IRWIN is a collective of Slovenian artists, primarily painters, and an original founding member of Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK).

History

In 1983, the artists Dušan Mandič, Miran Mohar, Andrej Savski, Roman Uranjek, and Borut Vogelnik, coming from the punk and graffiti scene in Ljubljana, formed an artistic group and called it Rrose Irwin Sélavy. This name had a reference to Marcel Duchamp, who used “Rrose Sélavy” (like eros c’est la vie) as one of his feminine pseudonyms. The group would soon shorten the name to R Irwin S.

In 1984, the group co-founded a larger collective known as Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK). Acting as the fine arts wing of the group, they joined the musical group Laibach, and the Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater group. Soon after the formation of the larger collective, R Irwin S changed its name to simply Irwin.

Characteristics

Irwin’s work is defined largely by three main principles. The first is the idea of building one’s own artistic position out of one’s particular circumstances; by being particular, art can become truly universal. The second is working in a group, a collective, or even an organization, shifting the emphasis away from the individual personality of the artist. The third is the fundamental NSK working procedure sometimes called the retro-principle. The latter principle gives rise to the concept known as “retroavantgardism” (or, later “retrogardism”). As the name implies, retroavantgardism is somewhat paradoxical because it calls for simultaneously looking backward (“retro”) and forward (“avant-garde”). This position is evident in the paradoxical title of an official statement of the group in 1987, “The Future is the seed of the past.” In essence, retroavantgardism consists in the recycled use of past symbols, images and philosophical ideas, particularly those that have been used by governments or other institutions to accumulate and hold power.

Irwin is also very interested in the idea of the complexity of the image. For them, an image is never neutral, nor does it ever appear in a neutral space. Thus their work can be tied to the larger international inquiry known as Institutional Critique. Directly drawing upon images that have strong political and/or artistic connotations, including fascist, Soviet, religious, and Suprematist images, Irwin’s art is complex and has a traumatic and provocative effect. Reflecting their belief that there is no neutral space, Irwin’s work becomes increasingly concerned with location, both in performance pieces, but also in exhibitions. The self-curation of their shows becomes as much a part of the work, as the pieces themselves.

Artistic Media

Paintings

Irwin’s “paintings” incorporate a number of media including paint, tar, books, dishes, Lego, silkscreens and many others. The works are not signed by the group, in a traditional sense, but are presented to the collective for approval. The work will then be stamped with the groups monogram—often on a metal plate.

Performance Pieces

Although primarily painters, they have engaged in many collaborative works with other NSK art collectives, ranging from theater to music video. In 1992, in cooperation with Michael Benson, they created the performance Black Square on Red Square, in which a square of black cloth, 22 meters to a side, was unfurled on Moscow's Red Square, in homage to Kazimir Malevich and suprematism. Others of their more notable activities have included the planning of the NSK Embassies and Consulates in Moscow, Gent and Florence, and the Transnacionala project—a journey from the east to the west coast of the United States in 1996.

Exhibitions

Irwin have exhibited widely in Europe and the USA, including Manifesta in Rotterdam and Ljubljana, Venice Biennial, After the Wall, and Aspects/Positions. In 2004, they have received the Jakopič Award, the highest annual award in Slovene fine arts.

Books

Notes

References

External links

IRWIN on the NSK State site.

Category:Slovenian culture Category:Artist collectives Category:Organizations based in Slovenia

de:IRWIN fr:IRWIN sl:Irwin fi:IRWIN

Coordinates	28°36′36″N77°13′48″N
name	Irwin Goodman
background	solo_singer
birth name	Antti Yrjö Hammarberg
alias	Irwin GoodmanRock-WilliamsWilliam WhiteAndyRudolf HoltzHamppariBob MerseyBill Black
born	September 14, 1943Hämeenlinna, Finland
died	January 14, 1991Hamina, Finland
origin	Hämeenlinna, Finland
instrument	VocalsGuitarHarmonica
genre	RockFolk
occupation	Singer-songwriter
years active	1962–1991
label	Finnlevy
website	www.irwingoodman.com
notable instruments	}}

Irwin Goodman (real name: Antti Yrjö Hammarberg, 14 September 1943, Hämeenlinna – 14 January 1991, Hamina) was a popular Finnish rock and folk singer. In the late 1960s he was widely known as a protest singer. He recorded over 300 songs, most of which were his own compositions, with lyrics written by Vexi Salmi. Irwin Goodman started as a protest song singer in the folk boom of the mid-1960s, his humorous songs often mocking any authorities becoming evergreens among Finnish people; to such extent that small "Irwin singalike" contests are nowadays arranged by some pubs for entertainment. Irwin got into continuing troubles with Finnish tax authorities, had ever-worsening problems with alcohol, and his escapades were eagerly followed by such sensationalist magazines as Hymy.

Goodman died of a myocardial infarction while on the way from Vyborg to Hamina, Finland. His life was turned into a feature film, ''Rentun Ruusu'', in 2001.

Irwin's most famous songs include "Poing poing poing" (1971), "Haistakaa paska koko valtiovalta" (1976) , "Rentun ruusu" (1988), "Ei tippa tapa" (1966), "Työmiehen lauantai" (1965), "En kerro kuinka jouduin naimisiin" (1965) and "Tyttö tuli" (1978). He won the Syksyn Sävel contest twice.

Common themes on his songs were drinking and alcoholism ("Ei tippa tapa", "Vielä yhdet", "Kieltolaki", "Homma käy", "Soittajan maanantai", "Rentun ruusu"), bashing immigrants and racism ("Mutakuono ja lakupellet," "Marcellino magaroni") and problems with money ("Raha ratkaisee", "Kun ei rahat riitä", "Meni rahahommat pieleen", "Manu vippaa muutama markka"). He protested the government with songs like "Juhlavalssi," and "Haistakaa paska koko valtiovalta".

In 1971, Irwin released an album featuring actor Esa Pakarinen; his 1972 album ''Kohta taas on joulu'' consists of Christmas carols. The later songs ("Suruton nuoruusaika", "Maailma on kaunis", "Ai, ai, ai, kun nuori ois" and "Viimeinen laulu") were often dark when compared to songs from the 1960s and 1970s.

Albums discography

''Irwinismi'' (1966)

''Ei tippa tapa'' (1966)

''Osta minut'' (1967)

''Reteesti vaan'' (1968)

''Irwin Goodman'' (1969)

''Työmiehen lauantai'' (1970)

''St. Pauli ja Reeperbahn'' (1970)

''Lonkalta (1971, feat. Esa Pakarinen)

''Poing, poing, poing'' (1971)

''Kohta taas on joulu'' (1972)

''Las Palmas'' (1972)

''Si Si Si'' (1973)

''Häirikkö'' (1976)

''Kolmastoista kerta'' (1977)

''Cha Cha Cha'' (1977)

''Inkkareita ja länkkäreitä'' (1977)

''Tyttö tuli'' (1978)

''Kulkurin kulta'' (1979, feat. Hanne)

''Keisari Irwin I'' (1979)

''Härmäläinen perusjuntti'' (1984)

''Dirly dirly dee'' (1985)

''Rentun Ruusu'' (1988)

'' Vuosikerta -89'' (1989)

''Hurraa - Me teemme laivoja'' (1990)

''Ai ai ai kun nuori ois'' (1990)

See also

List of best-selling music artists in Finland

Category:1943 births Category:1991 deaths Category:People from Hämeenlinna Category:Finnish singers Category:Finnish-language singers

ar:إيرفن غودمان de:Irwin Goodman et:Irwin Goodman ru:Ирвин Гудмен fi:Irwin Goodman sv:Irwin Goodman

Irwin A. Schiff (born in 1928) is a prominent figure in the United States tax protester movement. Schiff is known for writing and promoting literature that claims the United States income tax is applied incorrectly. He has lost several civil cases against the federal government and has a record of multiple convictions for various federal tax crimes. Schiff is serving a 13-plus year sentence for tax crimes (with his location listed as the Terre Haute Federal Correctional Institution). His projected release date is 7 October 2016. Schiff is the father of stockbroker and former United States Senate candidate Peter Schiff.

Background

In 1950, Schiff graduated from the University of Connecticut with a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting and economics.

After college, Schiff was in the insurance brokerage business in Connecticut. In connection with his business, he was involved in a tax shelter in which he became the victim of a Ponzi scheme in which he lost his money and the money of his clients. In 1968 he testified before the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency in opposition to the removal of gold backing from Federal Reserve Notes. In 1976, he published a book entitled ''The Biggest Con: How the Government is Fleecing You''. Schiff was a candidate for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination in 1996, and he participated in a Libertarian Party debate in Washington on July 5, 1996.

Schiff has a web site named "PayNoIncomeTax.com", which has previously offered his various books for sale. He is featured in Hollywood producer Aaron Russo's 2006 film ''America: Freedom To Fascism''.

Arguments raised by Schiff

Among the arguments raised over the years by Schiff are: # that no statutory deficiency in Federal income tax can exist until an assessment has been made; # that no tax assessment can be made unless a tax return has been voluntarily filed; # that the Internal Revenue Service, in enforcing the income tax, seeks to impose a tax not authorized by the taxing clauses of the United States Constitution; # that the United States Tax Court has no jurisdiction over Schiff; and # that the United States Tax Court is not a court. These arguments were ruled invalid in ''Schiff v. Commissioner''. Another argument made by Schiff on his web site is: "On the 1040 itself [...] you report 'zero' income regardless of how much you received in: wages, commissions, interest, alimony, capital gains or from operating a business. For tax purposes, 'income' only means corporate 'profit.' Therefore, no individual receives anything that is reportable as 'income.'" This argument has been rejected by the lower courts, as well as the United States courts of appeal. See ''Cameron v. Internal Revenue Serv.''; ''Stoewer v. Commissioner'';''Reinhart v. United States'';''Fink v. Commissioner'';''Flathers v. Commissioner'';''Schroeder v. Commissioner'';''Sherwood v. Commissioner''; and ''Ho v. Commissioner''.

Convictions for 1974 and 1975 tax years

Schiff had filed Federal income tax returns through the tax year 1973. For years 1974 and 1975, however, he refused to disclose his income. Instead, he sent unsigned 1040 forms to the Internal Revenue Service with the title ("U.S. Individual Income Tax Return") changed to read "U.S. Individual Income Confession." Instead of disclosing income, he included assertions of various constitutional rights on the forms, claiming essentially that under the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, and Thirteenth Amendments he would not be an "involuntary serf" of the U.S. government. Schiff contended that because Federal Reserve notes were not backed by gold, they were not “income” for purposes of the Federal income tax.

Schiff began conducting seminars on Federal income taxes in 1977. On April 12, 1978, Schiff appeared on the NBC television program ''The Tomorrow Show'' with host Tom Snyder, arguing his views on Federal income taxes. Six days after his appearance on ''The Tomorrow Show'', Schiff was charged with willful failure to file tax returns for the years 1974 and 1975. The modified, unsigned 1974 and 1975 forms—with no income information on them—were deemed by the Internal Revenue Service not to be valid Federal income tax returns under . During the resulting trial, a videotape of the television program was shown to the jury. Schiff was convicted on both counts, and appealed his conviction to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

At the Court of Appeals, the admission of the videotape was ruled unduly prejudicial, the conviction was overturned, and the case was remanded for a new trial. He was convicted a second time for failure to file, and that conviction was affirmed.

Convictions for 1980 through 1982 tax years

In October 1985 Schiff was convicted of tax evasion with respect to his personal income taxes for years 1980, 1981 and 1982, and willful failure to file a corporate tax return for Irwin A. Schiff, Inc. (a company for which he served as president), and that conviction was affirmed the following year. Schiff was released from the Federal prison system in June 1993. Despite having spent four years in the system, he continued his tax protest related activities.

Civil tax problems for tax years 1979 through 1985

In June 2004, a Federal court ruled that Schiff was liable for over $2 million in taxes, penalties and interest for the years 1979 through 1985. In that case, Schiff's attorney had filed a brief claiming a diminished capacity defense, contending that Schiff had been diagnosed with a chronic, severe delusional disorder relating to his beliefs about the federal income tax system. This was characterized by some opponents of Schiff's beliefs as a claim that those beliefs were the product of a delusion, or even insanity, and that Schiff had willingly allowed his defense counsel to raise such an argument.

Schiff responded to these claims, stating that the diminished capacity defense was an attempt to prevent the Judge from rendering a summary judgment and instead allow a jury trial. Schiff also asserted that this was different from an insanity defense. Schiff, in his statement on the matter, asserted that the judge erred in not putting this question to the jury, and insisted that "(1) no one is required to pay income taxes; (2) the entire federal judiciary is involved in a monumental, criminal conspiracy to collect income taxes in violation of law." As of November 2006, Schiff continued to state on his internet web site that the U.S. Federal income tax was repealed in the 1950s, and that U.S. officials were engaged in a conspiracy: "Since the income tax was repealed in 1954 when Congress adopted the 1954 Code, it is clear that for 50 years federal judges in conspiracy with U. S. Department of Injustice prosecutors have been illegally and criminally prosecuting people for crimes that do not exist in connection with a tax that nobody owes."

Case regarding ''The Federal Mafia''

''The Federal Mafia'' is a book written in prison by Schiff. In the book, Schiff contended that the income tax system and Internal Revenue Service were illegal. On August 9, 2004, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an injunction issued by a U.S. District Court in Nevada under against Irwin Schiff and associates Cynthia Neun and Lawrence Cohen, against the sale of this book by those persons. This prohibition does not extend to other sellers of the book. The court rejected Schiff's contention on appeal that the First Amendment protects sales of the book, as the court found that the information it contains is fraudulent.

Schiff, Neun and Cohen are currently barred under the preliminary injunction from selling or advertising material advocating nonpayment of tax, preparing a tax return for others, and from otherwise providing assistance or encouragement to others in violating tax law. Schiff and his associates are additionally required to provide a copy of the injunction to each of their customers, to post it on their website, and to provide the government with a customer list.

Schiff and his associates have responded by giving the book for free on their website.

Convictions for 1997 through 2002 tax years

On October 24, 2005, Schiff was convicted in the U.S. District Court in Las Vegas, Nevada, on multiple counts of filing false tax returns for the years 1997 through 2002, aiding and assisting in the preparation of false tax returns filed by other taxpayers, conspiring to defraud the United States, and income tax evasion, and he is again serving jail time. Schiff responded with numerous complaints about the trial process, including a claim that Judge Kent Dawson did not allow Schiff to present evidence at his trial.

Despite Schiff's age (approximately 78 years old), on February 24, 2006, Schiff was sentenced to 151 months (12 years and 7 months) in prison and was ordered to pay over $4.2 million in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service; Schiff was also sentenced to 12 additional months for contempt of court. On December 26, 2007, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed Schiff's convictions except for the criminal contempt convictions. The Court vacated the contempt convictions due to the failure of the trial court judge to file contempt orders under rule 42(b) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. The Court of Appeals indicated that the trial judge could file the appropriate paperwork and re-sentence Schiff on the contempt convictions. On September 5, 2008, the trial judge re-sentenced Schiff to eleven months in prison in connection with the contempt of court, effectively lowering Schiff's overall original sentence by one month.

