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2. After College
mmediately on leaving college, Mr. Jefferson engaged in the study of the Law under the direction of Mr. Wythe. Here, it is said, he became thoroughly acquainted with the civil and common law, exploring every topic and fathoming every principle. Here also, he is said to have acquired that facility, neatness, and order in business, which gave him, in effect, "the hundred hands of Briareus." With such a guide, and in such a school, all the rudiments of intellectual greatness could not fail of being stirred into action. The occasion was not long wanting to display the master passion of his nature in bold and prominent relief.
At the time when his faculties were being strengthened by manhood, an incident occurred that fixed them in their meditated sphere, and kindled his native ardor into a flame.
That was the celebrated speech of Patrick Henry on the memorable resolutions of 1765 against the Stamp Act. Young Jefferson listened to the "bold, grand, and overwhelming eloquence" of the orator of nature, the effect of which seems never to have lost its sorcery over his mind. More than fifty years afterwards, he reverts to it with all the vividness of the first impression. "He appeared to me," says he, "to speak as Homer wrote." (Autobiography, ME 1:5) The effect was indeed tremendous. It struck even that veteran and dignified assembly aghast. The resolutions were moved by Henry and seconded by Mr. Johnson. They were resisted by the whole monarchical body of the House of Burgesses as a matter of course. Besides, they were deemed so ill advised in point of time as to rally in opposition to them all the old members, including such men as Peyton Randolph, Wythe, Pendleton, Nicholas, Bland, etc. -- honest patriots whose influence in the House had till then been unbroken. "But," says Jefferson, "torrents of sublime eloquence from Henry, backed by the solid reasoning of Johnson, prevailed. The last, however, and strongest resolution was carried but by a single vote. The debate on it was most bloody. I was then but a student and stood at the door of communication between the house and the lobby during the whole debate and vote; and I well remember that after the numbers on the division were told and declared from the chair, Peyton Randolph, the Attorney-General, came out at the door where I was standing and said as he entered the lobby, 'by ----, I would have given 500 guineas for a single vote: for one vote would have divided the House, and Robinson was in the chair,' who he knew would have negatived the resolution." It was in the midst of this magnificent appeal that Henry is said to have exclaimed in a voice of thunder, "Caesar had his Brutus -- Charles the First his Cromwell -- and George the Third -- ("Treason," cried the Speaker -- "treason, treason," echoed from every part of the House. Henry faltered not; but rising to a loftier attitude and fixing a determined eye on the Speaker, finished his sentence with the firmest emphasis) may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it." (Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry, pg. 65) "I well remember," says Jefferson, "the cry of treason, the pause of Henry at the name of George the Third, and the presence of mind with which he closed his sentence and baffled the vociferated charge."
The grandeur of that scene and the triumphant eclat of Henry made the heart of young Jefferson ache for the propitious moment that should enrol him among the champions of persecuted humanity. The tone and strength of his mind at this early period are indicated by those emphatic mottos that he selected for his seals: "Ab eo libertas, a quo spiritus," and "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." These mottos attracted great attention, and were regarded as prophetic of his destiny. They were well remembered years after his death by the aged inhabitants of Virginia. The seals themselves were preserved as sacred relics by the family of Mr. Jefferson, and accurate impressions of them in wax were obtained by his particular friends in various parts of the country.
