Thomas Jefferson
April 13 1743 – July 4, 1826
He was an American Founding Father, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776) and the third President of the United States (1801–1809). He was a spokesman for democracy, embraced the principles of republicanism and the rights of the individual with worldwide influence.
April 13 1743 – July 4, 1826
He was an American Founding Father, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776) and the third President of the United States (1801–1809). He was a spokesman for democracy, embraced the principles of republicanism and the rights of the individual with worldwide influence.
The Declaration would eventually be considered one of Jefferson's major achievements;
he considered an enduring statement of human rights. Thomas Jefferson is also
the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, third president of
the United States, and founder of the University of Virginia.
His father Peter Jefferson was a successful planter and surveyor and his
mother Jane Randolph a member of one of Virginia's most distinguished
families. Having inherited a considerable landed estate from his father,
Jefferson began building Monticello when he was twenty-six years old. Three
years later, he married Martha Wayles Skelton, with whom he lived happily for ten
years until her death. Their marriage produced six children, but only two
survived to adulthood. Jefferson, who never remarried, maintained Monticello as
his home throughout his life, always expanding and changing the house.
As a member of the Continental Congress, he was chosen in 1776 to draft
the Declaration of Independence, which has been regarded ever since as a
charter of American and universal liberties. The document proclaims that all
men are equal in rights, regardless of birth, wealth, or status, and that the
government is the servant, not the master, of the people.
Jefferson was 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.
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.
Thomas Jefferson proposed the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom (the
frame and basis of the later First Amendment to the Constitution) in 1779, the
preamble began, "Well aware that Almighty God hath created the mind
free." Patrick Henry and other devout Christians attempted to substitute
the words "Jesus Christ" for "Almighty God" in this opening
passage and were overwhelmingly voted down.
This vote was interpreted by Jefferson to mean that Virginia's representatives wanted the law "to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahomedan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination."
A few years later, in 1786, the new United States found that it had to
deal very directly with the tenets of the Muslim religion.
