## 1. Life and Writings

 Thomas Jefferson was a born at Shadwell, Virginia, on April
13, 1743. His father, Peter Jefferson (1708-1757), was a farmer
and surveyor, and did much, from his own initiative and hard work, to
improve himself through reading and communal involvement. His mother,
Jane Randolph (1721-1776), belonged to one of Virginia's
most distinguished families ([Au], p. 3). While we know that his
relationship with his father was significant--for instance, he
proudly added the map of Virginian, Maryland, Delaware, and
Pennsylvania in his *Notes on the State of Virginia*--we
know little about his relationship with his mother. He aimed
throughout the course of his own life, and succeeded, in being much
like his father in terms of industry, responsibility, punctuality,
perseverance, and integrity, though he lacked his father's
physical robustness. When his mother died, he wrote tersely and coolly
in his pocket account book, "My mother died at eight
o'clock this morning [March 31], in the 57th year of age."
Thereafter, he suffered for weeks from violent migraines (Kukla, 35).
The death of his father, in contrast, proved to be a significant
turning point in his life. At fourteen years of age, he faced a
dilemma with life-changing implications. "When I recollect that
at fourteen years of age the whole care and direction of myself was
thrown on myself entirely," he wrote to grandson Thomas
Jefferson Randolph (24 Nov. 1808), "without a relative or friend
qualified to advise or guide me, and recollect the various sorts of
bad company with which I associated from time to time, I am astonished
that I did not turn off with some of them, and become as worthless to
society as they were."


From 1752 to 1757, Jefferson studied under the Scottish clergyman,
Rev. William Douglas, "a superficial Latinist" and
"less instructed in Greek," from whom he learned French
and the rudiments of Latin and Greek. With the death of his father in
1757, Jefferson earned a substantial inheritance--some
PS2,400 and some 5,000 acres of land to be divided between him
and younger brother, Randolph--and then began to study under Rev.
James Maury, "a correct classical scholar" ([Au], p.
4).



From 1760 to 1762, Jefferson attended William and Mary College and
there befriended Professor William Small. He wrote in his
Autobiography, "It was my great good fortune, and what probably
fixed the destinies of my life that Dr. Wm. Small of Scotland was then
professor of Mathematics, a man profound in most of the useful
branches of science, with a happy talent of communication, correct and
gentlemanly manners, & an enlarged & liberal mind."
Small, Jefferson added, had become attached to Jefferson, who became
his "daily companion when not engaged in the school." From
Small, Jefferson learned of the "expansion of science & of
the system of things in which we are placed" ([Au], pp.
4-5). Small introduced Jefferson to lawyer George Wythe, who
"continued to be my faithful and beloved Mentor in youth, and my
most affectionate friend through life," and under whom Jefferson
would soon be apprenticed in law--and Wythe introduced Jefferson
to Governor Francis Fauquier, governor of Virginia from 1758 till his
death ([Au], pp. 4-5). Small and Wythe especially would prove to
be cynosures to the young man.



Upon leaving William and Mary (1762) and to the time he began his
legal practice (1767), Jefferson, under the tutelage of Wythe ([Au:
5), undertook a rigorous course of study of law, which comprised for
him study of not just the standard legal texts of the day but also
anything of potential practical significance to advance human affairs.
For Jefferson, a lawyer, having a mastery of all things except
metempirical subjects and fiction, would be a human encyclopedia of
useful knowledge. Advisory letters to John Garland Jefferson (11 June
1790) and to Bernard Moore (30 Aug. 1814) show a lengthy and full
course of study, involving physical studies, morality, religion,
natural law, politics, history, belle lettres, criticism, rhetoric,
and oratory. Thereby, a lawyer would be fully readied for any turn of
events in a case. As lawyer, Jefferson's focus, David Konig
notes, was cases involving property--e.g., the legal acquisition
of lands and the quieting of titles--and that, adds Konig, shaped
his political thinking on the need of the relative equal distribution
of property among all male citizens for sound Republican
government.



As lawyer, Jefferson took up six *pro bono* cases of slaves,
seeking freedom. In the case of slave Samuel Howell in Howell v.
Netherland (Apr. 1770), Jefferson argued, in keeping with sentiments
he would include years later in his Declaration of Independence,
"Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes
into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the
liberty of moving and using it at his own will." The case was
awarded to Netherland, before his lawyer, George Wythe, could present
his case (Catterall, 90-91).



Jefferson would practice law till August 11, 1774, when he passed his
practice to Edmund Randolph at the start of the Revolutionary War.



In 1769, Jefferson gained admittance to the Virginian House of
Burgesses. Delegates' minds were, he said, "circumscribed
within narrow limits by an habitual belief that it was our duty to be
subordinate to the mother country in all matters of government"
([Au], p. 5). Jefferson's thinking inclined otherwise. The
experience in the House of Delegates substantially shaped his
revolutionary spirit.



On February 1, 1770, Jefferson lost most of the books of his first
library when a fire razed his house at Shadwell. Of the loss of his
books, he wrote to boyhood friend John Page (21 Feb. 1770),
"Would to god it had been the money [that the books cost and not
the books]; then had it never cost me a sigh!" He was to have
two other libraries at Monticello in his life, which, because of his
passion for learning, centered on books. When he built his residence
at Poplar Forest early in the nineteenth century, he kept there a
number of books--focused on philosophy, history, and
religion--for his own enjoyment.



Jefferson took as his wife Martha Wayles Skelton on January 1, 1772.
In that same year, daughter Martha was born. In 1778, daughter Mary
was born.



Upon retirement from law in 1774, Jefferson wrote Summary View of the
Rights of British America--"an humble and dutiful
address" of complaints addressed to King George III of England.
The complaints concerned numerous American rights, contravened, and
aimed at "some redress of their injured rights" ([S],
105). Due to its trenchant tone, it earned Jefferson considerable
reputation among congressmen as a gifted writer and as a
revolutionist.



Jefferson was elected to the Continental Congress in 1775 as its
second youngest member. He was soon invited to participate in a
committee with John Adams, Roger Sherman, Benjamin Franklin, and
Robert Livingston to draft a declaration on American independence. It
was decided that Jefferson himself should compose a draft. As John
Adams writes to Timothy Pickering (6 Aug. 1822) concerning his reasons
for Jefferson being the sole drafter of the document: "Reason
1st. You are a Virginian, and a Virginian ought to appear at the head
of this business. Reason 2nd. I am obnoxious, suspected, and
unpopular; You are very much otherwise. Reason 3rd. You can write ten
times better than I can" (Adams). For over two weeks, Jefferson
worked on the Declaration of Independence in an upper-floor apartment
at Seventh Street and Market Street in Philadelphia.



The document was intended to be "an expression of the American
mind" and was put forth to the "tribunal of the
world." Jefferson's draft listed certain "sacred
& undeniable" truths: that all men are created "equal
& independent"; that "from that equal creation,"
all have the rights "to the preservation of life, & liberty,
& the pursuit of happiness"; that governments, deriving
their "just powers from the consent of the governed," are
instituted to secure such rights; and that the people have a right to
abolish any government which "becomes destructive of these
ends" and to institute a new government, by "laying its
foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form,
as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and
Happiness" ([D], 19).



Rigorous debate followed. Excisions and changes were made to reduce
Jefferson's draft to three-quarters of its original length,
though the basic structure and the argument therein--a tightly
structured argument that begins with rights, turns to duties of
government, and moves to a justification for revolutionary behavior
when citizens' rights are consistently transgressed by
government--was unaltered. Thus, the Declaration contained the
rudiments of a political philosophy that would be fleshed out in the
decades that followed. The document, not thought to be significant at
the time, was approved on July 4, 1776, and it would become one of the
most significant political writings ever composed.



Not long after Jefferson finished the Declaration on Independence, he
was appointed to a committee to revise the outdated laws of Virginia,
as a result of a bill introduced to the General Assembly of Virginia.
That was a hefty task, which Jefferson--as part of a committee
comprising also Thomas Ludwell Lee, George Mason, Edmund Pendleton,
and George Wythe--began in 1776. Of the five, Lee and Mason
excused themselves, and revision, comprising 126 bills, was undertaken
by Jefferson, Wythe, and Pendleton. Revision was completed in 1779, a
period of not quite three years. Notable among the bills Jefferson
drafted, were Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge and
Bill for Religious Freedom. The latter was passed while Jefferson was
in France as Minister Plenipotentiary; the former, requiring educative
reforms that demanded a system of public education, did not pass.



