Jefferson

“ Jefferson's reforms crippled and impoverished the gentry, but did little for the people, and for the slaves nothing.
Nowhere in America existed better human material than in the middle and lower classes of Virginians. As explorers, adventurers, fighters,—wherever cour­age, activity, and force were wanted,—they had no equals; but they had never known discipline, and were beyond measure jealous of restraint. With all their natural virtues and indefinite capacities for good, they were rough and uneducated to a degree that shocked their own native leaders. ”

“ Jefferson's residence in France produced a profound impression upon him and had much to do in crystallizing his ideas of the true form of government.
That country was groveling under the heel of one of the most hideous systems that the baseness of man ever conceived. Who has not read of the nobleman who, when his coachman ran over a child and crushed out its life, was only concerned lest its blood should soil his carriage, or of the poor peasants who were compelled to beat the bogs all night long, to prevent the frogs from croaking and thereby disturbing the slumber of their lordly masters? ”

“ Such was the programme of humdrum economy which President Jefferson laid before Congress. After the exciting campaign of 1800, when the public was assured that the forces of Darkness and Light were locked in deadly combat for the soul of the nation, this tame programme seemed like an anticlimax. But those who knew Thomas Jefferson learned to discount the vagaries to which he gave expression in conversation. As John Quincy Adams once remarked after listening to Jefferson's brilliant table talk, "Mr. Jefferson loves to excite wonder." ”

“ Jefferson clung with touching pathos to the love and respect of his fellow-citizens, who repaid his devotion with equal attachment; but many an American President who yearned no less passionately for the people's regard would have died an outcast rather than have trafficked in their dignity and his own self-respect in order to seek or save a personal popularity. ”

“ In March, 1775, Jefferson, who had been kept at Monticello for some time by illness, was in Richmond as a member of the convention which assembled in the parish church of St. John to consider what course Virginia should take in the crisis. It was as a member of this body that Patrick Henry, to an audience of 150 persons, spoke the prophetic words in solemn tones as the key to the enigma: "We must fight! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms." ”

“ He was the first president of the American congress. There was Jefferson, whose brain gave to humanity its title-deed to liberty in that matchless document, the Declaration of Independence. In human record Jefferson is a towering figure, and stands so high that somehow we feel that he is kin to the mountains—his character is like Mount Everest piercing the clouds until its majestic summit is lost to view and in its presence we feel that we are nothing. ”

“ Adams and Jefferson are no more; and we are assembled, fellow-citizens, the aged, the middle-aged, and the young, by the spontaneous impulse of all, under the authority of the municipal government, with the presence of the chief-magistrate of the commonwealth, and others, its official representatives, the university, and the learned societies, to bear our part in those manifestations of respect and gratitude which universally pervade the land. Adams and Jefferson are no more. ”

“ The mass of Americans had become democratic in thought as well as act; not even another political revolution could undo what had been done. As a democrat, Jefferson's social success was sweeping and final; but he was more than a democrat,—and in his other character, as a Virginia republican of the State-rights school, he was not equally successful. ”

“ Jefferson, then, known of all men not fettered by provincial traditions as invested with this foresight and this faith, is become to a vast party an idol, and from his writings issue oracles. But the priests at his shrines, having waxed fat in honors, have at last so befogged his sentiments and wrested his arguments, that thousands of true men regard him sorrowfully as the promoter of that Slavery-Despotism which to-day blooms in treason. It is worth our while, therefore, to seek to know whether Jefferson the god of the Oligarchs is Jefferson the Democrat. ”

“ As the last weeks of President Jefferson's Administration approached, this personal conflict—the bitterness of sixteen years—concentrated its virulence upon a single point, but that point vital to Jefferson's fame and popularity,—the embargo.
Rarely in American history has been seen a struggle more furious or less ennobling than that which took place at Washington in the months of January and February, 1809. With a bold face, but with small confidence, Madison and Gallatin pressed their measures. ”

“ Let us, then, with the courage of Andrew Jackson, apply to present conditions the principles taught by Thomas Jefferson—Thomas Jefferson, the greatest constructive statesman whom the world has ever known; the greatest warrior who ever battled for human liberty. He quarried from the mountain of eternal truth the four pillars upon whose strength all popular government must rest. ”

“ It was only in intimate letters and in converse with Gallatin and Madison that Jefferson revealed his real purposes. So completely did Jefferson take these two advisers into his confidence, and so loyal was their cooperation, that the Government for eight years has been described as a triumvirate almost as clearly defined as any triumvirate of Rome. Three more congenial souls certainly have never ruled a nation, for they were drawn together not merely by agreement on a common policy but by sympathetic understanding of the fundamental principles of government. ”

“ From the metaphors in which these principles appeared as a constellation, a creed, a text, a touchstone, and a road, the world learned that they had already guided the American people through an age of revolution. In fact, they were mainly the principles of President Washington, and had they been announced by a Federalist President, would have created little remonstrance or surprise. In Jefferson's mouth they sounded less familiar, and certain phrases seemed even out of place. ”

“ By the first he contributed to the emancipation of the American colonies from British rule; by the second he broke the chains of sectarian bigotry that had fettered his native State; and by the third he gave that State and her sisters the chance to strike the shackles of ignorance from the minds of their sons.
Free Government, free faith, free thought—these were the treasures which Thomas Jefferson bequeathed to his country and his State; and who, it may well be asked, has ever left a nobler legacy to mankind? ”

