April 13, 1943: The Jefferson Memorial Is Dedicated

April 13, 1943: The Jefferson Memorial is dedicated in the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C., on the 200th Anniversary of the birth of Thomas Jefferson.

The native of Shadwell, outside Charlottesville, Virginia, served in the House of Burgesses of Britain's Virginia Colony from 1769 to 1775. That House became the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and is the oldest continuously operating deliberative body in North America. (Like Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Kentucky, Virginia officially calls itself a "Commonwealth," but, like the other 46 States, those "Commonwealths" are recognized by the federal government as "States.")

As a Burgess, Jefferson responded to the "Intolerable Acts" of 1774 by writing A Summary View of the Rights of British America, which made him a natural to be elected to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. While there, he was selected to write the Declaration of Independence, ratified on July 4, 1776. He served as Governor of Virginia from 1779 to 1781, including writing the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.

He then moved into the diplomatic sphere, serving as Minister Plenipotentiary for Negotiating Treaties of Amity and Commerce. From 1785 to 1789, he served as U.S. Minister to France. (Today, we would say, "Ambassador.") He returned to America to become the 1st U.S. Secretary of State, under the 1st President, George Washington. He finished 2nd to John Adams in the Presidential election of 1796, making him, under the wording of the Constitution of that time (changed in 1804 by the 12th Amendment), the 2nd Vice President. In 1800, he defeated Adams to become the 3rd President.

As President, he presided over a vast expansion of the country with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, and an early military victory in the conflict with the Barbary Pirates of North Africa from 1801 to 1805. His 2nd term was beset by economic issues, and his solution, the Embargo Act of 1807, was terribly counterproductive. Someone noticed that "embargo" spelled backwards was "o-grab-me," and that's what it felt like for what passed for big business in America at the time.

At the conclusion of his 2nd term in 1809, he left the Presidency, and founded the University of Virginia, the 1st university in the world not affiliated with any religious establishment.

To put it politely, his record on slavery was mixed. He had slaves, and never freed them, and, after the 1782 death of his wife Martha, with whom he had 6 children, but only 2 daughters survived to adulthood, he is alleged to have fathered up to 6 children with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings. But he criticized King George III for his role in the slave trade, a passage the Congress removed from the Declaration of Independence, for fear that the Southern colonies would reject it. And he signed a law prohibiting the importation of slaves into America starting in 1808.

He died on July 4, 1826, the 50th Anniversary of the approval of the Declaration of Independence. He had wanted to live to see it, and, every few hours on July 3, he awoke to ask, "Is this the 4th?" After being told, "No," a few times, the truth finally became, "Yes." He smiled, and went back to sleep, lasting until 12:50 PM on the 4th.

He had reconciled with Adams by mail, though they had never again seen each other in person. That same day, not knowing that Jefferson had already died, Adams passed away at 6:20, saying, "Thomas Jefferson lives. Independence forever."

John Russell Pope designed the Jefferson Memorial, but died in 1937 before construction could begin. Rudulph Evans sculpted the 18-foot statue at the center, which, due to wartime priorities for metal, was not finished until 1947, with a plaster version standing in for it until then.

As with the statue of Abraham Lincoln at his Memorial nearby, panels of Jefferson's memorial are inscribed with words of his. On one panel are selections from the Declaration of Independence, with a slight alteration: While he had written that, "We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights," the inscription on the memorial reads, "with certain inalienable rights," which has led to a great deal of confusion.

In a letter to another Signer of the Declaration, Dr. Benjamin Rush, dated September 23, 1800, Jefferson wrote, "For I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." Those words are inscribed on his Memorial.

And he hated despots to the end. In a letter to John Langdon, a Signer of the Constitution and 3 times Governor of New Hampshire, on March 5, 1810, he wrote, of, respectively, King Louis XVI of France (1774-1792), King Charles IV of Spain (1788-1808, overthrown by Napoleon), the man who ruled Naples as King Ferdinand IV and Sicily as King Ferdinand III (1759 to 1825), King Victor Amadeus III of Sardinia (1773-1796), Queen Maria I of Portugal (known as Maria the Mad, 1777-1816), King Christian VII of Denmark (1766-1806), King Frederick William II of Prussia (1786-1797), King Gustav III of Sweden (1771-1792, assassinated), Emperor Joseph II (reigned over the Holy Roman Empire starting in 1765 and the Austrian Empire starting in 1780, until his death in 1790), King George III of Great Britain (1760-1820, mentally incompetent from 1811 onward with his son, later King George IV, in charge), Empress Catherine II of Russia (a.k.a. Catherine the Great, 1762-1796), and Czar Alexander I of Russia (1801-1825):

While in Europe, I often amused myself with contemplating the characters of the then reigning sovereigns of Europe. Louis the XVI was a fool, of my own knowledge, and in despite of the answers made for him at his trial. The King of Spain was a fool, and of Naples the same. They passed their lives in hunting, and despatched two couriers a week, one thousand miles, to let each other know what game they had killed the preceding days. The King of Sardinia was a fool. All these were Bourbons.

