Thomas Jefferson was born on 13 April 1743 at Shadwell plantation in Virginia's Piedmont, inheriting land and slaves while studying law under George Wythe and reading Locke, Newton, and classical republicans. He entered the Virginia House of Burgesses as imperial tensions rose, authored A Summary View of the Rights of British America, and in 1776 drafted the Declaration of Independence's ringing assertion that all men are created equal—a phrase whose universalism would be invoked by abolitionists, suffragists, and civil rights movements even as Jefferson himself owned hundreds of enslaved people.

As governor of Virginia during the Revolutionary War, Jefferson fled British raids; afterward he wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom and advocated education reform. Service as minister to France exposed him to salon culture and architectural fashions he later imported to Monticello and the University of Virginia. As George Washington's secretary of state he clashed with Alexander Hamilton over national bank and foreign alignment, founding Democratic-Republican opposition to Federalist centralization. Elected president in 1800 after a contentious electoral dispute, he oversaw the Louisiana Purchase doubling national territory, sent Lewis and Clark to explore the West, and reduced federal taxes while maintaining slavery's expansion economically.

Jefferson retired to Monticello in 1809, corresponded voluminously with John Adams and other founders, and founded the University of Virginia with secular curriculum and neoclassical campus he designed. He died on 4 July 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration, hours before Adams. DNA and documentary evidence confirmed he fathered children with Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman at Monticello, forcing modern reckoning with his libertarian rhetoric and personal complicity in bondage. Jefferson's library rebuilt the Library of Congress after British burning in 1814; his Notes on the State of Virginia mixed scientific observation with racist speculation. He remains simultaneously symbol of democratic aspiration and embodiment of the republic's original contradiction between freedom and slavery.

1. 1743

   Born at Shadwell

   Born into Virginia planter society on the eve of empire and Enlightenment.

2. 1776

   Declaration Authored

   Wrote the Declaration of Independence adopted by the Continental Congress.

3. 1801

   First Term as President

   Inaugurated after the contentious election of 1800.

4. 1803

   Louisiana Purchase

   Negotiated purchase of French Louisiana, vastly expanding the nation.

5. 1826

   Death on July Fourth

   Died at Monticello on the Declaration's fiftieth anniversary.