From 1779 to 1781, Jefferson began tenure as governor of Virginia.
During his governorship, he reformed the curriculum of William and
Mary College by "abolishing the Grammar school,"
eliminating the professorships in Divinity and Oriental languages, and
supplanting them with professorships in Law and Police; Anatomy,
Medicine, and Chemistry; and Modern Languages ([Au], p. 5). He also
began his only book, *Notes on the State of Virginia*, in which
he described the geography, climate, and people of Virginia and their
laws, religions, manners, and commerce, among other things. The book,
in general, was well received by his Enlightenment friends and did
even more to enhance his reputation as a gifted writer.



Jefferson's wife Martha died on September 6, 1782.
Overwhelmingly distraught, he found some consolation in an invitation
to function as Minister to France--he needed to be away from
Monticello--which he did from 1784 to 1789. He ended the post at
the bidding of George Washington, who asked him to be his Secretary of
State--a post he held till 1793. Political disagreements between
Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton on political issues resulted in
formation of the Republican and Federalist parties--the former,
championing small, unobtrusive government and strict constructionism;
the latter, larger, strong government and a less strict interpretation
of the Constitution. After a brief retirement, he was elected
Vice-President of the United States for one term that ended in 1801,
and then President of the United States, which lasted two terms. His
presidency, which began triumphantly with his conciliatory First
Inaugural Address, was highlighted by the Louisiana Purchase in 1803,
which doubled the size of the country; the subsequent Lewis and Clark
Expedition, which ended in 1806; and the failed Embargo Act of 1807,
which aimed, among other things, to punish England during its war with
France, by prohibiting exchange of goods. During his tenure as
president, his daughter Maria died (1804).



In retirement, Jefferson resumed his domestic life at Monticello,
continued as president of the American Philosophical Society (a
position he held for nearly 20 years), and began activities that would
lead to the birth of the University of Virginia, which opened one year
before his death. Irretrievably saddled with debt throughout his
retirement, he sold his library, approximately 6,700 books, to
Congress in 1815 to pay off some of that debt. He died, as did John
Adams, on July 4, 1826. On his obelisk, there was written, upon his
request ([E]: 706):



Here was buried
  

Thomas Jefferson
  

Author of the Declaration of American Independence
  

Of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom
  

& Father of the University of Virginia. 



Jefferson wrote prodigiously. He penned some 19,000 letters. He
published *Notes on the State of Virginia* (English version) in
1787. He wrote key declarations such as Summary View of the Rights of
British Americans (1774), Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of
Taking Up Arms (1775), and the Declaration of Independence (1776);
authored numerous bills; and wrote his *Manual of Parliamentary
Practice for the Use of the Senate of the United States,* a
modified copy of which was still in use till 1977. He put together two
harmonies, *The Philosophy of Jesus* (1804)--no copies are
known to survive--and *The Life and Morals of Jesus of
Nazareth* (1820), by extracting passages from the New Testament.
Last, Jefferson undertook late in life an autobiography (never
completed), "for my own ready reference & for the
information of my family" ([Au]: 3).


## 2. Deity, Nature, and Society


### 2.1 The Cosmos



Like many other contemporaries he read--e.g., Hutcheson, Kames,
Bolingbroke, Tracy, and Hume--Jefferson was an empiricist, and in
keeping with Isaac Newton, a dyed-in-the-wool materialist. To John
Adams (15 Aug. 1820), he writes, "A single sense may indeed be
sometimes
 decieved,[1]
 but rarely: and never all our senses together, with their faculty of
reasoning." Jefferson continues: "'I feel: therefore
I exist.' I feel bodies which are not myself: there are other
existencies then. I call them matter. I feel them changing place. This
gives me motion. Where there is an absence of matter, I call it void,
or nothing, or immaterial space." Given matter and motion,
everything else, even thinking, is explicable. As all loadstones are
magnetic, matter too is merely "an action of a particular
organization of matter, formed for that purpose by it's
creator." Even mind and god are material. "To talk of
immaterial existences is to talk of nothings."



To Massachusetts politician Edward Everett (24 Feb. 1823), Jefferson
says that observed particulars are found to be nothing but
concretizations of atoms. He cautions, "By analyzing too
minutely we often reduce our subject to atoms, of which the mind loses
hold." That suggests a sort of pragmatic
atomism--*viz*., atoms being merely arbitrary
epistemological stopping points in the analysis of matter to keep the
mind from entertaining the dizzying thought of dividing without
end.



Jefferson, however, was not a metaphysical atomist of the Epicurean
sort, but a nominalist like philosopher John Locke (1690). To New
Jersey politician Dr. John Manners (22 Feb. 1814), he says:



> 
> 
> Nature has, in truth, produced units only through all her works.
> Classes, orders, genera, species, are not of her works. Her creation
> is of individuals. No two animals are exactly alike; no two plants,
> nor even two leaves or blades of grass; no two crystallizations. And
> if we may venture from what is within the cognizance of such organs as
> ours, to conclude on that beyond their powers, we must believe that no
> two particles of matter are of exact resemblance. 
> 
> 
> 



Humans categorize out of need, for the "infinitude of units or
individuals" outstrips the capacity of memory. There is grouping
and subgrouping until there are formed classes, orders, genera, and
species. Yet such grouping is man's doing, not
 nature's.[2]
 Jefferson begins with biota--the system he questions is the
Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus'--and works his way down to
"particles of matter."



In Jefferson's cosmos, which is Stoic-like in etiology, all
events are linked. The hand of deity is manifestly behind the
etiological arrangements. Jefferson writes to Adams (11 Apr.
1823):



> 
> 
> I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the
> universe; in it's parts general or particular, it is impossible
> for the human mind not to percieve and feel a conviction of design,
> consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of it's
> composition. The movements of the heavenly bodies, so exactly held in
> their courses by the balance of centrifugal and centripetal forces;
> the structure of our earth itself, with its distribution of lands,
> waters, and atmosphere; animal and vegetable bodies, each perfectly
> organized whether as insect, man or mammoth; it is impossible not to
> believe, that there is in all this, design, cause and effect, up to an
> ultimate cause, a Fabricator of all things from matter and motion,
> their preserver and regulator while permitted to exist in their
> present forms, and their regenerator into new and other forms.
> 
> 
> 



The language of perception is in keeping with his empiricism; the
language of feel, with his appropriation of philosophers Destutt de
Tracy's (1818/1827: 164) and Lord Kames' (1758: 250)
epistemology. Appeal to an ultimate cause implies a demiurge, of whose
nature little can be known other than its superior intelligence and
overall
 beneficence.[3]
 There is nothing here or in any other cosmological letters to suggest
that deity privileges human life any more than, in David Hume's
words, "that of an oyster" (1755 [1987]: 583).



Jefferson continues in his 1823 letter to Adams. Deity superintends
the cosmos. Some stars disappear; others come to be. Comets, with
their "incalculable courses", deviate from regular orbits
and demand "renovation under other laws." Some species of
animal have become extinct. "Were there no restoring power, all
existences might extinguish successively, one by one, until all should
be reduced to a shapeless chaos."



What precisely does divine superintendence entail?



William Wilson argues that the "'cut' of
Jefferson's mind" demands theism--divine
interpositionism. He writes:



> 
> Calling him a deist registers great misunderstanding of that mind. But
> the root of his thinking remained Newtonian, including its belief in
> an omnipresent divine activity in nature. The God of deism from this
> point of view would be a complete abstraction. As the statistician
> reduces a person of flesh and blood to a mere integer, so the deist
> reduces God to a functionary of no real description who abandons
> nature to a well-ordered dust. (Wilson 2017, 122)
> 



Holowchak thinks that it is unlikely that divine
superintendence--i.e., extinction and restoration--implies
supernatural intervention in the natural course of events (e.g., TJ to
Francis Adrian Van der Kemp, 25 Sept. 1816, and TJ to Daniel Salmon,
15 Feb. 1808). It is probable, thinks Holowchak, that a natural
capacity for restoration exists in certain types of matter in the same
way that mind, for Jefferson, is in certain types of matter (2013a).
Deity's superintendence is likely the capacity for
pre-established cosmic self-regulation comparable in some sense to the
work of a thermostat in regulating the temperature of a
 building.[4]
 Following Lord Bolingbroke whose views from *Philosophical
Works* he "commonplaced" early in life ([LCB]:
40-55), Jefferson believed that to posit that God needed to
intervene in cosmic events to keep aright them (e.g., by sending down
Jesus to save humanity) was to belie the capacities of deity. God,
thought Bolingbroke, and Jefferson's god owed more to
Bolingbroke than to any other thinker, got things right the first
time.


