*The Riverside Biographical Series* NUMBER 5 THOMAS JEFFERSON BY HENRY CHILDS MERWIN [Illustration: Th. Jefferson] THOMAS JEFFERSON BY HENRY CHILDS MERWIN [Publisher’s emblem] HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY Boston: 4 Park Street; New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street Chicago: 378-388 Wabash Avenue *The Riverside Press, Cambridge* COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY HENRY C. MERWIN ALL RIGHTS RESERVED CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. YOUTH AND TRAINING 1 II. VIRGINIA IN JEFFERSON’S DAY 16 III. MONTICELLO AND ITS HOUSEHOLD 28 IV. JEFFERSON IN THE REVOLUTION 36 V. REFORM WORK IN VIRGINIA 45 VI. GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA 59 VII. ENVOY AT PARIS 71 VIII. SECRETARY OF STATE 82 IX. THE TWO PARTIES 98 X. PRESIDENT JEFFERSON 114 XI. SECOND PRESIDENTIAL TERM 130 XII. A PUBLIC MAN IN PRIVATE LIFE 149 THOMAS JEFFERSON I YOUTH AND TRAINING Thomas Jefferson was born upon a frontier estate in Albemarle County, Virginia, April 13, 1743. His father, Peter Jefferson, was of Welsh descent, not of aristocratic birth, but of that yeoman class which constitutes the backbone of all societies. The elder Jefferson had uncommon powers both of mind and body. His strength was such that he could simultaneously “head up”—that is, raise from their sides to an upright position—two hogsheads of tobacco, weighing nearly one thousand pounds apiece. Like Washington, he was a surveyor; and there is a tradition that once, while running his lines through a vast wilderness, his assistants gave out from famine and fatigue, and Peter Jefferson pushed on alone, sleeping at night in hollow trees, amidst howling beasts of prey, and subsisting on the flesh of a pack mule which he had been obliged to kill.