Thomas Jefferson- Brief Biography

Thomas Jefferson (April 13,1743- July 4,1826)

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).

Thomas Jefferson was born and educated in Virginia. He graduated from the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg and practiced law. He represented Virginia in the Second Continental Congress and during the Revolutionary War. The Continental Congress that adopted the Declaration, which Jefferson lead a committee of to draft and write it. The Continental Congress mainly focused on religious freedom and the freedom of the colonies because the British were heavily taxing the colonies for revenue to raise money dued to their debt during the French and Indian War. During the Revolutionary War, not only was Jefferson a representative of Virginia but he was also a wartime governor (1779-1781). He later became the United States Minister to France in May 1785, and afterward the nation’s first Secretary of State in 1790-1793 under President George Washington. Jefferson and James Madison organized the Democratic Party to oppose the Federalist Party during the formation of the First Party System. In 1796, he elected to vice president. With Madison, he anonymously wrote the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions in 1798-1799, which sought to embolden the state’s rights in opposition to the national government by nullifying the Alien and Sedition Acts.

Jefferson was also a president. He was the third elected president of the United States. He was elected president in 1800, and pursued the nation, and during that term, Jefferson pursued the nation’s shipping and trading interest against the Barbary pirates, sometimes called Barbary corsairs, were pirates and privateers who operated from North Africa, and aggressive British trade policies respectively. During his presidency, he organized the Louisiana Purchase, when he sent scouts to scout all the way to the other side of the coast in what is now known as California with some local Native American help who joined them on their journey. As a resolution of this expedition, Jefferson doubled the size of the United States. Also as a result of peaceful negotiations with France, a country who helped the Americans to fight against the British during the American Revolution, his administration reduced military forces. He was re-elected for a second term in the year of 1804. Jefferson’s second term was beset with difficulties at home, including the trial of former vice president Aaron Burr, who was charged with the murder of Alexander Hamilton, who was the nation’s former secretary of treasury, Hamilton was mortally wounded in a duel with Burr, who was shot mortally.

American foreign trade, however, was diminished when Jefferson implemented the Embargo Act of 1807, responding to British threats to U.S. shipping. In 1803, Jefferson began a controversial process of Indian tribe removal to the newly organized Louisiana Territory, and, in 1807, signed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves. Jefferson mastered many disciplines from surveying to mathematics to horticulture and inventions. He was proven architect in the classical tradition. Jefferson’s keen interest on religion and in philosophy earned him the American Philosophical Society. He shunned organized religion, but was influenced by both Christianity and deism. Besides English, he was also fluent in the languages of Latin, Greek, French, Italian, and Spanish. He also founded the University of Virginia after retiring from all forms of public office. He was also named as a skilled writer and correspondent. He wrote a book called Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), is considered the most important American book published before 1800 and his preamble, an introduction, to the Declaration retains a seminal place in the English language as well as American history. Jefferson also had 6 children, but only 2 daughters survived to adulthood. He owned several plantations and owned many slaves, which many people thought was fair and sunflowers and daisies and didn’t know that slavery was very wrong.

Thomas Jefferson was a great man, except that he owned slaves, but he was very skilled at a variety of subjects such as languages and math. He was also creditable to be a good writer. He had to be, though, to have drafted the Declaration of Independence.