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Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, and one of the most influential Founding Fathers for his promotion of the ideals of Republicanism, he was the third President of the United States. He treated his pedigree lightly, but his mother, Jane Randolph Jefferson, came from one of the first families of Virginia; his father, Peter Jefferson, was a well-to-do landowner, although not in the class of the wealthiest planters.
This powerful advocate of liberty was born in 1743 in Virginia, inheriting from his father, some 5,000 acres of land, and from his mother, a high social standing. In 1760 Jefferson entered the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg at the age of 16; he studied there for two years, graduating with highest honors in 1762.
At William and Mary College, he enrolled in philosophy, studied mathematics, and metaphysics. A keen and diligent student, Jefferson displayed an avid curiosity in all fields and frequently studied fifteen hours a day as he also perfected his French, practiced the violin, and carried his Greek grammar book wherever he went. After graduating, he studied law with George Wythe, and was admitted to the Virginia bar in 1767.
In 1768, Jefferson began building Monticello on land inherited from his father. The Palladian style mansion, which he designed in every detail, took 40 years to entirely complete, but part of it was ready for occupancy when he married a 23-year-old widow named Martha Wayles Skelton in 1772. She died ten years later, but not before they had six children together, two of whom survived into adulthood. Jefferson never remarried.
Freckled and sandy-haired, rather tall and awkward, Jefferson was eloquent as a correspondent, but he was no public speaker. While he practiced law and served in the Virginia Assembly, in 1774, Jefferson wrote "A Summary View of the Rights of British America". The landmark document was a powerful argument of American terms for a settlement with Britain and helped speed the way to independence. The pamphlet was intended as instructions for the Virginia delegates to a national congress and would be the beginning contribution of Jefferson's pen rather than his voice to the patriot cause.
Jefferson was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence and a contributor to American political and civil culture. The Continental Congress delegated the task of writing the Declaration to a Committee of Five that unanimously solicited Jefferson, considered the best writer, to write the first draft, and in fact wrote all of them with no help at all.
In September 1776, Jefferson returned to Virginia and was elected to the new Virginia House of Delegates. During his term in the House, joined by James Madison, George Mason, and George Wythe, Jefferson set out to reform and update Virginia's system of laws to reflect its new status as a democratic state. He drafted 126 bills in three years, including laws to abolish primogeniture, establish freedom of religion, and streamline the judicial system.
In 1778, Jefferson's "Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge" led to several academic reforms at his alma mater, including an elective system of study - the first in an American university. The revolutionary concept, eventually became the modern cornerstone of elective academic credits used in today’s public and private educational systems around the world.
The introduction of Jefferson's bill on religious liberty, in 1779, touched off a quarrel that caused turmoil in Virginia for 8 years. The bill was significant as no other state--indeed, no other nation--provided for complete religious liberty at that time. Jefferson's bill stated "that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions on matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities." Many Virginians regarded the bill as an attack upon Christianity.
While the Jeffersonian Ideal was to view Man as a deity archetype, it's cause was to prevent a Religious State or Social Class or Government from becoming a Deity over the people. Clarity becomes evident in Jefferson's own comments, when he expressed, "...these laws, drawn by myself, laid the ax to the foot of pseudo-aristocracy...", and "It is honorable for us to have produced the first legislature who had the courage to declare that the reason of man may be trusted with the formation of his own opinions."
As governor of Virginia in 1780, his political enemies criticized his performance, charging him with failure to provide for the adequate defense of Richmond. Although he knew a British invasion was imminent, he fled the capital during the moment of crisis. By June 1781, when he retired from the governorship, the Virginia assembly voted that an inquiry be made into his conduct. Jefferson was exonerated and the assembly unanimously voted a resolution of appreciation of his conduct, but Public disapproval of his performance delayed his future political prospects, and he was never again elected to office in Virginia.
