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1. Early Years
homas Jefferson was born April 13, 1743 (April 2, old style), on the farm called Shadwell, adjoining what is now Monticello, in the county of Albermarle, Virginia. The date of his birth was unknown to the public until after his decease. Repeated attempts had been made to ascertain it by formal applications to him on various occasions, both by individuals and public bodies; but from scruples of a patriotic nature, he always declined revealing it and enjoined the same privacy upon his family. The principles which determined him on this subject were the great indelicacy and impropriety of permitting himself to be made the recipient of a homage, so incompatible with the true dignity and independence of the republican character, and the still greater repugnance which he should feel at seeing the birthday honors of the Republic transferred in any degree, to any individual.
Soon after his inauguration as President in 1801, he was waited on by the Mayor and Corporation of the city of Washington, with the request that he would communicate the anniversary of his birth, as they were desirous of commemorating an event which had conferred such distinguished glory upon their country. He replied, "The only birthday which I recognize is that of my country's liberties." In August, 1803, he received a similar communication from Levi Lincoln on behalf of a certain association in Boston, to which he replied: "Disapproving myself of transferring the honors and veneration for the great birthday of our Republic to any individual, or of dividing them with individuals, I have declined letting my own birthday be known, and have engaged my family not to communicate it." (ME 10:416) This has been the uniform answer to every application of the kind.
n the paternal side, Mr. Jefferson could number no titles to high or ancient lineage. His ancestors, however, were of solid respectability and among the first settlers of Virginia. They emigrated to this country from Wales, and from near the mountain of Snowden. His grandfather was the first of whom we have any particular information. He had three sons: Thomas, who died young; Field, who resided on the waters of the Roanoke and left numerous descendants; and Peter, the father of the subject of these memoirs, who settled in Albermarle county, on the lands called Shadwell. He was the third or fourth settler in that region of the country. They were all gentlemen of property and influence in the colony.
But the chief glory of Mr. Jefferson's genealogy was the sturdy contempt of hereditary honors and distinctions with which the whole race was imbued. It was a strong genealogical feature, pervading all the branches of the primitive stock and forming a remarkable head and concentration in the individual who was destined to confer immortality upon the name. With him, indeed, if there was any one sentiment which predominated in early life and which lost none of its rightful ascendency through a long career of enlightened and philanthropic effort, it was that of the natural equality of all men in their rights and wants, and of the nothingness of those pretensions which "are gained without merit and forfeited without crime." The boldness with which, on his first entrance into manhood, he attacked and overthrew the deep rooted institutions of Primogeniture and Entails forms a striking commentary upon this attribute of his character.
An anecdote is related by Mr. Madison, which is no less apposite and striking. During the infant stages of our separate sovereignty, the slowness with which the wheels of government moved and the awkwardness of its forms were everywhere the prominent topics of conversation. On one occasion at which Mr. Jefferson was present, a question being started concerning the best mode of providing the executive chief, it was among other opinions gravely advanced that an hereditary determination was preferable to any elective process that could be devised. At the close of an eloquent effusion against the agitations and animosities of a popular choice and in favor of birth as, on the whole, affording a better chance for a suitable head of the government, Mr. Jefferson with a smile remarked that he had heard of a University somewhere in which the Professorship of Mathmatics was hereditary!
His father, Peter Jefferson, was born February 29th, 1708, and in 1739 married Jane Randolph, of the age of 19, daughter of Isham Randolph, one of the seven sons of that name and family settled in Dungeoness in Goochland county, who trace their pedigree far back in England and Scotland, "to which," says Mr. Jefferson, "let every one ascribe the faith and merit he chooses." He was a self-educated man, but rose steadily by his own exertions and acquired considerable distinction. He was commissioned jointly with Joshua Fry, professor of mathematics in William and Mary College, to designate the boundary line between Virginia and North Carolina, and was afterwards employed with the same gentleman to construct the first regular map of Virginia. He died August 17, 1757, leaving a widow with six daughters and two sons, Thomas being the elder of the sons. To both the sons he left large estates; to Thomas the Shadwell lands, where he was born, and which included Monticello; and to his brother the estate on James river, called Snowden, after the reputed birthplace of the family. The mother of Mr. Jefferson survived to the fortunate year of 1776, the most memorable epoch in the annals of her country and in the life of her son.