One of Schiff's co-defendants, Lawrence Cohen, was sentenced on February 3, 2006 to 33 months in prison and was ordered to pay $480,000 in restitution. On December 26, 2007, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed Cohen's conviction due to the failure of the trial court to allow testimony from a psychiatrist regarding Cohen's mental state. The Court of Appeals remanded the Cohen case for a possible re-trial. On June 16, 2009, Cohen pleaded guilty to aiding and assisting in the filing of a false tax return. However, Cohen passed away on August 6, 2009, and his case was therefore dismissed.

On February 23, 2006, Cynthia Neun, another co-defendant, was sentenced to 68 months in prison and was ordered to pay over $1.1 million in restitution. Neun's conviction was affirmed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. According to the prosecutor's office, Neun sold materials encouraging people not to pay taxes, prepared false tax returns, and represented hundreds of taxpayers in dealings with the IRS where she promoted Schiff's arguments. She is required to submit to three years of supervision following her release, which occurred on December 28, 2010.

In this last case Schiff's attorneys again asked that the court consider the claim that Schiff has a mental disorder relating to his beliefs about taxes. According to the prosecutor's office the evidence at trial showed that Schiff had attempted to evade the payment of over $2 million in taxes from 1979 through 1985, and that he had used offshore bank accounts using multiple tax identification numbers and had attempted to hide assets in connection with his tax protester related activity.

Convictions of Schiff's followers

Other individuals who have been convicted of federal tax crimes after following Irwin Schiff include Warren J. Burdett, Christopher and Pamela Harrison; Scott D. Haynes Kenneth Heath; Joseph Letscher, David Middleton, Robert L. Mosel; James C. Payne, David G. Pflum; and Steven A. Swan.

Publications

Books written by Schiff include the following:

''Federal Mafia: How It Illegally Imposes and Unlawfully Collects Income Taxes'' (1992) ISBN 0-930374-09-6

''The Great Income Tax Hoax: Why You Can Immediately Stop Paying This Illegally Enforced Tax'' (1985) ISBN 0-930374-05-3

''How an Economy Grows and Why It Doesn't'' (1985) ISBN 0-930374-06-1

''The Social Security Swindle: How Anyone Can Drop Out'' (1984) ISBN 0-930374-04-5

''How Anyone Can Stop Paying Income Taxes'' (1982) ISBN 0-930374-03-7

''The Kingdom of Moltz'' (1980) ISBN 0-930374-02-9

''The Biggest Con: How the Government Is Fleecing You'' (1977) ISBN 0-930374-01-0

See also

Peter Schiff

Tax protester history

Notes

External links

Pay No Income Tax, Irwin Schiff's website.

Daniel B. Evans ''et al.'', "Irwin Schiff," from ''Tax Protester Dossiers: Gurus and Other Big Fish''

Category:1928 births Category:Living people Category:American activists Category:American fraudsters Category:American libertarians Category:American people convicted of tax crimes Category:University of Connecticut alumni Category:American people convicted of fraud

Coordinates	28°36′36″N77°13′48″N
name	Steve Irwin
birth name	Stephen Robert Irwin
birth date	February 22, 1962
birth place	Essendon, Victoria
death date	September 04, 2006
death place	Batt Reef, Queensland
death cause	Stingray Accident
nationality	Australian
other names	The Crocodile Hunter
years active	1997–2006
occupation	NaturalistZoologistConservationistTelevision personalityHerpetologist
notable works	''The Crocodile Hunter''
spouse
children	Bindi Sue Irwin (b.1998)Robert Clarence Irwin (b.2003)
website	Australia Zoo }}

Stephen Robert "Steve" Irwin (22 February 1962 – 4 September 2006), nicknamed "The Crocodile Hunter", was an Australian television personality, wildlife expert, and conservationist. Irwin achieved worldwide fame from the television series ''The Crocodile Hunter'', an internationally broadcast wildlife documentary series which he co-hosted with his wife Terri. Together, the couple also co-owned and operated Australia Zoo, founded by Irwin's parents in Beerwah, about 80 km (50 miles) north of the Queensland state capital city of Brisbane. Irwin died on 4 September 2006 after being pierced in the chest by a stingray barb while filming an underwater documentary film entitled ''Ocean's Deadliest''. The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society ship MY ''Steve Irwin'' was named in his honour.

Early life

Irwin was born on his mother's birthday to Lyn and Bob Irwin in Essendon, a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria. He moved with his parents as a child to Queensland in 1970, where he attended Landsborough State School and Caloundra State High School. Irwin described his father as a wildlife expert interested in herpetology, while his mother Lyn was a wildlife rehabilitator. After moving to Queensland, Bob and Lyn Irwin started the small Queensland Reptile and Fauna Park, where Steve grew up around crocodiles and other reptiles.

Irwin became involved with the park in a number of ways, including taking part in daily animal feeding, as well as care and maintenance activities. On his sixth birthday he was given a scrub python. He began handling crocodiles at the age of nine after his father had educated him on reptiles from an early age. Also at age nine he wrestled his first crocodile, again under his father's supervision. He worked as a volunteer for Queensland's East Coast Crocodile Management program and captured over 100 crocodiles, some of which were relocated, while others were housed at the family park. Irwin took over the management of the park in 1991 and renamed it ''Australia Zoo'' in 1992.

Career

Marriage and family

In 1991, Irwin met Terri Raines, an American naturalist from Eugene, Oregon who was visiting wildlife rehabilitation facilities in Australia and had decided to visit the zoo. According to the couple, it was love at first sight. Terri said at the time, "I thought there was no one like this anywhere in the world. He sounded like an environmental Tarzan, a larger-than-life superhero guy." They were engaged four months later and were married in Eugene on 4 June 1992. Together they had two children: a daughter, Bindi Sue Irwin (born 24 July 1998), and a son, Robert Clarence "Bob" (named after Irwin's father) Irwin (born 1 December 2003). Bindi Sue is jointly named after two of Steve Irwin's favourite animals: Bindi, a saltwater crocodile, and Sui, a Staffordshire Bull Terrier who died in June 2004. Irwin was as enthusiastic about his family as he was about his work. He once described his daughter Bindi as "the reason [he] was put on the Earth." His wife once said, "The only thing that could ever keep him away from the animals he loves are the people he loves even more." Although the Irwins were happily married, they did not wear wedding rings; they believed that in their line of work, wearing jewellery could pose a hazard to them and/or the animals.

''The Crocodile Hunter'' and related work

Steve and Terri spent their honeymoon trapping crocodiles together. Film footage of their honeymoon, taken by John Stainton, became the first episode of ''The Crocodile Hunter''. The series debuted on Australian TV screens in 1996, and made its way onto North American television the following year. ''The Crocodile Hunter'' became successful in the United States, the UK, and over 130 other countries, reaching 500 million people. Irwin's exuberant and enthusiastic presenting style, broad Australian accent, signature khaki shorts, and catchphrase "Crikey!" became known worldwide. Sir David Attenborough praised Irwin for introducing many to the natural world, saying "He taught them how wonderful and exciting it was, he was a born communicator."

American satellite and cable television channel Animal Planet ended ''The Crocodile Hunter'' with a series finale entitled "Steve's Last Adventure." The last Crocodile Hunter documentary spanned three hours with footage of Irwin's across-the-world adventure in locations including the Himalayas, the Yangtze River, Borneo, and the Kruger National Park. Irwin went on to star in other Animal Planet documentaries, including ''Croc Files'', ''The Crocodile Hunter Diaries'', and ''New Breed Vets''. During a January 2006 interview on ''The Tonight Show with Jay Leno'', Irwin announced that Discovery Kids would be developing a show for his daughter, Bindi Sue Irwin – a plan realised after his death as the series ''Bindi the Jungle Girl''.

Other television and film work

In 1998, Irwin continued, working with director Mark Strickson, to present ''The Ten Deadliest Snakes in the World''. He appeared on several episodes of ''The Tonight Show with Jay Leno''. A 2000 FedEx commercial with Irwin lightheartedly dealt with the possibility of occupational death from snakebite and the fanciful notion that FedEx would have saved him, if only FedEx were used.

Under Irwin's leadership, the operations grew to include the zoo, the television series, the Steve Irwin Conservation Foundation (later renamed Wildlife Warriors), and the International Crocodile Rescue. Improvements to the Australia Zoo include the Animal Planet Crocoseum, the rainforest aviary and Tiger Temple. Irwin mentioned that he was considering opening an Australia Zoo in Las Vegas, Nevada, and possibly at other sites around the world.

In 2001, Irwin appeared in a cameo role in the Eddie Murphy film ''Dr. Dolittle 2'', in which a crocodile warns Dolittle that he knows Irwin is going to grab him and is prepared to attack when he does, but Dolittle fails to warn Irwin in time. Irwin's only starring feature film role was in 2002's ''The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course'', which was released to mixed reviews. In the film Irwin (who portrayed himself and performed numerous stunts) mistakes some CIA agents for poachers. He sets out to stop them from capturing a crocodile, which, unknown to him, has actually swallowed a tracking transmitter. The film won the Best Family Feature Film award for a comedy film at the Young Artist Awards. The film was produced on a budget of about US$12 million, and has grossed $33 million. To promote the film, Irwin was featured in an animated short produced by Animax Entertainment for Intermix.

In 2002, Irwin and his family appeared in the Wiggles video/DVD release ''Wiggly Safari'', which was set in Australia Zoo and featured singing and dancing inspired by Australian wildlife.

In 2006, Irwin provided his voice for the 2006 animated film ''Happy Feet'', as an elephant seal named Trev. The film was dedicated to Irwin, as he died during post-production. Another, previously incomplete scene, featuring Irwin providing the voice of an albatross and essentially playing himself, was restored to the DVD release.

Media campaigns

Irwin was also involved in several media campaigns. He enthusiastically joined with the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service to promote Australia's strict quarantine/customs requirements, with advertisements and posters featuring slogans such as, "Quarantine Matters! Don't muck with it". His payments for these advertising campaigns were directed into his wildlife fund.

In 2004, Irwin was appointed ambassador for The Ghan, the passenger train running from Adelaide to Alice Springs in the central Australian outback, when the line was extended all the way to Darwin on the northern coast that year. For some time he was sponsored by Toyota.

Irwin was a keen promoter for Australian tourism in general and Queensland tourism in particular. In 2002, the Australia Zoo was voted Queensland's top tourist attraction. His immense popularity in the United States meant he often promoted Australia as a tourist destination there. As a part of the United States' "Australia Week" celebrations in January 2006, Irwin appeared at UCLA's Pauley Pavilion in Los Angeles, California.

Search and rescue in Mexico

In November 2003, Irwin was filming a documentary on sea lions off the coast of Mexico's Baja California Peninsula when he heard via his boat's radio that two scuba divers were reported missing in the area. Irwin and his entire crew suspended operations to aid in the search. His team's divers searched with the rescue divers, and Irwin used his vessel to patrol the waters around the island where the incident occurred, as well as using his satellite communications system to call in a rescue plane. On the second day of the search, kayakers found one of the divers, Scott Jones, perched on a narrow rock ledge jutting out from the side of a cliff. Irwin and a crewmember escorted him to Irwin's boat. Jones did not recognise Irwin. The other lost diver, Katie Vrooman, was found dead by a search plane later the same day not far from Jones' location.

Honours

In 1997, while on a fishing trip on the coast of Queensland with his father, Irwin discovered a new species of turtle. Later given the honour of naming the newly discovered species, he named it Irwin's turtle (''Elseya irwini'') after his family. Another newly discovered Australian animal – a species of air-breathing land snail, ''Crikey steveirwini'', was named after Irwin in 2009.

In 2001, Irwin was awarded the Centenary Medal by the Australian government for his "service to global conservation and to Australian tourism". In 2004, he was recognised as Tourism Export of the Year. He was also nominated in 2004 for Australian of the Year – an honour which was won that year by Australian cricket captain Steve Waugh. Shortly before his death, Irwin was to be named an adjunct professor at the University of Queensland's School of Integrative Biology. On 14 November 2007, Irwin was awarded the adjunct professorship posthumously.

In May 2007, the government of Rwanda announced that it would name a baby gorilla after Irwin as a tribute to his work in wildlife conservation. Also in 2007, the state government of Kerala, India named the Crocodile Rehabilitation and Research Centre at Neyyar Wildlife Sanctuary in his honour; however, Terri objected that this action had been taken without her permission and asked the Kerala government in 2009 to stop using Irwin's name and images – a request which the state government complied with in mid-2009.

Environmentalism

Irwin was a passionate conservationist and believed in promoting environmentalism by sharing his excitement about the natural world rather than preaching to people. He was concerned with conservation of endangered animals and land clearing leading to loss of habitat. He considered conservation to be the most important part of his work: "I consider myself a wildlife warrior. My mission is to save the world's endangered species." Irwin bought "large tracts of land" in Australia, Vanuatu, Fiji and the United States, which he described as "like national parks" and stressed the importance of people realising that they could each make a difference.

Irwin founded the Steve Irwin Conservation Foundation, which became an independent charity and was later renamed "Wildlife Warriors Worldwide". He also helped found International Crocodile Rescue, the Lyn Irwin Memorial Fund (named in memory of his mother, who died in an automobile crash in 2000), and the Iron Bark Station Wildlife Rehabilitation Facility.

Irwin urged people to take part in considerate tourism and not support illegal poaching through the purchase of items such as turtle shells or shark-fin soup.

Sir David Attenborough was an inspiration to Irwin, according to his widow. When presenting a Lifetime Achievement Award to Attenborough after Irwin's death at the British National Television Awards on 31 October 2006, Terri Irwin said, "If there's one person who directly inspired my husband it's the person being honoured tonight.... [Steve's] real, true love was conservation – and the influence of tonight's recipient in preserving the natural world has been immense." Attenborough reciprocated by praising Irwin for introducing many to the natural world, saying, "He taught them how wonderful and exciting it was, he was a born communicator."

Irwin was described after his death by Mark Townend, CEO of RSPCA Queensland, as a "modern-day Noah." British naturalist David Bellamy lauded his skills as a natural historian and media performer. Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki paid tribute to Irwin, noting that "[h]umanity will not protect that which we fear or do not understand. Steve Irwin helped us understand those things that many people thought were a nuisance at best, a horror at worst. That made him a great educator and conservationist."

After his death, the vessel ''MV Robert Hunter'' owned by the environmental action group Sea Shepherd was renamed ''MY Steve Irwin''. Shortly before his death, Irwin had been investigating joining Sea Shepherd's 2007–2008 voyage to Antarctica to disrupt Japanese whaling activity. Following his death, the organisation suggested renaming their vessel, and this idea was endorsed by Terri Irwin. Regarding the ship and its new name, Terri said, "If Steve were alive, he'd be aboard with them!"

== Sporting activities == Irwin loved mixed martial arts competitions and trained with Greg Jackson in the fighting/grappling system of Gaidojutsu.

Like many Australians, he was a avid cricket fan. This was seen during his visit to Sri Lanka where he played cricket with some local children and said "I love cricket" and "It's a shame we have to go catch some snakes now". This was seen during the ''Crocodile Hunter'' episode “Island of the Snakes".

