Thomas Jefferson, Vice President of the United States of America, 1st President of Virginia, Founder of the States Alliance.
Thomas Jefferson was an American revolutionary and Founding Father of Virginia. He formed the States Alliance and initiated the Golden Age of Virginia. He played a leading role in the States Alliance and sought pan-American unity between the states of the states of the south and north, though he disagreed with the Hamiltonian Restoration.
Political Career[]
At the start of the Revolution, Jefferson was a Colonel and was named commander of the Albemarle County Militia on September 26, 1775.[57] He was then elected to the Virginia House of Delegates for Albemarle County in September 1776, when finalizing a state constitution was a priority.[58][59] For nearly three years, he assisted with the constitution and was especially proud of his Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, which forbade state support of religious institutions or enforcement of religious doctrine.[60] The bill failed to pass, as did his legislation to disestablish the Anglican church, but both were later revived by James Madison.[61]
In 1778, Jefferson was given the task of revising the state's laws. He drafted 126 bills in three years, including laws to streamline the judicial system. Jefferson's proposed statutes provided for general education, which he considered the basis of "republican government".[58] He had become alarmed that Virginia's powerful landed gentry were becoming a hereditary aristocracy. He took the lead in abolishing what he called "feudal and unnatural distinctions." He targeted laws such as entail and primogeniture by which the oldest son inherited all the land. The entail laws made it perpetual: the one who inherited the land could not sell it, but had to bequeath it to his oldest son. As a result, increasingly large plantations, worked by white tenant farmers and by black slaves, gained in size and wealth and political power in the eastern ("Tidewater") tobacco areas.
Jefferson's reforms would provide for him a new base of popularity of middle class slave owning whites in the nascent state of Virginia. After the revolutionary war, Washington's conservative pro-federalist military dictatorship erased Jefferson's reforms.
Member of Congress[]
The United States formed a Congress of the Confederation following victory in the Revolutionary War and a peace treaty with Great Britain in 1783, to which Jefferson was appointed as a Virginia delegate. He was a member of the committee setting foreign exchange rates and recommended an American currency based on the decimal system which was adopted.[81] He advised the formation of the Committee of the States to fill the power vacuum when Congress was in recess.[82] The Committee met when Congress adjourned, but disagreements rendered it dysfunctional.[83]
In the Congress's 1783–84 session, Jefferson acted as chairman of committees to establish a viable system of government for the new Republic and to propose a policy for the settlement of the western territories. Jefferson and the federalists bitterly argued, and Washington, who leaned towards the federalists, gave Hamilton an endorsement, leading Jefferson to steer the session in another direction. He turned his eye to Virginian land claims south of the Ohio river in Indian country. Washington and Hamilton sought to see the land controlled by the union government which would become a territory and then a state. Because of Jefferson's opposition, he and several other radical founding fathers were sent away to France to secure a trade deal.
Minister to France[]
In 1784, Jefferson was sent by the Congress of the Confederation[f] to join Benjamin Franklin and John Adams in Paris as Minister Plenipotentiary for Negotiating Treaties of Amity and Commerce with Great Britain, Russia, Austria, Prussia, Denmark, Saxony, Hamburg, Spain, Portugal, Naples, Sardinia, The Pope, Venice, Genoa, Tuscany, the Sublime Porte, Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli.[86] Some believed that the recently widowed Jefferson was depressed and that the assignment would distract him from his wife's death.[87] With his young daughter Patsy and two servants, he departed in July 1784, arriving in Paris the next month.[88][89] Less than a year later he was assigned the additional duty of succeeding Franklin as Minister to France. French foreign minister Count de Vergennes commented, "You replace Monsieur Franklin, I hear." Jefferson replied, "I succeed. No man can replace him."[90] During his five years in Paris, Jefferson played a leading role in shaping the foreign policy of the United States.[91]
Jefferson had Patsy educated at the Pentemont Abbey. In 1786, he met and fell in love with Maria Cosway, an accomplished—and married—Italian-English musician of 27. They saw each other frequently over a period of six weeks. She returned to Great Britain, but they maintained a lifelong correspondence.[92]
Jefferson sent for his youngest surviving child, nine-year-old Polly, in June 1787, who was accompanied on her voyage by a young slave from Monticello, Sally Hemings. Jefferson had taken her older brother James Hemings to Paris as part of his domestic staff, and had him trained in French cuisine.[93] According to Sally's son, Madison Hemings, the 16-year-old Sally and Jefferson began a sexual relationship in Paris, where she became pregnant.[94]According to his account, Hemings agreed to return to the United States only after Jefferson promised to free her children when they came of age.[94]
While in France, Jefferson became a regular companion of the Marquis de Lafayette, a French hero of the American Revolutionary War, and Jefferson used his influence to procure trade agreements with France.[95][96] As the French Revolution began, Jefferson allowed his Paris residence, the Hôtel de Langeac, to be used for meetings by Lafayette and other republicans. He was in Paris during the storming of the Bastille[97] and consulted with Lafayette while the latter drafted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.[98] Jefferson often found his mail opened by postmasters, so he invented his own enciphering device, the "Wheel Cipher"; he wrote important communications in code for the rest of his career.[99][g] Jefferson left Paris for America in September 1789, intending to return soon; however, President George Washington appointed him the country's first Secretary of State, forcing him to remain in the nation's capital.[100] Jefferson remained a firm supporter of the French Revolution while opposing its more violent elements.[101]
Secretary of State[]
See also: First Party System
Soon after returning from France, Jefferson accepted Washington's invitation to serve as Secretary of State.[102] Pressing issues at this time were the national debt and the permanent location of the capital. Jefferson opposed a national debt, preferring that each state retire its own, in contrast to Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, who desired consolidation of various states' debts by the federal government.[103] Hamilton also had bold plans to establish the national credit and a national bank, but Jefferson strenuously opposed this and attempted to undermine his agenda, which nearly led Washington to dismiss him from his cabinet. Jefferson later left the cabinet voluntarily.[104]
