short biography thomas jefferson

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Thomas Jefferson

By: History.com Editors

Updated: March 22, 2022 | Original: October 29, 2009

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), author of the Declaration of Independence and the third U.S. president, was a leading figure in America’s early development. During the American Revolutionary War (1775-83), Jefferson served in the Virginia legislature and the Continental Congress and was governor of Virginia. He later served as U.S. minister to France and U.S. secretary of state and was vice president under John Adams (1735-1826). 

Jefferson, a Democratic-Republican who thought the national government should have a limited role in citizens’ lives, was elected president in 1800. During his two terms in office (1801-1809), the U.S. purchased the Louisiana Territory and Lewis and Clark explored the vast new acquisition. Although Jefferson promoted individual liberty, he also enslaved over six hundred people throughout his life. After leaving office, he retired to his Virginia plantation, Monticello, and helped found the University of Virginia.

Thomas Jefferson’s Early Years

Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743, at Shadwell, a plantation on a large tract of land near present-day Charlottesville, Virginia . His father, Peter Jefferson (1707/08-57), was a successful planter and surveyor and his mother, Jane Randolph Jefferson (1720-76), came from a prominent Virginia family. Thomas was their third child and eldest son; he had six sisters and one surviving brother.

Did you know? In 1815, Jefferson sold his 6,700-volume personal library to Congress for $23,950 to replace books lost when the British burned the U.S. Capitol, which housed the Library of Congress, during the War of 1812. Jefferson's books formed the foundation of the rebuilt Library of Congress's collections.

In 1762, Jefferson graduated from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, where he reportedly enjoyed studying for 15 hours, then practicing violin for several more hours on a daily basis. He went on to study law under the tutelage of respected Virginia attorney George Wythe (there were no official law schools in America at the time, and Wythe’s other pupils included future Chief Justice John Marshall and statesman Henry Clay ). 

Jefferson began working as a lawyer in 1767. As a member of colonial Virginia’s House of Burgesses from 1769 to 1775, Jefferson, who was known for his reserved manner, gained recognition for penning a pamphlet, “A Summary View of the Rights of British America” (1774), which declared that the British Parliament had no right to exercise authority over the American colonies .

Why Thomas Jefferson’s Anti‑Slavery Passage Was Removed from the Declaration of Independence

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Thomas Jefferson: America’s Pioneering Gourmand

Founding Father, author of the Declaration of Independence, third president of the United States, appropriator of the Louisiana Purchase, gastronome…?

Jefferson & Adams: Founding Frenemies

The two founding fathers, who share a special place in American history, had a long, complicated relationship over the course of their lives.

Marriage and Monticello

After his father died when Jefferson was a teen, the future president inherited the Shadwell property. In 1768, Jefferson began clearing a mountaintop on the land in preparation for the elegant brick mansion he would construct there called Monticello (“little mountain” in Italian). Jefferson, who had a keen interest in architecture and gardening, designed the home and its elaborate gardens himself. 

Over the course of his life, he remodeled and expanded Monticello and filled it with art, fine furnishings and interesting gadgets and architectural details. He kept records of everything that happened at the 5,000-acre plantation, including daily weather reports, a gardening journal and notes about his slaves and animals.

On January 1, 1772, Jefferson married Martha Wayles Skelton (1748-82), a young widow. The couple moved to Monticello and eventually had six children; only two of their daughters—Martha (1772-1836) and Mary (1778-1804)—survived into adulthood. In 1782, Jefferson’s wife Martha died at age 33 following complications from childbirth. Jefferson was distraught and never remarried. However, it is believed he fathered more children with one of his enslaved women, Sally Hemings (1773-1835), who was also his wife’s half-sister .

Slavery was a contradictory issue in Jefferson’s life. Although he was an advocate for individual liberty and at one point promoted a plan for the gradual emancipation of slaves in America, he enslaved people throughout his life. Additionally, while he wrote in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal,” he believed African Americans were biologically inferior to whites and thought the two races could not coexist peacefully in freedom. Jefferson inherited some 175 enslaved people from his father and father-in-law and owned an estimated 600 slaves over the course of his life. He freed only a small number of them in his will; the majority were sold following his death.

Thomas Jefferson and the American Revolution

In 1775, with the American Revolutionary War recently underway, Jefferson was selected as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress. Although not known as a great public speaker, he was a gifted writer and at age 33, was asked to draft the Declaration of Independence (before he began writing, Jefferson discussed the document’s contents with a five-member drafting committee that included John Adams and Benjamin Franklin ). The Declaration of Independence , which explained why the 13 colonies wanted to be free of British rule and also detailed the importance of individual rights and freedoms, was adopted on July 4, 1776.

In the fall of 1776, Jefferson resigned from the Continental Congress and was re-elected to the Virginia House of Delegates (formerly the House of Burgesses). He considered the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which he authored in the late 1770s and which Virginia lawmakers eventually passed in 1786, to be one of the significant achievements of his career. It was a forerunner to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution , which protects people’s right to worship as they choose.

From 1779 to 1781, Jefferson served as governor of Virginia, and from 1783 to 1784, did a second stint in Congress (then officially known, since 1781, as the Congress of the Confederation). In 1785, he succeeded Benjamin Franklin (1706-90) as U.S. minister to France. Jefferson’s duties in Europe meant he could not attend the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787; however, he was kept informed of the proceedings to draft a new national constitution and later advocated for including a bill of rights and presidential term limits.

Jefferson's Path to the Presidency

After returning to America in the fall of 1789, Jefferson accepted an appointment from President George Washington (1732-99) to become the new nation’s first secretary of state. In this post, Jefferson clashed with U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton (1755/57-1804) over foreign policy and their differing interpretations of the U.S. Constitution. In the early 1790s, Jefferson, who favored strong state and local government, co-founded the Democratic-Republican Party to oppose Hamilton’s Federalist Party , which advocated for a strong national government with broad powers over the economy.

In the presidential election of 1796, Jefferson ran against John Adams and received the second-highest amount of votes, which, according to the law at the time, made him vice president.

Jefferson ran against Adams again in the presidential election of 1800, which turned into a bitter battle between the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans. Jefferson defeated Adams; however, due to a flaw in the electoral system, Jefferson tied with fellow Democratic-Republican Aaron Burr (1756-1836). The House of Representatives broke the tie and voted Jefferson into office. In order to avoid a repeat of this situation, Congress proposed the Twelfth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which required separate voting for president and vice president. The amendment was ratified in 1804.

Jefferson Becomes Third U.S. President

Jefferson was sworn into office on March 4, 1801; he was the first presidential inauguration held in Washington, D.C. ( George Washington was inaugurated in New York in 1789; in 1793, he was sworn into office in Philadelphia, as was his successor, John Adams, in 1797.) Instead of riding in a horse-drawn carriage, Jefferson broke with tradition and walked to and from the ceremony.

