Most members of Congress signed the Declaration on August 2, 1776. Its author signed the paper Th Jefferson. After signing, he was ready to go home. He missed his family. Besides, he felt he was needed in Virginia. He quit his seat in Congress on September 2 and reached Monticello a week later.
In October, Jefferson became a member of Virginia’s new state legislature. He served there for three difficult years. England was the world’s most powerful nation. For a long while, it appeared that the United States would lose the war.
Jefferson ran for governor of Virginia in June 1779. He was elected and held the office for two years. Jefferson was a brilliant thinker. He was a marvelous writer. But he was not a good wartime governor. Perhaps the biggest problem was that in his heart he was a man of peace. He was not good at raising and arming men for combat. As a result, Virginia was unprepared when the British invaded the state in 1781.
On June 2, 1781, with British forces overrunning Virginia, Jefferson’s term as governor ended. Two days later, Jefferson was at Monticello when a messenger arrived with terrible news. The British were coming to capture him! Thomas made Martha and the children board a carriage and escape. He then walked into the woods to see if he could spot the enemy. Seeing no sign of them, he decided to return home for some papers. Before doing that, he took out a small telescope he had brought along. He aimed it at Charlottesville, just two miles from Monticello. The town was crawling with British troops.
The telescope may have saved his life. The British had seized Monticello. Had he returned home, Jefferson might have been captured and hanged. Instead, he met up with his family.
CONTINENTAL SOLDIER
WHEN THE THIRTEEN COLONIES WENT TO WAR AGAINST ENGLAND, THE AMERICAN COLONISTS WANTED THEIR OWN FLAG TO REPRESENT THE LAND THEY WERE FIGHTING FOR. HERE ARE SOME OF THE FLAGS COLONISTS USED DURING THE REVOLUTION.
Jefferson took them to Poplar Forest, a plantation he owned about eighty miles from Monticello.
A few months after the Jeffersons fled Monticello, Americans won a stunning victory. It occurred right in Virginia. Ben Franklin had convinced France to help America fight Britain. In October 1781, George Washington’s troops, along with French soldiers, crushed the British at Yorktown, Virginia. This victory meant that America had won its war for independence.
No one was happier about independence than Thomas Jefferson. This should have been a happy time for Jefferson. However, some Virginians accused him of not having done enough earlier as governor to protect the state. Virginia’s legislature even held hearings on the subject. Jefferson was cleared of wrongdoing in late 1781. Still, the harsh words from people of his own state hurt him deeply. To make things worse, while horseback riding, Thomas broke his left wrist and suffered other injuries. He couldn’t leave the house for six weeks.
In the following year came the worst blow of all. By early 1782, the Jeffersons were back at Monticello. There, on May 8, Martha gave birth to her sixth and last child, Lucy Elizabeth. Martha grew weaker day by day following the birth. For four months, Thomas stayed by her bedside. He read to her from their favorite books. At night, he slept in a nearby room.
In her final hours, Martha told Thomas her last wish. She had three living children—Patsy, Maria, and the baby, Lucy Elizabeth. She couldn’t bear for them to be raised by a stepmother. Promise never to remarry, she begged her husband. Thomas promised. A short time later, on September 6, 1782, Martha died.
Thomas’s oldest daughter Patsy was nine at the time. Many years later she wrote that her father nearly lost his mind from grief. He would not leave his room for three weeks. When he finally came out, he went on long horseback rides through the woods. “The violence of his emotion, of his grief,” she wrote half a century later, “to this day I dare not trust myself to describe.”
Friends such as James Madison thought that Thomas should return to politics. That might take his mind off his grief. Jefferson agreed. In June 1783, Jefferson was elected to the Continental Congress. Over the next six months, he served on nearly every major committee in Congress. He also wrote at least thirty-one government papers.
In the spring of 1784, Congress gave him an important job. He was to go to France and help make treaties with European countries. Jefferson left his two younger daughters with relatives. But eleven-year-old Patsy made the 3,800-mile voyage with her father. They reached Paris on August 6.
Once he was in France, Jefferson’s job changed. Ben Franklin resigned as U.S. minister to France. Jefferson, who had learned some French, was then named to the post. He was to make sure that the United States and France remained friends. He kept in touch with French officials and traveled around the country.
Back home, though, things were going poorly. In October 1784, two-year-old Lucy Elizabeth died of whooping cough. News traveled so slowly by ship that Jefferson didn’t find out about it for about three months. The grieving father wanted his only other child, Maria, to join Patsy and himself in France. Eight-year-old Maria was too young to travel alone. Jefferson wrote home asking that one of his slaves sail with her.
A slave named Sally Hemings, only fourteen years old herself, was sent with Maria. The two girls arrived in France in mid-1787. Maria entered the school that Patsy attended. Sally went to work as a house slave in Jefferson’s Paris apartment.
Sally Hemings was not only a slave. She was closely related to Jefferson’s late wife. Martha Jefferson’s parents were John and Martha Wayles. Martha’s father also had six children with one of his slave women. These children were considered black and were raised as slaves. Sally was one of them. Because they had the same father, Martha and Sally were half-sisters. After John Wayles’s death in 1773, Sally had become Martha and Thomas Jefferson’s slave at Monticello.
Sally Hemings probably looked like her half-sister. She may have reminded Thomas of Martha in other ways. Jefferson began a relationship with Sally. She had little if any choice in the matter. Because Jefferson was her master, Sally had to do what he wanted. This was just one of the many evil things about slavery. Yet over time, it appears that Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson grew very fond of each other. They would maintain their relationship for nearly forty years.
In 1789, Sally Hemings became pregnant. Thomas Jefferson was the father. By then, Jefferson had been overseas for five years. He wanted to go home. Congress said he could. But Jefferson had one problem. Under French law, Sally could become free by staying in France. She agreed to return to the U.S. only if Jefferson made her a promise. Their children had to be freed once they reached adulthood. Sally may have also asked for her own freedom one day as well.
Jefferson agreed. In the fall of 1789, he sailed for home with Sally Hemings and his two daughters. They barely made it. Off Virginia’s coast, a storm lashed their ship, ripping away some of the sails. Then another vessel nearly rammed into them. Their ship also caught fire—but fortunately, just after they had landed.
The travelers reached Monticello two days before Christmas of 1789. Sally’s baby was born soon after, but the child seems to have lived only a short time. Jefferson’s relationship with Sally continued at Monticello. Over the next nineteen years, they had six more children. Two died in infancy. Their sons Beverley, Madison, and Eston, and their daughter, Harriet, lived to adulthood. Like their mother, these four children were slaves at Monticello.
Many years later, Madison Hemings complained that Thomas Jefferson hadn’t shown his slave family any “fatherly affection.” However, in one way Jefferson did favor Sally and their children. He saw to it that they had easier jobs than the field slaves. Sally and Harriet did housework and sewing at Monticello. The boys ran errands and worked at carpentry.
Eventually, Sally and her children were given their freedom, but not for many years to come.
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