Part 3

Jefferson in his lifetime was often charged with gross inconsistency in his political views and conduct; but the inconsistency was more apparent than real. At times he strictly construed, and at times he almost set aside the Constitution; but the clue to his conduct can usually be found in the fundamental principle that the only proper function of government or constitutions is to express the will of the people, and that the people are morally and mentally competent to govern. “I am sure,” he wrote in 1796, “that the mass of citizens in these United States mean well, and I firmly believe that they will always act well, whenever they can obtain a right understanding of matters.” And Jefferson’s lifelong endeavor was to enable the people to form this “right understanding” by educating them. His ideas of the scope of public education went far beyond those which prevailed in his time, and considerably beyond those which prevail even now. For example, a free university course for the most apt pupils graduated at the grammar schools made part of his scheme,—an idea most nearly realized in the Western States; and those States received their impetus in educational matters from the Ordinance of 1787, which was largely the product of Jefferson’s foresight.

Happily for Virginia, she did not become a scene of war until the year 1779, and, meanwhile, Jefferson and his friends lost no time in remodeling her constitution. There were no common schools, and the mass of the people were more ignorant and rough than their contemporaries in any other colony. Elections were scenes of bribery, intimidation, and riot, surpassing even those which Hogarth depicted in England. Elkanah Watson, of Massachusetts, describes what he saw at Hanover Court House, Patrick Henry’s county, in 1778: “The whole county was assembled. The moment I alighted, a wretched, pug-nosed fellow assailed me to swap watches. I had hardly shaken him off, when I was attacked by a wild Irishman who insisted on my swapping horses with him.... With him I came near being involved in a boxing-match, the Irishman swearing, I ‘did not trate him like a jintleman.’ I had hardly escaped this dilemma when my attention was attracted by a fight between two very unwieldy fat men, foaming and puffing like two furies, until one succeeded in twisting a forefinger in a sidelock of the other’s hair, and in the act of thrusting by this purchase his thumb into the latter’s eye, he bawled out, ‘King’s Cruise,’ equivalent in technical language to ‘Enough.’”

Quakers were put in the pillory, scolding women were ducked, and it is said that a woman was burned to death in Princess Anne County for witchcraft. The English church, as we have seen, was an established church; and all taxpayers, dissenters as well as churchmen, were compelled to contribute to its support. Baptist preachers were arrested, and fined as disturbers of the peace. The law of entail, both as respects land and slaves, was so strict that their descent to the eldest son could not be prevented even by agreement between the owner and his heir.

In his reformation of the laws, Jefferson was supported by Patrick Henry, now governor, and inhabiting what was still called the palace; by George Mason, a patriotic lawyer who drew the famous Virginia Bill of Rights; by George Wythe, his old preceptor, and by James Madison, Jefferson’s friend, pupil, and successor, who in this year began his political career as a member of the House of Burgesses.

Opposed to them were the conservative party led by R. C. Nicholas, head of the Virginia bar, a stanch churchman and gentleman of the old school, and Edward Pendleton, whom Jefferson described as “full of resource, never vanquished; for if he lost the main battle he returned upon you, and regained so much of it as to make it a drawn one, by dexterous manœuvres, skirmishes in detail, and the recovery of small advantages, which, little singly, were important all together. You never knew when you were clear of him.”

Intense as the controversy was, fundamental as were the points at issue, the speakers never lost that courtesy for which the Virginians were remarkable; John Randolph being perhaps the only exception. Even Patrick Henry—though from his humble origin and impetuous oratory one might have expected otherwise—was never guilty of any rudeness to his opponents. What Jefferson said of Madison was true of the Virginia orators in general,—“soothing always the feelings of his adversaries by civilities and softnesses of expression.”

Jefferson struck first at the system of entail. After a three weeks’ struggle, land and slaves were put upon the same footing as all other property,—they might be sold or bequeathed according to the will of the possessor. Then came a longer and more bitter contest. Jefferson was for abolishing all connection between church and state, and for establishing complete freedom of religion. Nine years elapsed before Virginia could be brought to that point; but at this session he procured a repeal of the law which imposed penalties for attendance at a dissenting meeting-house, and also of the law compelling dissenters to pay tithes. The fight was, therefore, substantially won; and in 1786, Jefferson’s “Act for establishing religion” became the law of Virginia.(1)

Another far-reaching law introduced by Jefferson at this memorable session of 1776 provided for the naturalization of foreigners in Virginia, after a two years’ residence in the State, and upon a declaration of their intention to become American citizens. The bill provided also that the minor children of naturalized parents should be citizens of the United States when they came of age. The principles of this measure were afterward embodied in the statutes of the United States, and they are in force to-day.

