Thomas Jefferson Part 1

Thomas Jefferson.

by Henry Childs Merwin.

I

YOUTH AND TRAINING

Thomas Jefferson was born upon a frontier estate in Albemarle County, Virginia, April 13, 1743. His father, Peter Jefferson, was of Welsh descent, not of aristocratic birth, but of that yeoman cla.s.s which const.i.tutes the backbone of all societies. The elder Jefferson had uncommon powers both of mind and body. His strength was such that he could simultaneously "head up"-that is, raise from their sides to an upright position-two hogsheads of tobacco, weighing nearly one thousand pounds apiece. Like Was.h.i.+ngton, he was a surveyor; and there is a tradition that once, while running his lines through a vast wilderness, his a.s.sistants gave out from famine and fatigue, and Peter Jefferson pushed on alone, sleeping at night in hollow trees, amidst howling beasts of prey, and subsisting on the flesh of a pack mule which he had been obliged to kill.

Thomas Jefferson inherited from his father a love of mathematics and of literature. Peter Jefferson had not received a cla.s.sical education, but he was a diligent reader of a few good books, chiefly Shakespeare, The Spectator, Pope, and Swift; and in mastering these he was forming his mind on great literature after the manner of many another Virginian,-for the houses of that colony held English books as they held English furniture.

The edition of Shakespeare (and it is a handsome one) which Peter Jefferson used is still preserved among the heirlooms of his descendants.

It was probably in his capacity of surveyor that Mr. Jefferson made the acquaintance of the Randolph family, and he soon became the bosom friend of William Randolph, the young proprietor of Tuckahoe. The Randolphs had been for ages a family of consideration in the midland counties of England, claiming descent from the Scotch Earls of Murray, and connected by blood or marriage with many of the English n.o.bility. In 1735 Peter Jefferson established himself as a planter by patenting a thousand acres of land in Goochland County, his estate lying near and partly including the outlying hills, which form a sort of picket line for the Blue Mountain range. At the same time his friend William Randolph patented an adjoining estate of twenty-four hundred acres; and inasmuch as there was no good site for a house on Jefferson's estate, Mr. Randolph conveyed to him four hundred acres for that purpose, the consideration expressed in the deed, which is still extant, being "Henry Weatherbourne's biggest bowl of Arrack punch."

Here Peter Jefferson built his house, and here, three years later, he brought his bride,-a handsome girl of nineteen, and a kinswoman of William Randolph, being Jane, oldest child of Isham Randolph, then Adjutant-General of Virginia. She was born in London, in the parish of Shadwell, and Shadwell was the name given by Peter Jefferson to his estate. This marriage was a fortunate union of the best aristocratic and yeoman strains in Virginia.

In the year 1744 the new County of Albemarle was carved out of Goochland County, and Peter Jefferson was appointed one of the three justices who const.i.tuted the county court and were the real rulers of the s.h.i.+re. He was made also Surveyor, and later Colonel of the county. This last office was regarded as the chief provincial honor in Virginia, and it was especially important when he held it, for it was the time of the French war, and Albemarle was in the debatable land.

In the midst of that war, in August, 1757, Peter Jefferson died suddenly, of a disease which is not recorded, but which was probably produced by fatigue and exposure. He was a strong, just, kindly man, sought for as a protector of the widow and the orphan, and respected and loved by Indians as well as white men. Upon his deathbed he left two injunctions regarding his son Thomas: one, that he should receive a cla.s.sical education; the other, that he should never be permitted to neglect the physical exercises necessary for health and strength. Of these dying commands his son often spoke with grat.i.tude; and he used to say that if he were obliged to choose between the education and the estate which his father gave him, he would choose the education. Peter Jefferson left eight children, but only one son besides Thomas, and that one died in infancy. Less is known of Jefferson's mother; but he derived from her a love of music, an extraordinary keenness of susceptibility, and a corresponding refinement of taste.

His father's death left Jefferson his own master. In one of his later letters he says: "At fourteen years of age the whole care and direction of myself were thrown on myself entirely, without a relative or a friend qualified to advise or guide me."

The first use that he made of his liberty was to change his school, and to become a pupil of the Rev. James Maury,-an excellent clergyman and scholar, of Huguenot descent, who had recently settled in Albemarle County. With him young Jefferson continued for two years, studying Greek and Latin, and becoming noted, as a schoolmate afterward reported, for scholars.h.i.+p, industry, and shyness. He was a good runner, a keen fox-hunter, and a bold and graceful rider.

