Chapter 2

More than once the legislature was obliged to flee before the enemy; Gates was crushed at Camden; Arnold the traitor scourged Richmond with his raiders; Monticello itself was captured by cavalry, and Jefferson escaped only by a hair's breadth. His estate was trampled over, his horses stolen, his barns burned, his crops destroyed and many of his slaves run off.

He declined a third election, and in the autumn of 1782, to his inconsolable sorrow, his wife died, leaving three daughters, the youngest a babe.

In the following November, he took his seat in congress at Annapolis, and during that session he proposed and caused the adoption of our present system of decimal currency.

In May, 1784, he was again elected plenipotentiary to France to assist Franklin and Adams in negotiating commercial treaties with foreign nations. He arrived in Paris in July, and in May, succeeding, became sole plenipotentiary to the king of France for three years from March 10, 1785.

Jefferson's residence in France produced a profound impression upon him and had much to do in crystallizing his ideas of the true form of government.

That country was groveling under the heel of one of the most hideous systems that the baseness of man ever conceived. Who has not read of the nobleman who, when his coachman ran over a child and crushed out its life, was only concerned lest its blood should soil his carriage, or of the poor peasants who were compelled to beat the bogs all night long, to prevent the frogs from croaking and thereby disturbing the slumber of their lordly masters? The condition of no people could be more horrible, than that of the lower classes in France previous to the uprising, with its excesses that horrified the world.

Jefferson enjoyed the music, the art and the culture of the gay capital, but could never shake off the oppression caused by the misery of the people.

"They are ground to powder," he said, "by the vices of the form of government which is one of wolves over sheep, or kites over pigeons."

He took many journeys through the country and made it a practice to enter the houses of the peasants and talk with them upon their affairs and manner of living. He often did this, using his eyes at the same time with the utmost assiduity. All that he learned deepened the sad impression he had formed, and he saw with unerring prevision the appalling retribution that was at hand.

But Jefferson was not the officer to forget or neglect his duties to his own government, during the five years spent in France.

Algiers, one of the pestilent Barbary States, held a number of American captives which she refused to release except upon the payment of a large ransom. It had been the custom for years for the powerful Christian nations to pay those savages to let their ships alone, because it was cheaper to do so than to maintain a fleet to fight them. Jefferson strove to bring about a union of several nations with his own, for the purpose of pounding some sense into the heads of the barbarians and compelling them to behave themselves.

One reason why he did not succeed was because our own country had no navy with which to perform her part in the compact.

France, with that idiotic blindness which ruled her in those fearful days, maintained a protective system which prevented America from sending cheap food to starving people, nor was Jefferson able to effect more than a slight change in the pernicious law. One thing done by him made him popular with the masses. His "Notes on Virginia" was published both in French and English. Like everything that emanated from his master hand, it was well conceived and full of information. In addition, it glowed with republican sentiment and delighted the people. He was in Paris when his State legislature enacted the act for which he had so strenuously worked, establishing the freedom of religion. He had numerous copies of it printed in French and distributed. It struck another popular chord and received the ardent praise of the advanced Liberals.

Jefferson was too deeply interested in educational work to forget it among any surroundings. All new discoveries, inventions and scientific books were brought to the knowledge of the colleges in the United States, and he collected a vast quantity of seeds, roots and nuts for transplanting in American soil.

It need hardly be said that his loved Monticello was not forgotten, and, as stated elsewhere, he grew about everything of that nature that would stand the rigor of the Virginia winters. No office or honor could take away Jefferson's pride as a cultivator of the soil.

Returning to Virginia on leave of absence, in the autumn of 1789, he was welcomed with official honors and the cordial respect of his fellow citizens. On the same day he learned of his appointment by Washington as his Secretary of State.

He would have preferred to return to his former post, but yielded to the wishes of the first president, and, arriving in New York in March, 1790, entered at once upon the duties of his office.

In the cabinet Jefferson immediately collided with the brilliant Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury.

The two could no more agree than oil and water.

Jefferson was an intense republican-democrat, and was shocked and disgusted to find himself in an atmosphere of distrust of a republican system of government, with an unmistakable leaning toward monarchical methods. This feeling prevailed not only in society, but showed itself among the political leaders.

Jefferson's political creed may be summed up in his own words:

"The will of the majority is the natural law of every society and the only sure guardian of the rights of man; though this may err, yet its errors are honest, solitary and short-lived. We are safe with that, even in its deviations, for it soon returns again to the right way."

