Thomas Jefferson (April 13 [O.S. April 2], 1743 – July 4, 1826) was a Founding Father and the third president of the United States, serving from 1801 to 1809. A prolific writer and philosopher, Jefferson was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence.
Born into a slave owning family in Shadwell, Virginia, Jefferson emerged as an ideological leader of the American Revolution through his fierce advocacy for civil liberties, including the freedoms of speech, religion, and thought. He was elected to represent Virginia in the Second Continental Congress in 1775 and selected a member of the Committee of Five. Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence largely alone, and the document was unanimously passed by the Congress in 1776. Jefferson was appointed U.S. Minister to France in 1785 by the Confederation Congress, maintaining the American–French alliance against the British. He was appointed the first U.S. Secretary of State by President in 1790, helping administer Washington's policy of neutrality in European conflicts. Jefferson and his political ally founded the in 1792, centered on , , , and . Running against candidate in , Jefferson finished with the second-highest number of votes and became Adams's . He ran again in , winning against Adams, and in overwhelmingly defeating the Federalists' of .
This page is based on “Thomas Jefferson” from English Wikipedia, (r1380172901) CC BY-SA 4.0 used under the license. The original authors are listed in its page history.
Jefferson's presidency assertively defended the nation's shipping and trade interests against Barbary pirates and aggressive British trade policies, promoted a western expansionist policy with the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the nation's geographic size, and reduced military forces and expenditures following successful negotiations with France. In his second presidential term, he was beset by difficulties at home, including the trial of his former vice president Aaron Burr. In 1807, Jefferson implemented the Embargo Act to defend the nation's industries from British threats to U.S. shipping, limit foreign trade, and stimulate the birth of American manufacturing.
Jefferson is ranked among the upper tier of U.S. presidents both by scholars and in public opinion. Presidential scholars and historians have praised Jefferson's advocacy of religious freedom and tolerance, his peaceful acquisition of the Louisiana Territory from France, and his leadership in supporting the Lewis and Clark Expedition. They acknowledge his lifelong ownership of large numbers of slaves, but offer varying interpretations of his views on and relationship with slavery.1
Early life and education
Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743 (April 2, 1743, Old Style, Julian calendar), at the family's Shadwell Plantation in the Colony of Virginia. He was the third of ten children.2 His father, Peter Jefferson, was a planter and surveyor; his mother was Jane Randolph.3 Peter Jefferson moved his family to Tuckahoe Plantation in 1745 following 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 before October 1753.4
Jefferson began his education together with the Randolph children at Tuckahoe under tutors.5 Thomas' father Peter, who was self-taught and regretted not having a formal education, entered Thomas into an English school at age five. In 1752, at age nine, he attended a local school run by a Presbyterian minister and also began studying the natural world, which he grew to love. He studied Latin, Greek, and French, and began learning to ride horses. Thomas read books from his father's modest library.6 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.67 Jefferson came to know various Native Americans including Cherokee chief Ostenaco, who often stopped at Shadwell to visit on their way to Williamsburg to trade.89 In Williamsburg, the young Jefferson met and came to admire Patrick Henry.10
Thomas's father died in 1757, and his estate was divided between his sons, Thomas and Randolph.11John Harvie Sr. became 14-year-old Thomas' guardian.12 Thomas inherited approximately 5,000 acres (7.8 sq mi; 20.2 km2), which included the land on which he later built Monticello in 1772.13
In 1761, at the age of seventeen, Jefferson entered the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, where he studied mathematics and philosophy with William Small. Under Small's tutelage, Jefferson encountered the ideas of British empiricists, including John Locke, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton. Small also 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. Jefferson later wrote that, while there, he "heard more common good sense, more rational & philosophical conversations than in all the rest of my life".14
During his first year in college, Jefferson spent considerable time attending parties and dancing and was not very frugal with his expenditures; in his second year, regretting that he had squandered away time and money in his first year, he committed to studying fifteen hours a day.15 While at William & Mary, Jefferson became a member of the Flat Hat Club, the nation's oldest secret society, a small group whose members included St. George Tucker, Edmund Randolph, and James Innes.1617
Jefferson concluded his formal studies in April 1762.18 He read the law under Wythe's tutelage while working as a law clerk in his office.19 Jefferson was well-read in a broad variety of subjects, including law, philosophy, history, natural law, natural religion, ethics, and several areas of science, including astronomy20 and agriculture.
Jefferson kept two commonplace books: from about age 15 to 30, he compiled a book of sayings and quotations, published in the 20th century as Jefferson's Literary Commonplace Book.21 During his years of legal study under Wythe, Jefferson began recording his notes on law, history, and philosophy, and continued to do so until the end of his life; his Legal Commonplace Book was also published in the 20th century.22
On July 20, 1765, Jefferson's sister Martha married his close friend and college companion Dabney Carr, which greatly pleased Jefferson. In October of that year, however, Jefferson's sister Jane unexpectedly died at age 25. Her death plunged Jefferson into a months-long period of mourning that was spoken of amongst the family.23
Jefferson treasured his books and amassed three sizable libraries in his lifetime. He began assembling his first library, which grew to 200 volumes, in his youth.24 Wythe was so impressed with Jefferson that he later bequeathed his entire library to him.25 In 1770, however, Jefferson's first library was destroyed in a fire at his Shadwell home. His second library, which replenished the first, grew to nearly 6,500 volumes by 1814.26 After British forces set the Library of Congress on fire in the burning of Washington in 1814, Jefferson sold his second library to the U.S. government for $23,950, hoping to help jumpstart the Library of Congress's rebuilding. Jefferson used a portion of the proceeds to pay off some of his large debt. Jefferson soon resumed collecting his third personal library. In a letter to John Adams, Jefferson wrote, "I cannot live without books."2728 By the time of Jefferson's death a decade later, his third and final library had grown to nearly 2,000 volumes.29
Career
Lawyer and House of Burgesses
In 1767, Jefferson was granted admission to the Virginia bar, and lived with his mother at Shadwell.30 Between 1769 and 1775, he represented Albemarle County in Virginia's House of Burgesses.31 While serving in the House of Burgesses, Jefferson pursued reforms to slavery, including writing and sponsoring legislation in 1769 to strip power from the royal governor and courts, instead providing masters of slaves with the discretion to emancipate them. Jefferson persuaded his cousin Richard Bland to spearhead the legislation's passage, but it faced strong opposition in a state whose economy was largely agrarian.32
As a lawyer, Jefferson took on seven freedom-seeking enslaved people as clients33 and waived his fee for one he claimed should be freed before the minimum statutory age for emancipation.34 Jefferson invoked natural law, arguing "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, which was conceivably used to aid his escape shortly thereafter.34 Jefferson's underlying intellectual argument that all people were entitled by their creator to what he labeled a "natural right" to liberty is a theme that he later prominently incorporated into the Declaration of Independence.35 In 1767, Jefferson took on 68 cases for the General Court of Virginia and was counsel in three notable cases of that era, Howell v. Netherland (1770), Bolling v. Bolling (1771), and Blair v. Blair (1772).36
In 1768, Jefferson began constructing his primary residence, Monticello, on a hilltop overlooking his 5,000-acre (20 km2; 7.8 mi2) plantation.38 He spent most of his adult life designing Monticello and was quoted as saying, "Architecture is my delight, and putting up, and pulling down, one of my favorite amusements."39 Construction was done mostly by local masons and carpenters, assisted by Jefferson's slaves.40 He moved into the South Pavilion in 1770. Turning Monticello into a neoclassical masterpiece in the Palladian style became Jefferson's lifelong project.41
On January 1, 1772, Jefferson married his third cousin,42Martha Wayles Skelton, a 23-year-old widow of Bathurst Skelton.4344 She was a frequent hostess for Jefferson and managed the large household. Historian Dumas Malone described the marriage as the happiest period of Jefferson's life.45 Martha was a skilled pianist; Jefferson often accompanied her on the violin or cello.46 During their ten-year marriage, Martha bore six children: Martha "Patsy" (1772–1836); Jane Randolph (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).4748 Only Martha and Mary survived to adulthood.49 Martha's father, John Wayles, died in 1773, and the couple inherited 135 enslaved people, 11,000 acres (45 km2; 17 mi2), and the estate's debts. The debts took Jefferson years to satisfy, contributing to his financial problems.43
Martha later suffered from ill health, including diabetes, and frequent childbirth weakened her. 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.50 Jefferson was grief-stricken by her death, relentlessly pacing back and forth for roughly three weeks, and finally emerging to take long rambling rides on secluded roads with his daughter, Martha, who said she was "a solitary witness to many a violent burst of grief".4951
Jefferson sought out John Adams, a Continental Congress delegate from Massachusetts and an emerging leader in the Congress.55 They became close friends, and Adams supported Jefferson's appointment to the Committee of Five, which the Congress charged with authoring the Declaration: Adams, Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman. The committee initially thought that Adams should write the document, but Adams persuaded the committee to choose Jefferson due to Jefferson being a Virginian, popular, and a good writer by Adams.56
Jefferson consulted with his fellow committee members, but mostly wrote the Declaration of Independence in isolation between June 11 and 28, 1776.57 Jefferson drew considerably on his proposed draft of the Virginia Constitution, George Mason's draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, and other sources.58 Other committee members made some changes, and a final draft was presented to Congress on June 28, 1776.59 Congress began debate over its contents on Monday, July 1,59 resulting in the removal of roughly a fourth of Jefferson's original draft.6061 Jefferson resented the changes, but he did not speak publicly about them.62 On July 4, 1776, the Congress voted unanimously to ratify the Declaration, and delegates signed it on August 2. Jefferson and the other delegates knew they were committing high treason against the Crown, which was punishable by torture and death.63
Following its ratification, the Declaration was released publicly. Two days after its ratification, on July 6, The Pennsylvania Evening Post, was the first newspaper to publish it. On July 8 at noon, it was read publicly and simultaneously for the first time at three designated locations: Trenton, New Jersey; Easton, Pennsylvania; and Philadelphia.64
Contemporary historians generally view the Declaration of Independence as one of the most significant and influential written documents in world history, and Jefferson's preamble is regarded as an enduring statement on individual and human rights. Jefferson's phrase "all men are created equal" has been called "one of the best-known sentences in the English language". Harvard University history chairman David Armitage has written that, "No American document has had a greater global impact than the Declaration of Independence",65 and historian Joseph Ellis has written that the Declaration includes "the most potent and consequential words in American history".6166
Virginia state legislator and governor
At the start of the American Revolution, Colonel Jefferson was named commander of the Albemarle County Militia on September 26, 1775.67 He was then elected to the Virginia House of Delegates for Albemarle County in September 1776, when finalizing the state constitution was a priority.6869 For nearly three years, Jefferson 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.70 The bill failed to pass, as did his legislation to disestablish the Anglican Church, but both were later revived by James Madison.71
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".68 Jefferson also was concerned that Virginia's powerful landed gentry were becoming a hereditary aristocracy and took the lead in abolishing what he called "feudal and unnatural distinctions".72 He targeted laws such as entail and primogeniture by which a deceased landowner's oldest son was vested with all land ownership and power.7273
Jefferson was elected governor for one-year terms in 1779 and 1780.74 He transferred the state capital from Williamsburg to Richmond, and introduced additional measures for public education, religious freedom, and inheritance.75
During General Benedict Arnold's 1781 invasion of Virginia, Jefferson escaped Richmond just ahead of the British forces, which razed the city.7677 He sent emergency dispatches to Colonel Sampson Mathews and other commanders in an attempt to repel Arnold's efforts.7879 When the British occupied Norfolk, Jefferson had caused patriots to burn and destroy it in 1776.80General 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.81 Jefferson escaped to Poplar Forest, his plantation to the west.82 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 Jefferson was not reelected.83
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 two.84
In 1782, Jefferson refused a partnership offer by North Carolina Governor Abner Nash, in a profiteering scheme involving the sale of confiscated Loyalist lands.85 Unlike some Founders, 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 James Madison, James Monroe, and other friends.86
Jefferson accused British-based merchants of unfairly depressing tobacco prices and forcing Virginia planters to take on unsustainable debt loads. In 1786, he remarked:
A powerful engine for this [mercantile profiteering] was the giving of good prices and credit to the planter till they got him more immersed in debt than he could pay without selling lands or slaves. They then reduced the prices given for his tobacco so that…they never permitted him to clear off his debt.87
Notes on the State of Virginia
In 1780, Jefferson received a letter of inquiry from French diplomat François Barbé-Marbois 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).88 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.89 He also wrote of his views on the American Indians, equating them to European settlers.9091
Notes was first published in 1785 in French and appeared in English in 1787.92 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";93University of Virginia historian Merrill D. Peterson described it as an accomplishment for which all Americans should be grateful.94
Member of Congress
Jefferson was appointed a Virginia delegate to the Congress of the Confederation organized following the peace treaty with Great Britain in 1783. He was a member of the committee setting foreign exchange rates and recommended an American currency based on the decimal system that was adopted.95 He advised the formation of the Committee of the States to fill the power vacuum when Congress was in recess.96 The committee met when Congress adjourned, but disagreements rendered it dysfunctional.97
Jefferson sent a letter (revealed in 2025) to Virginia Governor Benjamin Harrison, dated December 31, 1783, in which he relates the wave of enthusiasm of Europeans for taking up arms against their leaders. Jefferson was sharing the affirmation of his own promotion of the right to bear arms that brought about the American Revolution. The letter also conveys Jefferson's anxiety over the final ratification of the Treaty of Paris formally ending the revolutionary war. Signed initially by the parties in September, the still-outstanding consent of two colonies was required in London (then a two-month journey) by the following March. The deadline was ultimately but barely met, with the required signatures made in mid-January.98
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 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.99100 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 Territory.99
Minister to France
On May 7, 1784, Jefferson was appointed by the Congress of the Confederation101 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.102103 With his young daughter Patsy and two servants, he departed in July 1784, arriving in Paris the next month.104105 Jefferson had Patsy educated at 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."106 During his five years in Paris, Jefferson played a leading role in shaping U.S. foreign policy.107
In 1786, he met and fell in love with Maria Cosway, a married 27-year-old musician. She returned to Great Britain after six weeks, but she and Jefferson maintained a lifelong correspondence.108 During the summer of 1786, Jefferson arrived in London to meet with John Adams, who was then serving as the nation's first US 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 in a gesture of public insult. Jefferson returned to France in August.109
