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U.S Presidents — Thomas Jefferson | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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OVERVIEW
Name: Thomas Jefferson
President: # 3 Term Number(s): 4, 5 Term Length: 8 Took Office: March 4, 1801 Left Office: March 4, 1809 Age when Elected: 57 Party: Democratic-Republican Also Known As: "Man of the People, Sage of Monticello" BIOGRAPHIC INFORMATION
Education: The College of William & Mary
Occupation: statesman, planter, lawyer Other Governmental Position: 2nd Vice President of the United States, 1st United States Secretary of State, United States Ambassador to France, Delegate from Virginia to the Congress of the Confederation, 2nd Governor of Virginia, Delegate from Virginia to the Second Continental Congress. Military Service: None Religion: unknown Spouse(s): Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson (January 1, 1772) Children: Martha Washington Jefferson, Jane Randolph Jefferson, stillborn son, Mary Wayles Jefferson, Lucy Elizabeth Jefferson I, Lucy Elizabeth Jefferson II
Birthdate: April 13, 1743
Birthplace: Shadwell, Virginia Deathdate: July 4, 1826 Deathplace: Charlottesville, Virginia Age at Death: 83 Cause of Death: debility (most likely dehydration resulting from amoebic dysentery) Place of Internment: The Monticello Estate in Charlottesville, Virginia  Signature FIRST ELECTION
Election Year: 1800
Main Opponent: John Adams Voter Participation: N/A
SECOND ELECTION
Election Year: 1804
Main Opponent: Charles Cotesworth Pinckney Voter Participation: N/A
CABINET AND COURT APPOINTMENTS
Vice President: Aaron Burr, George Clinton
Secretary of State: James Madison (1801–1809) Secretary of the Treasury: Samuel Dexter (1801), Albert Gallatin (1801–1809) Secretary of War: Henry Dearborn (1801–1809) Secretary of the Navy: Benjamin Stoddert (1801), Robert Smith (1801–1809) Attorney General: Levi Lincoln Sr. (1801–1804), John Breckinridge (1805–1806), Caesar A. Rodney (1807–1809) Supreme Court Assignments: William Johnson (1804), Henry Brockholst Livingston (1807), Thomas Todd (1807) PRESIDENT'S BIOGRAPHY This powerful advocate of liberty was born in 1743 in Albemarle County, Virginia, inheriting from his father, a planter and surveyor, some 5,000 acres (2,023 hectares) of land, and from his mother, a Randolph, high social standing. He studied at the College of William and Mary, then read law. In 1772 he married Martha Wayles Skelton, a widow, and took her to live in his partly constructed mountaintop home, Monticello. Freckled and sandy-haired, rather tall and awkward, Jefferson was eloquent as a correspondent, but he was no public speaker. In the Virginia House of Burgesses and the Continental Congress, he contributed his pen rather than his voice to the patriot cause. As the "silent member" of the Congress, Jefferson, at 33, drafted the Declaration of Independence. In years following, he labored to make its words a reality in Virginia. Most notably, he wrote a bill establishing religious freedom, enacted in 1786. Jefferson succeeded Benjamin Franklin as minister to France in 1785. His sympathy for the French Revolution led him into conflict with Alexander Hamilton when Jefferson was Secretary of State in President Washington's Cabinet. He resigned in 1793. Sharp political conflict developed, and two separate parties, the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans, began to form. Jefferson gradually assumed leadership of the Republicans, who sympathized with the revolutionary cause in France. Attacking Federalist policies, he opposed a strong centralized Government and championed the rights of states.  When Jefferson assumed the presidency, the crisis in France had passed. He slashed Army and Navy expenditures, cut the budget, eliminated the tax on whiskey so unpopular in the West, yet reduced the national debt by a third. He also sent a naval squadron to fight the Barbary pirates, who were harassing American commerce in the Mediterranean. Further, although the Constitution made no provision for the acquisition of new land, Jefferson suppressed his qualms over constitutionality when he had the opportunity to acquire the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon in 1803. During Jefferson's second term, he was increasingly preoccupied with keeping the nation from involvement in the Napoleonic wars, though both England and France interfered with the neutral rights of American merchantmen. Jefferson's attempted solution, an embargo upon American shipping, worked badly and was unpopular. Jefferson retired to Monticello to ponder such projects as his grand designs for the University of Virginia. A French nobleman observed