### 2.2 Nature and Society



How for Jefferson does man leave the state of nature and enter into
society? Jefferson appeals to nature in what one scholar calls a
"middle landscape" manner (Marx 1964: 104-5). The
happiest state for humans is one that seeks a middle ground between
what is savage and what is "refined." Jefferson's
vision, thinks Marx, is Arcadian. Jefferson's aim, early
writings indicate (e.g., TJ to James Madison, 20 Dec. 1787 and [NV]:
290-91), was for America to be a pastoral society that had the
freedom of primitivism, because it was neither materialist nor
manufacturing and it had an abundancy of land. America, because it was
neither primitive nor uncultured, could have the trimmings of cultured
societies, without their degenerative excesses.



Jefferson's natural-law theory is Stoical, not Hobbesian or
Rousseauian. For Jefferson, the basal laws of nature that obtain when
man is in the state of nature are roughly the self-same laws that
obtain in civil society. They are also roughly the same basal laws
that obtain between states.



> 
> 
> The moral duties which exist between individual and individual in the
> state of nature, accompany them into a state of society, and the
> aggregate of the duties of all the individuals composing the society
> constitutes the duties of that society towards any other; so that
> between society and society the same moral duties exist as did between
> individuals composing them, while in an unassociated state, and their
> maker not having released them from those duties on their forming
> themselves into a nation ([F]: 423).
> 
> 
> 



The ideological frame that allows for social stability is in the
Declaration of Independence, in which Jefferson lists two self-evident
truths: the equality of all men and their endowment of unalienable
rights.



"Equality" for Jefferson comprises equality of opportunity
and moral equality. Equality of opportunity recognizes the differences
between persons--e.g., talents, prior social status, education,
and wealth--and seeks to level the playing field through
republican reforms such as introduction of a bill to secure human
rights; elimination of primogeniture, entails, and state-sanctioned
religion; periodic constitutional renewal; and and educational reform
for the self-sufficiency of the general citizenry. To remedy the
unequal distribution of property, Jefferson advocates in his Draft
Constitution for Virginia that 50 acres of property go to every male
 Virginian[5]
 ([CV]: 343). Moral equality recognizes that each human deserves equal
status in personhood and citizenship, hence again the need of
republican reforms of the sort listed above.



Rights are held to obtain, whether or not holders recognize them, and
they have a moral dimension apart from their obvious legal dimension.
There are, for instance, the moral obligations to obey the law and to
recognize and uphold the rights of
 others.[6]



Jefferson, mostly following Locke, mentions three unalienable rights
in the Declaration of Independence: life, liberty, and pursuit of
happiness. The right to life constitutes a right to one's own
personhood. The rights to liberty and pursuit of happiness (Locke
lists property instead of happiness) entail self-determination through
labor, art, industry, and self-governance. Government has no right to
control the lives of its citizens or dictate a course of happiness.
Therein lies the foundation of Jeffersonian liberalism.



There is also the right to revolution, which entails the right to
abolish any tyrannical form of government, given long abuses.


## 3. Morality


### 3.1 Religion and Morality



The right to the pursuit of happiness implies too that all persons are
free to worship as they choose. Since religion is a matter between a
man and his deity (e.g., TJ to Miles King, 26 Sept. 1814), no one owes
any account of his faith to another. Moreover, legislature should make
"no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting
the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation
between church and state ([DB]:
 510).[7]



Being personal, religion ought not to be politicized. When the clergy
engraft themselves into the "machine of government," they
prove a "very formidable engine against the civil and religious
rights of man" (TJ to Jeremiah Moor, 14 Aug. 1800). All people,
Jefferson asserts, should follow the example of the Quakers: live
without priests, be guided their internal monitor of right and wrong,
and eschew matters inaccessible to common sense, for belief can only
rightly be shaped by "the assent of the mind to an intelligible
proposition" (TJ to John Adams, 22 Aug. 1813).



The true principles of morality are the "mild and simple
principles of the Christian philosophy" (TJ to Gerry Elbridge,
29 Mar. 1801)--the principles common to all right-intended
religions. Jefferson writes to Thomas Leiper (21 Jan. 1809):



> 
> 
> My religious reading has long been confined to the moral branch of
> religion, which is the same in all religions; while in that branch
> which consists of dogmas, all differ, all have a different set. The
> former instructs us how to live well and worthily in society; the
> latter are made to interest our minds in the support of the teachers
> who inculcate
>  them.[8]
> 
> 
> 



Thus, the principles common to all religions are few, exoteric, and
the true principles of
 morality.[9]



Though chary of sectarian religion due to the empleomania of sectarian
clerics and a sharp critic of Christianity in his youth ([NR]),
"Christianity," deterged of its political trappings and
metaphysical twaddle, in time became special to Jefferson (e.g., TJ to
John Adams, 12 Oct. 1813 and 24 Jan. 1814). He states to Dr. Benjamin
Rush (21 Apr. 1803):



> 
> 
> I am a Christian, in the only sense [Jesus] wished any one to be;
> sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others;
> ascribing to him every *human* excellence; & believing he
> never claimed any other.
> 
> 
> 



Jesus' teachings make up the greatest moral system, and Jesus is
"the greatest of all the [religious]
 reformers."[10]
 To Benjamin Waterhouse (26 June 1822), Jefferson writes:



> 
> 
> The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of
> man. 1. That there is one only God, and he all perfect. 2. That there
> is a future state of rewards and punishments. 3. That to love God with
> all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself, is the sum of religion.
> 
> 
> 
> 



Consequently, Jesus' message comprises love of god (being one,
*pace* Calvin, not three), love of mankind, and belief in an
afterlife of reward or punishment.



Yet much in the Bible, Jefferson thought, was redundant, hyperbolic,
bathetic, absurd, and beyond the bounds of physical possibility (e.g.,
TJ to John Adams, 28 Oct. 1813). That was confirmed by inspection of a
late-in-life "harmony" Jefferson constructed, *The Life
and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth* (1820), in which the virgin
birth, miraculous cures, and resurrection were excised. Christ was
neither the savior of mankind nor the son of God, but the great moral
reformer of the Jewish religion([B]).



Even after he purged the Bible of its corruptions--in his own
words, after he plucked, in an oft-used metaphor, the diamonds from
the dungheap (TJ to John Adams, 12 Oct. 1813, and TJ to )--to try
both to make plain Jesus' true teachings and to give a credible
account of the life of Jesus, Jefferson did not completely follow
Jesus' uncontaminated teachings. He did think love of God was
needed for one to be of upstanding virtue, for each could see and feel
the existence of deity in the cosmos. Thus, atheists, however
ostensibly virtuous, suffered from a defect of moral sensibility. Yet
when Jefferson expressed his own view on the branches of morality
(true religion), he did not mention belief in an afterlife, as did
 Jesus.[11]
 His 1814 letter to Law (13 June) mentions belief in an afterlife
merely as one of the correctives to lack of a moral sense, along with
self-interest, the approbation of others upon doing good, and the
rewards and punishments of laws. Given that, along with his
out-and-out commitment to materialism and given the evidence of four
letters that unequivocally express skepticism apropos of an
 afterlife,[12]
 and given that he and his wife wrote about the "eternal
separation" they were about to make on her deathbed, it is
probable, asserts one scholar, that he did not believe in an afterlife
(Holowchak 2019a, pp. 128-2). So, belief in an afterlife, one of
the chief teachings of Jesus, was likely not an essential part of
morality for Jefferson. In contrast, Charles Sanford, noting that
Jefferson appeals to the hereafter in several letters and addresses,
offers a small-step argument in defense of belief in an afterlife.
"'The prospects of a future state of retribution for the
evil as well as the good done while here' [are] among the moral
forces necessary to motivate individuals to live good lives in
society." He adds: "Jefferson had begun with the
conviction that God had created in man a hunger for the rights of
equality, freedom, and life and a desire to follow God's moral
law. It was only a small step further to believe that God had also
created man with an immortal soul"
 (152).[13]



Finally, Jefferson later in life claimed to be a Unitarian. What did
"Unitarianism" mean for him?



