Gilbert Chinard

In 1767, Thomas Jefferson, then twenty-four years of age, was "led into the practice of the law at the bar of the General Court" by his friend and mentor, Mr. Wythe. He was the owner of a substantial estate inherited from his father, and he managed the family property of Shadwell, but he had already formed plans for an establishment of his own and begun preparations to build Monticello on the other side of the Rivanna. The only future open to him seemed to be that of any young Virginian of his social class. He occasionally joined them in fox-hunting and attended the races, enjoyed a dance, a concert, and a good play at the theater. The following year was particularly brilliant at Williamsburg. The governor held stately receptions and the Virginian Company of Comedians presented a rich program: "The Constant Couple or a Trip to Jubilee", a farce called "The Miller of Mansfield", "The Beggar's Opera", "The Anatomist or Sham Doctor", besides the ordinary plays of the repertory, were given during the spring and summer of that year.[20]

Jefferson had his share of all these social pleasures, together with others, but there were also simpler and more austere occupations. First of all he had to look after his plantation. Agriculture, so long a haphazard and empirical affair, was making great strides in Europe, particularly in England. Treatises on the subject and special magazines were read eagerly in Virginia; the choice of cultures, the improvement of seeds, the introduction of new crops greatly concerned the minds of progressive planters like Colonel Washington and the young master of Shadwell.

The "Garden Books" kept by Jefferson and now published only in part, reveal him as a forerunner of modern efficiency engineers. Fences, walls, roads and bridges had to be built on the 1900-acre estate left him by his father; trees had to be planted and vegetables raised for the large family at Shadwell, for the slaves and for the many travelers and visitors who continued to drop in. If all the seeds planted in Jefferson's vegetable garden and orchards did well, he must have had an extraordinary variety of produce, considerably larger than is to be found on the best appointed farms of to-day. For he was not satisfied with the staple vegetables which appear on the American table with clocklike regularity; he sowed "salsifia, peppergrass, sorrel, salmon radishes, nasturtium, asparagus, all sorts of lettuce, cresses, celery, strawberries, snap-beans, purple beans, white beans, sugar beans, cucumbers, watermelons, cherries, olive stones, raspberries, turnips", and—horrors!—garlic. He was led into many such experiments by his neighbor and friend Philip Mazzei, formerly of Tuscany and now of Albemarle County, for many of the entries in the Garden Book are in Italian and "aglio de Terracina (vulgo garlic), radiocchio di Pistoia (succory or wild endive), cavolo broccolo Francese di Pisa, fragole Maggese (May strawberries)" and dozens of other imported varieties appear in his garden lists. Then there were the horses, for, true to the Virginia tradition, Jefferson kept no less than half a dozen blood mares of good pedigree. Above all, the regular crops of wheat, corn and especially tobacco had to be looked after; for tobacco was the only crop that could be marketed for solid cash or sent to London to be exchanged for books, furniture, fine clothes, musical instruments, and the choice wines of Europe. As a practical farmer Jefferson was rather successful, since during these early years his land brought him an average return of two thousand dollars. This was ample for his needs. But his main resources were procured from the practice of law.

He kept a complete memorandum of all the cases in which he appeared before the courts of Virginia and opposite each case entered the fee received for his professional services.[21] These fees would seem very moderate to the least ambitious practitioner of our days. In many cases no fee is mentioned at all, and we are at liberty to suppose that Jefferson took some charity cases, or that the defendants were not always scrupulous in paying their bills. Yet, altogether, the total averaged close to three thousand dollars a year, a nice fat addition to the income from Shadwell and Monticello. Starting with one hundred and fifteen cases in 1768, Jefferson was retained as attorney or counsel in no less than four hundred thirty cases in 1771, and it is no exaggeration to state that no day passed during the twelve years he remained engaged in the practice of law without his giving considerable time to his profession. The moderate amount of these fees and the large number of cases indicate the kind of practice in which Jefferson was employed. Trespassing of cattle on a neighbor's field, destruction of fences, robbery committed by a clerk, wills, administration of estates, interest, quarrels between two goodwives, with a lively exchange of actionable words, assault and battery, all the seamy, sordid, petty side of life, constituted for these twelve years the daily practice of Thomas Jefferson, an apprenticeship of life and a training in the knowledge of human nature enjoyed by very few abstract philosophers.

