Thomas Jefferson
Born: April 13, 1743
Died: July 4, 1826
Colony/State: Virginia
Occupation / Public Role: Lawyer, planter, legislator, diplomat, Secretary of State, Vice President, President of the United States
Contribution to the Founding Era: Delegate to the Continental Congress, signer of the Declaration of Independence, principal draftsman of the Declaration, author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, and later the third President of the United States.
Thomas Jefferson was born at Shadwell in Virginia and educated at the College of William and Mary. He studied law under George Wythe and entered public life through Virginia’s colonial legislature, the House of Burgesses. Before independence, he had already emerged as one of Virginia’s leading political thinkers and writers.
Jefferson’s central place in the founding era rests first on the Declaration of Independence. In June 1776, the Continental Congress appointed the Committee of Five to prepare a declaration, and Jefferson wrote the first draft. The National Archives states that he drafted it between June 11 and June 28, 1776, after which it was revised by John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Congress itself before final adoption on July 4, 1776. He then signed the Declaration as one of Virginia’s seven signers.
Jefferson’s draft mattered not only because it became the nation’s best-known founding text, but because it captured ideas that would echo far beyond 1776. The Declaration’s statement that “all men are created equal” became one of the most enduring claims in American political history. At the same time, Jefferson’s original rough draft included passages later removed by Congress, including his denunciation of the slave trade.
After independence, Jefferson continued in major public service. He served as Governor of Virginia, later as minister to France, then as the nation’s first Secretary of State, second Vice President, and third President of the United States. Britannica notes that his presidency is especially associated with the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the size of the United States.
Jefferson also considered the Declaration of Independence, the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, and the founding of the University of Virginia to be his three greatest achievements. Monticello’s historical material identifies those three as the accomplishments he most wanted remembered.
No honest page on Jefferson can skip the contradiction at the center of his life. Monticello states plainly that he championed universal rights while also holding more than 600 people in slavery over the course of his life. That tension is not a side note. It is part of the core truth about Jefferson and about the founding era itself.
Thomas Jefferson died at Monticello on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the same day as John Adams. He remains one of the most important and most debated figures in American history: signer, drafter, statesman, president, and a man whose words outlived his own world by a very long shot.
Related Links
- Signers of the Declaration of Independence
- Declaration of Independence
- Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence Draft
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