Jefferson finds the notion of three deities in one inscrutable, and
therefore physically impossible. Here he falls back on his naturalism.
He allows nothing inconsistent with the laws of nature, gleaned
through experience. The sort of Unitarianism Jefferson promotes is not
a religious sect, but instead a manner of approaching religion. Of his
Unitarianism, Jefferson asserts to John Adams (22 Aug. 1813),
"We should all then, like the Quakers, live without an order of
priests, moralize for ourselves, follow the oracle of conscience, and
say nothing about what no man can understand, nor therefore
believe." To Dr. Thomas Cooper (2 Nov. 1822), Jefferson
contrasts Unitarians with sectarian preachers, so Unitarians can be
grasped as persons living fully in accordance with the dictates of
their moral sense faculty. To Benjamin Waterhouse (8 Jan. 1825),
Jefferson states that Unitarianism is "primitive Christianity,
in all the simplicity in which it came from the lips of Jesus."
Such letters show plainly that monotheism, incomplexity, and
non-sectarianism are dependent issues. Jefferson made purchase of
monotheism because it and benevolence were key tenets of Jesus'
uncorrupted teachings. Those two tenets, letters indicate, were the
framework of his Unitarianism, or of any right religion.


### 3.2 The Moral Sense



For Jefferson, morality was not reason-guided, but dictated by a moral
sense. Here he followed Scottish
 empiricists,[14]
 such as William Small (Hull 1997: 102-5 and [Au]:
4-5)--the only non-minister at William and Mary
College--and Francis Hutcheson and especially Lord
 Kames.[15]



To nephew Peter Carr (19 Aug. 1785), Jefferson says that the god-given
moral sense, innate and instinctual, is as much a part of a
person's nature as are the senses of hearing and seeing, or as
is a leg or arm. Jefferson's comparisons to hearing and sight
invite depiction of the moral sense tied to a bodily organ, like the
heart (TJ to Maria Cosway, 12 Oct. 1785). Like strength of limbs, it
too is given to persons in a greater or lesser degree, and can be made
better or worse through exercise or its neglect.



A letter to daughter Martha (11 Dec. 1783) suggests the moral sense
works spontaneously, without any input of reason. The language of
"feel" is critical.



> 
> 
> If ever you are about to say any thing amiss or to do any thing wrong,
> consider before hand. You will feel something within you which will
> tell you it is wrong and ought not to be said or done: this is your
> conscience, and be sure to obey
>  it.[16]
> 
> 
> 



One ought to resist the temptation to act viciously in circumstances
when vice will not be detected. He tells Carr (19 Aug. 1785) to act
always and in all circumstances as if everyone in the world were
looking at him. Jefferson bids grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph (24
Nov. 1808) to appeal to moral exemplars before acting, and he lists
Small, Wythe, and Peyton Randolph. "I am certain that this mode
of deciding on my conduct, tended more to correctness than any
reasoning powers I possessed." Thus, one can use the moral sense
unerringly, or relatively so, if one disregards the intrusions of
reason and assumes that all of one's actions are under the
scrutiny of cynosures--i.e., there will be no temptation to act
from the pressure of peers. In another letter to Carr (10 Aug. 1787),
Jefferson disadvises his nephew to attend lectures on moral philosophy
and appeals counterfactually to a ham-handed creator. "He who
made us would have been a pitiful bungler if he had made the rules of
our moral conduct a matter of science." Here and
 elsewhere,[17]
 Jefferson is explicit that reason is uninvolved in moral
"judgments."



Not everyone possesses a moral sense. Napoleon, he tells Adams (25
Feb. 1823), is an illustration. To Thomas Law (13 June 1814),
Jefferson says that want of the moral sense can somewhat be rectified
by education and employment of rational calculation, but such
educative remedies are blandishments not aimed to encourage morally
correct action, because that is impossible without a moral sense, but
to discourage actions with pernicious consequences. In short, one
without a moral sense can be induced or shaped to behave as if having
a moral sense, though such actions would merely be consistent with
morally correct actions, not be morally correct actions.



Finally, the function of reason, he says in his 1787 letter to Carr,
is "in some degree" to oversee the exercise of the moral
faculty, "but it is a small stock which is required for
this". Reason might function, thinks one scholar, (1) to
encourage or reinforce morally correct
 action,[18]
 (2) to keep the moral sense vital and vigorous, (3) to instill the
first elements of morality in children through exposure to history,
(4) to allow for cultural sensitivity to morally retarded cultures,
(5) to continue moral advance through reading history as adults, (6)
to help make plain the rights (especially derivative rights) of
humans, (7) to form general rules to serve as rough guides human
 action,[19]
 and (8) to encourage moral improvement through breeding for morality
(Holowchak 2014b, 177-80). None of those functions, however,
directly involves reason in moral "judgments."



Jefferson also believed, following the lead of many thinkers of his
day--e.g., Francis Ferguson, John Millar, Lord Kames (1798 and
1774), William Robertson, Claude Adrien Helvetius, the Marquis
de Condorcet, and Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot--that humans were
morally progressing over time (e.g., TJ to John Adams, 11 Jan. 1816,
and TJ to P.S. Dupont de Nemours, 24 Apr. 1816). There were, however,
periodic glitches--periods of moral stagnation or decline. The
belligerence between England and France in Jefferson's later
years was to him evidence of such decline. Still, such moral
declinations, considered overall, were temporary setbacks or
"retrogradations," not genuine declinations. In a letter
to Adams (1 Aug. 1816), he writes that the Americas will show Europe
the path to moral advance.



> 
> 
> We are destined to be a barrier against the returns of ignorance and
> barbarism. Old Europe will have to lean on our shoulders, and to
> hobble along by our side, under the monkish trammels of priest and
> kings, as she can.
> 
> 
> 



Thus, moral progress is movement, prompted by embrace of liberty and
respect for humans' rights, toward the ideals of love of deity
and love of humanity through beneficence--the ideals taught best
by
 Jesus.[20]



## 4. Political Philosophy


### 4.1 The "Mother Principle"



In his First Inaugural Address (1801), Jefferson lists the
"essential principles of our Government" in 15
doctrines--perhaps his first attempt at a definition of
republicanism ([I1]: 494-95).


1. Equal and exact justice to all men, irrespective of political or
religious persuasion;
2. peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, without
entangling alliances to any;
3. Federal support in the rights of states' government;
4. preservation of constitutional vigor of the Federal
government;
5. election by the people;
6. absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority;
7. a well-disciplined militia;
8. supremacy of the civil over the military authority;
9. light taxation;
10. ready payment of debts;
11. encouragement of agriculture and commerce;
12. the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the
bar of the public reason;
13. freedom of the press;
14. protection by *habeas corpus* and trial by juries
impartially selected; and
15. freedom of religion.



Fifteen years later in a series of letters, Jefferson again grapples
with a definition of "republicanism." To P.S. Dupont de
Nemours (24 Apr. 1816), Jefferson lists nine "moral
principles" upon which republican government is grounded.



> 
> 
> I believe with you that morality, compassion, generosity, are innate
> elements of the human constitution; that there exists a right
> independent of force; that a right to property is founded in our
> natural wants, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these
> wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without
> violating the similar rights of other sensible beings; that no one has
> a right to obstruct another, exercising his faculties innocently for
> the relief of sensibilities made a part of his nature; that justice is
> the fundamental law of society; that the majority, oppressing an
> individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting
> on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society; that
> action by the citizens in person, in affairs within their reach and
> competence, and in all others by representatives, chosen immediately,
> and removable by themselves, constitutes the essence of a republic;
> that all governments are more or less republican in proportion as this
> principle enters more or less into their composition; and that a
> government by representation is capable of extension over a greater
> surface of country than one of any other form.
> 
> 
> 



Among the nine principles, the seventh



> 
> 
> Action by the citizens in person, in affairs within their reach and
> competence, and in all others by representatives, chosen immediately,
> and removable by themselves, constitutes the essence of a
> republic.
> 
> 
> 



comes closest to the essence of republicanism. To John Taylor (28 May
1816), Jefferson attempts a "precise and definite idea" of
republicanism:



> 
> 
> A government by its citizens in mass, acting directly and personally,
> according to rules established by the majority.
> 
> 
> 



He adds,



> 
> 
> Every other government is more or less republican, in proportion as it
> has in this composition more or less of this ingredient of the direct
> action of the citizens.
> 
> 
> 



To Samuel Kercheval (12 July 1816), Jefferson gives his "mother
principle":



> 
> 
> Governments are republican only in proportion as they embody the will
> of their people, and execute it. 
> 
> 
> 



