BIOGRAPHY
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In the thick of party conflict in 1800, Thomas
Jefferson wrote in a private letter, "I have sworn upon the altar of
God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of
man."
This powerful advocate of liberty was born in 1743 in
Albemarle County, Virginia, inheriting from his father, a planter
and surveyor, some 5,000 acres of land, and from his mother, a
Randolph, high social standing. He studied at the College of William
and Mary, then read law. In 1772 he married Martha Wayles Skelton, a
widow, and took her to live in his partly constructed mountaintop
home, Monticello.
Freckled and sandy-haired, rather tall and awkward,
Jefferson was eloquent as a correspondent, but he was no public
speaker. In the Virginia House of Burgesses and the Continental
Congress, he contributed his pen rather than his voice to the
patriot cause. As the "silent member" of the Congress, Jefferson, at
33, drafted the Declaration of Independence. In years following he
labored to make its words a reality in Virginia. Most notably, he
wrote a bill establishing religious freedom, enacted in 1786
Jefferson succeeded Benjamin Franklin as minister to
France in 1785. His sympathy for the French Revolution led him into
conflict with Alexander Hamilton when Jefferson was Secretary of
State in President Washington's Cabinet. He resigned in 1793.
Sharp political conflict developed, and two separate
parties, the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans, began to
form. Jefferson gradually assumed leadership of the Republicans, who
sympathized with the revolutionary cause in France. Attacking
Federalist policies, he opposed a strong centralized Government and
championed the rights of states.
As a reluctant candidate for President in 1796,
Jefferson came within three votes of election. Through a flaw in the
Constitution, he became Vice President, although an opponent of
President Adams. In 1800 the defect caused a more serious problem.
Republican electors, attempting to name both a President and a Vice
President from their own party, cast a tie vote between Jefferson
and Aaron Burr. The House of Representatives settled the tie.
Hamilton, disliking both Jefferson and Burr, nevertheless urged
Jefferson's election.
When Jefferson assumed the Presidency, the crisis in
France had passed. He slashed Army and Navy expenditures, cut the
budget, eliminated the tax on whiskey so unpopular in the West, yet
reduced the national debt by a third. He also sent a naval squadron
to fight the Barbary pirates, who were harassing American commerce
in the Mediterranean. Further, although the Constitution made no
provision for the acquisition of new land, Jefferson suppressed his
qualms over constitutionality when he had the opportunity to acquire
the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon in 1803.
During Jefferson's second term, he was increasingly
preoccupied with keeping the Nation from involvement in the
Napoleonic wars, though both England and France interfered with the
neutral rights of American merchantmen. Jefferson's attempted
solution, an embargo upon American shipping, worked badly and was
unpopular.
Jefferson retired to Monticello to ponder such
projects as his grand designs for the University of Virginia. A
French nobleman observed that he had placed his house and his mind
"on an elevated situation, from which he might contemplate the
universe."
He died on July 4, 1826.
Biography from www.whitehouse.gov
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