Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson is, by far, my favorite president. He was the first president I ever read a full book on and I find his life infinitely fascinating. While there are many vile and lamentable elements of his personal life (mainly his connections to and participation in slavery), I still find a ton of wonderful accomplishments to admire. Jefferson not only wrote the Declaration of Independence, but he also wrote the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, which inspired the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. It is because of Jefferson that we as Americans hold the separation of church and state and religious freedom so dear. And for that reason, Jefferson can be seen as a father of one of our main mechanisms against tyranny: The demarcation of religious and political institutions as separate bodies, thus ensuring no one mistakes the government as enforcing the will of God. Jefferson also supported immigrants' rights, public education, economic equality, and a bill of rights. I also find his love of learning and pursuit of scientific knowledge incredibly commendable.

However, Jefferson being my favorite president does not make him the best president. For me, that honor goes to Franklin D. Roosevelt, with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln coming in as a close second and third respectively. In these articles, I analyze solely the presidency of every individual I discuss. The fact that Herbert Hoover saved millions of lives with his humanitarian efforts during the Boxing Rebellion, WW1, and the Mississippi River Flood does not help his score. The only actions by Hoover - or any other president - that I factor into my ranking are those he took after affirming the proclamation, "I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States of America, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States" and before his successor did the same. Jefferson is now naked, no longer armored by his brilliant political career outside the White House. Can he still receive a good score? Yes!

Jefferson was, in my opinion, a great president. However, he did have many flaws. For instance, while he was one of the prime defenders of civil liberties in early US history, he also often wrote to local judiciaries asking them to prosecute his critics on trumped-up charges. Arguably the worst thing Jefferson ever did as president was endorse the assimilation of Native American tribes into white culture. However, Jefferson also did some positive things in regard to civil rights. For instance, while he did want Native Americans to assimilate, he also urged white settlers to be more peaceful with their indigenous neighbors and to avoid offensive violence. Furthermore, Jefferson signed the Naturalization Act of 1802, which lowered the number of years an immigrant had to live in the US to become a citizen from 14 years (as was standard under John Adams) to a mere 5 years. While supporting indigenous assimilation may have been Jefferson's worst deed in the executive branch, his best deed was ending the importation of slaves into the Union.

Elements of Jefferson's foreign policy are also problematic to me. For instance, he perpetrated the first overseas coup by the US government. However, that episode also exists in a larger story - the story of the First Barbary Pirates War - in which Jefferson showed himself to be a talented, capable leader. For decades leading up to Jefferson's inauguration in 1801, Western nations (including the US) had been paying tribute to Tripolitana (modern-day Libya) in exchange for the sultan of that country ensuring his pirates didn't attack European and American sailors. Jefferson had always been opposed to this, so when the sultan demanded higher payments from his government, Jefferson obviously refused. In retaliation, the sultan declared war on the US on May 14, 1801, by cutting down the American flag at the US consulate in Tripoli. With this, the First Barbary Pirates War began.

During the First Barbary Pirates War, Jefferson attempted to remove the sultan in a coup. Considering the situation the US was in, with Tripolitana having literally declared war on America due to a refusal to pay unfairly-high tributes, Jefferson's actions are understandable. They're certainly a lot less egregious than, say, when Dwight D. Eisenhower overthrew Muhammad Mossadeqq in Iran simply because he, Mossadeqq, tried to prevent Western countries from exploiting the Iranian oil industry. However, I still consider these actions imperialist and immoral. Understandable does not mean justified! However, under Jefferson's leadership, the US navy, which easily could have lost due to how weak it was and how little faith the American people placed in their naval forces, defeated Tripolitana. On June 4, 1805, the First Barbary Pirates War ended in an American victory. That day, a peace treaty was signed where the US paid one final tribute of $60,000 in exchange for the return of all American property taken by Tripolitana and the termination of any responsibility to pay future tolls.

In 1801, Spain ceded control over the Louisiana Territory to France. This scared many Americans because, under Spain, the United States could quickly and legally access New Orleans. Access to New Orleans was necessary to provide white settlers in states like Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan with basic necessities. Americans started to fear that France would evict Americans from New Orleans. So, later in 1801, Jefferson sent James Monroe and Robert Livingston to Paris to negotiate the sale of New Orleans to the US. Unbeknownst to Jefferson, Monroe, and Livingston, France was planning to go to war with the rest of Europe and needed money to fund these adventures. So, the French diplomats who corresponded with Monroe and Livingston offered the pair the whole of the Louisiana Territory. Even more astonishingly, they were offered the area for a tiny price of 3 cents per acre.

Jefferson was less excited than Monroe and Livingston. Acquiring New Orleans was necessary for the survival of the United States while acquiring the whole Louisiana Territory was not. Additionally, Jefferson was a strict constructionist, meaning he thought the only powers of the federal government were those directly mentioned in the Constitution. As a result, he worried that buying the Louisiana Territory would be illegal, as nowhere in the Constitution was such a massive land grab permitted. However, he ultimately decided that since agrarian living made people more self-reliant, he should go through with the purchase to give Americans more access to farmland. On April 30, 1803, the Senate approved the Louisiana Purchase. Jefferson also tried to buy the western half of Florida from Spain, but this did not succeed. Many people would consider these efforts to be positive, but I do not. No one living in Florida or Louisiana was given a say in these purchases, making them undemocratic and thus un-American.