One of the most significant achievements of Jefferson’s first administration was the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France for $15 million in 1803. At more than 820,000 square miles, the Louisiana Purchase (which included lands extending between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains and the Gulf of Mexico to present-day Canada) effectively doubled the size of the United States. Jefferson then commissioned explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the uncharted land, plus the area beyond, out to the Pacific Ocean. (At the time, most Americans lived within 50 miles of the Atlantic Ocean.)  Lewis and Clark’s expedition , known today as the Corps of Discovery, lasted from 1804 to 1806 and provided valuable information about the geography, American Indian tribes and animal and plant life of the western part of the continent.

Louisiana Purchase: The Land Deal of the Millennium

For a mere $15 million, Thomas Jefferson doubled the size of the United States, buying 800,000 square miles from the French that stretched from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains.

Lewis and Clark: A Timeline of the Extraordinary Expedition

In 1804, Lewis and Clark set off on a journey filled with harrowing confrontations, harsh weather and fateful decisions as they scouted a route across the American West.

How Sally Hemings and Other Enslaved People Secured Precious Pockets of Freedom

In navigating lives of privation and brutality, enslaved people haggled, often daily, for liberties small and large.

In 1804, Jefferson ran for re-election and defeated Federalist candidate Charles Pinckney (1746-1825) of South Carolina with more than 70 percent of the popular vote and an electoral count of 162-14. During his second term, Jefferson focused on trying to keep America out of Europe’s Napoleonic Wars (1803-15). However, after Great Britain and France, who were at war, both began harassing American merchant ships, Jefferson implemented the Embargo Act of 1807. 

The act, which closed U.S. ports to foreign trade, proved unpopular with Americans and hurt the U.S. economy. It was repealed in 1809 and, despite the president’s attempts to maintain neutrality, the U.S. ended up going to war against Britain in the War of 1812. Jefferson chose not to run for a third term in 1808 and was succeeded in office by James Madison (1751-1836), a fellow Virginian and former U.S. secretary of state.

Thomas Jefferson’s Later Years and Death

Jefferson spent his post-presidential years at Monticello, where he continued to pursue his many interests, including architecture, music, reading and gardening. He also helped found the University of Virginia, which held its first classes in 1825. Jefferson was involved with designing the school’s buildings and curriculum and ensured that unlike other American colleges at the time, the school had no religious affiliation or religious requirements for its students.

Jefferson died at age 83 at Monticello on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Coincidentally, John Adams, Jefferson’s friend, former rival and fellow signer of the Declaration of Independence, died the same day . Jefferson was buried at Monticello. However, due to the significant debt the former president had accumulated during his life, his mansion, furnishing and enslaved people were sold at auction following his death. Monticello was eventually acquired by a nonprofit organization, which opened it to the public in 1954.

Jefferson remains an American icon. His face appears on the U.S. nickel and is carved into stone at Mount Rushmore . The Jefferson Memorial, near the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was dedicated on April 13, 1943, the 200th anniversary of Jefferson’s birth.

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Early years

At a glance: the jefferson presidency.

• Declaring independence
• American in Paris
• Slavery and racism
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Where was Thomas Jefferson educated?

What was thomas jefferson like, what is thomas jefferson remembered for.

Thomas Jefferson

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Who was Thomas Jefferson?

Thomas Jefferson was the primary draftsman of the  Declaration of Independence  of the United States and the nation’s first secretary of state (1789–94), its second  vice president  (1797–1801), and, as the third  president  (1801–09), the statesman responsible for the  Louisiana Purchase . 

As a teenager, Thomas Jefferson boarded with the local schoolmaster to learn Latin and Greek. In 1760 he entered the  College of William & Mary  in  Williamsburg , where he was influenced by, among others,  George Wythe , the leading legal scholar in Virginia, with whom he read  law  from 1762 to 1767.

Thomas Jefferson was known for his shyness (apart from his two inaugural addresses as president , there is no record of Jefferson delivering any public speeches whatsoever) and for his zealous certainty about the American cause. He was full of contradictions, arguing for human freedom and equality while owning hundreds of enslaved people.

How was Thomas Jefferson influential?

Thomas Jefferson’s ideas about politics and government greatly influenced early American history. He believed that the American Revolution represented a clean break with the past and that the United States should reject all European versions of political discipline and resist efforts to create a strong central governmental authority.

Thomas Jefferson is remembered for being the primary writer of the Declaration of Independence and the third president of the United States. The fact that he owned over 600 enslaved people during his life while forcefully advocating for human freedom and equality made Jefferson one of America’s most problematic and paradoxical heroes.

Recent News

Thomas Jefferson (born April 2 [April 13, New Style], 1743, Shadwell, Virginia [U.S.]—died July 4, 1826, Monticello, Virginia, U.S.) was the draftsman of the Declaration of Independence of the United States and the nation’s first secretary of state (1789–94) and second vice president (1797–1801) and, as the third president (1801–09), the statesman responsible for the Louisiana Purchase . An early advocate of total separation of church and state , he also was the founder and architect of the University of Virginia and the most eloquent American proponent of individual freedom as the core meaning of the American Revolution .

Long regarded as America’s most distinguished “apostle of liberty,” Jefferson has come under increasingly critical scrutiny within the scholarly world. At the popular level, both in the United States and abroad, he remains an incandescent icon, an inspirational symbol for both major U.S. political parties, as well as for dissenters in communist China, liberal reformers in central and eastern Europe, and aspiring democrats in Africa and Latin America. His image has suffered, however, as the focus on racial equality has prompted a more negative reappraisal of his dependence upon slavery and his conviction that American society remain a white man’s domain. Especially disturbing to many were the DNA results of the 1998 study revealing that Jefferson had almost certainly fathered a child with Sally Hemings , an enslaved woman thirty years his junior and owned by him. (For more on this story, see “Tom and Sally”: The Jefferson - Hemings paternity debate .) The huge gap between his lyrical expression of liberal ideals and the more attenuated reality of his own life has transformed Jefferson into America’s most problematic and paradoxical hero. The Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. , was dedicated to him on April 13, 1943, the 200th anniversary of his birth.

(Read Joseph Ellis’s Britannica essay on the Sally Heming’s affair.)

Albermarle county, where Jefferson was born, lay in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in what was then regarded as a western province of the Old Dominion. His father, Peter Jefferson, was a self-educated surveyor who amassed a tidy estate that included 60 enslaved people. According to family lore, Jefferson’s earliest memory was as a three-year-old boy “being carried on a pillow by a mounted slave” when the family moved from Shadwell to Tuckahoe. His mother, Jane Randolph Jefferson, was descended from one of the most prominent families in Virginia . She raised two sons, of whom Jefferson was the eldest, and six daughters. There is reason to believe that Jefferson’s relationship with his mother was strained, especially after his father died in 1757, because he did everything he could to escape her supervision and had almost nothing to say about her in his memoirs. He boarded with the local schoolmaster to learn his Latin and Greek until 1760, when he entered the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg .

