All honour to Jefferson—to the man, who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for National Independence by a single People, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document an abstract truth applicable to all men and all times; and so to embalm it there, that to-day and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression.
Abraham Lincoln
THE FOURTH OF JULY
1826
Thomas Jefferson was born in Virginia, April 13, 1743
Framed the Declaration of Independence, 1776
Was elected Governor of Virginia, 1779
Appointed Secretary of State in Washington’s Cabinet, 1789
Elected third President of the United States, 1800
He died on the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Fourth of July, 1826
He was called the Sage of Monticello. Monticello was the name of his fine country estate.
THE BOY OWNER OF SHADWELL FARM
Thomas Jefferson was a boy of seventeen, tall, raw-boned, freckled, and sandy-haired. He came to Williamsburg from the far west of Virginia, to enter the College of William and Mary.
With his large feet and hands, his thick wrists, and prominent cheek bones and chin, he could not have been accounted handsome or graceful. He is described, however, as a fresh, bright, healthy-looking youth, as straight as a gun-barrel, sinewy and strong, with that alertness of movement which comes of early familiarity with saddle, gun, canoe, and minuet. His teeth, too, were perfect. His eyes, which were of hazel-gray, were beaming and expressive.
His home, Shadwell Farm, was a hundred and fifty miles to the north-west of Williamsburg among the mountains of central Virginia. It was a plain, spacious farmhouse, a story and a half high, with four large rooms and a wide entry on the ground floor, and many garret chambers above. The farm was nineteen hundred acres of land, part of it densely wooded, and some of it so steep and rocky as to be unfit for cultivation. The farm was tilled by thirty slaves.
And Thomas Jefferson, this student of seventeen, through the death of his father, was already the head of the family, and under a guardian, the owner of Shadwell Farm, the best portion of his father’s estate.
His father, Peter Jefferson, had been a wonder of physical force and stature. He had the strength of three strong men. Two hogsheads of tobacco, each weighing a thousand pounds, he could raise at once from their sides, and stand them upright. When surveying in the Wilderness, he could tire out his assistants, and tire out his mules; then eat his mules, and still press on, sleeping alone by night in a hollow tree to the howling of the wolves, till his task was done.
From this natural chief of men, Thomas Jefferson derived his stature, his erectness, and his bodily strength.
James Parton (Arranged)
A CHRISTMAS GUEST
Shadwell Farm was a good farm to grow up on. Thomas Jefferson and his noisy crowd of schoolfellows hunted on a mountain near by, which abounded in deer, turkeys, foxes, and other game. Jefferson was a keen hunter, eager for a fox, swift of foot and sound of wind, coming in fresh and alert after a long day’s clambering hunt.
He studied hard, for he liked books as much as fox-hunting. Soon he began to be impatient to enter college. Then, too, he had never seen a town nor even a village of twenty houses, and he was curious to know something of the great world. His guardian consenting, he bade farewell to his mother and sisters, and set off for Williamsburg, a five days’ long ride from his home.
But just before he started for college, he stayed over the holidays at a merry house in Hanover County, where he met, for the first time, a jovial blade named Patrick Henry, noted then only for fiddling, dancing, mimicry, and practical jokes.
Jefferson and Henry became great friends. Jefferson had not a suspicion of the wonderful talent that lay undeveloped in the prime mover of all the fun of that merry company. While as little, doubtless, did Patrick Henry see in this slender sandy-haired lad, a political leader and associate.
Yet only a few years later, in May 1765, Patrick Henry was elected a member of the House of Burgesses, and Jefferson was become a brilliant law student.
In 1775, Jefferson was elected a delegate to the Continental Congress, that declared the Independence of the United States of America.
James Parton (Arranged)
THE AUTHOR OF THE DECLARATION
The English settlers of Virginia, brought with them English rights and liberties. The settlers and their descendants were “forever to enjoy all liberties, franchises, and immunities enjoyed by Englishmen in England.” They received from England the right to make their own laws, if not contrary to the laws of England.
It was a Governor of Virginia who summoned the first representative Assembly that ever met in America, the first American Colonial Legislature. This happened about a year before the Pilgrim Fathers reached the New World, and drew up the Mayflower Compact.