Having grown up in Essendon, Irwin was a fan of the Essendon Bombers, an Australian rules football club in the Australian Football League. Irwin took part in an Australian Rules football promotion in Los Angeles as part of "Australia Week" in early 2006. After his death, a picture of Irwin wearing a Bombers Guernsey was shown by ESPN.com in their Bottom 10 ranking of the worst Division I FBS college football teams after Week 1 of the season in tribute to him.

Having lived in Queensland most of his life, Irwin was also a fan of rugby league. As a teenager, he played for the Caloundra Sharks as a second-rower, and as an adult he was known to be a passionate Brisbane Broncos fan and was involved with the club on several occasions. On one occasion after turning up to training he asked if he could tackle the largest player, Shane Webcke. Despite being thrown to the ground and looking like he'd been crushed he was jovial about the experience. Irwin laughingly shared the experience with the Queensland State of Origin squad before the 2006 series. Irwin also supported rugby union, being a fan of the national team, the Wallabies. He once wore a Wallaby jersey during a demonstration at the zoo. A behind-the-scenes episode of ''The Crocodile Hunter'' showed Irwin and the crew finding a petrol station in a remote part of Namibia to watch the Wallabies defeat France in the 1999 Rugby World Cup Final. Irwin was also a talented surfer.

Controversies

A controversial incident occurred during a public show on 2 January 2004, when Irwin carried his one-month-old son, Bob, in his arm while hand-feeding a chicken carcass to Murray, a saltwater crocodile. The infant was close to the crocodile, and comparisons were made in the press to Michael Jackson's dangling his son outside a German hotel window. In addition, child welfare groups, animal rights groups, and some of Irwin's television viewers criticised his actions as irresponsible and tantamount to child abuse. Irwin apologised on the US NBC Today Show. Both he and his wife publicly stated that Irwin was in complete control of the situation, as he had dealt with crocodiles since he was a small child, and based on his lifetime of experience neither he nor his son were in any danger. He also showed footage of the event shot from a different angle, demonstrating that they were much further from the crocodile than they had appeared in the publicised clip. Terri Irwin said their child was in no more danger than one being taught to swim. No charges were filed; according to one journalist, Irwin told officials he would not repeat the action. The incident prompted the Queensland government to change its crocodile-handling laws, banning children and untrained adults from entering crocodile enclosures.

In June 2004, allegations were made that he disturbed wildlife (namely whales, seals and penguins) while filming a documentary, ''Ice Breaker'', in Antarctica. The matter was subsequently closed without charges being laid.

After questions arose in 2003 about Irwin being paid $175,000 worth of taxpayers' money to appear in a television advertisement and his possible political ties, Irwin told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that he was a conservationist and did not choose sides in politics. His comments describing Australian Prime Minister John Howard as the "greatest leader in the world" earned him scorn in the media.

Irwin was criticised for having an unsophisticated view of conservation in Australia that seemed more linked to tourism than to the problems Australia faces as a continent. In response to questions of Australia's problems with overgrazing, salinity, and erosion, Irwin responded, "Cows have been on our land for so long that Australia has evolved to handle those big animals." The Sydney Morning Herald concluded with the opinion that his message was confusing and amounted to "eating roos and crocs is bad for tourism, and therefore more cruel than eating other animals".

Death

On 4 September 2006, Irwin was fatally pierced in the chest by a stingray spine while snorkelling at the Great Barrier Reef, at Batt Reef, which is located off the coast of Port Douglas in north Queensland. Irwin was in the area filming his own documentary, ''Ocean's Deadliest'', but weather had stalled filming. Irwin decided to take the opportunity to film some shallow water shots for a segment in the television program his daughter Bindi Irwin was hosting when the ray suddenly turned and lashed out at him with the spine on its tail.

The events were caught on camera, and a copy of the footage was handed to the Queensland Police. In an interview with ''TIME'', marine documentary filmmaker and former spearfisherman Ben Cropp concluded that Irwin had accidentally boxed the ray in, causing it to attack: "It stopped and twisted and threw up its tail with the spike, and it caught him in the chest.... It's a defensive thing. It's like being stabbed with a dirty dagger.... It's a one-in-a-million thing. I have swum with many rays, and I have only had one do that to me."

Initially, when CNN's Larry King interviewed Irwin's colleague John Stainton late on 4 September 2006, Stainton denied the suggestion that Irwin had pulled the spine out of his chest or that he had seen footage of the event, insisting that the anecdote was "absolute rubbish." However, the following day, when he first described the video to the media, he stated, "Steve came over the top of the ray and the tail came up, and spiked him here [in the chest], and he pulled it out and the next minute he's gone."

It is thought, in the absence of a coroner's report, that a combination of the toxins and the puncture wound from the spine caused Irwin to die of cardiac arrest, with most of the damage being inflicted by tears to arteries or other main blood vessels. A similar incident in Florida a month later, in which a man survived a stingray barb through the heart, suggested that Irwin's removing the barb might have caused or hastened his death.

Crew members aboard his boat called the emergency services in the nearest city of Cairns and administered CPR as they rushed the boat to the nearby Low Islets to meet an emergency rescue helicopter. However, despite the best efforts of Irwin's crew, medical staff pronounced him dead when they arrived a short time later. According to Dr Ed O'Loughlin, who treated Irwin, "it became clear fairly soon that he had non-survivable injuries. He had a penetrating injury to the left front of his chest. He had lost his pulse and wasn't breathing." Irwin's body was flown to a morgue in Cairns. His wife, Terri Irwin, who was on a walking tour in Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park in Tasmania at the time, returned via a private plane from Devonport to the Sunshine Coast with their two children.

Stainton told CNN's Larry King that, in his opinion, the videotape of Irwin's fatal accident "should be destroyed". In an interview with Barbara Walters on the American ABC network shortly after Irwin's death, Terri Irwin said she had not seen the film of her husband's deadly encounter with the stingray and that it would not be shown on television. On 3 January 2007, the only video footage showing the events that led to Irwin's death was handed over to Terri, who said that her family had not seen the video and that it would never be made public. In an 11 January 2007 interview with ''Access Hollywood'', Terri said that "all footage [had] been destroyed." Despite these statements, numerous videos and still pictures claiming to be of Irwin's death surfaced on YouTube and other Internet sites.

Production was completed on ''Ocean's Deadliest'', which aired for the first time on the Discovery Channel on 21 January 2007. The documentary was completed with footage shot in the weeks following the accident. According to Stainton, "Anything to do with the day that he died, that film is not available." Irwin's death is not mentioned in the film, aside from a still image of him at the end alongside the text "In Memory of Steve Irwin". Terri Irwin reported in 2007 that Steve had an ongoing premonition that he would die before he reached age 40. She wrote about this in a book about their lives together, ''Steve and Me''.

Reaction

News of Irwin's death prompted reactions around the world. Then Australian Prime Minister John Howard expressed his "shock and distress" at the death, saying that "Australia has lost a wonderful and colourful son." Queensland Premier Peter Beattie commented in a Channel Seven television interview that Irwin would "be remembered as not just a great Queenslander, but a great Australian". The Australian federal parliament opened on 5 September 2006 with condolence speeches by both the Prime Minister, John Howard, and the Leader of the Opposition, Kim Beazley. Flags at the Sydney Harbour Bridge were lowered to half mast in honour of Irwin.

Several Australian news websites went down because of high web traffic, and for the first time, the "top ten" list of most-viewed stories for Fairfax Digital news sites was swept by a single topic. Talk-back radio experienced a high volume of callers expressing their grief. The television interview show ''Enough Rope'' re-broadcast a 2003 interview between Irwin and Andrew Denton on the evening of his death. The Seven Network aired a television memorial show as a tribute to Irwin on 5 September 2006, as did the Nine Network on 6 September.

The U.S. feed of the Animal Planet cable television channel aired a special tribute to Irwin that started on Monday, 4 September. The tribute continued with the Animal Planet channel showing highlights of Irwin's more than 200 appearances on Discovery Network's shows. CNN showed a repeat of his 2004 interview on ''Larry King Live''. Late-night talk show host Jay Leno—on whose show Irwin had appeared more than ten times—delivered a tribute describing Irwin as a great ambassador of Australia. There were also tributes on ''Live with Regis & Kelly'' and Barbara Walters' ''The View.''

Hundreds of people visited Australia Zoo to pay tribute to the deceased entertainer and conservationist. The day after his death, the volume of people coming to pay their respects affected traffic so much that police reduced the speed limit near the zoo and told motorists to expect delays. BBC reported on 13 September that thousands of fans had been to Australia Zoo since Irwin's death, bringing flowers, candles, stuffed animals and messages of support. In the weeks after his death, Irwin's conservation foundation, Wildlife Warriors, reported that thousands of people from around the world were offering their support via donations to the conservation group.

Dan Mathews, vice-president of the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said it was "no shock at all that Steve Irwin should die provoking a dangerous animal." He added that "Irwin made his career out of antagonising frightened wild animals, that's a very dangerous message to send to children." He also made a comparison with another well known conservationist: "If you compare [Irwin] with a responsible conservationist like Jacques Cousteau, he looks like a cheap reality TV star." The son of Jacques Cousteau, Jean-Michel Cousteau—also a producer of wildlife documentaries—took issue as well with Irwin's hands-on approach to nature television, saying, "You don't touch nature, you just look at it." Cousteau went on to say that although Irwin's approach "goes very well on television", it would "interfere with nature, jump on animals, grab them, hold them, and have this very, very spectacular, dramatic way of presenting things" which he felt was "very misleading". Jacques Cousteau's grandson and Jean-Michel's nephew, Philippe Cousteau Jr., however, was working with Irwin on the "Ocean's Deadliest" documentary at the time of the accident and later described him as "a remarkable individual." Describing their project, he said, "I think why Steve was so excited about it that we were looking at these animals that people think of as, you know, dangerous and deadly monsters, and they're not. They all have an important place in the environment and in the world. And that was what his whole message was about."

Backlash against stingrays

Fatalities due to stingrays are infrequent and occurrences are not consistently collated, while there have been several others in Australia. Irwin's death is believed to be the only fatality from a stingray ever captured on film. In the weeks following Irwin's death, at least ten stingrays were found dead and mutilated, with their tails cut off, on the beaches of Queensland, prompting speculation that they had been killed by fans of Irwin as an act of revenge. However Bill Turner, chairman of Queensland fishing information service Sunfish, said the claims were ridiculous. "To tie this into what happened with Steve is just ridiculous," he said. "I've been seeing this for the 50 years that I've been fishing." Michael Hornby, a friend of the late naturalist and executive director of Irwin's Wildlife Warrior fund, condemned any revenge killings. "We just want to make it very clear that we will not accept and not stand for anyone who's taken a form of retribution. That's the last thing Steve would want," he said.

Funeral

Queensland Premier Peter Beattie offered to hold a state funeral for Irwin – an honour also agreed to by Prime Minister Howard. The family decided, however, that such a funeral would not have been appropriate. Irwin's father Bob stated that his son would not have wanted such an honour and would want to be remembered as an "ordinary bloke." Beattie stated he would honour the decision of the Irwin family regarding their arrangements.

Family and friends held a private funeral service at Caloundra on the afternoon of 9 September. Irwin was buried in a private ceremony at Australia Zoo on the same day; the grave site is inaccessible to the zoo's visitors.

Public memorial service

A public service was held at the 5,500-seat Crocoseum at Australia Zoo on 20 September. The service was broadcast live, commercial free, in the eastern states of Australia, by free-to-air channels Seven, Nine and the ABC in Australia, as well as live on subscription channel Sky News Australia. In addition, it was broadcast live and without commercials on Animal Planet in the United States, as well as to Germany, the UK, and Asia. It is estimated that over 300 million viewers worldwide watched the service. The memorial was also rebroadcast in the US on Animal Planet on 1 January 2007, as part of their New Year's Day celebration, and again the following day.

The memorial included a speech by Australian Prime Minister John Howard, as well as messages by celebrities from Australia and around the world including Hugh Jackman, Cameron Diaz, Justin Timberlake, Kevin Costner, Russell Crowe, David Wenham, Kelly Ripa and Larry King. Costner called Irwin a fearless man who was brave enough to let people see him as he was. Irwin's father, Bob Irwin, spoke at the memorial, as did his daughter Bindi and associates Wes Mannion and John Stainton. Anthony Field of The Wiggles partly hosted the service, often sharing the screen with various animals, from koalas to elephants. Australian music star John Williamson sang ''True Blue'', which was Irwin's favourite song. In a symbolic finish to the service, Irwin's truck was loaded up with gear and driven out of the arena for the last time as Williamson sang. As a final tribute, Australia Zoo staff spelled out Irwin's catchphrase "Crikey" in yellow flowers as Irwin's truck was driven from the Crocoseum for the last time to end the service.

Other memorials

Flags on the Sydney Harbour Bridge flew at half mast on the day of the memorial service, and several permanent memorials for Irwin have been considered or announced since his death. Premier Peter Beattie suggested a national park be named after Irwin or a permanent memorial might be constructed in his honour, though the details of the structure would depend on Irwin's family. On 1 January 2007, Glass House Mountains Road, the road that runs by the Australia Zoo, was officially renamed Steve Irwin Way. The Australian government announced in July 2007 that there would be a nature park in Australia named after Irwin.

Animal Planet announced it would rename the garden in front of Discovery Communications' world headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland to be the Steve Irwin Memorial Sensory Garden. Animal Planet also announced the creation of a Steve Irwin Crocodile Hunter Fund (called "The Crikey Fund") to "provide a way for people from across the globe to make contributions in Irwin's honour to support wildlife protection, education and conservation".

On the DVD of the animated film ''Happy Feet'', there is a deleted scene in which the main character, Mumble, meets an albatross (voiced by Irwin) and a blue whale. The scene was unfinished at first, but it was included on the DVD release to honour Irwin's memory, as Irwin had insisted on being in a film that contained a message about the environment. However, this scene was removed from the movie, and it was decided to let Irwin play an elephant seal named Trev.

On 4 September 2007, Australian fans gathered at the Irwin family zoo on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland to commemorate the first anniversary of Irwin's death. State Premier Peter Beattie described Irwin as one of the state's greatest cultural ambassadors. On 15 November, Irwin's widow Terri and children, Bindi and Bob, remembered his life and achievements on "''Steve Irwin Day''."

An asteroid discovered in 2001 was named 57567 Crikey in honour of Irwin and his "signature phrase".

