A Summary Of Thomas Jefferson's Story

Thomas Jefferson is a very prominent, important person in American history who is still well-known in the present day. The interesting story that is his life includes switching from owning a law business to becoming a prominent figure in the government, and eventually becoming the third president of the United States. The narrative of his life has many plot twists in it, as he starts as a slave-owner, and transitions to having one of his own slaves as his personal concubine. The beginning of the Jeffersons tale starts on April 13, 1743 in Shadwell, Virginia where he is born to a loving family as the fifth sibling. He would remain in Shawell with his mother, Jane Jefferson, until he was twenty seven years old. Thomas Jefferson would undergo

Livingston, and John Adams, who would draft a declaration for the people. Jefferson immediately started working on the rough draft until he completed it on June 28, when he submitted it to the committee. The committee then proceeded to make eighty-six changes to it, shortening the overall length by one fourth. His draft was later described, “He had defined an ideal in the declaration, using words to transform principle into policy, and he had lived with the reality of managing both a war and a fledgling government” (Meacham, 2012, p. 114). After the edits were made to Jefferson’s draft, The Declaration of Independence was officially adopted on July 4, 1776 and then signed on August 2, 1776 by 56 members of the Second Continental Congress. The next year, in 1777, Thomas Jefferson authored the Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, which passed in 1786, and he considered his second greatest accomplishment in his life. This bill is described as “the forerunner of the first amendment protections for religious freedom” (Cogapp, 1997), and its purpose was to proclaim freedom of religion and speech, setting the precedent for the Constitution. His second daughter, Mary, was born on August 1, 1778, dying soon after. However, with Jefferson’s growing popularity and the continuation of the Revolutionary War, he was elected by the

ships from sailing into foreign ports for trading. While this idea was intended to cause America to become self-dependent, it actually caused them to lose a lot of money, seeing how people began going into debt and trade products started rotting. Profits from exports dropped from $108 million to $22 million, and Americans as well as people from other countries called for the removal of the Embargo Act. With all of the added stress from the Embargo Act, Jefferson began getting stress headaches, causing him to move to Monticello on July 23, 1808, leaving the President’s house vacant. Once Jefferson’s term was officially over in 1808, one of his friends in Congress, Wilson Nicholas, introduced a bill for ending the embargo on January 14, 1809, that quickly was accepted. Thomas Jefferson told how he was surprised that the bill passed because he thought that Congress wanted to continue implementing the Embargo Acts. After his years as president, he quickly deteriorated healthwise at his home