Thomas Jefferson

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• Born: 13 April 1743
• Birthplace: Shadwell, Virginia
• Died: 4 July 1826 (natural causes)
• Best Known As: Author of the Declaration of Independence

Thomas Jefferson was the third president of the United States and one of the drafters of the Declaration of Independence. Biographer James Parton said Thomas Jefferson could "calculate an eclipse, survey an estate, tie an artery, plan an edifice, try a cause, break a horse, dance a minuet, and play the violin." Besides serving two terms as president, Jefferson served as vice-president, secretary of state, minister to France, congressman, governor of Virginia; he also founded the University of Virginia and served as president of the American Philosophical Society. For all that, Jefferson is best remembered as a champion of human rights and the lead draftsman of the Declaration of Independence. High points of his presidency include the Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon and the exploration of the west by Lewis and Clark. The third person to be president, Jefferson followed John Adams as president and was succeeded by James Madison.

Jefferson married Martha Wayles Skelton, a widow, in 1772. She died in 1782, at the age of 33... Jefferson and his wife had one son and five daughters; only two of his children lived to see him become president... DNA tests in 1998 showed that Jefferson may well have fathered a child or children by one of his slaves, Sally Hemings... Jefferson was played by Nick Nolte in the 1995 movie Jefferson in Paris... Jefferson's face appears on the U.S. nickel and the two-dollar bill.

Thomas Jefferson believed that a large military establishment would both increase the nation's debt and threaten American liberty. As the first secretary of state (1789–93), he urged neutrality in the war between England and France; as president (1801–09), he pursued a policy of “peace, commerce, and honest friendship” with all nations, but “entangling alliances with none.” Jefferson's administration cut military spending drastically, from over $3 million annually to $1.9 million, although his administration also founded the U.S. Military Academy, first proposed by Washington, at West Point, New York, in 1802. Neutrality, though, was not isolation: Jefferson sent the U.S. Fleet to the Mediterranean in 1801, and cooperated with Sweden, Portugal, Naples, and other neutral powers in a multinational alliance against Tripoli. To replace the expensive frigates built by the Federalist administrations, Jefferson built 180 gunboats, 50 feet long, with crews of 20 and cannon mounted in bow and stern, primarily to defend American harbors. Instead of military force, the United States would use economic pressure in international affairs. The Europeans, he reasoned, depended on American grain and fish to feed their large armies and overtaxed populations. When both France and England attacked American commercial policy in 1807, Jefferson closed U.S. ports, depriving the belligerent Europeans of American goods. Though the embargo of 1808–09 did not force France or England to negotiate, Jefferson did not lose faith in economic power as the most potent weapon in the American arsenal.

[See also Academies, Service: U.S. Military Academy; Economy and War; Hamilton, Alexander; Tripolitan War.]

Bibliography

• Merrill Peterson, Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation, 1970.
• Reginald C. Stuart, The Half‐Way Pacifist: Thomas Jefferson's View of War, 1978.
• Drew R. McCoy, The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America, 1980.
• Robert W. Tucker and David C. Hendrickson, Empire of Liberty: The Statecraft of Thomas Jefferson, 1990

(b. Shadwell [now Albemarle County], Va., 13 Apr. 1743; d. Monticello, Va., 4 July 1826), statesman and president of the United States, 1801–1809. Thomas Jefferson exerted a profound influence on the Supreme Court and the course of American constitutional development. As political leader and president, his thoughts on the role of judges and on the federal system provided a significant contrast to the nationalizing ideas of Alexander Hamilton, John Marshall, and Joseph Story.

Jefferson and James Madison produced the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798–1799, which supported the compact theory of the Constitution and denied that the Supreme Court alone had authority to determine if the laws of Congress were constitutional. Jefferson argued that the Court was a creation of the Constitution and to give it the power of judicial review would make “its discretion and not the Constitution the measure of its powers.” He argued that when the federal government assumed a power not granted to it by the Constitution, each state, as a party to the constitutional compact, had a right to declare the law unconstitutional (see State Sovereignty and States' Rights). He also believed that each branch of the federal government had a coordinate right to resolve questions of constitutionality.

As president, Jefferson confronted Federalist judges of the Supreme and lower federal courts who enjoyed tenure during good behavior. He did not support radicals in his party who wished to amend the Constitution to eliminate the federal judiciary and who favored a broad construction of the impeachment clause of Articles I, II, and III in order to remove judges for political reasons (see Impeachment). But he resisted Federalist attempts to broaden the powers of the national courts and to politicize them. He promoted repeal of the Judiciary Act of 1801, which had increased the number of federal judgeships and expanded the jurisdiction of the circuit courts. Jefferson did not overreact to the Court's decision in Marbury v. Madison (1803), although he found Chief Justice Marshall's reproof distasteful. Rather, he ignored the decision because he had gotten his way: the Court did not order the administration to deliver the commissions. Though Marshall claimed for the Court the power to interpret the Constitution, he did not explicitly claim that its power to do so was either exclusive or final. Jefferson helped initiate impeachment proceedings in 1803 against John Pickering, an alcoholic and insane district court judge, and worked behind the scenes for his conviction. But he did not support impeachment proceedings against Justice Samuel Chase, who was eventually acquitted in 1805. In the treason trial of Aaron Burr (1806), Jefferson refused to obey Marshall's subpoena to testify but accepted Burr's acquittal.

After his retirement in 1809, Jefferson criticized Marshall and the Supreme Court more directly. He opposed such nationalist decisions as Martin v. Hunter's Lessee (1816), McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), and Cohens v. Virginia (1821). He encouraged Spencer Roane and John Taylor to criticize the Court publicly. In private correspondence, Jefferson raised a number of important questions about the Supreme Court's power. Could the Court claim to be the final arbiter in conflicts between the states and the federal government, since this power was not explicitly granted in the Constitution? Could the Supreme Court arrogate this power to itself? What is the relationship of the Court to the will of the people, especially since its members are appointed during good behavior? Should the Court hold its discussions in secret and hide internal dissent by handing down unanimous decisions? Could the Court be an impartial arbiter in disputes between the federal government and the states, since it was a part of the federal government and its judges' salaries were paid by that government?

