Thomas jefferson' life history

Early life and career

The third of ten children, Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743 at the family home in Shadwell, Goochland County, Virginia, now part of Albemarle County. His father was Peter Jefferson, a planter and slaveholder, and a surveyor. He was of possible Welsh descent, although this remains unclear. His mother was Jane Randolph, daughter of Isham Randolph, a ship's captain and sometime planter. Peter and Jane married in 1739. Thomas Jefferson was little interested and indifferent to his ancestry and he only knew of the existence of his paternal grandfather.
Before the widower William Randolph, an old friend of Peter Jefferson, died in 1745, he appointed Peter as guardian to manage his Tuckahoe Plantation and care for his four children. That year the Jeffersons relocated to Tuckahoe, where they lived for the next seven years before returning to Shadwell in 1752. Here Thomas Jefferson recorded his earliest memory, that of being carried on a pillow by a slave during the move to Tuckahoe. Peter Jefferson died in 1757 and the Jefferson estate was divided between Peter's two sons; Thomas and Randolph. Thomas inherited approximately 5,000 acres  of land, including Monticello and between 20-40 slaves. He took control of the property after he came of age at 21.
On October 1, 1765, when Jefferson was 22, his oldest sister Jane died at the age of 25. He fell into a period of deep mourning, as he was already saddened by the absence of his sisters Mary, who had been married several years to Thomas Bolling, and Martha, who in July had wed Dabney Carr. Both lived at their husbands' residences. Only Jefferson's younger siblings Elizabeth, Lucy, and the two toddlers, were at home. He drew little comfort from the younger ones, as they did not provide him with the same intellectual engagement as the older sisters had. According to the historian Ferling, while growing up Jefferson struggled with loneliness and abandonment issues that eventually developed into a reclusive lifestyle as an adult.Jefferson began his childhood education under the direction of tutors at Tuckahoe along with the Randolph children.In 1752, Jefferson began attending a local school run by a Scottish Presbyterian minister. At the age of nine, Jefferson began studying Latin, Greek, and French; he learned to ride horses, and began to appreciate the study of nature. He studied under the Reverend James Maury from 1758 to 1760 near Gordonsville, Virginia. While boarding with Maury's family, he studied history, science and the classics.At age 16, Jefferson entered the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, and first met the law professor George Wythe, who became his influential mentor. For two years he studied mathematics, metaphysics, and philosophy under Professor William Small, who introduced the enthusiastic Jefferson to the writings of the British Empiricists, including John Locke, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton He also improved his French, Greek, and violin. A diligent student, Jefferson displayed an avid curiosity in all fields and graduated in 1762 with highest honors.[citation needed] Jefferson read law while working as a law clerk for Wythe. During this time, he also read a wide variety of English classics and political works. Jefferson was admitted to the Virginia bar five years later in 1767.Throughout his life, Jefferson depended on books for his education. He collected and accumulated thousands of books for his library at Monticello. When Jefferson's father Peter died Thomas inherited, among other things, his large library.  A significant portion of Jefferson's library was also bequeathed to him in the will of George Wythe, who had an extensive collection. Always eager for more knowledge, Jefferson continued learning throughout most of his life. Jefferson once said, "I cannot live without books."

