ANCIENT& not so ancient WISDOM
offering a weekly positive perspective

July 1, 2004

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."

- Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)

 

Thomas Jefferson was born in 1743 in Albermarle County, Virginia, inheriting from his father 5,000 acres of land, and from his mother, Jane Randolph Jefferson, high social standing. 

Jefferson attended the College of William and Mary (1760-62) and then studied law with George Wythe. In 1769, he began six years of service as a representative in the Virginia House of Burgesses. In 1770, he began building Monticello on land inherited from his father. The mansion was ready when he married Martha Wayles Skelton on Jan. 1, 1772. They had six children, two of whom survived to adulthood. As a gentleman farmer he studied botany and meteorology. 

Jefferson's national reputation began in 1774, when he wrote a political pamphlet, A Summary View of the Rights of British America. Jefferson claimed that colonial allegiance to the king was voluntary. "The God who gave us life," he wrote, "gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them." 

Jefferson was eloquent as a writer, not a public speaker. In the Virginia House of Burgesses and the Continental Congress, he contributed his pen rather than his voice to the patriot cause. As the "silent member" of the Continental Congress, Jefferson, at 33, was appointed on June 11, 1776, to head a committee of five in preparing the Declaration of Independence. He was its primary author. His initial draft was amended after consultation with Benjamin Franklin and John Adams and altered both stylistically and substantively by Congress. Jefferson's reference to the voluntary allegiance of colonists to the crown was struck; also deleted was a clause that censured the monarchy for imposing slavery upon America. Based upon the same natural rights theory contained in A Summary View, to which it bears a strong resemblance, the Declaration of Independence made Jefferson internationally famous. Years later that fame evoked the jealousy of John Adams, who complained that the declaration's ideas were "hackneyed." Jefferson agreed, "Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind." 

In years following, he labored to make its words a reality in Virginia. In June 1779, Jefferson’s bill on religious liberty started eight years of political turmoil in Virginia. The bill was significant as no other state or nation provided for complete religious liberty at that time. Jefferson's bill stated, "That all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions on matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities." Many Virginians regarded the bill as an attack upon Christianity. It passed in 1786 as a result of the perseverance of James Madison. Jefferson, in France at the time, wrote to Madison "it is honorable for us to have produced the first legislature who had the courage to declare that the reason of man may be trusted with the formation of his own opinions." 

As president he fought tirelessly for free speech and U.S. expansion. By the time Jefferson assumed the Presidency, the crisis regarding the Napoleonic Wars had passed. He slashed Army and Navy expenditures along with a host of other cuts in the Federal Budget and was able to reduce the national debt by a third. He sent a naval squadron to fight the Barbary pirates, who were harassing American commerce in the Mediterranean. Further, although the Constitution made no provision for the acquisition of new land, Jefferson suppressed his qualms over constitutionality when he had the opportunity to acquire the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon in 1803.  

After a second term, he retired to Monticello to undertake personal projects such as the design for the University of Virginia at Charlottesville (1819). A French nobleman observed that he had placed his house and his mind "on an elevated situation, from which he might contemplate the universe." He conceived, planned, designed, and supervised both its construction and the hiring of faculty.  

The university was the last of three contributions by which Jefferson wished to be remembered; they constituted a trilogy of freedoms: freedom from Britain, freedom of conscience, and freedom maintained through education.  

Wishing you great and continued success in all pursuits of freedom.

Sincerely,