In the old days of the bar, one of the earmarks of most lawyers was a fluency of speech, unsurpassed except perhaps by the ministers. But words never came easily to Jefferson, or in great abundance. His voice, pleasant and modulated in ordinary conversation, "sank in his throat", if raised higher, and became husky. He was clearly a business lawyer, an office lawyer, whose clear, precise, meticulous presentation of facts fitted him particularly for appearing before a court of appeals like the General Court, rather than for moving and emotionally convincing a jury of twelve men good and true.

His scorn for oratory, long sentences, images, apostrophes may have been a case of sour grapes, for in his youth he admired tremendously Patrick Henry. As we have seen, he was wise enough not to aim higher than he could reach. Not only did he never crave the fame of the popular orator, but, conscious of his limitations, he always showed a real repugnance to addressing a large assembly. Particularly brilliant in conversation, he was destined to be a committee man, to win his ends by the pen rather than by the silver tongue of the politician. Yet if he had been fond of rhetoric, rhetoric would have found its way into his writings, but no man of the period wrote less figuratively, employed fewer artifices of style; metaphors, comparisons were unknown to him. Ideas remained ideas and were never clad in the flowing garments of mythology; facts remained facts and never became allegories. Liberty never appeared before his eyes and was never represented by him as a goddess, and neither America nor Britannia were majestic figures of heroic size that passed in his dreams. He was neither emotional nor imaginative, yet his eyes were keen and quick to note and establish distinctions between different varieties of plants or animals. His mind was alert and always on the lookout for new facts to add to his store of knowledge, after proper cataloguing. Surely he was not the man to make startling discoveries in the realm of natural history, or to propose a new system of the universe, nor was he one to conceive, in a moment of inspiration, a new political gospel and a new system of society; when he took up the practice of law in Williamsburg, the greatest future that destiny had in store for him, promising as he was, seemed to become as upright and sound a lawyer as Mr. Wythe, and a legal authority as good and learned as Mr. Pendleton.

He was admitted to the Bar in 1767, and two years later was chosen as a member of the House of Burgesses and placed on the committee appointed to draw up an answer to the Governor's speech. His draft was rejected, however, and Colonel Nicholas' address substituted.[22] A few days later Governor Botetourt, unable to endorse the spirited remonstrance to the King on the subject of taxation, dissolved the Assembly.

The next day—wrote Jefferson—we met in the Apollo of the Raleigh Tavern, formed ourselves into a voluntary convention, drew up articles of association against the use of any merchandise imported from Great Britain, signed and recommended them to the people, repaired to our several counties, and were re-elected without any other exception than of the very few who had declined to follow our proceedings.[23]

A spirit of discontent was abroad and had spread throughout the colonies, but it was neither disloyalty nor rebellion. Easily satisfied with this gesture, which for many remained a mere gesture, the Virginians paid little attention to public affairs during the next two years. In the words of Jefferson "nothing of particular excitement occurring for a considerable time, our countrymen seemed to fall into a state of insensibility and inaction." His private life was more eventful. The first of February, 1770, the house at Shadwell in which he lived with his mother, his brother and his unmarried sisters, was burnt to the ground, and with it every paper he had and almost every book.

On reasonable estimate—he wrote to Page—I calculate the cost of the books burned to have been £200 sterling. Would to God it had been the money, then it had never cost me a sigh. To make the loss more sensible, it fell principally on my books of Common law, of which I have but one left, at that time lent out. Of papers too of every kind I am utterly destitute. All of these whether public or private, of business or of amusement, have perished in the flames.