Marriage and family

After practicing as a circuit lawyer for several years, Jefferson married the 23-year-old widow Martha Wayles Skelton. The wedding was celebrated on January 1, 1772 at Martha's home, an estate called 'The Forest' near Williamsburg, Virginia. Martha Jefferson was described as attractive, gracious and popular with their friends; she was a frequent hostess for Jefferson and managed the large household. They were said to have a happy marriage. She read widely, did fine needle work and was an amateur musician. Jefferson played the violin and Martha was an accomplished piano player. It is said that she was attracted to Thomas largely because of their mutual love of music.One of the wedding gifts he gave to Martha was a "forte-piano". During the ten years of their marriage, she had six children: Martha Washington, called Patsy, (1772–1836); Jane (1774–1775); a stillborn or unnamed son in 1777; Mary Wayles (1778–1804), called Polly; Lucy Elizabeth (1780–1781); and Lucy Elizabeth (1782–1785). Two survived to adulthood.
After her father John Wayles died in 1773, Martha and her husband Jefferson inherited his 135 slaves, 11,000 acres and the debts of his estate. These took Jefferson and other co-executors of the estate years to pay off, which contributed to his financial problems. Among the slaves were Betty Hemings and her 10 children; the six youngest were half-siblings of Martha Wayles Jefferson, as they are believed to have been children of her father, and they were three-quarters European in ancestry. The youngest, an infant, was Sally Hemings. As they grew and were trained, all the Hemings family members were assigned to privileged positions among the slaves at Monticello, as domestic servants, chefs, and highly skilled artisans.
Later in life, Martha Jefferson suffered from diabetes and ill health, and frequent childbirth further weakened her. A few months after the birth of her last child, Martha died on September 6, 1782. Jefferson was at his wife's bedside and was distraught after her death. In the following three weeks, Jefferson shut himself in his room, where he paced back and forth until he was nearly exhausted. Later he would often take long rides on secluded roads to mourn for his wife. As he had promised his wife, Jefferson never remarried.Jefferson's oldest daughter Martha (called Patsy) married Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr. in 1790. They had 12 children, eleven of whom survived to adulthood. She suffered severe problems as Randolph became alcoholic and was abusive. When they separated for several years, Martha and her many children lived at Monticello with her father, adding to his financial burdens. Her oldest son, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, helped her run Monticello for a time after her father's death. She had the longest life of Jefferson's children by Martha.Mary Jefferson (called Polly and Maria) married her first cousin John Wayles Eppes in 1797. As a wedding settlement, Jefferson gave them Betsy Hemmings, the 14-year-old granddaughter of Betty Hemings, and 30 other slaves.[24] The Eppes had three children together, but only a son survived. Frail like her mother, Maria died at the age of 25, several months after her third child was born. It also died, and only her son Francis W. Eppes survived to adulthood, cared for by slaves, his father and, after five years, a stepmother.In 1768 Jefferson started the construction of Monticello, a neoclassical mansion on 5,000 acres which he designed himself. Since childhood, Jefferson had always wanted to build a mountaintop home within sight of his former home of Shadwell. Jefferson moved into the South Pavilion  in 1770, where his new wife Martha joined him in 1772. Monticello would be his continuing project to create a neoclassical environment, based on his study of the architect Andrea Palladio and the classical orders.While Minister to France during 1784–1789, he had an opportunity to see some of the classical buildings with which he had become acquainted from his reading, as well as to discover the "modern" trends in French architecture then fashionable in Paris. In 1794, following his service as Secretary of State (1790–93), he began rebuilding Monticello based on the ideas he had acquired in Europe. The remodeling continued throughout most of his presidency (1801–09). The most notable change was the addition of the octagonal dome.

Lawyer and House of Burgesses

Jefferson handled many cases as a lawyer in colonial Virginia, and was very active from 1768 to 1773. Jefferson's client list included members of the Virginia's elite families, including members of his mother's family, the Randolphs.
Beside practicing law, Jefferson represented Albemarle County in the Virginia House of Burgesses beginning on May 11, 1769 and ending June 20, 1775. His friend and mentor George Wythe served at the same time. Following the passage of the Coercive Acts by the British Parliament in 1774, Jefferson wrote a set of resolutions against the acts, which were expanded into A Summary View of the Rights of British America, his first published work. Previous criticism of the Coercive Acts had focused on legal and constitutional issues, but Jefferson offered the radical notion that the colonists had the natural right to govern themselves. Jefferson argued that Parliament was the legislature of Great Britain only, and had no legislative authority in the colonies. The paper was intended to serve as instructions for the Virginia delegation of the First Continental Congress, but Jefferson's ideas proved to be too radical for that body.

Political career from 1775 to 1800

Thomas Jefferson was the principle author of the Declaration of Independence, a formal document which officially proclaimed the dissolution of the American colonies from the British Crown. The sentiments of revolution put forth in the Declaration were already well established in 1776 as the colonies were already at war with the British when the Declaration was being debated, drafted and signed.
Before the Declaration was drafted Jefferson served as a delegate from Virginia to the Second Continental Congress beginning in June 1775, soon after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. He sought out John Adams who, along with his cousin Samuel, had emerged as a leader of the convention.Jefferson and Adams established a lifelong friendship and would correspond frequently; Adams ensured that Jefferson was appointed to the five-man committee to write a declaration in support of the resolution of independence. Having agreed on an approach, the committee selected Jefferson to write the first draft. His eloquent writing style made him the committee's choice for primary author; the others edited his draft. During June 1776, the month before the signing, Jefferson took notes of the Congressional debates over the proposed Declaration in order to include such sentiments in his draft, among other things justifying the right of citizens to resort to revolution. Jefferson also drew from his proposed draft of the Virginia Constitution, George Mason's draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, and other sources.
The historian Joseph Ellis states that the Declaration was the "core of's seductive appeal across the ages". After working for two days to modify the document, Congress removed language that was deemed antagonistic to friends in Britain and Jefferson's clause that indicted the British monarchy for imposing African slavery on the colonies. This was the longest clause removed. Congress trimmed the draft by about one fourth, wanting the Declaration to appeal to the population in Great Britain as well as the soon to be United States, while at the same time not wanting to give South Carolina and Georgia reasons to oppose the Declaration on abolitionist grounds. Jefferson deeply resented some of the many omissions Congress made. On July 4, 1776, Congress ratified the Declaration of Independence and distributed the document. Historians have considered it to be one of Jefferson's major achievements; the preamble is considered an enduring statement of human rights that has inspired people around the world. Its second sentence is the following: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", containing "the most potent and consequential words in American history". The passage came to represent a moral standard to which the United States should strive. This view was notably promoted by Abraham Lincoln, who based his philosophy on it, and argued for the Declaration as a statement of principles through which the United States Constitution should be interpreted. Intended as a revolutionary document for the world, not just the colonies, the Declaration was Jefferson's assertion of his core beliefs in a republican form of government.