The Queen of Portugal, a Braganza, was an idiot by nature. And so was the King of Denmark. Their sons, as regents, exercised the powers of government. The King of Prussia, successor to the great Frederick, was a mere hog in body as well as in mind. Gustavus of Sweden, and Joseph of Austria, were really crazy, and George of England, you know, was in a strait-waistcoat. There remained, then, none but old Catharine, who had been too lately picked up to have lost her common sense.

In this state Bonaparte found Europe; and it was this state of its rulers which lost it with scarce a struggle. These animals had become without mind and powerless; and so will every hereditary monarch be after a few generations. Alexander, the grandson of Catharine, is as yet an exception. He is able to hold his own. But he is only of the third generation. His race is not yet worn out. And so endeth the book of Kings, from all of whom the Lord deliver us, and have you, my friend, and all such good men and true, in His holy keeping.

And, despite Napoleon Bonaparte, first as dictator of France (1799-1804) and then as Emperor (1804-1814, with a brief return in 1815), selling him the Louisiana Territory, keeping Britain occupied in such a way as to be unable to win the War of 1812, and being one of the greatest military minds of all time, Jefferson hated his guts, too. On his first fall, Jefferson wrote to John Adams on July 5, 1814:

The Attila of the age dethroned, the ruthless destroyer of ten millions of the human race, whose thirst for blood appeared unquenchable, the great oppressor of the rights and liberties of the world...

Bonaparte was a lion in the field only. In civil life, a cold-blooded, calculating, unprincipled usurper, without a virtue; no statesman, knowing nothing of commerce, political economy, or civil government, and supplying ignorance by bold presumption.

And to Count Antonio Dugnani, who had been Pope Pius VI's "papal nuncio" to France while Jefferson was America's Minister there, he wrote on February 14, 1818, on the subject of Napoleon: "Having been, like him, intrusted with the happiness of my country, I feel the blessing of resembling him in no other point."

There are now 5 Presidents who have memorials on the National Mall in Washington. In chronological order of their service, they are: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Several other Presidents have official memorials, or at least statues, elsewhere in the District of Columbia.

Jefferson would appreciate institutions of learning being named after him, including Thomas Jefferson High School in Brooklyn. On the TV show Happy Days, the fictional Jefferson High was named for him. Also named for him are Thomas Jefferson University, a health-care-themed school, in Philadelphia; Jefferson College of Health Sciences, in Roanoke, Virginia; Washington & Jefferson College, in Washington; Pennsylvania; Thomas Jefferson School of Law, in San Diego; Jefferson Colleges in Washington, Mississippi and Hillsboro, Missouri; and community colleges in Watertown, New York; Louisville, Kentucky; and Birmingham, Alabama. And the Library of Congress' main building, which includes some donations from him, is named the Thomas Jefferson Building.

There are 15 States with cities or towns named for him, including Jefferson City, the capital of Missouri. The Counties that include Denver and Birmingham, Alabama are Jefferson County. There have been 3 ships named the USS Thomas Jefferson: A brig from 1814 to 1825, an attack transport from 1942 to 1955, and a U.S. Navy submarine in service from 1963 to 1985. 

Since 1938, Jefferson has appeared on the nickel, America's 5-cent coin, replacing the "Buffalo Nickel," the one with the "Indian head" on the front and the buffalo on the back. From 1929 to 1966, he was on the $2 bill, which was phased out, and temporarily brought back in 1976 as part of America's Bicentennial celebration.

The last surviving member of Jefferson's Cabinet was Albert Gallatin, who served as Secretary of the Treasury. He lived until 1849.

Among the actors who have played Jefferson: Charlton Heston in The Patriots in 1963, Hugh O'Brian in Swing Out, Sweet Land in 1970, Ken Howard in 1776 in 1972, Jeffrey Jones in George Washington: The Forging of a Nation in 1986, Scott Wilkinson in A More Perfect Union in 1989, Nick Nolte in Jefferson In Paris in 1995, Sam Neill in Sally Hemings: An American Scandal in 2000, Ronald McAdams in National Treasure in 2004, and Stephen Dillane in John Adams in 2008.

In a 2016 episode of the YouTube series Epic Rap Battles of History, "Nice" Peter Shukoff played Jefferson, while actor J.B. Smoove played Frederick Douglass, who challenged him on slavery, including perhaps the baddest zinger in the show's history: "You got a self-evident truth of your own: You let freedom ring, but never picked up the phone!"

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April 13, 1943 was a Tuesday. Baseball season started 7 days later. Football was out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And hockey season had ended 5 days earlier, when the Detroit Red Wings clinched the Stanley Cup over the Boston Bruins. So there were no scores on this historic day.