He adds,



> 
> 
> A government is republican in proportion as every member composing it
> has his equal voice in the direction of its concerns (not indeed in
> person, which would be impracticable beyond the limits of a city, or
> small township, but) by representatives chosen by himself, and
> responsible to him at short periods).
> 
> 
> 



Such writings suggest the following "barebones" definition
of "republic" for Jefferson, or a "Jeffersonian
republic":



> 
> 
> A government is a Jeffersonian republic if and only if it allows all
> citizens ample opportunity to participate politically in affairs
> within their reach and competency; it employs representatives, chosen
> and recallable by the citizenry and functioning for short periods, for
> affairs outside citizens' reach and competency; it functions
> according to the rules (periodically revisable) established by the
> majority of the citizens; and it guarantees the equal rights, in
> person and property, of all citizens.
> 
> 
> 



The definition is barebones for several reasons. First, it does not
fully capture the normative essence of Jefferson's description
of what is "proper for all conditions of society" in his
letter to Dupont de Nemours. Yet it is not normatively neutral, as it
speaks of equality of opportunity for each citizen to participate in
government and it guarantees equal rights. Second, the definition
ignores the partnership of politics and science, which is part of
Jefferson's conception of a republic. Jefferson insisted on
periodic revisions of the Constitution at conventions to accommodate
changes in the peoples' will, when suitably informed. Such
changes were not arbitrary, but dictated mostly by advances in
 science.[21]
 Jefferson writes to Samuel Kercheval (12 July 1816), "The laws
and constitutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human
mind." Thus, a republic for Jefferson is essentially progressive
and scientific, not static and conservative.



Thus, Jeffersonian republicanism is a *schema* for government
by the people, not any *particular* *system* of
governing. It is not wedded to any particular
constitution--constitutions, Jefferson is clear, are merely
provisional representations of the will of the people at the time of
their drafting (TJ to George Washington, 7 Nov. 1792)--but to the
principle of government representing the will of the people, suitably
informed. That is why Jefferson says in his First Inaugural Address
that for the will of the majority to be reasonable, it must be
rightful ([I1]:
 493).[22]
 Thus, Jeffersonian republicanism is essentially in partnership with
science.



Jefferson's attempts at defining "republic" and his
nine moral principles "proper for all conditions of
society" shows that republicanism is a political philosophy. For
Jefferson, republican governing is essentially progressive, and being
government of and for the people, it aims at involving all citizens to
their fullest capacity. Over the centuries, he recognized, human
potentiality had been stifled by coercive governments. Instantiation
of republican governing, thus, was an attempt to impose the minimal
political structure needed to maximize human liberty, free human
potentiality, and ensure the political ascendency of the
"natural *aristoi,*" the talented and virtuous, and
not the "artificial *aristoi,*" the wealthy and
wellborn.


### 4.2 The "Natural *Aristoi*"



Jefferson's republicanism was both democratic and meritocratic.
It was democratic in that it aimed roughly to have no person
disadvantaged at the start of life. That would be the same for Blacks,
who were the equals of all others in moral sensibility--hence,
their desert of equal rights and equal opportunities. Democratic
republicanism demanded recognition of moral equality and equality of
opportunity. Yet Jefferson realized that each person's dreams,
intelligence, and talents varied greatly. Thus, Jeffersonian
republicanism was also meritocratic in that all persons were allowed
to do with their life what they saw fit to do with it, so long as in
doing so they did not disallow others the opportunity of doing what
they saw fit to do. The most talented and virtuous, he assumed, would
naturally strive to exercise fully their talents and virtue through
politics and science.



Jefferson recognized two classes of people: laborers and learned (TJ
to Peter Carr, 7 Sept. 1814). His distinction, however, was not
determined by birth or wealth, as it was by most others of his day,
but by merit. To John Adams (28 Oct. 1813), Jefferson writes:



> 
> 
> There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are
> virtue and talents.
> 
> 
> 



He adds,



> 
> 
> There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth,
> without either virtue or talents; for with these it would belong to
> the first class.
> 
> 
> 



What Jefferson claimed here was that the traditional, centuries-old
class distinction, founded on birth or wealth, was in effect
politically obsolete. What made men "best" was talent
(i.e., skill, ambition, and genius) and virtue.



Jefferson then tells Adams that the natural *aristoi* comprise
"the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the
trust, and government of society." He adds that that government
is best which allows for "a pure selection of these natural
*aristoi* into the offices of government." Through
"instruction, trust, and government," the natural
*aristoi* will be not only political officials, but also
teachers, trustees, and practitioners or patrons of
 science.[23]



To ensure that political offices will be held by the natural
*aristoi*, there must be, *inter alia*, public access to
general education and free presses for dissemination of information to
the citizenry. With the citizenry generally educated, one has,
Jefferson continues to Adams, merely "to leave to the citizens
the free election and separation of the *aristoi* from the
pseudo-*aristoi,*" and "in general they will elect
the real good and
 wise."[24]
 That is much preferable to the centuries-old method of allowing the
wealthy and wellborn to govern at the expense of the people.


### 4.3 Usufruct and Constitutional Renewal



For Jefferson, constitutions, unlike the rights of men, are alterable,
in conformance to the level of progress of a state. Thus,
constitutions are to be replaced, altered, or renewed pursuant to
humans' intellectual, political, and moral progress.



To James Madison (6 Sept. 1789), Jefferson writes:



> 
> 
> The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another
> ... is a question of such consequences as not only to merit
> decision, but place also, among the fundamental principles of every
>  government.[25]
> 
> 
> 



Beginning with the evident proposition--"the earth belongs
in usufruct to the living"--Jefferson aims to prove that
the deeds of each generation, defined by a nineteen-year
 period,[26]
 ought to be independent (or relatively so) of each other. Moreover,
"usufruct" implies that each generation has an obligation
to leave behind their property to the subsequent generation at least
in the same condition in which it was received. For instance, any
debts one incurs while owning some land are not to be inherited by
another who obtains possession of that land after the former passes.
What applies to individuals applies to any collection of
individuals.



To instantiate the principle, there must be a period of adjustment.
Present debts will be a matter of honor and expediency; future debts
will be constrained by the principle. To constrain future debts, a
constitution ought to stipulate that a nation can borrow no more than
it can repay in the span of a generation. Temperate borrowing would
"bridle the spirit of war," inflamed much by the neglect
of repayment of debts.



Usufruct theoretically fits neatly with Jefferson's notions of
political progress and of periodic constitutional renewal. Concerning
the latter, he writes to C.F.W. Dumas (10 Sept. 1787):



> 
> 
> No society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law.
> ... Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at
> the end of 19. years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force
> and not of right.
> 
> 
> 



At the end of nineteen years, there will be a constitutional
convention, at which defects in laws can be addressed and changes can
be
 made.[27]
 Should the principle of usufruct be adopted, republican government
would have a built-in mechanism for obviating
 revolutions.[28]
 Without the debts and wars of one generation passed on to the next in
a Jeffersonian republic and with that republic's constitution
being renewed each generation to accommodate the needs and advances of
the next generation, Jefferson thinks, the stage is set for political
progress.



James Madison wrote a lengthy letter several months later (4 Feb.
1790) in reply to Jefferson's usufruct letter, and politely
proffered "some very powerful objections." Jefferson never
answered that letter, though he never renounced generational
sovereignty.


### 4.4 Revolution



Even well-intended governments can still go astray. Jefferson writes
in his Declaration of Independence,



> 
> 
> Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it
> is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, & to institute
> new government, laying it's foundation on such principles, &
> organizing it's powers in such form, as to them shall seem most
> likely to effect their safety & happiness ([D]: 19). 
> 
> 
> 



However, long-standing governments ought not to be changed "for
light & transient causes," otherwise one risks supplantation
of a corrupt government with another that is equally or more corrupt.
Yet



> 
> 
> when a long train of abuses & usurpations pursuing invariably the
> same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism,
> it is [citizens'] right, it is their duty to throw off such
> government, & to provide new guards for their future security
> ([D]: 19).
> 
> 
> 



In his Summary View of the Rights of British America, Jefferson states
that for revolution to occur, there needs to be "many
unwarrantable encroachments and usurpations" ([S]: 105). He
adds,



> 
> 
> Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a
> day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and
> pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly
> prove a deliberate and systematical plan of reducing us to slavery
> ([S]: 110).
> 
> 
> 



Therefore, a government becomes destructive when its abuses and
usurpations are (1) many and long, (2) directed to the same end, and
(3) clearly indicative of despotism.