Virginia state legislator and Governor

After Independence, Jefferson desired to reform the Virginia government.[48] In September 1776, eager to work on creating the new government and dismantle the feudal aspects of the old, Jefferson returned to Virginia and was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates for Albemarle County. Before his return, he had contributed to the state's constitution from Philadelphia; he continued to support freehold suffrage, by which only property holders could vote. Jefferson attempted to establish himself as a foe of slavery during the Revolution, however, the 21st century historian John Ferling has called this mostly "hyperbole".
He served as a Delegate from September 26, 1776 – June 1, 1779, as the war continued. Jefferson worked on Revision of Laws to reflect Virginia's new status as a democratic state. By abolishing primogeniture, establishing freedom of religion, and providing for general education, he hoped to make the basis of "republican government." Ending the Anglican Church as the state (or established) religion was a first step. Jefferson introduced his "Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom" in 1779, but it was not enacted until 1786, while he was in France as US Minister.
In 1778 Jefferson supported a bill to prohibit the international slave trade in Virginia; the state was the first in the union to adopt such legislation. This was significant as the slave trade would be protected from regulation for 20 years at the federal level under the new Constitution in 1787. Abolitionists in Virginia expected the new law to be followed by gradual emancipation, as Jefferson had supported this by opinion, but he discouraged such action while in the Assembly. Following his departure, the Assembly passed a law in 1782 making manumission easier. As a result, the number of free blacks in Virginia rose markedly by 1810: from 1800 in 1782 to 12,766 in 1790, and to 30,570 by 1810, when they formed 8.2 percent of the black population in the state.
He drafted 126 bills in three years, including laws to establish fee simple tenure in land, which removed inheritance strictures; and to streamline the judicial system. In 1778, Jefferson's "Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge" and subsequent efforts to reduce control by clergy led to some small changes at William and Mary College, but free public education was not established until the nineteenth century.Jefferson proposed a bill to eliminate capital punishment in Virginia for all crimes except murder and treason, but his effort was defeated. In 1779, at Jefferson's behest, William and Mary appointed his mentor George Wythe as the first professor of law in an American university.
In 1779, at the age of thirty-six, Jefferson was elected Governor of Virginia by the two houses of the legislature, as was the process. The term was then for one year, and he was re-elected in 1780. As governor in 1780, he transferred the state capital from Williamsburg to Richmond.
He served as a wartime governor, as the united colonies continued the Revolutionary War against Great Britain. By this time, Georgia had fallen to the British, whose forces had invaded South Carolina and threatened Charleston.[citation needed] In late 1780, Governor Jefferson prepared Richmond for attack by moving all arms, military supplies and records to a foundry located five miles outside of town. General Benedict Arnold, who had switched to the British side in 1780, learned of the transfer and moved to capture the foundry. Jefferson tried to get the supplies moved to Westham, seven miles to the north, but he was too late. He also delayed too long in raising a militia.
Arnold's troops burned the foundry before returning to Richmond, where they burned much of the city the following morning. With the Assembly, Jefferson evacuated the government in January 1781 from Richmond to Charlottesville. They began to meet at his home of Monticello. The government had moved so rapidly that he left his household slaves in Richmond, where they were captured as prisoners of war by the British and later exchanged for soldiers. In January 1781, Benedict Arnold led an armada of British ships and, with 1600 British regulars, conducted raids along the James River. Later Arnold would join Lord Cornwallis, whose troops were marching across Virginia from the south.
In early June 1781, Cornwallis dispatched a 250-man cavalry force commanded by Banastre Tarleton on a secret expedition to capture Governor Jefferson and members of the Assembly at Monticello. Tarleton hoped to surprise Jefferson, but Jack Jouett, a captain in the Virginia militia, thwarted the British plan by warning the governor and members of the Assembly.Jefferson and his family escaped and fled to Poplar Forest, his plantation to the west. The slaves left at Monticello tried to hide valuables, but Tarleton did not allow looting or destruction by his troops.
By contrast, when Lord Cornwallis and his sizeable number of troops later occupied Elkhill, a smaller estate of Jefferson's on the James River in Goochland County, they stripped it of resources and left it in ruins. According to a letter by Jefferson to a friend about Elkhill, British troops destroyed all his crops, burned his barns and fences, slaughtered or drove off the livestock, seized usable horses, cut the throats of foals and, after setting fires, left the plantation a waste. They captured 27 slaves and held them as prisoners of war. At least 24 died in the camp of diseases, a chronic problem for prisoners and troops in an era of poor sanitation.
Reportedly believing his gubernatorial term had expired in June, Jefferson spent much of the summer with his family at Poplar Forest.The members of the General Assembly had quickly reconvened in June 1781 in Staunton, Virginia across the Blue Ridge Mountains. They voted to reward Jouett with a pair of pistols and a sword, but considered an official inquiry into Jefferson's actions, as they believed he had failed his responsibilities as governor."The inquiry ultimately was dropped, yet Jefferson insisted on appearing before the lawmakers in December to respond to charges of mishandling his duties and abandoning leadership at a critical moment. He reported that he had believed it understood that he was leaving office and that he had discussed with other legislators the advantages of Gen. Thomas Nelson, a commander of the state militia, being appointed governor.""Jefferson was a controversial figure at this time, heavily criticized for inaction and failure to adequately protect the state in the face of a British invasion. Even on balance, Jefferson had been a very poor state executive, and left his successor, Thomas Nelson, Jr., to pick up the pieces."He was not re-elected again to office in Virginia.
In 1780 Jefferson as governor received numerous questions about Virginia, posed to him by François Barbé-Marbois, then Secretary of the French delegation in Philadelphia, the temporary capital of the united colonies, who intended to gather pertinent data on the American colonies. Jefferson's responses to Marbois' "Queries" would become known as Notes on the State of Virginia (1785). Scientifically trained, Jefferson was a member of the American Philosophical Society, which had been founded in Philadelphia in 1743. He had extensive knowledge of western lands from Virginia to Illinois. In a course of 5 years, Jefferson enthusiastically devoted his intellectual energy to the book; he included a discussion of contemporary scientific knowledge, and Virginia's history, politics, and ethnography. Jefferson was aided by Thomas Walker, George R. Clark, and U.S. geographer Thomas Hutchins. The book was first published in France in 1785 and in England in 1787.
It has been ranked as the most important American book published before 1800. The book is Jefferson's vigorous and often eloquent argument about the nature of the good society, which he believed was incarnated by Virginia. In it he expressed his beliefs in the separation of church and state, constitutional government, checks and balances, and individual liberty. He also compiled extensive data about the state's natural resources and economy.