Jefferson sent for his youngest surviving child, nine-year-old Polly, in June 1787. She was accompanied by 14 year old young slave from Monticello, Sally Hemings. Jefferson had taken her older brother, James Hemings, to Paris as part of his domestic staff and had him trained in French cuisine.110 According to Sally's son, Madison Hemings, by the time Sally was 16-year-old she was pregnant with 46 year old Jefferson's child.111112 Madison indicated his mother agreed to return to the United States only after Jefferson promised to free her children when they came of age.111112
While in France, Jefferson became a regular companion of the Marquis de Lafayette, a French hero of the American Revolution, and Jefferson used his influence with Lafayette to procure trade agreements with France.113114 As the French Revolution began, Jefferson agreed to allow his Paris residence at Hôtel de Langeac to be used for meetings by Lafayette and other revolutionary leaders. He was in Paris during the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, and he consulted with Lafayette as Lafayette drafted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.115 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.116117 Unable to attend the 1787 Constitution Convention, Jefferson supported the Constitution but desired the addition of the promised Bill of Rights.118 Jefferson left Paris for America in September 1789.119 He remained a firm supporter of the French Revolution while opposing its more violent elements.120
Secretary of State
Soon after returning from France, Jefferson accepted President Washington's invitation to serve as Secretary of State.121 Pressing issues at the time, the national debt and where the new national capital should be placed following its planned relocation from Philadelphia in 1800, placed him at odds with Secretary of the TreasuryAlexander Hamilton, who favored a capital close to major commercial centers in the Northeast, while Washington, Jefferson, and other agrarians wanted it further south.122 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 original 13 states.122
Jefferson opposed a national debt, preferring that each state retire its own, which contrasted with Hamilton's vision of the federal government consolidating state debts123 and establishing national credit and a national bank. Jefferson strenuously opposed both policies and attempted to undermine Hamilton's agenda, which nearly led Washington to dismiss him from the cabinet. He later left the cabinet voluntarily.124
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-Appalachia and British control in the North, believing this would aid in the pacification of Native Americans.125
Along with political protegé James Madison, then a U.S. Representative, and author Philip Freneau, Jefferson co-founded the National Gazette in Philadelphia in 1791, which sought to counter the policies of the Federalist Party, which Hamilton was promoting through the Gazette of the United States, an influential Federalist newspaper. The National Gazette criticized the policies promoted by Hamilton, often in anonymous essays signed by the pen name Brutus at Jefferson's urging and written by Madison.126 In the spring of 1791, Jefferson was suffering from migraines and tiring of the infighting with Hamilton, so he and Madison departed for a vacation in Vermont.127
In May 1792, Jefferson's concern about emerging political rivalries in the young nation was escalating, and he wrote Washington, imploring him to run for reelection for a second term that year as a unifying influence.128 He urged the president to rally the citizenry to a party that would defend democracy against the corrupting influence of banks and financial-focused interests, which the Federalists were embracing and espousing. Historians recognize Jefferson's letter to Washington as one of the first delineations of Democratic-Republican Party principles.129 Jefferson, Madison, and other Democratic-Republican organizers favored states' rights and local control and opposed the federal concentration of power. Hamilton, conversely, sought more power vested in the federal government.130
Jefferson supported France against Britain when the two nations fought in 1793, though his arguments in Washington's Cabinet were undercut by French Revolutionary envoy Edmond-Charles Genêt's open scorn for Washington.131 In discussions with British Minister George Hammond, Jefferson tried in vain to persuade the British to vacate their posts in the Northwest and to compensate the U.S. for enslaved people freed by the British at the end of the Revolutionary War. Jefferson also sought to return to private life, and resigned from the cabinet in December 1793; he may also have wanted to bolster his political influence from outside the administration.132
After the Washington administration negotiated the Jay Treaty with Britain in 1794, Jefferson saw a cause around which he could rally the Democratic-Republican Party. He organized national opposition to the treaty from Monticello.133 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".134 The Treaty passed, but it expired in 1805 during Jefferson's presidential administration, and then President Jefferson did not renew it. Jefferson continued his pro-France 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", he wrote.135
Election of 1796 and vice presidency
In the presidential campaign of 1796, Jefferson lost the electoral college vote to Federalist John Adams 71–68. He did, however, receive the second-highest number of votes and, under the electoral laws at the time, was elected as vice president. As presiding officer of the United States Senate, Jefferson 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.136 Jefferson previously studied parliamentary law and procedure for 40 years, making him qualified to serve as presiding officer. In 1800, he published his assembled notes on Senate procedure as A Manual of Parliamentary Practice.137 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, predicting that his rival would only serve one term. He also encouraged France to invade England, and advised Létombe to stall any American envoys sent to Paris.138 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.139 But 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.140
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.141 To rally opposition, he and James Madison anonymously wrote the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, asserting that the federal government had no right to exercise powers not specifically delegated to it by the states.142 The resolutions followed the "interposition" approach of Madison, that states may shield their citizens from federal laws that they deem unconstitutional. Jefferson advocated nullification, allowing states to entirely invalidate federal laws.143144 He warned that, "unless arrested at the threshold", the Alien and Sedition Acts would "drive these states into revolution and blood".145
Biographer Ron Chernow contends that "the theoretical damage of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions was deep and lasting, and was a recipe for disunion", and contributed to the outbreak of the American Civil War and later events.146 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".147 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.148
Election of 1800
Jefferson ran for president against John Adams again in 1800. Adams' campaign was weakened by unpopular taxes and vicious Federalist infighting over his actions in the Quasi-War.149 Democratic-Republicans pointed to the Alien and Sedition Acts and accused the Federalists of being secret pro-Britain monarchists. Federalists, in turn, charged that Jefferson was a godless libertine beholden to the French.150UCLA history professor Joyce Appleby described the 1800 presidential election as "one of the most acrimonious in the annals of American history".151
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 under the Three-Fifths Compromise.152 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 U.S. House of Representatives.153154 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.155
The win led to Democratic-Republican celebrations throughout the country.156 Some of Jefferson's opponents argued that he owed his victory to the South's inflated number of electors.157 Others alleged that Jefferson secured James Asheton Bayard's tie-breaking electoral vote by promising to retain various Federalist posts in the government.155 Jefferson disputed the allegation, and the historical record is inconclusive.158
The transition proceeded smoothly, marking a watershed in American history. Historian Gordon S. Wood writes that, "it was one of the first popular elections in modern history that resulted in the peaceful transfer of power from one 'party' to another."155
Presidency (1801–1809)
Jefferson was sworn in as president by Chief JusticeJohn 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 two predecessors, Jefferson exhibited a dislike of formal etiquette. Plainly dressed, he chose to walk alongside friends to the Capitol from his nearby boardinghouse instead of arriving by carriage.159 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."160161 Ideologically, he stressed "equal and exact justice to all men", minority rights, and freedom of speech, religion, and press.162 He said that a free and republican government was "the strongest government on earth".162 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.161
Widowed since 1782, Jefferson first relied on his two daughters to serve as his official hostesses.163 In late May 1801, he asked Dolley Madison, wife of his long-time friend James Madison, to be the permanent White House hostess. 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 for another eight years as First Lady while her husband was president.163
Financial affairs
Jefferson's first challenge as president was shrinking the $83 million national debt.164 He began dismantling Hamilton's Federalist fiscal system with help from the secretary of the treasury, Albert Gallatin.161 Gallatin devised a plan to eliminate the national debt in sixteen years by extensive annual appropriations and reduction in taxes.165 The administration eliminated the whiskey excise and other taxes after closing "unnecessary offices" and cutting "useless establishments and expenses".166167
Jefferson believed that the First Bank of the United States represented a "most deadly hostility" to republican government.165 He wanted to dismantle the bank before its charter expired in 1811, but was dissuaded by Gallatin.168 Gallatin argued that the national bank was a useful financial institution and set out to expand its operations.169 Jefferson looked to other corners to address the growing national debt.169 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.166 After two terms, he had lowered the national debt from $83 million to $57 million.170
Domestic affairs
Jefferson pardoned several of those imprisoned under the Alien and Sedition Acts.171 Congressional Republicans repealed the Judiciary Act of 1801, which removed nearly all of Adams's "midnight judges". A subsequent appointment battle led to the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Marbury v. Madison, asserting judicial review over executive branch actions.172 Jefferson appointed three Supreme Court justices: William Johnson (1804), Henry Brockholst Livingston (1807), and Thomas Todd (1807).173
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.174 He signed the Military Peace Establishment Act on March 16, 1802, founding the United States Military Academy at West Point. The act documented 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.175
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 Jefferson to name the first Librarian of Congress, and formed a committee to establish library regulations. Congress also granted both the president and vice president the right to use the library.176
Foreign affairs (1801–1805)
First Barbary War
American merchant ships had been protected from Barbary Coast pirates by the Royal Navy when the states were British colonies.177 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.178 Following the fleet's first engagement, he successfully asked Congress for a declaration of war.178 The "First Barbary War" was the first foreign war fought by the U.S.179
Pasha of TripoliYusuf 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.180 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.181 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."182
Louisiana Purchase
Spain ceded ownership of the Louisiana territory in 1800 to France. Jefferson was concerned that Napoleon's 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."183 In 1802, he instructed James Monroe and Robert R. Livingston to negotiate the purchase of New Orleans and adjacent coastal areas.184 In early 1803, Jefferson offered Napoleon nearly $10 million for 40,000 square miles (100,000 square kilometres) of tropical territory.185
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 kilometres) of French territory for $15 million (~$380 million in 2024), doubling the size of the United States.185 U.S. negotiators accepted the offer and signed the treaty on April 30, 1803.170 Word of the unexpected purchase did not reach Jefferson until July 3, 1803.170 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 European presence in North America, removing obstacles to U.S. westward expansion.186
Most thought that this was an exceptional opportunity, despite Republican reservations about the Constitutional authority of the federal government to acquire land.187 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 urged a speedy debate and ratification.188 On October 20, 1803, the Senate ratified the purchase treaty by a vote of 24–7.189 Jefferson personally was humble about acquiring the Louisiana Territory, but he resented complainers who called the vast domain a "howling wilderness".190
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 Louisianans adjusted to their new nation.191192 Historians have differed in their assessments regarding the constitutional implications of the sale,193 but they typically hail the Louisiana acquisition as a major accomplishment. Frederick Jackson Turner called the purchase the most formative event in American history.186
Expeditions
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.194 Jefferson and others were influenced by exploration accounts of Le Page du Pratz in Louisiana (1763) and James Cook in the Pacific (1784),195 and they persuaded Congress in 1804 to fund an expedition to explore and map the newly acquired territory to the Pacific Ocean.196
Jefferson appointed secretary Meriwether Lewis and acquaintance William Clark to lead the Corps of Discovery (1803–1806).197 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.198 The expedition lasted from May 1804 to September 1806 and obtained a wealth of scientific and geographic knowledge, including knowledge of many Indian tribes.199
Jefferson refuted the contemporary notion that Indians were inferior and maintained that they were equal in body and mind to people of European descent,202 although he believed them to be inferior in terms of culture and technology.203 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.204205 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".206
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. Various tribes accepted Jefferson's policies, including the Shawnees led by Black Hoof, the Muscogee, and the Cherokee. However, some Shawnees, led by Tecumseh, broke off from Black Hoof, and opposed Jefferson's assimilation policies.207
Historian Bernard Sheehan argues that Jefferson believed that assimilation was best for American Indians, and next-best was removal to the west; he felt that the worst outcome of the conflict would be their attacking the whites.205 Jefferson told U.S. Secretary of WarHenry Dearborn, who then oversaw Indian affairs, "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."208 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.209
Re-election in 1804 and second term
Jefferson was nominated for reelection by the Democratic-Republican Party, with George Clinton replacing Burr as his running mate.210 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.210
In March 1806, a split developed in the Democratic-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, permanently setting Randolph apart politically from Jefferson. Jefferson and Madison 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.211
Jefferson's popularity suffered further in his second term as a result of his response to wars in Europe. Relations with Britain deteriorated, 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 with Jefferson and the U.S. over trading rights, which the U.S. proved unsuccessful in countering. Jefferson then led the enactment of the Embargo Act of 1807, directed at both France and Britain, which triggered economic chaos in the U.S. and was strongly criticized, leading Jefferson to abandon the policy a year later.212
During the American Revolution, colonial states abolished the international slave trade, but South Carolina reopened it. In his annual message of December 1806, Jefferson denounced the international slave trade as "violations of human rights" and called on the new Congress to immediately criminalize it. The following year, in 1807, Congress passed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves, which Jefferson signed.213214 The act established severe punishment against the international slave trade, although it did not address the issue domestically.215
In Haiti, Jefferson's neutrality allowed arms to flow to the slave independence movement during the Haitian Revolution, and Jefferson blocked attempts to assist Napoleon, who was defeated militarily in Haiti in 1803.216 But Jefferson's administration refused official recognition of Haiti during his second term, in deference to southern complaints about racial violence against slave holders. Recognition was not extended to Haiti until 1862.217
Controversies
Burr conspiracy and trial
Following the 1801 electoral deadlock, Jefferson's relationship with his vice president, 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 Democratic-Republican ticket in 1804 in favor of charismatic George Clinton.
