CHAPTER 1

Politics: Thomas Jefferson

Omniscient Organizer

A mind always employed is always happy. This is the true secret, the grandrecipe for felicity.

—Thomas Jefferson, letter to his daughter Martha, May 21, 1787

On the morning of Monday, July 1, 1776, Thomas Jefferson had, it can safely besaid, a lot on his mind.

On that fateful day, the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia was toconsider the resolution, first introduced on June 7 by his fellow VirginianRichard H. Lee, to dissolve "all political connection between [the Colonies] andthe state of Great Britain." And as soon as that resolution passed, as Jeffersonexpected it would, his draft of the Declaration of Independence, which he hadcompleted the previous Friday, was due to come to the floor for a vote.Hypersensitive to criticism, the assiduous thirty-three-year-old wordsmithdreaded the thought of any tinkering with his text. (In fact, for the rest ofhis life, Jefferson would be bitter about the "mutilations" that hiscongressional colleagues were about to make, which reduced its length by about25 percent.) He was also unnerved because the war effort of the new nation-to-bewas not going well; the American troops in Canada, who lacked essentialprovisions due to a shortage of money, had just been hit by a smallpox epidemic."Our affairs in Canada," Jefferson wrote later that day to William Fleming, adelegate to Virginia's new independent state legislature, "go still retrograde."

The six-foot-two-and-a-half-inch delegate with the angular face, sandycomplexion, and reddish hair was also dogged by a host of domestic concerns. Hewas still recovering from the sudden death—her illness lasted less than anhour—of his fifty-six-year-old mother, Jane Randolph Jefferson, threemonths earlier. For most of April and the first part of May, Jefferson wasdetained by incapacitating migraines at Monticello, his five-thousand-acreestate, then a two-week journey by horseback from Philadelphia. And with hisfrail wife, Martha, pregnant for the third time in six years, he felt, as heinformed Virginia's de facto governor, Edmund Pendleton, on June 30, that it was"indispensably necessary ... [to] solicit the substitution of some other person"to take his seat in the Continental Congress by the end of the year. As itturned out, an anxious Jefferson couldn't even wait that long; on September 2,he would submit his resignation and return to his "country," as he still calledhis native Virginia.

Amid all the uncertainty and anxiety that he faced early on that sweltering Julymorning, Jefferson did a surprising thing. He started what turned out to be amassive list. For Jefferson, as for other obsessives, list making was apassionate pursuit that could help him get his bearings. Flipping his copy ofThe Philadelphia Newest Almanack, for the Year of Our Lord 1776 upsidedown, he wrote on the first interleaved blank page at the back, "Observations onthe weather." Below this heading, he set up three columns, "July, hour,thermom." At 9 a.m., he recorded 81 ½. With the debate on Lee's resolutiontaking up most of the day, Jefferson did not do another temperature readinguntil 7 p.m., when he recorded 82. But for the rest of that momentous week andfor years on end, he would record the temperature at least three times a day. Onthe fourth, when the mercury hit 68 at 6 a.m. before reaching a fitting high of76 at 1 p.m., he even managed to squeeze in a total of four readings. On the daythat the Declaration was signed, Jefferson also made the fifteen-minute trekfrom his room at Seventh and Market to John Sparhawk's book and gadget store onSecond Street, where he shelled out 3 pounds, 15 shillings (the equivalent ofseveral hundred dollars today) for a new thermometer. On Monday the eighth, ashe recorded in the account book, which he kept on the interleaved pages in thefront half of his almanac, he returned to Sparhawk's to purchase a barometer for4 pounds, 10 shillings.

Jefferson had been fascinated by meteorology ever since his undergraduate daysat William and Mary. In Williamsburg, he had befriended Lieutenant GovernorFrancis Fauquier, a London-born Fellow of the Royal Society, who was wellconnected in scientific circles. In 1760, Fauquier, who possessed the latestversions of the major scientific inventions of the day— the thermometer,telescope, and microscope—had begun a weather diary (which was limited tojust one reading a day). Inspired by this adolescent hero, Jefferson wouldestablish himself as an international authority in the field. In a chapter inhis scientific treatise, Notes on the State of Virginia, first publishedin 1785, Jefferson summarized some preliminary findings. In the age-old debateabout climate change that dated back to the ancients, Jefferson (like anotherprominent Southern politico who served as vice president exactly two centuriesafter he did) came down squarely on the side of "global warming." (But incontrast to Al Gore, who has warned of the dangers associated with greenhousegases, Jefferson was hypothesizing about how events such as deforestation couldbe "very fatal to fruits.")

