CHUSHICHI TSUZUKI JEFFERSON, THOMAS (1743–1826)

CHUSHICHI TSUZUKI JEFFERSON, THOMAS (1743–1826)

The third President of the USA, Jefferson was born on 13 April 1743 in Shadwell, Virginia, the son of a prosperous civil engineer, and remains best known for his promotion of democratic ideals during and subsequent to the American Revolution. Admitted to the bar, he entered the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1769, the first Virginia Convention in 1774 and the Continental Congress in 1775. Though he is said never to have made a speech, he rose quickly to prominence through force of character and literary skill. His A Summary of the Rights of America (1774) attacked the actions of both Crown and Parliament towards the American colonists, and contended that the colonies possessed a substantial degree of autonomy. These arguments were extended in the Declaration of Independence (1776), which Jefferson drafted, and which established him as the foremost leader of the revolutionary movement. Returning to Virginia, now with a substantial estate as a propertied country gentleman, he assisted in the reconstruction of her constitution and laws, arguing in particular for the eradication of all traces of aristocracy in both the legal and landholding systems, and the establishment of a truly republican government, which in his view necessitated the abolition of the laws of entail and primogeniture, the disestablishment of the state church and the introduction of

a system of general education. In many of his proposals he was considerably more radical than the public opinion of the period, notably in his proposals for the expatriation and emancipation of slaves (of which he owned at one point 150), and the prohibition of their importation. He also helped to revise the penal code, and restricted capital punishment to treason and murder. His reform proposals were summarised in the Notes on Virginia.

Entries A-Z 343 After independence Jefferson served in France, first as Franklin’s assistant, then

Minister, when he helped the National Assembly to draft a constitution. His very liberal religious opinions—deist rather than atheist—were derived in part from this period of residence. Upon his return he became Secretary of State under Washington, and crucially intervened to ensure that the new Constitution contained a Bill of Rights designed to protect citizens from governmental intrusion. His antagonism towards Alexander Hamilton assisted in the formation of the political parties of Federalists and Democrats, with Hamilton favouring stronger centralized powers. Though isolationist in his diplomacy, predictably Jefferson was much more sympathetic than Hamilton towards the French Revolution, which did not diminish his faith in democracy; indeed he famously commented on a taxpayers’ revolt that ‘a little rebellion now and then is a good thing’, a doctrine abhorrent to the legalistic and order-minded Hamilton. Though he retired in 1793 to devote himself to experimental farming, Jefferson was elected Vice-President in 1796 under the Federalist John Adams, and resolutely resisted the passage of the Alien and Sedition laws during the anti-French reaction of the period. He became President in 1801, and was re-elected in 1804. As President he eschewed pomp and ceremony, with the aim of republicanizing the institution. In his last years Jefferson thus remained as resolutely egalitarian as ever, as committed to freeing the slaves and as rooted as ever in an agrarian ideal hostile to urban and manufacturing growth, and in favour of the small- scale proprietor. ‘Cheap land’, it has been said, was the basis of his political thought, but his democratic outlook also rested on a rooted faith in popular sovereignty and the common man. Many facets of these ideals were taken up and extended by Andrew Jackson 30 years later, and ABRAHAM LINCOLN in the 1860s.