Thomas Jefferson: Early Life

Thomas Jefferson was born at Shadwell in what is now Albemarle County, Virginia on April 13th 1743. His mother, Jane Randolph Jefferson, was one of Virginia’s first families. His father, Peter Jefferson, was a well to do landowner and slave holders although not in the class of wealthiest planters. Jefferson was the third of ten children and he often had intellectual debates with his older sisters. He attended the College of William and Mary in 1760 and studied law with George Wythe. In 1762, Jefferson’s sister Jane died and he fell into a period of deep depression. Several historians believe that his grief during this time led to a reclusive lifestyle as an adult.

In 1769 Jefferson began six years of service with the Virginia House of Burgesses. The following years he began building Monticello on land he inherited from his father. The mansion, which he designed in every detail, took years to complete but part of it was ready for occupancy when he married Martha Wayles Skelton on January 1, 1772. They had six children, two of whom survived into adulthood: Martha Washington Jefferson and Mary Jefferson. Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, just hours before his close friend John Adams, on the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of

Independence. He was eighty-three years old, the holder of large debts, but according to all evidence a very optimistic man.

It was Jefferson's wish that his tomb stone reflect the things that he had given the people, not the things that the people had given to him. It is for this reason that Thomas Jefferson's epitaph reads:

HERE WAS BURIED THOMAS JEFFERSON

AUTHOR OF THE DECLARATION

OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE OF THE

STATUTE OF VIRGINIA FOR

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND FATHER OF THE

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA BORN APRIL 2, 1743 O.S.

DIED JULY 4. 1826

Thomas Jefferson: Architecture

When Thomas Jefferson died, he left over five hundred drawings and architectural documents. He drew plans for his own house, Monticello. He also drew plans for towns, government buildings, churches and educational institutions. He felt that the buildings in America should be symbols of the new country’s democratic ideals.

At the time, there were no schools of architecture. Jefferson was self-taught. Jefferson’s famous house, Monticello, took forty years to build. He sketched his first plan in the 1760s.

The first Monticello was two stories with eight rooms. Although the inside was typical of a Virginia plantation house, the outside reflected Jefferson’s interests in architecture. Jefferson wanted Monticello to be “an essay in architecture.”

Throughout the Revolutionary War, Jefferson’s workers continued to work on Monticello. In 1784, Jefferson left for France. He was excited by the neoclassical architecture he saw in P aris. He returned to America in 1789 with many ideas.

In 1796, Jefferson’s hired and enslaved craftsmen began to remodel Monticello. They added many features that Jefferson had admired in France: two-story public

rooms, skylights, indoor restrooms, and narrow staircases. They added a dome-shaped room to the third floor. Monticello was the first house in America to feature an exterior dome, which Jefferson sometimes called the “sky-room.”

Rather than build a grand staircase, Jefferson designed stairways for Monticello that are elegant but narrow and hard to climb

In 1809, Jefferson retired from the presidency. Monticello was finally complete. There were thirty-three rooms in the main house, four in the pavilions, and six under the South Terrace.

“Father of our National Architecture”

While in France, Jefferson was asked to help plan the Virginia State capitol in Richmond. When Jefferson became Secretary of State, his ideas influenced the style of the government buildings in the new capital of Washington, D.C. Jefferson hoped to “improve the taste of his countrymen” by introducing the neoclassical style he’d seen in Paris.

When Jefferson retired, he designed the first buildings for the University of Virginia. He called it his “academical village”, a place for students and professors to live and learn democratic ideals. The University’s domed Rotunda was modeled after the Roman Pantheon. Today the campus is considered one of the most beautiful in the country.

Thomas Jefferson: Hobbies

A writer, wine-maker, astronomer, gourmet chef, and even a fossil-hunter, our third President was clearly one of the most interesting men of his era. Here are five of his favorite pastimes.

1. Inventing

Jefferson invented many small practical devices and improved contemporary inventions. These include the design for a revolving book-stand to hold five volumes at once to be viewed by the reader. Jefferson invented a 6 in long coded wooden cipher wheel mounted on a metal spindle, to keep State Department messages secure, while he was Secretary of State. The messages were scrambled and unscrambled by 26 alphabet letters on each circular segment of the wheel. Jefferson's curiosity about devices

and machines was insatiable. He improved the pedometer, a device for counting the number of steps taken while walking, and gave one to James Madison. Jefferson can also be accredited as the creator of the swivel chair, the first of which he created and used to

write much of the Declaration of Independence.

2. Mockingbird Keeping In 1772, Thomas Jefferson purchased a mockingbird

from a slave. The bird soon became his favorite pet and accompanied him to the White House when he was

elected President. According to witnesses, the friendly avian was often allowed to fly about the presidential cabinet, stopping now and again to perch on Jefferson's shoulder.

3. Violin Playing “[Music] is the favorite passion of my soul,”

Jefferson once wrote. His mastery of the violin helped win the affections of Martha Wayles Skelton, who loved hearing the future president play and eventually married him in 1772.

4. Horticulture The politician’s extensive garden included 330 types of

vegetables and 170 species of fruit, several of which had rarely, if ever, been grown in U.S. soil previously (such as lima beans and tomatoes).

5. Book Collecting The Jefferson library consisted of

42 books when his father, Peter, passed away in 1757. By 1814, that number rose to a staggering 6487 volumes, enough to restock the Library of Congress after the British army burned it down during a raid of Washington D.C. This wasn't a donation, however. The government paid him $23,950 to part with his collection.

