Google Scholar Sweet Search Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson (April 13 [O.S. April 2] 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American Founding Father, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776) and the third President of the United States (1801–1809). He was a spokesman for democracy, embraced the principles of republicanism and the rights of man with worldwide influence. At the beginning of the American Revolution, he served in the Continental Congress, representing Virginia and then served as a wartime Governor of Virginia (1779–1781). Jefferson was the first United States Secretary of State (1790–1793) serving under President George Washington. Elected president in what Jefferson called the Revolution of 1800, he oversaw the purchase of the vast Louisiana Territory from France (1803), and sent the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–1806) to explore the new west. After Martha Jefferson, his wife of eleven years, died in 1782, Jefferson kept his promise to her that he would never remarry. Early life and career Education
The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare: Ideas ... - Edward Hagerman Thomas Jefferson: Early Life 1743-1766 Thomas Jefferson was born April 13, 1743 to Peter and Jane Randolph Jefferson on their estate at Shadwell, in what is today Albermarle County, Virginia, along the banks of the Rivanna River. It was a significant location for an aristocratic youth in the sense that it lay within the sparsely populated Piedmont Region, between the gentrified Tidewater coastline and the Blue Ridge Mountains of the frontier. In keeping with his borderland origins, Jefferson would throughout his long life occupy a political and psychological space that balanced the responsibilities of establishment privilege with the lures of open, unexplored territory. Peter Jefferson, a self-educated jack of all trades, moved from the Tidewater to the sparsely populated Piedmont in his youth, where he made a name for himself as a cartographer and surveyor. Jane Randolph Jefferson came from a leading Tidewater family, and had a noble bloodline ranging back to various locations in England and Scotland.
Thomas Jefferson's Views on Women by Thomas O. Jewett Thomas Jefferson stands as an infallible oracle to today's society. Both ends of the political spectrum quote him as evidence for their causes. As Joseph Ellis so eloquently stated in his book the American Sphinx, "Lifting Jefferson out of that context and bringing him into the present is like trying to plant cut flowers." Jefferson lived, chronologically, midway between the Age of Reason with its trust in science, and the Romantic Era with its uninhibited emotionalism. As a young man, Jefferson rejected the Stoic ideal of disdain for human passion, desire, and enjoyment of things usually accounted good in this world...Jefferson found himself drawn to the Epicurean ethic, which, while admitting the reality and the necessity of the passions, sought to control them by the exercise of reason. Thomas Jefferson Jefferson was especially concerned lest reason lose control, especially when it came to sexual passion. He came to prize domestic felicity above any other.
Thomas Jefferson - Autobiography With the Declaration of Independence January 6, 1821 At the age of 77, I begin to make some memoranda and state some recollections of dates & facts concerning myself, for my own more ready reference & for the information of my family. The tradition in my father's family was that their ancestor came to this country from Wales, and from near the mountain of Snowdon, the highest in Gr. My father's education had been quite neglected; but being of a strong mind, sound judgment and eager after information, he read much and improved himself insomuch that he was chosen with Joshua Fry professor of Mathem. in W. & M. college to continue the boundary line between Virginia & N. In 1769, I became a member of the legislature by the choice of the county in which I live, & continued in that until it was closed by the revolution. On the 1st of January, 1772 I was married to Martha Skelton widow of Bathurst Skelton, & daughter of John Wayles, then 23. years old. Mr. On the 22d of July Dr.
Thomas Jefferson's Views Concerning Native Americans By Tom Jewett Thomas Jefferson, our icon of freedom and personal liberty set the national policy toward Native Americans that would last for over one hundred years. He began the trail of tears which would destroy cultures and result in the reservation system. Always a man of dichotomies, Jefferson admired and lauded the American Indian. As a man of the Romantic Era he saw them as unspoiled; the "noble savage". Jefferson's attitude toward the Indian population of the United States always seemed as profoundly paradoxical as his attitude toward slavery... Jefferson had known and been interested in Native Americans all of his life. Peter Jefferson's house was a popular way station for the friendly Cherokees whose embassies were bound for Williamsburg. Jefferson further expounded on the Indians' ability to speak in his Notes on the State of Virginia: Referencing and comparing Native Americans to classical cultures was a theme which runs throughout Jefferson's musings on Indians. Bibliography