The death of his wife in 1782, added to Jefferson's troubles, but by the following year he was again seated in Congress where he made two contributions of enduring importance to the nation. In April 1784 he submitted Notes on the Establishment of a Money Unit and of a Coinage for the United States in which he advised the use of a decimal system. This report led to the adoption of the dollar, rather than the pound, as the basic monetary unit in the United States.
As chairman of the committee dealing with the government of western lands, Jefferson submitted proposals so liberal and farsighted as to constitute the most radical colonial policy of any nation in modern history. The proposed ordinance of 1784 reflected Jefferson's belief that the western territories should be self-governing and, when they reached a certain stage of growth, should be admitted to the Union as full partners with the original 13 states.
Jefferson was sent to Paris initially as a commissioner to help negotiate commercial treaties, then in 1785, he would succeed Benjamin Franklin as minister to France. Most European countries, however, were indifferent to American economic overtures. Jefferson wrote, "...They were ignorant of our commerce, and of the exchange of articles it might offer advantageously to both parties." Only one country, Prussia, signed a pact based on a model treaty drafted by Jefferson.
During these years, Jefferson followed events in the United States with understandable interest. He advised against any harsh punishment of those responsible for Shay's 1786 Rebellion in Massachusetts. He was highly concerned of the absence of a Bill of Rights for the People, in the new Constitution and, that it failed to limit the number of terms for the presidency.
While in France, Jefferson resided on the Champs Elysees in Paris. He did not attend the Constitutional Convention back in the States, but, he was witness to the beginning of the French Revolution. He doubted whether the French people could duplicate the American example of republican government. His advice, more conservative than anyone might have anticipated, was that France emulate the British system of constitutional monarchy.
When Jefferson left Paris in 1789, he expected to return to his Congressional post, but by time he arrived back in the States, Congress had confirmed his appointment as Secretary of State in the first administration of George Washington. Jefferson and Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, began sparring over national fiscal policy, especially the funding of the debts of the war, with Hamilton believing that the debts should be equally shared, and Jefferson believing that each state should be responsible for its own debt.
In further sparring with the Federalists, Jefferson suspected Hamilton and others in the emerging Federalist Party of implimenting a secret design to implant monarchist ideals and institutions in the government, a design which threatened to undermine republicanism. Jefferson led James Madison and others to build a nationwide network of Republican allies to attack Federalist policies and champion the rights of states across the country. This movement is what became known as the Democratic-Republican Party.
Jefferson retired to Monticello in 1793 where he continued to orchestrate opposition to Hamilton and Washington. For most of the next three years, however, he devoted himself to farm and family. Jefferson experimented with a new plow and other ingenious inventions, set out a thousand peach trees, built a nail factory, received distinguished guests from abroad, and all while he commenced on the finishing stages of the Monticello Mansion.
As a Republican in 1796, Jefferson became the reluctant presidential candidate of the party, and he seemed genuinely relieved when the Federalist candidate, John Adams, gained a narrow victory. As the runner-up, however, Jefferson became vice-president under the system then in effect. Jefferson hoped that he could work with Adams, especially since both men shared an anti-Hamilton bias. But those hopes were soon dashed as relations with France deteriorated.
With a quasi-War with the French underway, the Federalists under John Adams started a navy, built up the army, levied new taxes, readied for war, and enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798. Jefferson interpreted the Alien and Sedition Acts as an attack on his party more than on dangerous enemy aliens. Jefferson, laboring to check the authoritarian drift of the national government, secretly authored the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, which declared that the federal government had no right to exercise powers not specifically delegated to it by the states. More important, he provided his party with principles and strategy required to win the next Presidential election.
In the election of 1800, Jefferson's triumph was delayed temporarily as a result of a tie in electoral ballots with his running mate, Aaron Burr, which shifted the election to the House of Representatives. There Hamilton's influence helped Jefferson to prevail, although most Federalists supported Burr as the lesser evil. In his inaugural speech Jefferson held out an olive branch to his political enemies, inviting them to bury the partisanship of the past decade, to unite now as Americans.
