Jefferson would have been a notable man in any country and any age,
because he possessed both genius and character. Without the former he
could never have succeeded, as he did, in moulding the opinions of his
contemporaries and successors, and without the latter, he would not have
been, as he was, bitterly hated by his enemies and cordially loved by
his friends. His genius, however, was not of that kind which in the
ardor of its inspiration intoxicates the judgment; nor was his
character, on the other hand, of the sort which moves an admiration so
profound, unquestioning and universal, as to disarm the antagonism its
very excellence provokes. There was enough error and frailty, therefore,
mingled with his eminent qualities both of mind and heart, to involve
him in seeming contradictions, and to expose his life to double
construction and controversy. At the same time, it has happened to him
as it has often happened in human history, that the hostility awakened
by his acts during his life, has dwindled with the lapse of time, while
his fame has grown brighter and broader with every renewal of the
decisions of posterity. No man, we may now safely say, who has figured
on the theatre of events in this country, with the single exception of
Washington, occupies a larger share of the veneration of Americans.
He was born at Shadwell, in Albemarle county, Virginia, in 1743. His
father, dying when he was twelve years of age, left him a large
inheritance. He was educated at the College of William and Mary, studied
law under the celebrated George Wythe, began the practice of it in 1767,
and in 1769 was chosen a member of the provincial legislature, where his
first movement--an unsuccessful one--was for the emancipation of the
slaves. But a greater question soon engrossed his mind. Already a spirit
of opposition had been excited in the colonies to the arbitrary measures
of the parliament of Great Britain,--that very legislature was dissolved
by the Governor, in consequence of the sympathy displayed by its leading
members with the patriotic proceedings of Massachusetts,--it appealed to
the constituency, and was triumphantly returned,--and then in 1773, its
more active spirits organized, in a room of a tavern at Raleigh, a
system of correspondence, designed to inflame the zeal and unite the
efforts of the colonists against the encroachments of power. As a result
of this activity, a convention was called in Virginia for the purpose of
choosing delegates to a more general Congress. Jefferson was a member of
it, but not being able, on account of ill-health, to attend, drew up a
paper on the Rights of British America, which the convention did not
adopt, but which it published; "the leap he proposed," as he says,
"being too long for the mass of the citizens,"--and which Edmund Burke
in England caused to run through several editions. The pamphlet procured
him reputation, and the more honorable distinction of having his name
placed in a bill of attainder, moved in one of the houses of Parliament.
Thus early was he identified with the champions of liberty in the new
world.
In 1775, Jefferson took his seat for the first time in the Continental
Congress, whither he carried the same decided and liberal tone which had
marked his legislative efforts. He was soon appointed on the most
important committees, and especially on that, which, on the motion of
the delegates of Virginia, was raised to prepare a Declaration of
Independence for the colonies. It was a measure carried only after a
strenuous and hot debate, but it was finally carried by a large
majority; and to Jefferson was assigned the task, by his associates, of
preparing the document destined to inaugurate a new era in the history
of mankind. How he executed the duty the world knows; for this paper
became the charter of freedom to a whole continent; and annually to this
day, millions of people read it with gratitude, reverence, joy, and
praise to God. For a second time, then, we behold our Jefferson, a
chosen champion of liberty, linking his name, not with a bill of
attainder this time; but with the most signal event in the destiny of
his country,--and one, second to none in the political fortunes of
humanity.
The Declaration proclaimed, Mr. Jefferson retired from his place in the
Congress to resume his seat in the legislature of his native State;
where, an imperfect Constitution having been adopted, during his
absence, he was immediately involved in the most indefatigable labors
for its reform. In connection with Wythe, Mason, Pendleton, and Lee, he
prepared no less than 136 different acts, from which were derived all
the most liberal features of the existing laws of the Commonwealth. They
laid the foundation, in fact, of the code of Virginia,--as a mere
monument of industry, they were a most extraordinary work, but when we
consider the importance of some of the principles of legislation which
they introduced, sufficient in themselves to have immortalized the name
of any man. Among these principles, were provisions for the abrogation
of the laws of entail and primogeniture, for the establishment of
religious freedom, for a complete amelioration of the criminal code,
including the abolition of capital punishments in all cases, except of
treason and murder, for the emancipation, at a certain age, of all
slaves born after the passage of the act, for the division of the
counties into wards and towns, and the establishment thereby of free
municipal institutions, and for the introduction of a system of popular
education, providing for schools in each town, academies in each county,
and a University for the State. The three first were carried into
effect; but the others, in consequence of his personal absence on other
duties, failed. But what a different destiny would have been that of
Virginia if they had not failed! How intrepid, too, the mind which could
conceive and urge such measures at that time! Society in Virginia was
then divided into three classes, the land and slave-owners, the
yeomanry, and the laboring people. Jefferson was by birth and position
of the first class, but his chief associations had been among the second
class, while his sympathies were with the third class, or rather with
all classes. Had his suggestions been adopted, these distinctions would
have been destroyed, and Virginia raised to the first place among the
free nations of the earth. Thus, for a third time, we find Jefferson
among the foremost advocates of the liberty and advancement of the
people.
