IV

JEFFERSON IN THE REVOLUTION

SHORTLY after Mr. Jefferson's marriage, the preliminary movements of the Revolution began, and though he took an active part in them it was not without reluctance. Even after the battle of Bunker Hill, namely, in November, 1775, he wrote to a kinsman that there was not a man in the British Empire who more cordially loved a union with Great Britain than he did. John Jay said after the Revolution: "During the course of my life, and until the second petition of Congress in 1775, I never did hear any American of any class or description express a wish for the independence of the colonies."

But these friendly feelings were first outraged and then extinguished by a long series of ill-considered and oppressive acts, covering, with some intermissions, a period of

about twelve years. Of these the most noteworthy were the Stamp Act, which amounted to taxation without representation, and the impost on tea, which was coupled with a provision that the receipts should be applied to the salaries of officers of the crown, thus placing them beyond the control of the local assemblies. The crown officers were also authorized to grant salaries and pensions at their discretion; and a board of revenue commissioners for the whole country was established at Boston, and armed with despotic powers. These proceedings amounted to a deprivation of liberty, and they were aggravated by the king's contemptuous rejection of the petitions addressed to him by the colonists. We know what followed, — the burning of the British war schooner, Gaspee, by leading citizens of Providence, and the famous tea-party in Boston harbor.

Meanwhile Virginia had not been inactive. In March, 1772, a few young men, members of the House of Burgesses, met at the Raleigh Tavern in Williamsburg. They were Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee and his

brother, Thomas Jefferson, and a few others. They drew up several resolutions, the most important of which called for the appointment of a standing committee and for an invitation to the other colonies to appoint like committees for mutual information and assistance in the struggle against the crown. A similar resolution had been adopted in Massachusetts two years before, but without any practical result. The Virginia resolution was passed the next day by the House of Burgesses, and it gave rise to those proceedings which ushered in the Revolution.

The first Continental Congress was to meet in Philadelphia, in September, 1774; and Jefferson, in anticipation, prepared a draft of instructions for the delegates who were to be elected by Virginia. Being taken ill himself, on his way to the convention, he sent forward a copy of these instructions. They were considered too drastic to be adopted by the convention; but some of the members caused them to be published under the title of "A Summary View of the Rights of America." The pamphlet was extensively

read in this country, and a copy which had been sent to London falling into the hands of Edmund Burke, he had it reprinted in England, where it ran through edition after Jefferson's name thus became known throughout the colonies and in England.

edition.

"

The Summary View" is in reality a political essay. Its author wasted no time in discussing the specific legal and constitutional questions which had arisen between the colonies and the crown; but he went to the root of the matter, and with one or two generalizations as bold and original as if they had been made by Rousseau, he cut the Gordian knot, and severed America from the Parliament of Great Britain. He admitted some sort of dependence upon the crown, but his two main principles were these: (1) that the soil of this country belonged to the people who had settled and improved it, and that the crown had no right to sell or give it away; (2) that the right of self-government was a right natural to every people, and that Parliament, therefore, had no authority to

make laws for America. Jefferson was always about a century in advance of his time; and the "Summary View" substantially anticipated what is now the acknowledged relation of England to her colonies.

Jefferson was elected a member of the Continental Congress at its second session; and he made a rapid journey to Philadelphia in a chaise, with two led horses behind, reaching there the night before Washington set out for Cambridge. The Congress was composed mainly of young men. Franklin, the oldest member, was seventy-one, and a few others were past sixty. Washington was forty-three; John Adams, forty; Patrick Henry, a year or two younger; John Rutledge, thirty-six; his brother, twenty-six; John Langdon and William Paca, thirty-five, John Jay, thirty; Thomas Stone, thirty-two, and Jefferson, thirty-two.

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Jefferson soon became intimate with John Adams, who in later years said of him: Though a silent member of Congress, he was so prompt, frank, explicit, and decisive upon committees and in conversation—not