At the age of five, Thomas was placed by his father at an English school, where he continued four years, at the expiration of which he was transferred to a Latin school, where he remained five years under the tuition of Mr. Douglass, a clergyman from Scotland. With the rudiments of the Latin and Greek languages, he acquired at the same time a knowledge of the French. At this period, his father died, leaving him an orphan only fourteen years of age and without a relative or friend competent to direct or advise him.
An interesting reminiscence of this critical period of his boyhood and of the simple moral process by which he subdued and wrought into instruments of the greatest good the perilous circumstance of his position is contained in an affectionate letter, written more than fifty years afterwards to his grandson, then in Philadelphia. It is replete with sound admonition, applicable to every condition of youth, besides affording an insight into the juvenile mind and habits of the writer.
"Your situation, thrown at such a distance from us and alone, cannot but give us all great anxieties for you. As much has been secured for you by your particular position and the acquaintance to which you have been recommended as could be done towards shielding you from the dangers which surround you. But thrown on a wide world, among entire strangers, without a friend or guardian to advise, so young too, and with so little experience of mankind, your dangers are great, and still your safety must rest on yourself. A determination never to do what is wrong, prudence, and good humor, will go far towards securing to you the estimation of the world. When I recollect that at fourteen years of age, the whole care and direction of myself was thrown on myself entirely, without a relation or friend qualified to advise or guide me, and recollect the various sorts of bad company with which I associated from time to time, I am astonished I did not turn off with some of them and become as worthless to society as they were. I had the good fortune to become acquainted very early with some characters of very high standing, and to feel the incessant wish that I could ever become what they were. Under temptations and difficulties, I would ask myself what would Dr. Small, Mr. Wythe, Peyton Randolph, do in this situation? What course in it will ensure me their approbation? I am certain that this mode of deciding on my conduct tended more to its correctness than any reasoning powers I possessed. Knowing the even and dignified line they pursued, I could never doubt for a moment which of two courses would be in character for them. Whereas, seeking the same object through a process of moral reasoning, and with the jaundiced eye of youth, I should often have erred. From the circumstances of my position, I was often thrown into the society of horse-racers, card-players, fox hunters, scientific and professional men, and of dignified men; and many a time have I asked myself in the enthusiastic moment of the death of a fox, the victory of a favorite horse, the issue of a question eloquently argued at the bar or in the great council of the nation, Well, which of these kinds of reputation should I prefer? That of a horse-jockey? a fox-hunter? an orator? or the honest advocate of my country's rights? Be assured, my dear Jefferson, that these little returns into ourselves, this self-catechizing habit, is not trifling nor useless, but leads to the prudent selection and steady pursuit of what is right." (to Thomas Jefferson Randolph, Nov. 24, 1808, ME 12:196)
While in college he was more remarkable for solidity than sprightliness of intellect. His faculties were so even and well-balanced, that no particular endowment appeared pre-eminent. His course was not marked by any of those eccentricities which often presage the rise of extraordinary genius, but by the constancy of pursuit, that inflexibility of purpose, that bold spirit of inquiry and thirst for knowledge which are the surer prognostics of future greatness. His habits were those of patience and severe application, which, aided by a quick and vigorous apprehension, a talent of close and logical combination, and a retentive memory, laid the foundation sufficiently broad and strong for those extensive acquisitions which he subsequently made. The mathematics were his favorite study, and in them he particularly excelled. Nevertheless, he distinguished himself in all the branches of education embraced in the established course of that college. To his devotion to philosophy and science, he united an exquisite taste for the fine arts. In those of architecture, painting, and sculpture, he made himself such an adept as to be afterwards accounted one of the best critics of the age. For music he had an uncommon passion; and his hours of relaxation were passed in exercising his skill upon the violin, for which he evinced an early and extravagant predilection. His fondness for the ancient classics strengthened continually with his maturity, insomuch that it is said he scarcely passed a day in after-life without reading a portion of them. The same remark is applicable to his passion for mathematics. He became so well acquainted with both the great languages of antiquity as to read them with ease; and so far perfected himself in French as to become fluent with it, which was, subsequently, of essential service to him in his diplomatic labors. He could read and speak the Italian language and had competent knowledge of the Spanish. He also made himself master of the Anglo-Saxon, as a root of the English, and "an element in legal philology."
