Jefferson returned to America in 1789 and served as Secretary of State under Washington. He had succeeded in getting our present coinage system adopted, urging successfully a decimal system to replace that of England which many people wished to retain. He tried to have introduced a system of measures founded on the same decimal plan, but in this he did not succeed. While he was Secretary of State the mint in Philadelphia was established by his advice; till then American money had been coined in Europe.
In 1793 Jefferson resigned the office of Secretary of State and returned to his beloved home, Monticello, one of the handsomest country seats in Virginia. His overseer said that in the twenty years he lived at Monticello, he saw Jefferson sitting unemployed only twice—both times he was too unwell to work. “At all other times he was either reading, writing, talking, working upon some model, or doing something else.” Once Jefferson’s little grandsons whom he urged to “learn” and “labor” replied that they would not need to work because they would be rich. He answered, “Ah, those that expect to get through the world without industry, because they are rich, will be greatly mistaken. The people that do the work will soon get possession of all their property.”
One of his grandsons tells another incident of these days: “On riding out with him when a lad we met a negro who bowed to us; he returned his bow, I did not. Turning to me he asked, ‘Do you permit a negro to be more of a gentleman than yourself?’”
The country did not permit Jefferson to remain long in retirement. He was elected Vice President in 1796 and President in 1801. He represented the party of the people; this was opposed to the Federalist party led by Hamilton which was in favor of a centralized government. The party led by Jefferson was called, first Republican, then Democratic-Republican, then Democratic—to express the idea that the power belonged to the people. Scholar and aristocrat as Jefferson was, he had confidence in the “government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” as a man of the people expressed it later. Throughout Jefferson’s life this was his main idea, and the one for which he always worked.
During his first administration he rendered a great service to the country; being instrumental in 1803 in purchasing from France for fifteen million dollars the Louisiana territory. This territory included not only Louisiana but the territory extending to Puget Sound. In a message to Congress, Jefferson asked for money to send an expedition to explore this great country and he selected two brave and hardy frontiersmen to lead it, Captain Lewis and Lieutenant Clarke. They spent two and a half years on the expedition and brought back information about the country and specimens of its products.
After he had served his country twice as president, Jefferson retired to his home at Monticello and there spent his old age, still occupied with schemes for the public welfare. He believed in America for Americans. In a letter to President Monroe he said, “Our first and fundamental maxim should be never to entangle ourselves in the broils of Europe. Our second never to suffer Europe to intermeddle with Cis-Atlantic affairs.”
He planned an educational system for Virginia which included a comprehensive free school system, and a university. He gave years of thought and study to planning the building, government, and course of study of this university. In 1818 the state legislature made a grant to establish the University of Virginia.
Jefferson gave practically his whole life to the service of his country. He was in office thirty-nine years, and spent more than twenty years revising the Virginia Statutes and laboring to establish the University of Virginia. Thus, he said, his public services occupied over sixty years. During this time, his private affairs were neglected. From wealth in youth, he was reduced in old age to straitened circumstances. He sold his library, thirteen thousand volumes, to Congress for $23,950, about one-half of its auction value, and the money went to his creditors.
In the summer of 1826 Jefferson was taken ill. At midnight July the third, he was heard to murmur, “This is the fourth of July.” About midday he died, fifty years after the Declaration of Independence was adopted. On the same day in Massachusetts was dying John Adams who had helped in the fight for the people’s rights. During his last hours, his thoughts turned to his great associate and he said, “Thomas Jefferson still lives.”
On Jefferson’s tombstone were recorded as he had requested—not the offices he had held nor the honors he had received—but the three things by which he wished to be remembered,—that he wrote the Declaration of Independence, the Virginia Statute for religious liberty, and founded the University of Virginia.