Member of Congress and Minister to France

Following its victory in the war and peace treaty with Great Britain, in 1783 the United States formed a Congress of the Confederation , to which Jefferson was appointed as a Virginia delegate. As a member of the committee formed to set foreign exchange rates, he recommended that American currency should be based on the decimal system; his plan was adopted. Jefferson also recommended setting up the Committee of the States, to function as the executive arm of Congress. The plan was adopted but failed in practice.
Jefferson was "one of the first statesman in any part of the world to advocate concrete measures for restricting and eradicating Negro slavery." Jefferson wrote an ordinance banning slavery in all the nation's territories (not just the Northwest), but it failed by one vote. The subsequent Northwest Ordinance prohibited slavery in the newly organized territory, but it did nothing to free slaves who were already held by settlers there; this required later actions. Jefferson was in France when the Northwest Ordinance was passed.He resigned from Congress when he was appointed by George Washington's administration as minister to France in May 1784.Memorial plaque marking where Jefferson lived while he was Minister to France.The widower Jefferson, still in his 40s, was minister to France from 1785 to 1789, the year the French Revolution started. When the French foreign minister, the Count de Vergennes, commented to Jefferson, "You replace Monsieur Franklin, I hear," Jefferson replied, "I succeed him. No man can replace him."
Beginning in early September 1785, Jefferson collaborated with John Adams, US minister in London, to outline an anti-piracy treaty with Morocco. Their work culminated in a treaty that was ratified by Congress on July 18, 1787. Still in force today, it is the longest unbroken treaty relationship in U.S. history.Busy in Paris, Jefferson did not return to the US for the 1787 Constitutional Convention.
He enjoyed the architecture, arts, and the salon culture of Paris. He often dined with many of the city's most prominent people, and stocked up on wines to take back to the US. While in Paris, Jefferson corresponded with many people who had important roles in the imminent French Revolution. These included the Marquis de Lafayette, and the Comte de Mirabeau, a popular pamphleteer who repeated ideals that had been the basis for the American Revolution. His observations of social tensions contributed to his anti-clericalism and strengthened his ideas about the separation of church and state.
Jefferson's eldest daughter Martha, known as Patsy, went with him to France in 1784. His two youngest daughters were in the care of friends in the United States. To serve the household, Jefferson brought some of his slaves, including James Hemings, who trained as a French chef for his master's service.
Jefferson's youngest daughter Lucy died of whooping cough in 1785 in the United States, and he was bereft. In 1786, Jefferson met and fell in love with Maria Cosway, an accomplished Italian-English artist and musician of 27. They saw each other frequently over a period of six weeks. A married woman, she returned to Great Britain, but they maintained a lifelong correspondence.
In 1787, Jefferson sent for his youngest surviving child, Polly, then age nine. He requested that a slave accompany Polly on the trans-Atlantic voyage. By chance, Sally Hemings, a younger sister of James, was chosen; she lived in the Jefferson household in Paris for about two years. According to her son Madison Hemings, Sally and Jefferson began a sexual relationship in Paris and she became pregnant. She agreed to return to the United States as his concubine after he promised to free her children when they came of age.

