Thomas Jefferson began his education at William and Mary College in 1760. Later as a law student, he heard Patrick Henry present his resolves against the Stamp Act, an open display of taxation without representation where it levied taxes of colonial documents and newspapers, which largely shaped Jefferson’s mind that all men should be free.  

More than any other American, Thomas Jefferson, was for the freedom of the individual, being against any kind of special privilege and a champion of the interests of the common people. No other American ever did more to make his country free and keep it free, serving in public life for forty years.  As Jefferson said, he was drawn into public affairs of his country by emergencies which threatened his country with slavery, and ended by leaving it free.

Declaration of Independence

Jefferson’s first great struggle of his career of public service was with the mother country as she threatened the liberties of free men.  In 1776 at the age of thirty-three, he penned the Declaration of Independence, a document which was far more than the assertion of the rights of these states to be self-governing; it was also a charter of the liberties of Americans and all other men as individuals.  It was a manifesto of human rights against any and every sort of tyranny.

Religious Freedom

Next, after the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson authored the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, which was adopted several years later and has been regarded ever since as one of the noblest expressions of the freedom of the human spirit. 

Jefferson carried on the struggles of intolerance throughout his life.  No one saying of his reveals the man than the one that is engraved on the walls of the memorial to him in Washington, “I have sworn on the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

Father of Higher Education

The third service that Thomas Jefferson is thought most memorable was the founding, in his old age, of the University of Virginia.  Jefferson stands in our national history as the most eminent early apostle of education for everyone according to his abilities, regarding universal education a necessary corollary of political self-government, stating, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be.

Jefferson's Presidency 

Jefferson’s greatest services in his own eyes were not political success, including the Presidency, but freedom and enlightenment, believing the office sought the man, not the man the office.  He was no orator and was unhappy in a crowd, yet he was to succeed Benjamin Franklin as diplomat to France and appointed by President George Washington as the first Secretary of State in a time when foreign affairs were extremely important to this nation, even as they are today.

Freedom and happiness were the main concerns of Thomas Jefferson for the people and was completely against big government, except when it came to foreign affairs, being regarded as the prophet of democracy.  His financial views were conservative, not radical, and feared public debt and practiced economy.  He was no advocate of mob rule, but insisted on educated electorate and expected the people to choose trained leaders.  He stands out as a champion of majority rule against the rule of the privileged few, having faith in the character and good sense of ordinary citizens.

Thomas Jefferson saw his election to the Presidency as a victory for liberty over political despotism. Freedom of speech and press had long been endangered by the Alien and Sedition Acts and the government did seem to be trying to enforce uniformity of political opinion in the time of hysteria over foreign danger.

Jefferson restored calm and common sense to the public counsels, and, in a time when repression was rule in European countries, gave the United States a liberal government in which men might differ in opinion without being stigmatized as unpatriotic.  Jefferson’s own political philosophy was a compound of faith in individual human beings and distrust of governmental power as liable to abuse. 

He was the leader of his party and was against special favor and special interest groups.  He enormously increased opportunities for America by the Louisiana Purchase, which practically doubled the size of the country.  Jefferson firmly believed that, “The earth belongs always to the living generation” and “Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and inalienable rights of man.”