In 1779 he was chosen the successor of Patrick Henry, as the Governor of
the State; but war having been declared, and a military invasion being
at hand, he resigned the position on account of his want of military
talents, in favor of General Nelson. He had barely time to escape with
his family before the enemy entered his house. Congress twice solicited
him to go abroad, first to negotiate a peace, and then a treaty of
alliance and commerce with France, but as "the laboring oar," in his own
language, "was at home," it was not until the year 1782, when the
assurance that a general peace would be concluded, became stronger, that
he consented to quit his country. The preliminary articles of a peace,
however, were received before the time of his departure, and the objects
of his mission being thus accomplished, he was again chosen to Congress
in 1783.
The great question then, was the formation of a better government for
the colonies, than the weak and ill-jointed confederation of the time
had afforded. Jefferson was prepared to enter into its discussion with
ardor, bringing to the task that keen sagacity and that stern republican
spirit, which were among his chief characteristics, when he was joined
to Adams and Franklin in a commission for negotiating treaties of
commerce with foreign nations. He arrived in Paris in June of 1785. His
practical insight into affairs, his vast information, and his determined
will, made him a valuable acquisition even to the distinguished
abilities of his colleagues. His labors were incessant, and yet he found
time to participate, as far as his diplomatic functions allowed, in the
stirring and brilliant scenes then going forward on the theatre of
Europe. The part that he had performed in the great battles for liberty
in America, attracted towards him the regards and the confidence of all
the prominent actors of the revolutionary drama of France. It was at his
house that the patriots most frequently met; it was in his house that
the Declaration of Rights which preceded the first French Constitution
was drafted; it was at his house that the First Constitution was
proposed; it was from him that Lafayette received many of his best and
noblest impulses, and to him that the earlier leaders of the struggle
looked for sympathy, concurrence, and direction. In after years, in the
bitter political contests of the day, it was a topic of reproach that he
was under French influence, but the truth was, as some one has
sagaciously remarked, that the French had been brought under an American
influence. He simply continued to be abroad what he had always been at
home, the pioneer and consistent friend of popular rights,--the
unflinching supporter of popular liberty.
It was during this interval of absence in Europe, that the controversy
in respect to a better constitution of government for the colonies, to
which we have just alluded, was brought to a head. There had always been
a substantial union between them, founded upon contiguous geographical
position and their common interests, as well as their community of
origin, languages, laws and religion, which the common danger of the
Revolution had served to strengthen and cement. But as yet their
political union was inchoate and fragile. It was a simple improvement
upon the classical confederacies of history, such as had prevailed in
ancient Greece, on the plains of Etrusca, before Rome was, among the
dikes of Holland, or along the declivities of the Swiss Alps,--and such
as Montesquieu and the accepted writers praised as the perfection of
political arrangement, clear of all defects, and secure from foreign
violence and domestic weakness. Yet, in the practice of the New World,
it had not justified the praises of the theorists, for a fatal vice, an
alarming and radical weakness had been developed in its want of due
centripetal force. In other words, it was rather a conglomerate than a
united whole, and the difficulty of the new problem which it raised
consisted in the proper adjustment of the federal and central with the
State and local authority. Parties were, of course, immediately formed
on the question of the true solution of it, the one favoring a strong
central power, taking the name of Federalist; and the other, disposed to
adhere to the separate sovereignty and independence of the States,
taking the name of Anti-Federalist. In the end, the Constitution
actually adopted, a work only second in importance to the Revolution
itself, or more properly the constructive completion of it, was a
compromise between the two, although the original parties still
maintained their relative positions, as the friends and foes of a
preponderating general government.
