Williamsburg he stood in the hallway of the House, listening to Patrick Henry toss off his extempore oratorical thunderbolts against the Stamp Act in 1765. Jefferson was a listener and observer, distinctly uncomfortable in the spotlight, shy and nervous in a distracted manner that was sometimes mistaken for arrogance. 9
From his earliest days in the House he opposed all forms of parliamentary taxation and supported nonimportation resolutions against British trade regulations. But so did most other members of the House, along with the entire Tidewater leadership. (In 1771 his political radicalism collided with his domestic agenda when he ordered an expensive piano from London, “of fine mahogany, solid, not veneered,” in anticipation of his marriage to Martha. Even though this violated the nonimportation resolution, he ordered it sent anyway, saying he would store it until the embargo was lifted. The same thing happened three years later on an order of “sashed windows” for Monticello.) He seemed to most of his political contemporaries a hovering and ever-silent presence, like one of those foreigners at a dinner party who nod politely as they move from group to group but never reveal whether or not they can speak the language. He had a deep-seated aversion to the inherent contentions and routinized hurly-burly of a political career and was forever telling his friends that life on the public stage was not for him. Just as his political career was getting started, he seemed poised for retirement. 10
Given his subsequent role in the Continental Congress and then in shaping the course of the American Revolution, his selection to serve on the Virginia delegation in Philadelphia was a fortunate accident. Jefferson was not elected to the original delegation in 1774; he was not considered a sufficiently prominent figure to be included with the likes of George Washington, Patrick Henry, Edmund Pendleton and Peyton Randolph. In 1775, however, he was chosen as a potential substitute for Randolph—Jefferson was regarded as Randolph’s political godson—in anticipation of Randolph’s decision to abandon his post at Philadelphia in order to assume leadership of what was regarded as the more important business back in Virginia. It would be fair to say that Jefferson made the list of acknowledged political leaders in the Old Dominion, but just barely, and largely because of his ties by blood and patronage with the Randolph circle. If his arrival in Philadelphia in June 1775 marked his entry into national affairs, he entered by the side door. 11
WHIG PRINCIPLES
T HERE WAS ONE significant exception to this dominant pattern of reticence and marginality, but it happened to be the one item that delegates from the other colonies knew about the young Jefferson. “I have not been in Company with him yet,” reported Samuel Ward the day after Jefferson arrived, but “he looks like a very sensible spirited, fine Fellow and by the Pamphlet which he wrote last Summer he certainly is one.” Likewise John Adams recalled that Jefferson entered the Continental Congress carrying “the reputation of a masterly pen . . . , in consequence of a very handsome public paper which he had written for the House of Burgesses, which had given him the character of a fine writer.” 12
The reference was to a pamphlet that Jefferson had somewhat inadvertently published the previous year. In July 1774 he had taken it upon himself to draft a set of instructions for the first Virginia delegation to the Continental Congress. In a typical act of avoidance he had come up sick for the debate in the Virginia Convention, but friends had arranged for the publication of his draft by a press in Williamsburg. From there printers and newspaper editors throughout the colonies had picked up the pamphlet under the title of
A Summary View of the Rights of British America.
The audience at whom Jefferson had actually aimed his instructions, the Virginia legislators, chose
From his earliest days in the House he opposed all forms of parliamentary taxation and supported nonimportation resolutions against British trade regulations. But so did most other members of the House, along with the entire Tidewater leadership. (In 1771 his political radicalism collided with his domestic agenda when he ordered an expensive piano from London, “of fine mahogany, solid, not veneered,” in anticipation of his marriage to Martha. Even though this violated the nonimportation resolution, he ordered it sent anyway, saying he would store it until the embargo was lifted. The same thing happened three years later on an order of “sashed windows” for Monticello.) He seemed to most of his political contemporaries a hovering and ever-silent presence, like one of those foreigners at a dinner party who nod politely as they move from group to group but never reveal whether or not they can speak the language. He had a deep-seated aversion to the inherent contentions and routinized hurly-burly of a political career and was forever telling his friends that life on the public stage was not for him. Just as his political career was getting started, he seemed poised for retirement. 10
Given his subsequent role in the Continental Congress and then in shaping the course of the American Revolution, his selection to serve on the Virginia delegation in Philadelphia was a fortunate accident. Jefferson was not elected to the original delegation in 1774; he was not considered a sufficiently prominent figure to be included with the likes of George Washington, Patrick Henry, Edmund Pendleton and Peyton Randolph. In 1775, however, he was chosen as a potential substitute for Randolph—Jefferson was regarded as Randolph’s political godson—in anticipation of Randolph’s decision to abandon his post at Philadelphia in order to assume leadership of what was regarded as the more important business back in Virginia. It would be fair to say that Jefferson made the list of acknowledged political leaders in the Old Dominion, but just barely, and largely because of his ties by blood and patronage with the Randolph circle. If his arrival in Philadelphia in June 1775 marked his entry into national affairs, he entered by the side door. 11
WHIG PRINCIPLES
T HERE WAS ONE significant exception to this dominant pattern of reticence and marginality, but it happened to be the one item that delegates from the other colonies knew about the young Jefferson. “I have not been in Company with him yet,” reported Samuel Ward the day after Jefferson arrived, but “he looks like a very sensible spirited, fine Fellow and by the Pamphlet which he wrote last Summer he certainly is one.” Likewise John Adams recalled that Jefferson entered the Continental Congress carrying “the reputation of a masterly pen . . . , in consequence of a very handsome public paper which he had written for the House of Burgesses, which had given him the character of a fine writer.” 12
The reference was to a pamphlet that Jefferson had somewhat inadvertently published the previous year. In July 1774 he had taken it upon himself to draft a set of instructions for the first Virginia delegation to the Continental Congress. In a typical act of avoidance he had come up sick for the debate in the Virginia Convention, but friends had arranged for the publication of his draft by a press in Williamsburg. From there printers and newspaper editors throughout the colonies had picked up the pamphlet under the title of
A Summary View of the Rights of British America.
The audience at whom Jefferson had actually aimed his instructions, the Virginia legislators, chose
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