The disaster had not been quite so complete as Jefferson indicates. His "Commonplace Book" was saved, his account books, garden books and many memoranda and family papers escaped the flames and were discovered again in 1851 at the bottom of an old trunk.[24] Even as far as books were concerned, the loss was not altogether irretrievable. Jefferson wrote at once to Skipwith for a catalogue of books, sent orders to London, and two years later he could proudly enter in a diary not yet published that his library consisted on August 1, 1773, of twelve hundred and fifty books, not including volumes of music or "his books in Williamsburg." A very substantial store of printed matter for the time.

Another event of quite a different order took place in his life. Jefferson had lost a home, but he was building another, soon to be ready for occupancy, on the hill of Monticello, and he already knew that the house would not be left long without a mistress. On the third day of December, 1771, he filled out a formal application for a marriage license in the court of Charles City County and on the first of January he was married to Martha Skelton, widow of Bathurst Skelton, and daughter of John Wayles, then twenty-three years old. John Wayles of "The Forest" was a lawyer with a large practice, a man of worth if not of eminence, a boon companion welcomed in every society, who had amassed quite a large fortune. His daughter Martha, a true type of Virginia girl, of medium height and well-formed figure, had been well educated and possessed all the social accomplishments of the time. She danced gracefully, played the harpsichord and the spinet, was well read and, above all, was a very efficient housekeeper, for she knew how to manage the slaves and care for them in their illnesses, knew how to keep accounts and to arrange for a reception. If the family tradition is true, she was receptive to music, for Jefferson had won out over two rivals because of his talent on the violin and his ability to sing duets. It was a mariage de raison, to be sure, and two years later Jefferson noted with undisguised satisfaction that, following the death of his father-in-law, the portion that came to Martha was equal to his own patrimony and consequently "doubled the ease of our circumstances." But it was also a marriage of love, not without romantic color, with a wedding trip from Charles City to Monticello through a snowstorm, and a late arrival at night in the cold new house. Jefferson did not take any of his friends into his confidence and did not celebrate his connubial bliss; but at the very end of the pages given to Milton in his "Literary Bible", as an afterthought and a recantation from his misogynism, are found the following lines copied, we may surmise, during his honeymoon:

Nor gentle purpose, nor endearing smiles
Wanted, nor youthful dalliance, as beseems
Fair couple, linkt in happy league
Alone as they....[25]

Belinda had been forgotten, and the young woman-hater had found his fair conqueror.

But death again took its toll and cast its cloud over Monticello. With Page, Dabney Carr, Jefferson's fellow student at William and Mary, had been his closest friend. Carr, a frequent visitor at Shadwell, had married in 1764 Jefferson's sister Martha. Not a wealthy man, he was described by his brother-in-law as living in a very small house, with a table, half a dozen chairs, and one or two servants, but the happiest man in the universe.[26] He died when hardly thirty and Jefferson had him buried beneath the shade of their favorite tree at Monticello under which they had so often read, dreamed and discussed; and such was the origin of the little cemetery in which Jefferson was to bury so many of his dear ones before he joined them himself in his last sleep. For Carr he went to his "Literary Bible", as he himself felt unable to write a fitting tribute, and copied from Mallet's "Excursion" an inscription to nail on the tree, by the grave of the friend "who of all men living loved him most."

Honored by the Royal Government and made by Botetourt "Lieutenant of the County of Albemarle, and Chief Commander of all His Majesty's Militia, Horse and Foot in the said county of Albemarle"; honored also by his Alma Mater and appointed by the President of William and Mary "Surveyor of Albemarle County",[27] a member of the Assembly, one of the richest landowners of his county, one of the most successful lawyers of Virginia, happily married, busy with his estate, his books, his violin, his law practice, Jefferson could look forward to a long, quiet and moderate life, the ideal life of a farmer, a gentleman and a scholar. For a man who took his duties seriously it was by no means an existence of idleness, in nowise to be compared with the life of an English gentleman farmer. Every planter was to some extent a captain, and every plantation was to a large extent self-sufficient and self-supporting. In the case of Jefferson, who had recently increased his domain, difficulties and new problems requiring inventiveness, resourcefulness and ingenuity arose every day. Slaves had to be taught new trades and trained, the wilderness had to be reclaimed. Thus were developed qualities of leadership and qualities of class pride. A young planter related to the best families of the colony felt that he belonged to a ruling class, above which could only exist the remote power of the British Parliament and the majesty of the king represented by a governor who never really belonged, and who in spite of his exalted position, always remained a stranger.