Filmography

''Croc Files'' ''Dr. Dolittle 2'' ''Mystery Hunters'' ''The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course ''The Fairly OddParents ''5 Takes#Season Two- 5 Takes: Pacific Rim ''Happy Feet'' ''Ocean's Deadliest'' ''Bindi the Jungle Girl''

Year	! Film	! Role	! Other notes
rowspan="1"	1997–2004	''The Crocodile Hunter''	Himself
rowspan="1"	1999–2000	|	Himself
rowspan="1"	2001	|	Himself	Cameo role
rowspan="1"	2002	|	Himself	One episode
rowspan="1"	2002	|	Himself
rowspan="1"	2004	|	The Bad Parent Hunter	Episode: ''Nega Timmy''
rowspan="1"	2006	5 Takes: Pacific Rim'' ||	Himself	One Episode
rowspan="1"	2006	|	Trev	(voice)
rowspan="1"	2007	|	Himself	TV Special (Released after death), In Memory of.
2007–2008	|	Himself	TV series, released after death. New and Archive Footage

References

External links

Australia Zoo's ''Crocodile Hunter'' website

Official Animal Planet website for The Crocodile Hunter

Steve 'The Crocodile Hunter' Irwin – slideshow by ''Life magazine''

Huge collection of features and photographs from Daily Telegraph concerning the Irwins

Category:1962 births Category:2006 deaths Category:Australian conservationists Category:Australian environmentalists Category:Australian naturalists Category:Australian herpetologists Category:Australian television presenters Category:People from Melbourne Category:People from Queensland Category:Australian actors Category:Deaths due to fish attacks Category:Accidental deaths in Queensland Category:Filmed accidental deaths Category:Filmed deaths of entertainers

am:ስቲቭ እርዊን ar:ستيف إروين bn:স্টিভ আরউইন be-x-old:Стыў Ірвін bs:Steve Irwin bg:Стив Ъруин ca:Steve Irwin cs:Steve Irwin cy:Steve Irwin da:Steve Irwin de:Steve Irwin el:Στιβ Άιρβιν es:Steve Irwin eo:Steve Irwin eu:Steve Irwin fa:استیو ایروین fr:Steve Irwin ga:Steve Irwin ko:스티브 어윈 hy:Ստիվ Էրվին hr:Steve Irwin io:Steve Irwin id:Steve Irwin is:Steve Irwin it:Steve Irwin he:סטיב ארווין kn:ಸ್ಟೀವ್ ಇರ್ವಿನ್ ka:სტივ ირვინი la:Stephanus Irwin lv:Stīvs Ērvins lt:Steve Irwin hu:Steve Irwin ml:സ്റ്റീവ് ഇർവിൻ ms:Steve Irwin nl:Steve Irwin ja:スティーブ・アーウィン no:Steve Irwin nn:Steve Irwin pl:Steve Irwin pt:Steve Irwin ro:Steve Irwin qu:Steve Irwin ru:Ирвин, Стив simple:Steve Irwin sk:Steve Irwin sl:Steve Irwin sr:Стив Ирвин sh:Steve Irwin fi:Steve Irwin sv:Steve Irwin tl:Steve Irwin ta:இசுடீவ் இர்வின் th:สตีฟ เออร์วิน tr:Steve Irwin uk:Стівен Роберт Ірвін zh:史帝夫·厄文

Coordinates	28°36′36″N77°13′48″N
Name	Thomas Jefferson
Alt	Portrait of Thomas Jefferson by Rembrandt Peale.
Office	3rd President of the United States
Vicepresident	Aaron BurrGeorge Clinton
Term start	March 4, 1801
Term end	March 4, 1809
Predecessor	John Adams
Successor	James Madison
Office2	2nd Vice President of the United States
President2	John Adams
Term start2	March 4, 1797
Term end2	March 4, 1801
Predecessor2	John Adams
Successor2	Aaron Burr
Office3	1st United States Secretary of State
President3	George Washington
Term start3	March 22, 1790
Term end3	December 31, 1793
Predecessor3	John Jay (Acting)
Successor3	Edmund Randolph
Ambassador from4	United States
Country4	France
Nominator4	Congress of the Confederation
Term start4	May 17, 1785
Term end4	September 26, 1789
Predecessor4	Benjamin Franklin
Successor4	William Short
Office5	Delegate to the Congress of the Confederationfrom Virginia
Term start5	November 1, 1783
Term end5	May 7, 1784
Predecessor5	James Madison
Successor5	Richard Henry Lee
Office6	2nd Governor of Virginia
Term start6	June 1, 1779
Term end6	June 3, 1781
Predecessor6	Patrick Henry
Successor6	William Fleming
Office7	Delegate to the Second Continental Congressfrom Virginia
Term start7	June 20, 1775
Term end7	September 26, 1776
Predecessor7	George Washington
Successor7	John Harvie
Birth date	April 13, 1743
Birth place	Shadwell, Virginia
Death date	July 04, 1826
Death place	Charlottesville, Virginia, United States
Party	Democratic-Republican Party
Spouse	Martha Wayles
Children	MarthaJaneMaryLucyLucy Elizabeth
Alma mater	College of William and Mary
Profession	PlanterLawyerTeacher
Religion	''See article''
Signature	Thomas Jefferson Signature.svg }}

Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776) and the third President of the United States (1801–1809). He was an influential Founding Father, and an exponent of Jeffersonian democracy. Jefferson envisioned America as a great "Empire of Liberty" that would promote republicanism.

At the beginning of the American Revolution, Jefferson served in the Continental Congress, representing Virginia. He then served as the wartime Governor of Virginia (1779–1781), barely escaping capture by the British in 1781. Just after the war ended, from mid-1784 Jefferson served as a diplomat, stationed in Paris, initially as a commissioner to help negotiate commercial treaties. In May 1785, he became the United States Minister to France. He was the first United States Secretary of State (1790–1793). During the administration of President George Washington, Jefferson advised against a national bank and the Jay Treaty. Upon leaving office, with his close friend James Madison he organized the Democratic-Republican Party to oppose Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton's policies, especially his desire to create a national bank. He and Madison secretly wrote the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, which attempted to nullify the Alien and Sedition Acts and formed the basis of States' rights.

Elected president in what he called the Revolution of 1800, he oversaw a peaceful transition in power, purchased the vast Louisiana Territory from France (1803), and sent the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–1806) to explore the new west. He decided to allow slavery in the acquired territory, which laid the foundation for the crisis of the Union a half century later. His second term was beset with troubles at home, such as the failed treason trial of his former Vice President Aaron Burr, and escalating trouble with Britain. Jefferson always distrusted Britain as a threat to American values. With Britain at war with Napoleon, he tried aggressive economic warfare, however his embargo laws stopped American trade, hurt the economy, and provoked a furious reaction in the Northeast.

Jefferson was part of the Virginia planter elite. He was a loving husband to his wife Martha, who died in childbirth, and an affectionate father to their children. As a tobacco planter, Jefferson owned hundreds of slaves throughout his life; he held views on the racial inferiority of Africans common at the time. Most historians believe that after his wife died, Jefferson had an intimate relationship for nearly four decades with Martha's half-sister, his mixed-race slave Sally Hemings; and fathered her six children. He freed the four surviving Hemings children when they came of age.

A leader in The Enlightenment, Jefferson was a polymath who spoke five languages and was deeply interested in science and political philosophy. While not an orator he was an indefatigable letter writer and was acquainted with many influential people in America and Europe. His views on slavery were complex, and changed over the course of his life,. He was a leading American opponent of the international slave trade, and presided over its abolition in 1807. Jefferson is typically rated by historical scholars as one of the greatest U.S. presidents, though in recent decades scholars have tended to be more negative.

Early life and education

Family

The third of ten children, Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743) into the Randolph family that linked him to some of the most prominent individuals in Virginia. His mother was Jane Randolph, daughter of Isham Randolph of Dungeness, a ship's captain and sometime planter, first cousin to Peyton Randolph, and granddaughter of wealthy English and Scottish gentry. Jefferson's father was Peter Jefferson, a planter and major slaveholder, and a surveyor in Albemarle County (Shadwell, then Edge Hill, Virginia). He was of possible Welsh descent, although this remains unclear. When Colonel William Randolph, an old friend of Peter Jefferson, died in 1745, Peter assumed executorship and personal charge of William Randolph's estate in Tuckahoe as well as his infant son, Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr. That year the Jeffersons relocated to Tuckahoe, where they would remain for the next seven years before returning to their home in Albemarle in 1752. Peter Jefferson was appointed to the colonelcy of the county, an important position at the time. After he died in 1757, his son Thomas Jefferson inherited his estate, including about 50 slaves. They comprised the core of his labor force when he started to build Monticello as a young man.

When Thomas Jefferson was 22, his oldest sister Jane died at the age of 25 on October 1, 1765. He fell into a period of deep mourning, as he was already saddened by the absence of his sisters Mary, who had been married several years to Thomas Bolling, and Martha, who had wed in July to Dabney Carr. Both had moved to their husbands' residences. Only Jefferson's younger siblings Elizabeth, Lucy, and the two toddlers, were at home. He drew little comfort from the younger ones, as they did not provide him with the same intellectual stimulation as the older sisters had.

Education

In 1752, Jefferson began attending a local school run by a Scottish Presbyterian minister. At the age of nine, Jefferson began studying Latin, Greek, and French; he learned to ride horses, and began to appreciate the study of nature. He studied under the Reverend James Maury from 1758 to 1760 near Gordonsville, Virginia. While boarding with Maury's family, he studied history, science and the classics.

At age 16, Jefferson entered the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, and first met the law professor George Wythe, who became his influential mentor. For two years he studied mathematics, metaphysics, and philosophy under Professor William Small, who introduced the enthusiastic Jefferson to the writings of the British Empiricists, including John Locke, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton. He also improved his French, Greek, and violin. A diligent student, Jefferson displayed an avid curiosity in all fields and graduated in 1762 with highest honors. Jefferson read law while working as a law clerk for Wythe. During this time, he also read a wide variety of English classics and political works. Jefferson was admitted to the Virginia bar five years later in 1767.

Throughout his life, books played a vital role in Jefferson's education. Even during the American Revolution and while minister to France, Jefferson collected and accumulated thousands of books for his library at Monticello. A significant portion of Jefferson's library was also bequeathed to him in the will of George Wythe who himself had an extensive library. Always eager for more knowledge, Jefferson's education would continue throughout most of his life. Jefferson once stated, "I cannot live without books." By 1815, his library included 6,487 books, which he then sold to the Library of Congress to replace the collection destroyed in the War of 1812.

Career

Jefferson handled many cases as a lawyer in colonial Virginia, and was very active from 1768 to 1773. Jefferson's client list included members of the Virginia's elite families, including members of his mother's family, the Randolphs.

In 1768 Thomas Jefferson started the construction of Monticello, a neoclassical mansion. Since childhood, Jefferson had always wanted to build a beautiful mountaintop home within sight of Shadwell. Jefferson fell greatly in debt by spending lavishly over the years on Monticello in what was a continuing project to create a neoclassical environment, based on his study of the architect Andrea Palladio and the classical orders.

Besides practicing law, Jefferson represented Albemarle County in the Virginia House of Burgesses beginning on May 11, 1769 and ending June 20, 1775. Wythe also served at the same time. Following the passage of the Coercive Acts by the British Parliament in 1774, he wrote a set of resolutions against the acts, which were expanded into ''A Summary View of the Rights of British America'', his first published work. Previous criticism of the Coercive Acts had focused on legal and constitutional issues, but Jefferson offered the radical notion that the colonists had the natural right to govern themselves. Jefferson also argued that Parliament was the legislature of Great Britain only, and had no legislative authority in the colonies. The paper was intended to serve as instructions for the Virginia delegation of the First Continental Congress, but Jefferson's ideas proved to be too radical for that body.

Marriage and family

In 1772, at age 28 Jefferson married the 23-year-old widow Martha Wayles Skelton. They had six children, only two of whom survived to adulthood. Only their oldest daughter Martha lived beyond age 25.

# Martha Washington Jefferson (1772–1836), who married Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr., future governor of Virginia. They had twelve children, eleven of whom survived to adulthood. # Jane Jefferson (1774–1775) # stillborn or unnamed son (1777) # Mary Wayles Jefferson (1778–1804), called Polly, married her cousin John Wayles Eppes, son of Martha's sister, Elizabeth Wayles Eppes. Mary died at age 25 after the birth of her third child; only their son Francis W. Eppes survived to adulthood. Jefferson made his grandson Francis Eppes the designated heir of Poplar Forest, originally intended for Mary. In 1829 Francis Eppes moved to Florida, where he had a cotton plantation until the Civil War. # Lucy Elizabeth Jefferson (1780–1781) # Lucy Elizabeth Jefferson (1782–1785); it was customary to name subsequent children after one who had died, particularly when the family was also trying to pass down family names. The second Lucy died while Jefferson was in Paris, prompting him to have his youngest living daughter Polly sent to him; she was then age nine.

Mrs. Jefferson died on September 6, 1782, a few months after the birth of her last child. He was at his wife's bedside when she died. Jefferson was deeply upset after her death, and often rode on secluded roads to mourn for his wife.

Jefferson never remarried, as he had promised his wife. However, historians believe that while he was in Paris as the US minister, he began a relationship about 1789 with his young mixed-race slave Sally Hemings, who had accompanied his youngest daughter there. She became pregnant and according to her son's memoir, agreed to return to the US with Jefferson if he would free her children. The first child died soon after their return. He fathered five more children with her, four of whom survived to adulthood.

Jefferson never responded to reports or rumors about his relationship with her; his daughter and oldest grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph denied it. In fact Randolph noted the Hemings' children's strong resemblance to his grandfather, but he told the historian Henry Randall that Jefferson's nephew Peter Carr was the father. Based on this family testimony and Jefferson's discretion, his descendants and various historians denied Jefferson's paternity for nearly 200 years.

The matter was eventually settled (to the satisfaction of most historians) when a 1998 DNA study showed a match between the Jefferson male line and Eston Hemings' descendants and additional research was done. The Thomas Jefferson Foundation (TJF), which runs Monticello, conducted an independent historic review in 2000, as did the National Genealogical Society; both were among those who concluded that Jefferson was likely the father. As the Monticello Website says:

"Through his celebrity as the eloquent spokesman for liberty and equality as well as the ancestor of people living on both sides of the color line, Jefferson has left a unique legacy for descendants of Monticello's enslaved people as well as for all Americans."

In the antebellum period, the Hemingses would have been called a "shadow family". Hemings was three-fourths white and a half-sister to Jefferson's late wife, as her father was also John Wayles. Wayles had six children by his 12-year liaison with his slave Betty Hemings; the youngest was Sally. As the historians Philip D. Morgan and Joshua D. Rothman have written, there were numerous interracial relationships in the Wayles-Hemings-Jefferson families, Albemarle County and Virginia, often with multiple generations repeating the pattern.

Hemings' children were seven-eighths European in ancestry and legally white according to Virginia law of the time. (The "one-drop rule" did not become law until 1924.) Four survived to adulthood:

William Beverley,

Harriet Hemings,

Madison Hemings and

Thomas Eston Hemings.

All but Madison eventually identified as white and lived as adults in white communities. Jefferson freed them as they came of age, the first two informally by letting them "escape," and the last two in his will.