that he had placed his house and his mind "on an elevated situation, from which he might contemplate the universe." Jefferson died on July 4, 1826. FIRST LADY'S BIOGRAPHY Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson They were married on New Year's Day, 1772, at the bride's plantation home, The Forest, near Williamsburg. When they finally reached Monticello in a late January snowstorm to find no fire, no food, and the servants asleep, they toasted their new home with a leftover half-bottle of wine and "song and merriment and laughter." That night, on their own mountaintop, the love of Thomas Jefferson and his bride seemed strong enough to endure any adversity. The birth of their daughter Martha in September increased their happiness. Within ten years the family gained five more children. Of them all, only two lived to grow up: Martha, called Patsy, and Mary, called Maria or Polly. The physical strain of frequent pregnancies weakened Martha Jefferson so gravely that her husband curtailed his political activities to stay near her. He served in Virginia's House of Delegates and as governor, but he refused an appointment by the Continental Congress as a commissioner to France. Just after New Year's Day, 1781, a British invasion forced Mrs. Jefferson to flee the capital in Richmond with a baby girl a few weeks old—who died in April. In June the family barely escaped an enemy raid on Monticello. Mrs. Jefferson gave birth to another daughter the following May, and never regained a fair measure of strength. Jefferson wrote on May 20 that his wife's condition was dangerous. After months of tending her devotedly, he noted in his account book for September 6, "My dear wife died this day at 11:45 A.M." Apparently he never brought himself to record their life together; in a memoir he referred to ten years "in unchequered happiness." Half a century later, his daughter Martha remembered his sorrow: "the violence of his emotion... to this day I not describe to myself." For three weeks he had shut himself in his room, pacing back and forth until exhausted. Slowly that first anguish spent itself. In November he agreed to serve as commissioner to France, eventually taking Patsy with him in 1784 and sending for Polly later. When Jefferson became president in 1801, he had been a widower for 19 years. He had become as capable of handling social affairs as political matters. Occasionally he called on Dolley Madison for assistance. And it was Patsy, now Mrs. Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr., who appeared as the lady of the president's house in the winter of 1802–1803, when she spent seven weeks there. She was there again in 1805–1806, and gave birth to a son named for James Madison, the first child born in the White House. It was Martha Randolph and her family who shared Jefferson's retirement at Monticello until he died there in 1826. MAJOR EVENTS
1801–1805: The First Barbary War. Jefferson wins America's first significant overseas war.
1803: The Louisiana Purchase. The U.S. pays $15 million dollars to France for over 800,000 square miles (207 million hectares) of land. This amounts to 23% of the United States at roughly 3 cents per acre.
1803: Ohio joins the Union.
1804: Meriwether Lewis and William Clark begin their exploration of the Northwest.
1804: Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution defines the procedure for how the president and vice president are elected.
1807: Importing slaves from Africa is outlawed by Congress.
1807: Embargo Act of 1807. Jefferson promotes this financially disastrous bill prohibiting imports and exports for all ships and vessels under U.S. jurisdiction in an attempt to maintain U.S. neutrality between England and France.
1809: Non-Intercourse Act lifts all embargoes on American ships except for those going to British or French ports. Difficult to enforce, it is ineffective and economically damaging to the U.S.
TRIVIA
1.Thomas Jefferson was fluent in six languages.
2. The election was close; both Jefferson and Burr got the same number of electoral votes. The House of Representatives decided who should win the election with ten state delegations voting for Jefferson, four voting for Burr, and two making no choice. Burr became Vice President.
3. Thomas Jefferson was the main author of the Declaration of Independence.
4. Jefferson was the first president to be inaugurated in Washington, D.C.
5. Jefferson wrote his own epitaph never mentioning that he served as president. His epitaph read, "Author of the Declaration of American Independence, Author of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and the Father of the University of Virginia."
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