It was not strange, therefore, that Thomas Jefferson, born and reared in the atmosphere of Virginia Freedom, should have been a Patriot who fearlessly defended American Liberty.
He was also a man of unusual intellectual power and a writer of elegant prose. So when Congress appointed a Committee to draft the Declaration of Independence, he was made a member of that Committee.
When the Committee met, the other members asked Thomas Jefferson to compose the draft. He did so. The Committee admired his draft so much, that with but few changes, they submitted it to Congress.
After a fiery debate, some alterations being made, Congress adopted Thomas Jefferson’s draft, as the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America.
PROCLAIM LIBERTY
July 4, 1776
The Declaration was signed! America was free!
Joyously the great bell in the steeple of the State House at Philadelphia, swung its iron tongue and pealed forth the glad news, proclaiming Liberty throughout all the land.
The tidings spread from city to city, from village to village, from farm to farm. There was shouting, rejoicing, bonfires, and thanksgiving. Copies of the Declaration were sent to all the States. Washington had it proclaimed at the head of his troops; while far away in the Waxhaws, nine year old Andrew Jackson read it aloud to an eager crowd of backwoods settlers.
The great bell—the Liberty Bell—that had proclaimed Liberty, was carefully treasured. To-day, it may be seen in Independence Hall, as the old State House is now called.
Around the crown of the Liberty Bell are inscribed the words which God Almighty commanded the Hebrews to proclaim to all the Hebrew People, every fifty years, so that they should not oppress one another:—
Proclaim Liberty throughout all the Land,
Unto all the inhabitants thereof.
Twenty-three years before the Declaration of Independence was signed, these prophetic words from the Bible had been inscribed upon the crown of that great Bell.
ONLY A REPRIEVE
Fondly do we hope,—fervently do we pray,—that this mighty scourge of War may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
Abraham Lincoln
There were two statements in the Declaration of Independence, which must have profoundly disturbed its Signers:—
“All men are created equal,” and have the right “to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Many of the Signers were slave-holders.
Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, the Framer of the Declaration, was an Abolitionist, and an active one, throwing the weight of his great influence against the institution of slavery.
He earnestly believed that all men—white and black alike—are born equal. So, when he was asked to frame the Declaration of Independence, he put into it a clause condemning the slave-trade, as an “assemblage of horrors.” During the debate in the Convention, this clause was stricken out.
Though Jefferson had his reasons for not freeing his own slaves, he continued to speak and write against slavery as a violation of human rights and liberties.
“This abomination must have an end,” he said.
There were other Americans who believed as he did.
George Washington, in his Will, left their freedom to his slaves, to be given them after his wife’s death. He ordered a fund to be set aside for the support of all his old and sick slaves, and he bade his heirs see to it that the young negroes were taught to read and write and to carry on some useful occupation.
Kosciuszko was Jefferson’s intimate friend, and like him a believer in Freedom for all men, without regard to race or colour. Before he left America, Kosciuszko made a will turning over his American property to Jefferson, for the purchase of slaves from their owners and for their education, so that when free, they might earn their living and become worthy citizens.
From the time of Jefferson until the Civil War, slavery to be or not to be, was the burning question. Men and women, specially those belonging to the Society of Friends, devoted their lives to the abolition of slavery.
Many of these Abolitionists were mobbed, and otherwise persecuted, because of their humane efforts. William Lloyd Garrison was the great leader of the Abolitionists. “The Quaker Poet” Whittier was also a leader in the agitation against slavery.
But to go back to Thomas Jefferson: When the Missouri Compromise went into effect, and “the house was divided against itself,” Jefferson was deeply and terribly stirred. He looked far into the future.
“This momentous question,” he wrote, “like a fire-bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed, indeed, for the moment. But this is a reprieve only—not a final sentence.”
And again he said:—
“I tremble for my Country, when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep for ever.”
First the reprieve! Then as the crime was continued, the execution of the sentence! Nearly a hundred years of slavery passed after the framing of the Declaration, then on North and South fell the terrible retributive punishment of the Civil War.
ON THE FOURTH OF JULY
1826
It was the Fourth of July, the fiftieth anniversary of the Signing of the Declaration of Independence.
In his home at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson had closed his eyes for ever on the Fourth of July, the fiftieth anniversary of the Signing of the Declaration of Independence.