Political career from 1775 to 1800

Drafting a declaration

Jefferson served as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress beginning in June 1775, soon after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. He didn't know many people in the congress, but sought out John Adams, who along with his cousin Samuel had emerged as leaders of the convention. Jefferson and Adams there established a friendship that would last the rest of their lives, and was the direct cause of Jefferson's role in drafting the declaration. When Congress began considering a resolution of independence in June 1776, Adams saw to it that Jefferson was appointed to the five-man committee that was to prepare a declaration to accompany the resolution. The committee, after discussing the general outline that the document should follow, decided that Jefferson would write the first draft. The committee in general, and Jefferson in particular, thought Adams should write the document. Adams persuaded the committee to choose Jefferson, who was not thrilled with the assignment, and promised to consult with Jefferson personally. Jefferson had limited time for writing over the next seventeen days, and wrote the draft quickly. Jefferson completed a draft in consultation with other committee members, drawing on his own proposed draft of the Virginia Constitution, George Mason's draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, and other sources. The other committee members made various changes, most notably Jefferson had written, "We hold these truths to be sacred and un-deniable..." Franklin changed it to, "We hold these truths to be self-evident." A final draft incorporating these alterations was presented to the Congress on June 28, 1776. The title of the document was "A Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled."

After voting in favor of the resolution of independence on July 2, Congress turned its attention to the declaration. Over three days of fiery debate, Congress made changes in wording and deleted nearly a fourth of the text, most notably a passage critical of the slave trade, all changes that Jefferson resented. During the three day debate Jefferson spoke not a word for or against any of the revisions. On July 4, 1776, the wording of the Declaration of Independence was ratified. Before the signing a prayer was said and in silence the delegates to the convention applied their signature to the document. The Declaration would eventually become Jefferson's major claim to fame, and his eloquent preamble became an enduring statement of human rights. Jefferson remained at the convention for several more months, though the rest of his time in Philadelphia was uneventful.

State legislator

In September 1776, Jefferson returned to Virginia and was elected to the new Virginia House of Delegates for Albemarle County. He served there from September 26, 1776 – June 1, 1779. During his term in the House, Jefferson set out to reform and update Virginia's system of laws to reflect its new status as a democratic state. He drafted 126 bills in three years, including laws to abolish primogeniture, establish freedom of religion, and streamline the judicial system. In 1778, Jefferson's "Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge" and subsequent efforts to reduce clerical control led to some small changes at William and Mary College. While in the state legislature Jefferson proposed a bill to eliminate capital punishment in Virginia for all crimes except murder and treason. His effort to end the death penalty law was defeated.

Governor of Virginia

In 1779, at the age of thirty-six, Jefferson was elected Governor of Virginia and served from 1779–1781. At this time the now united colonies were in the middle of the American Revolutionary War with Britain. Georgia had fallen helpless into the hands of the British, South Carolina was invaded, and Charleston threatened. In his capacity as Governor Jefferson made efforts to prepare Richmond for attack by moving all arms, military supplies and records from Richmond to a foundry located five miles outside of town. General Benedict Arnold, who had switched to the British side in 1780, learned of this transfer and moved to capture the foundry. Jefferson then attempted to devise a way to move the supplies to Westham, seven miles to the north, but he was too late. Arnold's troops burned the foundry before returning to Richmond, where they burned much of the city the following morning. Jefferson at later points in his political career was criticized, especially by his political opponents, for failing to defend Richmond during this time.

In January of 1781, Benedict Arnold led an armada of British ships and with 1600 British regulars conducted raids along the James River. Later he would join Lord Cornwallis, whose troops were marching across Virginia from the south. In advance, Cornwallis dispatched a cavalry force commanded by Banastre Tarleton on a secret expedition to Monticello to capture then Governor Jefferson. Quickly making his way at night, Tarleton hoped to catch Jefferson by surprise, however in the midst of the activity and havoc of the invasion an action by a young Virginian named Jack Jouett, a captain in the Virginia militia, thwarted the British capture of Virginia's governor. Jouett had spotted the assembly and departure of Tarleton and his men and making his way to Monticello, by way of various back roads of which he was familiar, arrived at Monticello in time to warn Jefferson, members of the Virginia Assembly and citizens at large. With little warning Jefferson and his family fled and managed to escape, leaving his home to be captured by British troops. A detachment of Cornwallis' troops, in their march north from the Carolinas, seized the estate along with another plantation which Jefferson owned on the James River. British troops destroyed all his crops, burnt his barns and fences, drove off the cattle, seized all usable horses, cut the throats of the colts, and after setting fires left the plantation a smoldering, blackened waste. Twenty-seven slaves were also captured to which Jefferson later replied.. "Had he carried off the slaves to give them freedom, he would have done right."

As governor in 1780, he transferred the state capital from Williamsburg to Richmond. He continued to advocate educational reforms at the College of William and Mary, including the nation's first student-policed honor code. In 1779, at Jefferson's behest, William and Mary appointed George Wythe to be the first professor of law in an American university. Many people disliked his tenure, and he did not win office again in Virginia. However, in 1783 he was appointed to Congress by the state legislature.

Notes on the State of Virginia

In the Fall of 1780, Gov. Thomas Jefferson was given a list of 22 questions, by Secretary of the French legation to the United States François Marbois, intended to gather pertinent information on the American colonies. Jefferson's responses to Marbois' "Queries" would become known as ''Notes on the State of Virginia''. Jefferson, scientifically trained, was a member of the American Philosophical Society and had extensive knowledge of western lands from Virginia to Illinois. In a course of 5 years, Jefferson enthusiastically devoted his intellectual energy to the book, which discussed contemporary scientific knowledge, and Virginia's history, politics, and ethnography. Jefferson was aided by Thomas Walker, George R. Clark, and U.S. geographer Thomas Hutchins. The book was first published in France in 1785 and in England in 1787.

Member of Congress

Virginia appointed Jefferson to its delegation to the Congress of the Confederation in 1783. As a member of the committee formed to set foreign exchange rates, he recommended that American currency should be based on the decimal system; his plan was adopted. Jefferson also recommended setting up the Committee of the States, to function as the executive arm of Congress. The plan was adopted but failed in practice. He resigned from Congress when he was appointed minister to France in May 1784.

Minister to France

Jefferson was minister to France from 1785 to 1789, a peaceful time in Europe. When the French Foreign minister Count de Vergennes commented to Jefferson, "You replace Monsieur Franklin I hear", Jefferson replied, "I ''succeed'' him, no man can ''replace'' him.

He enjoyed the architecture, arts, and the salon culture of Paris. He often dined with many of the city's most prominent people, but sided with the revolutionaries in 1789 French Revolution. While in Paris, Jefferson corresponded with a number of individuals who had important roles in events leading up to the French Revolution. These included marquis de Lafayette and comte de Mirabeau, a popular pamphleteer who repeated ideals that had been the basis for the American Revolution.

Jefferson brought some of his slaves to serve the household, including James Hemings for training as a French chef. After his youngest daughter died, he requested that a young woman slave accompany his daughter Polly to France. Sally Hemings was chosen to travel with Polly, and lived with the Jefferson household for about two years in Paris. The historian Annette Gordon-Reed suggests that Jefferson began his long-term relationship with Hemings while in Paris; as was recounted by their son Madison Hemings in his 1873 memoir. There are no direct written accounts from Sally Hemings.

Secretary of State

In September of 1789 Jefferson returned to America from France with his daughter. Immediately upon his return President Washington wrote to him urging him to accept a seat in his Cabinet as Secretary of State. After a brief conference Jefferson accepted the appointment.

As George Washington's Secretary of State, (1790–1793) Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton argued over national fiscal policy, especially the funding of the debts of the war. Jefferson later compared Hamilton and the Federalists with "Royalism", and stated the "Hamiltonians were panting after...crowns, coronets and mitres." Due to their opposition to Hamilton, Jefferson and James Madison founded and led the Democratic-Republican Party. He worked with Madison and his campaign manager John J. Beckley to build a nationwide network of Republican allies. Jefferson's political actions, and his attempt to undermine Hamilton, nearly led George Washington to dismiss Jefferson from his cabinet. Though Jefferson left the cabinet voluntarily, Washington never forgave him, and never spoke to him again.

The French minister said in 1793: "Senator Morris and Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton...had the greatest influence over the President's mind, and that it was only with difficulty that he [Jefferson] counterbalanced their efforts." Jefferson supported France against Britain when they fought in 1793. Jefferson believed that political success at home depended on the success of the French army in Europe. The French minister in 1793, Edmond-Charles Genêt, caused a crisis when he tried to influence public opinion in appealing to the people, something Jefferson tried to stop.

Break from office

Jefferson retired to Monticello in late 1793 where he continued to oppose the policies of Hamilton and Washington. However, the Jay Treaty of 1794, led by Hamilton, brought peace and trade with Britain while Madison, with strong support from Jefferson, wanted, "to strangle the former mother country" without going to war. "It became an article of faith among Republicans that 'commercial weapons' would suffice to bring Great Britain to any terms the United States chose to dictate."

Even during the violence of the Reign of Terror, Jefferson refused to disavow the revolution because "To back away from France would be to undermine the cause of republicanism in America."

Election of 1796 and Vice Presidency

As the Democratic-Republican candidate in 1796 he lost to John Adams, but had enough electoral votes to become Vice President (1797–1801). As one of the chief duties of a Vice president is presiding over the Senate, Jefferson was concerned about the lack of rules governing this body, often leaving matters to the discretion of the presiding officer. Jefferson once wrote: ''"It is now so long since I have acted in the legislative line that I am entirely rusty in the Parliamentary rules of procedure.”'' Jefferson spent much of his time researching procedures and rules for governing bodies years before taking office. As a student he had transcribed notes on British parliamentary law into a manual he would later refer to as his ''Parliamentary Pocket Book''. Jefferson had also served on the committee appointed to draw up the rules of order for the Continental Congress in 1776. As Vice President he was more than qualified to bring reform to Senatorial procedural matters, and now prompted by the immediate need for such rules of order he would write his 'A Manual of Parliamentary Practice.' a document which the House of Representatives follow to the present day.

With the Quasi-War underway, the Federalists under John Adams started rebuilding the military, levied new taxes, and enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts. Jefferson believed that the Alien and Sedition Acts were an effort to suppress Democratic-Republicans rather than dangerous enemy aliens, although the acts later expired. Jefferson and Madison rallied support by anonymously writing the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, which declared that the federal government had no right to exercise powers not specifically delegated to it by the states. Though the resolutions followed the "interposition" approach of James Madison, Jefferson advocated nullification and at one point drafted a threat for Kentucky to secede. Jefferson's biographer Dumas Malone argued that this might have gotten Jefferson impeached for treason, had his actions become known at the time. In writing the Kentucky Resolutions, Jefferson warned that, "unless arrested at the threshold," the Alien and Sedition Acts would "necessarily drive these states into revolution and blood." Historian Ron Chernow says of this "he wasn't calling for peaceful protests or civil disobedience: he was calling for outright rebellion, if needed, against the federal government of which he was vice president." Jefferson "thus set forth a radical doctrine of states' rights that effectively undermined the constitution." Chernow argues that neither Jefferson nor Madison sensed that they had sponsored measures as inimical as the Alien and Sedition Acts themselves. Historian Garry Wills argued "Their nullification effort, if others had picked it up, would have been a greater threat to freedom than the misguided [alien and sedition] laws, which were soon rendered feckless by ridicule and electoral pressure" The theoretical damage of the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions was "deep and lasting, and was a recipe for disunion". George Washington was so appalled by them that he told Patrick Henry that if "systematically and pertinaciously pursued", they would "dissolve the union or produce coercion". The influence of Jefferson's doctrine of states' rights reverberated right up to the Civil War and beyond. Future president James Garfield, at the close of the Civil War, said that Jefferson's Kentucky Resolution "contained the germ of nullification and secession, and we are today reaping the fruits".

According to historian Ron Chernow, during the Quasi-War Jefferson engaged in a "secret campaign to sabotage Adams in French eyes". He held four confidential talks with French consul Joseph Letombe in the spring of 1797. In his private meetings with Letombe, Jefferson attacked Adams, predicted that he would only serve one term and encouraged France to invade England. Jefferson also advised Letombe to stall any American envoys sent to Paris by instructing them to "listen to them and then drag out the negotiations at length and mollify them by the urbanity of the proceedings." This toughened the tone that the French government adopted with the new Adams Administration. Due to pressure against the Adams Administration on behalf of the French government from Jefferson and his supporters, congress released the papers in connection with the XYZ Affair, which rallied support from Jefferson and the French government to Adams.

Election of 1800

Working closely with Aaron Burr of New York, Jefferson rallied his party, attacking the new taxes especially, and ran for the Presidency in 1800. Before the passage of the Twelfth Amendment, a problem with the new union's electoral system arose.

Hamilton convinced his party that Jefferson would be a lesser political evil than Burr and that such scandal within the electoral process would undermine the new constitution. On February 17, 1801, after thirty-six ballots, the House elected Jefferson President and Burr Vice President.

Jefferson owed his election victory to the South's inflated number of Electors, which counted slaves under the three-fifths compromise. After his election in 1800, some called him the "Negro President", with critics like the ''Mercury and New-England Palladium of Boston'' stating that Jefferson had the gall to celebrate his election as a victory for democracy when he won "the temple of Liberty on the shoulders of slaves."

Presidency 1801–1809

Thomas Jefferson took the oath of office on March 4, 1801, at a time when partisan strife between the Democratic-Republican and Federalist parties was growing to alarming proportions. Regarded by his supporters as the 'People's President' news of Jefferson's election was well received in many parts of the new country and was marked by celebrations throughout the Union. He was sworn in by Chief Justice John Marshall at the new Capitol in Washington DC. In contrast to the preceding president John Adams, Jefferson exhibited a dislike of formal etiquette. Unlike Washington, who arrived at his inauguration in a stagecoach drawn by six cream colored horses, Jefferson arrived alone on horseback without guard or escort. He was dressed plainly and after dismounting, retired his own horse himself.

As a result of his two predecessors, as well as the state of events in Europe, Jefferson inherited the presidency with relatively few urgent problems. Though he and his supporters initially wanted to dismantle several of the accomplishments of his two predecessors, notably the national bank, military, and federal taxation system, his treasury secretary persuaded him not to. In his second term, Jefferson's popularity suffered because the problems he faced, most notably those caused by the wars in Europe, became more difficult to solve. With the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805, Napoleon became more aggressive than ever; most of Jefferson's attempts to negotiate with him were unsuccessful during his second term. Jefferson's presidency is remembered for four major events. First came the purchase of the Louisiana territory from France in 1803, which doubled the size of the United States. A second accomplishment was the defeat of Mediterranean Sea pirates in the First Barbary War. The third occurred during Jefferson's second term, when he proposed legislation (approved by Congress) outlawing the importation of African slaves, as of the earliest date permitted by the U.S. Constitution. The fourth was the Embargo Act of 1807. Due to political attacks against him, in particular those by Alexander Hamilton and his supporters, he used the Alien and Sedition Acts to counter some of these political adversaries. His second term was more troubled than his first term, in part due to growing aggression on the part of Napoleon. Disliking the Jay Treaty, Jefferson instead passed the Embargo Act of 1807 which caused widespread economic problems while not accomplishing its goals, thus hurting his popularity.

