Home › Contents › Thomas Jefferson (THIRD president of the United)

Thomas Jefferson (THIRD president of the United)

THIRD president of the United States of America, under the constitution of 1789. He passed two years at the College of William and Mary, but his education was principally conducted by private tutors. He adopted of the legislature of Virginia, from 1769 to the commencement of the American revolution. In 1775 he was a delegate in Congress from Virginia. May 15, 1776, the convention of Virginia instructed their delegates to propose to Congress a declaration of independence. In June, Mr. Lee made the motion for such a declaration in Congress, and it was voted that a committee be appointed to prepare one. The committee was elected by ballot, and consisted of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston. The Declaration was exclusively the work of Mr. Jefferson, to whom the right of drafting it belonged as chairman of the committee, though amendments and alterations were made in it, by Adams, Franklin, and other members of the committee, and afterwards by Congress. Mr. Jefferson retired from Congress in September, 1776, and took a seat in the legislature of Virginia, in October. In 1779, he was chosen governor of Virginia, and held the office two years. He declined a foreign appointment in 1776, and again in 1781. He accepted the appointment of one of the commissioners for negotiating peace, but before he sailed, news was received of the signing the provisional treaty, and he was excused from proceeding on the mission. He returned to Congress. In 1784, he wrote notes on the establishment of a money-unit, and of a coin age for the United States. He proposed the money-system now in use. In May, 1784, he was appointed, with Adams and Franklin, a minister plenipotentiary to negotiate treaties of commerce with foreign nations. In 1785, he was appointed minister to the French court. In 1789, he returned to America, and received from Washington the appointment of secretary of state, which he held till December, 1793, and then resigned. On some appointment being offered him by Washington, in September, 1794, he replied to the secretary, "No circumstances will ever more tempt me to engage in anything public." Notwithstanding this determination he suffered himself to be a candidate for president, and was chosen vice-president in 1796. At the election in 1801, he and Aaron Burr having an equal number of the electoral votes, the House of Representatives, after a severe struggle, finally decided in his favor. He was re-elected in 1805. At the end of his second term, he retired from office. He died July 4, 1826, at one o'clock in the afternoon, just fifty years from the date of the Declaration of Independence, aged 83. Preparations had been made throughout the United States to celebrate this day, as a jubilee; and it is a most remarkable fact, that on the same day, John Adams, a signer with Jefferson of the Declaration, and the second on the committee for drafting it, and his immediate predecessor in the office of president, also died. Mr. Jefferson's publications were, Summary View of the Rights of British America, 1774; Declaration of Independence, 1776; Notes on Virginia, 1781; Manual of Parliamentary Practice for the use of the Senate; Life of Captain Lewis, 1814; some papers in Am. Phil. Trans. IV. His works, chiefly letters, were published by his grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, 4 vols. 8vo., 1829