From the American Revolution of 1776 we may date the commencement of that struggle which has agitated and still agitates Europe and the two Americas. By whatever words the character of this struggle may be expressed,—whether under the name of popular rights against exclusive privileges, or self-government or the government of the people, against absolute government or the government of a few, or by any other terms more or less appropriate,—the contest is still going on, openly and actively in those called free governments, silently and languidly in those where the sovereign power is opposed to the extension or introduction of the new doctrines. The contest is between progress (not here considered whether as right or wrong) and standing still; between change, without which there cannot be improvement, and a desire to resist all change, which can hardly end in keeping things stationary, but almost necessarily leads to a backward movement. The contest is not only for the practical application of principles in government, which are vigorously maintained by the one party, and either not denied or faintly opposed by the arguments of the other; but also for the free expression and publication of all opinions on all subjects affecting the moral and political condition of society.

There is no individual, either in America or in Europe, who by his actions and opinions has had a greater influence on this contest than Thomas Jefferson. During a long and laborious life, both in official situations which gave him opportunities that his activity never let slip, and in private life in his extensive correspondence and intercourse with persons of all countries, he constantly, perseveringly, and honestly maintained what he conceived to be the principle of pure republican institutions. In the ardour of youth, his zeal and energy mainly contributed to animate his countrymen to declare their independence on a foreign power. In his maturer age, when a member of the General Administration, he struggled, and he struggled at one time almost alone, against a monarchical and aristocratical faction, to maintain the great principles of the Revolution, and develop the doctrines of a pure unmixed popular government. His influence gave to these doctrines a consistency, and a form, and a distinctness, which the mass of the nation could easily seize and retain. He thus became the head of a party in the United States, which, whether always rightly appealing to his doctrines or not for the vindication of their acts, still regards him as the father of their school and the expounder of their principles. By his plain and unaffected manners, and the freedom with which he expressed his opinions on all subjects, he gave a practical example of that republican simplicity which he cultivated, and of that free inquiry which he urged upon all. Such a man must always have many friends and many enemies. From his friends and admirers he has received, perhaps, not more praise than those who believe in the truth of his doctrines and the purity of his conduct are bound to bestow; by his enemies, both at home and abroad, he has been blackened by every term of abuse that bigotry, malice, and falsehood can invent.

Thomas Jefferson was born April 2, 1743, at Shadwell, now in the county of Albemarle, in Virginia. He was educated at the College of William and Mary, at Williamsburg, then the capital of the colony, where, under Dr. Small, a native of Scotland, who was then Professor of Mathematics in the College, he studied mathematics, ethics, and other branches of knowledge. His education, owing to the care of this excellent instructor and his own industry, must have been of a superior kind. In addition to his general acquirements, he made himself well acquainted with the best Greek and Latin writers, and to the end of his long life retained his ability to read them. Mr. Jefferson studied law under Mr. Wythe, then a lawyer of eminence. He made his first appearance at the bar of the General Court in 1767, at the age of twenty-four, about two years after the misunderstanding between Great Britain and the Colonies had commenced. He practised for seven or eight years in the General Court, and was gradually rising to the first rank as an accurate and able lawyer, when he was called away to more important duties by the political events that preceded the American Revolution. In 1769 he was elected a member of the House of Burgesses for the County of Albemarle. In the session of this spring the House unanimously came to resolutions in opposition to those which had been lately passed in England by both Houses of Parliament on the affairs of Massachusetts. This measure, which was accompanied with the declaration that the right of laying taxes in Virginia was exclusively vested in its own legislature, and others of a like tendency, induced the Governor, Lord Botetourt, abruptly to dissolve the Assembly. The next day the members met at the Raleigh Tavern, and entered into articles of agreement, by which they bound themselves not to import or purchase certain specified kinds of British merchandise, till the act of parliament for raising a revenue in America was repealed; and they recommended this agreement to be adopted by their constituents. Eighty-eight members signed the agreement, among whom were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and others, who afterwards took a distinguished part in public affairs.