Various attempts have been made to ascertain the birth of opinions on the subject of American Independence, and to fix the precise epoch, and the particular individual, when and with whom the stupendous conception originated. The enquiry has been attended with no success, and is from the nature of the case incapable of solution. It is evident that the measure did not result from any deliberate and preconcerted design on the part of one, or of any number of individuals, but from a combination of causes growing for the most part out of the mistaken policy of the British Parliament, and fostered and matured by its unyielding obstinacy. It was the slow and legitimate growth of political oppression, assisted it is true by the great advance of certain minds beyond the general step of the age. To use the phraseology of Mr. Jefferson, "It would, moreover, be as difficult to say at what moment the Revolution began and what incident set it in motion, as to fix the moment that the embryo becomes an animal, or the act which gives him a beginning." (to John Adams, May 17, 1818. ME 15:169)
It is certain that if this subject were examined with reference to its bearing upon a Jefferson, it might with equal propriety be advanced that in those pointed inscriptions that he selected in the fire of youth as the mottos of his seals, we discover the germ, not merely of American emancipation, but of European revolution and of the general amelioration of associated man throughout the world. The revolution itself was but a preparatory movement. The mere separation of the colonies from the mother country was but the introductory stage of the grand and fundamental change through which they were to pass to derive any essential advantages from the act -- to wit, the entire abrogation of royalty and substitution of self-government.
Nay, even this magnificent result was but the first chapter in the history of the great moral and political regeneration that is advancing over the earth, and to which the revolution gave the primary impulse. Unless contemplated in the broad light of a contrast of principle between the advocates of republican and those of kingly government into which it finally resolved itself, it is of little importance to enquire what incident gave it birth, or who set it in motion. Stopping at the point at which many who were the boldest at the outset evidently wished it to stop, and with honest motives, the Revolution would have been nothing more, in effect, than transferring the government to other hands without putting it into other forms; and no change would have been wrought in the political condition of the world. It would have been merely a spirited and successful rebellion, or rather a struggle for power, like that which long embroiled the royal races of the Plantagenets, Tudors, and Stuarts, terminating at best in a limited modification of the old system, and most likely in its entire adoption, substituting George or John the First in the place of George the Third.
The solution of the problem, therefore, if practicable, would afford no criterion of the relative advance of the leading minds of that period. But the question becomes a rational one and assumes a powerful interest if presented in its proper aspect: With whom did those eternal rules of political reason and right originate that crowned with glory and immortality the American Revolution, making it one in substance as well as form? To whom belongs the honor of conceiving the grand project that gave to those detached fragments of empire that formed the nucleus of the American nation, not only shape and organization, but a new projectile impulse to revolve in an untried orbit under the control of a new equilibrium of forces? Viewing the subject under these, its moral phases, it becomes of some consequence to ascertain the origin and progress of individual opinions.
During the short interval he spent in his profession, he acquired considerable celebrity; but his forensic reputation was so disproportionate to his general pre-eminence as to have occasioned the common impression that he was deficient in the requisite qualifications for a successful practitioner at the bar. That this was not the case, however, we have the authority of a gentleman (William Wirt) whose opportunities of information and well known trustworthiness are a pledge of the literal accuracy of his statement. "Permit me," says he, "to correct an error which seems to have prevailed. It has been thought that Mr. Jefferson made no figure at the bar: but the case was far otherwise. There are still extant, in his own fair and neat hand, in the manner of his master, a number of arguments which were delivered by him at the bar upon some of the most intricate questions of the law, which, if they shall ever see the light, will vindicate his claims to the first honors of the profession."
Again, we have the authority of the same gentleman upon another interesting point. It will be new to the reader to learn that Mr. Jefferson was anything of a popular orator. "It is true," continues the writer, "he was not distinguished in popular debate; why he was not so, has often been a matter of surprise to those who have seen his eloquence on paper and heard in conversation. He had all the attributes of the mind and the heart and the soul which are essential to eloquence of the highest order. The only defect was a physical one: he wanted volume and compass of voice for a large deliberative assembly; and his voice, from the excess of his sensibility, instead of rising with his feelings and conceptions, sunk under their pressure and became guttural and inarticulate. The consciousness of this infirmity repressed any attempt in a large body, in which he knew he must fail. But his voice was all sufficient for the purposes of judicial debate; and there is no reason to doubt that if the services of his country had not called him away so soon from his profession, his fame as a lawyer would now have stood upon the same distinguished ground which he confessedly occupies as a statesman, an author, and a scholar."
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