Federalist leaders remained adamantly opposed to Jefferson, but the people approved his policies. Internal taxes were reduced; the military budget was cut; the Alien and Sedition Acts were permitted to lapse; and plans were made to extinguish the public debt. Simplicity and frugality became the hallmarks of Jefferson's administration. The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 capped his achievements. Ironically, Jefferson had to overcome constitutional scruples in order to take over the vast new territory without authorization by constitutional amendment. In this instance it was his Federalist critics who became the constitutional purists. Nonetheless, the purchase was received with popular enthusiasm.
In the election of 1804, Jefferson swept every state except two, and his second administration began with a minor success - the favorable settlement concluding the Tripolitan War, in which the newly created U.S. Navy fought its first engagements against the Barbary pirates, who had been disrupting American commerce in the Mediterranean. The following year the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which the president had dispatched to explore the Louisiana Territory, returned triumphantly after crossing the continent.
During Jefferson's second term, he was increasingly preoccupied with keeping the Nation from involvement in the Napoleonic wars, though both England and France interfered with the neutral rights of American merchantmen. Jefferson's attempted solution, an embargo upon American shipping, worked badly and was unpopular. Shortly before he retired from the presidency in 1809, Jefferson signed the act repealing the embargo, which had been in effect for 15 months.
Jefferson retired to Monticello and became increasingly obsessed with the creation of a new institution of higher learning, specifically one free of church influences where students could specialize in many new areas not offered at other universities. His dream was realized in 1819, with the founding of the University of Virginia.
One of the largest construction projects to that time in North America, it was notable for being centered about a library rather than a church. In fact, no campus chapel was included in his original plans. Jefferson is widely recognized for his innovative architectural design that is a powerful representation of his aspirations for both state sponsored education and an agrarian democracy in the new Republic. His educational idea of creating specialized units of learning is physically expressed in the configuration of his campus plan, which he called the Academical Village.
Individual academic units are expressed visually as distinct structures, called Pavilions, facing a grassy quadrangle, each housing classroom, faculty office, and residences. Each is visually equal in importance, and they are linked together with a series of open air arcades that are the front facades of student accommodations. Gardens and vegetable plots are placed behind, affirming the importance of the agrarian lifestyle.
Stylistically, Jefferson was a proponent of the Greek and Roman styles, which he believed to be most representative of American democracy by historical association. Each academic unit is designed with a two story temple front facing the quadrangle, while the library is modeled on the Roman Pantheon. The campus planning and architectural treatment remains today as a paradigm of the ordering of man-made structures to express intellectual ideas and aspirations.
The university was designed as the capstone of the educational system of Virginia and upon its opening in 1825, was the first university to offer a full slate of elective courses to its students. In his vision, any citizen of the commonwealth could attend school with the sole criterion being ability. A survey of members of the American Institute of Architects identified Jefferson's campus as the most significant work of architecture in America.
Jefferson died after 83 years in 1826, on the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Although he was born into one of the wealthiest families in the United States, Thomas Jefferson was deep in debt when he died. In his will, he left Monticello to the United States to be used as a school for orphans of navy officers, and his final resting place. Thomas Jefferson is buried on his Monticello estate, in Charlottesville, Virginia.
First issued in 1862, the U.S. 2 Dollar Bill was reissued in 1869, with Thomas Jefferson's portrait on front and his home, Monticello, on reverse. In 1976, it was reissued in honor of US bicentennial, with John Trumbull's painting "The Signing of the Declaration of Independence" replacing Monticello, on reverse.
The U.S. five-cent coin, commonly called a nickel, is a unit of currency equaling one-twentieth, or five hundredths, of a United States dollar and has been minted since 1866. The nickel's design since 1938 has featured a profile of President Thomas Jefferson on the front. From 1938 to 2003, Monticello was featured on the reverse.
For 2004 and 2005, nickels featured new designs to commemorate the bicentennials of the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark expedition; these new designs were called the Westward Journey nickel series. In 2006, Monticello returned to the reverse, while a new image of Jefferson facing forward was featured on the front.