Thomas Jefferson

He ... was remarkable even in his infancy for enterprise, boldness and discretion. When only eight years of age, he habitually went out, in the dead of night, alone with his dogs, into the forest to hunt the raccoon and opossum, which, seeking their food in the night can then only be taken. In this exercise no season or circumstance could obstruct his purpose, plunging through the winter's snows and frozen streams in pursuit of his object.

• Jefferson the Virginian (Dumas Malone)
  • p. 47 (Easton Press, 1993)

[Mathematics] was always his favorite subject, he said. "We have no theories here, no uncertainties remain on the mind; all is demonstration and satisfaction. I have forgotten much, and recover it with more difficulty than when in the vigor of my mind I originally acquired it." But, as he soon wrote to another, "thanks to the good foundation laid at college by my old master and friend Small, I am doing it with a delight and success beyond my expectation."

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 54 (Easton Press, 1993)

Nobody can live Jefferson's long and eventful life all over again, and nobody in our age is likely to match his universality.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. vii (Easton Press, 1993)

It was not as a commander like Washington, nor a fiery orator like Patrick Henry, that he gained his chief title to fame — it was as the draftsman of state papers and legislative bills and legal statutes.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. xii (Easton Press, 1993)

Nobody can live Jefferson's long and eventful life over again, and nobody in our age is likely to match his universality.

No historic American, except possibly Benjamin Franklin, played so notable a part in so many important fields of activity and thought: government, law, education, agriculture, architecture, science, philosophy.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. viii (Easton Press, 1993)

[Thomas Jefferson's fame] was dimmed toward the middle of the nineteenth century, when slaveholders tended to deride his sayings about human equality and Unionists to deplore his emphasis on State rights.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. viii (Easton Press, 1993)

Jefferson believed that he was sharing in cosmic events in that era, and in the perspective of history he undoubtedly was. [...] The sort of faith it called for he had in rare measure, and maintained afterwards more persistently than almost any other leader. This in itself is a supremely important historical fact.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • pp. xi-xii (Easton Press, 1993)

During the American Revolution, when Jefferson said "my country" he meant Virginia.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. xiii (Easton Press, 1993)

Only in the sense that he believed that society should be governed by those who are really the best qualified can he possibly be regarded as a political aristocrat, and it did not take him long to discover that native ability and high character are the sole possession of no class.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. xiv (Easton Press, 1993)

If he must be given a single designation, he was a liberal. Liberty was his chief concern, and his major emphasis was on the freedom of the spirit and the mind.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. xiv (Easton Press, 1993)

After Benjamin Franklin [Thomas Jefferson] may be regarded as the fullest American embodiment of the ideals of the Enlightenment. Both in his intellectual and his public life he represented them in action.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. xv (Easton Press, 1993)

If he ever wanted the [governorship of Virginia], which is doubtful, he certainly ceased doing so within a very few weeks.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. xvi (Easton Press, 1993)

...this shy and highly intellectual gentleman might never have got started in politics had he begun his career in a more democratic age.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. xvii (Easton Press, 1993)

He was exceedingly domestic, concentrating on his little family an intensity of devotion which is unusual among men.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. xviii (Easton Press, 1993)

He had no desire to be the master of others but he applied the most rigorous discipline to himself. That in itself must have made him seem rather formidable as a human being.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. xviii (Easton Press, 1993)

Jefferson was born on the fringe of western settlement, and some will say that he thus became a child of the American frontier.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • pp. 3-4 (Easton Press, 1993)

Rowe and the Master of the grammar school became far too merry and led the college boys in a row with the boys of the town. Consequently, one of these clergymen was summarily dismissed and the other resigned... Almost a year passed before a successor to the deposed professor of moral philosophy was installed, and in the interim Small added all or many of Rowe's subjects to his own.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 4 (Easton Press, 1993)

The most important early fact about Thomas Jefferson is not that he appeared on the edge of settlement but that he was born in the Province of Virginia and that, from his first days, he was numbered among its gentry.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • pp. 4-5 (Easton Press, 1993)

He died at the age of fifty-seven, in November, 1742 — three years after the marriage of his daughter to Peter Jefferson, and only a few months before the birth of their first son.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 17 (Easton Press, 1993)