For Jefferson, some amount of turbulence is one of the consequences of
liberty. The manure of blood is needed for healthy governing because
those governing will tend over time, Jefferson says to William S.
Smith (13 Nov. 1787), to govern in their own interests, if not
carefully watched. Moreover, those governed will assume mistakenly
that rights once granted will be rights always granted. So, rebellion
is the mechanism whereby those governing, Jefferson tells James
Madison (30 Jan. 1787), are periodically reminded that government in a
Jeffersonian republic is of and for the people--that is, that the
will of the majority, fittingly educated, is the standard of
justice.



The turbulence of which Jefferson speaks in the letters to Smith and
Madison are illustrations of rebellion, says Holowchak (2019a,
73-76), not revolution. In contrast, revolution for Jefferson,
following his Declaration, is a complex phenomenon. Unlike a
rebellion, it is never to be undertaken for slight reasons or because
of singular cases of governmental abuse. The difference, for
Holowchak, is one of scope, size, and persistency. Rebellions, often
violent, are generally quick signals to government concerning abuses,
usually parochial. Revolutions, essentially violent, are long-term,
well-planned, complex attempts at overthrowing a government, deemed
habitually abusive.



Mirkin interprets Jefferson otherwise. He does not distinguish between
rebellion and revolution, but distinguishes between "two levels
of revolt": populist rebellions and elitist threats of
rebellion. The former, exemplified by Shays' Rebellion and the
Whiskey Rebellion, are local and presumably non-moral issues. The
latter, exemplified by the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, are
larger, morality-grounded issues (e.g., transgression of rights), and
because of that, there is a persistency to them (64-65).




One thing is clear. Revolutions or elitist rebellions, for Jefferson,
are larger, more persistent, and more complex than rebellions or
populist rebellions. To John Adams (4 Sept. 1823), Jefferson writes of
the beginning, sustainment, and resolution of revolutions. "The
generation which commences a revolution can rarely compleat it.
Habituated from their infancy to passive submission of body and mind
to their kings and priests, they are not qualified, when called on, to
think and provide for themselves, and their inexperience, their
ignorance and bigotry make them instruments often, in the hands of the
Bonapartes and Iturbides to defeat their own rights and
purposes." Revolutions cannot be expected to establish a
sustainable, free government in the first effort.



Moreover, the revolutionary generation is generally suited to begin
and sustain the revolution, Jefferson continues in the letter to
Adams, but not to resolve it. It is, for Jefferson, incapable of
fixing a viable republican constitution. There are, thus, generational
responsibilities for a Jeffersonian revolution to succeed. The role of
the first generation is inchoation. Subsequent generations must
sustain and complete the initial effort to usurp the coercive
government. In the final stage, there is implementation of a
constitution, reflective of and beholden to the will of the
people.



It is because of the complexity and cost, in terms of human lives,
that Jefferson maintained that revolutions ought only to be undertaken
in cases of extreme, consistent despotism. As he writes in his
Declaration ([D]: 19), "When a long train of abuses and
usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to
reduce them [the people] under absolute Despotism, it is their right,
it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new
Guards for their future security." Still, he thought that they
were "mechanisms" needed in republican governments, for
there is a human tendency for those in power to be seduced by that
power (TJ to Spencer Roane, 9 Mar. 1821).


## 5. Philosophy of Education



Jefferson's views on education fit hand in glove with his
political
 philosophy.[29]
 To facilitate a government of and for the people, there must be
educational reform to allow for the general education of the citizenry
for fullest political participation, to enable citizens to carry on
daily affairs without governmental intervention, and to funnel the
most talented and virtuous to a first-tier institution like the
University of Virginia.



The sources of Jefferson's views on education were many. From
the French, Jefferson learned that education ought to be equalitarian,
secular, and philosophically grounded (Arrowood 1930 [1970]:
49-50). He likely studied the works of Condorcet, La Chalotais,
Diderot, Charon, and Turgot, and was influenced by men such as
Lafayette, Correa de Serra, Cuvier, Buffon, Humboldt, and Say.
Moreover, Jefferson corresponded with or read the works of Britons and
Americans such as John Adams, Priestley, Locke, Thomas Cooper, Pictet,
Stewart, Tichnor, Richard Price, William Small, Wythe, Fauquier,
Peyton Randolph, and Patrick Henry (Holowchak 2014a, 69). That
education ought to be scientific and useful was emphasized by William
Small at William and Mary College as well as his uptake of the
empirical philosophers of his day and their disdain of metempirical
squabbling.


### 5.1 A System of Education



Jefferson's educational views are spelled out neatly in four
bills proposed to the General Assembly of Virginia (1779), in his Bill
for Establishing a System of Public Education (1817), in his Rockfish
Gap Report (1818), and in key letters to correspondents--e.g.,
Carr, Banister, Munford, Adams, Cabell, Burwell, Brazier, and
Breckinridge.



When Jefferson, Pendleton, and Wythe undertook the task of revising
the laws of Virginia in 1776, Jefferson drafted four significant
bills--Bills 79 to 82.



> 
> 
> I consider 4 of these bills ... as forming a system by which
> every fibre would be eradicated of ancient or future aristocracy; and
> a foundation laid for a government truly
>  republican.[30]
>  ([WTJ5]: 44)
> 
> 
> 



Bill 79 proposed to create wards or hundreds, each of which would have
a school for general education in which "reading, writing, and
common arithmetic should be taught" ([BG]). Virginia was to be
subdivided in twenty-four districts, each of which would have a school
for "classical learning, grammar, geography, and the higher
branches of numerical arithmetic" ([BG]). Bill 80 proposed to
secularize William and Mary College and add to its curriculum by
enlarging its "sphere of science"
 ([BWM]).[31]
 Bill 81 proposed to create a public library for Virginia for
scholars, elected officials, and inquisitive citizens ([BL]). Bill 82,
the only bill that would eventually pass (1786), proposed to disallow
state patronage of any particular religion ([BR]; [Au]:
31-44).



Jefferson made it clear (TJ to George Wythe, 13 Aug. 1786) that Bill
79--concerning implementation of wards and ward schools--was
"the most important bill of our whole code", as it was the
"foundation ... for the preservation of freedom and
happiness" in a true republic. It was the key to engendering the
sort of reforms needed for Jeffersonian republicanism--reforms
aimed at an educated and thriving citizenry. 



> 
> 
> It is an axiom in my mind that our liberty can never be safe but in
> the hands of the people themselves, and that too of the people with a
> certain degree of education,
> 
> 
> 



he says to George Washington (4 Jan. 1786). "Wherever the people
are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own
government," he writes to philosopher Richard Price (8 Jan.
 1789).[32]



Yet Jefferson's trust in the people was not unconditional. He
never asserted categorically that government for and of the people
must, or even can, work. Experience had shown him that governments in
which officials were not elected by and beholden to the people did not
work--i.e., they were ultimately unresponsive to the needs of the
people--and so he often called republicanism an
"experiment" or "great experiment" (TJ to John
Adams, 28 Feb. 1796, and WTJ5: 484). If citizens' rights were to
be respected and defended and if governors were not to govern in their
own best interest but as stewards f the citizenry, all citizens needed
a basic education--hence, the indispensability of ward-school
education.


### 5.2 Education and Human Thriving



Given two classes of citizens, the laborers and the learned, Jefferson
recognized two levels of education ([R]: 459-60). The
laborers--divided roughly into husbandmen, manufacturers, and
craftsmen--needed to conduct business to sustain and improve
their domestic affairs. Thus, they needed access to primary education.
The learned needed access to college-level (Jefferson's
intermediary grammar schools) and university-level education. To Peter
Carr (7 Sept. 1814), Jefferson writes, 



> 
> 
> It is the duty of [our country's] functionaries, to provide that
> every citizen in it should receive an education proportioned to the
> conditions and pursuits of his life.
> 
> 
> 



Needs are not all personal. People are, for Jefferson, social
creatures, republics are progressive, and thus, citizens have
political duties. Education is critical. "If the condition of
man is to be progressively ameliorated, as we fondly hope and
believe," writes Jefferson to the French revolutionary Marc
Antoine Jullien (6 Oct. 1818), "education is to be the chief
instrument in effecting it." To fit and function in a stable,
thriving democracy, all citizens are expected to know and assume a
participatory role to the best of their capacities.



To promote both fullest political participation and moral progress,
Jefferson realized that educational reform had to be systemic. In a
letter to Senator Joseph C. Cabell (9 Sept. 1817), Jefferson outlines
six features of that system.


