Mineral Point tribune. (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1869-1938, 1873-03-13
JenersOn's Debts.

MR.. PARTON, in his chapter of Jeffer-
sons life, for the Atlantic Monthly for
March, alluding to Jefferson's resolution
to quit the public service at the end OF
Was hington's first term, says:
But why this agonizing desire for re-
tirement? Thereby hangs a tale. If we
give ten reasons for certain course of
conduct, there is often an eleventh which
we do not give; and that unspoken one is
apt to be the reason. He could no longer
afford to serve the ipublic on the terms
fixed by Congress. 1t was not merely
that his salary did not pay the cost of his
Philadelphia establishment, nor that his
estate was ill-managed by overseers Az
ancient debt hung, as he says, like g.
milestone round his neck, "a debt which
he had twice paid, although not incurred
by him. Upon the death cf his wife's
father, twenty years before, he had re-
ceived property from his estate worth
$40, 600, but subject to British debt Of
$13, 600. Impatient of debt, he sold fine
farm near Monticello for sum sufficient
to discharge it; but by the time he received
the money, the war of the Revolv1tion had
begun. Virginia invited all men owing
money to Great Britain to deposit the
same in her treasury, the State agreeing
to pay it over to the British creditor
after the war. The identical coin which
Jefferson received for his farm he him.
self carried to the treasury in Williams
burg, where it was Immediately expended
in equipping troops.
The Legislature of Virginia, however,
thought better of this policy, rescinded the
resolution, and returned the sums receiv-
ed under it. But Jefferson was obliged to
take back his thirteen thousand dollars in
deprecated paper, which continued to de-
preciate until it was worthless. In fact,
the thirteen thousand dollars just sufficed
to buy him one garment; and in riding by
that farm, in after years, he would some
times point to it, and say, laughing,
That farm l once sold forbn overcoat !"
At the end of the war, during which
CORVALLIS destroyed more than enough
of his property TO pay this debt, he had,
as ne remarked g to lay his shoulders to
the payment of it third time, in addi-
tion to g considerable debt of his own in
Cured just before the outbreak of hostili-
ties. g What the laws of Virginia." he
wrote to his creditor in England, are,
or may be, will in no wise influence my
conduct Substantial justice is my object,
as decided by reason, not by
authority or compulsion." Ever since
the war closed, he had been struggling to
reduce these debts; and, finally, made an
arrangement for paying them off at the
rate of four hundred pounds sterling a
yeas. How easy this ought to have been
to person owning ten thousand acres of
excellent land, lone hundred and fifty
four slaves, thirty four horses. five mules,
two hundred and forty nine cattle, three
hundred and ninety hogs, and three
sheepp But only two the'.sand acres of
his lands were cultivated, nine of his
horses were used for the saddle, and the
labor of his slaves had been, for ten years,
directed by overseers. In 1893 the great
er part of the debt remained to be dis
charged, and he saw, whenever he visited
Monticello, such evidences of "the rava-
ges of overseers" as filled him with alarm.
He had now son-inlaw to settle, a
second daughter to establish, a mountain.
ous debt to pay, high office to live up
to, and an estate going to ruin. Behold
his eleventh unuttered reason for the
frenzy which possessed him to live at
home
He might we'll desire to see the reign of
overseers brought to an end on his estate.
Readers remember, perhaps, General
Washington's experience with them.
How, when he owned one hundred and
one cows, he was compelled to buy butter
for his own table; and how, after building
one of the best barns in the country,
where thirty men could conveniently
WELD the fail, he could not prevent his
manager from treading out the grain
with horses-so impossible was it, he says,
"to put the overseers of this country out
of the track they have been accustomed
n Il L F. L
annual vacation in 1893, about the middle
of September, and caught this truly con-
servative gentleman in the act. Il found
a treading-ysrd," wrote the President,
''not thirty feet from the barn door, the
wheat again brought out of the barn, and
horses treading it out ia an open expo
sure, liable to the vicissitudes of wealth
er." With such men to manage, the Gen.
eral thought the new threshing- g-machine
would have brief existence.