In 1773, on the meeting of the Virginia Assembly in the spring, Mr. Jefferson was an active member in organizing the Standing Committee of Correspondence and Inquiry, the main objects of which were to procure early intelligence of the proceedings of the British Parliament, and to maintain a constant communication among all the Colonies. On the dissolution of the Assembly, in May 1774, by the Governor, Lord Dunmore, eighty-nine members met at the Raleigh Tavern, and, among other things, recommended the Committee of Correspondence to communicate with the Committees in the other colonies “on the expediency of appointing deputies for the several colonies of British America, to meet in General Congress, at such place annually as should be thought most convenient,” to consult on their common interests. It was also forthwith agreed that the members who might be elected under the writs at that time issuing in the colony of Virginia, should meet in Convention at Williamsburg on the 1st of August following, in order to appoint delegates to the Congress, if such General Congress should be approved by the other colonies. The Convention did meet, and thus formed the first popular assembly in Virginia, uncontrolled by Governor or Council. Mr. Jefferson, who was one of the deputies, prepared instructions for the delegates who might be sent to the Congress. In his absence, for illness prevented him from attending on this occasion, his instructions were laid on the table for perusal, and were generally approved, but thought too bold in the existing state of affairs. Still the Convention printed them, in the form of a pamphlet, under the title of A Summary View of the Rights of British America. The Convention drew up another set of instructions, which, though not so strong as Mr. Jefferson’s, expressed with great clearness the points at issue between the colonies and the mother-country, and the grievances of which the colonies had to complain. The General Congress, consisting of fifty-five members, met at Philadelphia, September 4, 1774. The disputes which had broken out between Lord Dunmore and the Assembly of Virginia were continually increased by fresh causes of mutual irritation. The Governor at last thought it prudent to remove himself and his family into a British ship of war that was lying at York in York River. His whole conduct during this period was feeble and contemptible. His last acts from his head-quarters at Norfolk were to annoy the inhabitants on the rivers and bays by a predatory kind of warfare, to proclaim martial law in the colony, and to give freedom to such of the slaves as would bear arms against their masters. At last, after setting fire to Norfolk, he was obliged to take refuge in his ships, and soon after to leave the country. Thus ended the colonial government in Virginia.

June 21, 1775, Mr. Jefferson took his seat in the General Congress, as one of the delegates from Virginia, and was appointed one of a Committee for preparing a declaration of the cause of taking up arms. A part of the address which he drew up was finally adopted, and no doubt greatly contributed to bring about the more decisive declaration of the following year. In 1776, Mr. Jefferson was again a delegate to Congress, and one of a committee appointed to draw up a Declaration of Independence. The committee was chosen in the usual way, by ballot, and as Mr. Jefferson had received the greatest number of votes, he was deputed by the other members to make the draught. Before it was shown to the committee, a few verbal alterations were made in it by Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams. After being curtailed about one-third, and with some slight alterations in the part retained, it was agreed to by the House, July 4, and signed by all the members present, except one. This instrument is too well known to require any remarks. It has both merits and defects; but it possessed one great quality. It served the purpose for which it was intended, and its author had the satisfaction of seeing the mighty question between the mother-country and the colonies referred to the decision of the sword, the only alternative then left except unconditional and disgraceful submission.

Before their adjournment the Virginia Convention, July 5, had elected Mr. Jefferson a delegate to Congress for another year; but he declined the honour on various grounds, among which was his desire to assist in reforming the laws of Virginia, under the New Constitution, which had just been adopted. Congress also marked their sense of his services by appointing him joint envoy to France, with Dr. Franklin and Silas Deane; but domestic considerations induced him to decline this honour also.

From this time Mr. Jefferson’s public life is interwoven with the history of his native state, and with that of the United States. During the war, he took no part in military movements. He was governor of Virginia in part of 1779, 1780, and part of 1781, in which year the State suffered considerably from the incursions of Lord Cornwallis; and at the close of his period of office, he narrowly escaped being taken prisoner by Colonel Tarleton, in his own house at Monticello.

In May, 1784, Mr. Jefferson was appointed by Congress minister to France; where he remained five years, during which he was actively employed in promoting the general interests of his country, and in keeping up an extensive correspondence. His industry and methodical habits enabled him to devote a great deal of his time to the examination of everything that could in any way prove beneficial to his countrymen. His correspondence during this period shows the variety of his pursuits, his unwearied industry, and unbounded zeal for every improvement that could benefit the social condition of man. His remarks on the political troubles of France, of which he witnessed the beginning, are characterized by his usual closeness of observation, and his sanguine anticipations of the benefit that would result from the people being called to participate in the exercise of the sovereign power. After all that has been written on the subject, they will still be read with interest.

