Thomas Jefferson: A Brief Biography of the 3rd U.S. President

Thomas Jefferson’s Education

After graduating from the College of William and Mary in 1762, Thomas Jefferson studied law under Virginia attorney George Wythe, before opening his own practice in 1767. Well respected from an early age, from 1769 to 1775, Jefferson became a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, later renamed the Virginia House of Delegates after independence from Great Britain.

Martha Jefferson

Inheriting land near Charlottesville Virginia, Jefferson’s keen interest in architecture and gardening lead to the construction of his beloved Monticello or “little mountain” in the Italian, where he and his young wife Martha gave birth to six children before Martha’s untimely death at the tender age of 33.

While only two of their children would survive into adulthood, Jefferson was so devastated by the loss of his beloved wife that he would never marry again.

As war broke out with Great Britain, in 1775, Jefferson was selected as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress, where he penned the first draft of the Declaration of Independence at 33 years of age, resigning the following year when he was re-elected to the Virginia House of Delegates.

Jefferson vs Hamilton

From 1779 to 1781, Jefferson served as governor of Virginia before landing his second stint in Congress from 1783 to 1784. A year later, Jefferson succeeded Benjamin Franklin as U.S. minister to France, and upon his return to the states in 1789, President George Washington appointed him as the nation’s first Secretary of State, where he frequently bucked heads with Secretary of the Treasury and staunch, big-government Federalist, Alexander Hamilton, over foreign affairs, interpretations of the Constitution and the size and authority of the federal government.

Hamilton’s insistence on a strong federal government would lead Jefferson to co-found the Democratic-Republican Party, which was an ideological precursor of today’s Republican Party.

From Vice President to President

In the presidential election of 1796, Jefferson defeated John Adams for the office of vice president, later running a second time against Adams for president during the election of 1800, which proved to be a bitter fight between the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans, just a few short years after both political sides had been so united in their revolutionary calls for independence. Jefferson was elected president.

The crowning achievement of Jefferson’s first term was his successful orchestration of the Louisiana Purchase from France, followed by Lewis and Clark’s expedition into the newly-purchased lands—an 8,000-mile journey which took them to the Pacific Ocean and back.

Handily re-elected in 1804, Jefferson’s second term focus was to steer the United States safely free from involvement in the Napoleonic Wars of 1803 to 1815, which at one point or another dragged much of Europe into the conflict.

After turning down a third term as president, Jefferson returned home to his beloved Monticello, where he continued to pursue his interests in architecture, music, reading and gardening, at the same time helping to found the University of Virginia, which opened its doors for its first student body in 1825.

Thomas Jefferson’s Death

After his death on July 4th, 1826—50 years to the day after he signed the Declaration of Independence—his surviving estate was heavily mired in debt due to a lifetime of extravagant spending, which in turn required that his slaves to be sold at auction alongside his land holdings, art and furnishings, forever cementing Thomas Jefferson into the early history of a newly-formed nation.