History of the 4th of July: Thomas Jefferson
Presidential portrait of Thomas Jefferson, by Rembrandt Peale, 1800. Image: Wikipedia
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HISTORY OF THE 4th OF JULY: THOMAS JEFFERSON
Part of the series on America 250, the US Semiquincentennial
[In my previous article, I wrote about John Adams, the first Vice President of the United States under George Washington, the second President of the United States, the first resident of the White House, and the writer of the Massachusetts State Constitution; he was also one of the creators of the Declaration of Independence during the Revolutionary War.]
Perhaps no one person is more associated with the 4th of July in American history than Thomas Jefferson, probably because it was his hand that penned the immortal Declaration of Independence.
As my friend Clay Jenkinson, who has been portraying Jefferson for over 40 years, says in his book Thomas Jefferson: The Man of Light:
“The Third President is the Muse of American life, the chief articulator of our national value system and our national self-identity. Jefferson was a man of almost unbelievable achievement: statesman, man of letters, architect, scientist, book collector, political strategist, and utopian visionary. But he is also a man of paradox: liberty-loving slaveholder, Indian-loving relocationist, publicly frugal and privately bankrupt, a constitutional conservative who bought the Louisiana Territory in 1803.”
Thomas Jefferson: Francophile
Even by 1782, as an admiring French visitor observed, Jefferson,
“without having quitted his own country,” had become “an American who… is a musician, draftsman, astronomer, natural philosopher, jurist, and a statesman.”
He knew about crop rotation and Renaissance architecture and could dance a jig, play the fiddle, or tie an artery.
Statue of Jefferson in Paris. Author’s photo
Jefferson both loved and hated his time in France. He went to Paris in 1784 to succeed Benjamin Franklin as Minister to France following the 1783 peace treaty negotiated with England. In Paris, Jefferson dealt with the repayment of French loans to the U.S. (obtained initially by Franklin) and attacks by North African pirates on American ships.
A statue of him (at right) currently stands along the River Seine in Paris, in front of the Hôtel de Salm (next to the Musée d’Orsay), which served as the model for Monticello, the home he built in Virginia. During the construction of the Hotel, Jefferson would watch for hours and said he was
“violently smitten with the Hôtel de Salm.”
He loved the culture, civilization, wine, and classical architecture of France, bringing some of it home, saying:
“I do love this people with all my heart”
… but was uncomfortable with the French social milieu and was scandalized by the lack of domestic morality among French aristocrats.
Jefferson’s Political Career
Jefferson began his political career when he was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1769 and was made a delegate to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1775, where he subsequently wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence in June of 1776. Returning to the Virginia legislature, he served as the second governor of Virginia from 1779 to 1781.
After serving as Minister to France from 1785 to 1789, he saw the early aspects of the French Revolution. He returned to America in 1789, just as the U.S. Constitution was taking effect.
Thomas Jefferson in 1791, in a portrait by Charles Willson Peale. Image: Wikipedia
He was appointed the first Secretary of State under President George Washington in 1790. In his first presidential election against rival John Adams, he lost and was consequently made Adams’s vice president.
In 1803, he essentially doubled the size of the United States by purchasing the Louisiana Territory from Napoleonic France for $15 million. Bonaparte needed the money for his wars in Europe.
Jefferson’s presidency assertively defended the nation’s shipping and trade interests against Barbary Pirates of North Africa and aggressive British (and French) trade policies.
In his second term, he signed in 1807 legislation banning the international slave trade, despite the fact that during his lifetime he owned over 600 slaves, and was the second largest slaveholder in his county.
The man who wrote “all men are created equal” and called slavery a “moral depravity” freed only five slaves during his lifetime. His fellow Founding Father, John Adams, owned no slaves.
Jefferson on Religion
Jefferson’s religious views were unusually transparent because he wrote so extensively about them — unlike most politicians then or now.
Jefferson wrote, in a letter to Benjamin Rush dated April 21, 1803:
“I am a Christian, in the only sense he [Jesus] wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others…”
He even explained that for the last 50 years of his life, he read the New Testament daily, often in Greek and Latin… and French.
Election of 1800
The 1800 presidential election was one of the most contentious in all of American history. Jefferson was locked in a mudslinging contest with his opponent, John Adams.
Jefferson had in 1782 in his Notes on the State of Virginia:
“… our rulers can have no authority over such natural rights, only as we have submitted to them (in a social compact.) The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God…
…which seems innocent enough, as it stands, but what followed was taken as inflammatory.
“But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God.”
Consequently, he was accused of being an atheist. In September of 1800, Jefferson was called:
“an enemy to pure morals and religion, and consequently an enemy to his country and his God.”
