Thomas Jefferson (, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was a Founding Father and the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was the second vice president under John Adams. Jefferson was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, and a leading proponent of democracy, republicanism and natural rights.
Jefferson was born into the Colony of Virginia's planter class. During the American Revolution, he represented Virginia in the Second Continental Congress, which unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson's advocacy for individual rights, including freedom of thought, speech, and religion, helped shape the ideological foundations of the revolution. Jefferson served as the second governor of Virginia from 1779 to 1781. In 1785, Congress appointed him as U.S. Minister to France, where he served from 1785 to 1789. President George Washington then appointed Jefferson the nation's first secretary of state, where he served from 1790 to 1793. In 1792, Jefferson and political ally James Madison organized the Democratic-Republican Party to oppose the Federalist Party during the formation of the nation's First Party System. Jefferson and Federalist John Adams became both personal friends and political rivals. In the 1796 U.S. presidential election between the two, Jefferson came in second, which made him Adams' vice president under the electoral laws of the time. Four years later, in the 1800 presidential election, Jefferson again challenged Adams and won the presidency. When running for reelection in 1804, Jefferson overwhelmingly defeated the Federalists' Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina.
Jefferson's presidency assertively defended the nation's shipping and trade interests against Barbary pirates and aggressive British trade policies, promoted a western expansionist policy with the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the nation's geographic size, and reduced military forces and expenditures following successful negotiations with France. In his second presidential term, Jefferson was beset by difficulties at home, including the trial of his former vice president Aaron Burr. In 1807, Jefferson implemented the Embargo Act to defend the nation's industries from British threats to U.S. shipping, limit foreign trade, and stimulate the birth of the American manufacturing.
Jefferson is ranked among the upper tier of U.S. presidents both by scholars and in public opinion. Presidential scholars and historians have praised Jefferson's advocacy of religious freedom and tolerance, his peaceful acquisition of the Louisiana Territory from France, and his leadership in supporting the Lewis and Clark Expedition. They acknowledge his lifelong ownership of large numbers of slaves, but offer varying interpretations of his views on and relationship with slavery.
Early life and education
thumb|left|The [[Wren Building at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, where Jefferson studied in 1761 and 1762]]
Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743 (April 2, 1743, Old Style, Julian calendar), at the family's Shadwell Plantation in the Colony of Virginia, then one of the Thirteen Colonies of British America. He was the third of ten children. His father, Peter Jefferson, was a planter and surveyor; his mother was Jane Randolph.
Jefferson was elected governor for one-year terms in 1779 and 1780. He transferred the state capital from Williamsburg to Richmond, and introduced additional measures for public education, religious freedom, and inheritance.
During General Benedict Arnold's 1781 invasion of Virginia, Jefferson escaped Richmond just ahead of the British forces, which razed the city. He sent emergency dispatches to Colonel Sampson Mathews and other commanders in an attempt to repel Arnold's efforts. When the British occupied Norfolk, Jefferson had caused patriots to burn and destroy it in 1776. General Charles Cornwallis that spring dispatched a cavalry force led by Banastre Tarleton to capture Jefferson and members of the Assembly at Monticello, but Jack Jouett of the Virginia militia thwarted the British plan. Jefferson escaped to Poplar Forest, his plantation to the west. When the General Assembly reconvened in June 1781, it conducted an inquiry into Jefferson's actions which eventually concluded that Jefferson had acted with honor, but Jefferson was not reelected.
In April of the same year, his daughter Lucy died at age one. A second daughter of that name was born the following year, but she died at age two.
In 1782, Jefferson refused a partnership offer by North Carolina Governor Abner Nash, in a profiteering scheme involving the sale of confiscated Loyalist lands. Unlike some Founders, Jefferson was content with his Monticello estate and the land he owned in the vicinity of Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. Jefferson thought of Monticello as an intellectual gathering place for James Madison, James Monroe, and other friends.
