t seven years (Koch and Peden 39). He sent abroad an agent to select the faculty, he chose the books for the library, drew up the curriculum, designed the buildings, and supervised their construction. The University finally opened in 1825, the winter before his death. Despite his preoccupation with the University, he continued to pursue a multitude of other tasks. In his eightieth year, for example, he wrote on politics, sending President Monroe long expositions later known to the world in Monroe's version as the Monroe Doctrine (Daugherty 326).Among all his interests, there was one intrusion on his time and thought which caused Jefferson endless embarrassment. His finances, always shaky, finally collapsed. Jefferson had frequently advanced money to friends who fancied themselves more hard-pressed than he, and occasionally had been forced to make good on their notes when they found it impossible to do so. He had spent money lavishly on his libraries and the arts, on Monticello, and on his children's education. His passion for architecture cost him a small fortune. At the final stage of his financial distress, Jefferson petitioned the Virginia legislature to grant him permission to dispose of Monticello and its farms by lottery. The almost immediate response of private citizens, in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, on hearing this news was to donate a sum of over $16,000 to aid the leader who had devoted his industry and resourcefulness to all America for half a century (Smith 304).On July 4, 1826, Jefferson died at Monticello. His health had been impaired by a too free use of the hot spring bath in 1818. From that time, his indisposition steadily increased until the spring of 1826, when it attained a troublesome and alarming violence, giving certain indications of a gradual approach of dissolution. Of the issue, he seemed perfectly aware. On the 5th of June, he observed to a friend that "he doubted his weathering the ...