Administration, Cabinet and Supreme Court appointments

{{infobox u.s. cabinet |align	left |clearyes |NameJefferson
President	Thomas Jefferson |President start1801 |President end1809
Vice president	Aaron Burr |Vice President start1801 |Vice President end1805
Vice president 2	George Clinton |Vice President start 21805 |Vice President end 21809
State	James Madison |State start1801 |State end1809
Treasury	Samuel Dexter |Treasury date1801
Treasury 2	Albert Gallatin |Treasury start 21801 |Treasury end 21809
War	Henry Dearborn |War start1801 |War end1809
Justice	Levi Lincoln, Sr. |Justice start1801 |Justice end1804
Justice 2	John Breckinridge |Justice start 21805 |Justice end 21806
Justice 3	Caesar A. Rodney |Justice start 31807 |Justice end 31809
Navy	Benjamin Stoddert |Navy date1801
Navy 2	Robert Smith |Navy start 21801 |Navy end 21809 }}

Associate Justice

William Johnson – 1804

Henry Brockholst Livingston – 1807

Thomas Todd – 1807

States admitted to the Union:

Ohio – March 1, 1803

First Barbary War

When Jefferson became president in 1801, the United States was at the time paying $80,000 to the Barbary states as a 'tribute' for protection against North African piracy. For decades, the pirates had been capturing American ships and crew members and demanding huge ransoms for their release. Before Independence, from 1775 until 1783, American merchant ships were protected from the Barbary pirates by the naval and diplomatic influence of Great Britain. When the American Revolution began, American ships were protected by the 1778 alliance with France, which required the French nation to protect "American vessels and effects against all violence, insults, attacks ...". On December 20, 1777, Morocco's Sultan Mohammed III declared that the American merchant ships would be under the protection of the sultanate and could thus enjoy safe passage into the Mediterranean and along the coast. The Moroccan-American Treaty of Friendship stands as the U.S.'s oldest non-broken friendship treaty. The one with Morocco has been the longest-lasting treaty with a foreign power.

After the United States gained independence, it had to protect its own merchant vessels. It also had to pay $80,000 as tribute to the Barbary states, as did Britain and France at this time. When Tripoli made new demands on the new President for a prompt payment of $225,000 and an annual payment of $25,000, Jefferson refused and decided it would be easier to fight the pirates than to continue to pay bribes. On May 10, 1801, the pasha of Tripoli declared war on the United States and the First Barbary War began. As secretary of state and vice president, Jefferson had opposed funds for a Navy to be used for anything more than a coastal defense, however the continued pirate attacks on American shipping interests in the Atlantic and Mediterranean and the systematic kidnapping of American crew members could no longer be ignored. President Jefferson ordered a fleet of naval vessels to various points in the Mediterranean. He forced Tunis and Algiers into breaking their alliance with Tripoli which ultimately forced it out of the fight. Jefferson also ordered five separate naval bombardments of Tripoli, which restored peace in the Mediterranean for a while.

Louisiana Purchase

In 1803 the United States under Jefferson bought the Louisiana Territory from France, doubling the size of the United States. As the exact boundaries of the territory were unsettled, England and Spain continued to make claims to parts of the territory until the time of president James Polk. Most of France's wealth in the New World came from their plantations in Caribbean. When France lost control of these countries a couple of years earlier, the Louisiana territory ceased to be of any value to France, who at the time was escalating its war against the rest of Europe. Jefferson sent James Monroe and Robert R. Livingston to Paris in 1802 to purchase the city of New Orleans and adjacent coastal areas. At the request of Jefferson, a French noblemen named Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours, having close ties with both Jefferson and Napoleon, also helped negotiate the purchase with France. Napoleon offered to sell the entire territory for a price of $15 million, which Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin financed easily. Jefferson acted contrary to his usual requirement of explicit Constitutional authority and the Federalists criticized him for acting without that authority, but most thought that this opportunity could not be missed. On December 20, 1803 the French flag was lowered in New Orleans and the U.S. flag raised, symbolizing the transfer of the Louisiana territory from France to the United States.

Politically, the Louisiana Purchase would prove to be one of the most consequential executive decisions in American history, although it wouldn't be finally secured until England and Mexico gave up their claims to it during the presidency of James Polk. Without realizing it at the time Jefferson had purchased one of the largest fertile tracts of land on the planet. The purchase also changed the new nation's national security strategy by removing French imperial ambitions in America. Opinions vary among historians as to who was the principal player in the purchase, some believing it was Napoleon, while others give credit to Jefferson, his secretary of state James Madison, and his negotiator James Monroe. Others agree with Alexander Hamilton, Jefferson's arch rival, and attribute it to "dumb luck". Still others concur that it was all of these things. Historian George Herring has said that while this was somewhat the result of Jefferson and Madison's "shrewd and sometimes belligerent diplomacy", that it "is often and rightly regarded as a diplomatic windfall-the result of accident, luck, and the whim of Napoleon Bonaparte".

Lewis and Clark Expedition

Jefferson had an avid interest in the sciences and had long entertained ideas of exploring the American frontier before Louisiana was purchased from France. As such Jefferson was a member of the American Philosophical Society, founded in Philadelphia in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin, and served as its President from 1797 to 1815. By the turn of the 19th century, the society was well established and staffed, and equipped for research. Jefferson made use of its resources by sending Meriwether Lewis to Philadelphia in 1803 for instruction at the Society in botany, mathematics, surveying, astronomy, chemistry and map making, among other subjects. On January 18, 1803, Jefferson sent a confidential letter to Congress asking for $2,500 to fund an expedition through the West; on February 28, 1803, Congress appropriated the necessary funds.

In 1804 Jefferson appointed Meriwether Lewis and William Clark as leaders of the expedition (1804–1806), which explored the Louisiana Territory and beyond, producing a wealth of scientific and geographical knowledge, and ultimately contributing to the European-American settlement of the West. Knowledge of the western part of the continent had been scant and incomplete, limited to what had been learned from trappers, traders, and explorers. This was the first official American military expedition to the Pacific Coast. Lewis and Clark, for whom the expedition became known, recruited the 45 men to accompany them, and spent a winter training them for the effort.

The expedition had several goals, including finding a "direct & practicable water communication across this continent, for the purposes of commerce" (the long-sought Northwest Passage). They were to follow and map the rivers, and collect scientific data. Jefferson wanted to establish a US claim of "discovery" of the Pacific Northwest by mapping and documenting a United States presence there before Europeans could get a chance to claim the land. The expedition reached the Pacific Ocean by November 1805. With its return in 1806, it had fulfilled Jefferson's hopes by amassing much new data about the topographical features of the county and its natural resources, with details on the flora and fauna, as well as the many Indian tribes of the West with which he hoped to increase trading.

Jefferson also commissioned the Pike Expedition to explore the central region of the Louisiana Purchase, and the Red River Expedition, which was less successful.

West Point

Ideas for a national institution for military education were founded during the American Revolution, but it wasn't until 1802 when Jefferson, following the advice of George Washington, John Adams and others, finally convinced Congress to authorize the funding and building of the United States Military Academy at West Point on the Hudson River in New York. On March 16, 1802, Jefferson signed the Military Peace Establishment Act, directing that a corps of engineers be established and "stationed at West Point in the state of New York, and shall constitute a Military Academy." The Act would provide well-trained officers for a professional army. The officers would be reliable republicans rather than a closed elite as in Europe, for the cadets were to be appointed by Congressmen, and thus exactly reflect the nation's politics. In May 1801 Secretary of War Henry Dearborn announced that the president had "decided in favor of the immediate establishment of a military school at West Point and also on the appointment of Major Jonathan Williams", grandnephew of Benjamin Franklin, to direct "the necessary arrangements, at that place for the commencement of the school." On July 4, 1802, the US Military Academy at West Point formally commenced its role as an institution for scientific and military learning.

In 1807, the United States Congress, acting on Jefferson's request, passed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves. Jefferson signed the act and it went into effect January 1, 1808, the earliest date permitted by the United States Constitution for any law regulating slavery. The act made international import and export of slaves a crime with severe punishments; it did not apply to the internal slave trade.

Embargo

The Embargo Act was passed in 1807 to maintain American neutrality in the Napoleonic Wars. Jefferson hoped to avoid national humiliation on the one hand, and war on the other. In the event he got both war and national humiliation; the economy of the entire Northeast suffered severely, the president was vehemently denounced,, and his party lost support. Instead of retreating Jefferson sent federal agents to secretly track down smugglers and violators.

The embargo was a financial disaster because the Americans could not export, while widespread disregard of the law meant enforcement was difficult. For the most part it effectively throttled American overseas trade. All areas of the United States suffered. In commercial New England and the Middle Atlantic states, ships rotted at the wharves, and in the agricultural areas, particularly in the South, farmers and planters could not dispose of their crops. Jefferson's Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin was against the entire embargo, foreseeing correctly the impossibility of enforcing the policy and the negative public reaction. "As to the hope that it may...induce England to treat us better," wrote Gallatin to Jefferson shortly after the bill had become law, "I think is entirely groundless...government prohibitions do always more mischief than had been calculated; and it is not without much hesitation that a statesman should hazard to regulate the concerns of individuals as if he could do it better than themselves."

Jefferson placed himself in a strange position with his embargo policy. Though he had so frequently argued for as small a federal government as possible, he now found the national government assuming extraordinary police powers in an attempt to enforce his policy. The presidential election of 1808, which James Madison won, showed that the Federalists were regaining strength, and helped to convince Congress that the Embargo would have to be repealed. Shortly before leaving office, in March 1809, Jefferson signed the repeal of the disastrous Embargo. In its place the Nonintercourse Act was enacted which proved no more effective than the Embargo, and it proved impossible to prevent American vessels from trading with the European belligerents once they had left American ports. Jefferson increasingly believed the problem was the greedy traders and merchants who lacked republican virtue by not complying.

Historians have generally given Jefferson poor marks on his embargo policy. Cogliano (2008) notes that the failure of the Embargo "reinforced the view that Jefferson had been lucky rather than adroit during the earlier negotiations." Doron Ben Atar (1993) argued that Jefferson's commercial and foreign policies were misguided, ineffective and harmful to American interests. Kaplan (1957) argued that the War of 1812 was the logical extension of his embargo, and that by entering the Napoleonic Wars on anti-British side, the United States deprived itself of the advantages of neutrality. Kaplan adds, "The results were a personal disaster for Jefferson and general malaise and confusion for the nation."Bradford Perkins (1980) concluded Jefferson was on this issue, "a wavering, miscalculating, and self-deluding man."

Other involvements

He obtained the repeal of some federal taxes in his bid to rely more on customs revenue. He pardoned several people imprisoned under the Alien and Sedition Acts, passed in John Adams' term. He repealed the Judiciary Act of 1801 and removed nearly all of Adams' "midnight judges" from office, which led to the Supreme Court deciding the important case of ''Marbury v. Madison''. He also signed into law a bill that officially segregated the US postal system by not allowing blacks to carry mail.

Father of a university

After leaving the Presidency, Jefferson continued to be active in public affairs. He wanted to found a new institution of higher learning, specifically one free of church influences, where students could specialize in many new areas not offered at other universities. Jefferson believed educating people was a good way to establish an organized society. He believed such schools should be paid for by the general public, so less wealthy people could be educated as students. A letter to Joseph Priestley, in January 1800, indicated that he had been planning the University for decades before its founding.

In 1819 he founded the University of Virginia. Upon its opening in 1825, it was the first university to offer a full slate of elective courses to its students. One of the largest construction projects to that time in North America, the university was notable for being centered about a library rather than a church. No campus chapel was included in Jefferson's original plans. Until his death, Jefferson invited students and faculty of the college to his home.

Jefferson is widely recognized for his planning of the University grounds. Its innovative design was an expression of his aspirations for both state-sponsored education and an agrarian democracy in the new Republic. His educational idea of creating specialized units of learning is expressed in the configuration of his campus plan, which he called the "Academical Village". Individual academic units were defined as distinct structures, represented by Pavilions, facing a grassy quadrangle. Each Pavilion housed classroom, faculty office, and residences. Though distinctive, each is visually equal in importance, and they are linked with a series of open-air arcades that are the front facades of student accommodations. Gardens and vegetable plots are placed behind and surrounded by serpentine walls, affirming the importance of the agrarian lifestyle.

His highly ordered site plan establishes an ensemble of buildings surrounding a central rectangular quadrangle, named The Lawn, which is lined on either side with the academic teaching units and their linking arcades. The quad is enclosed at one end with the library, the repository of knowledge, at the head of the table. The remaining side opposite the library remained open-ended for future growth. The lawn rises gradually as a series of stepped terraces, each a few feet higher than the last, rising up to the library set in the most prominent position at the top, while also suggesting that the Academical Village facilitates easier movement to the future.

Stylistically, Jefferson was a proponent of the Greek and Roman styles, which he believed to be most representative of American democracy by historical association. Each academic unit is designed with a two story temple front facing the quadrangle, while the library is modeled on the Roman Pantheon. The ensemble of buildings surrounding the quad is an unmistakable architectural statement of the importance of secular public education, while the exclusion of religious structures reinforces the principle of separation of church and state. The campus planning and architectural treatment remains today as a paradigm of building of structures to express intellectual ideas and aspirations. A survey of members of the American Institute of Architects identified Jefferson's campus as the most significant work of architecture in America.

The University was designed as the capstone of the educational system of Virginia. In his vision, any citizen of the state could attend school with the sole criterion being ability.

Slavery

Biographers such as Dumas Malone and Merrill Peterson have portrayed Jefferson as anti-slavery in that he hated slavery, opposed it as an institution, tried to end it in the territories, and successfully criminalized the international slave trade in 1807. However, historians such as David Brion Davis and Paul Finkelman, have noted his failure to free slaves he owned, even at his death. His views, like most of his contemporaries, changed over time. Earlier in his life he opposed slavery as an institution and said he wanted it to end, though later he became a stronger defender of the institution, and increasingly articulated defenses for the institution predicated on his views of racial inferiority. Regardless, he depended on enslaved labor to support his household and his plantations. His first public attack on slavery came in 1774; when he was chosen in 1776 to draft the Declaration of Independence, his opposition to slavery was well known. Junius P. Rodriguez says, "All aspects of Jefferson's public career suggest an opposition to slavery." Peter Onuf points to "his well-known opposition to slavery, most famously expressed in... his ''Notes on the state of Virginia'' (1785). Jefferson called slavery an "abominable crime," and a "moral depravity". David Brion Davis said that by 1784 Jefferson was "one of the first statesman in any part of the world to advocate concrete measures for restricting and eradicating Negro slavery." But Davis also noted that after the planter returned to the US from France in 1789, "the most remarkable thing about Jefferson's stand on slavery is his immense silence." Paul Finkelman noted Jefferson's lack of action after this date in terms of correcting or ending the institution. He said Jefferson's greatest failing was "his inability to join the best of his generation in fighting slavery and in his working instead to prevent any significant change in America's racial status quo."

In his first draft of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson condemned the British crown for the slave trade. He also condemned the King for "inciting American Negroes to rise in arms against their masters", related to the Crown's promise of freedom for slaves who fought for the British in the Revolution. At the request of delegates from South Carolina and Georgia, this language was dropped from the Declaration.