The same year, Burr was soundly defeated in his bid to be elected New York governor. During the campaign, Alexander Hamilton made publicly callous remarks regarding Burr's moral character.218Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel, held on July 11, 1804. In the duel, Burr mortally wounded Hamilton, who died the following day. Burr was subsequently indicted for Hamilton's murder, causing him to flee to Georgia, even though he remained president of the U.S. Senate during Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase's impeachment trial.219 Both indictments quietly died and Burr was not prosecuted.220
In August 1804, Burr contacted British Minister Anthony Merry offering to cede U.S. western territory in return for money and British ships.221 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.222 Burr discussed 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.223224 In the fall of 1806, Burr launched a military flotilla carrying about 60 men down the Ohio River. Wilkinson renounced the plot and reported Burr's expedition to Jefferson, who ordered Burr's arrest.222225226 On February 13, 1807, Burr was captured in Louisiana and sent to Virginia to be tried for treason.221 Burr's 1807 conspiracy trial became a national issue.227 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, and distant cousin, John Marshall, who dismissed the treason charge. Burr's legal team subpoenaed Jefferson, but Jefferson refused to testify, making the first argument for executive privilege.228 Instead, Jefferson provided relevant legal documents.229 After a three-month trial, the jury found Burr not guilty, while Jefferson denounced his acquittal.226230231232 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".226
Wilkinson's misconduct
Commanding General James Wilkinson was a holdover of the Washington and Adams administrations. In 1804, Wilkinson received 12,000 pesos from the Spanish for information on American boundary plans.233 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, since there was not then significant evidence against him.234 An investigation by the U.S. House of Representatives in December 1807 exonerated Wilkinson.235 In 1808, a military court looked into the allegations against Wilkinson but also found a lack of evidence. Jefferson retained Wilkinson in the U.S. Army.236 Evidence found in Spanish archives in the 20th century proved Wilkinson was on the Spanish payroll.233
Foreign affairs (1805–1809)
Attempted annexation of Florida
In the aftermath of the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson attempted to annex West Florida from Spain. In his annual message to Congress, on December 3, 1805, Jefferson railed against Spain over Florida border depredations.237238 A few days later Jefferson secretly requested a two-million-dollar expenditure to purchase Florida. Floor leader John Randolph opposed annexation, was upset over Jefferson's secrecy on the matter, and believed the money would end up going to Napoleon.238239 The Two Million Dollar bill passed only after Jefferson successfully maneuvered to replace Randolph with Barnabas Bidwell as floor leader.238239 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, refused the offer and Florida remained under Spanish control.240238 The failed venture damaged Jefferson's reputation among his supporters.241238
Chesapeake–Leopard affair
Starting in 1806, the Royal Navy began stopping American merchantmen to search for deserters from the British navy; approximately 6,000 sailors were impressed into the Royal Navy this way, leading to deep anger and resentment among the U.S. public. 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 an end to foreign interference with American merchant shipping, though relations with Britain showed no signs of improving. The Monroe–Pinkney Treaty was finalized but lacked any provisions regarding the issue of impressment, and Jefferson refused to submit it to the Senate for ratification.242
The British warship HMS Leopardencountered the USS Chesapeake off the Virginia coast in June 1807; Leopard fired at Chesapeake after the latter refused to allow for a search for deserters before removing four deserters from the ship.243 Jefferson issued a proclamation banning British warships 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, and Jefferson called for a special session of Congress in October to enact an embargo or alternatively to consider war.244
Embargo (1807–1809)
In December 1807, news arrived that Napoleon had extended the Berlin Decree, globally banning British imports. The Royal Navy, meanwhile continued to impress sailors from American merchant ships. However, 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. Meacham argued 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".245
In November 1807, Jefferson, for several days, met with his cabinet to discuss the deteriorating foreign situation.246 Secretary of State James Madison supported the embargo,247 while Treasury Secretary Gallatin opposed it, due to its indefinite time frame and the risk to the policy of American neutrality.248 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.249 Three acts were passed in Congress during 1807 and 1808, called the Supplementary, the Additional, and the Enforcement acts.243 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.243
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.250 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.243 The day before Madison was inaugurated as his successor, Jefferson said that he felt like "a prisoner, released from his chains".251
Post-presidency (1809–1826)
After his presidency, Jefferson remained influential and continued to correspond with many of the country's leaders (including his two protégées, Madison and Monroe, who succeeded him as president); the Monroe Doctrine strongly resembles solicited advice that Jefferson gave to Monroe in 1823.252253
University of Virginia
Jefferson envisioned a university free of church influences where students could specialize in new areas not offered at other colleges. He believed that education engendered a stable society, which should provide publicly funded schools accessible based solely on ability.254 He initially proposed his university in a letter to Joseph Priestley in 1800255 and, in 1819, 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 1825.256
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 student rooms. Gardens and vegetable plots were placed behind the pavilions and were surrounded by serpentine walls, affirming the importance of the agrarian lifestyle.257 The university had a library rather than a church at its center, emphasizing its secular nature—controversial at the time.258
When Jefferson died in 1826, James Madison replaced him as rector.259 Jefferson bequeathed most of his reconstructed library of almost 2,000 volumes to the university.260 Only one other ex-president has founded a university; Millard Fillmore founded the University at Buffalo in 1846.261
Reconciliation with Adams
Jefferson and John Adams became 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 was angered by Adams' appointment of "midnight judges".262 The two men did not communicate directly for more than a decade after Jefferson succeeded Adams as president.263 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.262
As early as 1809, Benjamin Rush began to prod the two through correspondence to re-establish contact.262 In 1812, Adams wrote a short New Year's greeting to Jefferson, prompted earlier by Rush, to which Jefferson warmly responded. This initial correspondence began what historian David McCullough calls "one of the most extraordinary correspondences in American history".264 Over the next 14 years, Jefferson and Adams exchanged 158 letters discussing their political differences, justifying their respective roles in events, and debating the revolution's import to the world.265
When Adams died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, his last words were an acknowledgment of his longtime friend and rival. "Thomas Jefferson survives", Adams said, unaware that Jefferson had died a few hours earlier.266267268
Autobiography
In 1821, at the age of 77, Jefferson began writing his Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson: 1743–1790, in which he said he sought to "state some recollections of dates and facts concerning myself".269 He focused on the struggles and achievements he experienced until July 29, 1790, where the narrative stopped short.270 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". He also addressed his enrollment in the College of William & Mary and his election to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1775.269
He 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".269 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. 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.271
Greek War of Independence
Thomas Jefferson was a philhellene, lover of Greek culture, who sympathized with the Greek War of Independence.272273 He has been described as the most influential of the Founding Fathers who supported the Greek cause,273274 viewing it as similar to the American Revolution.275 By 1823, Jefferson was exchanging ideas with Greek scholar Adamantios Korais.273 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.276 He also suggested the application of a classical education system for the newly founded First Hellenic Republic.277 Jefferson's philosophical instructions were welcomed by the Greek people.277 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.277
Lafayette's visit
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 4.256
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.278 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.279
Final days, death, and burial
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.280281 In February 1826, he successfully applied to the General Assembly to hold a public lottery as a fundraiser.282 His health began to deteriorate in July 1825, due to a combination of rheumatism from arm and wrist injuries, and intestinal and urinary disorders.256 By June 1826, he was confined to bed.282 On July 3, overcome by fever, Jefferson declined an invitation to attend an anniversary celebration of the Declaration in Washington.283
During his last hours, he was accompanied by family members and friends. Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, at 12:50 p.m. at age 83, on the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. In the moments prior to his death, Jefferson instructed his treating physician, "No, doctor, nothing more", refusing laudanum. But his final significant words were, "Is it the Fourth?" or "This is the Fourth".284 When his predecessor, John Adams, died at approximately 6:20 pm that same day, his last words were "Thomas Jefferson survives", though Adams was unaware that Jefferson had died several hours before.285286287288 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".289
Shortly after Jefferson died, attendants found a gold locket on a chain around his neck, containing a small faded blue ribbon around a lock of his wife Martha's hair.290
Jefferson was interred 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.291
As he got older, Jefferson became concerned that people should properly understand the object of the Declaration of Independence, and the people responsible for writing and adopting it. 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 founding the University of Virginia. Absent from his epitaph were his political roles, including his presidency.292
Jefferson died deeply in debt, and was unable to pass on his estate freely to his heirs.293 He gave instructions in his will for disposal of his assets,294 including the freeing of Sally Hemings's children;295 but his estate, possessions, and slaves were sold at public auctions starting in 1827.296 In 1831, Monticello was sold by Martha Jefferson Randolph and the other heirs.297
Jefferson wrote letters and speeches prolifically; these show him to be 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 development of the American Constitution in the 1770s and 1780s.306 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, and public papers.307
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".311312 A staunch advocate of the jury system, 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."313 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 of the majority.314 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.315
He was convinced that individual liberties were the fruit of political equality, which was threatened by the arbitrary government.316 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.315 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 the majority.315
According to Stanford Scholar Jack Rakove, "[w]hen Jefferson wrote 'all men are created equal' in the preamble to the Declaration, he was not talking about individual equality. What he really meant was that the American colonists, as a people, had the same rights of self-government as other peoples, and hence could declare independence, create new governments and assume their 'separate and equal station' among other nations."312 Jefferson's famous mantra later became a statement "of individual equality that everyone and every member of a deprived group could claim for himself or herself".312 Historian Henry Wiencek has noted Jefferson included slaves when he penned "all men are created equal" in the Declaration. As early as 1774, Jefferson had supported ending domestic slavery, and making slaves citizens.317 Later, writing in Notes (1781), Jefferson supported gradual emancipation of slaves, to be sent away from the U.S. to an unspecified place. The former slaves would be replaced by white immigrant workers.318 In 1792, Jefferson calculated that he was making a 4 percent profit every year on the birth of black children. After this he wrote that slavery presented an investment strategy for the future. Historian Brion Davis writes that Jefferson's emancipation efforts virtually ceased.319
Jefferson was steeped in the 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".320 But "the remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them".321 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, 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".322
Jefferson was a supporter of American expansionism, writing in 1801 that "it is impossible not to look forward to distant times when our rapid multiplication will expand itself beyond those limits, and cover the whole northern, if not the southern continent".323
Democracy
Jefferson considered democracy to be the expression of society and promoted national self-determination, cultural uniformity, and education of all males of the commonwealth.324 He supported public education and a free press as essential components of a democratic nation.325
After resigning as secretary of state in 1793, 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.326 Republicans united behind Jefferson as vice president, with the election of 1796 expanding democracy nationwide at grassroots levels.327 Jefferson promoted Republican candidates for local offices.328
Beginning with Jefferson's electioneering for the "revolution of 1800", his political efforts were based on egalitarian appeals.329 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".330 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 1804.331
At the onset of the American 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.332 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.333 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.334 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.335
Religion
Baptized in his youth, Jefferson became a governing member of his local Episcopal Church in Charlottesville, which he later attended with his daughters.336 Jefferson, however, spurned Biblical views of Christianity.337 Influenced by Deist authors during his college years, Jefferson abandoned mainstream Christianity after his review of New Testament teachings.338339 Jefferson has sometimes been portrayed as a follower of the liberal religious strand of Deism that values reason over revelation.340 Nonetheless, in 1803, Jefferson asserted, "I am Christian, in the only sense in which [Jesus] wished any one to be".214
Later, influenced by prominent Unitarian theologist, Joseph Priestley,340 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, which was never published during his lifetime.341342 Jefferson believed that Jesus' message had been obscured and corrupted by Paul the Apostle, the Gospel writers and Protestant reformers.340 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".343 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".337 By omitting miracles and the resurrection, Jefferson made the figure of Jesus more compatible with a worldview based on reason,337 and defined being a Christian as one who followed the simple teachings of Jesus.