Jefferson inclined to the anti-federalists, but not being in the midst
of the debate, was scarcely mingled with its more exciting quarrels. It
is hard to say, what shape, or whether a different shape at all, would
have been given to the instrument of union, had he been at home to take
part in its formation. We think it probable, however, that his immense
personal influence, combined with his sharp forecast and decentralizing
tendency, would have succeeded in modifying its more aristocratic and
conservative features, especially in regard to the absorbing power of
the Executive and the irresponsible tenure of the Judiciary. Be that as
it may, the choice of him by Washington, in 1789, for the post of the
first Secretary of State, gave him an opportunity of exercising his
talents and manifesting his disposition, in the organization of the new
experiment.
There were two antagonisms which he found it necessary at the outset to
meet; first, the tendency to federal absorption, and second, the
reliance upon law rather than liberty, both embodied in the person of
Alexander Hamilton, the Secretary of the Treasury, a man of genius, of
energy, of sincere convictions, and the confidant of Washington. The two
men were, therefore, speedily self-placed in strong opposition. Hamilton
had been educated in a military school, he admired the British
Constitution, and, though he was an earnest patriot, as his efficient
services in the war, and his masterly vindications of the Constitution
had proved, he cherished a secret distrust of the people. Jefferson, on
the other hand, had sympathized all his life with the multitude,
approved, or rather had anticipated, the French philosophy, which was
then in vogue, disliked the English models of government, and was
sanguine of the future. It was inevitable, consequently, that the
opposition of such men, both able, both decided, both earnest in their
plans, should widen into an almost irreconcilable hostility. In 1793,
Jefferson resigned, but not until, by his reports to Congress on the
currency, the fisheries, weights and measures, and by his correspondence
with foreign ministers, he had placed his department on a level with the
Foreign Offices of the older nations. It is to him that we are indebted
for our decimal coinage, and through him, as Mr. Webster, a competent
and not too friendly judge, has confessed, our diplomatic intercourse
was raised to a dignity and strength which will bear comparison with any
that other governments can produce.
In 1797 Jefferson was called from his retirement to act as
Vice-President of the United States,--a place of not much practical
efficiency, but which he illustrated by compiling a manual of
Parliamentary Practice, which has ever since been the standard by which
the proceedings of legislative bodies in this country are regulated.
There was no position, indeed, which he does not appear to have been
able to turn to some advantage to his country and his fellow-men.
At the close of his term as Vice-President, he was chosen President,--a
choice in which a final blow was given to the doctrines of Federalism,
and the democratic republic finally inaugurated. We shall not, however,
enter into the contests of that period, nor attempt to detail the
measures of his administration. They are subjects for history, not for
an outline like this we sketch. Suffice it to say, that the aspirations
of the people were not disappointed by the results of his action. He
rescued the functions of government from the improper direction which
had been given to them, he organized strength through simplicity, he
almost doubled the territory of the Union, he caused the vast regions of
the west, now the seat of populous empire, to be explored, he gave us
character abroad, and maintained tranquillity at home,--and, last of
all, against the solicitation of his friends, with a popular prestige
that would have carried him in triumph through a third or fourth term of
office, even to the close of his days, he consecrated for ever the
example of Washington, by resigning, as that great man had done, at the
end of eight years.
These are the simple facts of Jefferson's active career, and they need
no comment. They present a character obviously too transparent to allow
of much mistake. All his life points to a few simple but great objects.
By his sanguine temperament, his keen insight, his quick and cherishing
sympathies, his strong love of justice, his kindly visions of the
future, he was made a democrat; and, under no circumstances could he
have been any thing else. He hated tyranny, he loved truth, and he was
not afraid of man; how then could he avoid becoming what he was, the
apostle of freedom, author of the Statutes of Virginia and the
Declaration of Independence, founder of the republican party, a name of
power to future generations which have scarcely yet come up to the
greatness and breadth of his enlightened opinions? Errors of conduct he
may have committed, for who is perfect? impracticable views he may have
enunciated, for who is all-wise? but the glory of his achievements is an
imperishable remembrance of his countrymen, illustrating their history
to all nations and to all times. "A superior and commanding intellect,"
it has been eloquently said, "is not a temporary flame burning brightly
for a while, and then giving place to returning darkness. It is rather a
spark of fervent heat, as well as radiant light, with power to enkindle
the common mass of human mind; so that when it glimmers in its own
decay, and finally goes out in death, no night follows, but it leaves
the world all light, all on fire, from the potent contact of its own
spirit."
