Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was an American Founding Father and the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson was the nation's first U.S. secretary of state under George Washington and then the nation's second vice president under John Adams. Jefferson was a leading proponent of democracy, republicanism, and natural rights, and he produced formative documents and decisions at the state, national, and international levels.
Jefferson was born into the Colony of Virginia's planter class, dependent on slave labor. During the American Revolution, Jefferson represented Virginia in the Second Continental Congress, which unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson's advocacy for individual rights, including freedom of thought, speech, and religion, helped shape the ideological foundations of the revolution. This inspired the Thirteen Colonies in their revolutionary fight for independence, which culminated in the establishment of the United States as a free and sovereign nation.
Jefferson served as the second governor of revolutionary Virginia from 1779 to 1781. In 1785, Congress appointed Jefferson as U.S. Minister to France, where he served from 1785 to 1789. President Washington then appointed Jefferson the nation's first secretary of state, where he served from 1790 to 1793. In 1792, Jefferson and political ally James Madison organized the Democratic-Republican Party to oppose the Federalist Party during the formation of the nation's First Party System. Jefferson and Federalist John Adams became both personal friends and political rivals. In the 1796 U.S. presidential election between the two, Jefferson came in second, which made him Adams' vice president under the electoral laws of the time. Four years later, in the 1800 presidential election, Jefferson again challenged Adams and won the presidency. In 1804, Jefferson was reelected overwhelmingly to a second term, crushing his main opposition, the Federalists' Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina.
Jefferson's presidency assertively defended the nation's shipping and trade interests against Barbary pirates and aggressive British trade policies, promoted a western expansionist policy with the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the nation's geographic size, and reduced military forces and expenditures following successful negotiations with France. In his second presidential term, Jefferson was beset by difficulties at home, including the trial of his former vice president Aaron Burr. In 1807, Jefferson implemented the Embargo Act to defend the nation's industries from British threats to U.S. shipping, limit foreign trade, and stimulate the birth of the American manufacturing.
Jefferson is ranked among the upper tier of U.S. presidents both by scholars and in public opinion. Presidential scholars and historians have praised Jefferson's advocacy of religious freedom and tolerance, his peaceful acquisition of the Louisiana Territory from France, and his leadership in supporting the Lewis and Clark Expedition. They acknowledge his lifelong ownership of large numbers of slaves, but offer varying interpretations of his views on and relationship with slavery.
Ancestry
Thomas Jefferson’s ancestry reflects both uncertain paternal origins and a well-documented maternal lineage. Jefferson had limited knowledge of his father’s family beyond his grandfather, Thomas Jefferson, a Virginia planter. Family tradition held that the Jeffersons originated in Wales near Mount Snowdon, though this claim lacks definitive documentary evidence. Historical research suggests connection to the English Jeaffreson family of Suffolk, beginning with Samuel Jeaffreson, a landed estate owner, and continuing through his descendant Samuel Jeaffreson, who became a planter in St. Christopher’s and Antigua. This Samuel Jeaffreson had three sons, Samuel, Thomas, and Richard, and the son named Thomas is considered a plausible candidate for Thomas Jefferson’s great-grandfather. The evidence supports a migration route from England through the West Indies before the family’s establishment in Virginia in the mid-17th century.Jefferson’s maternal ancestry was extensively documented as noted in Jefferson's 1821 autobiography: "He was born February 29, 1707-8, and intermarried 1739, with Jane Randolph, of the age of 19, daughter of Isham Randolph, one of the seven sons of that name and family settled at Dungeoness in Goochland. They trace their pedigree far back in England and Scotland, to which let every one ascribe the faith and merit he chooses.". His mother, Jane Randolph, belonged to the Randolph family, one of the prominent colonial families of Virginia. The Randolphs traced their lineage to English gentry in Warwickshire with figures such as William Randolph his maternal great-grandfather, and to Scottish noble families, including Thomas Randolph, 1st Earl of Moray a celebrated soldier and nephew of Scottish king Robert the Bruce. Through this line, Jefferson was also distantly descended from Edward III of England.
Modern genetic research has identified a rare Y-chromosome haplogroup, K2, in Thomas Jefferson’s direct male line. This haplogroup is uncommon in the British Isles, which initially complicated assumptions about Jefferson’s paternal origins. However, the same lineage has been documented in a small number of men from Yorkshire and the West Midlands in England, indicating that the Jefferson paternal line was present in Britain prior to migration to colonial America. Although haplogroup K2 has deep prehistoric roots tracing back to populations in the Middle East or North Africa, its presence in England supports the conclusion that Jefferson’s paternal ancestry was British rather than a recent non-European origin.