By all accounts he was an obsessive student, often spending 15 hours of the day with his books, 3 hours practicing his violin, and the remaining 6 hours eating and sleeping. The two chief influences on his learning were William Small, a Scottish-born teacher of mathematics and science , and George Wythe , the leading legal scholar in Virginia. From them Jefferson learned a keen appreciation of supportive mentors, a concept he later institutionalized at the University of Virginia. He read law with Wythe from 1762 to 1767, then left Williamsburg to practice, mostly representing small-scale planters from the western counties in cases involving land claims and titles. Although he handled no landmark cases and came across as a nervous and somewhat indifferent speaker before the bench, he earned a reputation as a formidable legal scholar. He was a shy and extremely serious young man.

In 1768 he made two important decisions: first, to build his own home atop an 867-foot- (264-meter-) high mountain near Shadwell that he eventually named Monticello and, second, to stand as a candidate for the House of Burgesses . These decisions nicely embodied the two competing impulses that would persist throughout his life—namely, to combine an active career in politics with periodic seclusion in his own private haven. His political timing was also impeccable , for he entered the Virginia legislature just as opposition to the taxation policies of the British Parliament was congealing. Although he made few speeches and tended to follow the lead of the Tidewater elite, his support for resolutions opposing Parliament’s authority over the colonies was resolute.

In the early 1770s his own character was also congealing. In 1772 he married Martha Wayles Skelton ( Martha Jefferson ), an attractive and delicate young widow whose dowry more than doubled his holdings in land and enslaved people. In 1774 he wrote A Summary View of the Rights of British America , which was quickly published, though without his permission, and catapulted him into visibility beyond Virginia as an early advocate of American independence from Parliament’s authority; the American colonies were tied to Great Britain, he believed, only by wholly voluntary bonds of loyalty to the king.

His reputation thus enhanced , the Virginia legislature appointed him a delegate to the Second Continental Congress in the spring of 1775. He rode into Philadelphia—and into American history—on June 20, 1775, a tall (slightly above 6 feet 2 inches [1.88 meters]) and gangly young man with reddish blond hair, hazel eyes, a burnished complexion, and rock-ribbed certainty about the American cause. In retrospect, the central paradox of his life was also on display, for the man who the following year was to craft the most famous manifesto for human equality in world history arrived in an ornate carriage drawn by four handsome horses and accompanied by three enslaved people.

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson was a Founding Father of the United States, author of the Declaration of Independence, and America’s third president.

• Who Was Thomas Jefferson?

Thomas Jefferson was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. The native Virginian was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence and later held several national offices. Jefferson served as the nation’s first secretary of state, and the second vice president (under John Adams ), and the third American president, from 1801 to 1809. During his two-term presidency, Jefferson doubled the size of the United States by successfully brokering the Louisiana Purchase and defeated pirates from North Africa during the Barbary War. In retirement, Jefferson founded the University of Virginia and continued work on his beloved Monticello estate. He died on the 50 th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence at age 83.

Quick Facts

When and where was thomas jefferson born, children, wife, and sally hemings, declaration of independence, virginia governor and house delegate, national appointments: minister to france and secretary of state, vice presidency, accomplishments as u.s. president, ideology: political party, views on slavery, and legacy, later years: founding the university of virginia, when did thomas jefferson die.

FULL NAME: Thomas Jefferson BORN: April 13, 1743 DIED: July 4, 1826 BIRTHPLACE: Shadwell, Virginia SPOUSE: Martha Jefferson (1772-1782) CHILDREN: 12 ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aries

Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743, at the Shadwell plantation located just outside of Charlottesville, Virginia.

Thomas was born into one of the most prominent families of Virginia’s planter elite. His mother, Jane Randolph Jefferson, was a member of the proud Randolph clan, a family claiming descent from English and Scottish royalty. His father, Peter Jefferson, was a successful farmer as well as a skilled surveyor and cartographer who produced the first accurate map of the Province of Virginia.

Thomas was the third born of 10 siblings. As a boy, his favorite pastimes were playing in the woods, practicing the violin, and reading.

Jefferson began his formal education at age 9, studying Latin and Greek at a local private school run by Reverend William Douglas. In 1757, at the age of 14, he took up further study of the classical languages as well as literature and mathematics with Reverend James Maury, whom Jefferson later described as “a correct classical scholar.”

In 1760, having learned all he could from Maury, Jefferson left home to attend the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia’s capital. Although it was the second oldest college in America (after Harvard), William and Mary wasn’t an especially rigorous academic institution at that time. Jefferson was dismayed to discover that his classmates expended their energies betting on horse races, playing cards, and courting women rather than studying.

Nevertheless, the serious and precocious Jefferson fell in with a circle of older scholars that included Professor William Small, Lieutenant Governor Francis Fauquier, and lawyer George Wythe, and it was from them that he received his true education.

After three years at William and Mary, Jefferson decided to read law under Wythe, one of the preeminent lawyers of the American colonies. There were no law schools at this time; instead aspiring attorneys “read law” under the supervision of an established lawyer before being examined by the bar.

Wythe guided Jefferson through an extraordinarily rigorous five-year course of study—more than double the typical duration. By the time Jefferson won admission to the Virginia bar in 1767, he was already one of the most learned lawyers in America.

In 1769, Jefferson began construction of what was perhaps his greatest labor of love: Monticello , his house atop a small rise outside of Charlottesville, Virginia. The house was built on land within the state’s Piedmont region that his father had owned since 1735.

In keeping with his interests as one of America’s greatest Renaissance Men—he liked botany, archaeology, music, and birdwatching, among other subjects—Jefferson, himself, drafted the blueprints for Monticello’s neoclassical mansion, outbuildings, and gardens.

More than just a residence, Monticello was also a working plantation, where Jefferson kept roughly 130 Black people in slavery. Their duties included tending gardens and livestock, plowing fields, and working at the onsite textile factory.

Now a museum centered on its original owner, Monticello is open to the public for tours. The property was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1966 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.

From 1767 to 1774, Jefferson practiced law in Virginia with great success, trying many cases and winning most of them. During these years, he also met and fell in love with Martha Wayles Skelton, a recent widow and one of the wealthiest women in Virginia.

The pair married on January 1, 1772. Thomas and Martha Jefferson had six children together, but only two survived into adulthood: Martha, their firstborn, and Mary, their fourth, who went by the name “Maria.” Only Martha survived her father.

His six children with Martha, however, weren’t the only kids Jefferson fathered. History scholars and a significant body of DNA evidence indicate that Jefferson had an affair—and several children—with Sally Hemings, one of his enslaved people and the elder Martha’s half-sister. (Sally’s mother, Betty Hemings, was enslaved by Mather’s father, John Wayles, who also fathered Sally.)

It’s overwhelmingly likely, if not absolutely certain, that Jefferson fathered all six of Sally Hemings’ children. Even the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which owns and operates Monticello, has publicly acknowledged this and considers Jefferson’s paternity of Hemings’ children “settled historical matter.” The most compelling proof is DNA evidence, revealed in 1998, showing that some male member of the Jefferson family fathered Hemings’ children, and that it wasn’t Samuel or Peter Carr, the only two of Jefferson’s male relatives in the vicinity at the relevant times.