These questions do not lend themselves to easy answers, even today when we generally accept the idea of judicial supremacy on constitutional issues. As a consequence, Jefferson's criticism of the Supreme Court has resonated throughout American history and has formed the theoretical basis of the positions taken by presidents such as Andrew Jackson and Franklin Roosevelt, as well as other critics of an activist Court, who have attempted to confine the force of its decisions (see Judicial Self‐Restraint).

See also History of the Court: Establishment of the Union.

Bibliography

• Richard Ellis, The Jeffersonian Crisis: Courts and Politics in the Young Republic (1971)

— Richard E. Ellis

Jefferson, Thomas (1743-1826) philosopher, author of the Declaration of Independence, and 3rd president of the United States (1801-09), born in Albemarle County, Virginia. His political career began in 1769 when he was elected to Virginia's House of Burgesses, and he never resumed his earlier law practice. An early leader in the movement for American independence, Jefferson believed that Americans possessed the natural right to govern themselves. Jefferson was a classical scholar, author, and architect, who built his home, Monticello, and later designed the Virginia state capitol and the campus of the University of Virginia. His writing talents were already recognized at the Second Continental Congress (1775), and he was given the task of writing the document that would declare America's independence from Britain. Although the delegates later made many changes to the body of the work, it remains essentially Jefferson's. As a lawmaker in Virginia, Jefferson was responsible for the Statute of Religious Freedom, which greatly influenced the infant nation's church-state relationship. As governor of Virginia (1779-81), Jefferson was relatively ineffective, but his service in Congress (1783-84) was highly productive: he proposed legislation dealing with the decimal system of currency and wrote the legislation establishing the principle of creating new states as Americans moved west. As minister to France (1785-89) he sought to expand markets for America's agricultural surpluses. During his tenure as secretary of state (1790-93) under President George Washington, Jefferson worked toward settlement of Anglo-American issues left over from the war; expansion of American commerce; a strengthened alliance with France; freeing the West from European colonialism; and pacification of the Indians. He also sought to advance national interests by manipulating American neutrality in European conflicts. In 1796, after a brief retirement during which he pursued his intellectual and agrarian interests, Jefferson ran unsuccessfully for president, becoming John Adams's vice president. In the next presidential election, Jefferson was victorious over Adams in a bitter contest that was decided by the House of Representatives (Jefferson and Aaron Burr had tied). As president Jefferson sought to restore harmony to the nation and the government, which had been rent by strife between Federalists and Republicans. Jefferson's greatest presidential achievement, though of doubtful constitutionality, was the Louisiana Purchase (1803), which doubled the size of the country. He also planned the Lewis and Clark expedition (1804-06). Jefferson's second term was less successful, marred by continued conflicts with Chief Justice John Marshall and with the question of American neutrality in the war between Britain and France. Eventually, his plan for a state university in Virgina was approved, and the University of Virginia was chartered in 1819. Jefferson was its architectural designer, and he selected its faculty, determined its curriculum, and acquired its library.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

American philosopher and statesman Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was the third president of the United States. A man of broad interests and activity, he exerted an immense influence on the political and intellectual life of the new nation.

Thomas Jefferson was born at Shadwell, Va., on April 13, 1743. His father had been among the earliest settlers in this wilderness country, and his position of leadership descended to his eldest son, together with 5,000 acres of land.

Jefferson became one of the best-educated Americans of his time. At the age of 17 he entered the College of William and Mary, where he got exciting first glimpses of "the expansion of science, and of the system of things in which we are placed." Nature destined him to be a scientist, he often said; but there was no opportunity for a scientific career in Virginia, and he took the path of the law, studying it under the tutelage of George Wythe as a branch of the history of mankind. He read widely in the law, in the sciences, and in both ancient and modern history, philosophy, and literature. Jefferson was admitted to the bar in 1767; his successful practice led to a wide circle of influence and to cultivated intellectual habits that would prove remarkably creative in statesmanship. When the onrush of the American Revolution forced him to abandon practice in 1774, he turned these legal skills to the rebel cause.

Jefferson's public career began in 1769, when he served as a representative in the Virginia House of Burgesses. About this time, too, he began building Monticello, the lovely home perched on a densely wooded summit that became a lifelong obsession. He learned architecture from books, above all from the Renaissance Italian Andrea Palladio. Yet Monticello, like the many other buildings Jefferson designed over the years, was a uniquely personal creation. Dissatisfied with the first version, completed in 12 years, Jefferson later rebuilt it. Monticello assumed its ultimate form about the time he retired from the presidency.

His Philosophy

Jefferson rose to fame in the councils of the American Revolution. Insofar as the Revolution was a philosophical event, he was its most articulate spokesman, having absorbed the thought of the 18th-century Enlightenment. He believed in a beneficent natural order in the moral as in the physical world, freedom of inquiry in all things, and man's inherent capacity for justice and happiness, and he had faith in reason, improvement, and progress.

Jefferson's political thought would become the quintessence of Enlightenment liberalism, though it had roots in English law and government. The tradition of the English constitution gave concreteness to American patriot claims, even a color of legality to revolution itself, that no other modern revolutionaries have possessed. Jefferson used the libertarian elements of the English legal tradition for ideological combat with the mother country. He also separated the principles of English liberty from their corrupted forms in the empire of George III and identified these principles with nascent American ideals. In challenging the oppressions of the empire, Americans like Jefferson came to recognize their claims to an independent nationality.

Jefferson's most important contribution to the revolutionary debate was A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774). He argued that Americans, as sons of expatriate Englishmen, possessed the same natural rights to govern themselves as their Saxon ancestors had exercised when they migrated to England from Germany. Only with the reign of George III had the violations of American rights proved to be "a deliberate, systematical plan of reducing us to slavery." Though the logic of his argument pointed to independence, Jefferson instead set forth the theory of an empire of equal self-governing states under a common king and appealed to George III to rule accordingly.