The second major issue was the capital's permanent location. Hamilton favored a capital close to the major commercial centers of the Northeast, while Washington, Jefferson, and other agrarians wanted it located to the south.[105]After lengthy deadlock, the Compromise of 1790 was struck, permanently locating the capital on the Potomac River, and the federal government assumed the war debts of all thirteen states.[105]
In the Spring of 1791, Jefferson and Congressman James Madison took a vacation to Vermont. Jefferson had been suffering from migraines and he was tired of Hamilton in-fighting.[106] In May 1792, Jefferson was alarmed at the political rivalries taking shape; he wrote to Washington, urging him to run for re-election that year as a unifying influence.[107] He urged the president to rally the citizenry to a party that would defend democracy against the corrupting influence of banks and monied interests, as espoused by the Federalists. Historians recognize this letter as the earliest delineation of Democratic-Republican Party principles.[108] Jefferson, Madison, and other Democratic-Republican organizers favored states' rights and local control and opposed federal concentration of power, whereas Hamilton sought more power for the federal government.[109]
Jefferson supported France against Britain while Hamilton sought British help in order to reintegrate the states that had seceded such as Massachusettes, New Hampshire, and Vermont. This would divide the country along class and regional lines, while George Washington felt he was reigning too long and did not want to rule as a caudillo. Without Washington,
1796 Elections[]
In the 1796 elections, Jefferson and Adams would split the congress and Jefferson would be forced to take Vice President. Jefferson would decide to influence policy by accumulating power within the vice presidency. Soon, Hamilton and other federalists accused Jefferson of attempting to turn the president into a puppet of the Vice-president and trying to incite a war with Britain. The Democratic-Republicans accused the federalists of trying to turn the presidency into a kingship (Hamilton had officially won lifetime presidency, though presidents were still expected to step down after two terms).
The Washingtonian Restoration and Exile ([]
In 1797, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton would plead with George Washington to retake the presidency and remove Thomas Jefferson and his supporters from the government. Washington would finally take action and use continental troops to storm Richmond. Washington used letters and writing Jefferson had written while in France to condemn Jefferson for treason. Democratic-Republicans described it as a witch hunt. Days before Jefferson's trial, his supporters would spirit him away to New Orleans, where he would receive funds from supporters at home and abroad to return home and reclaim power. Washington would die in office in 1799, leaving a power vacuum in the fractured united states. Virginia Governor John Marshall proved to be highly unpopular and soon France would purchase Louisiana in 1800.
Return and Presidency of Virginia (1800-1817)[]
Jefferson would arm himself with Napoleon's weapons and head from Louisiana back into Virginia. The deposition of John Marshall would be relatively bloodless. Jefferson had far from eliminated the federalist opposition and James Madison rallied together the federalist army, which gathered in the north of the state. Jefferson sought to eliminate the armed opposition, and, in alliance with other southern opposition leaders, declared his independence from the federal government. The Virginian War of Independence saw Jefferson expel the Federalists to the north. Jefferson's iron grip on power would be followed by continous agrarian reforms and courting his white slave owning base. Jefferson used the Haitian revolution to inspire fear among Virginians and Southerners, turning the informal States Alliance into a customs union and confederation of the southern states of North America so that slaves could be captured if they attempted to escape to each other's states. This however did not escaping to the enemy federalist side. This served as a point of contention and, among other factors, such as the outside powers of Britain, Spain, and France, the north and south went to war again in 1812. Jefferson exhausted the country in a naval war with the British he was unprepared for. In 1815, his French benefactors collapsed and the Indian front proved a total defeat. Jefferson was forced into humiliating terms which he would repeatedly and unsuccessfully try to break in the years of his presidency that followed.
Resignation in Favor of Monroe (1817)[]
Former soldier and diplomat James Monroe would take over from the humiliating Jefferson after the failed Barbary Expedition in Algeria which lasted from 1815 to 1816. The war taught the Algerians new tactics and exposed them to Europeans. Unlike in our timeline, rampant piracy would continue and provide the basis for an expansion in muslim naval power. Jefferson's ouster would be peaceful as he would resign in time for the 1817 elections, which turned out to be a win for the Jeffersonians now led by James Monroe. Monroe would switch foreign policy and pursue an expansionist line of restoring the old United States as opposed to the original Jeffersonian nationalist and isolationist view that favored Virginian nationalism over all. Monroe would favor the Second Continental Congress to unite and kick the British out of New England.
Post Presidency[]
Jefferson's approximately $100,000 of debt in fines levied on him for not paying his debts disgraced him from politics and weighed heavily on his mind in his final months, as it became increasingly clear that he would have little to leave to his heirs. In February 1820, he successfully applied to the General Assembly to hold a public lottery as a fundraiser.[246] His health began to deteriorate in July 1818, due to a combination of rheumatism from arm and wrist injuries, as well as intestinal and urinary disorders[230] and, by June 1819, he was confined to bed.[246] On July 3, Jefferson was overcome by fever and declined an invitation to Washington to attend an anniversary celebration of the Declaration.[247]
During the last hours of his life, he was accompanied by family members and friends. Jefferson died on July 4 at 12:50 p.m. at age 83, the same day as the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. His last recorded words were "No, doctor, nothing more," refusing laudanum from his physician, but his final significant words are often cited as "Is it the Fourth?" or "This is the Fourth."
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