Lesson 9- Reading #1

Once Action at a Time

Two things about Thomas Jefferson are of special interest here.  First, as a young man he had the good fortune to find a mentor, George Wythe, a Williamsburg lawyer whose original house still stands in the restored village.  George Wythe was a substantial man of this time, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a member of the constitutional Convention.  But his chief claim to fame is as Thomas Jefferson's mentor.  It was probably the influence of mentor on under study, as Jefferson studied law in Wythe's office, that moved Jefferson toward his place in history and somewhat away from his natural disposition to settle down at Monticello as an eccentric Virginia scholar (which he remained, partly despite Wythe's influence.  The point of mentioning George Wythe is that old people may have a part to play in helping potential servant-leaders to emerge at their optimal best.

Perhaps the most significant aspect of Jefferson, more important in history than the Declaration of Independence or his later term as president, was what he did during the war.

He didn't become a main player in the war, instead ...He knew who he was, and he resolved to be his own man.  He chose his own role.  He went back to Virginia and didn't leave the state for the duration of the war.

...Jefferson believed ..the war would be won...that there would be a new nation, and that that nation would need a new system of law to set it on the course that he had dreamed for it in the Declaration of Independence.  So he went back to Monticello, got himself elected to the Virginia legislature, and proceeded to write new statutes embodying the new principles of law for the new nation.  He set out, against determined opposition of his conservative colleagues, to get these enacted into Virginia law.  It was an uphill fight.  He would go to Williamsburg and wrestle with his colleagues until he was slowed to a halt.  Then he would get on his horse and ride back to Monticello to rekindle his spirit and write some more statutes.  Armed with these statutes, he would return to Williamsburg and take another run at it.  He wrote one hundred and fifty [statutes] in that period and got fifty of them enacted into law, the most notable being separation of church and state.  For many years, Virginia legislators were digging into the remaining one hundred [statutes] as new urgent problems made their consideration advisable.

When the Constitution was drafted some years later, Jefferson wasn't even around; he was in France as our ambassador.  He didn't have to be around.  He had done his work and made his contribution ...in the statues already operating in Virginia.  Such are the wondrous ways in which leaders do their work - when they now who they are and resolve to be their own persons and will accept making their way to their goal by one action at a time, with a lot of frustration along the way.