Declaration of Independence

The Revolution had begun when Jefferson took his seat in the Second Continental Congress, at Philadelphia, in June 1775. He brought to the Congress, as John Adams recalled, "a reputation for literature, science, and a happy talent for composition." It was chiefly as a legislative draftsman that he would make his mark. His great work was the Declaration of Independence. In June 1776 he was surprised to find himself at the head of the committee to prepare this paper. He submitted a rough draft to Adams and Benjamin Franklin, two of the committee, who suggested only minor changes, revised it to Jefferson's satisfaction, and sent it to Congress. Congress debated it line by line for 2 1/2 days. Though many changes were made, the Declaration that emerged on July 4 bore the unmistakable stamp of Jefferson. It possessed that "peculiar felicity of expression" for which he was noted.

The Declaration of Independence crisply set forth the bill of particular grievances against the reigning sovereign and compressed a whole cosmology, a political philosophy, and a national creed in one paragraph. The truths declared to be "self-evident" were not new; as Jefferson later said, his purpose was "not to find out new principles, or new arguments …, but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject." But here, for the first time in history, these truths were laid at the foundation of a nation. Natural equality, the inalienable rights of man, the sovereignty of the people, the right of revolution - these principles endowed the American Revolution with high purpose united to a theory of government.

In Virginia

Jefferson returned to Virginia and to his seat in the reconstituted legislature. A constitution had been adopted for the commonwealth, but it was distressingly less democratic than the one Jefferson had drafted and dispatched to Williamsburg. He sought now to achieve liberal reforms by ordinary legislation. Most of these were contained in his comprehensive Revision of the Laws. Although the code was never enacted in entirety, the legislature went over the bills one by one. Of first importance was the Statute for Religious Freedom. Enacted in 1786, the statute climaxed the long campaign for separation of church and state in Virginia. Though Jefferson was responsible for the abolition of property laws that were merely relics of feudalism, his bill for the reform of Virginia's barbarous criminal code failed, and for the sake of expediency he withheld his plan for gradual emancipation of the slaves. Jefferson was sickened by the defeat of his Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge. A landmark in the history of education, it proposed a complete system of public education, with elementary schools available to all, the gifted to be educated according to their ability.

Jefferson became Virginia's governor in June 1779. The Revolutionary War had entered a new phase. The British decision to "unravel the thread of rebellion from the southward" would, if successful, have made Virginia the crucial battleground. Jefferson struggled against enormous odds to aid the southern army. He was also handicapped by the weakness of his office under the constitution and by his personal aversion to anything bordering on dictatorial rule.

Early in 1781 the British invaded Virginia from the coast, slashed through to Richmond, and put the government to flight. Jefferson acted with more vigor than before, still to no avail. In May, Gen. Charles Cornwallis marched his army into Virginia. The government moved to safer quarters at Charlottesville. The Redcoats followed, and 2 days after his term of office expired but before a successor could be chosen, Jefferson was chased from Monticello. The General Assembly resolved to inquire into Jefferson's conduct, and months after the British surrender at Yorktown, he attended the legislature on this business. But no inquiry was held, the Assembly instead voting him resolution of thanks for his services.

Nevertheless, wounded by the criticism, Jefferson resolved to quit public service. A series of personal misfortunes, culminating in his wife's death in September 1782, plunged him into gloom. Yet her death finally returned him to his destiny. The idealized life he had sought in his family, farms, and books was suddenly out of reach. That November he eagerly accepted congressional appointment to the peace commission in Paris. He never sailed, however, and wound up in Congress instead.

During his retirement Jefferson had written his only book, Note on the State of Virginia. The inquiry had begun simply, but it grew as Jefferson worked. He finally published the manuscript in a private edition in Paris (1785). Viewed in the light of 18th-century knowledge, the book is work of natural and civil history, uniquely interesting as a guide to Jefferson's mind and to his native country. He expressed opinions on a variety of subjects, from cascades and caverns to constitutions and slavery. An early expression of American nationalism, the book acted as a catalyst in several fields of intellectual activity. It also ensured Jefferson a scientific and literary reputation on two continents.

Service in Congress

In Congress from November 1783 to the following May, Jefferson laid the foundations of national policy in several areas. His proposed decimal system of coinage was adopted. He drafted the first ordinance of government for the western territory, wherein free and equal republican states would be created out of the wilderness; and his land ordinance, adopted with certain changes in 1785, projected the rectilinear survey system of the American West.

Jefferson also took a leading part in formulating foreign policy. The American economy rested on foreign commerce and navigation. Cut adrift from the British mercantile system, Congress had pursued free trade to open foreign markets, but only France had been receptive. The matter became urgent in 1783-1784. Jefferson helped reformulate a liberal commercial policy, and in 1784 he was appointed to a three-man commission (with Adams and Franklin) to negotiate treaties of commerce with the European powers.

Minister to France

In Paris, Jefferson's first business was the treaty commission; in 1785 he succeeded Franklin as minister to France. The commission soon expired, and Jefferson focused his commercial diplomacy on France. In his opinion, France offered imposing political support for the United States in Europe as well as an entering wedge for the free commercial system on which American wealth and power depended. Louis XVI's foreign minister seemed well disposed, and influential men in the French capital were ardent friends of the American Revolution. Jefferson won valuable concessions for American commerce; however, because France realized few benefits in return, Britain maintained its economic ascendancy.

His duties left Jefferson time to haunt bookstores, frequent fashionable salons, and indulge his appetite for art, music, and theater. He toured the south of France and Italy, England, and the Rhineland. He interpreted the New World to the Old. Some of this activity had profound effects. For instance, his collaboration with a French architect in the design of the classical Roman Capitol of Virginia inaugurated the classical revival in American architecture.

About Europe generally, Jefferson expressed ambivalent feelings. But on balance, the more he saw of Europe, the dearer his own country became. "My God!" he exclaimed. "How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy. I confess I had no idea of it myself…."

