Thomas Jefferson  (1743–1826) LINKS A Day in the Life of Thomas Jefferson http://www.monticello.org/jefferson/index.html The Monticello Organization’s Thomas Jefferson page presents a treasure trove of material about Jefferson. Included are “A Day in the Life of Jefferson;” a biography; selections from his letters and notable quotations; and materials relating both to his private life and to his multifaceted activities as a public figure. Thomas Jefferson Papers: Homepage http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/mtjhtml/mtjhome.html The Library of Congress’s site on Thomas Jefferson has an extensive collection of works on and about Jefferson, links to other sites, a timeline of his life, and much more Thomas Jefferson http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/mtjhtml/mtjhome.html Visit the White House’s Thomas Jefferson site for a detailed biography of Jefferson’s life. Thomas Jefferson Online http://www.pbs.org/jefferson/ The Public Broadcasting Society’s Thomas Jefferson page displays videos, photographs, classroom activities, and archives on Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson on Politics & Government: Front Page http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/ Over 2,700 excerpts from Jefferson's writings are available here, arranged by topic. BIOGRAPHY The third president of the United States (1801–1809), Jefferson was born in Virginia and educated privately until he was seventeen, when he was sent to William and Mary College. After graduation, he studied law, and in 1769 he was elected to the Virginia colonial legislature, the House of Burgesses. He served as a member of the Continental Congress (1775–1776), governor of Virginia (1779–1781), American minister to France (1784–1789), secretary of state (1790–1793), and vice president (1797–1801). Jefferson’s influence on the creation and history of the United States of America has been profound and enduring. He was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence. Fearful that the new country might move in the direction of a powerful centralized form of government, he opposed the adoption of the new Constitution until the Bill of Rights was added. As president, he supported the Louisiana Purchase (1803), which doubled the size of the United States. One of the paradoxes of this great champion of individualism and democratic rights is that he was a slaveowner himself who fathered at least one child by his black slave mistress Sally Hemings. While Jefferson did not write books in the usual sense, his political writings and his extraordinary letters rank among the great heritages of the nation’s founding fathers. In 1809, Jefferson retired to Monticello, the home he had designed himself, and devoted the rest of his years principally to the University of Virginia (1819), whose buildings he also designed and whose first rector he became. Jefferson’s lifelong commitment to the principle that an enlightened people could and should govern themselves through representative institutions is embodied in the inscription he ordered for his tombstone: “Author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia.” In April 1962, at a White House dinner honoring Nobel Prize winners of the Western Hemisphere, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy observed: “I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”