Thomas Jefferson

Author of the Declaration of Independence, first American secretary of state, the second US vice president, and the third president, Thomas Jefferson was a key Founding Father of America. Born on April 13, 1743, he was the son of a prominent Virginia planter and received a great education. He attended the College of William and Mary, then studied law under George Wyatt. From 1767 to 1775, Thomas Jefferson was a lawyer in Virginia. He married a 23-year-old widow, Martha Skelton, and they had six children.

In 1774, Thomas Jefferson drafted A Summary View of The Rights of British America, which justified the Americans’ right to be self-governed through a list of grievances against King George. Jefferson was then a delegate to the Second Continental Congress and was chosen to draft the Declaration of Independence. He wrote it in 17 days, finishing in June 1776 when he was just 33 years old. The Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776. The US was the first modern colony to declare itself independent of a colonizing power, which set a precedent for many other colonies across the globe. The Declaration of Independence inspired many other declarations of independence in many other nations in the following centuries.

During the Revolutionary War, Jefferson served in the Virginia House of Burgesses and was governor of Virginia for two terms. He wrote the Virginia statute on religious freedom, which was later modeled by the First Amendment in the US Bill of Rights. Thomas Jefferson then replaced Benjamin Franklin as American diplomat to France, then in 1789, he became President George Washington’s Secretary of State. However, he resigned from the office in 1793 because of his ideological conflicts with Alexander Hamilton, the Secretary of the Treasury. Thomas Jefferson was the vice president of John Adams, the second president, and in 1800, Thomas Jefferson became the third president of the USA. The election of 1800 between Jefferson and Aaron Burr was very close and tense. It could have resulted in civil war, but thankfully was resolved democratically. When Thomas Jefferson became president and replaced John Adams, it was the first peaceful transfer of power between opposing political parties in Western history. It was a critical moment, but the American experiment made it through.

As president, Jefferson halved the US national debt, used the Navy to deal with the Barbary pirates, and doubled the size of the nation through the Louisiana Purchase. In 1803, after buying the Louisiana territory, Jefferson commissioned Meriweather Lewis and William Clark to explore the new land. After serving two terms as president, Jefferson became an important factor in the founding of the University of Virginia, the first secular university in America. He designed its campus and became its first rector. On July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson passed away, as well as John Adams.

Thomas Jefferson’s great legacy was best summarized by himself. He had three things engraved on his tombstone: “author of the Declaration of Independence, author of the statute of Virginia for religious freedom, and father of the University of Virginia.” These were his greatest achievements, his crowning works that he will always be remembered for.