Election of 1796 and Vice Presidency

In late 1793, Jefferson retired to Monticello, from where he continued to oppose the policies of Hamilton and Washington. The Jay Treaty of 1794, led by Hamilton, brought peace and trade with Britain – while Madison, with strong support from Jefferson, wanted "to strangle the former mother country" without going to war. "It became an article of faith among Republicans that 'commercial weapons' would suffice to bring Great Britain to any terms the United States chose to dictate." Even during the violence of the Reign of Terror in France, Jefferson refused to disavow the revolution because "To back away from France would be to undermine the cause of republicanism in America." As vice president, Jefferson conducted secret talks with the French, in which he advocated that the French government take a more aggressive position against the American government, which he thought was too close to the British. He succeeded in getting the American ambassador expelled from France.
As the Democratic-Republican presidential candidate in 1796, Jefferson lost to John Adams, but had enough electoral votes to become Vice President (1797–1801). One of the chief duties of a Vice president is presiding over the Senate, and Jefferson was concerned about its lack of rules leaving decisions to the discretion of the presiding officer. Years before holding his first office, Jefferson had spent much time researching procedures and rules for governing bodies. As a student, he had transcribed notes on British parliamentary law into a manual which he would later call his Parliamentary Pocket Book. Jefferson had also served on the committee appointed to draw up the rules of order for the Continental Congress in 1776. As Vice President, he was ready to reform Senatorial procedures. Prompted by the immediate need, he wrote A Manual of Parliamentary Practice, a document which the House of Representatives follows to the present day.With the Quasi-War underway, the Federalists under John Adams started rebuilding the military, levied new taxes, and enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts. Jefferson believed that these acts were intended to suppress Democratic-Republicans rather than dangerous enemy aliens, although the acts were allowed to expire. Jefferson and Madison rallied opposition support by anonymously writing the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, which declared that the federal government had no right to exercise powers not specifically delegated to it by the states. Though the resolutions followed the "interposition" approach of Madison, Jefferson advocated nullification. At one point he drafted a threat for Kentucky to secede. Jefferson's biographer Dumas Malone argued that had his actions become known at the time, Jefferson might have been impeached for treason. In writing the Kentucky Resolutions, Jefferson warned that, "unless arrested at the threshold," the Alien and Sedition Acts would "necessarily drive these states into revolution and blood." The historian Ron Chernow says, he wasn't calling for peaceful protests or civil disobedience: he was calling for outright rebellion, if needed, against the federal government of which he was vice president.Chernow believes that Jefferson "thus set forth a radical doctrine of states' rights that effectively undermined the constitution." He argues that neither Jefferson nor Madison sensed that they had sponsored measures as inimical as the Alien and Sedition Acts. The historian Garry Wills argued, "Their nullification effort, if others had picked it up, would have been a greater threat to freedom than the misguided [alien and sedition] laws, which were soon rendered feckless by ridicule and electoral pressure." The theoretical damage of the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions was "deep and lasting, and was a recipe for disunion". George Washington was so appalled by them that he told Patrick Henry that if "systematically and pertinaciously pursued", they would "dissolve the union or produce coercion." The influence of Jefferson's doctrine of states' rights reverberated to the Civil War and beyond.
According to Chernow, during the Quasi-War, Jefferson engaged in a "secret campaign to sabotage Adams in French eyes." In the spring of 1797, he held four confidential talks with the French consul Joseph Letombe. In these private meetings, Jefferson attacked Adams, predicted that he would only serve one term, and encouraged France to invade England.[85] Jefferson advised Letombe to stall any American envoys sent to Paris by instructing them to "listen to them and then drag out the negotiations at length and mollify them by the urbanity of the proceedings." This toughened the tone that the French government adopted with the new Adams Administration. Due to pressure against the Adams Administration from Jefferson and his supporters, Congress released the papers related to the XYZ Affair, which rallied a shift in popular opinion from Jefferson and the French government to supporting Adams.

