CHAPTER XXX.

DEATH OF MRS. JEFFERSON.

BEFORE the Marquis de Chastellux had been gone from Monticello many hours, the sixth child of Thomas and Martha Jefferson was born, making the number of their living children three. It was death to the mother. She lingered four months, keeping her husband and all the household in what he termed "dreadful suspense." He took his turn with his sister and with her sister in sitting up at night. With his own hands he administered her medicines and her drinks. For four months he was either at her bedside, or at work in a little room near the head of her bed, never beyond call. His eldest daughter, a little girl of ten, but maturer than her years denoted, never lost the vivid recollection of her father's tender assiduity during those months. When the morning of September 6 dawned, it was evident that she had not many hours to live; and all the family gathered round her bed. Thirty years after, six of the female servants of the house enjoyed a kind of honorable distinction at Monticello, as "the servants who were in the room when Mrs. Jefferson died, such an impression did the scene leave upon the minds of the little secluded community. It was a tradition among the slaves, often related by these six eye-witnesses, that the dying lady gave her husband "many directions about many things that she wanted done;" but that when she came to speak of the children, she could not command herself for some time. At last she said that she could not die content if she thought her children would ever have a step-mother; and her husband, holding her hand, solemnly promised that he would never marry again.* Towards noon, as she was about to breathe her last, his feelings became

Jefferson at Monticello, p. 106.

uncontrollable. He almost lost his senses. His sister, Mrs. Carr, led him staggering from the room into his library, where he fainted, and remained so long insensible that the family began to fear that he, too, had passed away. They brought in a pallet, and lifted him upon it. He revived only to a sense of immeasurable woe. His daughter Martha, who was to be the solace of all his future years, ventured into the room at night; and even then, such was the violence of his grief, that she was amazed and confounded. For three weeks he remained in that apartment, attended day and night by this little child. He walked, as she related, almost incessantly, all day and all night, only lying down now and then, when he was utterly exhausted, upon the pallet that had been hurriedly brought while he lay in his fainting fit. When at last he left the house, he would ride on horseback hours and hours, roaming about in the mountain roads, in the dense woods, along the paths least frequented, accompanied only by his daughter,-"a solitary witness," she says, "to many a violent burst of grief, the remembrance of which has consecrated particular scenes beyond the power of time to obliterate."

So passed some weeks. He fell into what he called "a stupor of mind," from which the daily round of domestic duties could not rouse him. Meanwhile the intelligence of his loss reached Congress, then in session at Philadelphia, waiting with extreme solicitude the issue of the negotiations for peace at Paris. Six months had already passed since the negotiations had been begun, during the last three of which Dr. Franklin had been laid aside by an attack of his disease, leaving the chief burden to be borne by Mr. Jay alone. It now occurred to the Virginia members, that, as the causes of Mr. Jefferson's previous declining to cross the sea were removed, he might be willing to join the commission to treat for peace. He was at once elected a plenipotentiary by a unanimous vote, and, as Madison reports, "without a single adverse remark." The news of his election reached him November 25, 1782, eleven weeks after the death of his wife, when he had gone with his troop of children,daughters, nephews, and nieces, nine in all, to a secluded estate in Chesterfield County to have them inoculated.

It was like a trumpet-call to a war-horse standing listless under a tree in the pasture, after a rest from the exhaustion and wounds of a campaign. He accepted instantly. He flew to his long-neglected

desk to write the necessary letters, and to bring up the arrears in his correspondence; for the French minister had offered him a passage in a man-of-war which was to sail from Baltimore in three weeks, and in that vessel his beloved Marquis de Chastellux was also to cross the ocean! Enchanting prospect! But there is many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip. When he reached the port, after many delays, it was only to discover that the enemy's fleet blocked the pathway to the sea; and before the admiral saw a chance to elude them came the ecstatic news that the preliminaries had been signed, and there was no need of his going. So he wrote to Mr. Jay to give up the lodgings in Paris which he had requested him to engage; and in May, 1783, he was at home once more.

CHAPTER XXXI.

IN CONGRESS AT ANNAPOLIS.

BUT the spell was broken. He had shown himself willing to serve the public. Next month the legislature elected him a member of Congress; and in November, 1783, we find him at Annapolis ready to take his seat, after having left his eldest daughter at school in Philadelphia.

In the universal languor which followed the mighty effort of 1781, it was hard to get twenty-five members together; but Jefferson found them brimful of the spirit of disputation; for Arthur Lee was a member, the most disputatious man of whom history condescends to make mention. Caught in a shower in London, he sought the shelter of a shed, when a gentleman ventured the civil remark that it rained very hard. "It rains hard, sir," said Lee, "but I doubt whether you can say it rains very hard." One such person would suffice to set any twenty men by the ears. Days were wasted in the most trivial and needless debates, during which the good-tempered Jefferson sat silent and tranquil. A member asked him one day, how he could listen to so much false reasoning, which a word would refute, and not utter that word. "To refute," said he, "is easy; to silence, impossible." He added, that, in measures brought forward by himself, he took, as was proper, the laboring oar; but, in general, he was willing to play the part of a listener, content to follow the example of Washington and Franklin, who were seldom on their feet more than ten minutes, and yet rarely spoke but to convince. Despite the copious flow of words, many memorable things were done by this Congress; and though Jefferson sat in it but five months, his name is imperishably linked with some of its most interesting measures. It is evident that he often took "the laboring oar." Twice during the sickness of the president, he was elected

chairman of the body; and his name stands at the head of every committee of much importance.

He it was, who, as chairman of the committee of arrangements, wrote the much-embracing address with which the President of Congress received General Washington's resignation of his commission. He assisted in arranging the details of that affecting and immortal scene. The spectacle presented in the chamber at Annapolis impressed mankind; and the two addresses winged their way round the world, affording "a lesson useful to those who inflict and to those who feel oppression." As a member of this Congress, Thomas Jefferson, with four other signers of the Declaration of Independence, namely, Roger Sherman, Elbridge Gerry, Robert Morris, and William Ellery, signed the treaty of peace which acknowledged the independence of the United States.

A currency for the new nation, to take the place of the chaos of coins and values which had plagued the colonies from an early day, was among the subjects considered at this session. Jefferson, chairman of the committee to which the matter was referred, assisted to give us the best currency ever contrived by man, a currency so convenient, that, one after another, every nation on earth will adopt it. Two years before Gouverneur Morris, a clerk in the office of his uncle, Robert Morris, had conceived the most happy idea of applying the decimal system to the notation of money. But it always requires several men to complete one great thing. The details of the system devised by Gouverneur Morris were so cumbrous and awkward as almost to neutralize the simplicity of the leading idea. Jefferson rescued the fine original conception by proposing our present system of dollars and cents; the dollar to be the unit and the largest silver coin. He recommended also a great gold coin of ten dollars value, a silver coin of the value of one-tenth of a dollar, and a copper coin of the value of one-hundredth of a dollar. He suggested three other coins for the convenience of making change, silver half-dollar, a silver double-tenth, and a copper twentieth. It remained only to invent easy names for these coins, which was done in due time.

This perfect currency was not adopted without much labor and vigorous persistence on the part of Jefferson, both in and out of Congress. His views prevailed over those of Robert Morris, the first name in America at that time in matters of finance. Jefferson