Only four of Jefferson and Hemings’ six children survived. William Beverly Hemings, Harriet Hemings, James Madison Hemings, and Thomas Eston Hemings were born into slavery, though Jefferson freed them. Still shrouded in history is the exact nature of Jefferson’s relationship with Sally, who was thirty years younger than the Founding Father.

The beginning of Jefferson’s professional life coincided with major changes in Great Britain’s 13 American colonies . The conclusion of the French and Indian War in 1763 left Great Britain in dire financial straits; to raise revenue, the Crown levied a host of new taxes on its colonies in America. In particular, the Stamp Act of 1765, which imposed a tax on printed and paper goods, outraged the colonists, giving rise to the American revolutionary slogan, “No taxation without representation.”

Eight years later, on December 16, 1773, colonists protesting a British tea tax dumped 342 chests of tea into the Boston Harbor in what is known as the Boston Tea Party . In April 1775, American militiamen clashed with British soldiers at the Battles of Lexington and Concord , the first conflicts in what developed into the Revolutionary War .

Jefferson was one of the earliest and most fervent supporters of the cause of American independence from Great Britain. He was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1768 and joined its radical bloc, led by Patrick Henry and George Washington .

In 1774, Jefferson penned his first major political work, A Summary View of the Rights of British America , which established his reputation as one of the most eloquent advocates of the American cause. A year later, Jefferson traveled to Philadelphia to attend the Second Continental Congress , which created the Continental Army and appointed Washington as its commander-in-chief. However, the Congress’ most significant work fell to Jefferson himself.

In June 1776, the Congress appointed a five-man committee—Jefferson, John Adams , Benjamin Franklin , Roger Sherman , and Robert Livingston—to draft a Declaration of Independence . The committee then chose Jefferson to author the declaration’s first draft, selecting him for what Adams called his “happy talent for composition and singular felicity of expression.”

Over 17 days, Jefferson drafted one of the most beautiful and powerful testaments to liberty and equality in world history. The document opens with a preamble stating the natural rights of all human beings then continues on to enumerate specific grievances against King George III that absolved the American colonies of any allegiance to the British Crown.

Although the version of the Declaration of Independence adopted on July 4, 1776, had undergone a series of revisions from Jefferson’s original draft, its immortal words remain essentially his own:

“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; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

After authoring the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson returned to Virginia, where, from 1776 to 1779, he served as a member of the Virginia House of Delegates. There he sought to revise Virginia’s laws to fit the American ideals he had outlined in the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson successfully abolished the doctrine of entail, which dictated that only a property owner’s heirs could inherit his land, and the doctrine of primogeniture, which required that in the absence of a will a property owner’s oldest son inherited his entire estate.

On June 1, 1779, the Virginia legislature elected Jefferson as the state’s second governor. His two years as governor proved the low point of Jefferson’s political career. Torn between the Continental Army’s desperate pleas for more men and supplies and Virginians’ strong desire to keep such resources for their own defense, Jefferson waffled and pleased no one.

As the Revolutionary War progressed into the South, Jefferson moved the capital from Williamsburg to Richmond, only to be forced to evacuate that city when it, rather than Williamsburg, turned out to be the target of British attack.

On June 1, 1781, the day before the end of his second term as governor, Jefferson was forced to flee his home at Monticello, only narrowly escaping capture by the British cavalry. Although he had no choice but to leave, his political enemies later pointed to this inglorious incident as evidence of cowardice.

Jefferson declined to seek a third term as governor and stepped down on June 4, 1781. Claiming that he was giving up public life for good, he returned to Monticello, where he intended to live out the rest of his days as a gentleman farmer surrounded by the domestic pleasures of his family, his farm, and his books. But the next year, Jefferson was spurred back into public life by private tragedy: the untimely death of his beloved wife, Martha, on September 6, 1782, about six weeks before her 34 th birthday.

After months of mourning, in June 1783, Jefferson returned to Philadelphia to lead the Virginia delegation to the Confederation Congress. In 1785, that body appointed Jefferson to replace Benjamin Franklin as the U.S. minister to France. His official duties as minister consisted primarily of negotiating loans and trade agreements with private citizens and government officials in Paris and Amsterdam.

Although Jefferson appreciated much about European culture—its arts, architecture, literature, food, and wines—he found the juxtaposition of the aristocracy’s grandeur and the masses’ poverty repellant. “I find the general fate of humanity here, most deplorable,” he wrote in one letter.

In Europe, Jefferson rekindled his friendship with John Adams , who served as minister to Great Britain, and his wife, Abigail Adams . The educated and erudite Abigail, with whom Jefferson maintained a lengthy correspondence on a wide variety of subjects, was perhaps the only woman he ever treated as an intellectual equal.

After nearly five years in Paris, Jefferson returned to America at the end of 1789 with a much greater appreciation for his home country. As he wrote to his good friend James Monroe , “My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy.”

Jefferson arrived in Virginia in November 1789 to find George Washington waiting for him with news that Washington had been elected the first president of the United States of America and that he was appointing Jefferson as his secretary of state. Besides Jefferson, Washington’s most trusted advisor was Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton . A dozen years younger than Jefferson, Hamilton was a New Yorker and war hero who, unlike Jefferson and Washington, had risen from humble beginnings.

Rancorous partisan battles emerged to divide the new American government during Washington’s presidency. On one side, the Republican Party, led by Jefferson, promoted the supremacy of state governments, a strict constructionist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution , and support for the French Revolution . On the other side, the Federalists , led by Alexander Hamilton , advocated for a strong national government, broad interpretation of the Constitution, and neutrality in European affairs.

Washington’s two most trusted advisors thus provided nearly opposite advice on the most pressing issues of the day: the creation of a national bank, the appointment of federal judges, and the official posture toward France. On January 5, 1794, frustrated by the endless conflicts, Jefferson resigned as secretary of state, once again abandoning politics in favor of his family and farm at his beloved Monticello.

Despite Jefferson’s public ambivalence and previous claims that he was through with politics, the Republicans selected Jefferson as their candidate to succeed George Washington as president. In those days, candidates didn’t campaign for office openly, so Jefferson did little more than remain at home on the way to finishing a close second to then–Vice President John Adams in the electoral college vote. By the rules of the time, that made Jefferson the new vice president. He held the post from 1797 to 1801.

Besides presiding over the U.S. Senate , the vice president had essentially no substantive role in government. The long friendship between Adams and Jefferson had cooled due to political differences (Adams was a Federalist), and Adams didn’t consult his vice president on any important decisions.

To occupy his time during his four years as vice president, Jefferson authored A Manual of Parliamentary Practice , one of the most useful guides to legislative proceedings ever written, and served as the president of the American Philosophical Society.

John Adams ’ presidency revealed deep fissures in the Federalist Party between moderates such as Adams and George Washington and more extreme Federalists like Alexander Hamilton . In the presidential election of 1800, the Federalists refused to back Adams, clearing the way for the Republican candidates Jefferson and Aaron Burr to tie for first place, with 73 electoral votes each. After a long and contentious debate, the U.S. House of Representatives selected Jefferson to serve as the third president of America, with Burr as his vice president.

