What gave Mr. Jefferson the greatest anxiety and trouble, was our relations with the piratical Barbary powers who held the keys of the Mediterranean and sometimes extended their depredations even into the Atlantic. It was a question of paying tribute or going to war; and most of the European powers paid tribute. In 1784, for example, the Dutch contributed to “the high, glorious, mighty, and most noble, King, Prince, and Emperor of Morocco,” a mass of material which included thirty cables, seventy cannon, sixty-nine masts, twenty-one anchors, fifty dozen sail-needles, twenty-four tons of pitch, two hundred and eighty loaves of sugar, twenty-four China punch-bowls, three clocks, and one “very large watch.”
Jefferson ascertained that the pirates would require of the United States, as the [pg 78]price of immunity for its commerce, a tribute of about three hundred thousand dollars per annum. “Surely,” he wrote home, “our people will not give this. Would it not be better to offer them an equal treaty? If they refuse, why not go to war with them?” And he pressed upon Mr. Jay, who held the secretaryship of foreign affairs, as the office was then called, the immediate establishment of a navy. But Congress would do nothing; and it was not till Jefferson himself became President that the Barbary pirates were dealt with in a wholesome and stringent manner. During the whole term of his residence at Paris he was negotiating with the Mediterranean powers for the release of unfortunate Americans, many of whom spent the best part of their lives in horrible captivity.
Mr. Jefferson’s self-imposed duties were no less arduous. He kept four colleges informed of the most valuable new inventions, discoveries, and books. He had a Yankee talent for mechanical improvements, and he was always on the alert to obtain anything of this nature which he thought might be [pg 79]useful at home. Jefferson himself, by the way, invented the revolving armchair, the buggy-top, and a mould board for a plough. He bought books for Franklin, Madison, Monroe, Wythe, and himself. He informed one correspondent about Watt’s engine, another about the new system of canals. He smuggled rice from Turin in his coat pockets; and he was continually dispatching to agricultural societies in America seeds, roots, nuts, and plants. Houdin was sent over by him to make the statue of Washington; and he forwarded designs for the new capitol at Richmond. For Buffon he procured the skin of an American panther, and also the bones and hide of a New Hampshire moose, to obtain which Governor Sullivan of that State organized a hunting-party in the depth of winter and cut a road through the forest for twenty miles in order to bring out his quarry.
Jefferson was the most indefatigable of men, and he did not relax in Paris. He had rooms at a Carthusian monastery to which he repaired when he had some special [pg 80]work on hand. He kept a carriage and horses, but could not afford a saddle horse. Instead of riding, he took a walk every afternoon, usually of six or seven miles, occasionally twice as long. It was while returning with a friend from one of these excursions that he fell and fractured his right wrist; and the fracture was set so imperfectly that it troubled him ever afterward. It was characteristic of Jefferson that he said nothing to his friend as to the injury until they reached home, though his suffering from it was great; and, also, that he at once began to write with the other hand, making numerous entries, on the very night of the accident, in a writing which, though stiff, was, and remains, perfectly clear.
Mr. Jefferson’s two daughters had been placed at a convent school near Paris, and he was surprised one day to receive a note from Martha, the elder, asking his permission to remain in the convent for the rest of her life as a nun. For a day or two she received no answer. Then her father called [pg 81]in his carriage, and after a short interview with the abbess took his daughters away; and thenceforth Martha presided, so far as her age permitted, over her father’s household. Not a word upon the subject of her request ever passed between them; and long afterward, in telling the story to her own children, she praised Mr. Jefferson’s tact in dealing with what she described as a transient impulse.
After this incident, Jefferson, thinking that it was time to take his daughters home, obtained leave of absence for six months; and the little family landed at Norfolk, November 18, 1789. They journeyed slowly homeward, stopping at one friend’s house after another, and, two days before Christmas, arrived at Monticello, where they were rapturously greeted by the slaves, who took the four horses from the carriage and drew it up the steep incline themselves; and when he alighted, Mr. Jefferson, in spite of himself, was carried into the house on the arms of his black servants and friends.