At the age of sixteen, in the spring of 1760, he set out on horseback for Williamsburg, the capital of Virginia, where he proposed to enter the college of William and Mary. Up to this time he had never seen a town, or even a village, except the hamlet of Charlottesville, which is about four miles from Shadwell. Williamsburg-described in contemporary language as "the centre of taste, fas.h.i.+on, and refinement"-was an unpaved village, of about one thousand inhabitants, surrounded by an expanse of dark green tobacco fields as far as the eye could reach. It was, however, well situated upon a plateau midway between the York and James rivers, and was swept by breezes which tempered the heat of the summer sun and kept the town free from mosquitoes.

Williamsburg was also well laid out, and it has the honor of having served as a model for the city of Was.h.i.+ngton. It consisted chiefly of a single street, one hundred feet broad and three quarters of a mile long, with the capitol at one end, the college at the other, and a ten-acre square with public buildings in the middle. Here in his palace lived the colonial governor. The town also contained "ten or twelve gentlemen's families, besides merchants and tradesmen." These were the permanent inhabitants; and during the "season"-the midwinter months-the planters' families came to town in their coaches, the gentlemen on horseback, and the little capital was then a scene of gayety and dissipation.

Such was Williamsburg in 1760 when Thomas Jefferson, the frontier planter's son, rode slowly into town at the close of an early spring day, surveying with the outward indifference, but keen inward curiosity of a countryman, the place which was to be his residence for seven years,-in one sense the most important, because the most formative, period of his life. He was a tall stripling, rather slightly built,-after the model of the Randolphs,-but extremely well-knit, muscular, and agile. His face was freckled, and his features were somewhat pointed. His hair is variously described as red, reddish, and sandy, and the color of his eyes as blue, gray, and also hazel. The expression of his face was frank, cheerful, and engaging. He was not handsome in youth, but "a very good-looking man in middle age, and quite a handsome old man." At maturity he stood six feet two and a half inches. "Mr. Jefferson," said Mr. Bacon, at one time the superintendent of his estate, "was well proportioned and straight as a gun-barrel. He was like a fine horse, he had no surplus flesh. He had an iron const.i.tution, and was very strong."

Jefferson was always the most cheerful and optimistic of men. He once said, after remarking that something must depend "on the chapter of events:" "I am in the habit of turning over the next leaf with hope, and, though it often fails me, there is still another and another behind." No doubt this sanguine trait was due in part at least to his almost perfect health. He was, to use his own language, "blessed with organs of digestion which accepted and concocted, without ever murmuring, whatever the palate chose to consign to them." His habits through life were good. He never smoked, he drank wine in moderation, he went to bed early, he was regular in taking exercise, either by walking or, more commonly, by riding on horseback.

The college of William and Mary in Jefferson's day is described by Mr.

Parton as "a medley of college, Indian mission, and grammar school, ill-governed, and distracted by dissensions among its ruling powers." But Jefferson had a thirst for knowledge and a capacity for acquiring it, which made him almost independent of inst.i.tutions of learning. Moreover, there was one professor who had a large share in the formation of his mind. "It was my great good fortune," he wrote in his brief autobiography, "and what probably fixed the destinies of my life, that Dr. William Small, of Scotland, was then professor of mathematics; a man profound in most of the useful branches of science, with a happy talent of communication and an enlarged liberal mind. He, most happily for me, soon became attached to me, and made me his daily companion when not engaged in the school; and from his conversation I got my first views of the expansion of science, and of the system of things in which we are placed."

Jefferson, like all well-bred Virginians, was brought up as an Episcopalian; but as a young man, perhaps owing in part to the influence of Dr. Small, he ceased to believe in Christianity as a religion, though he always at home attended the Episcopal church, and though his daughters were brought up in that faith. If any theological term is to be applied to him, he should be called a Deist. Upon the subject of his religious faith, Jefferson was always extremely reticent. To one or two friends only did he disclose his creed, and that was in letters which were published after his death. When asked, even by one of his own family, for his opinion upon any religious matter, he invariably refused to express it, saying that every person was bound to look into the subject for himself, and to decide upon it conscientiously, unbiased by the opinions of others.

