Perth Amboy evening news., 1920-03-22
Fine Minutes A Day
With Orr Presidents
BY JAMES MORGAN.
The Pen of the Revolution

| Abraham Lincoln,
was nursed at the breast
OF the unexhausted West.
At the time of his birth beneath
one of its foothills, the Blue Ridge
Of Virginia was the American from
tier. The farm on which he vas born
had beer cleared in the wild forest
by his pioneer father when the smoke
of a neighbours chimney hardly could
be seen from his cabin door,.
Like both OF his predecessors and
so many of his successors in the pres
idency, Jefferson was a widows son.
Losing his father at fourteen, as the
eldest son he inherited the farm and
became the responsible head OF the
family of eight children.
1t was not a large estate, for the
Jeffersons, like the Washingtons, be-
the aristocracy who lorded 1t over
tide-water Virginia. But Thomas
J~efferson's mother was a Randolph
and sprung from the class which
found in her son the most u~nrelenting
foe to its ancient privileges.
When he rode East, with his darl-
ing fiddle under his arm, to be a
student at William and Mary's Col
lege, the tall, slender, sa~ndy-haired,
snub-nosed, freckled-faced seventeen
year-old boy of the fronttersman
never had seen a mansion, a church
or q village of twenty houses, and he
looked with a strangers w upon
the baronial pride and display OF the
old families who formed the vice
regal court at Williamsburg. His
light heart and his yet lighter feet
made him welcome at the balls in the
Apollo room of the Raleigh Tavern.
His already curious mind won for the
mere lad the remarkable fortune of a
place in a small group of learned and
.x..I~J -,Nn --hN rn0111n Tlu no n nTnh
at the dinner table of Governor Eau
quier to discuss tho literature and
music, the science and the philosophy
of Europe.
There over the roast and the pipes
the great world was opened to the
silent, reflective youth. More than
William and Mary's. the table of that
unsuspecting royal governor was the
training school of the immortal rebel
who indicted a king.
TO support the large family of his
mother on their too small farm, JEFF
ferson turned to the law. In seven
years at the bar he doubled his estate
n increased his slaves to four hun
dred. Buying the little mountain at
whose feet he was born, he built upon
its summit from plans of his own
drawing, with bricks of his max
ing, and with wood of his own cut
ting, the noblest house in all Virginia.
There at Monticello, he made his
home ever after, and there at last,
he died in sight of his birthplace, 1--WE
hundred eighty feet below. To THIS
eyrie one wild, stormy winters night
he took his bride, the twenty-slx-
year-old widow Shelton, who brought
him one hundred thfrty-ave slaves
and forty thousand acres, including
the famous Natural Bridge.
Jefferson's law practice continued
rapidly to grow until 1t amounted to
two Thousand five hundred dollars a
year, when he abandoned it forever to
prosecute George III in the great and
general court of mankind. He had
heard the first call of the Revolution
while q law student in Williamsburg.
It's clarion had been ringing in his
ears ever since he stood, an eager
looker-on. in the door of the House of
Burgesses. He saw Washington in his
seat and he saw his W friend, Pat
rick Henry, a fiddling Virginian like
himself, holding the floor amid cries
of treason as he invited the king to
profit by the example of Caesar, who
had his Brutus, and Charles I, who
had his Cromwell.
The sword, the tongue and the pen
Of American freedom were well met
that memorable day. After the pen
had waited twelve years for its turn
to speak, Jefferson sat in the Con-
gress at Philadelphia. Ii squire of
Monticello was q silent member, as
silent as the squire of Mt. Vernon.
Opportunity and duty went straight
to those two speeches. congressman
as the needle leaps to a loadstone.
Although the great Franklin. the
able, ambitious John Adams also
were on the committee to draw to
the Declaration of Independence, they
left the task wholly to their youngest
colleague, the thirty-three-year-old,
bookish, philosophic Virginian. When
congress was editing the manuscript,
Franklin leaned over . Jefferson to
comfort him with a little story of a
~signboard which was to have read:
John Thompson. the halter, makes
which friendly neiGhbors. to shave
to the name Thompson and the pic
ture of q hat.
BY a miraculous escape. while a
paragraph ~denouncing slavery was
stricken out of ~Jefferson's draft of
the Declaration, the assertion that
"all men are created equal was
spared. That glitering generality
surely would have been discarded II
conservative members had foreseen
what q blazing torch it was to be-
come, lighting a Civil WA that freed
the slaves and ever leading men on
along the endless road to justice and
liberty.
Copyright, 1920, by James Morgan;
published by special arrangement
with The Mcclure Newspaper Syn
dicate)