The acquaintances he happily formed in college probably determined the cast and direction of his ambition. These were the first characters in the whole province, among whom he has placed on record the names of three individuals who were particularly instrumental in fixing his future destinies: viz., Dr. Small, one of the professors in college "who made him his daily companion"; Gov. Fauquier, "the noblest man who had ever filled that office, to whose acquaintance and familiar table" he was admitted; and George Wythe, "his faithful and beloved mentor in youth and his most affectionate friend through life."
"It was," says he, "my great good fortune, and what probably fixed the destinies of my life, that Dr. William Small of Scotland was then professor of mathematics, a man profound in most of the useful branches of science, with a happy talent of communication, correct and gentlemanly manners, and an enlarged and liberal mind. He most happily for me became soon attached to me, and made me his daily companion when not engaged in the school; and from his conversation I got my first views of the expansion of science, and of the system of things in which we are placed. Fortunately, the philosophical chair became vacant soon after my arrival at college, and he was appointed to fill it per interim; and he was the first who ever gave, in that college, regular lectures in Ethics, Rhetoric, and Belles Lettres." (Autobiography, 1821, ME 1:3)
To Governor Fauquier, with whom he was in habits of intimacy, is also ascribed a high character. With the exception of an unfortunate passion for gaming, he was everything that could have been wished for by Virginia under the royal government. "With him," continues Mr. Jefferson, "and at his table, Dr. Small and Mr. Wythe, his amici omnium horarum, and myself, formed a partie quarree, and to the habitual conversations on these occasions, I owed much instruction."
George Wythe was emphatically a second father to young Jefferson. He was born about the year 1727, on the shores of the Chesapeake. His education had been neglected by his parents, and himself had led an idle and voluptuous life until the age of thirty; but by an extraordinary effort of self-recovery at that point of time, he overcame both the want and the waste of early advantages. He was one of the foremost of the Virginia patriots during the revolution; and one of the highest legal, legislative, and judicial characters which that State has furnished. He was early elected to the House of Delegates, then called the House of Burgesses, and continued in it until transferred to Congress in 1775. He was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, of which he had been an eminent supporter. The same year, he was appointed by the Legislature of Virginia one of the celebrated committee to revise the laws of the State. In 1777, he was chosen Speaker of the House of Delegates, and the same year was appointed Chancellor of the State, an office which he held until his death in 1806, a period of thirty years.
"No man," says Mr. Jefferson, "ever left behind him a character more venerated than George Wythe. His virtue was of the purest tint; his integrity inflexible, and his justice exact; of warm patriotism, and, devoted as he was to liberty and the natural and equal rights of man, he might truly be called the Cato of his country, without the avarice of the Roman; for a more disinterested person never lived. Temperance and regularity in all his habits gave him general good health, and his unaffected modesty and suavity of manners endeared him to everyone. He was of easy elocution, his language chaste, methodical in the arrangement of his matter, learned and logical in the use of it, and of great urbanity in debate; not quick of apprehension, but, with a little time, profound in penetration and sound in conclusion. In philosophy he was firm, and neither troubling nor perhaps trusting anyone with his religious creed, he left the world to the conclusion that that religion must be good which could produce a life of such exemplary virtue. His stature was of the middle size, well formed and proportioned, and the features of his face were manly, comely, and engaging. Such was George Wythe, the honor of his own, and the model of future times." (Notes for Biography of George Wythe, ME 1:169)
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