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."344 The full letter to Horatio Spatford can be read at the National Archives.345 Jefferson once supported banning clergy from public office but later relented.346 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".347 The Statute is one of only three accomplishments he chose for his epitaph.348349 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".350 The phrase 'Separation of Church and State' has been cited several times by the Supreme Court in its interpretation of the Establishment Clause.351
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 He contributed generously to several local denominations near Monticello.353 Acknowledging organized religion would always be factored into political life, 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.342354355 Jefferson believed that original sin was a gross injustice.342
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 Jefferson broadly agreed with the Unitarian view on Christianity, believing in one creator god, but denying the Trinity and resurrection.342354355 Further, in 1822, Jefferson wrote, "I confidently expect that the present generation will see Unitarianism become the general religion of the United States."357
Banks
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.358 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.359
In another letter to John Taylor, Jefferson wrote,360
Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; & that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
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 so, 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.361 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 1792.362 As president, Jefferson was persuaded by Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin to leave the bank intact but sought to restrain its influence.363364
Slavery
Scholars give radically differing interpretations on Jefferson's views and relationship with slavery.1 Opinions range from "emancipationists" who view him as an early proto-abolitionist, who subsequently made pragmatic compromises with the slave power to preserve the union; to "revisionists", who argue that he in fact entrenched the institution in American society; with people also having more nuanced opinions, either arguing that Jefferson held inconsistent views on the institution throughout his lifetime or that both interpretations are too overly simplistic.1
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.365 Over his lifetime he enslaved about 600 people; he inherited about 175 people while most of the remainder were people born on his plantations.366 Jefferson purchased some slaves in order to reunite their families. He sold approximately 110 people for economic reasons, primarily slaves from his outlying farms.366367 In 1784, when the number of people he enslaved likely was approximately 200, he began to divest himself of many slaves, and by 1794 he had divested himself of 161 individuals.368369
Approximately 100 slaves lived at Monticello at any given time. In 1817, the plantation recorded its largest slave population of 140 individuals.370
Jefferson once said, "My first wish is that the labourers may be well treated".366 Jefferson did not work his slaves on Sundays and Christmas and he allowed them more personal time during the winter months.371 Some scholars doubt Jefferson's benevolence,372 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.373
Jefferson felt slavery was harmful to both slave and master but had reservations about releasing slaves from captivity, and advocated for gradual emancipation.374375376 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.59 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.377 In 1784, Jefferson proposed the abolition of slavery in all western U.S. territories, limiting slave importation to 15 years.378 Congress, however, failed to pass his proposal by one vote.378 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 1796.379 Jefferson freed his runaway slave Harriet Hemings in 1822. Upon his death in 1826, Jefferson freed five male Hemings slaves in his will.380
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.381 In 1804, in a compromise, Jefferson and Congress banned domestic slave trafficking for one year into the Louisiana Territory.382 In 1806 he officially called for anti-slavery legislation terminating the import or export of slaves. Congress passed the law in 1807.374383384
In 1819, Jefferson strongly opposed a Missouri statehood application amendment, which banned domestic slave importation and freed slaves at the age of 25 on grounds that it would destroy the union.385 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.386 Jefferson wrote of his "suspicion" that Black people were mentally and physically inferior to Whites, but argued that they nonetheless had innate human rights.374387388 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.389 According to Eric Foner, "In 1824 Jefferson proposed that the federal government purchase and deport 'the increase of each year' (that is, children), so that the slave population would age and eventually disappear."390
During his presidency, Jefferson was for the most part publicly silent on the issue of slavery and emancipation,391 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.392393 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.374394 After numerous attempts and failures to bring about emancipation,395 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."396
Jefferson–Hemings controversy
Claims that Jefferson fathered children with his slave Sally Hemings after his wife's death have been debated since 1802. In 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.397 The allegations were further broadcast by the popular Irish satirist and poet Thomas Moore: "The weary statesman for repose has fled/ From the halls of council to his negro shed/ Where blest he woes some black Aspasia's grace/ And dreams of freedom in his slave's embrace!"398 The work containing the vitriolic couplet399 was immediately reprinted by two Philadelphia publishers, the first of several American editions.400
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 showed a match with the male Jefferson line.401402 Subsequently, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation (TJF) formed a nine-member research team of historians to assess the matter.402 The TJF report concluded that "the DNA study ... indicates a high probability that Thomas Jefferson fathered Eston Hemings".402403404 The TJF also concluded that Jefferson likely fathered all of Hemings's children listed at Monticello.402405
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.406407 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.408
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 Sally Hemings's children.409 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."410 Concerning the 1998 DNA study, Peterson said that "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".410
After Jefferson's death in 1826, 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 1835.411412 The Monticello Association refused to allow Sally Hemings' descendants the right of burial at Monticello.413
In 2026, anthropologist Richard Kurin authored a book detailing testing of hair labeled as having been cut from Jefferson to DNA of Hemings descendants. Kurin asserted that the findings demonstrated with "great certainty" that Jefferson fathered children with Hemings.414415416 However, critics pointed out that the findings were not peer-reviewed, and one of the Hemings descendants who participated withdrew after becoming troubled by Kurin's methods.417
Interests and activities
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, and livestock, but he lived perpetually beyond his means418 and was always in debt.419 Jefferson also planted two vineyards at Monticello and hoped to make wine, but the crop failed. His efforts were nonetheless an important contribution to the development of American viticulture.420
In archaeology in 1784, Jefferson, using the trench method, started excavating a Monacan423burial mound in Virginia. His excavations were prompted by him noticing local Native Americans visiting the site and the "Moundbuilders" question.424 His methods allowed him to witness the stratigraphic layout, the various human remains and other artifacts inside the mound. The evidence present at the site led him to admit that he saw no reason why the ancestors of the present-day Native Americans could not have raised those mounds.425
He was interested in birds and wine, and was a noted gourmet.426 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.427 As an advocate of Enlightenment ideals, Jefferson studied many aspects of the natural sciences and frequently corresponded, and even hosted on multiple occasions, with Prussian explorer, Alexander von Humboldt.428
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.429 His Notes on the State of Virginia was written in part as a contribution to the society.430 He became the society's third president on March 3, 1797, a few months after he was elected Vice President of the United States.430431
On March 10, 1797, Jefferson gave a lecture, later published as a paper in 1799, which reported on the skeletal remains of an extinct large sloth, which he named Megalonyx, unearthed by saltpeter workers from a cave in what is now Monroe County, West Virginia.432433 Jefferson is considered to be a pioneer of scientific paleontology research in North America.434
Jefferson served as APS president for the next eighteen years, including through both terms of his presidency.430 He introduced Meriwether Lewis to the society, where various scientists tutored him in preparation for the Lewis and Clark Expedition.430435 He resigned on January 20, 1815, but remained active through correspondence.436
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 languages.437438 Jefferson later came to regard Greek as the "perfect language" as expressed in its laws and philosophy.439 While attending the College of William & Mary, he taught himself Italian.440 Here Jefferson first became familiar with the Anglo-Saxon language, studying it 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.437 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.441
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.442 Jefferson criticized language purists and supported the introduction of neologisms to English, foreseeing the emergence of "an American dialect". He described the Académie Française, a body designated to regulate the French language, as an "endeavor to arrest the progress of their language".443
He collected and understood a number of Native American vocabularies and instructed Lewis and Clark to record and collect various indigenous languages during their Expedition.444 When Jefferson moved from Washington after his presidency, he took 50 Native American vocabulary lists 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. Thirty years of collecting were lost, with only a few fragments rescued from the muddy banks of the river.445
Jefferson was not an outstanding orator and preferred to communicate through writing. 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, which started a tradition that continued until 1913.446
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),447 and the moldboard plow, an idea he never patented and gave to posterity.448 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.449 He first opposed patents but later supported them. From 1790 to 1793, as Secretary of State, he was the ex officio head of the three-person patent review board. He drafted reforms of US patent law which led to him being relieved of this duty in 1793, and also drastically changed the patent system.450
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, Jefferson was awarded an honorary Doctor of Law degree from Harvard University in 1787.451
Music
Jefferson had a lifelong interest in music, calling it "the favorite passion of my soul". He played the violin and cello. He was reportedly able to play the violin well enough to perform in weekly concerts at the Governor's Palace.452 Several thousand volumes of sheet music that Jefferson gave to the U.S. government started the Library of Congress.453
Legacy
Historical reputation
Jefferson is seen as 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.454 The participatory democracy and expanded suffrage he championed defined his era and became a standard for later generations.455Jon 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.456 A Siena Research Institute poll of presidential scholars, which began in 1982, has consistently ranked Jefferson as one of the five best U.S. presidents,457 and a 2015 Brookings Institution poll of American Political Science Association members ranked him as the fifth-greatest president.458
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 to be depicted in a stone national memorial at Mount Rushmore.459 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.460
In October 2021, in response to lobbying, the New York City Public Design Commission voted unanimously to remove the plaster model of the statue of Jefferson that currently stands in the United States Capitol rotunda from the chamber of the New York City Council, where it had been for more than a century, due to him fathering children with people he enslaved.468
Freeman, Joanne B. (2008). Shuffelton, Frank (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Jefferson. 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.
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. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1598841565.
Jefferson personally showed little interest in his ancestry; on his father's side, he only knew of the existence of his grandfather.56 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".5 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.41↩
While the news from Francis Eppes, with whom Lucy was staying, did not reach Jefferson until 1785, in an undated letter,51 it is clear that the year of her death was 1784 from another letter to Jefferson from James Currie dated November 20, 1784.52↩
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."61↩
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. ISSN0043-5597. JSTOR2953276. ↩↩2
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, wealth, and political power in the eastern ("Tidewater") tobacco areas.76 During the Revolutionary era, all such laws were repealed by the states that had them.77↩
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 University Press. p. 343. Retrieved July 10, 2019 – via Founders Online, National Archives. ↩
Bryan, Charles (October 25, 2014). "Richmond's Benedict Arnold". Richmond Times Dispatch. Retrieved July 11, 2019. ↩
Anthony M. Hance, writing in Tarleton's Fox Hunt, quotes a letter from a Bradley S. Johnson that claims an unnamed girl did the ride. "When Tarleton got to 'Castle Hill,' about twenty miles from Charlottesville, its owner, Colonel Rives, ... detained him with a Virginia break¬ fast — ... while his daughter rode at speed to warn Jefferson and the other rebels."85 but at the time Castle Hill was not owned by a Colonel Rives but was instead owned by its builder Thomas Walker, though the house did later pass on by inheritance into the Rives family.86↩
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."147↩
Daum, Andreas W. (2024). Alexander von Humboldt: A Concise Biography. Trans. Robert Savage. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. p. 80. ISBN 978-0691247366. ↩
"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. ↩↩2↩3
Neem, Johann N. "Beyond the Wall: Reinterpreting Jefferson's Danbury Address." Journal of the Early Republic, vol. 27, no. 1, 2007, pp. 139–54. JSTOR website Retrieved January 5, 2025. ↩
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.369↩
Foner, Eric, "Lincoln and Colonization", in Foner, Eric, ed., Our Lincoln: New Perspectives on Lincoln and His World, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008, p. 139. ↩
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. ↩
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".403↩
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)".401↩
Wilkinson, A. B. (2019). "Slave Life at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello". American Quarterly. 71: 247–264. doi:10.1353/aq.2019.0017. S2CID150519408. 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. Archived from the original on June 20, 2018. 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. JSTOR2674361. PMID18271151. [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.