Danbury Baptist Association
Nevertheless, Jefferson did win the election. And, in an 1802 correspondence with the Danbury Baptist Association in Connecticut, he coined one of the most famous American phrases, though he meant the opposite of how the phrase is usually understood currently.
Connecticut was a Congregational “established” state church. This meant that citizens’ taxes — regardless of their religious affiliation — supported the Congregational Church buildings, the pastor and his parsonage (and sometimes his firewood). The Baptists wrote to complain to Jefferson that, as a religious minority in the state, they were being discriminated against and did not enjoy “religious freedom.”
Jefferson responded that he:
“contemplate[d] with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…'”
And then continued:
“thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”
The current interpretation is that the wall protects government from religion; Jefferson’s intent was that it protected religion (specifically minority faiths like the Baptists’) from government interference.
Heterodox
But Jefferson was by no means an orthodox Christian. Although he attended a local school run by a Presbyterian minister at age 9 and studied under an Anglican priest at age 15, he encountered Enlightenment thinkers while studying at the College of William and Mary at age 16. While he later became a governing member of his local Episcopal (Anglican) church, he was influenced during his studies by the philosophies of Epicureanism, Deism, and Unitarianism.
Jefferson asserted that:
- The concept of the trinity was “mere abracadabra.”
- Jesus’ miracles were “vulgar ignorance… & fabrications”
- “[John Calvin] introduced more new absurdities into the Christian religion than can readily be imagined”
- “The prophecies in Revelation are the ravings of a maniac”
- “I trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian.”
- “I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know.”
The Jefferson Bible
Jefferson Bible, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth Extracted Textually from the Gospels in Greek, Latin, French & English. Image: Wikipedia
The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, commonly referred to as the Jefferson Bible, was Jefferson’s second attempt to capture the philosophy, life, and moral teachings of Jesus. He completed it in 1820 by cutting and pasting numerous sections from the New Testament with a razor and glue.
Jefferson created a condensed composition that excluded all miracles by Jesus and most mentions of the supernatural, including sections of the four gospels that contain the resurrection and most other miracles, and passages that portray Jesus as divine.
- Begins with the nativity (no angels)
- Proceeds chronologically with a harmonization of thFour4 Gospels
- Ends with the stone rolled in front of the tomb.
Although Jefferson shared it with some friends, he never allowed it to be published during his lifetime. Nevertheless, beginning in 1904 and continuing for some years thereafter until the 1950s, new members of Congress were given a copy of the Jefferson Bible. A private organization, the Freethought Press, revived the practice in 1997.
Jefferson was a religious paradox. He also gave generously to local denominations near his home at Monticello. He attended religious services sitting in his reserved seat in the House of Representatives at the Capitol. As president, he also permitted Christian church services at the Department of the Treasury and the War Department.
Founding Fathers Friendship: Thomas Jefferson and John Adams
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Image: National Review
Though friends from their days together at the Continental Congress, Thomas Jefferson and our second President, John Adams, later disagreed. The second presidential contest between them, the election of 1800, was very contentious, and Jefferson resented Adams’ “Midnight judicial appointments” at the end of his presidential term, ahead of Jefferson taking office.
They were eventually reconciled in their twilight years, and they never saw each other again after Adams left the White House, replaced by Jefferson. However, in the last 14 years of their lives, they exchanged 158 letters, some of them quite warm. This correspondence is generally regarded as the intellectual capstone of the achievements of the revolutionary generation and as the most impressive correspondence among prominent statesmen.
They both died on the same day, July 4th, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, two of the last three signers. At the age of 90, John Adams collapsed in his favorite reading chair and died that afternoon; his last words are often reported to have been,
“Thomas Jefferson still lives.”
However, although this story appears in contemporaneous obituaries and biographies – even as recently as David McCullough‘s popular biography of John Adams – his niece and companion, Louisa Smith, recalls only that Adams mentioned the name Jefferson. Adams died at about 6:20.
But Jefferson might have said, “Wrong, as usual,” if he had still been alive. However, in his last days, his health had failed, and he passed in and out of consciousness. Shortly before midnight on the 3rd of July 1826, Jefferson asked his doctor one last time
“Is it the 4th?”
…with his doctor replying, “It soon will be.”
Later, around 1 pm on the 4th, Jefferson died in his home in Monticello, Virginia – surrounded by his daughter and some special household servants. At the age of 83, Thomas Jefferson died. Adams died on the same day, around 6 pm.
Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
billpetro.com
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Thanks Bill. It took me a while to finally get to your site. Now that I’m here I wish I had found it earlier. Thanks from a amateur history nerd.
Steven H. Hoskins