Born at Shadwell, Albemarle Co., Va., April 13 (N. S.), 1743; father died, 1757; entered College, March, 1760; graduated, April, 1762; admitted to bar, 1767; elected to House of Burgesses, 1769; married, January, 1772; elected to Continental Congress, March, 1775; attends Virginia Assembly, October, 1776; elected Governor of Virginia, June 1, 1779; reëlected, June 1, 1780; resigned, June 1, 1781; elected delegate to Congress, November, 1781; Mrs. Jefferson died, September, 1782; elected delegate to Congress, June, 1783; minister to France, May, 1784; appointed Secretary of State, September, 1789; leaves France, October, 1789; resigns as Secretary of State, December, 1793; elected Vice-President, November, 1796; nominated for President, May, 1800; elected President, February 17, 1801; inaugurated, March 4, 1801; Louisiana Treaty signed, May 2, 1803; Louisiana Treaty ratified, October 20, 1803; reëlected President, November, 1804; retires from Presidency, March 4, 1809; University of Virginia established, 1818; writes last letter, June 25, 1826; died, July 4, 1826.

Personal

  His powers of conversation.—It appears from his character and conduct in early life, that he possessed in a high degree the art of captivating and corrupting all sorts of people with whom he conversed. And when he was clothed with the ensigns of royalty his power and opportunity of corrupting his subjects greatly increased. He became the standard of taste and model of imitation. His sentiments and manners became a living law to his subjects. In his familiar intercourse with all around him he undoubtedly seized those soft moments which were the most favorable to his malignant design of seduction. This he could do without departing from the dignity of his station.

  We left Charlottesville on Saturday morning, the 4th of February, for Mr. Jefferson’s. He lives, you know, on a mountain, which he has named Monticello, and which, perhaps you do not know, is a synonyme for Carter’s mountain. The ascent of this steep, savage hill, was as pensive and slow as Satan’s ascent to Paradise…. His house, which is of brick, two stories high in the wings, with a piazza in front of a receding centre. It is built, I suppose, in the French style. You enter, by a glass folding-door, into a hall which reminds you of Fielding’s “Man of the Mountain,” by the strange furniture of its walls. On one side hang the head and horns of an elk, a deer, and a buffalo; another is covered with curiosities which Lewis and Clarke found in their wild and perilous expedition. On the third, among many other striking matters, was the head of a mammoth, or, as Cuvier calls it, a mastodon, containing the only os frontis, Mr. Jefferson tells me, that has yet been found. On the fourth side, in odd union with a fine painting of the Repentance of Saint Peter, is an Indian map on leather, of the southern waters of the Missouri, and an Indian representation of a bloody battle, handed down in their traditions. Through this hall—or rather museum—we passed to the dining-room, and sent our letters to Mr. Jefferson, who was of course in his study. Here again we found ourselves surrounded with paintings that seemed good. We had hardly time to glance at the pictures before Mr. Jefferson entered; and if I was astonished to find Mr. Madison short and somewhat awkward, I was doubly astonished to find Mr. Jefferson, whom I had always supposed to be a small man, more than six feet high, with dignity in his appearance, and ease and graciousness in his manners…. The evening passed away pleasantly in general conversation, of which Mr. Jefferson was necessarily the leader. I shall probably surprise you by saying that, in conversation, he reminded me of Dr. Freeman. He has the same discursive manner and love of paradox, with the same appearance of sobriety and cool reason.

  The Mansion House at Monticello was built and furnished in the days of his prosperity. In its dimensions, its architecture, its arrangements and ornaments, it is such a one as became the character and fortune of the man. It stands upon an elliptic plain, formed by cutting down the apex of a mountain; and, on the west, stretching away to the north and the south, it commands a view of the Blue Ridge for a hundred and fifty miles, and brings under the eye one of the boldest and most beautiful horizons in the world; while, on the east, it presents an extent of prospect bounded only by the spherical form of the earth, in which nature seems to sleep in eternal repose, as if to form one of her finest contrasts with the rude and rolling grandeur on the west. In the wide prospect, and scattered to the north and south, are several detached mountains, which contribute to animate and diversify this enchanting landscape; and among them, to the south, Willis’s Mountain, which is so interestingly depicted in his Notes. From this summit, the Philosopher was wont to enjoy that spectacle, among the sublimest of Nature’s operations, the looming of the distant mountains; and to watch the motions of the planets, and the greater revolution of the celestial sphere.