He returned to America at the close of 1789, and early in the next year he was appointed Secretary of State by the President, General Washington. He held this office till the end of 1793, when he resigned. From 1793 to 1797 he lived in retirement. In 1797 he was elected Vice-President of the United States; and in 1801 was chosen President, in place of Mr. Adams, by the House of Representatives, on whom the election devolved in consequence of the equal division of the electors’ votes between Mr. Jefferson and Colonel Burr. He was elected a second time, and after fulfilling his term of eight years retired to his favourite residence at Monticello, near the centre of the State of Virginia.

On Mr. Jefferson’s retirement from the Presidency of the United States he received, in the form of a farewell address, the thanks of the General Assembly of his native State, Feb. 9, 1809. After briefly recapitulating the leading measures of his administration, most of which faction itself must allow were eminently calculated to promote the happiness of the nation, and secure those republican principles on which the constitution was founded, the General Assembly conclude with bearing testimony to his unvarying singleness of purpose, from the days of his youth when he resisted the Governor Dunmore, to his retirement from the highest honours which the united nation could bestow. This address, which, in point of style, is more free from objection than most American productions of the same class, is such as few men on retiring from power have received, and it was offered for services which few have performed.

In this document, among the advantages for which the nation was indebted to Mr. Jefferson’s administration, the acquisition of Louisiana and with it the free navigation of the Mississippi, are not forgotten. Mr. Jefferson early saw the importance of the United States possessing this great outlet for the commerce of the Western States, and strongly urged it while he was Secretary of State under General Washington. The object was accomplished in 1803, when Louisiana was purchased from the French, for 15,000,000 dollars.

Mr. Jefferson himself thought that the most important service which he ever rendered to his country, was his opposition to the federal party during the presidency of Mr. Adams, while he was himself Vice-President of the United States. Himself in the Senate, and Mr. Gallatin in the House of Representatives, had alone to sustain the brunt of the battle, and to keep the Republican party together. The re-action that ensued, drove Mr. Adams from his office, and placed Mr. Jefferson there. Mr. Jefferson’s administration was characterized by a zealous and unwearied activity in the promotion of all those measures which he believed to be for the general welfare. He never allowed considerations of relationship or friendship to bias him in the selection of proper persons for offices; he always found, as he says, that there were better men for every place than any of his own connexions.

The last years of his life, though spent in retirement, were not wasted in inactivity. He continued his habits of early rising and constant occupation: he maintained a very extensive correspondence with all parts of the world, received at his table a great number of visitors, and was actively engaged in the foundation and direction of the University of Virginia, which was established by the State of Virginia, near the village of Charlottesville, a few miles from Monticello.

The last letter in Mr. Jefferson’s published correspondence, and it is probably the last that he wrote, is in reply to Mr. Weightman of Washington, on behalf of the citizens of Washington who had invited Mr. Jefferson to the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of American Independence. His health would not permit him to accept the invitation: his reply is characteristic. The zeal for republican institutions which had animated him during a long life still glows warm and fresh in the letter of a man of the age of fourscore and three, suffering under a painful malady. His firm conviction in the truth of those principles which he had maintained through life, appears stronger as he approaches the termination of his career. He died July 4, 1826, the day of the celebration, just half a century after that on which the instrument was signed. Mr. Adams died on the same day. Mr. Jefferson is buried in the grounds near his own house, with a simple inscription recording him as the author of the Declaration of Independence, and the Act for Religious Toleration; and as the Rector of the University of Virginia. The fact of his having been President of the United States is not mentioned.

The latter days of Mr. Jefferson were embittered by pecuniary difficulties, which were owing, no doubt, in some measure to the neglect of his estates during his long absence on the public service; and in a great degree to an obligation which he incurred to pay a friend’s debts (see an excellent letter to Mr. Madison, Feb. 17, 1826).

In the 4th vol. of his Memoirs, &c., p. 439, are printed his Thoughts on Lotteries, which were written at the time when he was making his application to the Legislature of Virginia for permission to sell his property by lottery, in order to pay his debts and make some provision for his family. The general arguments in defence of lotteries are characterized by Mr. Jefferson’s usual felicity of expression and ingenuity in argument, and they are also in like manner pervaded by the fallacies which are involved in many of his political and moral speculations. But this paper has merits which entitle it to particular attention. It contains a brief recapitulation of his services; and is in fact the epitome of the life of a man who for sixty years was actively and usefully employed for his country. “I came,” he says, “of age in 1764, and was soon put into the nomination of justices of the county in which I live, and at the first election following I became one of its representatives in the legislature;

“I was thence sent to the old Congress;

“Then employed two years with Mr. Pendleton and Wythe, on the revisal and reduction to a single code of the whole body of the British Statutes, the acts of our Assembly, and certain parts of the Common Law;

“Then elected Governor;

“Next to the legislature, and to Congress again;

“Sent to Europe as Minister Plenipotentiary;

“Appointed Secretary of State to the new government;

“Elected Vice-President and President;

“And lastly, a Visitor and Rector of the University of Virginia. In these different offices, with scarcely any interval between them, I have been in the public service now sixty-one years, and during the far greater part of that time in foreign countries, or in other states.”

