Jefferson showed his draft to the committee, which made some final revisions, and then presented it to Congress on June 28, 1776. After voting in favor of the resolution of independence on July 2, Congress turned its attention to the declaration. Over several days of debate, Congress made a few changes in wording and deleted nearly a fourth of the text, most notably a passage critical of the slave trade, changes that Jefferson resented. On July 4, 1776, the wording of the Declaration of Independence was approved. The Declaration would eventually become Jefferson's major claim to fame, and his eloquent preamble became an enduring statement of human rights.
State legislator
In September 1776, Jefferson returned to Virginia and was elected to the new Virginia House of Delegates. During his term in the House, Jefferson set out to reform and update Virginia's system of laws to reflect its new status as a democratic state. He drafted 126 bills in three years, including laws to abolish primogeniture, establish freedom of religion, and streamline the judicial system. In 1778, Jefferson's "Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge" led to several academic reforms at his
alma mater, including an elective system of study...the first in an American university.
While in the state legislature Jefferson proposed a bill to eliminate capital punishment for all crimes except murder and treason. His effort to reform the death penalty law was defeated by just one vote, and such crimes as rape remained punishable by death in Virginia until the 1960s. He succeeded in passing an act prohibiting the importation of slaves but not slavery itself.
Governor of Virginia
Jefferson served as governor of Virginia from 1779—1781. As governor, he oversaw the transfer of the state capital from Williamsburg to the more central location of Richmond in 1780. He continued to advocate educational reforms at the College of William and Mary, including the nation's first student-policed honor code. In 1779, at Jefferson's behest, William and Mary appointed George Wythe to be the first professor of law in an American university. Dissatisfied with the rate of changes he wanted to push through, he later became the founder of the University of Virginia, which was the first university in the United States at which higher education was completely separate from religious doctrine.
Virginia was invaded twice by the British led first by Benedict Arnold and then by Lord Cornwallis during Jefferson's term as governor. He, along with Patrick Henry and other leaders of Virginia, were but ten minutes away from being captured by Banastre Tarleton, a British colonel leading a cavalry column that was raiding the area in June 1781. Public disapproval of his performance delayed his future political prospects, and he was never again elected to office in Virginia. He was, however, appointed by the state legislature to Congress in 1783.
Member of Congress
The Virginia state legislature appointed Jefferson to the Congress of the Confederation on 6 June 1783, his term beginning on 1 November. He was a member of the committee formed to set foreign exchange rates, and in that capacity he recommended that the American currency be based on the decimal system.
Jefferson also recommended setting up the Committee of the States, to function as the executive arm of Congress when Congress was not in session.
He left Congress when he was elected a minister plenipotentiary on 7 May 1784. He became Minister to France in 1785.
Minister to France
Because Jefferson served as minister to France from 1785 to 1789, he was not able to attend the Philadelphia Convention. He generally supported the new constitution despite the lack of a bill of rights and was kept informed by his correspondence with James Madison.
While in Paris, he lived in a home on the Champs-Élysées. He spent much of his time exploring the architectural sites of the city, as well as enjoying the fine arts that Paris had to offer. He became a favorite in the salon culture and was a frequent dinner guest of many of the city's most prominent people. In addition, he frequently entertained others from French and European society. He and his daughters were accompanied by two slaves of the Hemings family from Monticello. Jefferson paid for James Hemings to be trained as a French chef (Hemings later accompanied Jefferson as chef when he was in Philadelphia). Sally Hemings, James' sister, had accompanied Jefferson's younger daughter overseas. Some historians speculate that Jefferson begun a long-term relationship with Sally Hemings while in Paris. Both the Hemings learned French during their time in the city.
From 1784 to 1785, Jefferson was one of the architects of trade relations between the United States and Prussia. The Prussian ambassador Friedrich Wilhelm von Thulemeyer and John Adams, both living in the Hague, and Benjamin Franklin in Paris, were also involved.
Despite his numerous friendships with the social and noble elite, when the French Revolution began in 1789, Jefferson sided with the revolutionaries.
