Thomas Jefferson – Today’s birthday 268 President Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States.
Thomas Jefferson Biography: (via whitehouse.gov)
In the heat of party conflict in 1800, Thomas Jefferson wrote in a private letter, “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the human spirit.”
This powerful advocate of liberty was 1743 in Albemarle County, Virginia, inheriting from his father, a farmer and surveyor, some 5,000 hectares of land, and his mother was born, Randolph, high social status. He studied at the College of William and Mary, then read law. In 1772 he married Martha Wayles Skelton, a widow, and took them to their home mountain live in part built Monticello.
Freckles, strawberry blonde, pretty large and unwieldy, Jefferson was eloquent as a correspondent, but he was no orator. At the Virginia House of Burgesses and the Continental Congress, which contributed his pen rather than his voice to the patriotic cause. As the “silent member” of Congress, Jefferson, at 33, drafted the Declaration of Independence. In the following years he worked for his words a reality in Virginia. In particular, he wrote a bill establishing religious freedom, issued in 1786.
Jefferson Benjamin Franklin as minister to France was in 1785. His sympathy for the French Revolution led him into conflict with Alexander Hamilton when Jefferson was Secretary to the President Washington. He joined in 1793.
acute political conflict developed, and two different parts, the Federalists and Republicans, Democrats began to form. Jefferson gradually taking the lead of the Republicans who were sympathetic to the revolutionary cause in France. Attacking Federalist policies, he opposed a strong central government and the rights of the States.
As a reluctant candidate for the presidency in 1796, Jefferson within three votes of election. Thanks to a loophole in the Constitution, was Vice-President, although an opponent of President Adams. In 1800 the defect caused a more serious problem. appoint Republican voters in an attempt to a chairman and a vice-president of his own party, threw a relationship between Jefferson and Aaron Burr. The House of Representatives the same. Hamilton, Jefferson and Burr dislike both, but requested Jefferson choice.
When Jefferson became president, the crisis had passed in France. Reduced costs of Army and Navy to reduce the budget to eliminate the tax on whiskey so unpopular in the West, however, reduced the national debt by a third party. He also sent a naval squadron against the Barbary pirates who were harassing American commerce in the Mediterranean to fight. Moreover, although the Constitution does not acquire new land, Jefferson suppressed his concerns about constitutionality, if it the opportunity had been offered Louisiana Territory from Napoleon in 1803.
During Jefferson’s second term he was more interested in the nation against any involvement in the Napoleonic wars, when England and France, the rights of neutral American dealer. Jefferson’s attempted solution, an embargo on U.S. ships, has a malfunction and was unpopular.
Jefferson retired to Monticello to reflect on such projects as his grand design of the University of Virginia. A French nobleman observed that he had given his house and his heart, “on a hill from which you can view the universe.”
He died 4th Juli 1826th