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.410↩
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 ↩
Mark Isaak (December 24, 2010). "Etymology: Named after People". Curiosities of Biological Nomenclature. Archived from the original on September 21, 2013. Retrieved November 9, 2025. ↩↩2↩3
Byers, G. W. (1976). "A New Appalachian Brachypanorpa (Mecoptera: Panorpodidae)". Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society. 49 (3): 433–440. JSTOR25082844. ↩
Born into a slave owning family in Shadwell, Virginia, Jefferson emerged as an ideological leader of the American Revolution through his fierce advocacy for civil liberties, including the freedoms of speech, religion, and thought. He was elected to represent Virginia in the Second Continental Congress in 1775 and selected a member of the Committee of Five. Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence largely alone, and the document was unanimously passed by the Congress in 1776. Jefferson was appointed U.S. Minister to France in 1785 by the , maintaining the against the British. He was appointed the first by President in 1790, helping administer Washington's policy of neutrality in European conflicts. Jefferson and his political ally founded the in 1792, centered on , , , and . Running against candidate in , Jefferson finished with the second-highest number of votes and became Adams's . He ran again in , winning against Adams, and in overwhelmingly defeating the Federalists' of .
Jefferson's presidency assertively defended the nation's shipping and trade interests against Barbary pirates and aggressive British trade policies, promoted a western expansionist policy with the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the nation's geographic size, and reduced military forces and expenditures following successful negotiations with France. In his second presidential term, he was beset by difficulties at home, including the trial of his former vice president Aaron Burr. In 1807, Jefferson implemented the Embargo Act to defend the nation's industries from British threats to U.S. shipping, limit foreign trade, and stimulate the birth of American manufacturing.
Jefferson is ranked among the upper tier of U.S. presidents both by scholars and in public opinion. Presidential scholars and historians have praised Jefferson's advocacy of religious freedom and tolerance, his peaceful acquisition of the Louisiana Territory from France, and his leadership in supporting the Lewis and Clark Expedition. They acknowledge his lifelong ownership of large numbers of slaves, but offer varying interpretations of his views on and relationship with slavery.1
Early life and education
Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743 (April 2, 1743, Old Style, Julian calendar), at the family's Shadwell Plantation in the Colony of Virginia. He was the third of ten children.2 His father, Peter Jefferson, was a planter and surveyor; his mother was Jane Randolph.3 Peter Jefferson moved his family to Tuckahoe Plantation in 1745 following 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 before October 1753.4
Jefferson began his education together with the Randolph children at Tuckahoe under tutors.5 Thomas' father Peter, who was self-taught and regretted not having a formal education, entered Thomas into an English school at age five. In 1752, at age nine, he attended a local school run by a Presbyterian minister and also began studying the natural world, which he grew to love. He studied Latin, Greek, and French, and began learning to ride horses. Thomas read books from his father's modest library.6 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.67 Jefferson came to know various Native Americans including Cherokee chief Ostenaco, who often stopped at Shadwell to visit on their way to Williamsburg to trade.89 In Williamsburg, the young Jefferson met and came to admire Patrick Henry.10
Thomas's father died in 1757, and his estate was divided between his sons, Thomas and Randolph.11John Harvie Sr. became 14-year-old Thomas' guardian.12 Thomas inherited approximately 5,000 acres (7.8 sq mi; 20.2 km2), which included the land on which he later built Monticello in 1772.13
In 1761, at the age of seventeen, Jefferson entered the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, where he studied mathematics and philosophy with William Small. Under Small's tutelage, Jefferson encountered the ideas of British empiricists, including John Locke, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton. Small also 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. Jefferson later wrote that, while there, he "heard more common good sense, more rational & philosophical conversations than in all the rest of my life".14
During his first year in college, Jefferson spent considerable time attending parties and dancing and was not very frugal with his expenditures; in his second year, regretting that he had squandered away time and money in his first year, he committed to studying fifteen hours a day.15 While at William & Mary, Jefferson became a member of the Flat Hat Club, the nation's oldest secret society, a small group whose members included St. George Tucker, Edmund Randolph, and James Innes.1617
Jefferson concluded his formal studies in April 1762.18 He read the law under Wythe's tutelage while working as a law clerk in his office.19 Jefferson was well-read in a broad variety of subjects, including law, philosophy, history, natural law, natural religion, ethics, and several areas of science, including astronomy20 and agriculture.
Jefferson kept two commonplace books: from about age 15 to 30, he compiled a book of sayings and quotations, published in the 20th century as Jefferson's Literary Commonplace Book.21 During his years of legal study under Wythe, Jefferson began recording his notes on law, history, and philosophy, and continued to do so until the end of his life; his Legal Commonplace Book was also published in the 20th century.22
On July 20, 1765, Jefferson's sister Martha married his close friend and college companion Dabney Carr, which greatly pleased Jefferson. In October of that year, however, Jefferson's sister Jane unexpectedly died at age 25. Her death plunged Jefferson into a months-long period of mourning that was spoken of amongst the family.23
Jefferson treasured his books and amassed three sizable libraries in his lifetime. He began assembling his first library, which grew to 200 volumes, in his youth.24 Wythe was so impressed with Jefferson that he later bequeathed his entire library to him.25 In 1770, however, Jefferson's first library was destroyed in a fire at his Shadwell home. His second library, which replenished the first, grew to nearly 6,500 volumes by 1814.26 After British forces set the Library of Congress on fire in the burning of Washington in 1814, Jefferson sold his second library to the U.S. government for $23,950, hoping to help jumpstart the Library of Congress's rebuilding. Jefferson used a portion of the proceeds to pay off some of his large debt. Jefferson soon resumed collecting his third personal library. In a letter to John Adams, Jefferson wrote, "I cannot live without books."2728 By the time of Jefferson's death a decade later, his third and final library had grown to nearly 2,000 volumes.29
Career
Lawyer and House of Burgesses
In 1767, Jefferson was granted admission to the Virginia bar, and lived with his mother at Shadwell.30 Between 1769 and 1775, he represented Albemarle County in Virginia's House of Burgesses.31 While serving in the House of Burgesses, Jefferson pursued reforms to slavery, including writing and sponsoring legislation in 1769 to strip power from the royal governor and courts, instead providing masters of slaves with the discretion to emancipate them. Jefferson persuaded his cousin Richard Bland to spearhead the legislation's passage, but it faced strong opposition in a state whose economy was largely agrarian.32
As a lawyer, Jefferson took on seven freedom-seeking enslaved people as clients33 and waived his fee for one he claimed should be freed before the minimum statutory age for emancipation.34 Jefferson invoked natural law, arguing "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, which was conceivably used to aid his escape shortly thereafter.34 Jefferson's underlying intellectual argument that all people were entitled by their creator to what he labeled a "natural right" to liberty is a theme that he later prominently incorporated into the Declaration of Independence.35 In 1767, Jefferson took on 68 cases for the General Court of Virginia and was counsel in three notable cases of that era, Howell v. Netherland (1770), Bolling v. Bolling (1771), and Blair v. Blair (1772).36
In 1768, Jefferson began constructing his primary residence, Monticello, on a hilltop overlooking his 5,000-acre (20 km2; 7.8 mi2) plantation.38 He spent most of his adult life designing Monticello and was quoted as saying, "Architecture is my delight, and putting up, and pulling down, one of my favorite amusements."39 Construction was done mostly by local masons and carpenters, assisted by Jefferson's slaves.40 He moved into the South Pavilion in 1770. Turning Monticello into a neoclassical masterpiece in the Palladian style became Jefferson's lifelong project.41
On January 1, 1772, Jefferson married his third cousin,42Martha Wayles Skelton, a 23-year-old widow of Bathurst Skelton.4344 She was a frequent hostess for Jefferson and managed the large household. Historian Dumas Malone described the marriage as the happiest period of Jefferson's life.45 Martha was a skilled pianist; Jefferson often accompanied her on the violin or cello.46 During their ten-year marriage, Martha bore six children: Martha "Patsy" (1772–1836); Jane Randolph (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).4748 Only Martha and Mary survived to adulthood.49 Martha's father, John Wayles, died in 1773, and the couple inherited 135 enslaved people, 11,000 acres (45 km2; 17 mi2), and the estate's debts. The debts took Jefferson years to satisfy, contributing to his financial problems.43
Martha later suffered from ill health, including diabetes, and frequent childbirth weakened her. 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.50 Jefferson was grief-stricken by her death, relentlessly pacing back and forth for roughly three weeks, and finally emerging to take long rambling rides on secluded roads with his daughter, Martha, who said she was "a solitary witness to many a violent burst of grief".4951
Jefferson sought out John Adams, a Continental Congress delegate from Massachusetts and an emerging leader in the Congress.55 They became close friends, and Adams supported Jefferson's appointment to the Committee of Five, which the Congress charged with authoring the Declaration: Adams, Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman. The committee initially thought that Adams should write the document, but Adams persuaded the committee to choose Jefferson due to Jefferson being a Virginian, popular, and a good writer by Adams.56
Jefferson consulted with his fellow committee members, but mostly wrote the Declaration of Independence in isolation between June 11 and 28, 1776.57 Jefferson drew considerably on his proposed draft of the Virginia Constitution, George Mason's draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, and other sources.58 Other committee members made some changes, and a final draft was presented to Congress on June 28, 1776.59 Congress began debate over its contents on Monday, July 1,59 resulting in the removal of roughly a fourth of Jefferson's original draft.6061 Jefferson resented the changes, but he did not speak publicly about them.62 On July 4, 1776, the Congress voted unanimously to ratify the Declaration, and delegates signed it on August 2. Jefferson and the other delegates knew they were committing high treason against the Crown, which was punishable by torture and death.63
Following its ratification, the Declaration was released publicly. Two days after its ratification, on July 6, The Pennsylvania Evening Post, was the first newspaper to publish it. On July 8 at noon, it was read publicly and simultaneously for the first time at three designated locations: Trenton, New Jersey; Easton, Pennsylvania; and Philadelphia.64
Contemporary historians generally view the Declaration of Independence as one of the most significant and influential written documents in world history, and Jefferson's preamble is regarded as an enduring statement on individual and human rights. Jefferson's phrase "all men are created equal" has been called "one of the best-known sentences in the English language". Harvard University history chairman David Armitage has written that, "No American document has had a greater global impact than the Declaration of Independence",65 and historian Joseph Ellis has written that the Declaration includes "the most potent and consequential words in American history".6166
Virginia state legislator and governor
At the start of the American Revolution, Colonel Jefferson was named commander of the Albemarle County Militia on September 26, 1775.67 He was then elected to the Virginia House of Delegates for Albemarle County in September 1776, when finalizing the state constitution was a priority.6869 For nearly three years, Jefferson 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.70 The bill failed to pass, as did his legislation to disestablish the Anglican Church, but both were later revived by James Madison.71
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".68 Jefferson also was concerned that Virginia's powerful landed gentry were becoming a hereditary aristocracy and took the lead in abolishing what he called "feudal and unnatural distinctions".72 He targeted laws such as entail and primogeniture by which a deceased landowner's oldest son was vested with all land ownership and power.7273
Jefferson was elected governor for one-year terms in 1779 and 1780.74 He transferred the state capital from Williamsburg to Richmond, and introduced additional measures for public education, religious freedom, and inheritance.75
During General Benedict Arnold's 1781 invasion of Virginia, Jefferson escaped Richmond just ahead of the British forces, which razed the city.7677 He sent emergency dispatches to Colonel Sampson Mathews and other commanders in an attempt to repel Arnold's efforts.7879 When the British occupied Norfolk, Jefferson had caused patriots to burn and destroy it in 1776.80General 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.81 Jefferson escaped to Poplar Forest, his plantation to the west.82 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 Jefferson was not reelected.83
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 two.84
In 1782, Jefferson refused a partnership offer by North Carolina Governor Abner Nash, in a profiteering scheme involving the sale of confiscated Loyalist lands.85 Unlike some Founders, 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 James Madison, James Monroe, and other friends.86
Jefferson accused British-based merchants of unfairly depressing tobacco prices and forcing Virginia planters to take on unsustainable debt loads. In 1786, he remarked:
A powerful engine for this [mercantile profiteering] was the giving of good prices and credit to the planter till they got him more immersed in debt than he could pay without selling lands or slaves. They then reduced the prices given for his tobacco so that…they never permitted him to clear off his debt.87
Notes on the State of Virginia
In 1780, Jefferson received a letter of inquiry from French diplomat François Barbé-Marbois 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).88 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.89 He also wrote of his views on the American Indians, equating them to European settlers.9091
Notes was first published in 1785 in French and appeared in English in 1787.92 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";93University of Virginia historian Merrill D. Peterson described it as an accomplishment for which all Americans should be grateful.94
Member of Congress
Jefferson was appointed a Virginia delegate to the Congress of the Confederation organized following the peace treaty with Great Britain in 1783. He was a member of the committee setting foreign exchange rates and recommended an American currency based on the decimal system that was adopted.95 He advised the formation of the Committee of the States to fill the power vacuum when Congress was in recess.96 The committee met when Congress adjourned, but disagreements rendered it dysfunctional.97
Jefferson sent a letter (revealed in 2025) to Virginia Governor Benjamin Harrison, dated December 31, 1783, in which he relates the wave of enthusiasm of Europeans for taking up arms against their leaders. Jefferson was sharing the affirmation of his own promotion of the right to bear arms that brought about the American Revolution. The letter also conveys Jefferson's anxiety over the final ratification of the Treaty of Paris formally ending the revolutionary war. Signed initially by the parties in September, the still-outstanding consent of two colonies was required in London (then a two-month journey) by the following March. The deadline was ultimately but barely met, with the required signatures made in mid-January.98
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 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.99100 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 Territory.99
Minister to France
On May 7, 1784, Jefferson was appointed by the Congress of the Confederation101 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.102103 With his young daughter Patsy and two servants, he departed in July 1784, arriving in Paris the next month.104105 Jefferson had Patsy educated at 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."106 During his five years in Paris, Jefferson played a leading role in shaping U.S. foreign policy.107
In 1786, he met and fell in love with Maria Cosway, a married 27-year-old musician. She returned to Great Britain after six weeks, but she and Jefferson maintained a lifelong correspondence.108 During the summer of 1786, Jefferson arrived in London to meet with John Adams, who was then serving as the nation's first US 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 in a gesture of public insult. Jefferson returned to France in August.109