  Mr. Jefferson examined much less than he rejected. He never examined the evidences of Christianity. He rejected it as an imposture,—rejected it, not by the dictate of his own mind, but upon mere perusal of the Bible, under the influence of the infidel School of his own and the immediately preceding age,—Bolingbroke, Hume, Voltaire, Diderot, and the rest of that gang. What he meant by examination was treating the Bible like Tooke’s Pantheon,—studying all the fashionable atheists of the age, and never looking into the writers in favour of Christianity. So far was Mr. Jefferson from encouraging or recommending examination into the truth of the Christian Religion, that he founded his University with a cold, professed, and systematic exclusion of all theological studies from the institution.

  Of all the tests to which Jefferson was submitted, retirement is, perhaps, the one which he supported the best. In his relations with his own political subordinates, now become his successors, not the slightest trace of jealousy, depreciation, or arrogance, no affectation of directing them, and no hesitation to be of use to them by his counsels; nothing of indifference in his reserve, nor of pedantry in his advice; kindness, a sanguine interest, and a frankness that is often highly useful; in his relations with his old adversaries, much courtesy, often even a certain tone of careless freedom, without the slightest concession to their views; accessible to everybody, even to the curious and idle, but of a presence grave enough, and at times cold enough, to discourage familiarity; a large but not ostentatious retinue, a liberal hospitality supported by a ruinous expenditure without the appearance of profusion; perfectly in his place as the recent head of a State metamorphosed into a rural philosopher; living only one year too long, that last year, when the derangement of his fortune led him to occupy the attention of his fellow-citizens too much with his own private affairs, and to detail at too great a length the services which gave him a claim upon the gratitude of the United States; such were the distinguishing features of his seclusion.

  Mr. Jefferson’s stature was commanding—six feet two-and-a-half inches in height, well formed, indicating strength, activity, and robust health; his carriage erect; step firm and elastic, which he preserved to his death; his temper, naturally strong, under perfect control; his courage cool and impassive. No one ever knew him exhibit trepidation. His moral courage of the highest order—his will firm and inflexible—it was remarked of him that he never abandoned a plan, a principle, or a friend. A bold and fearless rider, you saw at a glance, from his easy and confident seat, that he was master of his horse, which was usually the fine-blood-horse of Virginia…. His habits were regular and systematic. He was a miser of his time, rose always at dawn, wrote and read until breakfast, breakfasted early, and dined from three to four;… retired at nine, and to bed from ten to eleven. He said, in his last illness, that the sun had not caught him in bed for fifty years. He always made his own fire. He drank water but once a day, a single glass, when he returned from his ride. He ate heartily, and much vegetable food, preferring French cookery, because it made the meats more tender. He never drank ardent spirits or strong wines. Such was his aversion to ardent spirits, that when, in his last illness, his physician desired him to use brandy as an astringent, he could not induce him to take it strong enough.

  He belonged neither to the first nor to the second order of human beings. He was not the discoverer of the truths he loved, nor did he promote their acceptance by any of the heroic methods. He did not always avoid the errors to which his cast of character rendered him peculiarly liable. But the sum of his merit was exceedingly great. He was an almost perfect citizen. He loved and believed in his species. Few men have ever been better educated than he, or practised more habitually the methods of an educated person. He defended the honor of the human intellect when its natural foes throughout Christendom conspired to revile, degrade, and crush it. After Washington, he was the best chief magistrate of a republic the world has ever known; and, in some material particulars, he surpassed Washington. He keenly enjoyed his existence, and made it a benefaction to his kind.

  At Williamsburg in 1760 he dressed in colors, powdered, carried his fine laced hat beneath his arm, bowed low, paid gallant compliments to the fair sex, and danced at every “assembly” held in the capital or the vicinity. In a word, the afterward celebrated Mr. Thomas Jefferson was a beau and “macaroni,” had a strong preference apparently for all that was in conflict with his subsequent social theories, laughed, jested, made love to the little belles of the little capital, and was the very last man whom any one would have regarded as the future leader of a great political party and the writer of the Declaration of Independence.