Hamilton believed in a strong, centralized government, and on nearly every measure that came before the cabinet, these intellectual giants wrangled. Their quarrels were so sharp that Washington was often distressed. He respected both too deeply to be willing to lose either, but it required all his tact and mastering influence to hold them in check. Each found the other so intolerable, that he wished to resign that he might be freed from meeting him.

Hamilton abhorred the French revolution, with its terrifying excesses, and Jefferson declared that no horror equalled that of France's old system of government.

Finally Jefferson could stand it no longer and withdrew from the cabinet January 1, 1794.

An equally potent cause for his resignation was the meagreness of his salary of $3500. It was wholly insufficient and his estate was going to ruin. He yearned to return to his beloved pursuit, that of a farmer.

The request by Washington to act as special envoy to Spain did not tempt him, but he allowed his name to be put forward as a candidate for the presidency in 1796. John Adams received 71 votes and Jefferson 68, which in accordance with the law at that time made him vice-president.

President Adams ignored him in all political matters, and Jefferson found the chair of presiding officer of the senate congenial. He presided with dignity and great acceptability, and his "Manual of Parliamentary Practice" is still the accepted authority in nearly all of our deliberative bodies.

The presidential election of 1800 will always retain its place among the most memorable in our history.

The Federalists had controlled the national government for twelve years, or ever since its organization, and they were determined to prevent the elevation of Jefferson, the founder of the new Republican party. The Federal nominees were John Adams for president and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney for vice-president, while the Republican vote was divided between Jefferson and Aaron Burr.

A favorite warning on the part of those who see their ideas threatened with overthrow is that our country is "trembling on the verge of revolution." How many times in the past twenty-five, ten and five years have ranting men and women proclaimed from the housetops that we were "on the verge of revolution?" According to these wild pessimists the revolution is always at hand, but somehow or other it fails to arrive. The probabilities are that it has been permanently side-tracked.

During the campaign of 1800, Hamilton sounded the trumpet of alarm, when he declared in response to a toast:

"If Mr. Pinckney is not elected, a revolution will be the consequence, and within four years I will lose my head or be the leader of a triumphant army."

The Federalist clergy joined in denouncing Jefferson on the ground that he was an atheist. The Federalists said what they chose, but when the Republicans grew too careless they were fined and imprisoned under the Sedition law.

The exciting canvas established one fact: there was no man in the United States so devotedly loved and so fiercely hated as Thomas Jefferson. New York had twelve electoral votes, and because of the Alien and Sedition laws she withheld them from Adams and cast them upon the Republican side.

It may not be generally known that it was because of this fact that New York gained its name of the "Empire State."

The presidential vote was: Jefferson, 73; Burr, 73; John Adams, 65; C. C. Pinckney, 64; Jay, 1. There being a tie between the leading candidates, the election was thrown into the House of Representatives, which assembled on the 11th of February, 1801, to make choice between Burr and Jefferson.

It is to the credit of Hamilton that, knowing the debased character of Burr, he used his utmost influence against him.

A great snow storm descended upon the little town of Washington and the excitement became intense. On the first ballot, eight States voted for Jefferson and six for Burr, while Maryland and Vermont were equally divided. All the Federalists voted for Burr with the single exception of Huger of South Carolina, not because of any love for Burr, but because he did not hate him as much as he did Jefferson.

Mr. Nicholson of Maryland was too ill to leave his bed. Without his vote, his State would have been given to Burr, but with it, the result in Maryland would be a tie.

It was a time when illness had to give way to the stern necessity of the case, and the invalid was wrapped up and brought on his bed through the driving snow storm and placed in one of the committee rooms of the house, with his wife at his side, administering medicines and stimulants night and day. On each vote the ballot box was brought to the bed side and his feeble hand deposited the powerful bit of paper.

Day after day, the balloting went on until thirty-five ballots had been cast.

By that time, it was clear that no break could be made in the Jefferson columns and it was impossible to elect Burr. When the thirty-sixth ballot was cast, the Federalists of Maryland, Delaware and South Carolina threw blanks and the Federalists of Vermont stayed away, leaving their Republican brothers to vote those States for Jefferson. By this slender chance did the republic escape a calamity, and secure the election of Jefferson for president with Burr for vice-president.

The inauguration of the third president was made a national holiday throughout the country. The church bells were rung, the military paraded, joyous orations were delivered, and many of the newspapers printed in full the Declaration of Independence.

The closeness of the election resulted in a change in the electoral law by which the president and vice-president must of necessity belong to the same political party.

Jefferson had every reason to feel proud of his triumph, but one of the finest traits of his character was his magnanimity.