Jefferson accused British-based merchants of unfairly depressing tobacco prices and forcing Virginia planters to take on unsustainable debt loads. In 1786, he remarked:<blockquote>A powerful engine for this [mercantile profiteering] was the giving of good prices and credit to the planter till they got him more immersed in debt than he could pay without selling lands or slaves. They then reduced the prices given for his tobacco so that…they never permitted him to clear off his debt.</blockquote>
Notes on the State of Virginia
In 1780, Jefferson received a letter of inquiry from French diplomat François Barbé-Marbois into the geography, history, and government of Virginia, as part of a study of the United States. Jefferson organized his responses in a book, Notes on the State of Virginia (1785). The book explores what constitutes a good society, using Virginia as an exemplar. Jefferson included extensive data about the state's natural resources and economy and wrote at length about slavery and miscegenation; he articulated his belief that blacks and whites could not live together as free people in one society because of justified resentments of the enslaved. He also wrote of his views on the American Indians, equating them to European settlers.
Notes was first published in 1785 in French and appeared in English in 1787. Biographer George Tucker considered the work "surprising in the extent of the information which a single individual had been thus far able to acquire, as to the physical features of the state"; University of Virginia historian Merrill D. Peterson described it as an accomplishment for which all Americans should be grateful.
Member of Congress
thumb|alt=Legislative chamber|The Assembly Room at [[Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where Jefferson served as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress and where the Congress edited but unanimously ratified his draft of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776]]
Jefferson was appointed a Virginia delegate to the Congress of the Confederation organized following the peace treaty with Great Britain in 1783. He was a member of the committee setting foreign exchange rates and recommended an American currency based on the decimal system that was adopted. He advised the formation of the Committee of the States to fill the power vacuum when Congress was in recess. The committee met when Congress adjourned, but disagreements rendered it dysfunctional.
Jefferson sent a letter (revealed in 2025) to Virginia Governor Benjamin Harrison, dated December 31, 1783, in which he relates the wave of enthusiasm of Europeans for taking up arms against their leaders. Jefferson was sharing the affirmation of his own promotion of the right to bear arms that brought about the American Revolution. The letter also conveys Jefferson's anxiety over the final ratification of the Treaty of Paris formally ending the revolutionary war. Signed initially by the parties in September, the still-outstanding consent of two colonies was required in London (then a two-month journey) by the following March. The deadline was ultimately but barely met, with the required signatures made in mid-January.
In the Congress's 1783–1784 session, Jefferson acted as chairman of committees to establish a viable system of government for the new Republic and to propose a policy for settlement of the western territories. He was the principal author of the Land Ordinance of 1784, whereby Virginia ceded to the national government the vast area that it claimed northwest of the Ohio River. He insisted that this territory should not be used as colonial territory by any of the thirteen states, but that it should be divided into sections that could become states. He plotted borders for nine new states in their initial stages and wrote an ordinance banning slavery in all the nation's territories. Congress made extensive revisions and rejected the ban on slavery. The provisions banning slavery, known as the "Jefferson Proviso", were modified and implemented three years later in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and became the law for the entire Northwest Territory. With his young daughter Patsy and two servants, he departed in July 1784, arriving in Paris the next month. Jefferson had Patsy educated at Pentemont Abbey. Less than a year later, he was assigned the additional duty of succeeding Franklin as Minister to France. French foreign minister Count de Vergennes commented, "You replace Monsieur Franklin, I hear." Jefferson replied, "I succeed. No man can replace him." During his five years in Paris, Jefferson played a leading role in shaping U.S. foreign policy.
In 1786, he met and fell in love with Maria Cosway, a married 27-year-old Italian-English musician. She returned to Great Britain after six weeks, but she and Jefferson maintained a lifelong correspondence. During the summer of 1786, Jefferson arrived in London to meet with John Adams, who was then serving as the nation's first US Ambassador to Britain. Adams had official access to George III and arranged a meeting between Jefferson and the king. Jefferson later described the king's reception of the men as "ungracious". According to Adams's grandson, George III turned his back on both in a gesture of public insult. Jefferson returned to France in August.
thumb|left|upright=0.7|1786 portrait by [[Mather Brown]]
Jefferson sent for his youngest surviving child, nine-year-old Polly, in June 1787. She was accompanied by a young slave from Monticello, Sally Hemings. Jefferson had taken her older brother, James Hemings, to Paris as part of his domestic staff and had him trained in French cuisine. According to Sally's son, Madison Hemings, 16-year-old Sally and Jefferson began a sexual relationship in Paris, where she became pregnant. Madison indicated his mother agreed to return to the United States only after Jefferson promised to free her children when they came of age.