Election of 1800 and first term

Working closely with Aaron Burr of New York, Jefferson rallied his party, attacking the new taxes especially, and ran for the Presidency in 1800. Before the passage of the Twelfth Amendment, a problem with the new union's electoral system arose.Hamilton convinced his party that Jefferson would be a lesser political evil than Burr and that such scandal within the electoral process would undermine the new constitution. On February 17, 1801, after thirty-six ballots, the House elected Jefferson President and Burr Vice President.Jefferson owed his election victory to the South's inflated number of Electors, which counted slaves under the three-fifths compromise. After his election in 1800, some called him the "Negro President", with critics like the Mercury and New-England Palladium of Boston stating that Jefferson had the gall to celebrate his election as a victory for democracy when he won "the temple of Liberty on the shoulders of slaves."Thomas Jefferson took the oath of office on March 4, 1801, at a time when partisan strife between the Democratic-Republican and Federalist parties was growing to alarming proportions. Regarded by his supporters as the 'People's President' news of Jefferson's election was well received in many parts of the new country and was marked by celebrations throughout the Union. He was sworn in by Chief Justice John Marshall at the new Capitol in Washington DC. In contrast to the preceding president John Adams, Jefferson exhibited a dislike of formal etiquette. Unlike Washington, who arrived at his inauguration in a stagecoach drawn by six cream colored horses, Jefferson arrived alone on horseback without guard or escort. He was dressed plainly and after dismounting, retired his own horse himself.
As a result of his two predecessors, as well as the state of events in Europe, Jefferson inherited the presidency with relatively few urgent problems. Though he and his supporters attempted to dismantle several of the accomplishments of his two predecessors, notably the national bank, military, and federal taxation system, they were only partially successful.

Native American policy

As governor of Virginia (1780-1781) during the Revolutionary War, Jefferson recommended forcibly moving Cherokee and Shawnee tribes that fought on the British side to lands west of the Mississippi River. Later, as president, Jefferson proposed in private letters beginning in 1803 a policy that under Andrew Jackson would be called Indian Removal, under an act passed in 1830. As president, he made a deal with elected officials of the state of Georgia: if Georgia would release its legal claims to "discovery" in lands to its west, the U.S. military would help expel the Cherokee people from Georgia. His deal violated an existing treaty between the United States government and the Cherokee Nation, which guaranteed its people the right to their historic lands.
Jefferson believed that Natives should give up their own cultures, religions, and lifestyles to assimilate to western European culture, Christian religion, and a European-style agriculture, which he believed to be superior. He believed that assimilation of Native Americans into the European-American economy would make them more dependent on trade, and that they would eventually be willing to give up land that they would otherwise not part with, in exchange for trade goods or to resolve unpaid debts. In keeping with his trade and acculturation policy, Jefferson kept Benjamin Hawkins as Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Southeastern peoples, who became known as the Five Civilized Tribes for their adoption of European-American ways.
Jefferson believed assimilation was best for Native Americans; second best was removal to the west. He felt the worst outcome of the cultural and resources conflict between European Americans and Native Americans would be their attacking the whites. He told his Secretary of War, General Henry Dearborn (Indian affairs were then under the War Department): "if we are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe, we will never lay it down until that tribe is exterminated, or driven beyond the Mississippi." With the colonial and native civilizations in collision, compounded by British incitement of Indian tribes and mounting hostilities between the two peoples, Jefferson's administration took quick measures to avert another major conflict. His deal with Georgia was related to later measures to relocate the various Indian tribes to points further west.