From the mid-1770s, Jefferson advocated a plan of gradual emancipation, in Virginia, by which children of slaves would be freed. But he did not advance legislation for it while in the assembly. During the 1770s as a Virginia legislator, Jefferson also wrote bills to prevent free blacks from living in or moving into Virginia, and to punish interracial relations. Jefferson believed that free blacks should be deported and replaced with white settlers. He feared free blacks would encourage a rebellion by slaves against whites. He proposed policies to prepare slaves for freedom: education, emancipation, and transportation of the freedmen to Africa.

In 1778 Jefferson pushed a bill through the Virginia legislature—one of the first of its kind in modern history—to ban further importation of slaves into the state. Davis says that abolitionists assumed "that an end to slave imports would lead automatically to the amelioration and gradual abolition of slavery." Many slave owners opposed the international slave trade, while still supporting slavery. Ending the importation benefited slaveholders because it increased the value of slaves and decreased the chances of slave rebellion associated with new arrivals.

As a Virginia legislator, Jefferson failed to lead on gradual emancipation and discouraged efforts to include it in law. After he left the Assembly, in 1782 Virginia "easily adopted a law allowing private manumission." Maryland and Delaware passed similar laws as part of the post-Revolutionary War trend toward increased freedoms. In the two decades after the Revolution, in Virginia the number of free blacks climbed from less than one percent in 1782, to 4.2 percent in 1790, and 7.2 percent in 1810. In Delaware, three-quarters of blacks were free by 1810. In these two decades, numerous slaveholders were moved by ideals to free their slaves, either during their lives or by deed of will. In this period, Jefferson nominally freed only two slaves: he allowed Robert Hemings to purchase his freedom at market rates in 1794; and he freed his younger brother James Hemings in 1796, after requiring him to train his brother Peter for three years as a chef.

In 1784, Jefferson wrote an ordinance banning slavery in all the nation's territories (not just the Northwest), but it failed by one vote. While he was in France as US minister, the US Congress adopted a version that banned slavery in the Northwest Territory (north of the Ohio River). He was a leader in abolishing the international slave trade, both for Virginia (1778) and the nation as a whole (1808).

During his presidential term, Jefferson was disappointed that the younger generation was making no move to abolish slavery, but he kept silent. In December 1806 in his presidential message to Congress, he called for a law to ban the international slave trade as required by the U.S. Constitution. He denounced the trade as "violations of human rights which have been so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, in which the morality, the reputation, and the best interests of our country have long been eager to proscribe." Jefferson signed the bill passed by Congress, and the international trade became illegal in January 1808. By that time only South Carolina had been officially importing slaves. Illegal smuggling continued for decades.

Views of slaves and blacks

Jefferson inherited slaves as a child, and owned upwards of 700 different people at one time or another. The historian Herbert E. Sloan says that Jefferson's debt prevented his freeing his slaves, but Finkelman says that freeing slaves was "not even a mildly important goal" of Jefferson, who preferred to spend lavishly on luxury goods like wine and French chairs.

As was typical of planters, Jefferson made decisions about breaking up families when he gave slaves to his sisters and daughters as wedding presents. He considered children over the age of 10 or 12, when they began working on the plantation, as ready to leave their families. For instance, he gave the 14-year-old Betsy Hemmings and 30 other slaves to his daughter Mary Jefferson Eppes and her husband on the occasion of her marriage. From 1784-1794, he gave away or sold 161 slaves from Monticello.

Isaac Jefferson learned tinsmithing and nailmaking while held as a slave by Jefferson. Born into slavery in 1775, in 1847 he was interviewed as a free man by the author and historian Charles Campbell. The material remained unpublished until 1951 when Raymond Logan edited it into ''Memoirs of a Monticello Slave''. Isaac Jefferson's account provided valuable details to historians about daily life and family relationships at Monticello.

According to the historian Stephen Ambrose: "Jefferson, like all slaveholders and many others, regarded Negroes as inferior, childlike, untrustworthy and, of course, as property." He believed they were inferior to whites in reasoning, mathematical comprehension, and imagination. Jefferson thought these "differences" were "fixed in nature" and was not dependent on their freedom or education. He thought such differences created "innate inferiority of Blacks compared to Whites". In ''Notes on the State of Virginia'', Jefferson claimed that blacks prefer the beauty of whites over other blacks, and cited "the preferences of the Orangutan for the black woman over those of his own species".

Jefferson did not believe that African Americans could live in American society as free people together with whites. For a long-term solution, he thought that slaves should be freed after reaching maturity and having repaid their owner's investment; afterward, he thought they should be sent to African colonies in what he considered "repatriation", despite their being American-born. Otherwise, he thought the presence of free blacks would encourage a violent uprising by slaves' looking for freedom. Jefferson expressed his fear of slave rebellion: "We have the wolf by the ears; and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other."

In 1809, he wrote to Abbé Grégoire, whose book argued against Jefferson's claims of black inferiority in ''Notes on the State of Virginia''. Jefferson said blacks had "respectable intelligence", but did not alter his views. In August 1814 the planter Edward Coles and Jefferson corresponded about Coles' ideas on emancipation. Jefferson urged Coles not to free his slaves, but the younger man took all his slaves to the Illinois and freed them, providing them with land for farms.

Interests, activities, inventions, and improvements

Jefferson was a farmer, with a lifelong interest in mechanical innovations, new crops, soil conditions, and scientific agricultural techniques. He took special interest in his gardens. His main cash crop was tobacco, but its price was usually low and it was rarely profitable. He tried to achieve self-sufficiency with wheat, vegetables, flax, corn, hogs, sheep, poultry and cattle to feed and clothe his family, slaves and white employees, but he had cash flow problems and was always in debt.

Jefferson had a love for reading and collected thousands of books in his personal library. Jefferson stated that he could not "live without books" and that he had a "canine appetite for reading." By 1815, his library included 6,487 books, which he sold to the Library of Congress to replace the smaller collection destroyed in the War of 1812. In honor of Jefferson's contribution, the library's website for federal legislative information was named THOMAS. In 2007, Jefferson's two-volume 1764 edition of the Qur'an was used by Rep. Keith Ellison for his swearing in to the House of Representatives. In February 2011 the ''New York Times'' reported that a part of Jefferson's retirement library, containing 74 volumes with 28 book titles, was discovered at Washington University in St. Louis.

Jefferson was an accomplished architect who helped popularize the Neo-Palladian style in the United States. Modern scholarship indicates that hemp was a secondary crop at Monticello, but there is no evidence that Jefferson used the plant for smoking. Jefferson was interested in birds and wine, and was a noted gourmet. Jefferson was a prolific writer. He learned Gaelic to translate Ossian, and sent to James Macpherson for the originals.

Jefferson invented many small practical devices and improved contemporary inventions. These include the design for a revolving book-stand to hold five volumes at once to be viewed by the reader. Another was the "Great Clock", powered by the Earth's gravitational pull on Revolutionary War cannonballs. Its chime on Monticello's roof could be heard as far as the University of Virginia. Louis Leschot, a machinist, aided Jefferson with the clock. Jefferson invented a 15 cm long coded wooden cypher wheel, mounted on a metal spindle, to keep secure State Department messages while he was Secretary of State. The messages were scrambled and unscrambled by 26 alphabet letters on each circular segment of the wheel. He improved the moldboard plow and the polygraph, in collaboration with Charles Willson Peale.

Political philosophy and views

Jefferson idealized the independent yeoman as the best exemplar of republican virtues, distrusted cities and financiers, and favored states' rights and a strictly limited federal government, though he suspended his qualms to buy Louisiana. Jefferson detested the European system of established churches and called for a wall of separation between church and state; he helped disestablish the Anglican Church in Virginia, and was the author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1779, 1786). Jefferson sponsored Jeffersonian democracy; his Democratic-Republican Party, dominated American politics for 25 years.

Jefferson was a leader in developing republicanism in the United States. He insisted that the British aristocratic system was inherently corrupt and that Americans' devotion to civic virtue required independence. Jefferson's vision was that of an agricultural nation of yeoman farmers minding their own affairs.

Jefferson's republican political principles were heavily influenced by the Country Party of 18th century British opposition writers. He was influenced by John Locke (particularly relating to the principle of inalienable rights).

Jefferson had a decided dislike and distrust of banks and bankers and opposed borrowing from banks because he believed it created long-term debt as well as monopolies, and inclined the people to dangerous speculation, as opposed to productive labor on the farm.

Jefferson believed that each man has "certain inalienable rights". He defines the right of "liberty" by saying, "Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others..." A proper government, for Jefferson, is one that not only prohibits individuals in society from infringing on the liberty of other individuals, but also restrains itself from diminishing individual liberty.

Like almost all political thinkers of his day Jefferson did not support gender equality, and opposed female involvement in politics, saying that "our good ladies ... are contented to soothe and calm the minds of their husbands returning ruffled from political debate."

Democracy

There is no dispute that Jefferson is a major iconic figure in the emergence of democracy—he was the "agrarian democrat" who shaped the thinking of his nation and the world. As historian Vernon Louis Parrington concluded in 1927: :"Far more completely than any other American of his generation he embodied the idealisms of the great revolution -- its faith in human nature, its economic individualism, its conviction that here in America, through the instrumentality of political democracy, the lot of the common man should somehow be made better." Jefferson's concepts of democracy were rooted in The Enlightenment, as Peter Onuf has stressed. He envisioned democracy an expression of society as a whole, calling for national self-determination, cultural uniformity, and based upon the education of the all the people. The emphasis on uniformity allowed no opportunity for a multiracial republic in which some groups were not fully assimilated into the identical republican values. Onuf argues that Jefferson was unable and unwilling to abolish slavery until a such demand could issue naturally from the sensibilities of the entire people. Gordon Wood (2009) concluded that Jefferson personified American ideals: "His ideas about liberty and democracy left such a deep imprint on the future of his country that, despite persistent attempts to discredit his reputation, as long as there is a United States he will remain the supreme spokesman for the nation's noblest ideals and highest aspirations." Public education and a free press was essential to a democratic nation: "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free it expects what never was and never will be....The people cannot be safe without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.

Foreign policy

According to Tucker and Hendrickson (1992) Jefferson believed America "was the bearer of a new diplomacy, founded on the confidence of a free and virtuous people, that would secure ends based on the natural and universal rights of man, by means that escaped war and its corruptions." Jefferson sought a radical break from the traditional European emphasis on "reason of state" (which could justify any action) and the traditional priority of foreign policy and the needs of the ruling family over the needs of the people.

Jefferson envisaged America becoming the world's great "empire of liberty"--that is, the model for democracy and republicanism. He identified his nation as a beacon to the world, for, he said on departing the presidency in 1809, America was: :"Trusted with the destinies of this solitary republic of the world, the only monument of human rights, and the sole depository of the sacred fire of freedom and self-government, from hence it is to be lighted up in other regions of the earth, if other regions of the earth shall ever become susceptible of its benign influence."

He saw Britain as America's great enemy because it was the base for successful aristocracy and antipathy to democracy, while France, at least in the early stages of the French Revolution, appeared to Jefferson to be an ideal solution to Europe's malaise. He said, "The liberty of the whole world was depending on the issue of the contest." He never wanted war. The paradox was that Britain was much more powerful and was the leading trading partner of the U.S., so that the sort of economic warfare he proposed would hurt the American economy.

Rebellion

In the 1780s Jefferson saw occasional upheaval as a natural event. In a letter to James Madison on January 30, 1787, Jefferson wrote, "A little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical...It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government." Similarly, in a letter to Abigail Adams on February 22, 1787 he wrote, "The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all." Concerning Shays' Rebellion after he had heard of the bloodshed, on November 13, 1787 Jefferson wrote to William S. Smith, John Adams' son-in-law, "What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must from time to time be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." In another letter to William S. Smith during 1787, Jefferson wrote: "And what country can preserve its liberties, if the rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms."

Religion

Jefferson rejected the orthodox Christianity of his day and was especially hostile to the Catholic Church as he saw it operate in France. Throughout his life Jefferson was intensely interested in theology, biblical study, and morality. As a landowner he played a role in governing his local Episcopal Church; in terms of belief he was inclined toward the religious philosophy of Christianity:

In private letters, Jefferson refers to himself as "Christian" (1803): "To the corruptions of Christianity I am, indeed, opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence....

Jefferson believed in the moral teachings of Christ and edited a compilation of Christ's teachings leaving out the miracles. Jefferson was firmly anticlerical saying that in "every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot...they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer for their purposes."

Jefferson rejected the idea of immaterial beings and considered the idea of an immaterial Creator a heresy introduced into Christianity. He held to the view that God was a material being, stating in a letter to John Adams that "[t]o talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings." He, instead, held to a belief that all things that existed were material, including God. In the same letter to Adams he continues: "At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But a heresy it certainly is. Jesus taught nothing of it. He told us indeed that 'God is a spirit,' but he has not defined what a spirit is, nor said that it is not matter. And the antient fathers generally, if not universally, held it to be matter: light and thin indeed, an etherial gas; but still matter."

Native American policy

Between 1776 and 1779, while governor of Virginia during the Revolutionary War, Jefferson recommended forcibly moving Cherokee and Shawnee tribes that fought on the British side to lands west of the Mississippi River. Later, Jefferson was the first President to propose the idea of Indian Removal. He laid out an approach to Indian removal in a series of private letters that began in 1803 (for example, see letter to William Henry Harrison below). His first such act as president was to make a deal with the state of Georgia: if Georgia were to release its legal claims to discovery in lands to its west, the U.S. military would help forcefully expel the Cherokee people from Georgia. At the time, the Cherokee Nation had a treaty with the United States government which guaranteed its people the right to their lands, which was violated by Jefferson's deal with Georgia.

Acculturation and assimilation

Jefferson's original plan was for Natives to give up their own cultures, religions, and lifestyles in favor of western European culture, Christian religion, and a European-style agricultural lifestyle.

Jefferson believed that their assimilation into the European-American economy would make them more dependent on trade with white Americans, and would eventually thereby be willing to give up land that they would otherwise not part with, in exchange for trade goods or to resolve unpaid debts. In an 1803 letter to William Henry Harrison, Jefferson wrote:

:To promote this disposition to exchange lands, which they have to spare and we want, for necessaries, which we have to spare and they want, we shall push our trading uses, and be glad to see the good and influential individuals among them run in debt, because we observe that when these debts get beyond what the individuals can pay, they become willing to lop them off by a cession of lands.... In this way our settlements will gradually circumscribe and approach the Indians, and they will in time either incorporate with us as citizens of the United States, or remove beyond the Mississippi. The former is certainly the termination of their history most happy for themselves; but, in the whole course of this, it is essential to cultivate their love. As to their fear, we presume that our strength and their weakness is now so visible that they must see we have only to shut our hand to crush them, and that all our liberalities to them proceed from motives of pure humanity only. Should any tribe be foolhardy enough to take up the hatchet at any time, the seizing the whole country of that tribe, and driving them across the Mississippi, as the only condition of peace, would be an example to others, and a furtherance of our final consolidation.