An English tourist, Burnaby, traveling in Virginia in 1760, had already noted signs of impatience and restlessness among the colonists of Virginia. "They are haughty," he wrote, "and jealous of their liberties; impatient of restraint and can scarcely bear the thought of being controlled by superior power. Many of them consider the Colonies as independent states, not connected with Great Britain otherwise than by having the same common King."[28]

When the delegates from Virginia were sent to the first Continental Congress, Silas Deane noted that "the Virginia, and indeed all the Southern delegates appear like men of importance...they are sociable, sensible, and spirited men. Not a milksop among them."[29]

They were aristocrats wont to give orders and resentful of any interference; they were lords and almost supreme rulers on their plantations; they were owners of many slaves and they had been accustomed to call no man master; and Jefferson was one of them.

The change in the situation had come very abruptly. It is not the purpose of this book to present an elaborate discussion of the causes of the American Revolution, whether they were economic or political or philosophical, or whether they were of mixed motives, varying with each colony and in each colony with every man, did not impel the colonies to revolt against the mother country. I am aware of the present tendency to attribute most of the agitation preceding the revolution to purely economic causes; it must be remembered however, that, if the ulterior motives of the promoters of the American Revolution were selfish and interested, Jefferson was one of those who were moved by entirely different considerations, as were, as a matter of fact, most of the members of the First Continental Congress.

While life was still moving easily and happily in Virginia, where in 1772 the theatrical season had been particularly brilliant, things were coming to a head in New England. News of the Bill closing the Port of Boston on the first of June, 1774, reached the Virginia Assembly during the spring session; how it was received had better be told in the words of Jefferson. As so often happens in history at the decisive turn of events, the leadership was taken by a very small group of men who made up their minds at once, assumed responsibility and changed the course of the ship of state. So far no strong protest had been made by Virginia to the British Government. Dunmore was far from being tyrannical; the order imposing duties on many English products had been largely rescinded, except on tea, but it may not be sacrilegious to state that the Virginia gentry were more partial to French wines, Madeira and Nantes rum than to the English national beverage. If Virginia had not declared at that particular time her solidarity, if Jefferson and his friends had not taken the right steps and found the right words to "arouse the people from the lethargy into which they had fallen", even New England steadfastness and stanchness of heart would have been unequal to the task. It was on this occasion, rather than on the Fourth of July, 1776, that the fate of the British colonies of America was decided.

According to Jefferson's own statement, leadership in these subjects was no longer left to the old members of the Assembly, but Patrick Henry, R. H. Lee, F. L. Lee, three or four other members and he himself met in the library after agreeing that they must take "an unequivocal stand in the line with Massachusetts." They decided that the best means of calling the seriousness of the situation to the attention of the public was to appoint a day of general fasting and prayer, quite an unprecedented measure in Virginia; but they rummaged in old books "for revolutionary precedents and forms of the Puritans", and they finally "cooked up a resolution, somewhat modernizing their phrases, for appointing the 1st day of June on which the port-bill was to commence, for a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer, to implore Heaven to avert from us the evils of civil war, to inspire us with firmness in support of our rights, and to turn the hearts of the King and Parliament to moderation and justice."[30] Clearly the day of fasting and prayer did not appear to any of the members of the unofficial committee as springing from a profound religious sentiment, but they knew how strong over the people was the power of the Church, and how impossible it was to unite them except by giving a religious appearance to a purely political manifestation. These young Virginia lawyers knew their people and were not totally unacquainted with mass psychology; they knew how to play the game of practical politics, despite their high and disinterested ideal.