Thomas Jefferson: Views on Slavery

Thomas Jefferson spent his entire life in the company of African-American slaves. Slaves accompanied Jefferson to Philadelphia, where he wrote the Declaration of Independence. They sailed with him to France, where he was a diplomat. Over his lifetime, Thomas Jefferson owned over six hundred slaves.

At Monticello, Jefferson and his family were surrounded by African Americans. They were necessary for running the 5,000-acre plantation, which consisted of four separate farms.

Jefferson lived during a time when slavery was a well-established and accepted system in many countries. By the time he was twenty-one, slaves had been in the

colonies for about 145 years. Jefferson owned slaves throughout his

lifetime. But he also felt that slavery had been forced upon his generation. He was against

the slave trade, but felt that his ability to make changes was limited.

Jefferson always believed that slavery was an unjust system. He called it an “abominable crime.” He favored a plan of gradual emancipation (freedom) that called for the freed slaves to be removed outside the United States. He felt that slavery had created such fear and anger

between whites and blacks that they could not live together in a stable society. Jefferson wrote that the races would have to be separated because of “deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained.” Slaves made up over half the total population of Virginia. Jefferson felt that freeing them would not be a simple task and became more and more silent on the issue.

When Jefferson died in 1826, he was $107,000 in debt. Six months later, crowds flocked to Monticello for an auction. There they bid on Jefferson’s property, which would be sold to help pay his debt. This included “household furniture”, crops, livestock, and “130 valuable negroes.” Sadly, Thomas Jefferson, the man who wrote “all men are created equal” was not able to grant equality to the enslaved men and woman who called Monticello home.

Thomas Jefferson: Sally Hemings Scandal

Sally Hemings, whose given name was probably Sarah, was the daughter of Elizabeth (Betty) Hemings. According to her son, Madison Hemings, her father was Thomas Jefferson's father-in-law John Wayles. Sally Hemings became Thomas Jefferson's property as part of his inheritance from the Wayles estate in 1774 and came with her mother to Monticello by 1776. As a child she was probably a nursemaid to Jefferson's daughter Mary (slave girls from the age of six or eight were childminders and assistants to head nurses on southern plantations).

There are only four known descriptions of Sally Hemings. Enslaved blacksmith Isaac

Jefferson remembered that she was "mighty near white. . . very handsome, long straight hair down her back." Jefferson biographer Henry S. Randall recalled Jefferson's grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph describing her as "light colored and decidedly good looking."

Sally Hemings had at least six children, who are now believed to

have been fathered by Thomas Jefferson years after his wife’s death. According to Jefferson's records, four survived to adulthood: Beverly, Harriet, Madison and

Eston. Both Madison and Eston Hemings made known their belief that they were sons of Thomas Jefferson.

Sally's name became publicly linked to Jefferson's in 1802, when journalist James Callendar published in a Richmond newspaper the allegation that she was Jefferson's “concubine” and had borne him a number of children. Jefferson's Randolph grandchildren denied the existence of such a relationship, while Sally Hemings' descendants considered their connection to Jefferson an important family truth. Jefferson himself made neither a public response nor any explicit reference to this issue, but a 1998 DNA study genetically linked her male descendants with male descendants of the Jefferson family.

Sally Hemings was never officially freed by Thomas Jefferson. It seems most likely that Jefferson's daughter Martha Randolph gave Sally "her time," a form of unofficial freedom that would enable her to remain in Virginia (the laws at that time required freed slaves to leave the state within a year). Madison Hemings reported that his mother lived in Charlottesville with him and his brother Eston until her death in 1835. The location of her grave remains a mystery.

Thomas Jefferson as President

Louisiana Purchase

When France lost control of

Haiti due to a slave revolt,

Napoleon no longer needed the

Louisiana territory. What

Napoleon wanted was money to

build an army and navy to conquer most of Europe. The

United States was fearful of having a powerful county like

France sharing a border to the west. Also, the United

States had long had its eye on the city of New Orleans.

New Orleans was the biggest city in the Louisiana

territory. It sat of the mouth of the Mississippi River and

therefore controlled materials flowing up and down the

river.

Jefferson approached Napoleon and offered him $10

Million for the sale of New Orleans. He countered with

$15 million for not just the city, but also the entire

Louisiana Territory. Jefferson was hesitant to accept

because he, as a Democratic-Republican, believed in a

strict interpretation of the Constitution and there is

nothing in the Constitution that gives the President the

power to add territory. In the end, Jefferson could not

refuse this offer because it was too good of a deal.

America doubled its size with the stroke of a pen, and

remarkably without firing a bullet, for just 4 cents an

acre.

Embargo Act of 1807

The neutrality of the United States was tested during

Jefferson Presidency. Britain and France went to war

(again) and both imposed trade restrictions

in order to weaken each other’s economies.

This also had the effect of disrupting

American trade and therefore the United

States' neutrality was difficult to maintain.

Jefferson’s solution to this problem was to establish the

Embargo Act, which essentially stated that the United

States wasn’t going to trade with either country.

The embargo was an unpopular and costly failure. It

was considered Jefferson’s worst decision while in office.

It hurt the American economy far more than the British

or French, and resulted in widespread smuggling.

Jefferson retires after two terms as President.

Although much of the nation looked at him as a hero,

Jefferson looked at his own presidency as a failure

because he went against many of his personal beliefs

while he was in office. He even left the fact that he was

president off his own tombstone.