Secretary of State

On Jefferson's return to America in 1789, President Washington prevailed upon him to become secretary of state. For the next 3 years he was chiefly engaged in fruitless negotiations with the European powers. With Spain he sought to fix the southern United States boundary and secure free navigation of the Mississippi River through Spanish territory to the Gulf of Mexico. With Britain he sought removal of English troops from the Northwest and settlement of issues left over from the peace treaty. In this encounter he was frustrated by the secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, whose ascendancy in the government also checked Jefferson's and James Madison's efforts for commercial discrimination against Britain and freer trade with France. In Jefferson's opinion, Hamilton's fiscal system turned on British trade, credit, and power, while his own system turned on commercial liberation, friendship with France, and the success of the French Revolution. Hamilton's measures would enrich the few at the expense of the many, excite speculation and fraud, concentrate enormous power in the Treasury, and break down the restraints of the Constitution. To combat these tendencies, Jefferson associated himself with the incipient party opposition in Congress.

Developing Political Parties

As the party division deepened, Jefferson was denounced by the Federalists as the "generalissimo" of the Republican party, a role he neither possessed nor coveted but, finally, could not escape. When war erupted between France and Britain in 1793, the contrary dispositions of the parties toward these nations threatened American peace. Jefferson attempted to use American neutrality to force concessions from Britain and to improve cooperation between the embattled republics of the Atlantic world. In this he was embarrassed by Edmond Genet, the French minister to the United States, and finally had to abandon him altogether. The deterioration of Franco-American relations did irreparable damage to Jefferson's political system.

Jefferson resigned his post at the end of 1793, again determined to quit public life. But in 1796 the Republicans made him their presidential candidate against John Adams. Losing by three electoral votes, Jefferson became vice president. When the "XYZ affair" threatened to plunge the United States into war with France in 1798, Jefferson clung to the hope of peace and, in the developing war hysteria, rallied the Republicans around him. Enactment of the Alien and Sedition Laws convinced him that the Federalists aimed to annihilate the Republicans and that the Republicans' only salvation lay in political intervention by the state authorities. On this basis he drafted the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, in which he elaborated the theory of the Union as a compact among the several states, declared the Alien and Sedition Laws unconstitutional, and prescribed the remedy of state "nullification" for such assumptions of power by the central government. Kentucky did not endorse this specific doctrine, but the defense of civil liberties was now joined to the defense of state rights. Though the celebrated resolutions did not force a change of policy, by contributing to the rising public clamor against the administration they achieved their political purpose.

President of the United States

Republicans doubled their efforts to elect the "man of the people" in the unusually bitter campaign of 1800. Jefferson topped Adams in the electoral vote. But because his running mate, Aaron Burr, received an equal number of votes, the final decision went to the House of Representatives. Only after 36 ballots was Jefferson elected.

Jefferson became president on March 4, 1801, in the new national capital, Washington, D.C. His inaugural address - a political touchstone for a century or longer - brilliantly summed up the Republican creed and appealed for the restoration of harmony and affection. "We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all republicans: we are all federalists." Jefferson extended the hand of friendship to the Federalists and, although Federalists monopolized the Federal offices, he attempted to limit his removals of them. Even after party pressures forced him to revise this strategy, moderation characterized his course.

Reform was the order of the day. Working effectively with Congress, Jefferson restored freedom of the press; lowered the residency period of the law of naturalization to 5 years; scaled down the Army and Navy (despite a war against Barbary piracy); repealed the partisan Judiciary Act of 1801; abolished all internal taxes, together with a host of revenue offices; and began the planned retirement of the debt. The Jeffersonian reformation was bottomed on fiscal policy; by reducing the means and powers of government, it sought to further peace, equality, and individual freedom.

The President's greatest triumph - and his greatest defeat - came in foreign affairs. Spain's cession of Louisiana and the port of New Orleans to France in 1800 posed a serious threat to American security, especially to the aspirations of the West. Jefferson skillfully negotiated this crisis. With the Louisiana Purchase (1803), America gained an uncharted domain of some 800,000 square miles, doubling its size, for $11,250,000. Even before the treaty was signed, Jefferson planned an expedition to explore this country. The Lewis and Clark expedition, like the Louisiana Purchase, was a spectacular consummation of Jefferson's western vision.

Easily reelected in 1804, Jefferson soon encountered foreign and domestic troubles. His relations with Congress degenerated as Republicans quarreled among themselves. Especially damaging was the insurgency of John Randolph, formerly Republican leader in the House. And former vice president Aaron Burr mounted an insurgency in the West; but Jefferson crushed this and, with difficulty, maintained control of Congress. The turbulence of the Napoleonic Wars, with American ships and seamen ravaged in the neutral trade, proved too difficult. France was not blameless, but Britain was the chief aggressor.

Finally there appeared to be no escape from war except by withdrawing from the oceans. In December 1807 the President proposed, and Congress enacted, a total embargo on America's seagoing commerce. More than an alternative to war, the embargo was a test of the power of commercial coercion in international disputes. On the whole, it was effectively enforced, but it failed to bring Britain or France to justice, and the mounting costs at home led to its repeal by Congress in the waning hours of Jefferson's presidency.

Active Retirement

In retirement Jefferson became the "Sage of Monticello," the most revered - by some the most hated - among the remaining Revolutionary founders. He maintained a large correspondence and intellectual pursuits on a broad front. Unfinished business from the Revolution drew his attention, such as revision of the Virginia constitution and gradual emancipation of slaves. But the former would come only after his death, and the failure of the latter would justify his worst fears. He revived his general plan of public education. Again the legislature rejected it, approving, however, a major part, the state university. Jefferson was the master planner of the University of Virginia in all its parts, from the grounds and buildings to the curriculum, faculty, and rules of governance. He died at Monticello on the fiftieth anniversary of American independence, July 4, 1826.

Further Reading

There are several editions of Jefferson's writings: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, edited by Paul Leicester Ford (10 vols., 1892-1899); The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, edited by Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh (20 vols. in 10; 1905); and Papers, edited by Julian P. Boyd and others (17 vols., 1950-1965). The Boyd work, though complete only to November 1790, is the best edition; a good companion piece is The Family Letters of Thomas Jefferson, edited by Edwin Morris Betts and James Adam Bear, Jr. (1966).