1. Basic education should be available to all.
2. Education should be tax-supported.
3. Education should be free from religious dictation.
4. The educational system should be controlled at the local
level.
5. The upper levels of education should feature free inquiry.
6. The mentally proficient should be enabled to pursue education to
the highest levels at public expense.



Only a system could offer all citizens an education proportioned to
their needs: the laborers, a broad, general education; the learned, an
education suited to their idiosyncratic needs (Bowers 1943: 243 and
Walton 1984: 119). Jefferson gets across that point to academician
George Ticknor (25 Nov. 1817) in the manner of Bacon by limning the
important truths--"that knowledge is power, that knowledge
is safety, and that knowledge is happiness." That knowledge is
useful, data-driven.



Overall, observation showed that human capacities were greatly
underdeveloped (TJ to William Green Munford, 17 June 1799).
Consequently, education needed to tap into untapped human potential in
morally responsible ways.



> 
> 
> As well might it be urged that the wild and uncultivated tree,
> hitherto yielding sour and bitter fruit only, can never be made to
> yield better; yet we know that the grafting art implants a new tree on
> the savage stock, producing what is most estimable both in kind and
> degree. Education, in like manner, engrafts a new man on the native
> stock, and improves what in his nature was vicious and perverse into
> qualities of virtue and social worth ([R]: 461).
> 
> 
> 



Human perfectibility, for Jefferson, was a matter of improved
efficiency of living, which implied not merely progress in the fields
of human health and human productivity through discoveries and
labor-saving inventions, but also and especially moral improvement.
Moral improvement was much more important than exercise of rationality
(e.g., TJ to Maria Cosway, 12 Oct. 1786). Pure rationality was a
matter of humans abstracting from reality; moral sensibility was a
matter of humans immersed in reality.



Still Jefferson thought courses in morality were unneeded, if not
injurious. "I think it lost time to attend lectures in this
branch," Jefferson writes to Carr (10 Aug. 1787), for moral
conduct is not a matter of reason. That of course was consistent with
the empiricism of his day--e.g., Lord Kames and David Hume.
Nonetheless, Jefferson in *Notes on the State of Virginia* has
a role for education in moral development. The first stage of
education is not the time to encourage critical engagement with
material like the Bible, for human rationality is not sufficiently
developed, but instead a time when children should store historical
facts to be used critically later in life. While doing so, the
"elements of morality" can be instilled. Such elements
teach children, says Jefferson in Aristotelian fashion, that



> 
> 
> their own greatest happiness ... does not depend on their
> condition in life in which chance has placed them, but is always the
> result of a good conscience, good health, occupation [i.e., industry],
> and freedom in all just pursuits ([NV]: 147).
> 
> 
> 



Moral "learning" is, thus, less a matter of ingesting and
digesting moral principles to apply to circumstances--there were
no inviolable principles for Jefferson, as morality was a matter of
sensing the right thing to do in circumstances--but of placing
faith in the capacity of one's moral sense to
"decide" the right course of action without the corruptive
influence of reason or peer pressure (TJ to Martha Jefferson, 11 Dec.
1783, TJ to Peter Carr, 19 Aug. 1785 and 10 Aug. 1787).



Because of the subordination of rationality to morality, education
must be useful. It must engender effective, participatory citizenry
and political stability. Jefferson always insisted on the practicality
of education, because his take on knowledge was
 Baconian.[33]
 Consider what Jefferson says to scientist and physician Edward Jenner
(14 May 1806) on behalf of the "whole human family" for
his discovery of a vaccine for small pox.



> 
> 
> Medecine has never before produced any single improvement of such
> ability. Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood was
> a beautiful addition to our knowledge of the animal economy, but on a
> review of the practice of medicine before & since that epoch, I do
> not see any great amelioration which has been derived from that
> discovery, you have erased from the Calendar of human afflictions one
> of it's greatest. Yours is the comfortable reflection that
> mankind can never forget that you have lived.
> 
> 
> 



Yet every scientific discovery is potentially fruitful. "No
discovery is barren; it always serves as a step to something
else" (TJ to Robert Patterson, 17 Apr. 1803).



"Useful" for Jefferson was broad and with normative
 implications.[34]
 A complete education for Jefferson would produce men who were



> 
> 
> in all ways useful to society--useful because intelligent,
> cultured, well-informed, technically competent, moral (this
> particularly), capable of earning a living, happy, and fitted for
> political and social leadership (Martin: 37). 
> 
> 
> 



Useful implied socially and politically active. Male citizens of
greatest virtue and greatest genius would contribute by participation
in science and in the most politically prominent positions. Lesser
citizens would contribute more modestly and mostly at local levels
through, for illustration, jury duty, participation in militia, and
voting for and overseeing elected representatives.



Finally, education for Jefferson was a way of living. Its aim was to
give persons the tools they would need to make them socially and
politically involved, free, self-sufficient, and happy. As Karl
Lehmann (201-2) notes:



> 
> 
> To Thomas Jefferson, school would never be a 'finishing'
> agency. From each stage, man would have to move on in a never ending
> process of self-education.... The narrow professional who had but
> a technical knowledge of his little vocational area was a curse to
> him. Education had to be broad in order to assure the freedom and
> happiness of man.
> 
> 
> 


## 6. Race



Jefferson's views on race have been the focus of considerable
discussion in the secondary
 literature.[35]
 Those views, which would be considered today as racist, were likely
influenced by the views of the leading naturalists of his day. In that
regard, he was the product, not ahead, of his time.



Most of the discussion of Jefferson's views on Blacks concerns
his *Notes on the State of Virginia.* In Query XIV, Jefferson
writes, "In memory [Blacks] are equal to the whites"
([NV]: 139). "In reason," Jefferson says, "[Blacks
are] much inferior [to Whites], as I think one could scarcely be found
capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of
Euclid" ([NV]: 139). He adds, "Never yet could I find that
a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain
narration" ([NV]: 140). "In imagination [Blacks] are dull,
tasteless, and anomalous," and that is evident in their art. In
music, Blacks have accurate ears "for tune and time," are
generally more gifted than Whites, and are capable of a "small
catch," as illustrated by their talent with the
"Banjar," a guitar-like instrument "brought ...
from Africa." "Whether they will be equal to the
composition of a more extensive run of melody, or of complicated
harmony, is yet to be proved." Despite their misery, which
"is often the parent of the most affecting touches of
poetry," they have "no poetry" ([NV]: 40-41
and 288n10).



Inferiority of mind and imagination, he adds, is also confirmed, in
Jefferson's estimation, by "the improvement of the blacks
in body and mind, in the first instance of their mixture with the
whites," and that "has been observed by every one, and
proves that their inferiority is not the effect merely of their
condition of life" ([NV]: 141). Here he may be referencing
"observations" in scientific texts of his day in his
library.



In morality, Jefferson admits, Blacks are the equals of all
others.



> 
> 
> We find among them numerous instances of the most rigid integrity, and
> as many as among their better instructed masters, of benevolence,
> gratitude, and unshaken fidelity.
> 
> 
> 



What he takes to be their "disposition to theft,"
Jefferson explains thus: "The man, in whose favour no laws of
property exist, probably feels himself less bound to respect those
made in favour of others." Might not a slave "justifiably
take a little from one, who has taken all from him" ([NV]:
142).



All such conclusions, Jefferson says, are provisional: They have the
confirmation of observation, but Blacks as well as "red
men" hitherto have not been the subjects of natural history.



> 
> 
> The opinion, that they are inferior in the faculties of reason and
> imagination, must be hazarded with great diffidence. To justify a
> general conclusion, requires many observations, even where the subject
> may be submitted to the Anatomical knife, to Optical glasses, to
> analysis by fire or by solvents. How much more then where it is a
> faculty, not a substance, we are examining; where it eludes the
> research of all the senses; where the conditions of its existence are
> various and variously combined; where the effects of those which are
> present or absent bid defiance to calculation; let me add too, as a
> circumstance of great tenderness, where our conclusion would degrade a
> whole race of men from the rank in the scale of beings which their
> Creator may perhaps have given them. To our reproach it must be said,
> that though for a century and a half we have had under our eyes the
> races of black and of red men, they have never yet been viewed by us
> as subjects of natural history. I advance it therefore as a suspicion
> only, that the blacks ... are inferior to the whites in the
> endowments both of body and mind ([NV]: 143).
> 
> 
> 



Though he stated that Blacks and Native Americans had not been the
subjects of natural history, there was a large body of literature by
leading naturalists of his day--e.g., Swedish biologist Carl
Linnaeus ([1758] 1808), Oliver Goldsmith ([1774] 1823), and
"Georges" Cuvier ([1817] 1831)--to which Jefferson
had access and which he doubtless assimilated. That literature viewed
Blacks and Native Americans as inferior to white Europeans, and the
overall tendency was to associate darker skin with increased
 inferiority.[36]
 Prominent philosophers like David Hume (1755 [1987]: 208n10), Adam
Smith (1759 [1982]: 208), and C.F. de Volney in (1802 [2010]: 68) also
asserted the inferiority of Blacks and Native Americans.