Dr. Small introduced Jefferson to other valuable acquaintances; and, boy though he was, he soon became the fourth in a group of friends which embraced the three most notable men in the little metropolis. These were, beside Dr. Small, Francis Fauquier, the acting governor of the province, appointed by the crown, and George Wythe. Fauquier was a courtly, honorable, highly cultivated man of the world, a disciple of Voltaire, and a confirmed gambler, who had in this respect an unfortunate influence upon the Virginia gentry,-not, however, upon Jefferson, who, though a lover of horses, and a frequenter of races, never in his life gambled or even played cards. Wythe was then just beginning a long and honorable career as lawyer, statesman, professor, and judge. He remained always a firm and intimate friend of Jefferson, who spoke of him, after his death, as "my second father." It is an interesting fact that Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and Henry Clay were all, in succession, law students in the office of George Wythe.

Many of the government officials and planters who flocked to Williamsburg in the winter were related to Jefferson on his mother's side, and they opened their houses to him with Virginia hospitality. We read also of dances in the "Apollo," the ball-room of the old Raleigh tavern, and of musical parties at Gov. Fauquier's house, in which Jefferson, who was a skillful and enthusiastic fiddler, always took part. "I suppose," he remarked in his old age, "that during at least a dozen years of my life, I played no less than three hours a day."

At this period he was somewhat of a dandy, very particular about his clothes and equipage, and devoted, as indeed he remained through life, to fine horses. Virginia imported more thoroughbred horses than any other colony, and to this day there is probably a greater admixture of thoroughbred blood there than in any other State. Diomed, winner of the first English Derby, was brought over to Virginia in 1799, and founded a family which, even now, is highly esteemed as a source of speed and endurance. Jefferson had some of his colts; and both for the saddle and for his carriage he always used high-bred horses.

Referring to the Williamsburg period of his life, he wrote once to a grandson: "When I recollect the various sorts of bad company with which I a.s.sociated from time to time, I am astonished I did not turn off with some of them, and become as worthless to society as they were.... But I had the good fortune to become acquainted very early with some characters of very high standing, and to feel the incessant wish that I could ever become what they were. Under temptations and difficulties, I would ask myself what would Dr. Small, Mr. Wythe, Peyton Randolph do in this situation?

What course in it will a.s.sure me their approbation? I am certain that this mode of deciding on my conduct tended more to correctness than any reasoning powers that I possesed."

This pa.s.sage throws a light upon Jefferson's character. It does not seem to occur to him that a young man might require some stronger motive to keep his pa.s.sions in check than could be furnished either by the wish to imitate a good example or by his "reasoning powers." To Jefferson's well-regulated mind the desire for approbation was a sufficient motive. He was particularly sensitive, perhaps morbidly so, to disapprobation. The respect, the good-will, the affection of his countrymen were so dear to him that the desire to retain them exercised a great, it may be at times, an undue influence upon him. "I find," he once said, "the pain of a little censure, even when it is unfounded, is more acute than the pleasure of much praise."

During his second year at college, Jefferson laid aside all frivolities.

He sent home his horses, contenting himself with a mile run out and back at nightfall for exercise, and studying, if we may believe the biographer, no less than fifteen hours a day. This intense application reduced the time of his college course by one half; and after the second winter at Williamsburg he went home with a degree in his pocket, and a volume of c.o.ke upon Lytleton in his trunk.

II

VIRGINIA IN JEFFERSON'S DAY

To a young Virginian of Jefferson's standing but two active careers were open, law and politics, and in almost every case these two, sooner or later, merged in one. The condition of Virginia was very different from that of New England,-neither the clerical nor the medical profession was held in esteem. There were no manufactures, and there was no general commerce.

Nature has divided Virginia into two parts: the mountainous region to the west and the broad level plain between the mountains and the sea, intersected by numerous rivers, in which, far back from the ocean, the tide ebbs and flows. In this tide-water region were situated the tobacco plantations which const.i.tuted the wealth and were inhabited by the aristocracy of the colony. Almost every planter lived near a river and had his own wharf, whence a schooner carried his tobacco to London, and brought back wines, silks, velvets, guns, saddles, and shoes.

The small proprietors of land were comparatively few in number, and the whole const.i.tution of the colony, political and social, was aristocratic.

