The tone of apology or defense which Calhoun and other Southern statesman afterward adopted on the subject of slavery was not taken by the men of Jefferson’s generation.  Another famous Virginian, John Randolph of Roanoke, himself a slave-holder, in his speech on the militia bill in the House of Representatives, December 10, 1811, said:  “I speak from facts when I say that the night-bell never tolls for fire in Richmond that the mother does not hug her infant more closely to her bosom.”  This was said apropos of the danger of a servile insurrection in the event of a war with England—­a war which actually broke out in the year following, but was not attended with the slave-rising which Randolph predicted.  Randolph was a thorough-going “State rights” man, and, though opposed to slavery on principle, he cried “Hands off!” to any interference by the general government with the domestic institutions of the States.  His speeches read better than most of his contemporaries’.  They are interesting in their exhibit of a bitter and eccentric individuality, witty, incisive, and expressed in a pungent and familiar style which contrasts refreshingly with the diplomatic language and glittering generalities of most congressional oratory, whose verbiage seems to keep its subject always at arm’s-length.

Another noteworthy writing of Jefferson’s was his Inaugural Address of March 4, 1801, with its programme of “equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights; . . . absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority; . . . the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in the public expense; freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected.”

During his six years’ residence in France, as American minister, Jefferson had become indoctrinated with the principles of French democracy.  His main service and that of his party—­the Democratic, or, as it was then called, the Republican party—­to the young republic was in its insistence upon toleration of all beliefs and upon the freedom of the individual from all forms of governmental restraint.  Jefferson has some claims to rank as an author in general literature.  Educated at William and Mary College in the old Virginia capital, Williamsburg, he became the founder of the University of Virginia, in which he made special provision for the study of Anglo-Saxon, and in which the liberal scheme of instruction and discipline was conformed, in theory, at least, to the “university idea.”  His Notes on Virginia are not without literary quality, and one description, in particular, has been often quoted—­the passage of the Potomac through the Blue Ridge—­in which is this poetically imaginative touch:  “The mountain being cloven asunder, she presents to your eye, through the cleft, a small catch of smooth blue horizon, at an infinite distance in the plain country, inviting you, as it were, from the riot and ytumult roaring around, to pass through the breach and participate of the calm below.”