This smattering of the "science" of Jefferson's time
shows that some of the most esteemed scientists held that Blacks and
Native Americans, considering each as a race or subspecies of humans,
were regarded as inferior or
 defective.[37]
 Jefferson owned and was informed by most of that literature, since he
tended to be aware of recent developments in all of the sciences. Thus
Jefferson's "observations" were tainted by the
"observations" or prejudgments of the authorities of his
day. Despite his view of them as inferior, he recognized Blacks, as
moral equals of all others, had the same rights as all other men. He
writes to Bishop Gregoire (25 Feb. 1809):



> 
> 
> Whatever be [Blacks'] degree of talent it is no measure of their
> rights. Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior to others in
> understanding, he was not therefore lord of the person or property of
> others.
> 
> 
> 



Nonetheless, Jefferson's view of Native Americans was
inconsistent with those naturalists who viewed them too as a race
inferior to Europeans, and that requires some explanation. In Query
XIV of his *Notes on the State of Virginia*, Jefferson offers a
brief analysis of Native Americans as a race. Not having had the
"advantages" of exposure to European culture that Blacks
have had, still Native Americans "often carve figures on their
pipes not destitute of design and merit" ([NV]: 140). Their
carvings and drawings "prove the existence of a germ in their
minds which only wants
 cultivation."[38]
 He continues,



> 
> 
> They astonish you with strokes of the most sublime oratory; such as
> prove their reason and sentiment strong, their imagination glowing and
> elevated. ([NV]: 140)
> 
> 
> 



One may wonder how much "advantage" Jefferson imagines
Blacks should demonstrate on account of their exposure to the
"culture" of their oppressors while enslaved. But
Jefferson maintains that though "most of [the Blacks in America]
have been confined to tillage, to their own homes, and their own
society" and have had little direct exposure to sciences and the
arts,



> 
> 
> many have been so situated, that they might have availed themselves of
> the conversation of their masters; many have been brought up to the
> handicraft arts, and from that circumstance have always been
> associated with the whites. Some have been liberally educated, and all
> have lived in countries where the arts and sciences are cultivated to
> a considerable degree, and have had before their eyes samples of the
> best works from abroad ([NV]: 139-40).
> 
> 
> 



Thus, Jefferson's assessment of Blacks differs from his
assessment of Native Americans. It is unclear whether that difference
is natural or nurtural. The intimation in  *Notes on the State of
Virginia* and in a letter to Edmund Coles (25 Aug. 1814) is
natural, though in other letters (e.g., TJ tp Benjamin Banneker, 30
Aug. 1791, and TJ to Bishop Gregoire, 25 Feb. 1809), the
suggestion is nurtural, though deficiencies are so pronounced that
there can be no rapid change of situation. With Native Americans, the
scenario is otherwise.



There is also a sentiment commonly expressed in the secondary
literature (e.g., Risjord 2002: 50-1, and Holowchak 2012,
243-48) that Jefferson had a personal, or political, interest in
defending Native Americans that he did not have for Blacks.
Buffon--perhaps the greatest naturalist of his day--argued
that since the continent of North America was colder and wetter than
that of
 Europe,[39]
 its biota, Native Americans included, were inferior ([NV]: 48).
Consequently, "the savage" was feeble, glabrous,
passionless, and compared to Europeans, was sexually less potent, less
sensitive, and more timid, among other things ([NV]: 58). Abbe
Raynal said more. What was true of Native Americans would eventually
prove true of any Europeans transplanted in America ([NV]: 64).
Jefferson put considerable effort into refuting Buffon and Raynal
([NV]: 60-64), which he did, as most scholars concede (e.g.,
Peden 1954: xxiii), with remarkable success, though his aim was
further, open discussion more than it was refutation ([NV]: 54).



One thing seems clear, however. His mistaken views of Blacks and his
views of Native Americans shaped his political thinking.
Jefferson's political vision was of an American nation that was
wedded to liberty, happiness, and mostly agrarian living, that
instantiated irenic republican governance, and that would in time
serve as a model for other parts of the globe (Holowchak 2017b,
131-51). That vision, for success, required in his eyes the
fullest cultivation of genius and morality in the youthful nation
(McCoy 1980: 136). Native Americans, it seems, passed on both
accounts. Blacks, however, were to him wanting in genius. Thus, only
Native Americans could be integrated into the fledgling nation, which
held the prospect of covering, as an "empire for liberty,"
the North American continent (TJ to James Madison, 27 Apr. 1809) and
perhaps even the South American continent (TJ to James Madison, 24
Nov. 1801). In Jefferson's view, Blacks could not be integrated,
for any admixture of black blood with white blood would taint the
offspring, and thereby threaten the success of Jefferson's
republican experiment. So, every slave would eventually have to be
"removed beyond the reach of mixture" ([NV]: 137-38
and 143). Thus, he thought everyone would be best served if Blacks
were educated, emancipated, and expatriated; so too would Whites.



Jefferson's views on race of course have been roundly refuted by
modern science, which shows that race biologically is an empty
category.



What, however, of Jefferson's views and actions on the
elimination of slavery?



We do know that Jefferson consistently spoke out loudly against the
institution of slavery and that, as lawyer and politician, he worked
hard toward its eradication. He, for instance, undertook six *pro
bono* cases on behalf of slaves, seeking freedom, and never
defended the rights of a slaveholder. He crafted spirited declamations
of slavery in his Summary View ([S] 115-16), initial draft of
the Declaration of Independence ([Au] 22), his *Notes on the State
of Virginia* ([NV]: 162-63), and in several letters.



Nonetheless, he did little in retirement, when he could have tried to
do more.



Yet as he matured, Jefferson did little to advance the issue, because
he believed that that effort might be more harmful than beneficial.
The time, he consistently said, was not right. As early as 1805 (TJ to
William Burwell, Jan. 28), he expresses skepticism concerning the
eradication of slavery.



> 
> 
> There are many virtuous men who would make any sacrifices to effect
> it, many equally virtuous who persuade themselves either that the
> thing is not wrong, or that it cannot be remedied, and very many with
> whom interest is morality [i.e., those who recognize its immorality,
> but think sympathy is equivalent to action]. The older we grow, the
> larger we are disposed to believe the last part to be.
> 
> 
> 



To Edward Coles (25 Aug. 1814), he writes of the "general
silence" on slavery as indicative of public apathy among younger
generations. 



> 
> 
> I have overlived the generation with which mutual labors & perils
> begat mutual confidence and influence. This enterprise [abolition of
> slavery] is for the young; for those who can follow it up, and bear it
> through to its consummation.
> 
> 
> 



He even castigates Coles when the latter considers emancipation of his
own slaves--a precipitous act.



> 
> 
> The laws do not permit us to turn them loose, if that were for their
> good: and to commute them for other property is to commit them to
> those whose usage of them we cannot control. I hope then, my dear sir,
> you will reconcile yourself to your country and its unfortunate
> condition.
> 
> 
> 



Jefferson's mistaken views on Blacks and his refusal upon
retirement to do more to eliminate the institution of slavery have
prompted considerable critical discussion in the secondary literature
(see fn. 38). On the one hand, most see Jefferson as racist. McColley
(1964), Cohen (1969), Miller (1977), and Dawidoff (1993) argue that
Jefferson's racial views were hypocritical rationalizations for
his slaveholding and large living. Finkelman (1994), O'Brien
(1996), and Magnis (1999) state that Jefferson was driven by a
profound hatred of Blacks. On the other hand, Levy (1963), Mayer
(2001), Burstein (2005), and Holowchak (2013b and 2020a) argue that
though Jefferson held false views concerning Blacks, it is
anachronistic to call him a racist, as ignorance concerning racial
differences by commoners and scientists was at the time rife.
Jefferson, ultimately, was a product of the ignorance and prejudgments
of his time.