The retirement of Mr. Jefferson at Monticello was passed in the
cultivation of his estate, in the pursuit of letters, in cheerful
intercourse with friends, in the duties of a liberal hospitality, and in
advancing his favorite project of a University of Virginia. His notes on
Virginia, and his contributions to scientific periodicals, together with
his extensive correspondence, had brought him to the acquaintance of the
most distinguished scientific men of the world, and his eminent
political services had made him known to statesmen. His house was,
therefore, always thronged with visitors, who, attracted by his fame,
were charmed by his conversation, astonished by his learning, and warmed
into love by the unaffected kindliness of his deportment. A beautiful
retirement, full of grandeur, of simplicity, of dignity and repose! A
patriarch of the nation which he had helped to found, and which he lived
to see in a condition of unparalleled advancement,--illustrious in two
hemispheres,--his name connected with events that introduced a new era
in the history of his race,--surrounded by the grateful admiration of
growing millions of people; his old age was passed in the serenest
contentment, amid the blandishments of literature and science, the
interchanges of friendly offices, and in useful labor in the library or
on the farm.
Monticello, which is the name which Mr. Jefferson had given to his home,
was built in one of the most enchanting regions of Virginia. "It seemed
designed by nature," says a writer, "as the very seat from which, lifted
above the world's turmoil, one who has exhausted what it can bestow of
eminence, might look down, withdrawn from its personal troubles, but
contemplating at leisure the distant animation of the scene. It was a
place scarcely less fit for the visionary abode of the philosophic
speculatist, than by its far-spread and shifting beauties of landscapes
to inspire a poet with perpetual delight." On a spire of the romantic
Blue Ridge, whose varying outlines stretch away from it till they are
lost to the sight, with a sylvan scene of unsurpassed loveliness in the
vale below, the quiet Rivanna meandering through rich fields on one
side, the pleasant village of Charlotteville dotting the other, while
the porticoes and domes of the University rise in the distance behind,
it overlooked a combination of natural pictures that are rarely found in
one spot.
"The country," says the visitor we have just quoted, "is not flat, but a
gently waving one; yet, from above and afar, its inequalities of surface
vanish into a map-like smoothness, and are traceable only in the light
and shade cast by hill and plain. The prospect here has a diameter of
near a hundred miles: its scope is therefore such that atmospheric
effects are constantly flickering over it, even in the most cloudless
days of a climate as bright if not quite so soft as that of Italy; and
thus each varying aspect of the weather is reflected, all the while,
from the features of the landscape, as the passions are over the face of
some capricious beauty, that laughs, and frowns, and weeps almost in the
same breath. Near you, perhaps, all is smiling in the sunlight; yonder
broods or bursts a storm; while, in a third quarter, darkness and light
contend upon the prospect, and chase each other. The sky itself is thus
not more shifting than the scene you may have before you. It takes a new
aspect at almost every moment, and bewitches you with a perpetual
novelty."
The mansion of the philosopher was placed on the top of an eminence
commanding this beautiful scene. It was somewhat fantastic in its
architecture, owing to the additions and rebuildings that had been
constantly going on, to adapt it to the enlarged wants and changing
tastes of the occupant, but it was spacious, richly furnished and
commodious. The rarest treasures of literature adorned the library, and
indeed every part bore witness to the affluence and cultivated pursuits
of the venerable sage. A farm of some fourteen thousand acres lay about
among the hills, which was laboriously and carefully husbanded, and
which gave employment in various ways to a number of artificers and
mechanics, whose dwellings were distributed about the slopes. His
estate, in short, was a small and almost independent community in
itself, capable of supplying the ordinary needs and even the luxuries of
a highly civilized condition of social existence. As a proof of this, we
may state by the way, that the carriage of the proprietor, as well as
many of the tools and implements in daily use, had been manufactured on
the premises. But the wonder of the place was the library, which was not
only extensive, but extensively rich in its rare possessions, which the
master had seduously collected during his long residence abroad from
every nook and corner of Europe. Unfortunately many of these books,
afterwards presented to Congress, were burned in the conflagration of
the Capitol. Of the man himself, a guest, who was any thing but an
admirer, has left this record.
