---
title: "Thomas Jefferson"
chunk: 6/19
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:06:33.894887+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Jefferson sent for his youngest surviving child, nine-year-old Polly, in June 1787. She was accompanied by a young slave from Monticello, Sally Hemings. Jefferson had taken her older brother, James Hemings, to Paris as part of his domestic staff and had him trained in French cuisine. According to Sally's son, Madison Hemings, 16-year-old Sally and Jefferson began a sexual relationship in Paris, where she became pregnant. Madison indicated his mother agreed to return to the United States only after Jefferson promised to free her children when they came of age.
While in France, Jefferson became a regular companion of the Marquis de Lafayette, a French hero of the American Revolution, and Jefferson used his influence with Lafayette to procure trade agreements with France. As the French Revolution began, Jefferson agreed to allow his Paris residence at Hôtel de Langeac to be used for meetings by Lafayette and other revolutionary leaders. He was in Paris during the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, and he consulted with Lafayette as Lafayette drafted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Jefferson often found his mail opened by postmasters, so he invented his own enciphering device, the "Wheel Cipher"; he wrote important communications in code for the rest of his career. Unable to attend the 1787 Constitution Convention, Jefferson supported the Constitution but desired the addition of the promised Bill of Rights. Jefferson left Paris for America in September 1789. He remained a firm supporter of the French Revolution while opposing its more violent elements.

== Secretary of State ==

Soon after returning from France, Jefferson accepted President Washington's invitation to serve as Secretary of State. Pressing issues at the time, the national debt and where the new national capital should be placed following its planned relocation from Philadelphia in 1800, placed him at odds with Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, who favored a capital close to major commercial centers in the Northeast, while Washington, Jefferson, and other agrarians wanted it further south. After lengthy deadlock, the Compromise of 1790 was struck, permanently locating the capital on the Potomac River, and the federal government assumed the war debts of all original 13 states.
Jefferson opposed a national debt, preferring that each state retire its own, which contrasted with Hamilton's vision of the federal government consolidating state debts and establishing national credit and a national bank. Jefferson strenuously opposed both policies and attempted to undermine Hamilton's agenda, which nearly led Washington to dismiss him from the cabinet. He later left the cabinet voluntarily.
Jefferson's goals were to decrease American dependence on British commerce and to expand commercial trade with France. He sought to weaken Spanish colonialism of the Trans-Appalachia and British control in the North, believing this would aid in the pacification of Native Americans.
Along with political protegé James Madison, then a U.S. Representative, and author Philip Freneau, Jefferson co-founded the National Gazette in Philadelphia in 1791, which sought to counter the policies of the Federalist Party, which Hamilton was promoting through the Gazette of the United States, an influential Federalist newspaper. The National Gazette criticized the policies promoted by Hamilton, often in anonymous essays signed by the pen name Brutus at Jefferson's urging and written by Madison. In the spring of 1791, Jefferson was suffering from migraines and tiring of the infighting with Hamilton, so he and Madison departed for a vacation in Vermont.
In May 1792, Jefferson's concern about emerging political rivalries in the young nation was escalating, and he wrote Washington, imploring him to run for reelection for a second term that year as a unifying influence. He urged the president to rally the citizenry to a party that would defend democracy against the corrupting influence of banks and financial-focused interests, which the Federalists were embracing and espousing. Historians recognize Jefferson's letter to Washington as one of the first delineations of Democratic-Republican Party principles. Jefferson, Madison, and other Democratic-Republican organizers favored states' rights and local control and opposed the federal concentration of power. Hamilton, conversely, sought more power vested in the federal government.
Jefferson supported France against Britain when the two nations fought in 1793, though his arguments in Washington's Cabinet were undercut by French Revolutionary envoy Edmond-Charles Genêt's open scorn for Washington. In discussions with British Minister George Hammond, Jefferson tried in vain to persuade the British to vacate their posts in the Northwest and to compensate the U.S. for enslaved people freed by the British at the end of the Revolutionary War. Jefferson also sought to return to private life, and resigned from the cabinet in December 1793; he may also have wanted to bolster his political influence from outside the administration.
After the Washington administration negotiated the Jay Treaty with Britain in 1794, Jefferson saw a cause around which he could rally the Democratic-Republican Party. He organized national opposition to the treaty from Monticello. The treaty, designed by Hamilton, aimed to reduce tensions and increase trade. Jefferson warned that it would increase British influence and subvert republicanism, calling it "the boldest act [Hamilton and Jay] ever ventured on to undermine the government". The Treaty passed, but it expired in 1805 during Jefferson's presidential administration, and then President Jefferson did not renew it. Jefferson continued his pro-France stance; during the violence of the Reign of Terror, he declined to disavow the revolution. "To back away from France would be to undermine the cause of republicanism in America", he wrote.

== Election of 1796 and vice presidency ==