Thomas Jefferson Research Paper

To be completely honest with you I chose Thomas Jefferson because he was really popular and I figured I would find a lot of information on him through the Interwebs I hope to learn almost everything about Thomas Jefferson through writing this essay and doing an insane amount of research. Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743 in Virginia he was the eighth child born of 10 siblings. By the time he was 9 he was a very avid learner of Greek, French and Latin. His mother was Jane Randolph and his father died in 1757. Jefferson became the governor of Virginia in 1779 and remained there until 1781. It was during this time that the capital of state was transferred from Williamsburg to Richmond in

Though he did not campaign for his party, He became the President of the United States on February 17, 1801. Jefferson stood with better people, grounding his position on a wide knowledge of English history and political background. His most notable early contribution was his powerful pamphlet A summary view of rights in British America (1774), originally written for presentation to the Virginia convention that year. In this he emphasized natural rights, including emigration and denied authority over the colonies, recognizing no tie with the the US except the king. After his father died when Jefferson was a teen, the future president inherited the Shadwell property. In 1768, Jefferson began clearing a mountaintop on the land, in preparation for the brick mansion he would construct there called Monticello. Jefferson, who had an insane interest in architecture and gardening, designed the home and its elaborate gardens himself. Over the course of his life, he remodeled and expanded Monticello and filled it with art, fine furnishings and interesting gadgets and awesome details. He kept records of everything that happened at the 5,000-acre plantation, including daily weather reports, a gardening journal and notes about his slaves and animals. On January 1, 1772, Jefferson married Martha Wales Skelton

In this office, he advocated or publicly recommend or support, for each state to pay its own portion of the Revolutionary War debt and supported France in its war with Britain, though he believed the United States should maintain neutral in the conflict.In 1803 as President of the United States, Jefferson purchased more than 800,000 square miles of Louisiana Territory from France for about $15 million, effectively doubling the size of the United States this was an important contribution of Thomas Jefferson. Having just greatly increased the size of the United States, Jefferson wanted to explore both the new part of the country and the rest of the continent. He appointed as his secretary Meriwether Lewis, who then enlisted William Clark. They left on their journey in 1804 with the goals of learning more about the landscape and the Native American tribes, and to finding a water passage between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean. This is something new I learned and didn’t think this was something Thomas Jefferson had anything to do with. Jefferson thought universities should educate leaders rather than just preachers and professors. He founded the University of Virginia as the United States first “nonsectarian university.”James H. Billington, the current Librarian of Congress, wrote: “If ever a library had a single founder, Thomas Jefferson is the founder