The election of Jefferson in 1800 was a landmark of world history: the first peacetime transfer of power from one party to another in a modern republic. Delivering his inaugural address on March 4, 1801, Jefferson spoke to the fundamental commonalities uniting all Americans despite their partisan differences. “Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle,” he stated. “We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.”

President Jefferson’s accomplishments during his first term in office, from 1801 to 1805, were numerous, remarkably successful, and productive. In keeping with his Republican values, Jefferson stripped the presidency of all the trappings of European royalty, reduced the size of the armed forces and government bureaucracy, and lowered the national debt from $80 million to $57 million in his first two years in office.

Nevertheless, Jefferson’s most important achievements as president all involved bold assertions of national government power and surprisingly liberal readings of the Constitution.

Louisiana Purchase

Jefferson’s most significant accomplishment as president was the Louisiana Purchase. In 1803, he acquired land stretching from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains from cash-strapped Napoleonic France for the bargain price of $15 million, thereby doubling the size of the nation in a single stroke. He then devised the wonderfully informative Lewis and Clark Expedition to explore, map out, and report back on the new American territories.

Tripoli Pirates

Jefferson also put an end to the centuries-old problem of Tripoli pirates from North Africa disrupting American shipping in the Mediterranean. During the Barbary War , Jefferson forced the pirates to capitulate by deploying new American warships.

Notably, both the Louisiana Purchase and the undeclared war against the Barbary pirates conflicted with Jefferson’s much-avowed Republican values. Both actions represented unprecedented expansions of national government power, and neither was explicitly sanctioned by the Constitution.

Second Term

Although Jefferson easily won re-election in 1804, his second term in office proved much more difficult and less productive than his first. He largely failed in his efforts to impeach the many Federalist judges swept into government by the Judiciary Act of 1801.

However, the greatest challenges of Jefferson’s second term were posed by the war between Napoleonic France and Great Britain. Both Britain and France attempted to prevent American commerce with the other power by harassing American shipping. Britain, in particular, sought to impress American sailors into the British Navy.

In response, Jefferson passed the Embargo Act of 1807, suspending all trade with Europe. The move wrecked the American economy as exports crashed from $108 million to $22 million by the time he left office in 1809. The embargo also led to the War of 1812 with Great Britain after Jefferson left office.

Jefferson was the first leader of the Republican Party, which formed in the 1790s and became the Democratic-Republican Party before the end of the decade. Jeffersonian Republicans advocated for a smaller federal government, encouraged states’ rights and individual liberties, and favored a strict interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. Jefferson was the first of three Democratic-Republican presidents, followed by James Madison and James Monroe . The party eventually evolved into the modern-day Democratic Party.

Beyond his positions and actions while in public office, Jefferson offered a window into his political philosophy and worldview through his only full-length book, Notes on the State of Virginia . He began writing the book in late 1781 after stepping down as the governor of Virginia and ostensibly sought to outline the history, culture, and geography of his home state. However, Notes on the State of Virginia also contained Jefferson’s vision of the good society he hoped America would become: a virtuous agricultural republic based on the values of liberty, honesty, and simplicity and centered on the self-sufficient yeoman farmer.

Views on Slavery

Jefferson’s writings shed light on his contradictory, controversial, and much-debated views on race and slavery . Jefferson was a slave owner his entire life, and his very existence as a gentleman farmer depended on the institution of slavery.

Like most white Americans of that time, Jefferson held views we would now describe as nakedly racist: He believed that Black people were innately inferior to white people in terms of both mental and physical capacity.

Nevertheless, he claimed to abhor slavery as a violation of the natural rights of man. He saw the eventual solution of America’s race problem as the abolition of slavery followed by the exile of formerly enslaved people to either Africa or Haiti, because, he believed, the formerly enslaved couldn’t live peacefully alongside their former masters.

As Jefferson wrote, “We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.”

Democratic Legacy

Jefferson will be forever revered as one of the great American Founding Fathers . As the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote the foundational text of American democracy and one of the most important documents in world history. He also wrote about other key democratic ideals, including:

• The separation of church and state: In 1777, Jefferson wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which established freedom of religion and the separation of church and state. Although the document wasn’t adopted as Virginia state law for another nine years, it was one of Jefferson’s proudest life accomplishments.
• Legislative procedures: Jefferson’s A Manual of Parliamentary Practice (1801) established more granular rules for America’s legislative bodies than had been previously outlined. He was inspired to study the subject while serving as vice president, which involved overseeing the U.S. Senate. His rules are still active influences in the Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives.

Ultimately, Jefferson was a man of many contradictions. He was the spokesman of liberty and a racist slave owner, a champion of the common people and a man with luxurious and aristocratic tastes, a believer in limited government and a president who expanded governmental authority beyond the wildest visions of his predecessors, a quiet man who abhorred politics and arguably the most dominant political figure of his generation. The tensions between Jefferson’s principles and practices make him all the more apt a symbol for the nation he helped create, a nation whose shining ideals have always been complicated by a complex history.

On March 4, 1809, after watching the inauguration of his close friend and successor James Madison , Jefferson returned to Virginia to live out the rest of his days as “The Sage of Monticello.”

His primary pastime was endlessly rebuilding, remodeling, and improving his home and estate, at considerable expense. A Frenchman named Marquis de Chastellux quipped, “it may be said that Mr. Jefferson is the first American who has consulted the Fine Arts to know how he should shelter himself from the weather.”

Jefferson also dedicated his later years to organizing the University of Virginia, the nation’s first secular university. He personally designed the campus, envisioned as an “academical village” in Charlottesville, and hand-selected renowned European scholars to serve as its professors. The University of Virginia opened its doors on March 7, 1825, one of the proudest days of Jefferson’s life.

At the end of his life, the former president kept up an outpouring of correspondence. In particular, he rekindled a lively correspondence on politics, philosophy, and literature with John Adams that stands out among the most extraordinary exchanges of letters in history.

Nevertheless, Jefferson’s retirement was marred by financial woes. To pay off the substantial debts he incurred over decades of living beyond his means, Jefferson resorted to selling his cherished personal library to the national government to serve as the foundation of the Library of Congress.

Jefferson died on July 4, 1826—the 50 th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence—at his Monticello estate near Charlottesville, Virginia.

His death occurred only a few hours before fellow Founding Father John Adams passed away in Massachusetts. In the moments before he passed, Adams spoke his last words, eternally true though not in the literal sense he meant them: “Thomas Jefferson survives.”

Jefferson is buried in the family cemetery at his beloved Monticello, in a grave marked by a plain gray tombstone. The brief inscription it bears, written by Jefferson, himself, is as noteworthy for what it excludes as what it includes. It suggests his humility as well as his belief that his greatest gifts to posterity came in the realm of ideas rather than the realm of politics:

“Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, and father of the University Of Virginia.”