Jefferson sent for his youngest surviving child, nine-year-old Polly, in June 1787. She was accompanied by 14 year old young slave from Monticello, Sally Hemings. Jefferson had taken her older brother, James Hemings, to Paris as part of his domestic staff and had him trained in French cuisine.110 According to Sally's son, Madison Hemings, by the time Sally was 16-year-old she was pregnant with 46 year old Jefferson's child.111112 Madison indicated his mother agreed to return to the United States only after Jefferson promised to free her children when they came of age.111112
While in France, Jefferson became a regular companion of the Marquis de Lafayette, a French hero of the American Revolution, and Jefferson used his influence with Lafayette to procure trade agreements with France.113114 As the French Revolution began, Jefferson agreed to allow his Paris residence at Hôtel de Langeac to be used for meetings by Lafayette and other revolutionary leaders. He was in Paris during the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, and he consulted with Lafayette as Lafayette drafted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.115 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.116117 Unable to attend the 1787 Constitution Convention, Jefferson supported the Constitution but desired the addition of the promised Bill of Rights.118 Jefferson left Paris for America in September 1789.119 He remained a firm supporter of the French Revolution while opposing its more violent elements.120
Secretary of State
Soon after returning from France, Jefferson accepted President Washington's invitation to serve as Secretary of State.121 Pressing issues at the time, the national debt and where the new national capital should be placed following its planned relocation from Philadelphia in 1800, placed him at odds with Secretary of the TreasuryAlexander Hamilton, who favored a capital close to major commercial centers in the Northeast, while Washington, Jefferson, and other agrarians wanted it further south.122 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 original 13 states.122
Jefferson opposed a national debt, preferring that each state retire its own, which contrasted with Hamilton's vision of the federal government consolidating state debts123 and establishing national credit and a national bank. Jefferson strenuously opposed both policies and attempted to undermine Hamilton's agenda, which nearly led Washington to dismiss him from the cabinet. He later left the cabinet voluntarily.124
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-Appalachia and British control in the North, believing this would aid in the pacification of Native Americans.125
Along with political protegé James Madison, then a U.S. Representative, and author Philip Freneau, Jefferson co-founded the National Gazette in Philadelphia in 1791, which sought to counter the policies of the Federalist Party, which Hamilton was promoting through the Gazette of the United States, an influential Federalist newspaper. The National Gazette criticized the policies promoted by Hamilton, often in anonymous essays signed by the pen name Brutus at Jefferson's urging and written by Madison.126 In the spring of 1791, Jefferson was suffering from migraines and tiring of the infighting with Hamilton, so he and Madison departed for a vacation in Vermont.127
In May 1792, Jefferson's concern about emerging political rivalries in the young nation was escalating, and he wrote Washington, imploring him to run for reelection for a second term that year as a unifying influence.128 He urged the president to rally the citizenry to a party that would defend democracy against the corrupting influence of banks and financial-focused interests, which the Federalists were embracing and espousing. Historians recognize Jefferson's letter to Washington as one of the first delineations of Democratic-Republican Party principles.129 Jefferson, Madison, and other Democratic-Republican organizers favored states' rights and local control and opposed the federal concentration of power. Hamilton, conversely, sought more power vested in the federal government.130
Jefferson supported France against Britain when the two nations fought in 1793, though his arguments in Washington's Cabinet were undercut by French Revolutionary envoy Edmond-Charles Genêt's open scorn for Washington.131 In discussions with British Minister George Hammond, Jefferson tried in vain to persuade the British to vacate their posts in the Northwest and to compensate the U.S. for enslaved people freed by the British at the end of the Revolutionary War. Jefferson also sought to return to private life, and resigned from the cabinet in December 1793; he may also have wanted to bolster his political influence from outside the administration.132
After the Washington administration negotiated the Jay Treaty with Britain in 1794, Jefferson saw a cause around which he could rally the Democratic-Republican Party. He organized national opposition to the treaty from Monticello.133 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".134 The Treaty passed, but it expired in 1805 during Jefferson's presidential administration, and then President Jefferson did not renew it. Jefferson continued his pro-France 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", he wrote.135
Election of 1796 and vice presidency
In the presidential campaign of 1796, Jefferson lost the electoral college vote to Federalist John Adams 71–68. He did, however, receive the second-highest number of votes and, under the electoral laws at the time, was elected as vice president. As presiding officer of the United States Senate, Jefferson 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.136 Jefferson previously studied parliamentary law and procedure for 40 years, making him qualified to serve as presiding officer. In 1800, he published his assembled notes on Senate procedure as A Manual of Parliamentary Practice.137 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, predicting that his rival would only serve one term. He also encouraged France to invade England, and advised Létombe to stall any American envoys sent to Paris.138 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.139 But 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.140
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.141 To rally opposition, he and James Madison anonymously wrote the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, asserting that the federal government had no right to exercise powers not specifically delegated to it by the states.142 The resolutions followed the "interposition" approach of Madison, that states may shield their citizens from federal laws that they deem unconstitutional. Jefferson advocated nullification, allowing states to entirely invalidate federal laws.143144 He warned that, "unless arrested at the threshold", the Alien and Sedition Acts would "drive these states into revolution and blood".145
Biographer Ron Chernow contends that "the theoretical damage of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions was deep and lasting, and was a recipe for disunion", and contributed to the outbreak of the American Civil War and later events.146 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".147 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.148
Election of 1800
Jefferson ran for president against John Adams again in 1800. Adams' campaign was weakened by unpopular taxes and vicious Federalist infighting over his actions in the Quasi-War.149 Democratic-Republicans pointed to the Alien and Sedition Acts and accused the Federalists of being secret pro-Britain monarchists. Federalists, in turn, charged that Jefferson was a godless libertine beholden to the French.150UCLA history professor Joyce Appleby described the 1800 presidential election as "one of the most acrimonious in the annals of American history".151
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 under the Three-Fifths Compromise.152 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 U.S. House of Representatives.153154 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.155
The win led to Democratic-Republican celebrations throughout the country.156 Some of Jefferson's opponents argued that he owed his victory to the South's inflated number of electors.157 Others alleged that Jefferson secured James Asheton Bayard's tie-breaking electoral vote by promising to retain various Federalist posts in the government.155 Jefferson disputed the allegation, and the historical record is inconclusive.158
The transition proceeded smoothly, marking a watershed in American history. Historian Gordon S. Wood writes that, "it was one of the first popular elections in modern history that resulted in the peaceful transfer of power from one 'party' to another."155
Presidency (1801–1809)
Jefferson was sworn in as president by Chief JusticeJohn 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 two predecessors, Jefferson exhibited a dislike of formal etiquette. Plainly dressed, he chose to walk alongside friends to the Capitol from his nearby boardinghouse instead of arriving by carriage.159 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."160161 Ideologically, he stressed "equal and exact justice to all men", minority rights, and freedom of speech, religion, and press.162 He said that a free and republican government was "the strongest government on earth".162 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.161
Widowed since 1782, Jefferson first relied on his two daughters to serve as his official hostesses.163 In late May 1801, he asked Dolley Madison, wife of his long-time friend James Madison, to be the permanent White House hostess. 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 for another eight years as First Lady while her husband was president.163
Financial affairs
Jefferson's first challenge as president was shrinking the $83 million national debt.164 He began dismantling Hamilton's Federalist fiscal system with help from the secretary of the treasury, Albert Gallatin.161 Gallatin devised a plan to eliminate the national debt in sixteen years by extensive annual appropriations and reduction in taxes.165 The administration eliminated the whiskey excise and other taxes after closing "unnecessary offices" and cutting "useless establishments and expenses".166167
Jefferson believed that the First Bank of the United States represented a "most deadly hostility" to republican government.165 He wanted to dismantle the bank before its charter expired in 1811, but was dissuaded by Gallatin.168 Gallatin argued that the national bank was a useful financial institution and set out to expand its operations.169 Jefferson looked to other corners to address the growing national debt.169 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.166 After two terms, he had lowered the national debt from $83 million to $57 million.170
Domestic affairs
Jefferson pardoned several of those imprisoned under the Alien and Sedition Acts.171 Congressional Republicans repealed the Judiciary Act of 1801, which removed nearly all of Adams's "midnight judges". A subsequent appointment battle led to the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Marbury v. Madison, asserting judicial review over executive branch actions.172 Jefferson appointed three Supreme Court justices: William Johnson (1804), Henry Brockholst Livingston (1807), and Thomas Todd (1807).173
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.174 He signed the Military Peace Establishment Act on March 16, 1802, founding the United States Military Academy at West Point. The act documented 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.175
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 Jefferson to name the first Librarian of Congress, and formed a committee to establish library regulations. Congress also granted both the president and vice president the right to use the library.176
Foreign affairs (1801–1805)
First Barbary War
American merchant ships had been protected from Barbary Coast pirates by the Royal Navy when the states were British colonies.177 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.178 Following the fleet's first engagement, he successfully asked Congress for a declaration of war.178 The "First Barbary War" was the first foreign war fought by the U.S.179
Pasha of TripoliYusuf 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.180 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.181 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."182
Louisiana Purchase
Spain ceded ownership of the Louisiana territory in 1800 to France. Jefferson was concerned that Napoleon's 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."183 In 1802, he instructed James Monroe and Robert R. Livingston to negotiate the purchase of New Orleans and adjacent coastal areas.184 In early 1803, Jefferson offered Napoleon nearly $10 million for 40,000 square miles (100,000 square kilometres) of tropical territory.185
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 kilometres) of French territory for $15 million (~$380 million in 2024), doubling the size of the United States.185 U.S. negotiators accepted the offer and signed the treaty on April 30, 1803.170 Word of the unexpected purchase did not reach Jefferson until July 3, 1803.170 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 European presence in North America, removing obstacles to U.S. westward expansion.186
Most thought that this was an exceptional opportunity, despite Republican reservations about the Constitutional authority of the federal government to acquire land.187 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 urged a speedy debate and ratification.188 On October 20, 1803, the Senate ratified the purchase treaty by a vote of 24–7.189 Jefferson personally was humble about acquiring the Louisiana Territory, but he resented complainers who called the vast domain a "howling wilderness".190
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 Louisianans adjusted to their new nation.191192 Historians have differed in their assessments regarding the constitutional implications of the sale,193 but they typically hail the Louisiana acquisition as a major accomplishment. Frederick Jackson Turner called the purchase the most formative event in American history.186
Expeditions
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.194 Jefferson and others were influenced by exploration accounts of Le Page du Pratz in Louisiana (1763) and James Cook in the Pacific (1784),195 and they persuaded Congress in 1804 to fund an expedition to explore and map the newly acquired territory to the Pacific Ocean.196
Jefferson appointed secretary Meriwether Lewis and acquaintance William Clark to lead the Corps of Discovery (1803–1806).197 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.198 The expedition lasted from May 1804 to September 1806 and obtained a wealth of scientific and geographic knowledge, including knowledge of many Indian tribes.199
Jefferson refuted the contemporary notion that Indians were inferior and maintained that they were equal in body and mind to people of European descent,202 although he believed them to be inferior in terms of culture and technology.203 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.204205 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".206
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. Various tribes accepted Jefferson's policies, including the Shawnees led by Black Hoof, the Muscogee, and the Cherokee. However, some Shawnees, led by Tecumseh, broke off from Black Hoof, and opposed Jefferson's assimilation policies.207
Historian Bernard Sheehan argues that Jefferson believed that assimilation was best for American Indians, and next-best was removal to the west; he felt that the worst outcome of the conflict would be their attacking the whites.205 Jefferson told U.S. Secretary of WarHenry Dearborn, who then oversaw Indian affairs, "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."208 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.209
Re-election in 1804 and second term
Jefferson was nominated for reelection by the Democratic-Republican Party, with George Clinton replacing Burr as his running mate.210 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.210
In March 1806, a split developed in the Democratic-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, permanently setting Randolph apart politically from Jefferson. Jefferson and Madison 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.211
Jefferson's popularity suffered further in his second term as a result of his response to wars in Europe. Relations with Britain deteriorated, 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 with Jefferson and the U.S. over trading rights, which the U.S. proved unsuccessful in countering. Jefferson then led the enactment of the Embargo Act of 1807, directed at both France and Britain, which triggered economic chaos in the U.S. and was strongly criticized, leading Jefferson to abandon the policy a year later.212
During the American Revolution, colonial states abolished the international slave trade, but South Carolina reopened it. In his annual message of December 1806, Jefferson denounced the international slave trade as "violations of human rights" and called on the new Congress to immediately criminalize it. The following year, in 1807, Congress passed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves, which Jefferson signed.213214 The act established severe punishment against the international slave trade, although it did not address the issue domestically.215
In Haiti, Jefferson's neutrality allowed arms to flow to the slave independence movement during the Haitian Revolution, and Jefferson blocked attempts to assist Napoleon, who was defeated militarily in Haiti in 1803.216 But Jefferson's administration refused official recognition of Haiti during his second term, in deference to southern complaints about racial violence against slave holders. Recognition was not extended to Haiti until 1862.217
Controversies
Burr conspiracy and trial
Following the 1801 electoral deadlock, Jefferson's relationship with his vice president, 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 Democratic-Republican ticket in 1804 in favor of charismatic George Clinton.
