ON JULY 4, 1826, in his familiar alcove bed at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson quietly expired in his eighty-third year. The simultaneous deaths of two of the architects of the American Revolution, men who had laid the cornerstone of a new nation, were rightly seen as the passing of an epoch.
He was buried on July 5 in the graveyard at the foot of Mulberry Row. More than half a century before, he had planned a Gothic memorial for this site, but it remained a simple, unadorned rectangular plot, and he wanted nothing grander for his own burial place. He had designed a stone obelisk, eight feet tall, to bear the inscription: Here is buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence,of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia. The public offices he heldgovernor of Virginia, secretary of state, Vice President, and President of the United Stateswere not, in his mind, his greatest accomplishments. Even the purchase of Louisiana, the capstone of his presidency, was not to be listed among his lasting achievements. The three accomplishments he chose to be remembered for were, significantly, acts of an architect-builder: the design of a new nation, the erection of a foundation for freedom of worship in that nation, and the founding of a great university.
Jeffersons grave and tombstone .
His grave was dug between those of his wife and youngest daughter by Wormley, the slave who was to recall years later the tumultuous greeting Jefferson received from the Monticello slaves on his return from France. In all likelihood, the coffin was lovingly crafted by John Hemings; in his will, Jefferson had granted Hemings his freedom.
The years following Jeffersons retirement from the presidency in 1809 had been both happy and troubled. The happiness derived from his return to Monticello, where he settled in as a patriarch of his family and, increasingly, of his state and nation. Although he officially divestedhimself of all political attachments when he left the presidency, he had the satisfaction of continuing to exert an indirect influence on national affairs through his close friendship with the successive Presidents Madison and Monroe, to whom he was virtually an Augustan deity. His creative energies were thrown into his academical village, the University of Virginia; he was its architect and construction superintendent, fundraiser, academic recruiter, library and curriculum consultant, lobbyist, boosterin short, its father. His final years were enriched by the knowledge that he was constructing an institution he hoped would equal in education what his Declaration had created in statecraft.
But his old age was crippled by the specter of ever-increasing insolvency. His presidency, with its generous annual salary of $25,000, should have allowed him to eliminate his debts and even accrue a surplus. Instead, he returned to Virginia after eight years in Washington even more deeply in debt. He hoped to assign the annual income of $2,500 from his Bedford estate, which accounted for half of his land and slaves, to paying off his debts, but steadily declining economic conditions in Virginia, the War of 1812, bad weather, and his own hospitality all conspired to increase these. The sale of his library to the government in 1815 for nearly $24,000 eliminated less than half of this debt, and from that time onward, there was little chance of extracting himself from eventual financial ruin except by massive sales of his only tangible assets, land and slaves. Even this became an impossibility after the economic recession in 1819, when land values tumbled.
The coup de grace came in 1818 when Wilson Carey Nicholas, father-in-law of his grandson, Jefferson Randolph, asked him to endorse notes of $20,000. With misgivings, Jefferson did so, and a year later Nicholas defaulted on the loan. Jefferson was left with an additional large debt, which could be managed only by attempting to meet the interest payments. The final years of his life saw his finances deteriorate rapidly. An attempt to eliminate his debts with a lottery, which offered Monticello and its lands as a prize, but would have allowed him to live in the mansion during his lifetime and retain the Bedford estate and his slaves, was a failure. At his death, he was more than $100,000 in debt.
There is a nagging question about Jeffersons finances: How coulda man who recorded every penny he earned or spent, who kept accounts as rigorously as a banker, allow himself to slip so deeply into debt? The explanation by the editors of Jeffersons Memorandum Books is as surprising as it is insightful: he rarely ever knew how badly in debt he actually was. Through much of his life in public service, they write, Jefferson was profoundly ignorant of his own financial condition. When he did balance his accounts, he discovered he was $10,000 further in debt than he thought he was.
In spite of his exacting eye for the details of income and expenditure, he seldom stepped back to observe his economic landscape. Because he notched each financial tree, he thought he knew the forest; until it was too late, he had little idea of his net worth. He was like a man who went through life dutifully recording every check he wrote but blithely failing to balance his checkbook. It should have been apparent to him, for example, that he was living well beyond his income during his eight years in the presidency, and that a day of reckoning must come. It was not until he was leaving office in 1809 and settling his affairs, however, that he discovered he owed yet another $10,000 that he never knew about.
The editors of the Memorandum Books observe that it was, ironically, the very act of writing down his daily accounts that contributed to his economic undoing. The daily ritual of recording pecuniary events, they write, gave Jefferson an artificial sense of order in his financial world. The very exactness of the accounts, together with an innate optimism which perpetually overestimated sources of income and underestimated expenditures, prevented him from attempting any real financial planning until it was too late.
Ultimately, his slide into economic ruin demonstrated that, of the vast number of skills he accumulated in the course of a lifetime,financial management ranked very low among them. His personal flaw was perhaps an aristocrats mentality about money; deep down, he believed it would somehow always be there. He preached to others throughout his life the necessity for keeping out of debt, but he was seldom willing to forgo anything he wanted for himself, his family, or friends, no matter how little he could afford it. Austerity was simply not a part of Jeffersons personal life. It became, however, a part of the life of Monticello.
It was inevitable that his eroding finances would take a toll on Monticello. Because the house was normally crammed with family, relatives, friends, visitors, and passing acquaintances, it was under continued assault by the rub, scrape, and wear of its inhabitants. The elements were also its enemy. In an age when there was little control of humidity, wood was vulnerable to rapid deterioration from dry rot and insects. The only way to keep exterior woodwork sound was by frequent painting. To maintain the exterior properly, the house should have been completely repainted every five or six years. There is no record that this was ever done. The terraces presented the most serious problem, for they were high-maintenance architecture. To prevent the decks and rails from rotting away from exposure to sun, rain, and ice required annual painting, and lumber had to be substituted frequently for splitting and decaying boards and structural members. They never received this kind of care; in fact, after Jeffersons death, the terraces rotted away and collapsed onto the dependency roofs below them.