The next day Governor Dunmore pronounced the usual English remedy in such circumstances: the dissolution of the Assembly. Once more the members met in the Apollo room, and "they agreed to an association, and instructed the committee of correspondence to propose to the corresponding committees of the other colonies to appoint deputies to meet in Congress at such place annually as would be convenient, to direct, from time to time, the measures required by the general interest."

This passage in the "Autobiography" has led historians into a spirited controversy as to whether the proposal to form a Congress originated in Virginia or in Massachusetts, and whether such a plan had not been discussed in Boston as early as 1770. Whatever the case may be, the most important part of the resolution passed in the Raleigh Tavern was not the establishment of a coÖrdinating organism; it was the declaration recorded by Jefferson, "that an attack on any one colony should be considered as an attack on the whole." This last part was not a simple administrative provision, it was more than a promise of a union; it was the constitution of a new society, since according to Kames as quoted by Jefferson in his "Commonplace Book" "mutual defence against a more powerful neighbor is in early times the chief, or sole motive for joining society."

The deputies went back home and, on the first of June, met the assemblies of the people "to perform ceremonies of the day and to address to them discourses suited to the occasion. The people met generally, with anxiety and alarm in their countenance, and the effect of the day, through the whole colony was like a shock of electricity, arousing every man and placing him erect and solid on his centre."[31]

As a result of the train of thought started by the meeting, the freeholders of Albemarle County adopted on June 26 a series of resolutions evidently written by Jefferson. Here for the first time Jefferson declared that:

The originality of this theory cannot be determined without comparison with the resolutions adopted a few days before by the Assembly of Fairfax County presided over by Colonel George Washington. These came from the pen of George Mason and they stated with equal emphasis the contractual theory of the government of the British colonies. Whether Jefferson knew them or not, the similarity with the views expressed by the freeholders of Albemarle is most striking.

The first article averred the principle also found in Jefferson's "Commonplace Book" that "this colony and Dominion of Virginia cannot be considered as a conquered country, and as it was, that the present inhabitants are not of the conquered, but of the conquerors." It added that:

The second article enunciated the most essential and "fundamental principle of government", that the people "could be governed by no laws to which they had not given their consent by Representatives freely chosen by themselves."

The third article declared that the colonies had some duty to fulfill towards the mother country and admitted that the British Parliament might, "directed with wisdom and moderation", take measures to regulate "American commerce", although such action was in some degree repugnant to the principles of the Constitution.[32]

Whether or not Jefferson had received the Fairfax resolutions before writing the Albemarle declaration, this is the capital difference between the two documents and the two doctrines. On the one hand, George Mason accepted the theory that the first settlers had brought over with them the civil constitution and form of government of the mother country, and consequently admitted a permanent connection between the colony and the metropolis. Jefferson, on the contrary, asserted with great strength and clarity the complete independence of the colonists from the British constitution. They were subject to no laws except those they had freely adopted when they had consented to a new compact and formed a new society. He was perfectly justified when he declared in his "Autobiography":

This was really the core of the question. Jefferson had reached that conclusion, not from following a certain line of abstract reasoning, but after studying the history of the Greek colonies in Stanyan, and the history of the Saxon settlement of Great Britain in many authors, as may be seen in his "Commonplace Book", and he was soon to reaffirm the doctrine of expatriation as the fundamental principle on which rested all the claims of the American colonies.

The Virginia Convention was to meet at Williamsburg on August 1, to select delegates to a General Congress of the colonies. With all his books at hand, all his legal authorities, the precious "Commonplace Book" and all the repertories he had gathered in his library, Jefferson proceeded to draft a project of instructions for the future delegates. He was taken ill on his way to Williamsburg but forwarded the plan to Peyton Randolph and Patrick Henry. Henry never mentioned it; Randolph informed the convention that he had received such a paper from a member, prevented by sickness from offering it, and laid it on the table for perusal. It was read generally by the members, approved by many, though thought too bold for use at that time; but they printed it in pamphlet form, under the title of "A Summary View of the Rights of British America."