1804 election and second term

In his second term, Jefferson's popularity suffered because the problems he faced, most notably those caused by the wars in Europe, became more difficult to solve. During Jefferson's first term, Napoleon's position was relatively weak and as such negotiations were possible. After Napoleon's decisive victory at the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805, however, Napoleon became much more aggressive, and most United States attempts to negotiate with him were unsuccessful. Jefferson responded with the Embargo Act of 1807, directed also at Great Britain. This triggered economic chaos in the US and was strongly criticized at the time, as it continues to be. Due to political attacks against Jefferson, in particular those by Alexander Hamilton and his supporters, he used the Alien and Sedition Acts to counter some of these political adversaries. In 1807, Jefferson ordered his former vice president Aaron Burr tried for treason. Burr was charged with conspiring to levy war against the United States in an attempt to establish a separate confederacy composed of the Western states and territories, but he was acquitted.
Due to protections under the US Constitution of 1787, the international slave trade had been protected for two decades, during which planters of the Lower South imported tens of thousands of slaves, more than during any other 20-year period. In December 1806 Jefferson had called on Congress to take action and in 1807, it passed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves. This was the earliest that the trade could be regulated; Jefferson signed and the law went into effect January 1, 1808. While the act established severe punishment against the international trade, it did not regulate the domestic slave trade.Jefferson encouraged passage of the Embargo Act in 1807 to maintain American neutrality in the Napoleonic Wars. Jefferson hoped to avoid national humiliation on the one hand, and war on the other. In the event, he got both war and national humiliation; the economy of the entire Northeast suffered severely, Jefferson was vehemently denounced, and his party lost support. Instead of retreating, Jefferson sent federal agents to secretly track down smugglers and violators.
The embargo was a financial disaster because the Americans could not export, while widespread disregard of the law meant enforcement was difficult. For the most part, it effectively throttled American overseas trade. All areas of the United States suffered. In commercial New England and the Middle Atlantic states, ships rotted at the wharves, and in the agricultural areas, particularly in the South, farmers and planters could not export their crops. Jefferson's Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin was against the embargo, foreseeing correctly the impossibility of enforcing the policy and the negative public reaction. "As to the hope that it may...induce England to treat us better," wrote Gallatin to Jefferson shortly after the bill had become law, "I think is entirely groundless...government prohibitions do always more mischief than had been calculated; and it is not without much hesitation that a statesman should hazard to regulate the concerns of individuals as if he could do it better than themselves."
Though he had so frequently argued for as small a federal government as possible, Jefferson required the national government to assume extraordinary police powers in an attempt to enforce his policy. The presidential election of 1808, which James Madison won, showed that the Federalists were regaining strength, and helped to convince Congress that the Embargo would have to be repealed. Shortly before leaving office, in March 1809, Jefferson signed the repeal of the disastrous Embargo. In its place the Nonintercourse Act was enacted, which proved no more effective than the Embargo. The government found it was impossible to prevent American vessels from trading with the European belligerents once they had left American ports. Jefferson increasingly believed the problem was the greedy traders and merchants who showed their lack of "republican virtue" by not complying.
Historians have generally criticized Jefferson for his embargo policy. Cogliano notes that the failure of the Embargo "reinforced the view that Jefferson had been lucky rather than adroit during the earlier negotiations." Doron Ben Atar argued that Jefferson's commercial and foreign policies were misguided, ineffective and harmful to American interests. Kaplan argued that the War of 1812 was the logical extension of his embargo and that, by entering the Napoleonic Wars on anti-British side, the United States gave up the advantages of neutrality. Kaplan adds, "The results were a personal disaster for Jefferson and general malaise and confusion for the nation."[130] Bradford Perkins concluded that on this issue, Jefferson was "a wavering, miscalculating, and self-deluding man."

University of Virginia

After leaving the Presidency, Jefferson continued to be active in public affairs. He wanted to found a new institution of higher learning, specifically one free of church influences, where students could specialize in many new areas not offered at other universities. Jefferson believed educating people was a good way to establish an organized society. He believed such schools should be paid for by the general public, so less wealthy people could be educated as students. A letter to Joseph Priestley, in January 1800, indicated that he had been planning the University for decades before its founding.
In 1819 he founded the University of Virginia. Upon its opening in 1825, it was the first university to offer a full slate of elective courses to its students. One of the largest construction projects to that time in North America, the university was notable for being centered about a library rather than a church. No campus chapel was included in Jefferson's original plans. Until his death, Jefferson invited students and faculty of the college to his home.
Jefferson is widely recognized for his planning of the University grounds. Its innovative design was an expression of his aspirations for both state-sponsored education and an agrarian democracy in the new Republic. His educational idea of creating specialized units of learning is expressed in the configuration of his campus plan, which he called the "Academical Village". Individual academic units were defined as distinct structures, represented by Pavilions, facing a grassy quadrangle. Each Pavilion housed classroom, faculty office, and residences. Though distinctive, each is visually equal in importance, and they are linked with a series of open-air arcades that are the front facades of student accommodations. Gardens and vegetable plots are placed behind and surrounded by serpentine walls, affirming the importance of the agrarian lifestyle.
His highly ordered site plan establishes an ensemble of buildings surrounding a central rectangular quadrangle, named The Lawn, which is lined on either side with the academic teaching units and their linking arcades. The quad is enclosed at one end with the library, the repository of knowledge, at the head of the table. The remaining side opposite the library remained open-ended for future growth. The lawn rises gradually as a series of stepped terraces, each a few feet higher than the last, rising up to the library set in the most prominent position at the top, while also suggesting that the Academical Village facilitates easier movement to the future.
Stylistically, Jefferson was a proponent of the Greek and Roman styles, which he believed to be most representative of American democracy by historical association. Each academic unit is designed with a two story temple front facing the quadrangle, while the library is modeled on the Roman Pantheon. The ensemble of buildings surrounding the quad is an unmistakable architectural statement of the importance of secular public education, while the exclusion of religious structures reinforces the principle of separation of church and state. The campus planning and architectural treatment remains today as a paradigm of building of structures to express intellectual ideas and aspirations. A survey of members of the American Institute of Architects identified Jefferson's campus as the most significant work of architecture in America.
The University was designed as the capstone of the educational system of Virginia. In his vision, any citizen of the state could attend school with the sole criterion being ability.

