THOMAS JEFFERSON :: Essays Papers

THOMAS JEFFERSONIn the thick of party conflict in 1800, Thomas Jefferson wrote in a private letter, I have sworn upon the altar of God perpetual hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. This respectable advocate of liberty was born in 1743 in Albermarle County, Virginia, inheriting from his father, a planter and surveyor, some 5,000 acres 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 marital Martha Wayles Skelton, a widow, and took her to live in his partly constructed mountaintop home, Monticello. Freckled and sandy-haired, rather tall(a) and awkward, Jefferson was eloquent as a correspondent, but he was no prevalent speaker. In the Virginia House of Burgesses and the Continental Congress, he contributed his pen rather than his articulatio to the patriot cause. As the silent member of the Congress, Jefferson, at 33, drafted the Declaration of Independence. In years fol lowing he labored to make its words a reality in Virginia.Most notably, he wrote a bill establishing unearthly 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 Washingtons Cabinet. He resigned in 1793. Sharp political conflict developed, and both 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 authorities and championed the rights of states. As a reluctant candidate for President in 1796, Jefferson came inwardly three votes of election. Through a flaw in the Constitution, he became evil President, although an opponent of President Adams. In 1800 the defect caused a more upright problem. Repu blican electors, attempting to name both a President and a ill-doing President from their own party, cast a tie vote amid Jefferson and Aaron Burr. The House of Representatives settled the tie. Hamilton, disliking both Jefferson and Burr, nevertheless urged Jeffersons election. When Jefferson assumed the Presidency, the crisis in France had passed. He slashed Army and Navy expenditures, cut the budget, eliminated the tax on whisky so unpopular in the West, yet reduced the national debt by a third. He also sent a naval squadron to iron the Barbary pirates, who were harassing American commerce in the Mediterranean.