"A change in our climate ... is taking place very sensibly," he concluded, basedon his assessment of decades of data collected by himself and others. "Bothheats and colds are become much more moderate.... Snows are less frequent andless deep." Jefferson, who bought about twenty thermometers during the course ofhis life, would continue to gather a wealth of weather data, which he crunchedevery which way, until 1816. Even during his presidency, he took the temperatureat both dawn and 4 p.m. The National Weather Service, established in 1870 as theWeather Bureau, has hailed Jefferson as "the father of weather observers."

But a thirst for knowledge wasn't the only reason why Jefferson began thisambitious new scholarly undertaking at what turned out to be a pivotal moment inworld history. Compiling and organizing information, as he well knew, could alsohelp calm him down. "Nature intended me," he later wrote, "for the tranquilpursuits of science by rendering them my supreme delight." Distracting himselffrom his innermost thoughts was his way of warding off feelings of despair.While Jefferson was a gifted singer, he often used his musical talent, like hisingenuity, to hide from himself. One could "hardly see him anywhar outdoors,"his slave Isaac once noted, "but that he was a-singin'." He would even singwhile reading. His habitual manner of coping with stress was to do not less, butmore. In contrast to most people, who become undone when they take on too much,Jefferson became energized. His constant fear was not having enough to occupyhis mind. For Jefferson, whose personal credo was a mishmash of Epicureanism andStoicism, happiness was synonymous with virtuous work. "Nothing can contributemore to it [happiness]," he later mused, "than the contracting a habit ofindustry and activity." In contrast, he considered idleness "the most dangerouspoison of life." To be fair, his was not an introspective culture; as onehistorian has put it, eighteenth-century Virginians had "neither the taste northe skill for self-examination." Even so, the vehemence with which Jeffersonavoided experiencing internal distress qualifies him as an outlier.

The pedantic side of this patron saint of polymaths has often been overlooked.Most Americans associate Jefferson only with his staggering intellect. AsPresident John F. Kennedy put it at a White House dinner honoring fifty Nobellaureates a half century ago, "I think this is the most extraordinary collectionof talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the WhiteHouse, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone." Feware aware that America's "Apostle of Freedom," as President Franklin Rooseveltcalled the most erudite Founding Father, was as consumed by the petty as he wasby the lofty. The nonstop doer was not always discriminating in what he did.Jefferson delighted in gathering factoids, regardless of how meaningful theymight turn out to be. He was also eager to communicate what he reaped."[Jefferson] scattered information," Senator William Maclay of Pennsylvaniaobserved in 1790, "wherever he went." During his presidency, he kept a long listwith the equally long-winded title, "A statement of the vegetable market inWashington, during a period of 8 years, wherein the earliest and last appearanceof each article is noted." As this document reveals, while entrusted withrunning the country, Jefferson felt compelled to keep constant tabs on theavailability of twenty-nine vegetables (and seven fruits) in our nation'scapital. The earliest date on which he could enjoy a watermelon at the WhiteHouse was July 7; the latest was September 4. And when his eldest grandson,Thomas Jefferson Randolph, who was about to spend a year studying science inPhiladelphia, visited him in Washington in 1807, the president immediately askedthe fifteen-year-old to empty out his trunk so that he could personally examineevery article. Having completed this inventory, Jefferson took out a pencil andpaper in order to make a list of other items that he was convinced theadolescent would need.

Keeping track of minutiae was a lifelong preoccupation. Jefferson kept in hispocket an ivory notebook—a kind of proto-iPad on which he could write inpencil; and when he returned to his study, he would then transfer his data toone of his seven permanent ledger books. In his Garden and Farm books, which hekept for more than fifty years, he recorded all the goings-on at Monticello."[H]ad the last dish of our spring peas," he wrote on July 22, 1772, in atypical entry in the Garden Book. And in his account books, which he maintainedfor nearly sixty years, he kept track of every cent he ever spent. "Mr.Jefferson," the overseer at Monticello once observed, "was very particular inthe transaction of all his business. He kept an account of everything. Nothingwas too small for him to keep an account of it."

All this financial calculating did not do much for Jefferson himself. One reasonwhy obsessives love control—or, to be accurate, the illusion of havingeverything under control—is that they can easily be overwhelmed by theirown impulses. A man with sumptuous tastes, Jefferson never could get a handle onhis own penchant for runaway spending; during his eight years in the WhiteHouse, he would shell out $10,000 ($200,000 today) on fine wines. But while hewould always be in debt and would saddle Thomas Jefferson Randolph, the executorof his estate, with a $100,000 ($2 million) tab, time and time again, Americabenefited from his interest in systematically tracking the smallest ofexpenditures. After all, Jefferson created the penny as we know it—aninnovation that would help put the whole country's finances in order. On accountof this little-known legacy, to this day, Americans have Jefferson to thankevery time they open their wallet or balance their checking account.

