THOMAS JEFFERSON*

THE FRIEND OF THE PEOPLE

"Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God."-JEFFERSON'S SEAL.

Four things made the United States a Nation: The Declaration of Independence and the heroic work of the Revolution, the adoption of the Constitution and the presidency of Washington. But we were first made Americans by the work of Thomas Jefferson and of those who followed him and believed as he did. More than anyone else among our patriot fathers, Jefferson expressed the ideals that we call American. He was the eloquent pen of the Revolution. But he was far more than that. He believed in human equality as few men have ever believed in it. And he worked for it with power and success.

Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. His bold and original thought took the lead in ending the system that gave all a man's land on his death to his eldest son, a system that had built up the great estates of Europe, and prevented the division of land among the people. He led the cause of religious freedom, separating the church and the state. His work ended the importation of slaves from Africa. He was the father of popular education in America. So many of his theories and principles are the very foundation. stones of the Republic, that it has been said: “If Jefferson was wrong, America is wrong."

*From a sketch by John Foster Carr.

From the beginning, the spirit of independence flourished on American soil; for none but hardy lovers of liberty could face the dangers, hardships and toil of the unbroken wilderness, and find a living there. Within a dozen years after the first settlers came from England, the first Virginia Assembly met, the first representative body that ever came together in the land that was to be the United States. This assembly immediately—it was in 1619-claimed the right of self-government and boldly made it known to England, the mother country, that in crossing the seas the colonists had lost none of the rights of Englishmen. The first Jefferson in America, the great grandfather of Thomas Jefferson, had come from Wales to Virginia, and was a member of this first, free assembly of America. In the great grandson the love of liberty seemed inherited. It was in the very blood of the

man.

THE BOY AND HIS STUDENT DAYS

Thomas Jefferson was born in Albemarle County, Virginia, April 2nd, 1743. Men said that he was always fortunate, and his good fortune surely began with his father, who, like Washington, had started life as a surveyor, and had helped in making the first good map that was ever prepared of the colony of Virginia. He was a man of might, knew the wilderness and loved it, and became the unquestioned chief of the whole frontier. Among the wild hills of central Virginia, with the Indians still nearby, he bought one thousand acres of land, and began to hew out a farm and a home. And soon to his log cabin he brought his bride of seventeen. He was a man of keen intelligence, and in the days when few people had books,

and fewer read them, he eagerly read the famous volumes that were the help and inspiration of Franklin. He was an enterprising, hard-working, methodical man; and, growing wheat and tobacco on his highland farm, he was so successful that in twenty years he could give a large plantation to his youngest son. He was still a young man when he was made colonel of his county and member of the House of Burgesses.

Human greatness is sometimes found in a small and delicate body, but sometimes, and it was so among the founders of our republic, great men are almost giants in body. Jefferson, like Washington and Lincoln, was a very tall and very powerful man. And as he inherited from his father his great strength, so from his father he inherited his fine and bold intelligence. His first schooling was in the families of two clergymen. His father died while he was still a boy, and as a last command, directed that his son Thomas should receive the best education that the colonies in that day could give. And it was a part of that command that the exercise necessary for the body's development should not be neglected; for, he said, the weakly in body could not be independent in mind.

By the death of his father, Thomas Jefferson became his own master, when he was fourteen years old. His first free act was to change his school, and he chose the best school in the province. After two years of work there he was impatient for college. Explaining his wishes to his guardian, he said that at college he could learn mathematics and get a more "universal acquaintance." And so when he was sixteen, he went to Williamsburg, to the old college of William and Mary. Williamsburg was the capital of the colony, a town of no more than one thousand inhabitants, in the very heart of the great tobacco country. It was

a dull and sleepy town, except during the winter season, when the legislature and the great court of justice were in session. Then it became a gorgeous center of fashion; the tobacco lords with their ladies, their splendid coaches and six, and their men servants filled the town. The old Raleigh Tavern was ablaze with lights and was gay with parties and balls, music and dancing, and the royal governor then held his elegant court.

Here Jefferson spent the next seven years making his own the knowledge he longed for, and forming the opinions that were to make him a great leader of men. For a young man of sixteen he must have had extraordinary talent and personal charm, for at once three remarkable men became his friends and found pleasure in his company. One of these men, his "daily companion," he said, was a Dr. William Small, Professor of Mathematics and Philosophy-a bold and original thinker, who gave the young Thomas his first knowledge of the "system of things in which we are placed." From him he learned the habit of looking at things carefully and "observingly." And from him, too, he caught the enthusiasm for science, that was just then a new thing in the world. The second friend, with whom he dined once a week, was no less a person than the Governor himself-Francis Fauquier, a very eloquent gentleman indeed, patron of learning and literature, French scholar, musician, a man of honor, but also a gay and dashing man of the world, fond of wine, cards and gaming.

His third friend was George Wythe,-"my second father," he called him-who because of his lofty character and great ability made the deepest impression upon the mind and heart of the young Jefferson. He was the greatest lawyer of old Virginia, and in his