Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson was the American Founding Father who drafted the Declaration of Independence, served as the third President of the United States, and spent sixty years demonstrating the gap between his ideals and his practice. Born in Virginia in 1743, he owned more than six hundred enslaved people over his lifetime while writing that all men are created equal — a contradiction he lived with and could not resolve. His intellectual range was extraordinary: he was an architect, linguist, botanist, musician, lawyer, and diplomat, and his library became the foundation of the Library of Congress. His practical wisdom endures in the maxims: never spend your money before you have it; honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom; one man with courage is a majority. He died on July 4th, 1826 — the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration.