The few months' continuous stay at home which Jefferson had been able to make during the past ten years had not been sufficient for him to set things to rights. How greatly his farms needed a new system of management may be seen from the following letter to General Washington, written by him in the spring of 1794. He says:
To George Washington.
I find, on a more minute examination of my lands than the short visits heretofore made to them permitted, that a ten years' abandonment of them to the ravages of overseers has brought on them a degree of degradation far beyond what I had expected. As this obliges me to adopt a milder course of cropping, so I find that they have enabled me to do it, by having opened a great deal of lands during my absence. I have therefore determined on a division of my farms into six fields, to be put under this rotation: First year, wheat; second, corn, potatoes, peas; third, rye or wheat, according to circumstances; fourth and fifth, clover, where the fields will bring it, and buckwheat-dressings where they will not; sixth, folding and buckwheat-dressing. But it will take me from three to six years to get this plan under way. I am not yet satisfied that my acquisition of overseers from the head of Elk has been a happy one, or that much will be done this year towards rescuing my plantations from their wretched condition. Time, patience, and perseverance must be the remedy; and the maxim of your letter, "slow and sure," is not less a good one in agriculture than in politics.... But I cherish tranquillity too much to suffer political things to enter my mind at all. I do not forget that I owe you a letter for Mr. Young; but I am waiting to get full information. With every wish for your health and happiness, and my most friendly respects to Mrs. Washington, I have the honor to be, dear Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant.
Notwithstanding this disordered and disheartening state of his affairs (due to no fault of his), we still find him luxuriating in the quiet and repose of private life. On this subject he writes to Mr. Adams, on April 25th, as follows:
To John Adams.
Dear Sir—I am to thank you for the work you were so kind as to transmit me, as well as the letter covering it, and your felicitations on my present quiet. The difference of my present and past situation is such as to leave me nothing to regret but that my retirement has been postponed four years too long. The principles on which I calculated the value of life are entirely in favor of my present course. I return to farming with an ardor which I scarcely knew in my youth, and which has got the better entirely of my love of study. Instead of writing ten or twelve letters a day, which I have been in the habit of doing as a thing in course, I put off answering my letters now, farmer-like, till a rainy day, and then find them sometimes postponed by other necessary occupations.... With wishes of every degree of happiness to you, both public and private, and with my best respects to Mrs. Adams, I am your affectionate and humble servant.
The land not having been prepared for cultivation during the preceding fall, Jefferson's farming operations during the summer of 1794 amounted to nothing. Unfortunately, when the next season came around for the proper preparation to be made for the coming year, it found him in such a state of health as to prevent his giving his personal direction to his farms, and thus he was cut off from any profit from them for another twelvemonth. Just about this time General Washington made another attempt, through his Secretary of State, Edmund Randolph, to get Jefferson back into his cabinet. Though at the time ill, Jefferson at once sent the following reply to Randolph:
To Edmund Randolph.
Monticello, September 7th, 1794.
Dear Sir—Your favor of August the 28th finds me in bed under a paroxysm of the rheumatism, which has now kept me for ten days in constant torment, and presents no hope of abatement. But the express and the nature of the case requiring immediate answer, I write you in this situation. No circumstances, my dear Sir, will ever more tempt me to engage in any thing public. I thought myself perfectly fixed in this determination when I left Philadelphia, but every day and hour since has added to its inflexibility. It is a great pleasure to me to retain the esteem and approbation of the President, and this forms the only ground of any reluctance at being unable to comply with every wish of his. Pray convey these sentiments, and a thousand more to him, which my situation does not permit me to go into....
I find nothing worthy of notice in Jefferson's life during the year 1795. He continued tranquilly and happily enjoying the society of his children and grandchildren in his beautiful mountain home. Mrs. Randolph was now the mother of three children. We have seen from his letters to her how devotedly she was loved by her father. From the time of her mother's death she had been his constant companion until her own marriage; Maria Jefferson, now seventeen years old, was as beautiful and loving as a girl as she had been as a child. The brilliancy of her beauty is spoken of with enthusiasm by those still living who remember her.