Tuesday, April 13th, 1743 to Peter and Jane Randolph Jefferson. Peter Jefferson was a planter, a sheriff, and a justice of the peace. He died in 1757 when Thomas was 12. Little is known about his mother Jane except that she came from the Randolph family which would produce Chief Justice John Marshall (his second cousin once removed). However, Jefferson came to dislike him as a Federalist and as a jurist. Jane died of a stroke in 1776 just before Jefferson wrote The Declaration of Independence.
Although no friend of royalty, Jefferson was a descendant of King David I of Scotland (c.1084 to 1153). Born the son of a planter and surveyor, Jefferson’s real passion was science, even more than politics. His home in Monticello was loaded with his inventions: beds that folded into the wall to allow for maximum use of space, dumbwaiters that moved supplies from the cellar into the main part of the house, a clock built into the wall with inside and outside faces — these were all Jeffersonian inventions. Fauna and flora were of vital interest to Jefferson, the planter.
Physically, Jefferson was tall (6 foot two and a half) and thin with a pointed chin and the lips. As a youth, he was heavily freckled with reddish brown hair which became sandy as his hair grayed.
In his book Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, William DeGregorio writes that as a politician Mr. Jefferson lacked two essentials: a thin skin and a capacity for oratory. His legal background and writing skills were certainly more than adequate to write the Declaration of Independence and his 1785 book “Notes on the State of Virginia.” However, he was a poor speaker with a tendency to mumble his words and to slouch while speaking.
Between 1760 and 1762, Jefferson attended William and Mary College. He studied law and was admitted to the Virginia Bar in 1767. Between 1769 and 1774, Jefferson was a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses. Elected to the Continental Congress, he served in 1775 and 1776. Between Wednesday, June 11th, and Saturday, June 28th, 1776, he wrote the Declaration of Independence without aid of reference book or pamphlet.
Back on Wednesday, January 1st, 1772, Jefferson married Martha Wayles Skelton, a widow. She would be pregnant 7 times during the next ten years. Martha Jefferson died on Wednesday, September 6th, 1782.
The Jeffersons had two daughters, Martha (called Patsy) and Mary (called Polly). Both daughters accompanied Jefferson to Europe during the late 1780s. Polly, the youngest and prettiest (she resembled her mother), died in childbirth in 1798 while her father was Vice President under John Adams. Martha would serve as White House hostess and, in 1806, bore the first child to be born in the White House.
Jefferson had an extramarital affair with Maria (Hadfield) Cosway while he was our minister to France in 1786. Maria's husband Richard was a miniature artist working for the elite in Paris.
As for the Sally Hemings matter, the evidence of their love relationship is circumstantial. Some believe that Jefferson wooed Sally into the relationship rather than debauching her into it as many masters did to attractive slave women. Jefferson's granddaughter Ellen Randolph Coolidge wrote in 1858 that Sally Hemings was actually the daughter of Elizabeth Hemings and John Skelton. Hence, Sally Hemings was Martha Jefferson's half sister.
Prior to his appointment by President Washington as our first Secretary of State, Jefferson was a member of the House of Burgesses, a representative to the second Continental Congress where he wrote the Declaration of Independence, and he was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates 1777 to 1779. He was elected Governor of Virginia between 1779 and 1781. Between 1783 and 1785, he was a member of Congress where he established the decimal system and helped organize the government of the Northwest territories. As Minister to France, he successfully negotiated commercial treaties and was a keen observer of European affairs.
Appointed the nation's first Secretary of State, Jefferson ran the State Department on an annual budget of less than $10,000. He quarreled with Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton over their differences towards France and Britain. He hired a French translator named Philip Freneau to work for the State Department, but Freneau spent most of his time editing the National Gazette, a newspaper favoring the developing Democratic Republican Party in opposition to President Washington's and Alexander Hamilton's Federalist Party. Meanwhile, Secretary Hamilton hired John Fenno with money out of the Treasury Department to run the Gazette of the United States.
In 1797, Jefferson became Vice President having received the second most electoral votes against Vice President John Adams who received 71 to Jefferson's 68.
In 1800, Jefferson, the Democratic Republican party's presidential nominee and his running mate Aaron Burr of New York received 73 electoral votes to Adams' 65, but since Aaron Burr insisted that the tie vote go into the House of Representatives, it took 36 ballots with each state having one vote, based on its state’s majority, to elect Jefferson. Burr's insistence on going to the House ruptured his relationship with Jefferson. The major issue separating the Democratic Republican and Federalist parties was the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts which infringed on the rights of aliens and anti-government citizens to criticize the government under the threat of fines and imprisonments.
Jefferson's two terms as president resulted in the expansion of American territory through the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. A strict constructionist of the Constitution, Jefferson violated his principles since nothing in that document specifically allowed the executive to purchase foreign territory. However, since Napoleon Bonaparte was willing to sell, President Jefferson couldn't resist the opportunity to more than double the size of the United States.
Jefferson replaced Vice President Burr with New York Governor George Clinton in 1804 in the wake of Burr's political losses in New York and his duel that killed Alexander Hamilton at Weehawken, New Jersey on Tuesday, July 11th, 1804.
The second four years of President Jefferson's term was quite a quarrelsome one. The president, angered by increasing criticism by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase, sought unsuccessfully to have Chase impeached. Then there were arguments with Jefferson's second cousin John Marshall over documents needed for testimony in the treason trial of former Vice President Aaron Burr which resulted in Burr's acquittal.
Finally, there was bad blood between both the United States and France, both of whom rated American ships bound for one another’s ports. The resulting shipping embargo caused widespread unemployment in New England and there were threats of possible disunion. Nor did relations between England and France improve.
President Jefferson would live for 17 years following his retirement on March 4th, 1809.
Jefferson's major achievement in retirement was the establishment of the University of Virginia.
On Tuesday, July 4th, 1826, both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died. Jefferson was 83 and Adams was 90 years old.
So proud was Mr. Jefferson of his founding of the University of Virginia that his modest gravestone notes his founding of the university and his authorship of the Declaration of Independence, but leaves out mention of his two terms as President of the United States.
Mr. Jefferson's genius was practical and patriotic more than merely ceremonial!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
(Note: the major source of information here is from William A. DeGregorio's Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, 1986 edition.)
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