The irascible Adams made an exhibition of himself on the 4th of March, when in a fit of rage, he rose before day-light and set out in his coach for Massachusetts, refusing to wait and take part in the inauguration of his successor. With the mellowness of growing years, he realized the silliness of the act, and he and Jefferson became fully reconciled and kept up an affectionate correspondence to the end of their lives.

Jefferson did all he could to soothe the violent party feeling that had been roused during the election. This spirit ran like a golden thread through his first excellently conceived inaugural. He reminded his fellow citizens that while they differed in opinion, there was no difference in principle, and put forth the following happy thought:

"We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. If there be any among us, who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."

There can be little doubt that he had Hamilton in mind when he answered, as follows, in his own forceful way the radical views of that gifted statesman.

"Some honest men fear that a republican government cannot be strong, that this government is not strong enough. I believe this, on the contrary, is the strongest government on earth. I believe it is the only one where every man, at the call of the laws, would fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern."

It was characteristic of Jefferson's nobility that one of his first efforts was to undo, so far as he could, the mischief effected by the detested Sedition law. Every man who was in durance because of its operation was pardoned, and he looked upon the law as "a nullity as obsolete and palpable, as if congress had ordered us to fall down and worship a golden image."

He addressed friendly and affectionate letters to Kosciusko and others, and invited them to be his guests at the White House. Samuel Adams of Massachusetts had been shamefully abused during the canvas, but he felt fully compensated by the touching letter from the president. Thomas Paine was suffering almost the pangs of starvation in Paris, and Jefferson paid his passage home. Everywhere that it was possible for Jefferson to extend the helping hand he did so with a delicacy and a tact, that won him multitudes of friends and stamped him as one of nature's noblemen.

The new president selected an able cabinet, consisting of James Madison, Secretary of State; Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury; Henry Dearborn, Secretary of War; Robert Smith, Secretary of the Navy; Gideon Granger, Postmaster-general; Levi Lincoln, Attorney General. This household proved a veritable "happy family," all working together in harmony throughout the two terms, and Jefferson declared that if he had his work to do over again, he would select the same advisers without exception.

Although the policy, "to the victors belong the spoils," had not been formulated at that time, its spirit quickened the body politic. Jefferson's supporters expected him to turn out a part at least of the Federalists, who held nearly all the offices, but he refused, on the principle that a competent and honest office holder should not be removed because of his political opinions. When he, therefore, made a removal, it was as a rule, for other and sufficient reasons.

But he did not hesitate to show his dislike of the ceremony that prevailed around him. He stopped the weekly levee at the White House, and the system of precedence in force at the present time; also the appointment of fast and thanksgiving days. He dressed with severe simplicity and would not permit any attention to be paid him as president which would be refused him as a private citizen. In some respects, it must be conceded that this remarkable man carried his views to an extreme point.

The story, however, that he rode his horse alone to the capitol, and, tying him to the fence, entered the building, unattended, lacks confirmation.

Jefferson was re-elected in 1804, by a vote of 162 to 14 for Pinckney, who carried only two States out of the seventeen.

The administrations of Jefferson were marked not only by many important national events, but were accompanied by great changes in the people themselves. Before and for some years after the Revolution, the majority were content to leave the task of thinking, speaking and acting to the representatives, first of the crown and then to their influential neighbors. The property qualification abridged the right to vote, but the active, hustling nature of the Americans now began to assert itself. The universal custom of wearing wigs and queues was given up and men cut their own hair short and insisted that every free man should have the right to vote.

Jefferson was the founder and head of the new order of things, and of the republican party, soon to take the name of democratic, which controlled all the country with the exception of New England.

Our commerce increased enormously, for the leading nations of Europe were warring with one another; money came in fast and most of the national debt was paid.

Louisiana with an area exceeding all the rest of the United States, was bought from France in 1803, for $15,000,000, and from the territory were afterward carved the states of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Montana, Oklahoma, the Indian Territory and most of the states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado and Wyoming.

The upper Missouri River and the Columbia River country to the Pacific Ocean were explored in 1804-6, by Lewis and Clarke, the first party of white men to cross the continent north of Mexico. Ohio was admitted to the Union in 1802. Fulton's steamboat, the Clermont made her maiden trip from New York to Albany in 1807. The first boatload of anthracite coal was shipped to Philadelphia, and it was a long time before the people knew what to do with it.

The Tripolitan Pirates were snuffed out (1801-1805). The blight of the Embargo Act settled upon our commerce in 1807, in which year the opening gun of the War of 1812 was fired when the Leopard outraged the Chesapeake.