As previously mentioned, France used the revenue from the Louisiana Purchase to fund the Napoleonic Wars. During the Napoleonic Wars, Britain and France, which were combatting one another in the conflict, began attacking random ships and forcing those on board to enlist in their navies. This practice, known as impressment, disproportionately impacted American sailors and so required US action. Many people demanded that Jefferson go to war, but he wisely stood firm and refused to let the issue escalate into an armed conflict. On December 22, 1807, Jefferson attempted to resolve the impressment crisis by signing the Embargo Act, which banned all trade between the US and the outside world. The Embargo Act was meant to protect American ships by limiting their work overseas, as well as to strip Britain and France of American goods, putting economic pressure on the two to cease all use of impressment. The Embargo Act devastated the US economy, so it does hurt Jefferson's score. However, since Jefferson had very few other options, I don't detract as many points from Jefferson as others do. Under James Madison, impressment became the main cause of the War of 1812.

My final critique of the Jefferson Administration is that it tried to impeach a member of the Supreme Court named Samuel Chase, secretly because Jefferson was a Democratic-Republican and Chase was a Federalist. However, the rest of Jefferson's policies regarding the judicial branch were very helpful and beneficial. For instance, Jefferson added an extra seat to the Supreme Court, which I support because having more people work on the Supreme Court adds more diversity and rational arguments to the organization's activity. Additionally, Jefferson signed the Judiciary Act of 1802. When Jefferson defeated the Federalist John Adams in the 1800 election, Adams spent the remainder of his presidency enacting the Judiciary Act of 1801, which opened up new slots in the judicial branch that Adams could fill with his own supporters and thus cripple Jeffersonian policies. The Judiciary Act of 1802 repealed Adams' law, signaling to future generations that future moves like the one made by Adams would not be successful.

Throughout his presidency, Jefferson routinely gave financial aid and funds to museums promoting science and education among ordinary people. While I dislike the Louisiana Purchase, I do support the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which provided Americans with an abundance of knowledge regarding the flora and fauna of the newly-obtained lands. Jefferson signed the Military Peace Establishment Act, a great law that set limits on the military, and established West Point, a military college that has educated many of America's greatest generals, including Ulysses S. Grant! During his second term, Jefferson, in 1806, also commissioned the construction of the National Road.

Jefferson served as America's third president. Prior to him, America was led by George Washington and the aforementioned Adams. Adams was a Federalist and Washington, while never officially joining a political party, preferred Federalist policies to Democratic-Republican policies. For this reason, Adams and Washington both implemented elitist and authoritarian policies that Jefferson heroically dismantled. In 1791, Washington, in order to pay off America's debt from the Revolutionary War, passed a tax forcing small whiskey producers to pay an annual toll of 9 cents per gallon, but only forced big whiskey producers to pay an annual toll of 6 cents per gallon. It could be argued that this tax was necessary at the time, but Adams never repealed it once it became useless. Jefferson, however, did repeal the law. During Adams' presidency, the US was on the brink of war with France. As a result, Adams signed the Sedition Act, suspending the First Amendment until March 3, 1801. Jefferson pardoned people prosecuted under the Sedition Act and repaid all fines levied under the law.

About 6 years before Jefferson became president, a local scandal in Georgia known as the Yazoo Affair broke out. "The Yazoo" refers to a region of Georgia that, today, makes up the states of Alabama and Mississippi. In 1795, a bill was pushed through the Georgia state legislature selling the entirety of the Yazoo to a quartet of private companies for a price of simply 7 cents per acre. Newspapers and pundits were also paid off by wealthy businessmen to support and promote the Yazoo Act. Across the whole country, the Yazoo Act and the resulting controversy outraged the people. Washington and Adams, though presumably upset about the law as well, were unable to take any action due to the larger crises filling up their time. Jefferson, however, managed to convince Georgia to repeal the Yazoo Act in 1802.

From 1801 to 1805, Jefferson's vice president was the infamous Aaron Burr. Like Jefferson, Burr despised Alexander Hamilton, the founder of the Federalist Party. However, unlike Jefferson, Burr had more personal reasons for disliking Hamilton. In 1791, the two formed a rivalry when Burr defeated Philip Shulyer (Hamilton's father-in-law) in a race for a Senate seat. When Burr routinely sided with Jefferson over Hamilton regarding major political issues, the tensions between the two men began to constantly inflate. In 1804, the last straw came when Burr lost his bid for the office of governor of New York, a fact he blamed on Hamilton. As a result, Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel. Hamilton accepted, but lost, dying on July 12, 1804. The public, even Democratic-Republicans who loathed Hamilton's beliefs, was outraged. Burr was immediately denied a spot on Jefferson's reelection ticket.

However, Burr still craved political influence. So, once his waning time as vice president expired, he left for the mid-west. There, he worked with disgruntled settlers seeking independence to establish an empire that he, Burr, would rule. Plans were made to annex large portions of Mexico and the United States. Burr even wrote a British politician named Anthony Merry, promising him that he, Burr, would help Britain take over parts of America in exchange for British assistance in Burr's plans to take over other regions of the US. When Jefferson sent a general named James Wilkinson to the Louisiana Territory to keep the peace amidst a boundary dispute with Spain, Burr wrote to Wilkinson (secretly an ally of Burr) encouraging him to use the troops he was entrusted with to help Burr. When word of these letters reached Jefferson, he immediately had Burr arrested, sparing the US from the treasonous imperialism of a vice president-turned murder.

Jefferson's final accomplishment was reducing the national debt, lowering it from $80,000,000 to $57,000,000, meaning he almost halved the country's financial burdens. Jefferson is not only my personal favorite president but also one of, in my view, America's greatest presidents. He may have had an expansionist foreign policy, impeached judges who disliked his policies, suppressed some dissent, attempted a coup, and hurt the economy, but he also fought for immigrants, banned the slave trade, endorsed a kinder treatment of Native Americans by white settlers, reduced the national debt, pardoned critics imprisoned by John Adams, arrested Aaron Burr for his treasonous swindling, established West Point, set limits on the military, commissioned the National Road, and sent a message to future generations that tyranny, at least in the United States, would not be tolerated!