  Single out with me, as you easily will at the first glance, by a presence and a stature not easily overlooked or mistaken, the young, ardent, accomplished Jefferson. He is only just thirty-three years of age. Charming in conversation, ready and full in counsel, he is “slow of tongue,” like the great Lawgiver of the Israelites, for any public discussion or formal discourse. But he has brought with him the reputation of wielding what John Adams well called “a masterly pen.” And grandly has he justified that reputation. Grandly has he employed that pen already, in drafting a Paper which is at this moment lying on the table, and awaiting its final signature and sanction.

  There is no doubt that Thomas Jefferson failed as a speaker simply for lack of voice. He had all the other qualifications; but his voice became guttural and inarticulate in moments of great excitement, and the consciousness of this infirmity prevented him from risking his reputation in debate.

  If we may take Jefferson’s own word for it, he habitually studied, during his second collegiate year, fifteen hours a day, and for his only exercise ran, at twilight, a mile out of the city and back again. Long afterwards, in 1808, he wrote to a grandson a sketch of this period of his life, composed in his moral and didactic vein; in it he draws a beautiful picture of his own precocious and unnatural virtue, and is himself obliged to gaze in surprise upon one so young and yet so good amid crowding temptations. Without fully sharing in this generous admiration, we must not doubt that he was sufficiently studious and sensible, for he had a natural thirst for information and he always afterwards appeared a broadly educated man…. Certainly morals never became in his mind one of the exact sciences.

  After having served the eight years of his presidential office, Jefferson retired to this his chosen refuge, the creation of his own thought and industry, of much of his own personal handiwork, and spent yet seventeen long years in what with wise forethought and manful persistence he had indeed made “the dearest spot on earth.” Under his own vine and fig-tree, in his own house and his own garden, sitting in the refreshing shade of the trees he had himself planted, plucking the flowers and fruits he had himself reared, he talked wisdom to his gray-headed neighbors and contemporaries, gave kindly instruction and admonition to inquiring youths and students, or led his joyous and romping grandchildren through their juvenile games. American annals can present few pictures of so long enjoyed and so perfect a fruition of a labor of love. Bright and alluring as it is, the picture also presents painful shadows. He plucked his own domestic roses with bleeding fingers. The wounds of a bitter partisan conflict galled him; the persecutions of visitors and letter-writers worried him; and at last a hopeless bankruptcy brought him to the humiliating knowledge that the bread he ate was no longer that of his own earning.

  His “Anas”—the publication of which is to be lamented—sputter and smoke with charges and insinuations against Hamilton; and he treated Aaron Burr as his friend until Burr’s power to serve or injure him was gone forever. The question asked by himself, whether the world was better for his having lived, he answers by a statement in detail of what he had done. That he should have been so embarrassed in his extreme old age as to ask the Virginia legislature for authority to dispose of his property by a lottery, is a melancholy fact; and here again he catalogues his services, truthfully perhaps, but very stoutly. Though he had not escaped the virulence of criticism, he had certainly received more than compensatory public applause during his life, and was now diligent lest “the dull, cold ear of death” should escape being soothed by it afterwards.

  For eight years this tall, loosely built, somewhat stiff figure, in red waistcoat and yarn stockings, slippers down in the heel, and clothes that seemed too small for him, may be imagined as Senator Maclay described him, sitting on one hip, with one shoulder high above the other, talking almost without ceasing to his visitors at the White House. His skin was thin, peeling from his face on exposure to the sun, and giving it a tettered appearance. This sandy face, with hazel eyes and sunny aspects; this loose, shackling person; this rambling and often brilliant conversation, belonged to the controlling influences of American history, more necessary to the story than three-fourths of the official papers, which only hid the truth. Jefferson’s personality during these eight years appeared to be the government, and impressed itself, like that of Bonaparte, although by a different process, on the mind of the nation.

