THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THOMAS JEFFERSON
BY DANIEL S. LEVY
APRIL 13, 1743 Thomas Jefferson is born to Peter and Jane Jefferson at Shadwell plantation in Albemarle County, Virginia.
OCTOBER 1765 The colonists ask the King and Parliament to repeal the Stamp Act, which taxed colonial newspapers, commercial and legal papers, pamphlets and cards to pay the cost of Pontiac’s War and the French and Indian War.
1768 Jefferson starts work on Monticello at the top of an 867-ft. mountain that he inherited from his father. He moves into the South Pavilion two years later.
JAN. 1, 1772 Jefferson marries Martha Wayles Skelton, a 23-year-old widow. She brings a dowry that nearly doubles his land and number of slaves. The Jeffersons will have six children, only two of whom will live to adulthood.
DEC. 16, 1773 American patriots dressed like Mohawk Indians dump 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor to protest the tea tax and their lack of representation.
JULY 1774 Jefferson drafts instructions for the Virginia delegates to the First Continental Congress. He argues that Parliament has no governing rights over the colonies.
MARCH 23, 1775 Patrick Henry, in a speech at the Virginia Convention, calls on citizens to arm themselves, proclaiming, “Give me liberty, or give me death!”
APRIL 18–19, 1775 Paul Revere makes his famed midnight ride. The Battles of Lexington and Concord follow. These, the first skirmishes between British regulars and the Americans, mark the start of the American Revolution.
JUNE 17, 1775 The Battle of Bunker Hill—also known as the Battle of Breed’s Hill—takes place in Charlestown, Mass. It is the first major battle of the American Revolution.
JUNE 7, 1776 Congress appoints a committee to draft the Declaration of Independence. Members include Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Livingston and Roger Sherman. The group asks Jefferson to draft the document, which he pens in two to three days and includes the phrase “that all men are created equal.”
JULY 4, 1776 Congress approves the Declaration of Independence.
OCTOBER 1776 Jefferson returns to Virginia and serves in the House of Delegates. There he and James Madison become friends and start a lifelong political partnership.
MARCH 1, 1781 The Articles of Confederation are ratified, creating a weak confederation of sovereign states.
SEPT. 3, 1783 The Treaty of Paris is signed between Britain and the United States, ending the Revolution.
JULY 5, 1784 Congress has Jefferson join Adams and Franklin in negotiating treaties with European nations. He heads to Europe with his daughter Martha.
1784 Franklin invents bifocals
SUMMER 1786 Four years after the death of his wife, Jefferson meets Maria Cosway, an English artist. The two develop a close personal relationship. In October, after recovering from a broken wrist, Jefferson writes her a letter in which his “Head” debates with his “Heart” the conflicting merits of pleasure and love as opposed to rationality and intellect.
FEBRUARY–JUNE 1787 Jefferson travels through France and Italy and makes drawings of a macaroni, or pasta, machine.
MAY 25–SEPT. 17, 1787 The Constitutional Convention is held in Philadelphia. George Washington, Franklin and others form a new government and replace the Articles of Confederation.
JULY 1787 Daughter Mary (Polly) arrives in Paris with 14-year-old slave Sally Hemings.
NOVEMBER 1787 Jefferson receives a copy of the Constitution. He approves of it but calls for a Bill of Rights.
APRIL 30, 1789 Washington is sworn in in New York City as the first President of the United States.
JULY 14, 1789 The French Revolution gets under way with riots and the storming of the Bastille.
MARCH 21, 1790 Jefferson starts work as Secretary of State.
JAN. 21, 1793 Louis XVI of France is guillotined after being found guilty of treason. Queen Marie Antoinette is similarly killed on Oct. 16.
NOV. 19, 1794 Jay’s Treaty between the U.S. and Great Britain allows America to build a stronger economy.
FEB. 5, 1796 Jefferson frees James Hemings. He returns to Monticello in 1801 to work for wages as Jefferson’s chef.
DEC. 7, 1796 Adams is elected President and Jefferson Vice President.
JUNE 1800 The U.S. capital moves from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., and President Adams settles in town.
FEB. 17, 1801 After a tie vote between Jefferson and Aaron Burr, the election goes to the House of Representatives, where Jefferson is elected President and Burr Vice President.
MARCH 1801 President John Adams selects federal judges, including William Marbury (above), in a series of “midnight appointments.” Democratic-Republicans see this as a Federalist attempt to control the courts. Jefferson and Adams stop writing each other for a decade.
MARCH 4, 1801 Jefferson is the first President inaugurated in Washington. He walks to his Inauguration. “We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists,” he says in his speech.
SEPTEMBER 1802 James Callender writes in the Richmond Recorder how Jefferson “for many years past kept, as his concubine, one of his own slaves.” The Federalist presses soon pick up the story about Sally Hemings.
APRIL 30, 1803 Robert Livingston and James Monroe conclude a treaty with France to buy the Louisiana Territory for $15 million. It covers some 828,000 sq. mi. and almost doubles the size of the United States.
MAY 1804 Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, whom Jefferson had commissioned, set off with their Corps of Volunteers for North West Discovery to map the new Louisiana Territory and search for the legendary “Northwest Passage” to the Pacific to “offer the most direct & practicable water communication across this continent, for the purposes of commerce.”
JULY 12, 1804 Alexander Hamilton dies the day after a duel with Vice President Burr in Weehawken, N.J.
1804 Jefferson runs for re-election as President. George Clinton becomes Vice President.
DEC. 2, 1804 Napoleon Bonaparte crowns himself Emperor of France.
MARCH 2, 1807 Congress pro-hibits the importation of slaves.
DECEMBER 1807 Congress passes the Embargo Act. It closes American ports to foreign trade, allowing only coastal trade.
FEB. 12, 1809 Abraham Lincoln is born near Hodgenville, Ky.
MARCH 4, 1809 Jefferson retires from public office. He returns to Monticello and never leaves Virginia again.
JUNE 18, 1812 The War of 1812 begins because of Great Britain’s violations of U.S. maritime rights. It ends two years later with the Treaty of Ghent.
JULY 15, 1813 Adams and Jefferson start writing again in 1812, and Adams writes that it would be a pity if they died without explaining themselves to each other. Their correspondence will last the rest of their lives.
JAN. 8, 1815 Andrew Jackson defeats the British in the Battle of New Orleans.
DEC. 28, 1816 The American Colonization Society, whose president is Washington’s nephew Bushrod Washington, is formed to send blacks back to Africa.
1819 Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle is published.
MARCH 1820 The Missouri Compromise starts the sectional conflict over slavery and leads to the Civil War. Jefferson sees the dispute as intractable and calls the compromise a “fire bell in the night” and the “knell of the Union.”
DEC. 2, 1823 James Monroe sets out the Monroe Doctrine, closing the western hemisphere to future colonization and viewing any European interference as a hostile act.
DEC. 23, 1823 Clement Clarke Moore’s A Visit From St. Nicholas is first published.
MARCH 25, 1826 Jefferson writes his last letter to Adams.
JULY 4, 1826 Jefferson dies around noon on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. His last words are reportedly “Is it the Fourth?” Adams dies a few hours later, saying, “Thomas Jefferson still lives.”