After two years at State law-making Jefferson succeeded Patrick Henry as governor of Virginia, in the summer of 1779.  But although his administration was popular, it was not marked as pre-eminently able.  He had no military abilities for such a crisis in American affairs, nor even remarkable executive talent.  He was a man of thought rather than of action.  His happiest hours were spent in his library.  He did not succeed in arousing the militia when the English were already marching to the seat of government, and when the Cherokee Indians were threatening hostilities on the southwestern border.  Nor did he escape the censure of members of the legislature, which greatly annoyed and embittered him, so that he seriously thought of retiring from public life.

In 1782, on the death of his wife, whom he tenderly loved, we find him again for a short time in Congress, which appointed him in 1784, as additional agent to France with Franklin and Adams to negotiate commercial treaties.  On the return of Franklin he was accredited sole minister to France, to succeed that great diplomatist.  He remained in France five years, much enamoured with French society, as was Franklin, in spite of his republican sentiments.  He hailed, with all the transport his calm nature would allow, the French Revolution, and was ever after a warm friend to France until the Genet affair, when his eyes were partially opened to French intrigues and French arrogance.  But the principles which the early apostles of revolution advocated were always near his heart.  These he never repudiated.  It was only the excesses of the Revolution which filled him with distrust.

In regard to the Revolution on the whole, he took issue with Adams, Hamilton, Jay, and Morris, and with the sober judgment of the New England patriots.  England he detested from first to last, and could see no good in her institutions, whether social, political, or religious.  He hated the Established Church even more than royalty, as the nurse of both superstition and spiritual tyranny.  Even the Dissenters were not liberal enough for him.  He would have abolished if he could, all religious denominations and organizations.  Above all things he despised the etiquette and pomp of the English Court, as relics of mediaeval feudalism.  To him there was nothing sacred in the person or majesty of a king, who might be an idiot or a tyrant.  He somewhere remarks that in all Europe not one king in twenty has ordinary intelligence.

With such views, he was a favorite with the savants of the French Revolution, as much because they were semi-infidels as because they were opposed to feudal institutions.  The great points of diplomacy had already been settled by Franklin, and he had not much to do in France, although his talents as a diplomatist were exceptional, owing to his coolness, his sagacity, his learning, and his genial nature.  There was nothing austere about him, as there was in Adams.  His manners, though simple, were courteous and gentlemanly.