  In the spring of 1825, I visited Charlottesville, Albermarle county, Virginia,—where the State University is located—and then had an opportunity to observe Jefferson somewhat closely, but for a much shorter time than I desired. He had come to town from Monticello—which is near by—in a light covered carriage, drawn by two horses and driven by an old negro man…. To a youth like me it appeared something more than a mere privilege that I should be permitted to look upon the author of the Declaration of Independence, who was one of the foremost men in the country and who had reflected honor upon his and my own native State, as well as upon the nation. I scrutinized him so closely that the scene was photographed upon my mind, and memory, every now and then, has summoned him again before me. He was then two years younger than I am as I now write, but bore the marks of decrepitude—the wearing away of the vigorous energies of manhood. Notwithstanding the thoughts that crowded my youthful mind, I could not avoid observing the plainness and almost simple rusticity of his dress. His clothing was evidently home-made—probably woven upon a domestic loom—and there was nothing about either its cut or make up to indicate that it had passed through the hands of a fashionable tailor. In fact he belonged to that class of men who, disregarding the frivolities of society, devote their best faculties to other and greater objects. His shoulders were considerably stooped. He did not remove his hat, and I could observe only the face below it. I obtained a position, however, which enabled me to see his eyes with tolerable distinctness; and while they had undoubtedly lost somewhat of their brilliancy, they were still clear, penetrating, and bright. His voice was feeble and slightly tremulous, but not sufficiently so to leave the impression that it was not susceptible of distinct and clear enunciation when there was occasion for it. It appeared to me that he was careful in selecting his purchases, but he did not higgle about the prices. The merchant with whom he dealt exhibited the most marked deference to him, and when his purchases closed, took him by the arm and conducted him to his carriage, which he slowly entered with his assistance and that of the driver. The carriage then drove in the direction of Monticello, and I gazed at it until out of sight, with mingled emotions of pleasure and regret—pleasure at being permitted to see a venerable statesman of such high distinction, and regret at the fear that I should never see him again.

  During his whole life he was fighting the battle of the masses, yet at no period did he ever associate with them save in his own county, and then only as a great planter, or county squire; nor is there discernible in anything he did or wrote, the feeling of personal as opposed to theoretical liking for mankind. Humane, sympathetic, broad-minded he always was in his views, and actions; but in relations to his fellow-kind he seems to have had a distinct repugnance to association with hoi polloi. On the contrary, the chief happiness of his life was found in his intercourse with his social equals; and when his adoption of the people’s cause had produced social ostracism by the society of Philadelphia, so that old friends of his “crossed the street merely to avoid touching their hats to him,” and in his own words, “many declined visiting me with whom I had been on terms of the greatest friendship and intimacy,” he ever after, when alluding to the period, used expressions implying that he had endured the keenest suffering. With scarcely an exception, democracy the world over has fought its battles with self-made men as leaders; men near enough to the soil not to feel, or at least able to resist, the pressure of higher social forces: but Jefferson was otherwise, and the suffering this alienation and discrimination caused him is over and over again shown by his reiterated expression of hatred of the very politics to which he gave the larger part of his life.

  The most striking characteristics of Jefferson were his egotism, his industry, and his comprehensive learning. He had an opinion on every subject for every comer. The only subjects on which he confessed himself deficient were geology and poetry. No problem was too abstruse for him to grasp. He seldom asked advice or assistance from others. He was an infallible oracle to half the population of the country and a dangerous demagogue to the other half, but he was universally recognized as a man of scientific as well as literary attainments…. Thomas Jefferson is perhaps the most picturesque character in American history. He was longer in public life; he exercised a more potent and permanent influence upon his own and succeeding generations than any other man, not excepting Washington; but his character and motives have been and always will be subjects of controversy. There is no difference of opinion as to the honesty and patriotism of Washington, Franklin, Jackson, Lincoln, or Grant; while Jefferson is still extolled by some writers as the greatest and purest of statesmen and patriots, and by others denounced as a dangerous demagogue, unsound in his principles, insincere in his utterances, and dishonest in his acts. At the same time no public man ever left so much direct testimony in his own behalf. He was the most prolific of writers. There is scarcely a question in the entire range of human inquiry which he did not discuss; and his manuscripts were intentionally preserved and carefully arranged for the instruction of posterity. He frequently changed his policy and programme, and took different views of the same subjects on different occasions, perhaps on the ancient theory that “a wise man often changes his mind,—a fool never.”

Statesman

  After Washington and Franklin, there is no person who fills so eminent a place among the great men of America, as Jefferson. Whether we regard his important services in the revolutionary contest, or his subsequent assertion of the principles upon which the separation was undertaken,—both while he filled a subordinate station in Washington’s presidency, thwarted by his colleagues, as well as at variance with his chief, and while he administered himself the government of that free and prosperous country,—no reasonable doubt can be entertained, that to his enlightened views and to the firmness of his character, it is indebted for much of that freedom and prosperity.