The major biography is Dumas Malone, Jefferson and His Time (4 vols., 1948-1970), complete to 1805 and still in process. Less comprehensive is Merrill D. Peterson, Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation (1970). Accounts of Jefferson's elections are given in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ed., History of American Presidential Elections (4 vols., 1971). Jefferson as president is brilliantly, if not quite fairly, portrayed in the first four volumes of Henry Adams, History of the United States of America during the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison (9 vols., 1889-1891).

Other studies of Jefferson's life and thought include Fiske Kimball, Thomas Jefferson: Architect (1916); Roy J. Honeywell, The Educational Work of Thomas Jefferson (1931); Adrienne Koch, The Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson (1943); Karl Lehman, Thomas Jefferson: American Humanist (1947); Daniel J. Boorstin, The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson (1948); Edwin T. Martin, Thomas Jefferson: Scientist (1952); Caleb Perry Patterson, The Constitutional Principles of Thomas Jefferson (1953); Phillips Russell, Jefferson: Champion of the Free Mind (1956); and Merrill D. Peterson, The Jefferson Image in the American Mind (1960). Merrill D. Peterson, ed., Thomas Jefferson: A Profile (1967), collects essays by historians of Jefferson's era as well as modern ones. Jonathan Daniels, Ordeal of Ambition: Jefferson, Hamilton, Burr (1970), an account of the intertwining political careers of these three, is part biography and part history.

(1743-1826) American politician, scientist, educationalist, library cataloguer, architect, ambassador, winegrower, and writer. Born and brought up in Virginia, Jefferson was educated at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, then the state capital. Here he was introduced both to pre-Revolutionary politics and to the ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment. He was elected as a delegate from Virginia to the Continental Congress of 1776. Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, a statement of claims derived from Locke of the equal right of all men to self-government. ‘All men’ did not include Indians or slaves, and Jefferson could never reconcile the universality of the Declaration with his practical views on slavery. (It would have been very difficult to run his marvellous and beautiful house at Monticello without slaves.)

Jefferson was disillusioned by the legislature of independent Virginia: ‘All the powers of government . . . result to the legislative body. The concentrating these in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government. . . . 173 despots would surely be as oppressive as one.’ Some of his ideas on restraint of government, such as the Virginia Declaration of Religious Freedom, found their way into the First Amendment of the US Constitution. He was also much affected by the death of his wife in 1782. He therefore accepted with alacrity the offer of a post as American Minister in Paris (1784-9). Here he was a bridge between the American and French Revolutions. He coached the Marquis de Lafayette in writing the Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789), which Jefferson regarded as a somewhat inferior copy of the Declaration of 1776 necessitated by the survival of feudalism in Europe. He associated with Condorcet, with whom he shared beliefs in the perfectibility of mankind and the applicability of scientific method to solving political problems. Jefferson succeeded in some of his Enlightenment-inspired plans for the United States (for instance, in the North-West Ordinance of 1787, which laid out the plans for future white settlement, reserving one block of land in each settlement for the support of education), but failed in others, including metrication.

Jefferson served in the administrations of George Washington from 1789 to 1793 and was President himself from 1801 to 1809. He was responsible for the system of apportionment of House seats to states after each census which was used until the census of 1830, and is mathematically the same as the d'Hondt system of proportional representation. In the first US party system, he was the leader of the Republican-Democratic party, which stood for rural self-sufficiency and (relative) trust in the ordinary voter as against the urban and pro-business policies of the Federalists (see Adams and Hamilton). He is regarded as the co-founder (with Andrew Jackson, President 1829-37) of the Democratic coalition—rural, populist, embracing North and South until 1860. After his retirement, Jefferson was intensely active, and left his mark on architecture, garden design, universities, and librarianship through his oversight of the building of the University of Virginia and his books and cataloguing system which formed the nucleus of the Library of Congress. His epitaph, chosen by himself, describes him as ‘author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the statute of Virginia for religious freedom, and father of the University of Virginia’.

For more information on Thomas Jefferson, visit Britannica.com.

Able American self-taught architect of the late C18, he excelled in many things, and was one of the founding fathers and third President of the USA (1801–9). It is known he had a fine library of architectural books, and it was largely from these (e.g. Gibbs and Leoni) that he acquired his skills. One of his first buildings was Monticello, his own house near Charlottesville, VA (1768–82—remodelled 1796–1809), the plans of which were a variation on a design in Robert Morris's Select Architecture (1755), with additional elements derived from Gibbs, and a dash of Palladio taken from Leoni's edition of the Quattro Libri. Indeed, Monticello was Palladian in layout, intelligently altered to accommodate the most convenient internal arrangements, but in its final version it suggested the Antique villa transformed by French Neo-Classicism (e.g. Hôtel de Salm, Paris, of 1783).

In 1784 Jefferson was appointed Second American Minister to Paris, a stroke of good luck enabling him to absorb up-to-date architectural ideas at first hand. He was also conveniently placed to visit England, which he did in 1786, expressly to study Picturesque gardens that attracted the admiration of Europe at that time. In France he admired the top-lighting at the Château de Chaville (1764–6—destroyed) by Boullée, as well as Legrand and Molinos's dome of the Halle au Blé, Paris (1782–3).

When it was decided to build a State Capitol in Richmond, VA, Jefferson chaired the Committee charged with arranging for this, and he himself proposed a building based on the Corinthian Roman temple, the Maison Carrée, Nîmes (16 bc—to which building he had been introduced by Clérisseau's Antiquités de France (1778), and which he greatly admired): thus he was the first to reintroduce the rectangular temple-form into public architecture (as opposed to small garden fabriques, e.g. at Stowe, Bucks.) in the West since Classical Antiquity. In the event, the State Capitol (1785–99), which was designed by Jefferson with Clérisseau as adviser, employed the Ionic Order with angular capitals of the Scamozzi type, and had pilasters rather than engaged columns as on the cella of the Maison Carrée.