At this session Jefferson also drew an act for establishing courts of law in Virginia, the royal courts having necessarily passed out of existence when the Declaration of Independence was adopted. Moreover, he set on foot a revision of all the statutes of Virginia, a committee with him at the head being appointed for this purpose; and finally he procured the removal of the capital from Williamsburg to Richmond.

All this was accomplished, mainly by Jefferson’s efforts; and yet the two bills upon which he set most store failed entirely. These were, first, a comprehensive measure of state education, running up through primary schools and grammar schools to a state university, and, secondly, a bill providing that all who were born in slavery after the passage of the bill should be free.

This was Jefferson’s second ineffectual attempt to promote the abolition of slavery. During the year 1768, when he first became a member of the House of Burgesses, he had endeavored to procure the passage of a law enabling slave-owners to free their slaves, He induced Colonel Bland, one of the ablest, oldest, and most respected members to propose the law, and he seconded the proposal; but it was overwhelmingly rejected. “I, as a younger member,” related Jefferson afterward, “was more spared in the debate; but he was denounced as an enemy to his country, and was treated with the greatest indecorum.”

In 1778 Jefferson made another attempt:—he brought in a bill forbidding the further importation of slaves in Virginia, and this was passed without opposition. Again, in 1784, when Virginia ceded to the United States her immense northwestern territory, Jefferson drew up a scheme of government for the States to be carved out of it which included a provision “that after the year 1800 of the Christian Era, there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said States, otherwise than in punishment of crimes.” The provision was rejected by Congress.

In his “Notes on Virginia,” written in the year 1781, but published in 1787, he said: “The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism, on the one part, and degrading submission on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it.... With the morals of the people their industry also is destroyed. For in a warm climate no one will labor for himself who can make another labor for him.... Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.... The Almighty has no attribute which can take sides with us in such a contest.”

When the Missouri Compromise question came up, in 1820, Jefferson rightly predicted that a controversy had begun which would end in disruption; but he made the mistake of supposing that the Northern party were actuated in that matter solely by political motives. April 22, 1820, he wrote: “This momentous question, like a fire-bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union.... A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper.... The cession of that kind of property, for so it is misnamed, is a bagatelle which would not cost me a second thought if, in that way, a general emancipation and expatriation could be effected; and gradually and with due sacrifices I think it might be. But as it is, we have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.”

And later, he wrote of the Missouri Compromise, as a “question having just enough of the semblance of morality to throw dust into the eyes of the people.... The Federalists, unable to rise again under the old division of Whig and Tory, have invented a geographical division which gives them fourteen States against ten, and seduces their old opponents into a coalition with them. Real morality is on the other side. For while the removal of the slaves from one State to another adds no more to their numbers than their removal from one country to another, the spreading them over a larger surface adds to their happiness, and renders their future emancipation more practicable.”

These misconceptions as to Northern motives might be ascribed to Jefferson’s advanced age, for, as he himself graphically expressed it, he then had “one foot in the grave, and the other lifted to follow it;” but it would probably be more just to say that they were due, in part, to his prejudice against the New England people and especially the New England clergy, and in part to the fact that his long retirement in Virginia had somewhat contracted his views and sympathies. Jefferson was a man of intense local attachments, and he took color from his surroundings. He never ceased, however, to regard slavery as morally wrong and socially ruinous; and in the brief autobiography which he left behind him he made these predictions: “Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government.”

History has justified the second as well as the first of these declarations, for, excepting that brief period of anarchy known as “the carpet-bag era,” it cannot be maintained that the colored race in the Southern States have been at any time, even since their emancipation, “equally free,” in the sense of politically free, with their white fellow citizens.

VI

GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA

For three years Jefferson was occupied with the legislative duties already described, and especially with a revision of the Virginia statutes, and then, in June, 1779, he succeeded Patrick Henry as governor of the State. It has often been remarked that he was, all through life, a lucky man, but in this case fortune did not favor him, for the ensuing two years proved to be, so far as Virginia was concerned, by much the worst period of the war.

The French alliance, though no doubt an ultimate benefit to the colonies, had at first two bad effects: it relaxed the energy of the Americans, who trusted that France would fight their battles for them; and it stimulated the British to increased exertions. The British commissioners announced that henceforth England would employ, in the prosecution of the war, all those agencies which “God and nature had placed in her hands.” This meant that the ferocity of the Indians would be invoked, a matter of special moment to Virginia, since her western frontier swarmed with Indians, the bravest of their race.