“ As Jefferson had no landed property sufficiently large to warrant his leading the life of a leisurely country gentleman,--the highest aspiration of a Virginian aristocrat in the period of entailed estates,--it was necessary for him to choose a profession, and only that of a lawyer could be thought of by a free-thinking politician,--for such he was from first to last. Indeed, politics ever have been the native air which Southern gentlemen have breathed for more than a century. ”

“ Jefferson is the first American who has consulted the fine arts to know how he should shelter himself from the weather.
But it is on himself alone I ought to bestow my time. Let me describe to you a man, not yet forty, tall and with a mild and pleasing countenance, but whose mind and understanding are ample substitutes for every exterior grace. An American, who, without ever having quitted his own country, is at once a musician, skilled in drawing, a geometrician, an astronomer, a natural philosopher, legislator, and statesman. ”

“ The impression that France made upon Jefferson's mind was painful in the extreme. While enjoying the treasures of art that Paris presented, and particularly its music, fond of the people, too, relishing their amiable manners, their habits and tastes, he was nevertheless appalled at the cruel oppression of the ancient system of government. "The people," said he, "are ground to powder by the vices of the form of government," and he wrote to Madison that government by hereditary rulers was a "government of wolves over sheep, or kites over pigeons." ”

“ Jefferson was a man in, she thought, the early thirties, with a strongly modelled, shaven face, keen brown eyes behind eyeglasses, a mouth which could be grave one moment and humorous the next, and the air of a man who was accustomed to think for himself and expect others to do so. ”

“ Jefferson stepped out of the house and walked over to the Capitol—a tall, rather loose-jointed figure, with swinging stride, symbolizing, one is tempted to think, the angularity of the American character. "A tall, large-boned farmer," an unfriendly English observer called him. His complexion was that of a man constantly exposed to the sun—sandy or freckled, contemporaries called it—but his features were clean-cut and strong and his expression was always kindly and benignant. ”

“ Had not the Revolution intervened, Thomas Jefferson would probably have spent his years in his native colony, become a successful member of the Virginia bar, perhaps a judge learned and respected, a wealthy landowner adding constantly to the paternal acres. He had no ambition and little suspected his own latent genius, and yet, during all these years which he might have passed in leisurely and pleasant idleness, he never ceased, unknowingly as it were, to prepare himself for the great part he was to play. ”

“ Henceforward, as Jefferson conceived, government might act directly for the encouragement of agriculture and of commerce as its handmaid, for the diffusion of information and the arraignment of abuses; but there its positive functions stopped. Beyond that point only negative action remained,—respect for States' rights, preservation of constitutional powers, economy, and the maintenance of a pure and simple society such as already existed. ”

“ Is Jefferson more prettily situated than Marshall? I cannot say. But Jefferson lies back among the trees with an interval of orchard and corn-land between it and the railway line, and looks a very charming retreat indeed. A fat negro comes on board on duty of some kind connected with the brake, and a witty little half-breed boy comes on after him. The fat negro is the brown boy's butt. And he nearly bursts with wrath at the hybrid urchin's chaff, and threatens, between gasps, a retaliation that cannot find utterance in words. ”

“ On this point, we have to object that Jefferson—a man of remarkable powers, and whose spirit has more intimately transferred itself into the heart and hereditary sentiment of the American people than that of perhaps any other American, not perhaps excepting even Washington—does not seem to have received a full enough measure of that appreciation which even Mr. Hildreth might have been able to give him. Jefferson we regard as the type and father of much that is now most characteristic in the American mind; and in any history of the United States he ought to figure largely. ”

“ Even Jefferson, the most active-minded and sanguine of all Virginians—the inventor of the first scientific plough, the importer of the first threshing-machine known in Virginia, the experimenter with a new drilling-machine, the owner of one hundred and fifty slaves and ten thousand acres of land, whose negroes were trained to carpentry, cabinet-making, house-building, weaving, tailoring, shoe-making,—claimed to get from his land no more than six or eight bushels of wheat to an acre, and had been forced to abandon the more profitable cultivation of tobacco. ”

“ And it is in this matter especially that Jefferson left his mark on the institutions of his country,--as the champion of democracy, rather than as the champion of the abstract rights of man which he and Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams had asserted, in opposition to the tyranny of Great Britain in her treatment of the Colonies. And here he went beyond Puritan New England, which sought the ascendency of the wisest and the best, when the aristocracy of intellect and virtue should bear sway instead of the unenlightened masses. ”

“ This triumph of equal rights over ancient prejudices and restriction Jefferson always regarded as one of his most important contributions to the happiness of his country. Some of his utterances on this subject have passed into familiar proverbs: "Government has nothing to do with opinion," "Compulsion makes hypocrites, not converts," "It is error alone which needs the support of government; truth can stand by itself." ”

“ The works which Jefferson has left behind him as his share in the revision of the laws of the State, place his erudition as a lawyer beyond question, while to no man does Virginia owe more for the preservation of her ancient records than to him. ”

“ A man of fine education and of noble, elevated character, he earned distinction among his fellows, and though opposed politically by many prominent statesmen of the day, who, like Washington, Hamilton, and Adams, were in favor of a strong centralized government, while Jefferson, in the interests of the masses, feared encroachments on State and individual liberty, he was nevertheless paid the respect, consideration, and regard of his generation, as his services have earned the gratitude and his memory the endearing commendation of posterity. ”