While in France, Jefferson became a regular companion of the Marquis de Lafayette, a French hero of the American Revolution, and Jefferson used his influence with Lafayette to procure trade agreements with France. As the French Revolution began, Jefferson agreed to allow his Paris residence at Hôtel de Langeac to be used for meetings by Lafayette and other revolutionary leaders. He was in Paris during the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, and he consulted with Lafayette as Lafayette drafted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Jefferson often found his mail opened by postmasters, so he invented his own enciphering device, the "Wheel Cipher"; he wrote important communications in code for the rest of his career. Unable to attend the 1787 Constitution Convention, Jefferson supported the Constitution but desired the addition of the promised Bill of Rights. Jefferson left Paris for America in September 1789. He remained a firm supporter of the French Revolution while opposing its more violent elements.
Secretary of State
thumb|alt=Painting of Jefferson|A 48-year-old Jefferson in 1791, in a portrait by [[Charles Willson Peale]]
Soon after returning from France, Jefferson accepted President Washington's invitation to serve as Secretary of State. Pressing issues at the time, the national debt and where the new national capital should be placed following its planned relocation from Philadelphia in 1800, placed him at odds with Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, who favored a capital close to major commercial centers in the Northeast, while Washington, Jefferson, and other agrarians wanted it further south. After lengthy deadlock, the Compromise of 1790 was struck, permanently locating the capital on the Potomac River, and the federal government assumed the war debts of all original 13 states. and establishing national credit and a national bank. Jefferson strenuously opposed both policies and attempted to undermine Hamilton's agenda, which nearly led Washington to dismiss him from the cabinet. He later left the cabinet voluntarily.
Jefferson's goals were to decrease American dependence on British commerce and to expand commercial trade with France. He sought to weaken Spanish colonialism of the Trans-Appalachia and British control in the North, believing this would aid in the pacification of Native Americans.
Along with political protegé James Madison, then a U.S. Representative, and author Philip Freneau, Jefferson co-founded the National Gazette in Philadelphia in 1791, which sought to counter the policies of the Federalist Party, which Hamilton was promoting through the Gazette of the United States, an influential Federalist newspaper. The National Gazette criticized the policies promoted by Hamilton, often in anonymous essays signed by the pen name Brutus at Jefferson's urging and written by Madison. In the spring of 1791, Jefferson was suffering from migraines and tiring of the infighting with Hamilton, so he and Madison departed for a vacation in Vermont.
In May 1792, Jefferson's concern about emerging political rivalries in the young nation was escalating, and he wrote Washington, imploring him to run for reelection for a second term that year as a unifying influence. He urged the president to rally the citizenry to a party that would defend democracy against the corrupting influence of banks and financial-focused interests, which the Federalists were embracing and espousing. Historians recognize Jefferson's letter to Washington as one of the first delineations of Democratic-Republican Party principles. Jefferson, Madison, and other Democratic-Republican organizers favored states' rights and local control and opposed the federal concentration of power. Hamilton, conversely, sought more power vested in the federal government.
Jefferson supported France against Britain when the two nations fought in 1793, though his arguments in Washington's Cabinet were undercut by French Revolutionary envoy Edmond-Charles Genêt's open scorn for Washington. In discussions with British Minister George Hammond, Jefferson tried in vain to persuade the British to vacate their posts in the Northwest and to compensate the U.S. for enslaved people freed by the British at the end of the Revolutionary War. Jefferson also sought to return to private life, and resigned from the cabinet in December 1793; he may also have wanted to bolster his political influence from outside the administration.