The colony, it must be remembered, was then of immense extent; for beside the present Virginia and West Virginia, Kentucky and the greater part of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois were embraced in it. It stretched, in short, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River. Upon the seaboard Virginia was especially vulnerable, the tide-water region being penetrated by numerous bays and rivers, which the enemy’s ships could easily ascend, for they were undefended by forts or men. The total navy of the colony was four vessels, mounting sixty-two guns, and a few armed boats. The flower of the Virginia soldiery, to the number of ten thousand, were in Washington’s army, and supplies of men, of arms, of ammunition and food were urgently called for by General Gates, who was battling against Cornwallis in North Carolina. The militia were supposed to number fifty thousand, which included every man between sixteen and fifty years of age; but this was only one man for every square mile of territory in the present State of Virginia, and of these militiamen it was estimated that, east of the Blue Ridge, only about one in five was armed with a gun. The treasury was practically bankrupt, and there was a dearth of every kind of warlike material.

Such was the situation which confronted, as Mr. Parton puts it, “a lawyer of thirty-six, with a talent for music, a taste for art, a love of science, literature, and gardening.” The task was one calling rather for a soldier than a statesman; but Mr. Jefferson faced it with courage, and on the whole with success. In retaliating the cruel measures of the British, he showed a firmness which must have been especially difficult for a man of his temperament. He put in irons and confined in a dungeon Colonel Henry Hamilton and two subordinate officers who had committed atrocities upon American prisoners. He caused a prison-ship, like the ships of infamous memory which were employed as prisons by the British at New York, to be prepared; and the exchange of captives between Virginia and the British was stopped. “Humane conduct on our part,” wrote Jefferson, “was found to produce no effect. The contrary, therefore, is to be tried. Iron will be retaliated by iron, prison-ships for prison-ships, and like for like in general.” But in November, 1779, notice was received that the English, under their new leader, Sir Henry Clinton, had adopted a less barbarous system of warfare; and fortunately Jefferson’s measures of reprisal became unnecessary.

Hampered as he was by want of men and money, Jefferson did all that he could to supply the needs of the Virginia soldiers with Washington, of the army in North Carolina, led by Gates, and of George Rogers Clarke, the heroic commander who put down the Indian uprising on the western frontier, and captured the English officer who instigated it,—that same Colonel Hamilton of whom mention has already been made. The story of Clarke’s adventures in the wilderness,—he was a neighbor of Jefferson, only twenty-six years old,—of his forced marches, of his masterful dealing with the Indians, and finally of his capture of the British force, forms a thrilling chapter in the history of the American Revolution.

Many indeed of Jefferson’s constituents censured him as being over-zealous in his support of the army of Gates. He stripped Virginia, they said, of troops and resources which, as it proved afterward, were needed at home. But if Cornwallis were not defeated in North Carolina, it was certain that he would overrun the much more exposed Virginia. If he could be defeated anywhere, it would be in the Carolinas. Jefferson’s course, it is sufficient to say, was that recommended by Washington; and his exertions in behalf of the Continental armies were commended in the highest terms not only by Washington, but also by Generals Gates, Greene, Steuben, and Lafayette. The militia were called out, leaving behind only so many men as were required to cultivate the land, wagons were impressed, including two belonging to the governor, and attempts were even made—extraordinary for Virginia—to manufacture certain much-needed articles. “Our smiths,” wrote Jefferson, “are making five hundred axes and some tomahawks for General Gates.”

Thus fared the year 1779, and in 1780 things went from bad to worse. In April came a letter from Madison, saying that Washington’s army was on the verge of dissolution, being only half-clothed, and in a way to be starved. The public treasury was empty and the public credit gone. In August occurred the disastrous defeat of General Gates at Camden, which left Virginia at the mercy of Cornwallis. In October a British fleet under Leslie ravaged the country about Portsmouth, but failing to effect a juncture with Cornwallis, who was detained in North Carolina by illness among his troops, did no further harm. Two months later, however, Benedict Arnold sailed up the James River with another fleet, and, after committing some depredations at Richmond, sailed down again, escaping by the aid of a favorable wind, which hauled from east to west just in the nick of time for him.

In June, 1781, Cornwallis invaded Virginia, and no one suffered more than Jefferson from his depredations. Tarleton was dispatched to seize the governor at Monticello; but the latter was forewarned by a citizen of Charlottesville, who, being in a tavern at Louisa when Tarleton and his troop swept by on the main road, immediately guessed their destination, and mounting his horse, a fleet Virginia thoroughbred, rode by a short cut through the woods straight to Monticello, arriving there about three hours ahead of Tarleton.

