Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson was born in 1743 into Virginia’s planter aristocracy and became a lawyer, political thinker, and revolutionary leader. He wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1776, served as governor of Virginia during the Revolutionary War, represented the United States in France, and became Washington’s first secretary of state. After losing the presidency in 1796 and serving as vice president under John Adams, he won the election of 1800, a peaceful transfer of power between rival parties.

Jefferson’s first term was defined by the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, which doubled the size of the United States and opened vast territory for settlement, expansion, and future conflict over slavery and Indigenous sovereignty. He authorized the Lewis and Clark Expedition to explore the new territory and strengthened the vision of the United States as an agrarian republic stretching across the continent.

His second term was more difficult. Britain and France interfered with American shipping during the Napoleonic Wars, and Jefferson responded with the Embargo Act of 1807, which aimed to pressure Europe economically but instead damaged American merchants, especially in New England. The policy became deeply unpopular and was repealed shortly before he left office.

Jefferson retired to Monticello and later founded the University of Virginia, one of his proudest achievements. He died on July 4, 1826 — the same day as John Adams and exactly fifty years after the Declaration of Independence — a remarkable coincidence that seemed to mark his life as inseparable from America's founding story.