1801

 

__________

 

“The most extreme Democrat of his time.”

 

John Clark Ridpath on Thomas Jefferson.

__________

 

 

March 4: The following selection is from Charles Coffin, Building a Nation, published in 1882. “President Jefferson was a plain man. When he was inaugurated he would have no parade of military, but rode alone and on horseback to the capital, tied the horse to a post, entered the Capitol, took the oath of office, and rode back to his home. (72/119)

 

Ridpath has a similar description:

 

Though of aristocratic birth, Jefferson was the most extreme Democrat of his time. He was the first of his social class to substitute pantaloons for knee breeches, and to fasten his shoes by leather strings instead of by silver buckles. When elected President he set aside the custom of his predecessors, who rode to the place of their inauguration in a magnificent court-like carriage drawn by four horses, and accompanied by liveried servants, but proceeded thither on horseback and unattended. Arriving at the place, he hitched his horse to a rack, and going into the Capitol delivered an address that occupied less than fifteen minutes. So opposed was he to the Austin tatian and homage paid to greatness, that he abolished Presidential levees, and kept the date of his birth secret in order that it might not be celebrated. The American decimal system of coinage, is statute of religious freedom in Virginia, the Declaration of Independence, the University of Virginia, and the Presidency of the Union are the immutable foundations of his fame. (1219/283-284)

 

Van Loon notes, Mr. Jefferson out of office was against every form of official interference with the rights of the states and the individual. Mr. Jefferson in office soon recognized that no government can hope to survive unless it actually “governs.” (124/270)

 

“The Sedition Act was of course repealed,” he writes. “The navy, in so far as it was reducible, was diminished to something resembling zero.” Van Loon adds, “political improvement without a corresponding amount of economic improvement is absolutely without value and is not worth bothering about.” (124/272)