Thomas Jefferson, the Apostle of Americanism

by Gilbert Chinard

This was the keystone of Jefferson's social system at that time. It is not unimportant to note that it was a doctrine that could apply only to Anglo-Saxon colonies, more particularly to American colonies, and not a doctrine susceptible of universal application. Whether or not the principle might also be advanced by other peoples or nations, Jefferson did not state and did not care. His was not a mind to generalize and to extend universally any given principle. For the present, at least, he was satisfied to claim for the American settlers not the rights of man, but the rights of their Saxon ancestors. His position was legal and historical, not philosophical.

It was also to some extent an aristocratic position. Since the land was theirs by right of conquest, it almost necessarily ensued that only landowners, or to use the old colonial word, freeholders, were entitled to the rights, privileges, and happiness of self-government. The consequence was not expressed but it was implied. The analogy with the doctrine of the Physiocrats strikes one at first; but this analogy is only superficial. True enough, only freeholders are really worth considering and can raise a legitimate protest; but in a country as new and as extensive as America, it is within the power of every inhabitant to become a freeholder. For it is another iniquity to suppose that the Crown has the right to give grants of land:

It is time for us to lay this matter before his Majesty, and to declare, that he has no right to grant lands of himself. From the nature and purpose of civil institutions, all the lands within the limits, which any particular party has circumscribed around itself, are assumed by that society, and subject to their allotment; this may be done by themselves assembled collectively, or by their legislature, to whom they may have delegated sovereign authority; and, if they are alloted in neither of these ways, each individual of the society may appropriate to himself such lands as he finds vacant, and occupancy gives him title.

Thus spoke the pioneer, a pioneer who had studied law and history and could express in clear and forcible terms what the pioneers had felt only confusedly. Unless I am much mistaken, it is the first enunciation of one of the cardinal principles of Americanism; but, as far as Jefferson is concerned, it did not rest upon any political philosophy, either Hooker's or Locke's. The American settlers resumed and resurrected on a new soil the tradition interrupted by Parliamentary and kingly usurpations. By a sort of curious primitivism they renounced their immediate and degraded British forbears to claim as their true ancestors the Saxon conquerors of the British Isles. Can any one imagine anything farther from the theory of Rousseau in the "Discourse on the Origin of Inequality", or in the "Social Contract", anything farther from the universal humanitarianism of the French philosophers? In a last analysis, American society as it existed, and as it expressed its will to exist through its young spokesman, rested essentially not on an a priori principle but on the right of conquest, or more exactly, of discovery.

The best student of William and Mary, the young artist who wanted to make Monticello a thing of beauty, the lover of the literature of Greece and Rome, proclaimed loudly that "our ancestors who migrated hither were laborers, not lawyers." His was not a political philosophy dealing with "fictitious principles", it was the harsh, hard-headed, practical and fierce determination of the pioneer who stakes out a piece of land in the wilderness, ready to hold it against all claim jumpers.

The Virginia convention dominated by "Randolph, the Lees, Nicholas, Pendleton" was not ready to go so far as the young master of Monticello. The instructions to the delegates finally adopted and printed in an appendix to Jefferson's own "Autobiography" were exceedingly tame, but his declaration was printed, widely circulated among the people, and even reached England. It was just what was needed to set afire the public mind, for no people will rise, fight and die for an economic doctrine or in defense of its commercial interests. They have to be provided with mottoes which appeal to their imagination, they have to be raised above the ordinary trend of things; they must have a banner, a flag and a battle cry, and such was the object of Jefferson's peroration, which no Pendleton and no Lee could have written:

That these are our grievances, which we have just laid before his Majesty, with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people claiming their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their Chief Magistrate. Let those flatter, who fear: it is not an American art. To give praise where it is not due might be well from the venal, but it would ill beseem those who are asserting the rights of human nature. They know and will, therefore, say, that Kings are the servants, not the proprietors of the people.

Congress assembled at Philadelphia on September 4, 1774, under the presidency of Peyton Randolph of Virginia and adjourned in October, not without a recommendation "to discountenance every species of extravagance and dissipation, especially all horse racing, all kinds of gaming, cock-fighting, exhibitions of shows, plays and other diversions and entertainments."[36] The colonies were girding their loins for the fight, society life came to a standstill; the brilliant days of the little capital of Virginia were over.

When the counties organized committees of safety, Jefferson was at the top of the list of appointees in his county. He was again sent to the second convention of Virginia as representative from Albemarle. The convention met in Richmond, March 20, 1775, and it was then that Patrick Henry poured out in a fierce outburst the famous speech ending with the war cry of "Give me liberty or give me death." The resolution to arm passed with a decided majority and a plan of defense was adopted. Collisions threatened between the militia and the regulars on several occasions. But when Lord North's "Conciliatory Proposition" was received, Lord Dunmore convened the House of Burgesses on the first of July to take it into consideration. Peyton Randolph was then recalled from Congress and Jefferson appointed to succeed him. He did not leave, however, before an answer to the proposition had been drafted. The Virginians did not close the door to a compromise, but insisted that the final answer did not depend on them, for they considered that they were "bound in honor as well as interest, to share their general fate with their sister Colonies, and should hold themselves base deserters of that Union to which they had acceeded, were they to agree to any measure distinct and apart from them."

A few days later Lord Dunmore left the city and took refuge on board a man-of-war lying at York, declaring he had taken this step for his safety. Jefferson departed from Williamsburg for Philadelphia on the eleventh of June, 1775, and reached the capital of Pennsylvania on the twentieth. The national rôle of the young Virginia lawyer and landowner was about to begin.