JEFFERSON, THOMAS (1743-1826), third president of the United States, political th eorist, and representative of Enlightenment thought. ..

Jefferson was born in Albemarle County, Virginia. He graduated from the college of Wilham and Mary in 1762, studied law under George . Wythe, and was admitted to the Virginia bar in 1767. After he entered the House of Burgesses In 1769, public affairs increasingly occupied his time, and he soon became a leading opponent of British oppression of the col onies. A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774), Declaration ofthe Causes and Necessity for Taking up Arms (1775), Arms ( 1775), and the Declaration of Independence (1776), all drafted by Jefferson, made him the major penman of the American Revolution. In 1776 he left the Continental Congress to lead in reforming the laws of Virginia, drafting, among other measures, the famous bill establishi ng religious freedom. He served as governor of Virgina from 1779 to 1781, retired for two years during his wife's fatal illness, returned to Cong ress, helped draft the Northwest Odinance, and went to France, where, in 1785, he succeeded Benjamin Franklin as American minister. He delighted in Fr ence culture and conversed with Lafayette and other enlightened Frenchmen about limiting the despotism of the ancien regime. He returned to Amer ica a warm advocate of Franco-American friendship and in 1790 became secretary of state in Washington's first cabinet. With James Madison, he soon led the opposition against the party and plans of Alexander Hamilton and the spread of British influence in American councils. He resigned i n 1793, but during three years of "retirement," he remained politically active---especially in denouncing Jay's treaty. Elected vice-president in 1797, he bitterly opposed the quasi war with France and the Alien and Sedition laws and wrote the Kentucky Resolutions affirming the right of states to declare

void federal laws they deemed unconstitutional. His election as president in 1801 ended Federalist domination of the government. The restriction of the scope of the federal government, the purchase of Louisiana (1803), the failure of reconciliation efforts with England(1807), and the Embarg o(1808) marked his administrations. He retired to Monticello in 1809, devoting his remaining years to study, farming, a wide correspondence, and the f ounding of the University of Virginia. Philosophical views. Jefferson stands with Franklin as the supreme embodiment of the Enlightenment in the United States. His "immortals" were Bacon, Newton, and Locke, each representing a major aspect of his philosoph y. He accepted Bacon's empiricism and emphasis on the role of reason in improving society. From Newton he acquired his view that the univer se was harmonious, governed by law, and amenable to human investigation. Locke enunciated the political implications of these viewpoints a nd was, for Jefferson, the pre-eminent philosophical guide. The empirical epistemology of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and the insistence on go vernment by consent in the second Treatise on Civil Government undergirded all his thought. Although he read and admired other philosophers of the Age of Reason, especially the French physiocrats, he remained firmly within the English tradition. True to the Enlightenment, Jefferson was in many respects a universal man. Altho ugh not deeply interested in religion and frequently attacked as a freethinker and atheist(especially during the campaign of 1800), he accepted the conventiona l deism of his day. He admired Christian ethical doctrines enough to arrange them, taken from the Bible, in the volume he titled "Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth." Jefferson souqht to apply reason and scientific insight to agriculture and plantation life in general; he invented an improved plow, a cloc k showing days of the week, and the numerous other useful gadgets which add up to the fascination of his home, Monticello. He was an outstanding archite ct and an

enthusiastic natural scientist, making especially important contributions to paleontology. In addition, he was a learned philologist, a dist inguished bibliophile, a brilliant correspondent, a skilled violinist, and a connoisseur of the visual arts. He showed in his own life what man could do with the birthri ght of freedom proclaimed by Locke. Social and Political theory. Jefferson's most enduring fame is as the social phi losopher of American democracy. If the people were to govern, he held, they had somehow to be rendered "good,"est self-rule prove a curse. Hence, Jeffe rson favored agriculture because its pursuit fostered self-reliance, diligence, common sense, and other necessary qualities of "governors"; he sought to abolish feudal laws and to promote the right of every man to acquire property and hence independence and responsibility. He made education a key part of his every proposal for government. The statement "that government is best which governs least" became his guide only after he came to fear the plutocratic use o f power by Hamilton and others. He welcomed authority in governments, especially state and local ones; he accepted checks and balances, believed in th e utility of bills of rights, and favored the power of legislatures more than did many of his colleagues. He saw freedom of the press and religion as essentia l to democracy, and he believed it the national interest of the United States to encourage the spread of freedom around the world. Thus he resisted British he gemony in the Western world, encouraged the French Revolution, and supported the Mon.roe Doctrine. He was, in short, eager to find every device and policy that would prove mankind capable of governing itself in freedom and virtue. Fo~ probably the most accurate understanding of Jefferson might be Paul L. Ford, ed., The Wrltmgs of Thomas Jefferson, 10 vols.(New York, 1892)