The same year, Burr was soundly defeated in his bid to be elected New York governor. During the campaign, Alexander Hamilton made publicly callous remarks regarding Burr's moral character.218Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel, held on July 11, 1804. In the duel, Burr mortally wounded Hamilton, who died the following day. Burr was subsequently indicted for Hamilton's murder, causing him to flee to Georgia, even though he remained president of the U.S. Senate during Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase's impeachment trial.219 Both indictments quietly died and Burr was not prosecuted.220
In August 1804, Burr contacted British Minister Anthony Merry offering to cede U.S. western territory in return for money and British ships.221 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.222 Burr discussed 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.223224 In the fall of 1806, Burr launched a military flotilla carrying about 60 men down the Ohio River. Wilkinson renounced the plot and reported Burr's expedition to Jefferson, who ordered Burr's arrest.222225226 On February 13, 1807, Burr was captured in Louisiana and sent to Virginia to be tried for treason.221 Burr's 1807 conspiracy trial became a national issue.227 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, and distant cousin, John Marshall, who dismissed the treason charge. Burr's legal team subpoenaed Jefferson, but Jefferson refused to testify, making the first argument for executive privilege.228 Instead, Jefferson provided relevant legal documents.229 After a three-month trial, the jury found Burr not guilty, while Jefferson denounced his acquittal.226230231232 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".226
Wilkinson's misconduct
Commanding General James Wilkinson was a holdover of the Washington and Adams administrations. In 1804, Wilkinson received 12,000 pesos from the Spanish for information on American boundary plans.233 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, since there was not then significant evidence against him.234 An investigation by the U.S. House of Representatives in December 1807 exonerated Wilkinson.235 In 1808, a military court looked into the allegations against Wilkinson but also found a lack of evidence. Jefferson retained Wilkinson in the U.S. Army.236 Evidence found in Spanish archives in the 20th century proved Wilkinson was on the Spanish payroll.233
Foreign affairs (1805–1809)
Attempted annexation of Florida
In the aftermath of the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson attempted to annex West Florida from Spain. In his annual message to Congress, on December 3, 1805, Jefferson railed against Spain over Florida border depredations.237238 A few days later Jefferson secretly requested a two-million-dollar expenditure to purchase Florida. Floor leader John Randolph opposed annexation, was upset over Jefferson's secrecy on the matter, and believed the money would end up going to Napoleon.238239 The Two Million Dollar bill passed only after Jefferson successfully maneuvered to replace Randolph with Barnabas Bidwell as floor leader.238239 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, refused the offer and Florida remained under Spanish control.240238 The failed venture damaged Jefferson's reputation among his supporters.241238
Chesapeake–Leopard affair
Starting in 1806, the Royal Navy began stopping American merchantmen to search for deserters from the British navy; approximately 6,000 sailors were impressed into the Royal Navy this way, leading to deep anger and resentment among the U.S. public. 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 an end to foreign interference with American merchant shipping, though relations with Britain showed no signs of improving. The Monroe–Pinkney Treaty was finalized but lacked any provisions regarding the issue of impressment, and Jefferson refused to submit it to the Senate for ratification.242
The British warship HMS Leopardencountered the USS Chesapeake off the Virginia coast in June 1807; Leopard fired at Chesapeake after the latter refused to allow for a search for deserters before removing four deserters from the ship.243 Jefferson issued a proclamation banning British warships 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, and Jefferson called for a special session of Congress in October to enact an embargo or alternatively to consider war.244
Embargo (1807–1809)
In December 1807, news arrived that Napoleon had extended the Berlin Decree, globally banning British imports. The Royal Navy, meanwhile continued to impress sailors from American merchant ships. However, 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. Meacham argued 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".245
In November 1807, Jefferson, for several days, met with his cabinet to discuss the deteriorating foreign situation.246 Secretary of State James Madison supported the embargo,247 while Treasury Secretary Gallatin opposed it, due to its indefinite time frame and the risk to the policy of American neutrality.248 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.249 Three acts were passed in Congress during 1807 and 1808, called the Supplementary, the Additional, and the Enforcement acts.243 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.243
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.250 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.243 The day before Madison was inaugurated as his successor, Jefferson said that he felt like "a prisoner, released from his chains".251
Post-presidency (1809–1826)
After his presidency, Jefferson remained influential and continued to correspond with many of the country's leaders (including his two protégées, Madison and Monroe, who succeeded him as president); the Monroe Doctrine strongly resembles solicited advice that Jefferson gave to Monroe in 1823.252253
University of Virginia
Jefferson envisioned a university free of church influences where students could specialize in new areas not offered at other colleges. He believed that education engendered a stable society, which should provide publicly funded schools accessible based solely on ability.254 He initially proposed his university in a letter to Joseph Priestley in 1800255 and, in 1819, 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 1825.256
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 student rooms. Gardens and vegetable plots were placed behind the pavilions and were surrounded by serpentine walls, affirming the importance of the agrarian lifestyle.257 The university had a library rather than a church at its center, emphasizing its secular nature—controversial at the time.258
When Jefferson died in 1826, James Madison replaced him as rector.259 Jefferson bequeathed most of his reconstructed library of almost 2,000 volumes to the university.260 Only one other ex-president has founded a university; Millard Fillmore founded the University at Buffalo in 1846.261
Reconciliation with Adams
Jefferson and John Adams became 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 was angered by Adams' appointment of "midnight judges".262 The two men did not communicate directly for more than a decade after Jefferson succeeded Adams as president.263 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.262
As early as 1809, Benjamin Rush began to prod the two through correspondence to re-establish contact.262 In 1812, Adams wrote a short New Year's greeting to Jefferson, prompted earlier by Rush, to which Jefferson warmly responded. This initial correspondence began what historian David McCullough calls "one of the most extraordinary correspondences in American history".264 Over the next 14 years, Jefferson and Adams exchanged 158 letters discussing their political differences, justifying their respective roles in events, and debating the revolution's import to the world.265
When Adams died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, his last words were an acknowledgment of his longtime friend and rival. "Thomas Jefferson survives", Adams said, unaware that Jefferson had died a few hours earlier.266267268
Autobiography
In 1821, at the age of 77, Jefferson began writing his Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson: 1743–1790, in which he said he sought to "state some recollections of dates and facts concerning myself".269 He focused on the struggles and achievements he experienced until July 29, 1790, where the narrative stopped short.270 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". He also addressed his enrollment in the College of William & Mary and his election to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1775.269
He 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".269 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. 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.271
Greek War of Independence
Thomas Jefferson was a philhellene, lover of Greek culture, who sympathized with the Greek War of Independence.272273 He has been described as the most influential of the Founding Fathers who supported the Greek cause,273274 viewing it as similar to the American Revolution.275 By 1823, Jefferson was exchanging ideas with Greek scholar Adamantios Korais.273 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.276 He also suggested the application of a classical education system for the newly founded First Hellenic Republic.277 Jefferson's philosophical instructions were welcomed by the Greek people.277 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.277
Lafayette's visit
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 4.256
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.278 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.279
Final days, death, and burial
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.280281 In February 1826, he successfully applied to the General Assembly to hold a public lottery as a fundraiser.282 His health began to deteriorate in July 1825, due to a combination of rheumatism from arm and wrist injuries, and intestinal and urinary disorders.256 By June 1826, he was confined to bed.282 On July 3, overcome by fever, Jefferson declined an invitation to attend an anniversary celebration of the Declaration in Washington.283
During his last hours, he was accompanied by family members and friends. Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, at 12:50 p.m. at age 83, on the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. In the moments prior to his death, Jefferson instructed his treating physician, "No, doctor, nothing more", refusing laudanum. But his final significant words were, "Is it the Fourth?" or "This is the Fourth".284 When his predecessor, John Adams, died at approximately 6:20 pm that same day, his last words were "Thomas Jefferson survives", though Adams was unaware that Jefferson had died several hours before.285286287288 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".289
Shortly after Jefferson died, attendants found a gold locket on a chain around his neck, containing a small faded blue ribbon around a lock of his wife Martha's hair.290
Jefferson was interred 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.291
As he got older, Jefferson became concerned that people should properly understand the object of the Declaration of Independence, and the people responsible for writing and adopting it. 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 founding the University of Virginia. Absent from his epitaph were his political roles, including his presidency.292
Jefferson died deeply in debt, and was unable to pass on his estate freely to his heirs.293 He gave instructions in his will for disposal of his assets,294 including the freeing of Sally Hemings's children;295 but his estate, possessions, and slaves were sold at public auctions starting in 1827.296 In 1831, Monticello was sold by Martha Jefferson Randolph and the other heirs.297
Jefferson wrote letters and speeches prolifically; these show him to be 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 development of the American Constitution in the 1770s and 1780s.306 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, and public papers.307
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".311312 A staunch advocate of the jury system, 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."313 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 of the majority.314 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.315
He was convinced that individual liberties were the fruit of political equality, which was threatened by the arbitrary government.316 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.315 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 the majority.315
According to Stanford Scholar Jack Rakove, "[w]hen Jefferson wrote 'all men are created equal' in the preamble to the Declaration, he was not talking about individual equality. What he really meant was that the American colonists, as a people, had the same rights of self-government as other peoples, and hence could declare independence, create new governments and assume their 'separate and equal station' among other nations."312 Jefferson's famous mantra later became a statement "of individual equality that everyone and every member of a deprived group could claim for himself or herself".312 Historian Henry Wiencek has noted Jefferson included slaves when he penned "all men are created equal" in the Declaration. As early as 1774, Jefferson had supported ending domestic slavery, and making slaves citizens.317 Later, writing in Notes (1781), Jefferson supported gradual emancipation of slaves, to be sent away from the U.S. to an unspecified place. The former slaves would be replaced by white immigrant workers.318 In 1792, Jefferson calculated that he was making a 4 percent profit every year on the birth of black children. After this he wrote that slavery presented an investment strategy for the future. Historian Brion Davis writes that Jefferson's emancipation efforts virtually ceased.319
Jefferson was steeped in the 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".320 But "the remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them".321 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, 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".322
Jefferson was a supporter of American expansionism, writing in 1801 that "it is impossible not to look forward to distant times when our rapid multiplication will expand itself beyond those limits, and cover the whole northern, if not the southern continent".323
Democracy
Jefferson considered democracy to be the expression of society and promoted national self-determination, cultural uniformity, and education of all males of the commonwealth.324 He supported public education and a free press as essential components of a democratic nation.325
After resigning as secretary of state in 1793, 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.326 Republicans united behind Jefferson as vice president, with the election of 1796 expanding democracy nationwide at grassroots levels.327 Jefferson promoted Republican candidates for local offices.328
Beginning with Jefferson's electioneering for the "revolution of 1800", his political efforts were based on egalitarian appeals.329 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".330 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 1804.331
At the onset of the American 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.332 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.333 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.334 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.335
Religion
Baptized in his youth, Jefferson became a governing member of his local Episcopal Church in Charlottesville, which he later attended with his daughters.336 Jefferson, however, spurned Biblical views of Christianity.337 Influenced by Deist authors during his college years, Jefferson abandoned mainstream Christianity after his review of New Testament teachings.338339 Jefferson has sometimes been portrayed as a follower of the liberal religious strand of Deism that values reason over revelation.340 Nonetheless, in 1803, Jefferson asserted, "I am Christian, in the only sense in which [Jesus] wished any one to be".214
Later, influenced by prominent Unitarian theologist, Joseph Priestley,340 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, which was never published during his lifetime.341342 Jefferson believed that Jesus' message had been obscured and corrupted by Paul the Apostle, the Gospel writers and Protestant reformers.340 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".343 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".337 By omitting miracles and the resurrection, Jefferson made the figure of Jesus more compatible with a worldview based on reason,337 and defined being a Christian as one who followed the simple teachings of Jesus.
