As a composition, the Declaration [of Independence]
is Mr. Jefferson’s. It is the production of his mind,
and the high honor of it belongs to him clearly and
absolutely. To say that he performed his great work
well would be doing him an injustice. To say that
he did excellently well, admirably well, would be
inadequate and halting praise. Let us rather say
that he so discharged the duty assigned him that all
Americans may well rejoice that the work of drawing
the title-deed of their liberties devolved upon
him.—_Daniel Webster._
After Washington and Franklin there is no person who
fills so eminent a place among the great men of America
as Jefferson.—_Lord Brougham._
Washington.
His mind was great and powerful, without being of the very first order;
his penetration strong, though not so acute as that of a Newton, Bacon,
or Locke; and as far as he saw, no judgment was ever sounder. It was
slow in operation, being little aided by invention or imagination,
but sure in conclusion. Hence the common remark of his officers, of
the advantage he derived from councils of war, where, hearing all
suggestions, he selected whatever was best; and certainly no general
ever planned his battles more judiciously. But if deranged during the
course of the action, if any member of his plan was dislocated by
sudden circumstances, he was slow in a re-adjustment. The consequence
was, that he often failed in the field, and rarely against an enemy
in station, as at Boston and York. He was incapable of fear, meeting
personal dangers with the calmest unconcern. Perhaps the strongest
feature in his character was prudence, never acting until every
circumstance, every consideration was maturely weighed; refraining
if he saw a doubt, but when once decided, going through with his
purpose, whatever obstacles opposed. His integrity was most pure, his
justice the most inflexible I have ever known; no motives of interest
or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his
decision. He was, indeed, in every sense of the word, a wise, a good,
and a great man. His temper was naturally irritable and high-toned; but
reflection and resolution had obtained a firm and habitual ascendency
over it. If ever, however, it broke its bounds, he was most tremendous
in his wrath. In his expenses he was honorable, but exact; liberal in
contributions to whatever promised utility; but frowning and unyielding
on all visionary projects, and all unworthy calls on his charity.
His heart was not warm in its affections; but he exactly calculated
every man’s value, and gave him a solid esteem proportioned to it.
His person, you know, was fine, his stature exactly what one would
wish; his deportment easy, erect, and noble, the best horseman of his
age, and the most graceful figure that could be seen on horseback.
Although in the circle of his friends, where he might be unreserved
with safety, he took a free share in conversation, his colloquial
talents were not above mediocrity, possessing neither copiousness of
ideas nor fluency of words. In public, when called on for a sudden
opinion, he was unready, short, and embarrassed. Yet he wrote readily,
rather diffusely, in an easy and correct style. This he had acquired
by conversation with the world, for his education was merely reading,
writing, and common arithmetic, to which he added surveying at a
later day. His time was employed in action chiefly, reading little,
and that only in agriculture and English history. His correspondence
became necessarily extensive, and with journalizing his agricultural
proceedings, occupied most of his leisure hours within doors. On the
whole, his character was, in its mass, perfect, in nothing bad, in a
few points indifferent; and it may truly be said, that never did nature
and fortune combine more completely to make a man great, and to place
him in the same constellation with whatever worthies have merited from
man an everlasting remembrance. For his was the singular destiny and
merit of leading the armies of his country successfully through an
arduous war, for the establishment of its independence; of conducting
its councils through the birth of a government, new in its forms and
principles, until it had settled down into a quiet and orderly train;
and of scrupulously obeying the laws through the whole of his career,
civil and military, of which the history of the world furnishes no
other example.