After the Washington administration negotiated the Jay Treaty with Britain in 1794, Jefferson saw a cause around which he could rally the Democratic-Republican Party. He organized national opposition to the treaty from Monticello. The treaty, designed by Hamilton, aimed to reduce tensions and increase trade. Jefferson warned that it would increase British influence and subvert republicanism, calling it "the boldest act [Hamilton and Jay] ever ventured on to undermine the government". The Treaty passed, but it expired in 1805 during Jefferson's presidential administration, and then President Jefferson did not renew it. Jefferson continued his pro-France stance; during the violence of the Reign of Terror, he declined to disavow the revolution. "To back away from France would be to undermine the cause of republicanism in America", he wrote.
Election of 1796 and vice presidency
thumb|alt=Electoral College map|The results of the [[1796 United States presidential election|1796 U.S. presidential election between Adams and Jefferson, won by Adams]]
In the presidential campaign of 1796, Jefferson lost the electoral college vote to Federalist John Adams 71–68. He did, however, receive the second-highest number of votes and, under the electoral laws at the time, was elected as vice president. As presiding officer of the United States Senate, Jefferson assumed a more passive role than his predecessor, John Adams. He allowed the Senate to freely conduct debates and confined his participation to procedural issues, which he called an "honorable and easy" role. Jefferson previously studied parliamentary law and procedure for 40 years, making him qualified to serve as presiding officer. In 1800, he published his assembled notes on Senate procedure as A Manual of Parliamentary Practice. He cast only three tie-breaking votes in the Senate.
In four confidential talks with French consul Joseph Létombe in the spring of 1797, Jefferson attacked Adams, predicting that his rival would only serve one term. He also encouraged France to invade England, and advised Létombe to stall any American envoys sent to Paris. This toughened the tone that the French government adopted toward the Adams administration. After Adams's initial peace envoys were rebuffed, Jefferson and his supporters lobbied for the release of papers related to the incident, called the XYZ Affair after the letters used to disguise the identities of the French officials involved. But the tactic backfired when it was revealed that French officials had demanded bribes, rallying public support against France. The U.S. began an undeclared naval war with France known as the Quasi-War.
During the Adams presidency, the Federalists rebuilt the military, levied new taxes, and enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts. Jefferson believed these laws were intended to suppress Democratic-Republicans, rather than prosecute enemy aliens, and considered them unconstitutional. To rally opposition, he and James Madison anonymously wrote the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, asserting that the federal government had no right to exercise powers not specifically delegated to it by the states. The resolutions followed the "interposition" approach of Madison, that states may shield their citizens from federal laws that they deem unconstitutional. Jefferson advocated nullification, allowing states to entirely invalidate federal laws. He warned that, "unless arrested at the threshold", the Alien and Sedition Acts would "drive these states into revolution and blood".
Biographer Ron Chernow contends that "the theoretical damage of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions was deep and lasting, and was a recipe for disunion", and contributed to the outbreak of the American Civil War and later events. Washington was so appalled by the resolutions that he told Patrick Henry that, if "systematically and pertinaciously pursued", the resolutions would "dissolve the union or produce coercion". Jefferson had always admired Washington's leadership skills but felt that his Federalist party was leading the country in the wrong direction. He decided not to attend Washington's funeral in 1799 because of acute differences with him while serving as secretary of state.
Election of 1800
thumb|alt=Electoral College map|The results of the [[1800 United States presidential election|1800 presidential election between Adams and Jefferson, which Jefferson won, making him the nation's third president]]
Jefferson ran for president against John Adams again in 1800. Adams' campaign was weakened by unpopular taxes and vicious Federalist infighting over his actions in the Quasi-War. Democratic-Republicans pointed to the Alien and Sedition Acts and accused the Federalists of being secret pro-Britain monarchists. Federalists, in turn, charged that Jefferson was a godless libertine beholden to the French. UCLA history professor Joyce Appleby described the 1800 presidential election as "one of the most acrimonious in the annals of American history".
The Democratic-Republicans ultimately won more electoral college votes, due in part to the electors that resulted from the addition of three-fifths of the South's slaves to the population calculation under the Three-Fifths Compromise. Jefferson and his vice presidential candidate Aaron Burr unexpectedly received an equal total. Because of the tie, the election was decided by the Federalist-dominated U.S. House of Representatives.