Early life and education
Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743, at the family's Shadwell Plantation in the Colony of Virginia, then one of the Thirteen Colonies of British America. He was the third of ten children. His father, Peter Jefferson, was a planter and surveyor; his mother was Jane Randolph. Peter Jefferson moved his family to Tuckahoe Plantation in 1745 following the death of William Randolph III, the plantation's owner and Jefferson's friend, who in his will had named Peter guardian of Randolph's children. The Jeffersons returned to Shadwell before October 1753.Jefferson began his education together with the Randolph children at Tuckahoe under tutors. Thomas' father Peter, who was self-taught and regretted not having a formal education, entered Thomas into an English school at age five. In 1752, at age nine, he attended a local school run by a Presbyterian minister and also began studying the natural world, which he grew to love. He studied Latin, Greek, and French, and began learning to ride horses. Thomas read books from his father's modest library. He was taught from 1758 to 1760 by the Reverend James Maury near Gordonsville, Virginia, where he studied history, science, and the classics while boarding with Maury's family. Jefferson came to know various American Indians, including Cherokee chief Ostenaco, who often stopped at Shadwell to visit on their way to Williamsburg to trade. In Williamsburg, the young Jefferson met and came to admire Patrick Henry.
Thomas's father died in 1757, and his estate was divided between his sons, Thomas and Randolph. John Harvie Sr. became 14-year-old Thomas' guardian. Thomas inherited approximately, which included the land on which he later built Monticello in 1772.
In 1761, at the age of eighteen, Jefferson entered the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, where he studied mathematics and philosophy with William Small. Under Small's tutelage, Jefferson encountered the ideas of British empiricists, including John Locke, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton. Small also introduced Jefferson to George Wythe and Francis Fauquier. Small, Wythe, and Fauquier recognized Jefferson as a man of exceptional ability and included him in their inner circle, where he became a regular member of their Friday dinner parties. Jefferson later wrote that, while there, he "heard more common good sense, more rational & philosophical conversations than in all the rest of my life".
During his first year in college, Jefferson spent considerable time attending parties and dancing and was not very frugal with his expenditures; in his second year, regretting that he had squandered away time and money in his first year, he committed to studying fifteen hours a day. While at William & Mary, Jefferson became a member of the Flat Hat Club, the nation's oldest secret society, a small group whose members included St. George Tucker, Edmund Randolph, and James Innes.
Jefferson concluded his formal studies in April 1762. He read the law under Wythe's tutelage while working as a law clerk in his office. Jefferson was well-read in a broad variety of subjects, including law, philosophy, history, natural law, natural religion, ethics, and several areas of science, including astronomy and agriculture.
Jefferson kept two commonplace books: from about age 15 to 30, he compiled a book of sayings and quotations, published in the 20th century as Jefferson's Literary Commonplace Book. During his years of legal study under Wythe, Jefferson began recording his notes on law, history, and philosophy, and continued to do so until the end of his life; his Legal Commonplace Book was also published in the 20th century.
On July 20, 1765, Jefferson's sister Martha married his close friend and college companion Dabney Carr, which greatly pleased Jefferson. In October of that year, however, Jefferson mourned his sister Jane's unexpected death at age 25.
Jefferson treasured his books and amassed three sizable libraries in his lifetime. He began assembling his first library, which grew to 200 volumes, in his youth. Wythe was so impressed with Jefferson that he later bequeathed his entire library to him. In 1770, however, Jefferson's first library was destroyed in a fire at his Shadwell home. His second library, which replenished the first, grew to nearly 6,500 volumes by 1814. Jefferson organized his books into three broad categories of the human mind: memory, reason, and imagination. After British forces set the Library of Congress on fire in the Burning of Washington in 1814, Jefferson sold his second library to the U.S. government for $23,950, hoping to help jumpstart the Library of Congress's rebuilding. Jefferson used a portion of the proceeds to pay off some of his large debt. Jefferson soon resumed collecting his third personal library. In a letter to John Adams, Jefferson wrote, "I cannot live without books." By the time of Jefferson's death a decade later, his third and final library had grown to nearly 2,000 volumes.