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."344 The full letter to Horatio Spatford can be read at the National Archives.345 Jefferson once supported banning clergy from public office but later relented.346 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".347 The Statute is one of only three accomplishments he chose for his epitaph.348349 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".350 The phrase 'Separation of Church and State' has been cited several times by the Supreme Court in its interpretation of the Establishment Clause.351
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 He contributed generously to several local denominations near Monticello.353 Acknowledging organized religion would always be factored into political life, 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.342354355 Jefferson believed that original sin was a gross injustice.342
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 Jefferson broadly agreed with the Unitarian view on Christianity, believing in one creator god, but denying the Trinity and resurrection.342354355 Further, in 1822, Jefferson wrote, "I confidently expect that the present generation will see Unitarianism become the general religion of the United States."357
Banks
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.358 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.359
In another letter to John Taylor, Jefferson wrote,360
Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; & that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
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 so, 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.361 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 1792.362 As president, Jefferson was persuaded by Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin to leave the bank intact but sought to restrain its influence.363364
Slavery
Scholars give radically differing interpretations on Jefferson's views and relationship with slavery.1 Opinions range from "emancipationists" who view him as an early proto-abolitionist, who subsequently made pragmatic compromises with the slave power to preserve the union; to "revisionists", who argue that he in fact entrenched the institution in American society; with people also having more nuanced opinions, either arguing that Jefferson held inconsistent views on the institution throughout his lifetime or that both interpretations are too overly simplistic.1
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.365 Over his lifetime he enslaved about 600 people; he inherited about 175 people while most of the remainder were people born on his plantations.366 Jefferson purchased some slaves in order to reunite their families. He sold approximately 110 people for economic reasons, primarily slaves from his outlying farms.366367 In 1784, when the number of people he enslaved likely was approximately 200, he began to divest himself of many slaves, and by 1794 he had divested himself of 161 individuals.368369
Approximately 100 slaves lived at Monticello at any given time. In 1817, the plantation recorded its largest slave population of 140 individuals.370
Jefferson once said, "My first wish is that the labourers may be well treated".366 Jefferson did not work his slaves on Sundays and Christmas and he allowed them more personal time during the winter months.371 Some scholars doubt Jefferson's benevolence,372 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.373
Jefferson felt slavery was harmful to both slave and master but had reservations about releasing slaves from captivity, and advocated for gradual emancipation.374375376 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.59 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.377 In 1784, Jefferson proposed the abolition of slavery in all western U.S. territories, limiting slave importation to 15 years.378 Congress, however, failed to pass his proposal by one vote.378 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 1796.379 Jefferson freed his runaway slave Harriet Hemings in 1822. Upon his death in 1826, Jefferson freed five male Hemings slaves in his will.380
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.381 In 1804, in a compromise, Jefferson and Congress banned domestic slave trafficking for one year into the Louisiana Territory.382 In 1806 he officially called for anti-slavery legislation terminating the import or export of slaves. Congress passed the law in 1807.374383384
In 1819, Jefferson strongly opposed a Missouri statehood application amendment, which banned domestic slave importation and freed slaves at the age of 25 on grounds that it would destroy the union.385 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.386 Jefferson wrote of his "suspicion" that Black people were mentally and physically inferior to Whites, but argued that they nonetheless had innate human rights.374387388 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.389 According to Eric Foner, "In 1824 Jefferson proposed that the federal government purchase and deport 'the increase of each year' (that is, children), so that the slave population would age and eventually disappear."390
During his presidency, Jefferson was for the most part publicly silent on the issue of slavery and emancipation,391 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.392393 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.374394 After numerous attempts and failures to bring about emancipation,395 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."396
Jefferson–Hemings controversy
Claims that Jefferson fathered children with his slave Sally Hemings after his wife's death have been debated since 1802. In 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.397 The allegations were further broadcast by the popular Irish satirist and poet Thomas Moore: "The weary statesman for repose has fled/ From the halls of council to his negro shed/ Where blest he woes some black Aspasia's grace/ And dreams of freedom in his slave's embrace!"398 The work containing the vitriolic couplet399 was immediately reprinted by two Philadelphia publishers, the first of several American editions.400
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 showed a match with the male Jefferson line.401402 Subsequently, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation (TJF) formed a nine-member research team of historians to assess the matter.402 The TJF report concluded that "the DNA study ... indicates a high probability that Thomas Jefferson fathered Eston Hemings".402403404 The TJF also concluded that Jefferson likely fathered all of Hemings's children listed at Monticello.402405
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.406407 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.408
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 Sally Hemings's children.409 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."410 Concerning the 1998 DNA study, Peterson said that "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".410
After Jefferson's death in 1826, 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 1835.411412 The Monticello Association refused to allow Sally Hemings' descendants the right of burial at Monticello.413
In 2026, anthropologist Richard Kurin authored a book detailing testing of hair labeled as having been cut from Jefferson to DNA of Hemings descendants. Kurin asserted that the findings demonstrated with "great certainty" that Jefferson fathered children with Hemings.414415416 However, critics pointed out that the findings were not peer-reviewed, and one of the Hemings descendants who participated withdrew after becoming troubled by Kurin's methods.417
Interests and activities
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, and livestock, but he lived perpetually beyond his means418 and was always in debt.419 Jefferson also planted two vineyards at Monticello and hoped to make wine, but the crop failed. His efforts were nonetheless an important contribution to the development of American viticulture.420
In archaeology in 1784, Jefferson, using the trench method, started excavating a Monacan423burial mound in Virginia. His excavations were prompted by him noticing local Native Americans visiting the site and the "Moundbuilders" question.424 His methods allowed him to witness the stratigraphic layout, the various human remains and other artifacts inside the mound. The evidence present at the site led him to admit that he saw no reason why the ancestors of the present-day Native Americans could not have raised those mounds.425
He was interested in birds and wine, and was a noted gourmet.426 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.427 As an advocate of Enlightenment ideals, Jefferson studied many aspects of the natural sciences and frequently corresponded, and even hosted on multiple occasions, with Prussian explorer, Alexander von Humboldt.428
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.429 His Notes on the State of Virginia was written in part as a contribution to the society.430 He became the society's third president on March 3, 1797, a few months after he was elected Vice President of the United States.430431
On March 10, 1797, Jefferson gave a lecture, later published as a paper in 1799, which reported on the skeletal remains of an extinct large sloth, which he named Megalonyx, unearthed by saltpeter workers from a cave in what is now Monroe County, West Virginia.432433 Jefferson is considered to be a pioneer of scientific paleontology research in North America.434
Jefferson served as APS president for the next eighteen years, including through both terms of his presidency.430 He introduced Meriwether Lewis to the society, where various scientists tutored him in preparation for the Lewis and Clark Expedition.430435 He resigned on January 20, 1815, but remained active through correspondence.436
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 languages.437438 Jefferson later came to regard Greek as the "perfect language" as expressed in its laws and philosophy.439 While attending the College of William & Mary, he taught himself Italian.440 Here Jefferson first became familiar with the Anglo-Saxon language, studying it 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.437 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.441
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.442 Jefferson criticized language purists and supported the introduction of neologisms to English, foreseeing the emergence of "an American dialect". He described the Académie Française, a body designated to regulate the French language, as an "endeavor to arrest the progress of their language".443
He collected and understood a number of Native American vocabularies and instructed Lewis and Clark to record and collect various indigenous languages during their Expedition.444 When Jefferson moved from Washington after his presidency, he took 50 Native American vocabulary lists 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. Thirty years of collecting were lost, with only a few fragments rescued from the muddy banks of the river.445
Jefferson was not an outstanding orator and preferred to communicate through writing. 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, which started a tradition that continued until 1913.446
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),447 and the moldboard plow, an idea he never patented and gave to posterity.448 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.449 He first opposed patents but later supported them. From 1790 to 1793, as Secretary of State, he was the ex officio head of the three-person patent review board. He drafted reforms of US patent law which led to him being relieved of this duty in 1793, and also drastically changed the patent system.450
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, Jefferson was awarded an honorary Doctor of Law degree from Harvard University in 1787.451
Music
Jefferson had a lifelong interest in music, calling it "the favorite passion of my soul". He played the violin and cello. He was reportedly able to play the violin well enough to perform in weekly concerts at the Governor's Palace.452 Several thousand volumes of sheet music that Jefferson gave to the U.S. government started the Library of Congress.453
Legacy
Historical reputation
Jefferson is seen as 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.454 The participatory democracy and expanded suffrage he championed defined his era and became a standard for later generations.455Jon 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.456 A Siena Research Institute poll of presidential scholars, which began in 1982, has consistently ranked Jefferson as one of the five best U.S. presidents,457 and a 2015 Brookings Institution poll of American Political Science Association members ranked him as the fifth-greatest president.458
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 to be depicted in a stone national memorial at Mount Rushmore.459 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.460
In October 2021, in response to lobbying, the New York City Public Design Commission voted unanimously to remove the plaster model of the statue of Jefferson that currently stands in the United States Capitol rotunda from the chamber of the New York City Council, where it had been for more than a century, due to him fathering children with people he enslaved.468
Freeman, Joanne B. (2008). Shuffelton, Frank (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Jefferson. 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.
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. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1598841565.
Jefferson personally showed little interest in his ancestry; on his father's side, he only knew of the existence of his grandfather.56 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".5 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.41↩
While the news from Francis Eppes, with whom Lucy was staying, did not reach Jefferson until 1785, in an undated letter,51 it is clear that the year of her death was 1784 from another letter to Jefferson from James Currie dated November 20, 1784.52↩
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."61↩
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. ISSN0043-5597. JSTOR2953276. ↩↩2
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, wealth, and political power in the eastern ("Tidewater") tobacco areas.76 During the Revolutionary era, all such laws were repealed by the states that had them.77↩
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 University Press. p. 343. Retrieved July 10, 2019 – via Founders Online, National Archives. ↩
Bryan, Charles (October 25, 2014). "Richmond's Benedict Arnold". Richmond Times Dispatch. Retrieved July 11, 2019. ↩
Anthony M. Hance, writing in Tarleton's Fox Hunt, quotes a letter from a Bradley S. Johnson that claims an unnamed girl did the ride. "When Tarleton got to 'Castle Hill,' about twenty miles from Charlottesville, its owner, Colonel Rives, ... detained him with a Virginia break¬ fast — ... while his daughter rode at speed to warn Jefferson and the other rebels."85 but at the time Castle Hill was not owned by a Colonel Rives but was instead owned by its builder Thomas Walker, though the house did later pass on by inheritance into the Rives family.86↩
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."147↩
Daum, Andreas W. (2024). Alexander von Humboldt: A Concise Biography. Trans. Robert Savage. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. p. 80. ISBN 978-0691247366. ↩
"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. ↩↩2↩3
Neem, Johann N. "Beyond the Wall: Reinterpreting Jefferson's Danbury Address." Journal of the Early Republic, vol. 27, no. 1, 2007, pp. 139–54. JSTOR website Retrieved January 5, 2025. ↩
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.369↩
Foner, Eric, "Lincoln and Colonization", in Foner, Eric, ed., Our Lincoln: New Perspectives on Lincoln and His World, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008, p. 139. ↩
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. ↩
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".403↩
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)".401↩
Wilkinson, A. B. (2019). "Slave Life at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello". American Quarterly. 71: 247–264. doi:10.1353/aq.2019.0017. S2CID150519408. 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. Archived from the original on June 20, 2018. 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. JSTOR2674361. PMID18271151. [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.
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.410↩
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 ↩
Mark Isaak (December 24, 2010). "Etymology: Named after People". Curiosities of Biological Nomenclature. Archived from the original on September 21, 2013. Retrieved November 9, 2025. ↩↩2↩3
Byers, G. W. (1976). "A New Appalachian Brachypanorpa (Mecoptera: Panorpodidae)". Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society. 49 (3): 433–440. JSTOR25082844. ↩