From 1789, when he returned to the USA, becoming Secretary of State in Washington's Government, he involved himself in the planning and architecture of the new Federal capital, promoting French ideas when he could. Jefferson's greatest architectural achievement, however, was the University of Virginia, Charlottesville (1817–26), a series of porticoed pavilions (each with an Order from a different Roman building) linked by colonnades, on either side of a long rectangular lawn (the first campus plan) with a scaled-down version of the Pantheon in Rome on the long axis at one end. While Latrobe helped Jefferson with this design, the main scheme was Jefferson's own, though possibly based on Marly-le-Roi, the château of Louis XIV. The Rotunda at the University contained the most remarkable elliptical rooms in America, an arrangement possibly derived from the Doric column-base in the Désert de Retz near Paris, which Jefferson had seen. The University is arguably the most beautiful architectural ensemble in the American Continent. Like Monticello and the Virginia Capitol, it was more than a fine work of Classical architecture: all three were intended as exemplars from which Americans would learn the rules of architecture and civil design.

Bibliography

• W. Adams (1976, 1983)
• J. Boyd (ed.) (from 1950)
• Brawne (1994)
• Kimball (1966, 1968)
• Lehman (1980)
• Malone (1948–74)
• Mayo (ed.) (1970)
• Nichols (ed.) (1978)
• Nichols & Bear (1967)
• Nichols &Griswold(1978)
• O'Neal (1960)
• Placzek (ed.) (1982)
• Jane Turner (1996)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)

Jefferson, Thomas (1743-1826) The statesman and third President of the United States was also the principal author of the Declaration of Independence. A polymath and widely-read man, his ideal of tolerant and representative government by an educated citizenry was profoundly influenced by Enlightenment ideas, and especially the Second Treatise of Government of John Locke. This example of the direct and benign influence of a philosopher on a major political figure in a Western democracy has seldom been paralleled since the eighteenth century, and is utterly remote from the twenty-first.

• Born: Apr. 13, 1743, Goochland (now Albemarle) County, Va.
• Political party: Democratic-Republican
• Education: College of William and Mary, B.A., 1762
• Military service: none
• Previous government service: Virginia House of Burgesses, 1769–75; Second Continental Congress, 1775; committee that drafted Declaration of Independence, 1776; Virginia House of Delegates, 1776–78; governor of Virginia, 1779–81; Continental Congress, 1783–84; minister to France, 1785–89; U.S. secretary of state, 1790–93; Vice President, 1797–1801
• Elected President, 1800; served, 1801–9
• Subsequent public service: rector, University of Virginia, 1819–26
• Died: July 4, 1826, Monticello, Va.

Thomas Jefferson is considered by many to be the most intelligent man ever to occupy the White House. He was a scientist, architect, landscaper, lawyer, inventor, violinist, and philosopher (serving between 1797 and 1815 as president of the American Philosophical Society), as well as the founder and leader of the Democratic-Republican political party. At a White House reception for Nobel Prize winners, John F. Kennedy said he was hosting “probably the greatest concentration of talent and genius in this house except for perhaps those times when Thomas Jefferson ate alone.”

Jefferson was born at Shadwell, his father's 10,000-acre plantation near Charlottesville, Virginia. After graduating from college, he read law for five years and was admitted to the bar in 1767. Five years later he had obtained 5,000 acres for a plantation to secure his financial independence. As a member of the Virginia Committee of Correspondence in 1774, he wrote a defense of American independence called “A Summary View of the Rights of British America,” which argued that the British Parliament, elected by 150,000 British voters, had no right to control the legislatures or courts of millions of Americans, no right to prevent Americans from prohibiting the slave trade, no right to quarter British soldiers in American homes, and no right to use American taxes to support British troops in the colonies. Virginia's Williamsburg Convention could not accept all the principles and did not officially endorse the document, but it established Jefferson as one of the preeminent political theorists of the Revolution. In 1775, in response to prime minister Lord North's proposals to compromise with the colonies, Jefferson wrote “Causes for Taking Up Arms,” which inspired revolutionary sentiment and rejected the British offer. At the Continental Congress in 1776 he was chosen to write the Declaration of Independence, and with only a few changes his draft became the document signed on July 4, 1776.

Jefferson returned from Philadelphia in September 1776, was elected to the Virginia legislature, and set to work organizing a legal code for its new state government. He wrote the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, which ended the status of the Episcopal church as the state's established religion and affirmed the principle of separation of church and state. He also wrote a new penal code and much of the state constitution. His bill to prohibit the importation of slaves into Virginia was passed in 1778.

In 1779 Jefferson was elected governor, but he proved an ineffective wartime leader. British troops under General Charles Cornwallis occupied the capital at Richmond, and Jefferson himself, shortly after leaving office in 1781, was almost captured by a British raiding party at his Monticello estate.

He then published Notes on the State of Virginia, which described the social and political life of his state. In 1783, after his wife's death, he returned to Congress, where he worked on a committee to consider the peace treaty with Great Britain and another to establish territorial government for the Northwest Territories ceded by the British; his proposals were later embodied in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Though Congress initially refused to include his ban on slavery in the territories when it considered his proposal in 1784, it did ban slavery in these territories in 1787. Between 1785 and 1789 Jefferson served as minister to France, so he did not participate in the Constitutional Convention of 1787. He supported adoption of the U.S. Constitution but urged the addition of a Bill of Rights.

Jefferson joined the administration of George Washington in 1790 as secretary of state. He soon became involved in a bitter rivalry with Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton over foreign policy. Hamilton favored a pro-British “neutrality” in the Franco-British wars, while Jefferson favored strict neutrality and took a pro-French position. Hamilton favored creation of a national bank; Jefferson argued that the bank exceeded the powers of the national government and favored Northern interests. At the end of 1793, after writing a report recommending closer ties to France, Jefferson resigned from the cabinet and, with James Madison, began to organize the Democratic Societies. These associations later became a political party in opposition to the Federalist faction then in power.