This is the outline of Mr Jefferson’s public life: to fill it up would be to write the history of the United States, from the troubles which preceded the declaration of Independence, to Mr. Jefferson’s retirement from the Presidency in 1809.

The paper from which we have already made one extract, presents us with his services, in another point of view, still more interesting. It is an epitome of those great measures which were due mainly or entirely to his firm resolution, unwearied industry, and singleness of mind, in his pursuit of objects which he believed essential to the stability and happiness of his country.

“If legislative services are worth mentioning, and the stamp of liberality and equality, which was necessary to be impressed on our laws in the first crisis of our birth as a nation, was of any value, they will find that the leading and most important laws of that day were prepared by myself, and carried chiefly by my efforts; supported, indeed, by able and faithful coadjutors from the ranks of the House, very effective as seconds, but who would not have taken the field as leaders.

“The prohibition of the further importation of slaves was the first of these measures in time.

“This was followed by the abolition of entails, which broke up the hereditary and high-handed aristocracy, which by accumulating immense masses of property in single lines of families, had divided our country into two distinct orders, of nobles and plebeians.

“But further to complete the equality among our citizens, so essential to the maintenance of republican government, it was necessary to abolish the principle of primogeniture. I drew the law of descents, giving equal inheritance to sons and daughters, which made a part of the revised code.

“The attack on the establishment of a dominant religion was first made by myself. It could be carried at first only by a suspension of salaries for one year, by battling it again at the next session for another year, and so from year to year, until the public mind was ripened for the bill for establishing religious freedom, which I had prepared for the revised code also. This was at length established permanently, and by the efforts of Mr. Madison, being myself in Europe at the time that work was brought forward.

“To these particular services, I think I might add the establishment of our University, as principally my work, acknowledging at the same time, as I do, the great assistance received from my able colleagues of the Visitation. But my residence in the vicinity threw of course on me the chief burden of the enterprise, well as of the buildings, as of the general organization and care of the whole. The effect of this institution on the future fame, fortune, and prosperity of our country, can as yet be seen but at a distance. That institution is now qualified to raise its youth to an order of science unequalled in any other state; and this superiority will be the greater from the free range of mind encouraged there, and the restraint imposed at other seminaries by the shackles of a domineering hierarchy, and a bigoted adhesion to ancient habits.”

When Mr. Jefferson was a member of the Colonial Legislature, he made an effort for the emancipation of slaves; but all proposals of that kind, as well as to stop the importation of slaves, were discouraged during the colonial government. The importation of slaves into Virginia, whether by sea or land, was stopped in 1778, in the third year of the Commonwealth, by a bill brought in by Mr. Jefferson, which passed without opposition, and as Mr. Jefferson observes, “stopped the increase of the evil by importation, leaving to future efforts its final eradication^[4].” The Act for the Abolition of Entails was not carried without some opposition, and that for the abolition of the Established Anglican Church was not finally carried till 1778, though before the Revolution the majority of the people had become dissenters from the Church. The reason of the difficulty lay in the majority of the legislature being churchmen.

Mr. Jefferson married, in 1772, Martha Skelton, the widow of Bathurst Skelton. She died ten years after their marriage. One daughter, and a numerous family of grandchildren and great grandchildren, survived him. He was the author of Notes on Virginia, which have been several times printed; but his reputation as a writer rests on his official papers and correspondence, of which latter, we believe, that which is published forms only a part of what he left behind him.

The authorities here used are Jefferson’s Memoirs, Correspondence, &c., London, 1829, and part of the forthcoming Life of Jefferson, by Professor Tucker, of the University of Virginia. An article in the Journal of Education, No. 7, by Professor Tucker, contains a full account of the University of Virginia. To these sources we add, as evidence for some opinions expressed, some personal knowledge of Mr. Jefferson during the last two years of his life.