The former president’s likeness appears on the U.S. nickel and on Mount Rushmore. The Thomas Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., was dedicated in 1943 and took architectural influence from Jefferson’s designs at Monticello and the University of Virginia.

• We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.
• All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
• How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy.
• Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.
• The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.
• I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.
• I find friendship to be like wine, raw when new, ripened with age, the true old man’s milk and restorative cordial.
• I cannot live without books; but fewer will suffice where amusement, and not use, is the only future object.
• The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
• All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
• I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
• [A] wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.
• I know well that no man will ever bring out of that office the reputation which carries him into it.

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Biography Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743–July 4, 1826) was a leading  Founding Father of the United States, the author of the Declaration of Independence (1776) and he served as the third President of the US (1801–1809). Jefferson was a committed Republican – arguing passionately for liberty, democracy and devolved power. Jefferson also wrote the Statute for Religious Freedom in 1777 – it was adopted by the state of Virginia in 1786. Jefferson was also a noted polymath with wide-ranging interests from architecture to gardening, philosophy, literature and education. Although a slave owner himself, Jefferson sought to introduce a bill (1800) to end slavery in all Western territories. As President, he signed a bill to ban the importation of slaves into the US (1807).

Jefferson’s Childhood

“Still less let it be proposed that our properties within our own territories shall be taxed or regulated by any power on earth but our own. The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them. This, sire, is our last, our determined resolution;”

Thomas Jefferson – A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774). ( Wikisource )

Thomas Jefferson and The Declaration of Independence (1776)

Thomas Jefferson was the primary author in drafting the American Declaration of Independence. The act was adopted on July 4th, 1776 and was a symbolic statement of the aims of the American Revolution.

 “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, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness…”

– Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence , July 4th, 1776. Jefferson received suggestions from others such as James Madison. He was also influenced by the writings of the British Empiricists, in particular, John Locke and Thomas Paine . The importance of the Declaration of Independence was summed up in The Gettysburg address of Abraham Lincoln in 1863.

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

However, Jefferson was disappointed that a reference to the evil of slavery was removed at the request of delegates from the South. From 1785 to 1789 Jefferson served as minister to France, succeeding Benjamin Franklin . In France, Jefferson became immersed in Paris society. He was a noted host and came into contact with many of the great thinkers of the age. Jefferson also saw the social and political turmoil which resulted in the French Revolution. On 26 August 1789, the French Assembly published the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen , which was directly influenced by Jefferson’s US Declaration of Independence. On his return to America Jefferson served under George Washington as first Secretary of State. Here he began debating with the Hamilton factions over the size of government spending. Jefferson was an advocate of minimal government. At the end of his term 1783, he retired temporarily to Monticello, where he spent time amongst his gardens and with his family.

Jefferson – President in 1800

In 1796 Jefferson stood for President but lost narrowly to John Adams ; however, under the terms of the constitution, this was sufficient for him to become Vice President. In the run-up to the next election of 1800 Jefferson fought a bitter campaign. In particular, the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798 led to the imprisonment of many newspaper editors who supported Jefferson and were critical of the existing government. However, Jefferson was narrowly elected and this allowed him to promote open and representative government. On being elected, he offered a hand of friendship to his former political enemies. He also allowed the Sedition Act to expire and promoted the practical existence of free speech. The Presidency of Jefferson was eventful, but importantly he was able to preside over a period of relative stability and generally kept America out of conflict.

“I love peace, and am anxious that we should give the world still another useful lesson, by showing to them other modes of punishing injuries than by war, which is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer.”

At the time American neutrality was imperilled by the British-French wars, which raged around Canada. In 1803 Jefferson was able to double the size of the US, through the Louisiana Purchase, which gave America many states to the west. He also commissioned the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which crossed America seeking to explore and create friendships with the Native American populations.

Jefferson’s Retirement in Monticello

Thomas Jefferson’s Personal Life

Thomas Jefferson married Martha Wayles Skelton in 1772. Together they had six children, including one stillborn son. Martha Jefferson Randolph (1772–1836), Jane Randolph (1774–1775), a stillborn or unnamed son (1777), Mary Wayles (1778–1804), Lucy Elizabeth (1780–1781), and Lucy Elizabeth (1782–1785). Martha died only 10 years later. Thomas Jefferson remained single for the rest of his life. It was alleged that Jefferson fathered some of Sally Hemings’ daughters. Jefferson never denied it in public, but he did deny it private correspondence. There has never been any conclusive proof that this occurred.

Personal qualities

Jefferson was over 6’2″; this was very tall for his age. He didn’t relish public speaking, he preferred to express his opinions through his writings. His friends and family remarked on Jefferson’s many fine qualities. He was sympathetic and engaging in conversation. Never bored, he always found different avenues of interest to explore. Thomas Jefferson left a profound mark on America, through his influential shaping of the American constitution and political practices. Jefferson died at the age of 84 on the afternoon of July 4; it was the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. A few hours later on the same day, his longtime friend and fellow Founding Father John Adams also passed away. On his tombstone, Jefferson had inscribed three achievements he was proudest of:

HERE WAS BURIED THOMAS JEFFERSON AUTHOR OF THE DECLARATION OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE OF THE STATUTE OF VIRGINIA FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND FATHER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “ Biography of Thomas Jefferson ”, Oxford, UK – www.biographyonline.net . Published 22 June 2014 Last updated 22 October 2019.

Thomas Jefferson: A Life

Thomas Jefferson: A Life at Amazon

Light and Liberty – Quotes of Thomas Jefferson

Light and Liberty – Quotes of Thomas Jefferson at Amazon

Related pages

• Thomas Jefferson – Achievements
• Thomas Jefferson – minor accomplishments
• Thomas Jefferson’s views on religion

External Links

• Thomas Jefferson – Light and Liberty
• Monticello –  The home of Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson's Monticello

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Thomas Jefferson, A Brief Biography

Podcasts, Livestreams, and Videos about Thomas Jefferson

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Jefferson's Three Greatest Achievements

The Declaration of Independence

Statute of Virgina for Religious Freedom

For Jefferson, whose unorthodox religious views were a matter of heated discussion, the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was one of his greatest achievements.

The University of Virginia

Jefferson and . . ..

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Jefferson's personal life, interests, and habits.

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The people in Jefferson's life.

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Learn more about Jefferson's "tranquil pursuits of science" which he called his "supreme delight."

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“Monticello is as close as any of us can ever get to having a conversation with Thomas Jefferson.”

--Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian.

ADDRESS: 931 Thomas Jefferson Parkway Charlottesville, VA 22902 GENERAL INFORMATION: (434) 984-9800

Biography of Thomas Jefferson, Third President of the United States

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Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743–July 4, 1826) was the third president of the United States, after George Washington and John Adams. His presidency is perhaps best known for the Louisiana Purchase, a single land transaction that doubled the size of the United States' territory. Jefferson was an anti-Federalist who was wary of a large central government and favored states' rights over federal authority.