In 1796 Jefferson ran for President against Federalist John Adams. Jefferson received the second-highest total in the electoral college vote, and in accordance with the procedures then used, he assumed the Vice Presidency. When the Federalists passed the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, which made it a criminal offense to criticize the government, Jefferson opposed the tendency of the Federalists “to silence, by force and not by reason,” the complaints and criticisms of the people. In response, he drafted the Kentucky Resolves, in which he argued that an unconstitutional act passed by the national government, in this case violating 1st Amendment freedoms of speech and press, may be nullified by state governments.

In the election of 1800 Jefferson and his running mate, Aaron Burr, each received the same number of votes in the electoral college (the electoral votes at that time did not distinguish between President and Vice President). Jefferson was chosen President in the contingency election held by the House of Representatives. This was the first election in the United States in which power was transferred from one party to another. It was also the first election in which the electoral college voting had been organized by parties: all but one elector voted for his party's nominees.

Jefferson was the first President to be inaugurated in the new capital, Washington, D.C. He rode to his inauguration on his own horse rather than in a carriage, and after taking the oath of office reassured his political opponents with the conciliatory words, “We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.” With the motto “That government is best which governs least,” Jefferson began to overturn many of the Federalist policies. He abolished new federal judgeships that the Federalists had created in 1801; trimmed back the Treasury Department's attempts to direct the national economy; eliminated domestic taxes (especially on whiskey); turned domestic matters back to the states; and reduced the national debt. He modernized the navy but cut back on the army, though he did establish the military academy at West Point. He arranged for the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon Bonaparte for $15 million, which doubled the area of the United States. Although the Constitution makes no mention of acquiring territory (referring only to admission of new states to the Union), Jefferson downplayed the constitutional issues to complete the transaction.

Jefferson authorized Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to organize an expedition to map and report on the vast expanse of land. Congress then established a military government for the territory, which was gradually organized into 13 states. Jefferson was also successful when he used the navy against the pasha of Tripoli and the Barbary pirates; within four years their threat to U.S. shipping was diminished after a series of American naval victories. Jefferson did have to pay $60,000 to secure the release of American prisoners of war, however.

With the nation peaceful and prosperous, in 1804 Jefferson crushed his Federalist opponent, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, to win reelection to a second term. Jefferson then tried to remove Federalist Supreme Court justice Samuel Chase but could not secure the necessary two-thirds vote in the Senate, a result that confirmed the independence of the judiciary from political interference.

In foreign affairs Jefferson suffered setbacks. Napoleon refused to sell East or West Florida. Great Britain and France began to interfere with U.S. shipping. The Embargo Act of 1807, which forbade all foreign trade, meant hundreds of American ships sat and rotted in ports while sailors were idle and merchants lost their markets. The act was widely criticized and was repealed by Congress near the end of Jefferson's administration. Congress replaced it with the Non-Intercourse Act of 1809, a law that restored American trade to all nations except England and France, which would have to declare their respect for American shipping to restore trade. Jefferson's poor handling of maritime policy eroded his support within his own party. Though five state legislatures passed resolutions requesting that he run for a third term, Jefferson declined.

After retiring from office, Jefferson returned to Monticello and remained there for the rest of his life. The government purchased his magnificent library after the War of 1812 to form the nucleus of the second Library of Congress (the British having burned the first). Jefferson was responsible for the chartering of the University of Virginia in 1819. He designed the campus and its buildings and served as the first rector of the university. He also designed the state capitol building. Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, just a few hours before his great rival and friend John Adams, on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

See also Adams, John; Burr, Aaron; Electoral college; Madison, James; 12th Amendment; Washington, George

Sources

• Noble E. Cunningham Jr., In Pursuit of Reason: The Life of Thomas Jefferson (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987).
• Noble E. Cunningham, Jr., The Process of Government Under Jefferson (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978).
• Joseph J. Ellis, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Knopf, 1997).
• Adrienne Koch, Jefferson and Madison: The Great Collaboration (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969).
• Forrest McDonald, The Presidency of Thomas Jefferson (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997).
• Merrill D. Peterson, Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970)

(1743-1826), intellectual, statesman, and third president of the United States. Although Jefferson served as governor of Virginia, minister to France, secretary of state, vice president, and president, he is remembered in history less for the offices he held than for what he stood for: his belief in the natural rights of man as he expressed them in the Declaration of Independence and his faith in the people's ability to govern themselves. He left an impact on his times equaled by few others in American history. Introduced to the ideas of the Enlightenment as a student at the College of William and Mary, Jefferson displayed throughout his life an optimistic faith in the power of reason to regulate human affairs.

As a young member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, Jefferson questioned British colonial policies and was an early advocate of American rights. His forceful pamphlet A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774) gained him the reputation that placed him on the committee of the Continental Congress charged with drafting the Declaration of Independence. As its principal author, Jefferson gave eloquent expression to the principles of the natural rights of man, among which, he affirmed, was self-government.

Jefferson's intellectual prowess led some political opponents to dismiss him as a visionary, but he was remarkably successful in politics. As leader of the opposition to the Federalist policies of Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, Jefferson was put forward by his supporters to run against Adams in the election of 1796 to succeed George Washington as president. He lost that contest but four years later defeated Adams to preside over the first transfer of political power from one party to another in the history of the young Republic. In his inaugural address in 1801, he set the ship of state on a republican course based on faith in majority rule, simplicity and frugality in government, limited central authority, and protection of civil liberties and minority rights. Alexis de Tocqueville, visiting America five years after Jefferson's death, declared Jefferson to be "the greatest democrat whom the democracy of America has as yet produced."

On the eve of his inauguration as vice president in 1797, Jefferson had been elected president of the American Philosophical Society, a post he retained until 1815. In many ways he found more pleasure in holding that office than in being president of the United States. A boundless intellectual curiosity fueled his interests in science and natural history, the classics, music, and the arts. He once reflected: "Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering them my supreme delight. But the enormities of the times in which I have lived have forced me to take a part in resisting them, and to commit myself on the boisterous ocean of political passions."