Death

Jefferson's gravesite
Jefferson' health began to deteriorate by July 1825, and by June 1826 he was confined to bed. His death was from a combination of illnesses and conditions including uremia, severe diarrhea, and pneumonia.Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and a few hours before John Adams.
Though born into a wealthy slave-owning family, Jefferson had many financial problems, and died deeply in debt. He gave instructions for disposal of his assets in his Will and after his death, his possessions (including 130 persons he held as slaves) were sold off in public auctions starting in 1827. Monticello was sold in 1831.
Thomas Jefferson is buried in the family cemetery at Monticello. The cemetery is separately owned and operated by the Monticello Association, a lineage society that is not affiliated with the Thomas Jefferson Foundation that runs the estate as a public history site.
Jefferson wrote his own epitaph, which as:
HERE WAS BURIED THOMAS JEFFERSON
AUTHOR OF THE DECLARATION OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE
OF THE STATUTE OF VIRGINIA FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
AND FATHER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA.

Religion

Jefferson rejected the orthodox Christianity of his day and was especially hostile to the Catholic Church as he saw it operate in France. Throughout his life Jefferson was intensely interested in theology, biblical study, and morality. As a landowner he played a role in governing his local Episcopal Church; in terms of belief he was inclined toward Deism and the moral philosophy of Christianity.
In a private letter to Benjamin Rush, Jefferson refers to himself as "Christian" (1803): "To the corruptions of Christianity I am, indeed, opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence..." In a letter to his close friend William Short Jefferson clarified, "it is not to be understood that I am with him  in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist; he takes the side of Spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance toward forgiveness of sin; I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it. Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others, again, of so much ignorance, of so much absurdity, so much untruth and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being."Jefferson praised the morality of Jesus and edited a compilation of his teachings, omitting the miracles and supernatural elements of the biblical account, titling it "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth". Jefferson was firmly anticlerical saying that in "every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot...they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer for their purposes."Jefferson rejected the idea of immaterial beings and considered the idea of an immaterial Creator a heresy introduced into Christianity. In a letter to John Adams, Jefferson wrote that to "talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. . . . At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But a heresy it certainly is. Jesus taught nothing of it. He told us indeed that 'God is a spirit,' but he has not defined what a spirit is, nor said that it is not matter. And the ancient fathers generally, if not universally, held it to be matter: light and thin indeed, an etherial gas; but still matter."

Memorials and honors

Jefferson has been memorialized in many ways, including buildings, sculptures, and currency. The Jefferson Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C. on April 13, 1943, the 200th anniversary of Jefferson's birth. The interior of the memorial includes a 19-foot (6 m) statue of Jefferson and engravings of passages from his writings. Most prominent are the words inscribed around the monument near the roof: "I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." During the New Deal era of the 1930s, Democrats honored Jefferson and Andrew Jackson as their party's founding fathers and continued inspiration. He was portrayed by them as the spokesman for democracy and the common man. President Franklin D. Roosevelt led the effort to gain approvals for his monument in Washington.Thomas Jefferson has been honored on U.S. postage since the first Jefferson postage stamp was released in 1856. Jefferson was the second president to be featured on U.S. Postage. His portrait appears on the U.S. $2 bill, nickel, and the $100 Series EE Savings Bond, and a Presidential Dollar which released into circulation on August 16, 2007.
His original tombstone, now a cenotaph, is located on the campus in the University of Missouri's Quadrangle. A life mask of Jefferson was created by John Henri Isaac Browere in the 1820s.
Jefferson, together with George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, was chosen by sculptor Gutzon Borglum and approved by President Calvin Coolidge to be depicted in stone at the Mount Rushmore Memorial. Other memorials to Jefferson include the commissioning of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ship Thomas Jefferson in Norfolk, Virginia on July 8, 2003, in commemoration of his establishment of a Survey of the Coast, the predecessor to NOAA's National Ocean Service. A bronze monument to Jefferson was erected in Jefferson Park, Chicago along Milwaukee Avenue in 2005.