The Sage of Monticello
CHAPTER I
"AMERICA HAS A HEMISPHERE TO ITSELF"
When, after a long and fatiguing journey, Thomas Jefferson reached Monticello in the spring of 1809, he was in his sixty-third year and had well earned his "quadragena stipendia." But the Republic did not serve any pension to retired Presidents. For more than twelve years he had perforce neglected his domain, and his son-in-law, who had been in charge of the estate for some time, was scarcely a man to be intrusted with the administration of complicated financial interests. A large part of Jefferson's time was necessarily spent in setting things to rights; but the times were against him, and the embargo had proved more detrimental to the great landowners of the South than to the New England manufacturers. A planter whose sole revenue consisted in his crops had the utmost difficulty in providing for a large family of dependants, and a considerable number of slaves who had to be fed and clad, and most of all in keeping up appearances. Jefferson was hardly freed from public responsibilities when he had to labor under domestic difficulties which worried him even to his death bed.
Under his direction, however, Monticello became more than ever a self-supporting community; the slaves were taught all the necessary trades and when, thanks to the merino sheep brought over by Du Pont de Nemours, woolen goods of fine quality were made at Monticello, the master of the house was proud to wear clothes of homespun which, in his opinion, could rival the best produce of the English manufactures. Whole books could be written, and several have been written, on Jefferson the agriculturist, the surveyor, the civil engineer, the inventor and the architect. There is, however, another aspect of his last years which deserves more attention than it usually receives.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
From the portrait by Kosciuszko