Thomas Jefferson

Peter Jefferson died in 1757 and left his 14-year-old son 5,000 acres of Virginia Piedmont and the people who worked it. The inheritance set the terms of the life — Jefferson never earned a living outside a plantation and never stopped spending past what one produced. At the College of William and Mary he attached himself to the mathematician William Small, then read law under George Wythe and took the bar in 1767. He was a poor speaker, thin-voiced and hard to hear across a room, so he built a career on paper instead. On January 1, 1772, he married Martha Wayles Skelton, a widow of 23. They had six children and two reached adulthood. Martha died on September 6, 1782, and he withdrew from public life for months.

Eight years, 1801 to 1809. He sent a squadron against the Barbary states, doubled the country with a purchase his own constitutional theory could not justify, signed the 1807 law ending the legal importation of enslaved Africans, and finished with an embargo that emptied American ports and was repealed three days before he left office. BriefHistory has that administration and what it did to the republic. The rest of this page is the part of Jefferson the office does not explain.

He wrote that all men are created equal. He enslaved more than 600 people over the course of his life. At Monticello he ran a nail factory worked by boys aged 10 to 16, tracked each child's daily output, and wrote that a woman who brings a child every two years is more profitable than the best man on the farm. Sally Hemings was the half-sister of his dead wife. She was about 16 when she came back with him from Paris, where she had been legally free. The Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which owns Monticello, concluded in 2000 that he fathered her children and in 2018 called the question settled. He freed two people in his lifetime and five in his will, all of them Hemingses. She was not among them.

The debts came due at once. Roughly 100,000 dollars in arrears, the executors auctioned 130 people over five days in 1827, and within three years the families who had lived on that mountain for generations were scattered across Virginia and Ohio. His heirs sold the house in 1831. The gravestone he designed names three things — the Declaration, the Virginia statute for religious freedom, and the university — and leaves out the presidency entirely. The memorial on the Tidal Basin opened in 1943 with no statue inside it, the bronze arriving four years later. Scholars still rank him among the five best presidents. In 2018 Monticello opened a room in the South Wing telling Sally Hemings's story.

Thomas Jefferson's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Declaration of Independence other
  Drafted at 33 and edited hard by Congress 1776
• Notes on the State of Virginia book
  His only full-length book, and the plainest record of his views on race 1785
• Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom law
  Written in 1777 and enacted nine years later 1786
• Monticello building
  Begun in 1768 and rebuilt for four decades 1809
• University of Virginia building
  He drew the buildings, set the curriculum, and served as first rector 1819
• The Jefferson Bible book
  The Gospels cut apart with a razor and the miracles removed 1820

• 1757 aged ~14 His father dies and leaves him 5,000 acres and the people on them Jefferson was 14.
• January 1, 1772 aged 28 Marries Martha Wayles Skelton, a widow of 23
• September 6, 1782 aged 39 Martha dies at 33 after the birth of their sixth child Two of the six children reached adulthood.
• 1787 aged ~44 Sally Hemings arrives in Paris, where she is legally free She returned to Virginia with him in 1789.
• March 4, 1801 aged 57 Takes the oath as the third president
• April 30, 1803 aged 60 American envoys sign the Louisiana Purchase treaty in Paris
• March 2, 1807 aged 63 Signs the act banning the importation of enslaved Africans It took effect on January 1, 1808.
• January 25, 1819 aged 75 Virginia charters the University of Virginia
• July 4, 1826 aged 83 Dies at Monticello at 12:50 in the afternoon, aged 83

• Sally Hemings 1773–1835
  Enslaved woman at Monticello who bore children by Thomas Jefferson and negotiated their freedom in France. fathered children with
• Meriwether Lewis 1774–1809
  Co-leader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which mapped the American West to the Pacific Ocean. appointed
• Alexander Hamilton 1755–1804
  Founding Father who established the nation's financial system and co-authored the Federalist Papers. rival
• Benjamin Banneker 1731–1806
  Free Black astronomer and almanac author who helped survey the federal district and challenged Jefferson on race. corresponded with
• John Marshall 1755–1835
  Chief justice who established judicial review and strengthened the Supreme Court and federal government. opposed
• Sally Hemings 1773–1835
  Enslaved woman at Monticello who bore children by Thomas Jefferson and negotiated their freedom in France. enslaved, and fathered children with