In some respects it is a more original and more important document than the Declaration of Independence itself. With the detailed account of the grievances enumerated by Jefferson we cannot deal here. A few points, however, deserve special attention. The difficulties that had arisen between the colonies and the home government had occasioned the publication of many pamphlets dealing with the situation. Most of Jefferson's predecessors, however, had attempted to define in jure the rights of the British colonies. Thus George Mason had made his "Extracts" from the Virginia charters, "with some remarks on them" in 1773, and he had come to the conclusion already given in the "Fairfax resolves", that "the ancestors of the colonists when they had left their native land and settled in America had brought with them, although not confirmed by Charters, the civil government and form of government of the country they came from."[33] But he had gone back no farther in history and had not formulated the principles of the "constitution" of England. Not so with Jefferson, who emphatically denied that the colonists had anything to do with the British constitution or with its form of government. He had studied the history of the settlement of England in Molesworth, in Pelloutier, in Sir William Temple, in Dalrymple, and had come to the conclusion enunciated in the "Rights of British America":

On another and not less important point, Jefferson was indebted to his "Commonplace Book." He had taken great care to determine through historical and judicial authorities the origin of land tenures in the kingdom of England and he had found that in the good old Saxon times, "upon settling in the countries which they subdued, the victorious army divided the conquered lands. That portion which fell to every soldier he seized as a recompense due to his valour, as a settlement acquired by his own sword. He took possession of it as a freeman in full property. He enjoyed it during his own life and could dispose of it at pleasure, or transmit it as an inheritance to his children." It was not until after the fifth century that the king, because as general he was thought fittest to distribute the conquered lands to each according to his merits, assumed to himself and was quietly allowed the entire power of the partition of lands. This abominable system however was not introduced into England before the Norman Conquest, and thus was spread the false notion that all lands belonged to the crown.[34] Against this last claim, which he believed to rest on a false conception of history, Jefferson raises an emphatic protest. Backed by his knowledge of the gradual encroachment of the feudal system on the natural rights of his Anglo-Saxon ancestors, he claimed for the American colonists the same rights as belonged in the good old Anglo-Saxon days to those who had acquired a settlement by their own sword.

According to this theory, one of the mainstays of the doctrine of Americanism, of which Jefferson made himself the advocate, is the right of conquest. But here Jefferson would have introduced a distinction borrowed from Lord Kames, for "the northern nations who overran Europe fought not for glory or dominion but for habitation" and invaded only countries which were sparsely populated.[35] Whether such a position was tenable historically is quite another matter. The important point maintained by Jefferson is that when the first settlers left Great Britain for the shores of America, they were not colonists but free agents. By the mere fact of expatriating themselves they had severed all ties with the mother country, they had recovered full possession of all their natural rights and were at liberty to agree on a new social compact; they derived their rights of property not from the king but from their occupancy of a new and unsettled territory. All considered, this curious doctrine was nothing but a sort of sublimation and legal justification of the pioneer spirit.

This historical and legal demonstration, in which Jefferson had gone back to the very beginnings of Anglo-Saxon society, transcended all contemporary discussions on the Rights of the British Parliament. Jefferson was perfectly aware of its originality and not a little proud of it. It was in his opinion

Once the question was clearly put, Jefferson went at it with the methods used by a lawyer to prove the title to a piece of property. The first point to be settled was to determine who was the legitimate owner of the territory occupied by the American "colonists", the king or the colonists themselves; thus presented, the question became very simple:

This was the keystone of Jefferson's social system at that time. It is not unimportant to note that it was a doctrine that could apply only to Anglo-Saxon colonies, more particularly to American colonies, and not a doctrine susceptible of universal application. Whether or not the principle might also be advanced by other peoples or nations, Jefferson did not state and did not care. His was not a mind to generalize and to extend universally any given principle. For the present, at least, he was satisfied to claim for the American settlers not the rights of man, but the rights of their Saxon ancestors. His position was legal and historical, not philosophical.