  The democratic party, not the turbulent and coarse democracy of antiquity or the middle ages, but the great modern democracy, never had a more faithful or more distinguished representative than Jefferson. A warm friend of humanity, liberty, and science; trusting in their goodness as well as their rights; deeply touched by the injustice with which the mass of mankind have been treated, and the sufferings they endure, and incessantly engaged, with an admirable disinterestedness, in remedying them or preventing their recurrence; accepting power as a dangerous necessity, almost as one evil opposed to another, exerting himself, not merely to restrain, but to lower it; distrusting all display, all personal splendor, as a tendency to usurpation; a temper open, kind, indulgent, though ready to take up prejudices against, and feel irritated with the enemies of his party; a mind bold, active, ingenious, inquiring, with more penetration than forecast, but with too much good sense to push things to the extreme, and capable of employing, against a pressing danger or evil, a prudence and firmness, which would perhaps have prevented it, had they been adopted earlier or more generally.

  Surely, Jefferson may fairly claim the merit of being the father of the great system of repudiation! Was he sincere in these strange and startling paradoxes? It is difficult to answer, for he talked wildly on many subjects, and often shifted his ground. Still, there is a certain thread of consistency which runs through all his opinions, and would rather tend to show that he was in earnest. If so, his views much resembled the exaggerated notions of schoolboys—respectable, as the conceptions of young, ardent, inexperienced minds, dazzled by vague dreams of liberty and popular right—but wholly deficient in the elements which constitute the character of a statesman. And among the less worthy motives which seem to have influenced his conduct, it is impossible not to recognize a restless jealousy of those superior natures, with whom he was brought in contact, and whose gifts were so different from his own.

  His career shows him to have possessed many diverse qualities. He was a philosopher, and sometimes a visionary. He was also a politician and a political inventor of the most practical kind. Working in the dark, his hand was felt rather than seen. His lieutenants and agents bore the brunt of the contest, the chief, like a great commander, remaining in the rear—though not always out of the reach of a chance shot.

  In later years, when the very form of a State constitution became a party question, the influence of Jefferson largely dominated American thought. He stood for the rights of man as these were expressed in the Declaration of Independence, or were read into it by party interpretation. During the eighteenth century his influence fell far short of what it became after the party he was instrumental in organizing obtained possession of the national government. During the half century following his death, when in one form or another slavery and State sovereignty were national issues, and the extension of the franchise and the change from property to persons as the basis of representation were State issues, Jefferson was idealized as the political philosopher and reformer, and his ideas, as interpreted by a powerful party, were of paramount influence in many States. But his influence was always strongest in the newer parts of the country.

  Though not a hero worshipper, I am too good a partisan to question my principal; and Jefferson has been not alone my file-leader, but a guiding star in my political firmament. I am used to measure all systems, to try all causes, to determine all policies by the rules laid down in his philosophy. To me he stands out, after Washington and Franklin, the one clear figure in our early history, a perfect Doric column: wanting the brilliant levity of Hamilton; the sturdy, but narrow, spirit of Adams; sure-footed and far-seeing; not merely a statesman of the first order, but a very principal in the domain of original thinking and moral forces. The minor circumstances of his private life may interest me, but could in no wise change my perspective, because I am fixed in the belief that he was an upright and disinterested man, who considered his duty to his country before all else. Such inconsistencies as appear in his career are but proofs of this, since he never can wholly be true to his convictions, or potent for good in affairs, who does not adapt himself to the changing exigencies of the times, suiting his actions to his words, his words to his actions, according to the course of events.

Declaration of Independence, 1776

  The merit of this paper is Mr. Jefferson’s. Some changes were made in it, on the suggestion of other members of the committee, and others by Congress while it was under discussion. But none of them altered the tone, the frame, the arrangement, or the general character of the instrument. As a composition, the declaration is Mr. Jefferson’s. It is the production of his mind, and the high honor of it belongs to him, clearly and absolutely…. To say that he performed his great work well, would be doing him injustice. To say that he did excellently well, admirably well, would be inadequate and halting praise. Let us rather say, that he so discharged the duty assigned him, that all Americans may well rejoice that the work of drawing the title-deed of their liberties devolved on his hands.