Jefferson loved all things decimal (as did fellow obsessive the librarian MelvilDewey, discussed in chapter 3), and as a congressman at the end of theRevolution, he convinced Robert Morris, then the superintendent of finance, toscrap his confusing plan for establishing a uniform currency. To replace thevarious state currencies, which featured both pounds and dollars, Morris hadproposed issuing a new federal dollar divided into 1,440 units (a measure thatwould have incorporated the pennies of each state without leaving anyfractions). As Jefferson cogently argued in his 1784 paper, "Notes on theEstablishment of a Money Unit, and of a Coinage for the United States" (of whichhe was so proud that he appended it to his autobiography, written in 1821), "theinconveniences of this Unit" meant that an eighty-dollar horse would "require anotation of six figures, to wit, 115,200 units." Jefferson's recommendation todivide the dollar instead into ten dimes and one hundred pennies was readilyaccepted. Jefferson also sought (as would Dewey a century later) to extend thedecimal system to weights and measures, but his extensive report on the subject,submitted to the House of Representatives when he was secretary of state, wentnowhere. However, his countrymen may well have been better off had Congressheeded his sage advice to divide the foot into ten inches and the inch into tenlines.

Jefferson was the Founding Father who could not stop organizing the fledglingnation. When the bored vice president and president of the Senate becamefrustrated by the chaotic ways of Congress, he did not hesitate to take on themonumental task of setting it aright. As a law student in the 1760s, he had donea systematic study of deliberative bodies through the ages, gatheringquotations—a practice that he called "commonplacing"—from variousBritish treatises. After returning to Philadelphia in 1797 to assume hisposition as the number two in the administration of President John Adams,Jefferson frequently relied on these old notes contained in his "ParliamentaryPocket-Book," a 105-page leather-bound duodecimo (a small volume whose pages arejust 5 by 7 ¾ inches). In early 1800, he began to think about publishing atrimmed-down version of this guide, which he called A Manual ofParliamentary Practice. To put the finishing touches on his neatly writtenmanuscript required clarifying "small matters of daily practice," as he wrotethat February to George Wythe, his legal mentor from his Williamsburg days; forJefferson, this need to go into procedural minutiae made the endeavor all thatmuch more enjoyable.

Printed in early 1801, just as Jefferson was exchanging the vice presidency forthe presidency, his manual on the legislative process was immediately put intouse by the Senate, the House of Representatives, and state legislatures acrossthe country. "It is much more material," Jefferson wrote in the first section,entitled "Importance of Rules," "that there should be a rule to go by, than whatthat rule is."

By this meta-rule also lived the man. Jefferson was addicted to his routines. Hewould rise at dawn and read before breakfast. For sixty years, he gave himself acold foot bath every morning. At one o'clock, he would go riding—anactivity he continued as president. On his return, about two or two and a halfhours later, he would have his daily glass of water; dinner would then beserved, during which he drank wine, but never more than three glasses. Hetypically retired to his chambers at nine and went to bed between ten andeleven.

Monticello, which he kept fine-tuning for decades after first moving there in1770, celebrated the regularity and order that he loved. To construct his home,Jefferson relied on another rule-laden treatise, The Four Books onArchitecture by the sixteenth-century architect Andrea Palladio, which heonce referred to as his "Bible." During his lifetime, Jefferson owned seveneditions of this masterpiece that inspired the revival of the classical style inthe eighteenth century—he could not resist snapping up a couple of Frenchtranslations. For each part of a villa—say, the walls orceilings—Palladio insisted on precise proportions, based on the dimensionsof ancient Roman buildings, which he himself had measured "with the utmostdiligence." (This Renaissance man of numbers also encouraged architects to make"an exact calculation" of their costs before building in order to avoid leavingtheir creations unfinished.) Jefferson was, a French visitor noted in 1782, "thefirst American who has consulted the Fine Arts to know how he should shelterhimself from the weather." One factor contributing to his decade of "unchequeredhappiness" with his wife, Martha, who died at the age of thirty-three in 1782,was her skillful administration of Monticello. "Nothing," Dumas Malone, theauthor of the Pulitzer Prize–winning six volume Jefferson and HisTime, completed in 1981, "he ever did was more characteristic of him as aperson or as a mind." Jefferson himself calculated the mathematical measurementsand did the drawings for the three-story, twenty-one-room mansion, which hedidn't finish until 1809. He also selected all the furnishings andaccoutrements, down to the drapery and upholstery.