It was also to some extent an aristocratic position. Since the land was theirs by right of conquest, it almost necessarily ensued that only landowners, or to use the old colonial word, freeholders, were entitled to the rights, privileges, and happiness of self-government. The consequence was not expressed but it was implied. The analogy with the doctrine of the Physiocrats strikes one at first; but this analogy is only superficial. True enough, only freeholders are really worth considering and can raise a legitimate protest; but in a country as new and as extensive as America, it is within the power of every inhabitant to become a freeholder. For it is another iniquity to suppose that the Crown has the right to give grants of land:

Thus spoke the pioneer, a pioneer who had studied law and history and could express in clear and forcible terms what the pioneers had felt only confusedly. Unless I am much mistaken, it is the first enunciation of one of the cardinal principles of Americanism; but, as far as Jefferson is concerned, it did not rest upon any political philosophy, either Hooker's or Locke's. The American settlers resumed and resurrected on a new soil the tradition interrupted by Parliamentary and kingly usurpations. By a sort of curious primitivism they renounced their immediate and degraded British forbears to claim as their true ancestors the Saxon conquerors of the British Isles. Can any one imagine anything farther from the theory of Rousseau in the "Discourse on the Origin of Inequality", or in the "Social Contract", anything farther from the universal humanitarianism of the French philosophers? In a last analysis, American society as it existed, and as it expressed its will to exist through its young spokesman, rested essentially not on an a priori principle but on the right of conquest, or more exactly, of discovery.

The best student of William and Mary, the young artist who wanted to make Monticello a thing of beauty, the lover of the literature of Greece and Rome, proclaimed loudly that "our ancestors who migrated hither were laborers, not lawyers." His was not a political philosophy dealing with "fictitious principles", it was the harsh, hard-headed, practical and fierce determination of the pioneer who stakes out a piece of land in the wilderness, ready to hold it against all claim jumpers.

The Virginia convention dominated by "Randolph, the Lees, Nicholas, Pendleton" was not ready to go so far as the young master of Monticello. The instructions to the delegates finally adopted and printed in an appendix to Jefferson's own "Autobiography" were exceedingly tame, but his declaration was printed, widely circulated among the people, and even reached England. It was just what was needed to set afire the public mind, for no people will rise, fight and die for an economic doctrine or in defense of its commercial interests. They have to be provided with mottoes which appeal to their imagination, they have to be raised above the ordinary trend of things; they must have a banner, a flag and a battle cry, and such was the object of Jefferson's peroration, which no Pendleton and no Lee could have written:

Congress assembled at Philadelphia on September 4, 1774, under the presidency of Peyton Randolph of Virginia and adjourned in October, not without a recommendation "to discountenance every species of extravagance and dissipation, especially all horse racing, all kinds of gaming, cock-fighting, exhibitions of shows, plays and other diversions and entertainments."[36] The colonies were girding their loins for the fight, society life came to a standstill; the brilliant days of the little capital of Virginia were over.

When the counties organized committees of safety, Jefferson was at the top of the list of appointees in his county. He was again sent to the second convention of Virginia as representative from Albemarle. The convention met in Richmond, March 20, 1775, and it was then that Patrick Henry poured out in a fierce outburst the famous speech ending with the war cry of "Give me liberty or give me death." The resolution to arm passed with a decided majority and a plan of defense was adopted. Collisions threatened between the militia and the regulars on several occasions. But when Lord North's "Conciliatory Proposition" was received, Lord Dunmore convened the House of Burgesses on the first of July to take it into consideration. Peyton Randolph was then recalled from Congress and Jefferson appointed to succeed him. He did not leave, however, before an answer to the proposition had been drafted. The Virginians did not close the door to a compromise, but insisted that the final answer did not depend on them, for they considered that they were "bound in honor as well as interest, to share their general fate with their sister Colonies, and should hold themselves base deserters of that Union to which they had acceeded, were they to agree to any measure distinct and apart from them."

A few days later Lord Dunmore left the city and took refuge on board a man-of-war lying at York, declaring he had taken this step for his safety. Jefferson departed from Williamsburg for Philadelphia on the eleventh of June, 1775, and reached the capital of Pennsylvania on the twentieth. The national rÔle of the young Virginia lawyer and landowner was about to begin.