  This trust devolved on Jefferson, and with it rests on him the imperishable renown of having penned the Declaration of Independence. To have been the instrument of expressing, in one brief, decisive act, the concentrated will and resolution of a whole family of states, of unfolding, in one all-important manifesto, the causes, the motives, and the justification of this great movement in human affairs; to have been permitted to give the impress and peculiarity of his own mind to a charter of public right, destined—or, rather, let me say, already elevated—to an importance, in the estimation of men, equal to any thing human, ever borne on parchment, or expressed in the visible signs of thought,—this is the glory of Thomas Jefferson.

  He owed this distinction to respect for the colony which he represented, to the consummate ability of the state papers which he had already written, and to that general favor which follows merit, modesty, and a sweet disposition; but the quality which specially fitted him for the task was the sympathetic character of his nature by which he was able with instinctive perception to read the soul of the nation, and having collected in himself its best thoughts and noblest feelings, to give them out in clear and bold words, mixed with so little of himself, that his country, as it went along with him, found nothing but what it recognised as its own. No man of this century had more trust in the collective reason and conscience of his fellow men, or better knew how to take their counsel; and in return he came to be a ruler over the willing in the world of opinion…. This immortal state paper, which for its composer, was the aurora of enduring fame, was “the genuine effusion of the soul of the country at that time,” the revelation of its mind, when in its youth, its enthusiasm, its sublime confronting of danger, it rose to the highest creative powers of which man is capable.

  A document which is alone sufficient to perpetuate the name of Thomas Jefferson, and to cover it with glory in the estimation of his countrymen. It came from his mind, clear, shapely, complete as Minerva from the brain of Jupiter, and received no essential additions or important alterations from other hands, except such slight verbal modification as added little or nothing to its essential symmetry, its force, or its perspicuity.

  One of the most famous documents in the muniment room of history, bespeaks the hand of the philosophic Jefferson. It opens with sweeping aphorisms about the natural rights of man at which political science now smiles, and which, as American abolitionists did not fail to point out at a later day, might seem strange when framed for slave-holding communities by a publicist who himself held slaves.

  The one American state paper that has reached to supreme distinction in the world, and that seems likely to last as long as American civilization lasts…. American confidence in the supreme intellectual merit of this all-famous document received a serious wound, some forty years ago, from the hand of Rufus Choate, when, with a courage greater than would now be required for such an act, he characterized it as made up of “glittering and sounding generalities of natural right.” What the great advocate then so unhesitantly suggested, many a thoughtful American since then has at least suspected,—that this famous proclamation, as a piece of political literature, cannot stand the test of modern analysis; that it belongs to the immense class of over-praised productions; that it is, in fact, a stately patchwork of sweeping propositions of somewhat doubtful validity; that it has long imposed upon mankind by the well-known effectiveness of verbal glitter and sound; that, at the best, it is an example of florid political declamation belonging to the sophomoric period of our national life—a period which, as we flatter ourselves, we have now outgrown.

General

  The Editor, though he cannot be insensible to the genius, the learning, the philosophic inspiration, the generous devotion to virtue, and the love of country, displayed in the writings now committed to the press, is restrained, not less by his incompetency, than by his relation to the Author, from dwelling on themes which belong to an eloquence that can do justice to the names of illustrious benefactors to their country and to their fellow men.

  Mr. Jefferson, too, is entitled to great Respect, though after the conduct of his last days, and the posthumous publication of his writings, delicacy towards him from New England is an exemplification of something more than Christian meekness and forbearance.

  The inaugural address of Mr. Jefferson was as novel and extraordinary, as the simplicity of the scene which ushered it before the world. For condensation of ideas and Addisonian purity of language, it is allowed to be superior to any thing in the wide circle of political composition. In the short compass in which it is compressed, all the essential principles of free governments are stated, in detail, with the measures best calculated for their attainment and security, and an ample refutation of the adversary principles. Every word is pregnant with sentiment and reproof, and every sentence contains a text on which might be written volumes of political wisdom.

  In the talents, by which individuals are commonly supposed to acquire and extend their influence, he was almost wholly deficient: he had no military taste or skill; he never spoke in public, and had no peculiar power in writing. It is said by the author of the “Familiar Letters,” that he ruled the American people by “the magic of his pen.” This idea appears to be erroneous. Mr. Jefferson wrote through life very little. The little he wrote consisted mostly of private letters, which never went out to the people: in his few published writings, there is no extraordinary force or charm of style. As mere literary productions, they would have attracted no attention; they produced effect not as writings, but as acts…. There was no magic in his pen. The witchcraft of which he acquired influence lay, like that of the Maréchale d’ Ancre, in his mental superiority.

