Thomas Jefferson

I believe Thomas Jefferson did the most to define “America” as we know it. His lifelong passion was to “liberate the human mind from tyranny, whether imposed by the state, the church or our own ignorance.” (pg 339) He went to law school, and then was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses where he began his career in the legislature. He was a delegate to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia (1776). He wrote the original draft of the Declaration of Independence. After he left the congress, he entered the Virginia House of Delegates and in 1779 was elected Governor. In 1784, Jefferson was appointed Minister of France and served on the commission that signed the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War. In 1790, he was appointed the first Secretary of State under the new Constitution. In 1800, he was elected president (the first to be inaugurated in Washington DC). The Library of Congress contains 55,000 of Thomas Jefferson’s manuscripts and letters. He “distrusted rulers and feared the rise of an industrial proletariat, but more than any of his eminent contemporaries, he trusted the common man....” (pg 340)

Thomas Jefferson served the citizens of this country in a political sense for most of his adult life. His writings in the Declaration of Independence showed that he was thinking of the colonists and what they should be entitled to as he was writing it. He wanted it stated that all men are created equal and that they had rights such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He also wanted to ensure that laws that were made could be changed and that the united colonies ought to be free and independent states and that there should be no allegiance to the British Crown. He, in essence, wrote the words that made our country the free and independent nation that it is today.