On this day in history, February 17, 1801, in the first orderly transition from one American political party to another, Thomas Jefferson was elected the third president of the United States.
Born in Virginia in 1743 to a planter who died when he was 14, Tom was raised with other orphans, educated in Greek, Latin, and French, and attended boarding school and the College of William and Mary. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1767.
He served in the House of Burgesses in 1769-74 and opposed Great Britain's hostile actions as a member of the Committee of Correspondence. He was a delegate to the second Continental Congress in 1775-76 and was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1776-79, when he drafted his revolutionary Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, which soon became state law.
The Declaration of Independence
As a member of the second Continental Congress, Jefferson was the chief author of the Declaration of Independence, which reflected his core belief in a republican form of government. The revolutionary document contains his immortal line:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
This has been called "one of the best-known sentences in the English language” and "the most potent and consequential words in American history.” During the Revolutionary War, Jefferson served as governor of Virginia, and was minister to France in 1785-89 after the war.
Jefferson Favors Rebellion
In 1786-87, he advised against the severe punishment of those behind Shays' Rebellion in Massachusetts. “A little rebellion now and then is a good thing . . . ,” he wrote from Paris. "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
The red-haired Jefferson, who stood six feet two and a half inches tall, was appointed by President George Washington as the first secretary of state in 1790-93. But he clashed with Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton over U.S. relations with France and Britain.
As a leader of the Federalist Party, Alexander Hamilton also favored a stronger federal government than Jefferson, who resigned when Washington supported the Federalist plan for a national bank. Jefferson was vice president under Federalist President John Adams in 1797-1801.
The Election of 1800
In 1800, Jefferson was the Democratic-Republican Party candidate for president, with Aaron Burr as his vice president, in a heated campaign against Adams. The Federalist Party had taken advantage of the Alien and Sedition Acts, vehemently opposed by Jefferson, who argued in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions that they were unconstitutional.
Jefferson and Burr tied at 73 electoral votes, and Adams came in third with 65 votes, which led to an impasse. Burr refused to concede, and the election went to the House of Representatives on February 17, 1801. Hamilton mistrusted Jefferson, but disliked Burr even more, so he persuaded the House to vote against Burr.
Each state cast one vote and Jefferson won 10 of 14 states on the 36th ballot, while Burr was confirmed as vice president. The 12th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1804, ended the electoral controversy of 1800-01 by requiring separate ballots for president and vice president.
New Partisan Politics
The election highlighted the conflict between Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican supporters of the French, who had launched their own revolution, and the pro-British Federalists, who favored English-style governmental policies. The Jeffersonians feared that their political opponents wanted to abandon revolutionary ideals and restore the monarchical tradition of England.
The Federalists detested the French revolutionaries' brutal, bloody use of the guillotine and were less favorable to France in their foreign policy. And they advocated a strong, centralized government, a standing army, and financial support for new, urban industries.
The Republicans preferred limited government and states' rights. “The government is best that governs least," Jefferson said. And they favored a rural, agrarian society of yeoman farmers. "I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health, and the liberties of man," he declared.
The Louisiana Purchase
In his inaugural address, Jefferson sought to heal such partisan political differences by proclaiming: “We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.” In 1801, he sent naval squadrons and marines to suppress the Barbary pirates’ actions against American shipping in Tripoli.
President Jefferson did not renew the Alien and Sedition Acts and had the tax that caused the Whiskey Rebellion repealed. This cut government revenue, leading him to slash the military budget, relying instead on state militias, and trim the national debt by $1 million, or over a third.
Jefferson stretched the Constitution and bought Louisiana from France for $15 million in 1803. The Louisiana Purchase more than doubled the size of the United States. Then, he sent Lewis and Clark on their expedition to explore the western territory all the way to the Pacific Ocean.
"I know that the acquisition of Louisiana has been disapproved by some,” Jefferson wrote, “that the enlargement of our territory would endanger its union. The larger our association the less will it be shaken by local passions; is it not better that the opposite bank of the Mississippi should be settled by our own brethren and children than by strangers of another family?"
Easily reelected in 1804 over the divided Federalists, leading to their final downfall, President Jefferson established the precedent of executive privilege by refusing to testify at Burr’s treason trial. And in 1807, he ended the foreign slave trade as of January 1, 1808.
His second term was overshadowed by the Napoleonic wars, which led to continued European interference in American affairs. With France and England at war, U.S. ships were often targeted, so Jefferson signed the Embargo Act, halting exports and imports to hurt their trade, but this badly damaged American business as well.
The University of Virginia
Jefferson retired to Monticello, his unique, hilltop home that he constantly redesigned and rebuilt, and withdrew from public life. Deeply in debt, he sold his collection of 6,487 books in 1815 to rebuild the scorched Library of Congress, and founded and designed the neoclassical University of Virginia as an "academical village" where shared learning would infuse the daily life of students.
He died at Monticello on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the same day that John Adams died. Jefferson’s wife had died after 10 years of marriage, and he was a widower as president. He was survived by two daughters, and there is substantial DNA proof of the progeny of children by his slave, Sally Hemings, the half-sister of his wife.
Jefferson’s hobbies were archeology, fishing, horticulture, walking and riding, and playing the violin. His inventions included the dumbwaiter, the swivel chair, and a macaroni machine. He owned slaves his whole life, liked to dress casually, was a poor public speaker, kept mockingbirds as pets, and loved wine. Today, his iconic image appears on the nickel and the $2 bill.
The Legacy of Thomas Jefferson
Like many of the Founding Fathers, Jefferson was a Deist who had no faith in miracles. He wrote his own account of the gospels, The Jefferson Bible, which was Unitarian in theology. He believed in religious freedom, but opposed religion as the basis for running the United States.
He maintained that “a wall of separation between church and state” was necessary in a modern, democratic republic, writing: “In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.”
His intellectual support of the Enlightenment ideals of liberty and equality struck a chord that has echoed through the ages. His own view of his life, which he wrote for his tombstone at Monticello, concludes: "Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia."
SOURCES:
Ellis, Joseph. American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson. 1996.
Hitchens, Christopher. Thomas Jefferson: Author of America. 2005.
Jefferson, Thomas. The Jefferson Bible: The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. 1816.
John Kirshon - John Kirshon is a journalist/editor with more than 25 years of experience at the Associated Press, The New York Times and CBS News. He was ...
