Thomas Jefferson

C

Marriage

On New Year's Day, 1772, Jefferson married Martha Wayles Skelton, a 24-year-old widow. Patty, as Jefferson called her, shared her husband's love of music and played the harpsichord and piano. The marriage was a happy one despite Mrs. Jefferson's ill health. Of their six children, only two, both of them girls, lived to maturity. Martha Jefferson died in 1782. The death of his wife had a profound effect on Jefferson and probably influenced his return to politics, which he had considered abandoning.

III

Early Career

A

Virginia Burgess

By the time of his marriage, Jefferson had for several years been a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses. This was the lower chamber of the Virginia legislature, which was called the General Assembly. He was elected in 1768 and took his seat at Williamsburg in the spring of 1769. As a burgess, Jefferson took an active part in the events that led to the American Revolution (1775-1783). He belonged to the so-called radical group that was in opposition to the conservative planters of the Tidewater region. Many of his democratic views came from his experience as a resident of the western part of the colony, near the frontier, where he saw the colonists carve a civilization out of the wilderness. This strengthened his lifelong belief that people could and should govern themselves.

Jefferson was a poor speaker, but his literary talents made him a highly valued member of committees when resolutions and other public papers were drafted. He emerged as the recognized author of the patriot cause in Virginia and indeed in the whole of the colonies. Jefferson's first public paper, however, was considered too stiff and formal, and it was rewritten. The paper was a response to the greeting of the new governor, Lord Botetourt, to the General Assembly. Jefferson, who never took criticism graciously, remembered the incident with annoyance for many years.

A

1

Townshend Acts

In 1769 Jefferson joined his fellow burgesses in opposing the Townshend Acts. These laws passed by the British Parliament required the colonies to pay duties on paint, lead, paper, and tea. They also made changes in colonial administration that disturbed the colonists. The Massachusetts legislature appealed to the other colonies for concerted action against the laws. Virginia responded with resolutions protesting the acts. Governor Botetourt, learning of the resolutions, dissolved the General Assembly. However, the burgesses moved their meeting to the Raleigh Tavern in Williamsburg, where Jefferson and the others signed an association, or pledge of action. Drafted by Burgess George Mason and introduced by Burgess George Washington, the document went far beyond any previous protest. It bound its signers not to buy a number of imported goods until the Townshend duties were abolished.

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Faced with the prospect of a boycott, Great Britain lifted most of the offensive duties. Thus the colonists were quieted so effectively, Jefferson said, that they “seemed to fall into a state of insensibility to our situation.” He, however, was not deceived. He noted that the tea tax still held and that Parliament still claimed the right “to bind us by their laws in all cases whatsoever.”

A

2

Committee of Correspondence

In 1773, in retaliation for the burning of the British ship Gaspée near Providence, Rhode Island, the British government ordered a special court of inquiry and threatened to send the perpetrators to Britain for trial. Jefferson and his brother-in-law Dabney Carr were among the burgesses who protested the British threats. They met secretly with burgesses Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee and a few others to consider a plan of action. Carr drew up a set of resolutions proposing a committee of correspondence for Virginia. The committee was to keep in touch with other colonies on matters of common interest. Other resolutions challenged the legality of the court of inquiry and protested the threat “to transmit persons accused of offenses committed in America to places beyond the seas to be tried.” The resolutions were passed by the General Assembly. Although the committee of correspondence did not include Jefferson or other so-called radicals, the first step had been taken toward communication and joint action on grievances by all the colonies.

A

3

Jefferson's Resolutions

Early in 1774 the colonies were angered by the passage of what were called the Intolerable Acts. One of these, the Boston Port Act, closed Boston Harbor in retaliation for a protest incident, the so-called Boston Tea Party, where angry colonists dumped British tea into Boston Harbor. Virginia protested the Boston Port Act, and Jefferson was one of the burgesses who suggested that the day the act went into effect should be declared “a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer.” Because of this resolution, the General Assembly was again dismissed, this time by Lord Dunmore, who had replaced Botetourt as governor.

Virginians immediately elected their dismissed burgesses as delegates to a convention to consider the grievances of the colonies. As delegate from Albemarle County, Jefferson wrote a series of resolutions later titled A Summary View of the Rights of British America. In defining the grievances with Great Britain, Jefferson denied that Parliament had any authority over the colonies, and he attacked the restrictive acts passed by Parliament as a deliberate plan to destroy colonial freedom. Jefferson also accused the king of rejecting the best laws passed by colonial legislatures, of preventing the outlawing of slavery in the colonies, of permitting his governors to dissolve colonial assemblies, and of sending in armed forces without having the right to do so. Jefferson said the colonists were “a free people claiming their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their Chief Magistrate.”

On his way to Williamsburg, where the convention was to meet, Jefferson became ill. He was unable to go on but sent his Summary View to be presented by fellow Burgess Peyton Randolph. The younger delegates applauded Jefferson's work, but for the time being “tamer sentiments were preferred,” as Jefferson put it. The Summary View was set aside in favor of a more tactfully phrased remonstrance to Parliament. However, Jefferson's work was published in Philadelphia and England, and Jefferson's talents as a writer and political thinker came to the attention of American patriots outside of Virginia.

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