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Thomas Jefferson
1743-1826
Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence. He wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom and served the nation he helped create as minister to France, secretary of state, vice-president, and president of the United States.
He founded the University of Virginia and contributed to the fields of architecture, horticulture, ethnography, paleontology, archaeology, and astronomy. He believed human freedom was the surest path to human progress and consistently opposed slavery, calling it a "moral depravity." Yet, over the course of his life, Jefferson owned 600 people at Monticello and his other Virginia plantations. Their names appear on the wall behind the statue. Jefferson's way of life depended on the labor of people he held in slavery. |