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....