Jefferson translated his intellectual pursuits into action. His study of natural law and political thought informed his commitment to republican government. His devotion to science inspired numerous agricultural pursuits. His interest in architecture and the arts was manifest in the design of his home at Monticello. His concern about education led to proposals for public education in his state and to the founding of the University of Virginia, for which he was champion, architect, and academic planner.

The most versatile intellectual to occupy the presidential office, Jefferson was a complex man. He opposed an aristocracy and slavery, yet he enjoyed a life of privilege and owned slaves, optimistically hoping that the next generation would end that violation of natural law.

Jefferson's sense of priorities was strikingly revealed when he instructed that his tombstone be inscribed only with the words that he was the author of the Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and the father of the University of Virginia.

Bibliography:

Noble E. Cunningham, Jr., In Pursuit of Reason: The Life of Thomas Jefferson (1987); Merrill D. Peterson, Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation: A Biography (1970).

Author:

Noble E. Cunningham, Jr.

See also Constitution; Declaration of Independence; Deism; Elections: 1796 , 1800 , 1804; Jeffersonian Democracy; Republicanism; Revolution; Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions. For events during Jefferson's administration, see Barbary Wars; Embargo Act of 1807; Impressment Controversy; Lewis and Clark Expedition; Louisiana Purchase; Marbury v. Madison .

Early Life

Jefferson was born on Apr. 13, 1743, at “Shadwell,” in Goochland (now in Albemarle) co., Va. The vicinity, at that time considered a western outpost, was to remain his lifelong home, and from boyhood he absorbed the democratic views of his Western countrymen. After graduating from the College of William and Mary (1762), he studied law under George Wythe.

Revolutionary Leader

In the colonial house of burgesses Jefferson was (1769–75) a leader of the patriot faction. He was a founding member of the Virginia Committee of Correspondence, and in A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774), prepared for the First Virginia Convention, he brilliantly expounded the view that Parliament had no authority in the colonies and that the only bond with England was voluntary allegiance to the king. Although never an effective public speaker, he won a reputation as a draftsman of resolutions and addresses.

A delegate to the Second Continental Congress (1775–76), he served as a member of the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence. That document, except for minor alterations by John Adams and Benjamin Franklin and some others made on the floor of Congress, was wholly the work of Jefferson. In spirit it reflects his debt to English political theorists, particularly John Locke, and to French and other continental philosophers.

Jefferson returned to the Virginia legislature in the hope of being able to translate his ideals into reality in the establishment of a new state government. He urged the abolition of entail and primogeniture to prevent the continuance of an aristocracy; both practices were abolished, although primogeniture existed until 1785. His bill for establishing religious freedom, grounded in the belief that a person's opinions cannot be coerced, was not successful until 1786, when James Madison was able to carry part of the Jeffersonian program to completion.

In 1779, Jefferson succeeded Patrick Henry as governor of Virginia. He served through the trying last years of the American Revolution when Virginia was invaded by the British, and, hampered by lack of financial and military resources, experienced great difficulty. His conduct as governor was investigated in 1781, but he was completely vindicated.

Postwar Republican Leader

In 1783–84 he was again in the Continental Congress, where he drafted a plan for a decimal system of coinage and drew up a proposed ordinance for the government of the Northwest Territory, which, although not then adopted, was the basis for the Ordinance of 1787. In 1785 he succeeded Franklin as minister to France, and witnessed the beginning (1789) of the French Revolution, to which he was sympathetic. His unsuccessful attempt, with John Adams, to negotiate a trade treaty with England left him convinced of that country's essential selfishness. On his return he became (1790) Secretary of State.

Though absent when the Constitution was drafted and adopted, Jefferson gave his support to a stronger central government and to the Constitution, particularly with the addition of the Bill of Rights. He failed to realize the power that conservatives had attained in his absence, and he did not seem aware at first of the threat to agrarian interests posed by measures advocated by Alexander Hamilton. He would call himself neither a Federalist nor an Anti-Federalist, and was anxious to secure unity and cooperation in the new government.

Jefferson did not begin to differ with Hamilton until they clashed as to the way to persuade England to release the Northwest Territory forts, still held in violation of the 1783 Treaty of Paris. Jefferson favored the application of economic pressure by forbidding imports from England, but Hamilton objected, fearing that the resulting loss of revenue would endanger his plans for the nation's financial structure. Jefferson next opposed Hamilton by declaring against his Bank of the United States scheme on the ground that the Constitution did not specifically authorize it, rejecting the doctrine of “implied powers,” invoked by Hamilton's supporters. In both these encounters Hamilton, to Jefferson's chagrin, emerged the victor.

Fearing a return to monarchist ideals, if not to actual monarchy, Jefferson became virtual leader of the Anti-Federalist forces. He drew to himself a group of like-minded men who began to call themselves Republicans—a group to which the present Democratic party traces its origin. An organization was developed, and the National Gazette, edited by Philip Freneau, was established (1791) to disseminate Republican sentiments.

Jefferson and Hamilton, from being suspicious of each other, became openly antagonistic, and President George Washington was unable to reconcile them. In 1793, Jefferson left the cabinet. Later he bitterly criticized Jay's Treaty, which compromised the issues with Great Britain in ways outlined by Hamilton.

Jefferson's party was able to elect him Vice President in 1796, when that office was still filled by the person who ran second in the presidential race. He took little part in the administration but presided over the Senate and wrote A Manual of Parliamentary Practice (1801). His followers kept up their agitation and under Jefferson's direction extended the party's following both territorially and numerically, while the Federalists drifted into dissension. The passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts immensely stimulated newspaper discussion, and Jefferson drafted, in protest against these laws, the Kentucky Resolutions (see Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions), the first statement of the states' rights interpretation of the Constitution.

President

The Republicans triumphed easily at the polls in what is sometimes called “the Revolution of 1800,” but in the Electoral College vote, Aaron Burr (who had been slated for the office of Vice President) was found to have tied Jefferson for President. The choice was automatically left to the House of Representatives, where Jefferson was elected after a long deadlock, largely because Hamilton