When Peter Jefferson knew the region and his son was a boy, [Ablemarle County] was a silent country of far-flung patriarchal seats, though these were without architectural pretension. Afterwards, plain farmhouses on smaller clearings increased in number.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 29 (Easton Press, 1993)

Residents of Albemarle remembered that Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson had penetrated uncharted territory, and men associated with the County followed their example. Thomas Walker of Castle Hill carried on the dividing line from the point where they had left it; and George Rogers Clark, who was born across the Southwest Mountains from Shadwell just about the time that Peter returned, conquered the Northwest during the Revolution. His younger and equally redheaded brother, William Clark, was born in another county after his family had left this one, but Meriwether Lewis, whose name is linked with his in the history of exploration, was a native. Under the direction of President Jefferson they crossed a continent. The tradition of the wilderness persisted in Ablemarle.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 30 (Easton Press, 1993)

[Peter Jefferson] died when he was still less than fifty. His elder son, [was] then... fourteen.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 31 (Easton Press, 1993)

When he became twenty-one Thomas was to have either the lands on the Rivanna or the Fluvanna as he should choose, along with a proper share of the lifestock, half of the slaves not otherwise disposed of, and the residue of the estate. The lands that he did not choose were to go ultimately to his brother Randolph, along with a similar portion of the slaves and stock. As the residuary legatee he got the larger share, but the distribution of property between him and his young brother was certainly far more equitable than the distribution of talents. Thomas also got his father's books, mathematical instruments, cherry-tree desk and bookcase; and his designated servant, the "mulatto fellow Sawney," was the most valuable slave.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 32 (Easton Press, 1993)

One reason for leaving him the bookcase was that he had gone to it very frequently already. The forty volumes he is known to have inherited constituted an insignificant library in the light of his mature standards, but they formed the nucleus of his first collection.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 32 (Easton Press, 1993)

For all his lack of book learning he deeply appreciated it, and it was he more than anyone else who caused his son to be well schooled. The tradition is that his dying instruction was that the boy should receive a thorough classical education, and Thomas himself said that he was more grateful for this than for all the other privileges which his father's care had placed within his reach. If he had to choose between his estate and a liberal education he would have taken the latter, but no choice was necessary, for he was given both

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 33 (Easton Press, 1993)

He said much less about Jane Randolph Jefferson, however, than about his father. He Various entries in his financial records after he became a man reveal his solicitude for her welfare, and his almost complete failure to mention her name elsewhere may be attributed to his characteristic reticence about the women of his family. Nevertheless, the only remark he is known to have made about her influence was negative, and he probably did not value her counsel very highly.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 37 (Easton Press, 1993)

He must have inherited some of his diverse talent from his mother, but there is no positive testimony about her personality, and she remains a shadowy figure.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 38 (Easton Press, 1993)

Because of the death of the two infant boys at Tuckahoe, daughters predominated in the household and there was a distinct gap between the five older children [Jane, Mary, Thomas, Elizabeth, Martha] and the three younger [Lucy, Anna Scott, Randolph], who were born after the return to Shadwell.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 38 (Easton Press, 1993)

Thomas's sisters Jane and Martha meant more than the others in his life. Jane, nearly three years older than he, was his first favorite... It is said that she, more than any other member of the family, stimulated his boyish ambitions and encouraged him in his reading and his cultivation of music... he was only twenty-two when she died unmarried and he wrote for her a Latin epitaph.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 39 (Easton Press, 1993)

In 1752, when he was nine, his father placed him in the Latin school of the Reverend William Douglas, minister of St. James Parish, Northam. He boarded at the clergyman's house during the school term and remained under his instruction until the year that Colonel Jefferson died.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 39 (Easton Press, 1993)

Much nearer home a competent classicist was awaiting him, and he probably became aware of the limitations of the Reverend William Douglas after he had begun to study under the Reverend James Maury.