Both real estate and slaves descended by force of law to the eldest son, so that the great properties were kept intact. There were no towns.h.i.+ps and no town meetings. The political unit was the parish; for the Episcopal church was the established church,-a state inst.i.tution; and the parishes were of great extent, there being, as a rule, but one or two parishes in a county.

The clergy, though belonging to an establishment, were poorly paid, and not revered as a cla.s.s. They held the same position of inferiority in respect to the rich planters which the clergy of England held in respect to the country gentry at the same period. Being appointed by the crown, they were selected without much regard to fitness, and they were demoralized by want of supervision, for there were no resident bishops, and, further, by the uncertain character of their incomes, which, being paid in tobacco, were subject to great fluctuations. A few were men of learning and virtue who performed their duties faithfully, and eked out their incomes by taking pupils. "It was these few," remarks Mr. Parton, "who saved civilization in the colony." A few others became cultivators of tobacco, and acquired wealth. But the greater part of the clergy were companions and hangers-on of the rich planters,-examples of that type which Thackeray so well describes in the character of Parson Sampson in "The Virginians." Strange tales were told of these old Virginia parsons.

One is spoken of as pocketing annually a hundred dollars, the revenue of a legacy for preaching four sermons a year against atheism, gambling, racing, and swearing,-for all of which vices, except the first, he was notorious.

This period, the middle half of the eighteenth century, was, as the reader need not be reminded, that in which the English church sank to its lowest point. It was the era when the typical country parson was a convivial fox-hunter; when the Fellows of colleges sat over their wine from four o'clock, their dinner hour, till midnight or after; when the highest type of bishop was a learned man who spent more time in his private studies than in the duties of his office; when the cathedrals were neglected and dirty, and the parish churches were closed from Sunday to Sunday. In England, the reaction produced Methodism, and, later, the Tractarian movement; and we are told that even in Virginia, "swarms of Methodists, Moravians, and New-Light Presbyterians came over the border from Pennsylvania, and pervaded the colony."

Taxation pressed with very unequal force upon the poor, and the right of voting was confined to freeholders. There was no system of public schools, and the great ma.s.s of the people were ignorant and coa.r.s.e, but morally and physically sound,-a good substructure for an aristocratic society. Wealth being concentrated mainly in the hands of a few, Virginia presented striking contrasts of luxury and dest.i.tution, whereas in the neighboring colony of Pennsylvania, where wealth was more distributed and society more democratic, thrift and prosperity were far more common.

"In Pennsylvania," relates a foreign traveler, "one sees great numbers of wagons drawn by four or more fine fat horses.... In the slave States we sometimes meet a ragged black boy or girl driving a team consisting of a lean cow and a mule; and I have seen a mule, a bull, and a cow, each miserable in its appearance, composing one team, with a half-naked black slave or two riding or driving as occasion suited." And yet between Richmond and Fredericksburg, "in the afternoon, as our road lay through the woods, I was surprised to meet a family party traveling along in as elegant a coach as is usually met with in the neighborhood of London, and attended by several gayly dressed footmen."

Virginia society just before the Revolution perfectly ill.u.s.trated Buckle's remark about leisure: "Without leisure, science is impossible; and when leisure has been won, most of the cla.s.s possessing it will waste it in the pursuit of pleasure, and a _few_ will employ it in the pursuit of knowledge." Men like Jefferson, George Wythe, and Madison used their leisure for the good of their fellow-beings and for the cultivation of their minds; whereas the greater part of the planters-and the poor whites imitated them-spent their ample leisure in sports, in drinking, and in absolute idleness. "In spite of the Virginians' love for dissipation,"

wrote a famous French traveler, "the taste for reading is commoner among men of the first rank than in any other part of America; but the populace is perhaps more ignorant there than elsewhere." "The Virginia virtues,"

says Mr. Henry Adams, "were those of the field and farm-the simple and straightforward mind, the notions of courage and truth, the absence of mercantile sharpness and quickness, the rusticity and open-handed hospitality." Virginians of the upper cla.s.s were remarkable for their high-bred courtesy,-a trait so inherent that it rarely disappeared even in the bitterness of political disputes and divisions. This, too, was the natural product of a society based not on trade or commerce, but on land.

