Jefferson was about 6 ft. in height, large-boned, slim, erect and sinewy. He had angular features, a very ruddy complexion, sandy hair, and hazel-flecked, grey eyes. Age lessened the unattractiveness of his exterior. In later years he was negligent in dress and loose in bearing. There was grace, nevertheless, in his manners; and his frank and earnest address, his quick sympathy (yet he seemed cold to strangers), his vivacious, desultory, informing talk, gave him an engaging charm. Beneath a quiet surface he was fairly aglow with intense convictions and a very emotional temperament. Yet he seems to have acted habitually, in great and little things, on system. His mind, no less trenchant and subtle than Hamilton’s, was the most impressible, the most receptive, mind of his time in America. The range of his interests is remarkable. For many years he was president of the American philosophical society. Though it is a biographical tradition that he lacked wit, Molière and Don Quixote seem to have been his favourites; and though the utilitarian wholly crowds romanticism out of his writings, he had enough of that quality in youth to prepare to learn Gaelic in order to translate Ossian, and sent to Macpherson for the originals! His interest in art was evidently intellectual. He was singularly sweet-tempered, and shrank from the impassioned political bitterness that raged about him; bore with relative equanimity a flood of coarse and malignant abuse of his motives, morals, religion,[23] personal honesty and decency; cherished very few personal animosities; and better than any of his great antagonists cleared political opposition of ill-blooded personality. In short, his kindness of heart rose above all social, religious or political differences, and nothing destroyed his confidence in men and his sanguine views of life.
Authorities.—See the editions of Jefferson’s Writings by H. A. Washington (9 vols., New York, 1853-1854), and—the best—by Paul Leicester Ford (10 vols., New York, 1892-1899); letters in Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, series 7, vol. i.; S. E. Forman, The Letters and Writings of Thomas Jefferson, including all his Important Utterances on Public Questions (1900); J. P. Foley, The Jefferson Cyclopaedia (New York, 1900); the Memoir, Correspondence, &c., by T. J. Randolph (4 vols., Charlottesville, Va., 1829); biographies by James Schouler (“Makers of America Series,” New York, 1893); John T. Morse (“American Statesmen Series,” Boston, 1883); George Tucker (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1837); James Parton (Boston, 1874); and especially that by Henry S. Randall (3 vols., New York, 1853), a monumental work, although marred by some special pleading, and sharing Jefferson’s implacable opinions of the “Monocrats.” See also Henry Adams, History of the United States 1801-1817, vols. 1-4 (New York, 1889-1890); Herbert B. Adams, Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia (U. S. bureau of education, Washington, 1888); Sarah N. Randolph, Domestic Life of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1871); and an illuminating appreciation by W. P. Trent, in his Southern Statesmen of the Old Régime (New York, 1897); that by John Fiske, Essays, Historical and Literary, vol. i. (New York, 1902), has slighter merits.
(F. S. P.)
[1] It was embarrassed with a debt, however, of £3749, which, owing to conditions caused by the War of Independence, he really paid three times to his British creditors (not counting destruction on his estates, of equal amount, ordered by Lord Cornwallis). This greatly reduced his income for a number of years.
[2] The first law of its kind in Christendom, although not the earliest practice of such liberty in America.
[3] George Mason and Thomas L. Lee were members of the commission, but they were not lawyers, and did little actual work on the revision.
[4] Capital punishment was confined to treason and murder; the former was not to be attended by corruption of blood, drawing, or quartering; all other felonies were made punishable by confinement and hard labour, save a few to which was applied, against Jefferson’s desire, the principle of retaliation.
[5] This plan applied to the south-western as well as to the north-western territory, and was notable for a provision that slavery should not exist therein after 1800. This provision was defeated in 1784, but was adopted in 1787 for the north-western territory—a step which is very often said to have saved the Union in the Civil War; the south-western territory (out of which were later formed Mississippi, Alabama, &c.) being given over to slavery. Thus the anti-slavery clause of the ordinance of 1784 was not adopted; and it was preceded by unofficial proposals to the same end; yet to it belongs rightly some special honour as blazoning the way for federal control of slavery in the territories, which later proved of such enormous consequence. Jefferson in the first draft of the Ordinance of 1784, suggested the names to be given to the states eventually to be formed out of the territory concerned. For his suggestions he has been much ridiculed. The names are as follows: Illinoia, Michigania, Sylvania, Polypotamia, Assenisipia, Charronesus, Pelisipia, Saratoga, Metropotamia and Washington.
[6] He owned at one time above 150 slaves. His overseers were under contract never to bleed them; but he manumitted only a few at his death.