Secretary of State
After returning from France, Jefferson served as the first Secretary of State under George Washington (1790—1793). Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton began sparring over national fiscal policy, especially the funding of the debts of the war, with Hamilton believing that the debts should be equally shared, and Jefferson believing that each state should be responsible for its own debt (Virginia had not accumulated much debt during the Revolution). In further sparring with the Federalists, Jefferson came to equate Hamilton and the rest of the Federalists with Tories and monarchists who threatened to undermine republicanism. He equated Federalism with "Royalism," and made a point to state that "Hamiltonians were panting after...and itching for crowns, coronets and mitres." Jefferson and James Madison founded and led the Democratic-Republican Party. He worked with Madison and his campaign manager John J. Beckley to build a nationwide network of Republican allies to combat Federalists across the country.
Jefferson strongly supported France against Britain when war broke out between those nations in 1793. Historian Lawrence S. Kaplan notes Jefferson's "visceral support for the French cause," while agreeing with Washington that the nation should not get involved in the fighting. The arrival in 1793 of an aggressive new French minister, Edmond-Charles Genêt, caused a crisis for the Secretary of State, as he watched Genêt try to violate American neutrality, manipulate public opinion, and even go over Washington's head in appealing to the people; projects that Jefferson helped to thwart. According to Schachner, Jefferson believed that political success at home depended on the success of the French army in Europe:
- Jefferson still clung to his sympathies with France and hoped for the success of her arms abroad and a cordial compact with her at home. He was afraid that any French reverses on the European battlefields would give "wonderful vigor to our monocrats, and unquestionably affect the tone of administering our government. Indeed, I fear that if this summer should prove disastrous to the French, it will damp that energy of republicanism in our new Congress, from which I had hoped so much reformation."
Break from office
Jefferson at the end of 1793 retired to Monticello where he continued to orchestrate opposition to Hamilton and Washington. However, the Jay Treaty of 1794, orchestrated by Hamilton, brought peace and trade with Britain while Madison, with strong support from Jefferson, wanted, Miller says, "to strangle the former mother country" without going to war. "It became an article of faith among Republicans that 'commercial weapons' would suffice to bring Great Britain to any terms the United States chose to dictate." Jefferson, in retirement, strongly encouraged Madison.
Election of 1796 and Vice Presidency
As the Democratic-Republican candidate in 1796 he lost to John Adams, but had enough electoral votes to become Vice President (1797—1801). He wrote a manual of parliamentary procedure, but otherwise avoided the Senate.
With the Quasi-War, an undeclared naval war with France, underway, the Federalists under John Adams started a navy, built up the army, levied new taxes, readied for war, and enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798. Jefferson interpreted the Alien and Sedition Acts as an effort to suppress Democratic-Republicans rather than dangerous enemy aliens and, in fact, they were used to attack his party, with the most notable attacks coming from Matthew Lyon, a representative from Vermont. Jefferson and Madison rallied support by anonymously writing the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, which declared that the federal government had no right to exercise powers not specifically delegated to it by the states. The Resolutions meant that, should the federal government assume such powers, its acts under them could be voided by a state. The Resolutions presented the first statements of the states' rights theory, that later led to the concepts of nullification and interposition.
Election of 1800
Working closely with Aaron Burr of New York, Jefferson rallied his party, attacking the new taxes especially, and ran for the Presidency in 1800. Consistent with the traditions of the times, he did not formally campaign for the position. Before the passage of the Twelfth Amendment, a problem with the new union's electoral system arose. He tied with Burr for first place in the electoral college, leaving the House of Representatives (where the Federalists still had some power) to decide the election.
After lengthy debate within the Federalist-controlled House, Hamilton convinced his party that Jefferson would be a lesser political evil than Burr and that such scandal within the electoral process would undermine the still-young regime. The issue was resolved by the House, on February 17, 1801, after thirty-six ballots, when Jefferson was elected President and Burr Vice President. Burr's refusal to remove himself from consideration created ill will with Jefferson, who dropped Burr from the ticket in 1804 after Burr killed Hamilton in a duel.
However, Jefferson's win over the Federalist John Adams in the general election was derided in its time for how the electoral college was set up under the three-fifths compromise at the Constitutional convention. Jefferson owed part of his election to the South's inflated number of Electors due to slave-holdings, which meant that twelve of Jefferson's electoral votes...his margin of victory...were derived from citizenry who were denied the vote and their full humanity. After his election in 1800, Jefferson was derided as the "Negro President", with critics like the
Mercury and New-England Palladium of Boston writing on January 20, 1801, that Jefferson had the gall to celebrate his election as a victory for democracy when he won "the temple of Liberty on the shoulders of slaves."