Jefferson took the matter coolly. He first dispatched his family to a place of safety, sent his best horse to be shod at a neighboring smithy, and then proceeded to sort and separate his papers. He left the house only about five minutes before the soldiers entered it.

Two slaves, Martin, Mr. Jefferson’s body servant, and Cæsar, were engaged in hiding plate and other articles under the floor of the portico, a single plank having been raised for that purpose. As Martin, above, handed the last article to Cæsar under the floor, the tramp of the approaching cavalry was heard. Down went the plank, shutting in Cæsar, and there he remained, without making any outcry, for eighteen hours, in darkness, and of course without food or water. One of the soldiers, to try Martin’s nerve, clapped a pistol to his breast, and threatened to fire unless he would tell which way his master had fled. “Fire away, then,” retorted the black, fiercely answering glance for glance, and not receding a hair’s breath.

Tarleton and his men scrupulously refrained from injuring Jefferson’s property. Cornwallis, on the other hand, who encamped on Jefferson’s estate of Elk Hill, lying opposite Elk Island in the James River, destroyed the growing crops, burned all the barns and fences, carried off—“as was to be expected,” said Mr. Jefferson—the cattle and horses, and committed the barbarity of killing the colts that were too young to be of service. He carried off, also, about thirty slaves. “Had this been to give them freedom,” wrote Jefferson, “he would have done right; but it was to consign them to inevitable death from the smallpox and putrid fever, then raging in his camp.”

“Some of the miserable wretches crawled home to die,” Mr. Randall relates, “and giving information where others lay perishing in hovels or in the open air, by the wayside, these were sent for by their generous master; and the last moments of all of them were made as comfortable as could be done by proper nursing and medical attendance.”

These dreadful scenes, added to the agitation of having twice been obliged, at a moment’s notice, to flee from the enemy, to say nothing of the anxieties which she must have endured on her husband’s account, were too much for Mrs. Jefferson’s already enfeebled constitution. She died on September 6, 1782.

Six slave women who were household servants enjoyed for thirty years a kind of humble distinction at Monticello as “the servants who were in the room when Mrs. Jefferson died;” and the fact that they were there attests the affectionate relations which must have existed between them and their master and mistress. “They have often told my wife,” relates Mr. Bacon, “that when Mrs. Jefferson died they stood around the bed. Mr. Jefferson sat by her, and she gave him directions about a good many things that she wanted done. When she came to the children, she wept, and could not speak for some time. Finally she held up her hand, and, spreading out her four fingers, she told him she could not die happy if she thought her four children were ever to have a stepmother brought in over them. Holding her other hand in his, Mr. Jefferson promised her solemnly that he would never marry again;” and the promise was kept.

After his wife’s death Jefferson sank into what he afterward described as “a stupor of mind;” and even before that he had been, for the first and last time in his life, in a somewhat morbid mental condition. He was an excessively sensitive man, and reflections upon his conduct as governor, during the raids into Virginia by Arnold and Cornwallis, coming at a time when he was overwrought, rankled in his mind. He refused to serve again as governor, and desiring to defend his course when in that office, became a member of the House of Burgesses in 1781, in order that he might answer his critics there; but not a voice was raised against him. In 1782, he was again elected to the House, but he did not attend; and both Madison and Monroe endeavored in vain to draw him from his seclusion. To Monroe he replied: “Before I ventured to declare to my countrymen my determination to retire from public employment, I examined well my heart to know whether it were thoroughly cured of every principle of political ambition, whether no lurking particle remained which might leave me uneasy, when reduced within the limits of mere private life. I became satisfied that every fibre of that passion was thoroughly eradicated.”

Jefferson was an impulsive man,—in some respects a creature of the moment; certainly often, in his own case, mistaking, as a permanent feeling, what was really a transitory impression. His language to Monroe must, therefore, be taken as the sincere deliverance of a man who, at that time, had not the remotest expectation of receiving, or the least ambition to attain, the highest offices in the gift of the American people.

VII

ENVOY AT PARIS

Two years after his wife’s death, namely, in 1784, Jefferson was chosen by Congress to serve as envoy at Paris, with John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. The appointment came at an opportune moment, when his mind was beginning to recover its tone, and he gladly accepted it. It was deemed necessary that the new Confederacy should make treaties with the various governments of Europe, and as soon as the envoys reached Paris, they drew up a treaty such as they hoped might be negotiated. It has been described as “the first serious attempt ever made to conduct the intercourse of nations on Christian principles;” and, on that account, it failed. To this failure there was, however, one exception. “Old Frederick of Prussia,” as Jefferson styled him, “met us cordially;” and with him a treaty was soon concluded.