Boston: I; Appendix I, I Bear and Lucia Stanton, eds. Princeton: Princeton University Press, I: TJ to Benjamin Latrobe, 10 Oct. PTJ Letter from Abraham Lincoln to Henry L. Pierce, et al. Nicolay and John Hay, eds. Notes on the State of Virginia. Library of America, , Buy Tickets. Home Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson, 2 July He spent much of his life laying the groundwork to insure that the great experiment would continue. Abraham Lincoln made just this point when he declared: All honor to Jefferson — to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, and so to embalm it there, that to-day and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression.
Retirement During the last seventeen years of his life, Jefferson generally remained at Monticello, welcoming the many visitors who came to call upon the Sage.
Jefferson's personal life, interests, and habits. The people in Jefferson's life. Acknowledged as a great wine expert of early America, he sought to promote wine as an alternative to whiskey and cider. Jefferson the agriculturalist. He believed in the United States as an agrarian society, in part, because it would make the nation independent from other nations. Jefferson practiced what he taught: He was one of the first American farmers to employ crop rotation and redesigned the plow to make it more efficient.
Jefferson, the paleontologist. He was also obsessed with fossils and was involved in a great debate about the mammoth that became a political cause. Jefferson raised the profile of paleontology as president, and he has a mammoth named after him. Jefferson, the astronomer. Although Jefferson easily won re-election in , his second term in office proved much more difficult and less productive than his first. He largely failed in his efforts to impeach the many Federalist judges swept into government by the Judiciary Act of However, the greatest challenges of Jefferson's second term were posed by the war between Napoleonic France and Great Britain.
Both Britain and France attempted to prevent American commerce with the other power by harassing American shipping, and Britain in particular sought to impress American sailors into the British Navy. In response, Jefferson passed the Embargo Act of , suspending all trade with Europe.
The embargo also led to the War of with Great Britain after Jefferson left office. On March 4, , after watching the inauguration of his close friend and successor James Madison , Jefferson returned to Virginia to live out the rest of his days as "The Sage of Monticello. Jefferson's primary pastime was endlessly rebuilding, remodeling and improving his home and estate, at considerable expense. A Frenchman, Marquis de Chastellux, quipped, "it may be said that Mr. Jefferson is the first American who has consulted the Fine Arts to know how he should shelter himself from the weather.
Jefferson also dedicated his later years to organizing the University of Virginia , the nation's first secular university. He personally designed the campus, envisioned as an "academical village," and hand-selected renowned European scholars to serve as its professors. The University of Virginia opened its doors on March 7, , one of the proudest days of Jefferson's life. Jefferson also kept up an outpouring of correspondence at the end of his life.
In particular, he rekindled a lively correspondence on politics, philosophy and literature with John Adams that stands out among the most extraordinary exchanges of letters in history.
Nevertheless, Jefferson's retirement was marred by financial woes. To pay off the substantial debts he incurred over decades of living beyond his means, Jefferson resorted to selling his cherished personal library to the national government to serve as the foundation of the Library of Congress.
Jefferson died on July 4, — the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence — only a few hours before John Adams passed away in Massachusetts. In the moments before he passed, Adams spoke his last words, eternally true if not in the literal sense in which he meant them, "Thomas Jefferson survives.
As the author of the Declaration of Independence, the foundational text of American democracy and one of the most important documents in world history, Jefferson will be forever revered as one of the great American Founding Fathers.
However, Jefferson was also a man of many contradictions. Jefferson was the spokesman of liberty and a racist enslaved people owner, a champion of the common people and a man with luxurious and aristocratic tastes, a believer in limited government and a president who expanded governmental authority beyond the wildest visions of his predecessors, a quiet man who abhorred politics and arguably the most dominant political figure of his generation.
The tensions between Jefferson's principles and practices make him all the more apt a symbol for the nation he helped create, a nation whose shining ideals have always been complicated by a complex history. Jefferson is buried in the family cemetery at his beloved Monticello, in a grave marked by a plain gray tombstone. The brief inscription it bears, written by Jefferson himself, is as noteworthy for what it excludes as what it includes. The inscription suggests Jefferson's humility as well as his belief that his greatest gifts to posterity came in the realm of ideas rather than the realm of politics: "Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, and father of the University Of Virginia.
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John Adams was a Founding Father, the first vice president of the United States and the second president. His son, John Quincy Adams, was the nation's sixth president. The fourth U. Jefferson Davis was a 19th century U. Alexander Hamilton was a Founding Father, a Constitutional Convention delegate, author of the Federalist papers and the first secretary of the U.
Benjamin Franklin is best known as one of the Founding Fathers who never served as president but was a respected inventor, publisher, scientist and diplomat. Andrew Jackson was the seventh president of the United States. Related Awareness Events. Geography Awareness Week November 14 - November American Education Week November 14 - November
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