"I blush for my own people," wrote Dr. Channing, from Virginia, in 1791, "when I compare the selfish prudence of a Yankee with the generous confidence of a Virginian. Here I find great vices, but greater virtues than I left behind me." There was a largeness of temper and of feeling in the Virginia aristocracy, which seems to be inseparable from people living in a new country, upon the outskirts of civilization. They had the pride of birth, but they recognized other claims to consideration, and were as far as possible from estimating a man according to the amount of his wealth.

Slavery itself was probably a factor for good in the character of such a man as Jefferson,-it afforded a daily exercise in the virtues of benevolence and self-control. How he treated the blacks may be gathered from a story, told by his superintendent, of a slave named Jim who had been caught stealing nails from the nail-factory: "When Mr. Jefferson came, I sent for Jim, and I never saw any person, white or black, feel as badly as he did when he saw his master. The tears streamed down his face, and he begged for pardon over and over again. I felt very badly myself.

Mr. Jefferson turned to me and said, 'Ah, sir, we can't punish him. He has suffered enough already.' He then talked to him, gave him a heap of good advice, and sent him to the shop.... Jim said: 'Well I'se been a-seeking religion a long time, but I never heard anything before that sounded so, or made me feel so, as I did when Master said, "Go, and don't do so any more," and now I'se determined to seek religion till I find it;' and sure enough he afterwards came to me for a permit to go and be baptized.... He was always a good servant afterward."

Another element that contributed to the efficiency and the high standard of the early Virginia statesman was a good, old-fas.h.i.+oned cla.s.sical education. They were familiar, to use Matthew Arnold's famous expression, "with the best that has ever been said or done." This was no small advantage to men who were called upon to act as founders of a republic different indeed from the republics of Greece and Rome, but still based upon the same principles, and demanding an exercise of the same heroic virtues. The American Revolution would never have cut quite the figure in the world which history a.s.signs to it, had it not been conducted with a kind of cla.s.sic dignity and decency; and to this result n.o.body contributed more than Jefferson.

Such was Virginia in the eighteenth century,-at the base of society, the slaves; next, a lower cla.s.s, rough, ignorant, and somewhat brutal, but still wholesome, and possessing the primitive virtues of courage and truth; and at the top, the landed gentry, luxurious, proud, idle and dissipated for the most part, and yet blossoming into a few characters of a type so high that the world has hardly seen a better. Had he been born in Europe, Jefferson would doubtless have devoted himself to music, or to architecture, or to literature, or to science,-for in all these directions his taste was nearly equally strong; but these careers being closed to him by the circ.u.mstances of the colony, he became a lawyer, and then, under pressure of the Revolution, a politician and statesman.

During the four years following his graduation, Jefferson spent most of the winter months at Williamsburg, pursuing his legal and other studies, and the rest of the year upon the family plantation, the management of which had devolved upon him. Now, as always, he was the most industrious of men. He lived, as Mr. Parton remarks, "with a pen in his hand." He kept a garden book, a farm book, a weather book, a receipt book, a cash book, and, while he practiced law, a fee book. Many of these books are still preserved, and the entries are as legible now as when they were first written down in Jefferson's small but clear and graceful hand,-the hand of an artist. Jefferson, as one of his old friends once remarked, _hated_ superficial knowledge; and he dug to the roots of the common law, reading deeply in old reports written in law French and law Latin, and especially studying Magna Charta and Bracton.

He found time also for riding, for music, and dancing; and in his twentieth year he became enamored of Miss Rebecca Burwell, a Williamsburg belle more distinguished, tradition reports, for beauty than for cleverness. But Jefferson was not yet in a position to marry,-he even contemplated a foreign tour; and the girl, somewhat abruptly, married another lover. The wound seems not to have been a deep one. Jefferson, in fact, though he found his chief happiness in family affection, and though capable of strong and lasting attachments, was not the man for a romantic pa.s.sion. He was a philosopher of the reasonable, eighteenth-century type.

No one was more kind and just in the treatment of his slaves, but he did not free them, as George Wythe, perhaps foolishly, did; and he was even cautious about promulgating his views as to the folly and wickedness of slavery, though he did his best to promote its abolition by legislative measures. There was not in Jefferson the material for a martyr or a Don Quixote; but that was Nature's fault, not his. It may be said of every particular man that there is a certain depth to which he cannot sink, and there is a certain height to which he cannot rise. Within the intermediate zone there is ample exercise for free-will; and no man struggled harder than Jefferson to fulfill all the obligations which, as he conceived, were laid upon him.