Fast Facts: Thomas Jefferson

• Known For: Third president of the United States; Founding Father; drafted the Declaration of Independence
• Born : April 13, 1743 in the Colony of Virginia
• Died : July 4, 1826 in Charlottesville, Virginia
• Education: College of William and Mary
• Spouse: Martha Wayles (m. 1772-1782)
• Children: Martha, Jane Randolph, Unnamed Son, Maria, Lucy Elizabeth, Lucy Elizabeth (all with wife Martha); a rumored six with an enslaved woman, Sally Hemings, including Madison and Eston
• Notable Quote : "The government is best that governs least."

Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743, in the Colony of Virginia. He was the son of Colonel Peter Jefferson, a planter and public official, and Jane Randolph. Jefferson grew up in Virginia and was raised with the orphaned children of his father's friend, William Randolph. He was educated from ages 9 to 14 by a clergyman named William Douglas, from whom he learned Greek, Latin, and French. He then attended Reverend James Maury's School before matriculating at the College of William and Mary. Jefferson studied law with George Wythe, the first American law professor. He was admitted to the bar in 1767.

Political Career

Jefferson entered politics in the late 1760s. He served in the House of Burgesses—the legislature of Virginia—from 1769 to 1774. On January 1, 1772, Jefferson married Martha Wayles Skelton. Together they had two daughters: Martha "Patsy" and Mary "Polly." There is also speculation that Jefferson may have fathered several children with an enslaved woman,  Sally Hemings .

As a representative of Virginia, Jefferson argued against British actions and served on the Committee of Correspondence, which formed a union between the 13 American colonies. Jefferson was a member of the Continental Congress and later was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates. During part of the Revolutionary War , he served as the governor of Virginia. After the war, he was sent to France to act as a foreign minister.

In 1790, President Washington  appointed Jefferson to be the United States' first official  Secretary of State . Jefferson clashed with Secretary of the Treasury  Alexander Hamilton on how the new country should deal with France and Britain. Hamilton also desired a stronger federal government than Jefferson. Jefferson eventually resigned because he saw that Washington was more strongly influenced by Hamilton than himself. Jefferson later served as vice president under  John Adams  from 1797 to 1801.

Election of 1800

In 1800 , Jefferson ran as the Republican nominee for president, with  Aaron Burr  as his vice president. Jefferson ran a very contentious campaign against John Adams, under whom he had previously served. Jefferson and Burr tied in the  electoral vote , leading to an electoral controversy that was ultimately resolved in Jefferson's favor by a vote in the House of Representatives. Jefferson took office as the country's third president on February 17, 1801.

Thomas Jefferson called the election of 1800 the "Revolution of 1800" because it was the first time in the United States when the presidency passed from one party to another. The election marked a peaceful transition of power that has continued to this day.

An important early event during Jefferson's first term in office was the court case  Marbury v. Madison ,  which established the Supreme Court's power to rule on the constitutionality of federal acts.

From 1801 to 1805, America engaged in a war with the Barbary States of North Africa. The United States had been paying tribute to pirates from this area to stop attacks on American ships. When the pirates asked for more money, Jefferson refused, leading Tripoli to declare war. This ended in success for the United States, which was no longer required to pay tribute to Tripoli. However, America did continue to pay the rest of the Barbary States.

In 1803,  Jefferson purchased the Louisiana territory  from France for $15 million. Many historians consider this the most important act of his administration, as the purchase doubled the size of the United States. In 1804, Jefferson dispatched the Corps of Discovery, the expedition party famously led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, to explore the new territory

Reelection of 1804

Jefferson was renominated for the presidency in 1804 with George Clinton as his vice president. Jefferson ran against Charles Pinckney from  South Carolina and easily won a second term. The Federalists were divided, with radical elements leading to the party's downfall. Jefferson received 162 electoral votes and Pinckney got only 14.

Second Term

In 1807, during Jefferson's second term, Congress passed a law ending America's involvement in the foreign trade of enslaved people. This act—which went into effect January 1, 1808—ended the importation of enslaved people from Africa (it did not, however, end the sale of enslaved people within the United States).

By the end of Jefferson's second term, France and Britain were at war and American trade ships were often targeted. When the British boarded the American frigate  Chesapeake , they forced three soldiers to work on their vessel and killed one for treason. Jefferson signed the  Embargo Act of 1807  in response. The legislation stopped America from exporting and importing foreign goods. Jefferson thought this would have the effect of hurting trade in France and Great Britain. It ended up having the opposite effect and did more damage to America.

After his second term in office, Jefferson retired to his home in Virginia and spent much of his time designing the University of Virginia. Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence .

Jefferson's election marked the beginning of the fall of federalism and the Federalist Party . When Jefferson took over the office from Federalist John Adams, the transfer of power occurred in an orderly manner, setting a precedent for future political transitions. Jefferson took his role as party leader very seriously. His greatest achievement was perhaps the Louisiana Purchase, which more than doubled the size of the United States.

• Appleby, Joyce Oldham. "Thomas Jefferson." Times Books, 2003.
• Ellis, Joseph J. "American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson." Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.
• “Thomas Jefferson's Family: A Genealogical Chart.” Thomas Jefferson's Monticello .
• Thomas Jefferson: Significant Facts and Brief Biography
• Election of 1800: Thomas Jefferson versus John Adams
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Thomas Jefferson

The 3rd President of the United States

The biography for President Jefferson and past presidents is courtesy of the White House Historical Association.

Thomas Jefferson, a spokesman for democracy, was an American Founding Father, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776), and the third President of the United States (1801–1809).

In the thick of party conflict in 1800, Thomas Jefferson wrote in a private letter, “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

This powerful advocate of liberty was born in 1743 in Albemarle County, Virginia, inheriting from his father, a planter and surveyor, some 5,000 acres of land, and from his mother, a Randolph, high social standing. He studied at the College of William and Mary, then read law. In 1772 he married Martha Wayles Skelton, a widow, and took her to live in his partly constructed mountaintop home, Monticello.

Freckled and sandy-haired, rather tall and awkward, Jefferson was eloquent as a correspondent, but he was no public speaker. In the Virginia House of Burgesses and the Continental Congress, he contributed his pen rather than his voice to the patriot cause. As the “silent member” of the Congress, Jefferson, at 33, drafted the Declaration of Independence. In years following he labored to make its words a reality in Virginia. Most notably, he wrote a bill establishing religious freedom, enacted in 1786.

Jefferson succeeded Benjamin Franklin as minister to France in 1785. His sympathy for the French Revolution led him into conflict with Alexander Hamilton when Jefferson was Secretary of State in President Washington’s Cabinet. He resigned in 1793.

Sharp political conflict developed, and two separate parties, the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans, began to form. Jefferson gradually assumed leadership of the Republicans, who sympathized with the revolutionary cause in France. Attacking Federalist policies, he opposed a strong centralized Government and championed the rights of states.

As a reluctant candidate for President in 1796, Jefferson came within three votes of election. Through a flaw in the Constitution, he became Vice President, although an opponent of President Adams. In 1800 the defect caused a more serious problem. Republican electors, attempting to name both a President and a Vice President from their own party, cast a tie vote between Jefferson and Aaron Burr. The House of Representatives settled the tie. Hamilton, disliking both Jefferson and Burr, nevertheless urged Jefferson’s election.

