The darling object of Mr. Jefferson’s last years was the founding of the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. For this purpose he gave $1000; many of his neighbors in Albemarle County joined him with gifts; and through Jefferson’s influence, the legislature appropriated considerable sums. But money was the least of Jefferson’s endowment of the University. He gave of the maturity of his judgment and a great part of his time. He was made regent. He drew the plans for the buildings, and overlooked their construction, riding to the University grounds almost every day, a distance of four miles, and back, and watching with paternal solicitude the laying of every brick and stone. His design was the perhaps over-ambitious one of displaying in the University buildings the various leading styles of architecture; and certain practical inconven[pg 152]iences, such as the entire absence of closets from the houses of the professors, marred the result. Some offense also was given to the more religious people of Virginia, by the selection of a Unitarian as the first professor. However, Jefferson’s enthusiasm, ingenuity, and thoroughness carried the scheme through with success; and the University still stands as a monument to its founder.
It should be recorded, moreover, that under Jefferson’s regency the University of Virginia adopted certain reforms, which even Harvard, the most progressive of eastern universities, did not attain till more than half a century later. These were, an elective system of studies; the abolition of rules and penalties for the preservation of order, and the abolition of compulsory attendance at religious services.
Mr. Jefferson’s daily life was simple and methodical. He rose as soon as it was light enough for him to see the hands of a clock which was opposite his bed. Till breakfast time, which was about nine o’clock, he employed himself in writing. The whole [pg 153]morning was devoted to an immense correspondence; the discharge of which was not only mentally, but physically distressing, inasmuch as his crippled hands, each wrist having been fractured, could not be used without pain. In a letter to his old friend, John Adams, he wrote: “I can read by candle-light only, and stealing long hours from my rest; nor would that time be indulged to me could I by that light see to write. From sunrise to one or two o’clock, and often from dinner to dark, I am drudging at the writing-table. And all this to answer letters, in which neither interest nor inclination on my part enters; and often from persons whose names I have never before heard. Yet writing civilly, it is hard to refuse them civil answers.” At his death Jefferson left copies of 16,000 letters, being only a part of those written by himself, and 26,000 letters written by others to him.
At one o’clock he set out upon horseback, and was gone for one or two hours,—never attended by a servant, even when he became old and infirm. He continued these rides [pg 154]until he had become so feeble that he had to be lifted to the saddle; and his mount was always a fiery one. Once, in Mr. Jefferson’s old age, news came that a serious accident had happened in the neighboring village to one of his grandsons. Immediately he ordered his horse to be brought round, and though it was night and very dark, he mounted, despite the protests of the household, and, at a run, dashed down the steep ascent by which Monticello is reached. The family held their breath till the tramp of his horse’s feet, on the level ground below, could faintly be heard.
At half past three or four he dined; and at six he returned to the drawing-room, where coffee was served. The evening was spent in reading or conversation, and at nine he went to bed. “His diet,” relates a distinguished visitor, Daniel Webster, “is simple, but he seems restrained only by his taste. His breakfast is tea and coffee, bread always fresh from the oven, of which he does not seem afraid, with at times a slight accompaniment of cold meat. He enjoys [pg 155]his dinner well, taking with his meat a large proportion of vegetables.” The fact is that he used meat only as a sort of condiment to vegetables. “He has a strong preference for the wines of the continent, of which he has many sorts of excellent quality.... Dinner is served in half Virginian, half French style, in good taste and abundance. No wine is put on the table till the cloth is removed. In conversation, Mr. Jefferson is easy and natural, and apparently not ambitious; it is not loud as challenging general attention, but usually addressed to the person next him.” His health remained good till within a few months of his death, and he never lost a tooth.
Scarcely less burdensome than his correspondence was the throng of visitors at Monticello, of all nationalities, from every State in the Union, some coming from veneration, some from curiosity, some from a desire to obtain free quarters. Groups of people often stood about the house and in the halls to see Jefferson pass from his study to his dining-room. It is recorded that “a female once [pg 156]punched through a window-pane of the house with her parasol to get a better view of him.” As many as fifty guests sometimes lodged in the house. “As a specimen of Virginia life,” relates one biographer, “we will mention that a friend from abroad came to Monticello, with a family of six persons, and remained ten months.... Accomplished young kinswomen habitually passed two or three of the summer months there, as they would now at a fashionable watering-place. They married the sons of Mr. Jefferson’s friends, and then came with their families.”
The immense expense entailed by these hospitalities, added to the debt, amounting to $20,000, which Mr. Jefferson owed when he left Washington, crippled him financially. Moreover, Colonel Randolph, who managed his estate for many years, though a good farmer, was a poor man of business. It was a common saying in the neighborhood that nobody raised better crops or got less money for them than Colonel Randolph. The embargo, and the period of depression which followed the war of 1812, went far to impov[pg 157]erish the Virginia planters. Monroe died a bankrupt, and Madison’s widow was left almost in want of bread. Jefferson himself wrote in 1814: “What can we raise for the market? Wheat? we can only give it to our horses, as we have been doing since harvest. Tobacco? It is not worth the pipe it is smoked in. Some say whiskey, but all mankind must become drunkards to consume it.” Jefferson, also, was so anxious lest his slaves should be overworked, that the amount of labor performed upon his plantation was much less than it should have been. And, to cap the climax of his financial troubles, he lost $20,000 by indorsing to that amount for his intimate friend, Governor Nicholas, an honorable but unfortunate man. It should be added that Mr. Nicholas, in his last hours, “declared with unspeakable emotion that Mr. Jefferson had never by a word, by a look, or in any other way, made any allusion to his loss by him.”
In 1814, Mr. Jefferson sold his library to Congress for $23,950, about one half its cost; and in the very year of his death he [pg 158]requested of the Virginia legislature that a law might be passed permitting him to sell some of his farms by means of a lottery,—the times being such that they could be disposed of in no other way. He even published some “Thoughts on Lotteries,”—by way of advancing this project. The legislature granted his request, with reluctance; but in the mean time his necessities became known throughout the country, and subscriptions were made for his relief. The lottery was suspended, and Jefferson died in the belief that Monticello would be saved as a home for his family.
In March, 1826, Mr. Jefferson’s health began to fail; but so late as June 24 he was well enough to write a long letter in reply to an invitation to attend the fiftieth celebration, at Washington, of the 4th of July. During the 3d of July he dozed hour after hour under the influence of opiates, rousing occasionally, and uttering a few words. It was evident that his end was very near. His family and he himself fervently desired that he might live till the 4th [pg 159]of July. At eleven in the evening of July 3 he whispered to Mr. Trist, the husband of one of his granddaughters, who sat by him: “This is the fourth?” Not bearing to disappoint him, Mr. Trist remained silent; and Mr. Jefferson feebly asked a second time: “This is the fourth?” Mr. Trist nodded assent. “Ah!” he breathed, and sank into a slumber from which he never awoke; but his end did not come till half past twelve in the afternoon of Independence Day. On the same day, at Quincy, died John Adams, his last words being, “Thomas Jefferson still lives!”
The double coincidence made a strong impression upon the imagination of the American people. “When it became known,” says Mr. Parton, “that the author of the Declaration and its most powerful defender had both breathed their last on the Fourth of July, the fiftieth since they had set it apart from the roll of common days, it seemed as if Heaven had given its visible and unerring sanction to the work which they had done.”