Relationship with Sally Hemings

At home, Jefferson spent his time farming, managing his finances and making improvements to the estate. It was also at this time that Jefferson most likely had an affair with a slave named Sally Hemings, who was in fact Martha Jefferson's half-sister. Sally's mother, Betty Hemings, was a slave owned by Jefferson's father-in-law, John Wayles, who was the father of Betty's daughter Sally. While there is no definitive proof that Thomas Jefferson had children with Sally Hemings, the circumstantial evidence is all but conclusive: Jefferson was with Sally (either in France or at Monticello) nine months before the birth of all six of her children.

Furthermore, historical records corroborate the stories passed down orally through the Hemings family. Most compelling is recently produced DNA evidence showing that some male member of the Jefferson family fathered Hemings' children, and that it was not Samuel or Peter Carr, the only two of Jefferson's male relatives in the vicinity at the relevant times. It is therefore overwhelmingly likely, if not absolutely certain, that Thomas Jefferson fathered Sally Hemings' children.

Vice President

In 1797, despite Jefferson's public ambivalence and previous claims that he was through with politics, the Republicans selected Jefferson as their candidate to succeed Washington as president. In those days, candidates did not campaign for office openly, so Jefferson did little more than remain at home on the way to finishing a close second to then-Vice President John Adams in the electoral college, which, by the rules of the time, made Jefferson the new vice president. Besides presiding over the Senate, the vice president had essentially no substantive role in government. The long friendship between Adams and Jefferson had cooled due to political differences (Adams was a Federalist), and Adams did not consult his vice president on any important decisions.

To occupy his time during his four years as vice president, Jefferson authored "A Manual of Parliamentary Practice," one of the most useful guides to legislative proceedings ever written, and served as the president of the American Philosophical Society.

President

John Adams's presidency revealed deep fissures in the Federalist Party between moderates such as Adams and Washington and more extreme Federalists like Hamilton. In the presidential election of 1800, Hamiltonian Federalists refused to back Adams, clearing the way for the Republican candidates Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr to tie for first place with 73 electoral votes each. After a long and contentious debate, the House of Representatives selected Jefferson to serve as the third U.S. president, with Burr as his vice president.

The election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800 was a landmark of world history, the first peacetime transfer of power from one party to another in a modern republic. Delivering his inaugural address on March 4, 1801, Jefferson spoke to the fundamental commonalities uniting all Americans despite their partisan differences. "Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle," he stated. "We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists."

President Jefferson's first term in office was remarkably successful and productive. In keeping with his Republican values, Jefferson stripped the presidency of all the trappings of European royalty, reduced the size of the armed forces and government bureaucracy and lowered the national debt from $80 million to $57 million in his first two years in office.

Nevertheless, Jefferson's most important achievements as president all involved bold assertions of national government power and surprisingly liberal readings of the constitution. Jefferson's most significant accomplishment as president was the Louisiana Purchase. In 1803, he acquired land stretching from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains from cash-strapped Napoleonic France for the bargain price of $15 million, thereby doubling the size of the nation in a single stroke. He then devised the wonderfully informative Lewis and Clark Expedition to explore, map out and report back on the new American territories.

Jefferson also put an end to the centuries-old problem of Barbary pirates disrupting American shipping in the Mediterranean by forcing the pirates to capitulate by deploying new American warships. Notably, both the Louisiana Purchase and the undeclared war against the Barbary pirates conflicted with Jefferson's much-avowed Republican values. Both actions represented unprecedented expansions of national government power, and neither was explicitly sanctioned by the Constitution.

Although Jefferson easily won re-election in 1804, his second term in office proved much more difficult and less productive than his first. He largely failed in his efforts to impeach the many Federalist judges swept into government by the Judiciary Act of 1801. However, the greatest challenges of Jefferson's second term were posed by the war between Napoleonic France and Great Britain. Both Britain and France attempted to prevent American commerce with the other power by harassing American shipping, and Britain in particular sought to impress American sailors into the British Navy.

In response, Jefferson passed the Embargo Act of 1807, suspending all trade with Europe. The move wrecked the American economy as exports crashed from $108 million to $22 million by the time he left office in 1809. The embargo also led to the War of 1812 with Great Britain after Jefferson left office.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-30