Early in 1758, when he was fourteen, he began to attend Maury's little school. The clergyman was then forty years old and for six years had been officiating in Fredericksville Parish, which how included the part of Albemarle lying north and west of the Rivanna.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 40 (Easton Press, 1993)

...pointed out, many years later, the place designated for a race between Tom Jefferson's slow pony and Dabney Carr's swift horse. Tom had suggested that this should occur on February 30, and not until the last day of the month did the others discover that they had been taken in. This early Jeffersonian hoax produced no lasting ill will, however; the disappointed rider of the swift horse was, for a dozen years, the closest friend that the owner of the slow pony had.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 42 (Easton Press, 1993)

From his first notable teacher, Jefferson gained none of his characteristic political principles or religious ideas. He was indebted to him, however, more than to any other man, for his training in the classics. After two years in this school he was able to read Greek and Roman authors in the original, and this he continued to do throughout his long life.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 44 (Easton Press, 1993)

Thomas regarded George Washington as the best horseman of the age, but he himself was described in later life as an "uncommonly fine rider" and the family remembered him as a fearless one.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 46 (Easton Press, 1993)

[Thomas Jefferson] came to believe that the taming of the horse had resulted in the degeneracy of the human body, and he commended walking for exercise from the time that he began to advise the young.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 46 (Easton Press, 1993)

The family preserved a story about his first adventures as a huntsman. When he was ten he was given a gun by his father and sent into the forest alone in order to develop self-reliance. The inexperienced boy was wholly unsuccessful at first in his quest of quarry; but at length he found a wild turkey caught in a pen, tied it to a tree with his garter, shot it, and brought it home in triumph.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 46 (Easton Press, 1993)

It is said that while he was still at Maury's his favorite indoor amusement was playing on the violin, and that he was already proficient for his years.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 47 (Easton Press, 1993)

Lodging and eating at the College were not compulsory for "paying scholars," but the surviving records imply that he did not avail himself of the privilege of living in town. He began to pay board on March 25, 1760, and continued to do so for two years and one month. Then, so far as the records show, his college career was over.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 50 (Easton Press, 1993)

When Jefferson arrived on the scene, [William Small] was there, teaching physics, metaphysics, and mathematics, and through force of circumstances was soon teaching practically everything else.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 51 (Easton Press, 1993)

Jefferson's other teacher at first was the Reverend Jacob Rowe, professor of moral philosophy, whose field comprised rhetoric, logic, and ethics.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 52 (Easton Press, 1993)

For nearly half of Jefferson's course Small appears to have been the only regular teacher that he had. Whatever may be thought about the organization, administration, and discipline of the College, here was one of those rare personal influences which prove unforgettable and elicit immortal tribute. He afterwards said that Small probably fixed the destinies of his life.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 52 (Easton Press, 1993)

It is a highly significant fact, also, that the early teacher who did most to fix the destinies of his life was the only layman in the faculty of the College.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 53 (Easton Press, 1993)

What he learned from his favorite teacher was not obedience to authority but delight in the exercise of his mind.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 54 (Easton Press, 1993)

[Mathematics] was always his favorite subject, he said. "We have no theories here, no uncertainties remain on the mind; all is demonstration and satisfaction. I have forgotten much, and recover it with more difficulty than when in the vigor of my mind I originally acquired it." But, as he soon wrote to another, "thanks to the good foundation laid at college by my old master and friend Small, I am doing it with a delight and success beyond my expectation."

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 54 (Easton Press, 1993)

Jefferson said that he gave to his studies enlightened and affectionate guidance and was like a father to him. Actually, this unmarried teacher, whose chief complaint about his position was its loneliness, made a daily companion of young Jefferson, and taught him no less through informal talk than by his memorable lectures.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 54 (Easton Press, 1993)

There is some testimony that Small's influence persisted in the College. It has been said that he, more than any other teacher, was responsible for the liberality of spirit which came to characterize William and Mary. Some people called it "skepticism" and thought it dangerous, but Jefferson and his kindred spirits regarded it as the first step towards true knowledge. Historically, William Small was a minor torchbearer of the Enlightenment, and by any reckoning he was one of those rare men who point the way, who show new paths, who open doors before the mind.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 55 (Easton Press, 1993)

To Jefferson [Small] also opened the door of George Wythe's law office, and he and Wythe ushered this inquiring young man into the Governor's Palace.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 55 (Easton Press, 1993)