Who was Thomas Jefferson?

Thomas Jefferson was a Virginia planter, lawyer, and statesman who served as the principal author of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the second Vice President from 1797 to 1801, and the third President of the United States from March 4, 1801 to March 4, 1809. He was born on April 13, 1743 at Shadwell in Goochland (later Albemarle) County, Virginia, the son of surveyor and planter Peter Jefferson. He studied at the College of William and Mary from 1760 to 1762, read law with George Wythe, and entered the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1769.

His 1774 pamphlet A Summary View of the Rights of British America argued that Parliament had no authority over the colonies, a radical position that anticipated the Declaration. As a delegate to the Second Continental Congress in 1775 and 1776, he served on the Committee of Five and drafted the Declaration of Independence in two weeks in June 1776. He returned to Virginia to serve in the legislature, where he drafted the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom in 1777 (enacted 1786), and served as governor from 1779 to 1781.

After his wife Martha died in 1782, he served in Congress, drafted the framework that became the Northwest Ordinance, and went to Paris as American minister to France from 1785 to 1789. As George Washington's first Secretary of State from 1790 to 1793, he clashed with Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton over the scope of federal power, sparking the formation of the Democratic-Republican and Federalist parties. He served as Vice President under John Adams, then defeated Adams in the bitter election of 1800.

As President, he reduced federal spending, repealed internal taxes, completed the Louisiana Purchase from France for 15 million dollars in 1803, dispatched the Lewis and Clark expedition from 1804 to 1806, fought the Barbary pirates, and imposed the Embargo Act of 1807 in response to British and French interference with American shipping. He retired to Monticello, his architectural masterpiece in Charlottesville, where he founded the University of Virginia in 1819 and resumed correspondence with John Adams that continued until both men died on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration.

Jefferson held complicated views on slavery: he wrote "all men are created equal" while owning more than 600 enslaved people during his lifetime, and his relationship with Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman, has been confirmed by DNA testing as the source of at least one of her children's lineage.