"Dressed, within doors, as I saw him last, no longer in the red
breeches, which were once famous as his favorite and rather conspicuous
attire; but still vindicating by a sanguine waistcoat his attachment to
that Republican color; in gray shorts, small silver kneebuckles, gray
woollen stockings, black slippers, a blue body-coat, surmounted by a
gray spencer; tall, and though lithe of person and decidedly graceful
and agile of motion and carriage, yet long and ill-limbed, Mr.
Jefferson's figure was commanding and striking, though bad, and his face
most animated and agreeable, although remarkably ugly. His legs, by no
means shunned observation; yet they were scarcely larger at the knee
than in the ankle, and had never been conscious of a calf. Still, though
without strength, they had always borne him along with vigor and
suppleness. These bodily qualities and a health almost unfailing, he
preserved, in a singular degree, to the very close of his long life. At
the time I speak of, when he was in his eighty-first year, he not only
mounted his horse without assistance and rode habitually some ten miles
a day, but, dismounting at a fence breast-high, would leap over it, by
only placing his hand on the topmost rail. He walked not only well and
swiftly, but with a lightness and springiness of tread, such as few
young men even have. It was a restless activity of mind, which informed
all this unusual mobility of body; and the two, I think, were, in him,
greatly alike. For his intellect had, like his person, more size than
shape, more adroitness than force, more suppleness than solidity, and
affected its ends by continuity of action not mass of power, by
manipulation not muscularity. You may batter to pieces with a small
hammer that which a cannon-ball would not shiver. He was never idle:
nay, hardly a moment still. He rose early and was up late, through his
life; and was all day, whenever not on foot or a-horse-back, at study,
at work, or in conversation. If his legs and fingers were at rest, his
tongue would sure to be a-going. Indeed, even when seated in his library
in a low Spanish chair, he held forth to his visitors in an almost
endless flow of fine discourse, his body seemed as impatient of keeping
still as his mind, it shifted its position incessantly, and so twisted
itself about that you might almost have thought he was attitudinizing.
Meantime, his face, expressive as it was ugly, was not much less busy
than his limbs, in bearing its part in the conversation, and kept up,
all the while, the most speaking by-play, an eloquence of the
countenance as great as ugly features could well have. It stood to his
conversation like the artful help of well-imagined illustrations to the
text of a book: a graphic commentary on every word, that was as
convincing to the eyes as was his discourse to the ears. The impression
which it conveyed was a strong auxiliary of all he uttered: for it begat
in you an almost unavoidable persuasion of his sincerity."
Jefferson's conversation is described as the most agreeable and
brilliant of his day; but was it this which gave him his personal power?
He was not in other respects a man of any pre-eminent personal
qualities; he did not possess commanding military skill; he was no
orator, having seldom spoken in public; and though a good writer, he was
not particularly distinguished in that line. His conversation,
therefore, may have helped him in acquiring a mastery of the minds of
men; but the real secret of his success consisted in two things--in his
general superiority of intellect, and in his rich, generous, noble
intuitions. He saw the truths and spoke the words, which the world
wanted to see and hear, at the right time--a little in advance of his
generation, but not too much in advance so as to "dwarf himself by the
distance." His sympathetic genius beat responsive to the genius of his
age. His instincts were the instincts of the men of his day; more
decided and pronounced than theirs, but still recognized as a prophecy
of what they felt the deepest and wanted the most. All the talent, all
the cunning, all the selfish calculation of the world could not have
enabled him to reach the heights which he attained by the simple and
consistent utterance of his nature. He conquered, as Emerson says in
speaking of the force of character over and above mere force of some
special faculty, because his arrival any where altered the face of
affairs. "Oh, Iole, how did you know that Hercules was a God?"
"Because," answered Iole, "I was content the moment my eyes fell upon
him. When I beheld Theseus, I desired that I might see him offer battle,
or at least guide his horses in the chariot race; but Hercules did not
wait for a contest; he conquered whether he stood or walked, or sat, or
whatever thing he did."
Happy in his life, Jefferson was no less happy in his death, for he went
peacefully to rest on the fiftieth anniversary of the great day which he
had done so much to make great, the Jubilee of our national
freedom,--when the shouts of the people, as they ascended from the
innumerable vales, to his receding ears, must have sounded as a prelude
to the swelling voices of posterity.
=Hancock.=
[Illustration: Hancock fac-simile of letter]
[Illustration: Hancock House, Boston]