When Jefferson assumed the Presidency, the crisis in France had passed. He slashed Army and Navy expenditures, cut the budget, eliminated the tax on whiskey so unpopular in the West, yet reduced the national debt by a third. He also sent a naval squadron to fight the Barbary pirates, who were harassing American commerce in the Mediterranean. Further, although the Constitution made no provision for the acquisition of new land, Jefferson suppressed his qualms over constitutionality when he had the opportunity to acquire the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon in 1803.

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.

Jefferson retired to Monticello to ponder such projects as his grand designs for the University of Virginia. A French nobleman observed that he had placed his house and his mind “on an elevated situation, from which he might contemplate the universe.”

He died on July 4, 1826.

Learn more about Thomas Jefferson’s spouse, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson .

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Thomas Jefferson: Life in Brief

Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, spent his childhood roaming the woods and studying his books on a remote plantation in the Virginia Piedmont. Thanks to the prosperity of his father, Jefferson had an excellent education. After years in boarding school, where he excelled in classical languages, Jefferson enrolled in William and Mary College in his home state of Virginia, taking classes in science, mathematics, rhetoric, philosophy, and literature. He also studied law, and by the time he was admitted to the Virginia bar in April 1767, many considered him to have one of the nation's best legal minds.

Shaping America's Political Philosophy

Jefferson was shy in person, but his pen proved to be a mighty weapon. His pamphlet entitled "A Summary View of the Rights of British America," written in 1774, articulated the colonial position for independence and foreshadowed many of the ideas in the Declaration of Independence, the work for which he is most famous. By 1774, Jefferson was actively involved in organizing opposition to British rule, and in 1776, he was appointed to the Second Continental Congress. As a powerful prose stylist and an influential Virginia representative, Jefferson was chosen to write the Declaration of Independence. This document is a brilliant assertion of fundamental human rights and also serves as America's most succinct statement of its philosophy of government.

Before becoming the nation's third President, Jefferson served as delegate to the Virginia House of Delegates, where he drafted legislation that abolished primogeniture, the law that made the eldest son the sole inheritor of his father's property. He also promoted religious freedom, helping to establish the country's separation between church and state, and he advocated free public education, an idea considered radical by his contemporaries.

During the Revolution, Jefferson served two years as governor of Virginia, during which time he barely escaped capture by British forces by fleeing from Monticello, his home. He was later charged with being a coward for not confronting the enemy. After the war, Jefferson served as America's minister to France, where he witnessed firsthand the dramatic events leading up to the French Revolution.

While abroad, Jefferson corresponded with members of the Constitutional Convention, particularly his close associate from Virginia, James Madison. He agreed to support the Constitution and the strong federal government it created. Jefferson's support, however, hinged upon the condition that Madison add a bill of rights to the document in the form of ten amendments. The rights that Jefferson insisted upon—among them were freedom of speech, assembly, and practice of religion—have become fundamental to and synonymous with American life ever since.

Presidential Politics

Jefferson served as secretary of state under Washington, but quarrels with Secretary of Treasury Alexander Hamilton over his vision of a centralized national bank caused Jefferson to resign his post in 1793. In the election of 1796, Jefferson was the favorite of Democratic-Republican opponents of the Washington administration. He came in second to Federalist John Adams in Electoral College votes and became Adams's vice president.

In 1800, however, the political tide had turned against the Federalist Party of Adams and Hamilton. After a bitterly contested election, a tie vote in the Electoral College, and a protracted deadlock in the House of Representatives, Jefferson finally emerged as the winner—thanks, in part, to the three-fifths clause of the Constitution, which gave states with large slave populations additional votes. In his inaugural address, Jefferson pled for national unity in an attempt to heal the wounds of a vicious campaign and to gain support from the Federalist-controlled Congress. Due to a relatively placid first term, prosperity, lower taxes, and a reduction of the national debt, Jefferson won a landslide victory in 1804.

Defining the Powers of the Government

Jefferson believed in a "wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another" but which otherwise left them free to regulate their own affairs. In an effort to minimize the influence of the central government, he reduced the number of government employees, slashed Army enlistments, and cut the national debt. Similar to his predecessor, John Adams, Jefferson had to deal with the political war waged between his Republican Party and the Federalists. The battles were focused on the nation's judiciary branch. The landmark ruling in Marbury v. Madison, which established the independent power of the Supreme Court, was handed down during Jefferson's presidency.

Foreign affairs dominated his day-to-day attentions while President, often pushing him toward Federalist policies that contrasted with his political philosophy. To ensure the safety of American ships on the high seas, Jefferson attempted to put an end to the bribes that the United States had been paying to the Barbary states for many years. This resulted in a war with Tripoli, in which Jefferson was forced to use his navy and to rethink his policy of reducing the U.S. military. While the United States at first enjoyed an economic boom due to the war between England and France, the British navy's practice of forcing American sailors into British service led to Jefferson's disastrous suspension of trade with both France and England. This trade war devastated the economy, alienated the hard-hit mercantile Northeast, and propelled America into war with England.

His brilliant negotiation and ties to France led to the Louisiana Purchase for $15 million, doubling the size of the nation. Nonetheless, the deal troubled Jefferson, who did not wish to overstep the central government's powers as outlined by the Constitution, which made no mention of the power to acquire new territory. It was Jefferson who authorized the famous Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804-1806), led by Meriwether Lewis, a military officer who was Jefferson's clerk at the White House.

A Private Portrait of Contradictions

Jefferson preferred to live a simple lifestyle during his time in office, often greeting his dinner guests in old homespun clothes and a pair of worn bedroom slippers. Having lost his beloved wife, Martha Wayles Skelton, in 1782 to childbirth, Jefferson relied on his two married daughters and the wife of his secretary of state, Dolley Madison, as his official hostesses. Although he disliked pomp and circumstance, Jefferson knew how to live well; his wine bill upon leaving the presidency exceeded $10,000. In 1809, Jefferson retired to his Virginia plantation home, Monticello, where he continued pursuing his widely diverse interests in science, natural history, philosophy, and the classics. Jefferson also devoted himself to founding the University of Virginia.

Contemporary debates continue to rage—as they did during Jefferson's own lifetime—concerning his relationship with Sally Hemings, one of Jefferson's slaves, after Martha's death. Recent DNA evidence presents a convincing case that Jefferson was indeed the biological father of Heming's children, and most historians now believe that Jefferson and Hemings had a long-term sexual relationship. Jefferson was ambivalent about slavery throughout his career. As a young politician, he argued for the prohibition of slavery in new American territories, yet he never freed his own slaves. How could a man responsible for writing the sacred words "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal" have been a slave owner? He never resolved his internal conflict on this issue.

After carrying on a long and fascinating correspondence with John Adams while both men were in the twilight of their lives, Jefferson died on July 4, 1826—exactly fifty years to the day from the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Professor of History University of Virginia

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