The Embargo Act was a grievous mistake of Jefferson, though its purpose was commendable. Under the plea of securing our ships against capture, its real object was to deprive England and France of the commodities which could be secured only in the United States. This measure might have been endurable for an agricultural people, but it could not be borne by a commercial and manufacturing one, like New England, whose goods must find their market abroad. Under the Embargo Act, the New England ships were rotting and crumbling to pieces at her wharves. It was not long before she became restless. The measure was first endorsed by the Massachusetts legislature, but the next session denounced it.

Early in 1809, congress passed an act allowing the use of the army and navy to enforce the embargo and make seizures.

The Boston papers printed the act in mourning and, meetings were called to memorialize the legislature. That body took strong ground, justifying the course of Great Britain, demanding of congress that it should repeal the embargo and declare war against France. Moreover, the enforcement act was declared "not legally binding," and resistance to it was urged.

This was as clear a case of nullification as that of South Carolina in 1832.

Connecticut was as hot-headed as Massachusetts.

John Quincy Adams has stated that at that time the "Essex Junto" agreed upon a New England convention to consider the expediency of secession. Adams denounced the plotters so violently that the Massachusetts legislature censured him by vote, upon which he resigned his seat in the United States senate.

The Embargo Act was passed by congress, December 22, 1807, at the instance of Jefferson, and repealed February 28, 1809, being succeeded by the Non-Intercourse Act, which forbade French and British vessels to enter American ports. It was mainly due to Jefferson's consummate tact that war with Great Britain was averted after the Leopard and Chesapeake affair, and he always maintained that had his views been honestly carried out by the entire nation, we should have obtained all we afterward fought for, without the firing of a hostile gun.

When on March 4, 1809, Jefferson withdrew forever from public life, he was in danger of being arrested in Washington for debt. He was in great distress, but a Richmond bank helped him for a time with a loan. He returned to Monticello, where he lived with his only surviving daughter Martha, her husband and numerous children, and with the children of his daughter Maria, who had died in 1804.

He devoted hard labor and many years to the perfection of the common school system in Virginia, and was so pleased with his establishment of the college at Charlottesville, out of which grew the University of Virginia, that he had engraved on his tombstone, "Father of the University of Virginia," and was prouder of the fact than of being the author of the Declaration of Independence.

Meanwhile, his lavish hospitality carried him lower and lower into poverty. There was a continual procession of curious visitors to Monticello, and old women poked their umbrellas through the window panes to get a better view of the grand old man. Congress in 1814, paid him $23,000 for his library which was not half its value. Some time afterward a neighbor obtained his name as security on a note for $20,000 and left him to pay it all.

In the last year of his life, when almost on the verge of want, $16,500 was sent to him as a present from friends in New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore, more than one-half being raised by Mayor Hone of New York. Jefferson was moved to tears, and in expressing his gratitude said, he was thankful that not a penny had been wrung from taxpayers.

In the serene sunset of life, the "Sage of Monticello" peacefully passed away on the afternoon of July 4, 1826, and a few hours later, John Adams, at his home in Quincy, Mass., breathed his last. A reverent hush fell upon the country, at the thought of these two great men, one the author of the Declaration of Independence and the other the man who brought about its adoption, dying on the fiftieth anniversary of its signing, and many saw a sacred significance in the fact.

Horace Greeley in referring to the co-incidence, said there was as much probability of a bushel of type flung into the street arranging themselves so as to print the Declaration of Independence, as there was of Jefferson and Adams expiring on the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of that instrument; and yet one alternative of the contingency happened and the other never can happen.

Jefferson's liberal views have caused him to be charged with infidelity.

He profoundly respected the moral character of Christ, but did not believe in divine redemption through Christ's work. His dearest aim was to bring down the aristocracy and elevate the masses.

He regarded slavery as a great moral and political evil, and in referring to it said: "I tremble for my country when I remember that God is just."

No more humane slave owner ever lived, and his servants regarded him with almost idolatrous affection, while his love of justice, his hospitality, his fairness to all and his winning personality disarmed enmity and gave him many of his truest and warmest friends from among his political opponents.

A peculiar fact connected with Jefferson is the difference among his portraits. This is due to the varying periods at which they were made. As we have stated, he was raw-boned, freckled and ungainly in his youth, but showed a marked improvement in middle life. When he became old, many esteemed him good looking, though it can hardly be claimed that he was handsome.

When Jefferson was eighty years old, Daniel Webster wrote the following description of the venerable "Sage of Monticello:"