  As an author, he has left no memorial that is worthy of his genius; for the public papers drawn by him are admired rather for the patriotic spirit which dictated them than for the intellectual power they exhibit. They presented no occasion for novelty of thought, or argument, or diction. His purpose was only to make a judicious and felicitous use of that which every body knew and would assent to; and this object he has eminently fulfilled. His “Notes on Virginia,” though stamped with his characteristic independence of mind, are rather remarkable for the extent of his statistical knowledge, in a country and at a period when knowledge of that kind was so difficult of attainment; and his “Manual” of parliamentary practice required nothing more than care and discrimination. His diplomatic correspondence throughout shows that he possessed logical powers of the highest order; and his letters, especially those of his latter years, are written with great elegance and felicity…. But it is on his merits as a lawgiver and political philosopher that his claims to greatness chiefly rest: it is for these that he is to be praised or condemned by posterity; for beyond all his contemporaries has he impressed his opinions of government on the minds of the great mass of his countrymen.

  Jefferson was the Danton of the West; but his forte lay not so much in oratory as in political management. More perhaps than any other statesman of his age, he aspired to be an author, to which title the most vivacious pages of his “Notes on Virginia,” conspicuously his graphic description of the passage of the Potomac through the Blue Ridge, his “Autobiography” and “Correspondence,” give him a fair claim. His sketches of continental society, though bearing the mark of a somewhat superficial study of French models, and marred by eighteenth-century mannerism, are lively; and his occasional flights of fancy, as in the “Dialogue between the Head and the Heart,” at least ingenious.

  Those venomous “Anas,” among the most unfortunate of all deeds of the pen…. How differently could we think of him were it not for this bequest which, like the cloven foot, peeps out from beneath his apparent guise of broad charity and kindliness.

  Jefferson was preëminently a writer. His speeches were not effective, nor was he strong in administration; but in the seclusion of his study or office, with a pen in his hand, his power and ability were unequaled. He was profoundly learned in the theory and practice of government; his writings and career show him to have been one of the broadest and most consistent democrats of any age.

  Much of Jefferson’s remarkable influence was due to his attractive style as a writer. Phrases from his letters and public documents, sometimes fervent, sometimes humorous, circulated through the land like silver coin. He wrote and he talked with warm blood coursing through his veins; and though the shaft might rankle where it was driven, it struck the mark. Vigour, liveliness, and choice felicity of expression marked his style, which was nevertheless scholarly; and while so many of his age modelled their style upon Addison and the “Spectator,” sought out the sonorous and balanced their periods laboriously, admitting no word that might not be found in Johnson’s dictionary, he preferred rather the figurative, and aimed to make the English vocabulary more copious. His style, like that of every master, was an image of himself, and adaptive he meant it to be to the current American age and institutions.

  Jefferson was not a thorough American because of the strain of French philosophy that permeated and weakened all his thought.

  If Jefferson be judged by any single piece of work, except perhaps the “Declaration of Independence,” or by the general qualities of his style, he cannot in any fairness be termed a great writer. His “Notes on Virginia,” his only book, may be justly said to be interesting and valuable, but cannot rank high as literature. His state papers, with the exception made above, and his official reports are excellent of their kind, but their kind is not sufficiently literary to warrant any one in holding them up as models. Even his countless letters, while fascinating to the student of his character, are rather barren of charm when read without some ulterior purpose. In short, while Jefferson was plainly the most widely cultured of our early statesmen and was thus in a real sense a man of letters, he would be little read to-day if his fame depended either upon his authorship of a masterpiece in the shape of a book or upon his possession of a powerful or charming style. We see at once that in at least two important respects Jefferson is inferior to Franklin as a writer…. But has not Jefferson given us a masterpiece? In a book, no; in a state paper, yes. The “Declaration of Independence,” whatever may be the justice of the criticism directed against this and that clause or statement, is a true piece of literature, because ever since it was written it has been alive with emotion…. The man who drafted such a document knew the spirit of his own people and could express it to their satisfaction; to deny him literary power of a high order would therefore be pedantic.