Forced Indian relocation

With the colonial and native civilizations in collision compounded by British incitement of Indian tribes and mounting hostilities between the two peoples quick measures were resorted to so as to avert another major conflict and measures were taken to forcefully relocate the various Indian tribes to points further west. Jefferson relates his feelings of the affair in a letter to Alexander von Humboldt in 1813:

:You know, my friend, the benevolent plan we were pursuing here for the happiness of the aboriginal inhabitants in our vicinities. We spared nothing to keep them at peace with one another. To teach them agriculture and the rudiments of the most necessary arts, and to encourage industry by establishing among them separate property. In this way they would have been enabled to subsist and multiply on a moderate scale of landed possession. They would have mixed their blood with ours, and been amalgamated and identified with us within no distant period of time. On the commencement of our present war, we pressed on them the observance of peace and neutrality, but the interested and unprincipled policy of England has defeated all our labors for the salvation of these unfortunate people. They have seduced the greater part of the tribes within our neighborhood, to take up the hatchet against us, and the cruel massacres they have committed on the women and children of our frontiers taken by surprise, will oblige us now to pursue them to extermination, or drive them to new seats beyond our reach.

Jefferson believed assimilation was best for Native Americans; second best was removal to the west. The worst possible outcome would happen if Native Americans attacked the whites. He told his Secretary of War, General Henry Dearborn (who was the primary government official responsible for Indian affairs): "if we are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe, we will never lay it down until that tribe is exterminated, or driven beyond the Mississipi."

Death

Jefferson' health began to deteriorate by July 1825, and by June 1826 he was confined to bed. His death was from natural causes, a combination of illnesses and conditions including uremia, severe diarrhea, and pneumonia. Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and a few hours before John Adams.

Though born into a wealthy slave-owning family, Jefferson had many financial problems, and died deeply in debt. He gave instructions for disposal of his assets in his Will and after his death, his possessions (including the persons he held as slaves) were sold off in public auctions starting in 1827, Monticello itself was sold in 1831. Thomas Jefferson is buried in the family cemetery at Monticello. The cemetery only is now owned and operated by the Monticello Association, a separate lineage society that is not affiliated with the Thomas Jefferson Foundation that runs the estate.

Jefferson wrote his own epitaph, which reads:

Legacy

Memorials and Honors

Jefferson has been memorialized in many ways, including buildings, sculptures, and currency. The Jefferson Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C. on April 13, 1943, the 200th anniversary of Jefferson's birth. The interior of the memorial includes a statue of Jefferson and engravings of passages from his writings. Most prominent are the words which are inscribed around the monument near the roof: "I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man".

Thomas Jefferson has been honored on U.S. postage since the first Jefferson postage stamp was released in 1856. Jefferson was the second president to be featured on U.S. Postage. His portrait appears on the U.S. $2 bill, nickel, and the $100 Series EE Savings Bond, and a Presidential Dollar which released into circulation on August 16, 2007.

His original tombstone, now a cenotaph, is located on the campus in the University of Missouri's [[David R. Francis Quadrangle| Quadrangle]]. A life mask of Jefferson was created by John Henri Isaac Browere in the 1820s.

Jefferson, together with George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, was chosen by sculptor Gutzon Borglum and approved by President Calvin Coolidge to be depicted in stone at the Mount Rushmore Memorial. Other memorials to Jefferson include the commissioning of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ship ''Thomas Jefferson'' in Norfolk, Virginia on July 8, 2003, in commemoration of his establishment of a Survey of the Coast, the predecessor to NOAA's National Ocean Service; and the placement of a bronze monument in Jefferson Park, Chicago at the entrance to the Jefferson Park Transit Center along Milwaukee Avenue in 2005.

Reputation

Jefferson has often been seen as a major American icon of liberty, democracy and republicanism. Many have hailed him as one of the most articulate spokesmen of the American Revolution, and as a renaissance man who promoted science and scholarship. He is seen by many as having championed a political philosophy that has retained its power over the centuries. Abraham Lincoln cited Jefferson when articulating his own philosophy of liberty and equality in the battle against slavery. Lincoln used the natural rights precepts of the Declaration of Independence as his guide to a better Union. He once said that Jefferson was "the most distinguished politician in our history."

During the New Deal era of the 1930s, Democrats honored Jefferson and Andrew Jackson as their party's founding fathers and continued inspiration. He was portrayed as the spokesman for democracy and the common man and archfoe of Hamilton, portrayed as the front man for bankers and aristocrats. President Franklin D. Roosevelt took the lead in building his monument in Washington.

Historian Gordon Wood has noted how the views of Jefferson and the other founders have changed as the values of the modern age have changed. He argues that during the progressive era of the late 19th and early 20th century, when scholars saw revolutionary America as a struggle between "haves" and "have nots", Jefferson's reputation reached new heights as his presidency was seen as the final defeat of the moneyed classes. Wood argues that this predominated until the 1940s, when the progressive era view fell from favor, and thus Jefferson's reputation declined from its prior heights. As modern historians see slavery as a greater evil than the mercantilism that Jefferson's adversaries championed (a view without consensus until recently), Wood argues, Jefferson's legacy in recent decades has come under further scrutiny and criticism.

After the Civil Rights Revolution came a reappraisal focused on race. Some historians expressed dismay at his harsh treatment of Native Americans, while others have been more forgiving. There is also dismay about his opposition to a biracial society, and his views on blacks and their supposed racial inferiority. The likelihood of his relationship with Sally Hemings, a slave who was three-quarters white, and his "shadow family" by her suggests he kept his privacy and was a complex man of apparent contradictions. Jefferson's legacy as a champion of Enlightenment ideals has been challenged by modern historians who find his ownership of hundreds of slaves at Monticello to be in contradiction to his views on freedom and the equality of men. Historian Peter Onuf stated that "Jefferson's failure to address the problem of slavery generally and the situation of his own human chattel...is in itself the most damning possible commentary on his iconic standing as 'apostle of freedom'." The historian Clarence E. Walker said that Jefferson could rationalize being a slave owner and defender of freedom since he believed blacks were inferior and needed supervision.

Writings

''A Summary View of the Rights of British America'' (1774)

''Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms'' (1775)

''Memorandums taken on a journey from Paris into the southern parts of France and Northern Italy, in the year 1787''

''Notes on the State of Virginia'' (1781)

''Manual of Parliamentary Practice for the Use of the Senate of the United States'' (1801)

''Autobiography'' (1821)

''Jefferson Bible, or The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth''

See also

Jeffersonian democracy

Maria Cosway

Monticello Association

Uriah P. Levy

Jefferson Levy

France in the American Revolutionary War

Founding Fathers of the United States

US Presidents on US postage stamps

List of Presidents of the United States

Notes

Bibliography

Biographical

Appleby, Joyce. ''Thomas Jefferson'' (2003), short interpretive essay by leading scholar.

Bernstein, R. B. ''Thomas Jefferson''. (2003) Well-regarded short biography.

Brodie, Fawn McKay. ''Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History'', W.W. Norton, 1974,the "first extensive investigation of the Sally Hemings story".

Burstein, Andrew. ''Jefferson's Secrets: Death and Desire at Monticello'', New York: Basic Books, 2005

Gordon-Reed, Annette. ''Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American controversy'',Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia Press, 1997 (reprint 1998 to include discussion of DNA analysis)

Cunningham, Noble E. ''In Pursuit of Reason'' (1988) well-reviewed short biography.

Crawford, Alan Pell, ''Twilight at Monticello'', Random House, New York, (2008)

Ellis, Joseph. ''American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson'' (1996).Prize-winning essays; assumes prior reading of his biography. Gordon-Reed, Annette. ''Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American controversy'',Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia Press, 1997 (reprint 1998 to include discussion of DNA analysis) , short biography. Malone, Dumas. ''Jefferson and His Time'', 6 vols. (1948–82). Multi-volume biography of TJ by leading expert; A short version is online.

Padover, Saul K. ''Jefferson: A Great American's Life and Ideas''

A standard scholarly biography. Peterson, Merrill D. (ed.) ''Thomas Jefferson: A Reference Biography'' (1986),24 essays by leading scholars on aspects of Jefferson's career. Abook detailing Thomas Jefferson's love of music. 2 volumes.

Scharff, Virginia. ''The Women Jefferson Loved'' (2010)

Politics and ideas

Ackerman, Bruce. ''The Failure of the Founding Fathers: Jefferson, Marshall, and the Rise of Presidential Democracy.'' (2005)

Adams, Henry. ''History of the United States of America during the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson'' (1889; Library of America edition 1986) famous 4-volume history

* Wills, Garry, ''Henry Adams and the Making of America'' (2005), detailed analysis of Adams' ''History''

Banning, Lance. ''The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology'' (1978)

Channing; Edward. ''The Jeffersonian System: 1801–1811'' (1906), "American Nation" survey of political history

Dunn, Susan. ''Jefferson's Second Revolution: The Election Crisis of 1800 and the Triumph of Republicanism'' (2004)

Elkins, Stanley and Eric McKitrick. ''The Age of Federalism'' (1995) in-depth coverage of politics of 1790s

Fatovic, Clement. "Constitutionalism and Presidential Prerogative: Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian Perspectives." '': American Journal of Political Science,'' 2004 48(3): 429–444. Issn: 0092-5853 Fulltext: in Swetswise, Ingenta, Jstor, and Ebsco

Finkelman, Paul. ''Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson'' (2001), esp ch 6–7

Hatzenbuehler, Ronald L. ''"I Tremble for My Country": Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia Gentry,'' (University Press of Florida; 206 pages; 2007). Argues that the TJ's critique of his fellow gentry in Virginia masked his own reluctance to change

Horn, James P. P. Jan Ellen Lewis, and Peter S. Onuf, eds. ''The Revolution of 1800: Democracy, Race, and the New Republic'' (2002) 17 essays by scholars

Jayne, Allen. ''Jefferson's Declaration of Independence: Origins, Philosophy and Theology'' (2000); traces TJ's sources and emphasizes his incorporation of Deist theology into the Declaration.

Roger G. Kennedy. ''Mr. Jefferson's Lost Cause: Land, Farmers, Slavery, and the Louisiana Purchase'' (2003).

Knudson, Jerry W. ''Jefferson and the Press: Crucible of Liberty.'' (2006)

Lewis, Jan Ellen, and Onuf, Peter S., eds. ''Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, Civic Culture''. (1999)

McDonald, Forrest. ''The Presidency of Thomas Jefferson'' (1987) intellectual history approach to Jefferson's Presidency

Matthews, Richard K. "The Radical Political Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson: An Essay in Retrieval," ''Midwest Studies in Philosophy,'' XXVIII (2004)

Mayer, David N. ''The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson'' (2000)

Onuf, Peter S., "Every Generation Is An 'Independant Nation': Colonization, Miscegenation and the Fate of Jefferson's Children", ''William and Mary Quarterly'', Vol. LVII, No.1, January 2000, JSTOR

Onuf, Peter S. ''Jefferson's Empire: The Languages of American Nationhood''. (2000). Online review

Onuf, Peter. "Thomas Jefferson, Federalist" (1993) online journal essay

Rahe, Paul A. "Thomas Jefferson's Machiavellian Political Science". ''Review of Politics'' 1995 57(3): 449–481. ISSN 0034–6705 Fulltext online at Jstor and Ebsco.

Sears, Louis Martin. ''Jefferson and the Embargo'' (1927), state by state impact

Sloan, Herbert J. ''Principle and Interest: Thomas Jefferson and the Problem of Debt'' (1995). Shows the burden of debt in Jefferson's personal finances and political thought.

Smelser, Marshall. ''The Democratic Republic: 1801–1815'' (1968). "New American Nation" survey of political and diplomatic history

Staloff, Darren. ''Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson: The Politics of Enlightenment and the American Founding.'' (2005)

Tucker, Robert W. and David C. Hendrickson. ''Empire of Liberty: The Statecraft of Thomas Jefferson'' (1992); called "probably the most important study of the theory & means of Jefferson's foreign policy. by Cogliano, ''Thomas Jefferson: reputation and legacy'' (2008) p. 237

Urofsky, Melvin I. "Thomas Jefferson and John Marshall: What Kind of Constitution Shall We Have?" ''Journal of Supreme Court History'' 2006 31(2): 109–125. Issn: 1059-4329 Fulltext: in Swetswise, Ingenta and Ebsco

Valsania, Maurizio. "'Our Original Barbarism': Man Vs. Nature in Thomas Jefferson's Moral Experience." ''Journal of the History of Ideas'' 2004 65(4): 627–645. Issn: 0022-5037 Fulltext: in Project Muse and Swetswise

Wagoner, Jennings L., Jr. ''Jefferson and Education.'' (2004).

Religion

Gaustad, Edwin S. ''Sworn on the Altar of God: A Religious Biography of Thomas Jefferson'' (2001) Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, ISBN 0-8028-0156-0

Sanford, Charles B. ''The Religious Life of Thomas Jefferson'' (1987) University of Virginia Press, ISBN 0-8139-1131-1

Sheridan, Eugene R. ''Jefferson and Religion'', preface by Martin Marty, (2001) University of North Carolina Press, ISBN 1-882886-08-9

Edited by Jackson, Henry E., President, College for Social Engineers, Washington, D. C. ''The Thomas Jefferson Bible'' (1923) Copyright Boni and Liveright, Inc. Printed in the United States of America. Arranged by Thomas Jefferson. Translated by R. F. Weymouth. Located in the National Museum, Washington, D. C.

Legacy and historiography

Cogliano, Francis D. ''Thomas Jefferson: Reputation and Legacy'' (Edinburgh University Press, 2006) online edition

Gordon-Reed, Annette. ''Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American controversy'', Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia Press, 1997 (reprint 1998 to include discussion of DNA analysis)

Onuf, Peter. "The Scholars' Jefferson," ''William and Mary Quarterly'' 3d Series, L:4 (October 1993), 671–699. Historiographical review or scholarship about TJ; in JSTOR

Onuf, Peter S., ed. ''Jeffersonian Legacies''. (1993)

Onuf, Peter S., ed. (with Jan Ellen Lewis). ''Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture'', University Press of Virginia, 1999, Google preview.

Perry, Barbara A. "Jefferson's Legacy to the Supreme Court: Freedom of Religion", ''Journal of Supreme Court History'' 2006 31(2): 181–198. Issn: 1059-4329 Fulltext in Swetswise, Ingenta and Ebsco

Peterson, Merrill D. ''The Jefferson Image in the American Mind'' (1960), how Americans interpreted and remembered Jefferson

Taylor, Jeff. ''Where Did the Party Go?: William Jennings Bryan, Hubert Humphrey, and the Jeffersonian Legacy'' (2006), on Jefferson's role in Democratic history and ideology.

Wiltse, Charles Maurice. ''The Jeffersonian Tradition in American Democracy'' (1935), analysis of Jefferson's political philosophy

"Thomas Jefferson", PBS interviews with 24 historians

Primary sources

''Thomas Jefferson: Writings: Autobiography / Notes on the State of Virginia / Public and Private Papers / Addresses / Letters'' (1984, ISBN 978-0-940450-16-5) Library of America edition. There are numerous one-volume collections; this is perhaps the best place to start.

''Thomas Jefferson, Political Writings'' ed by Joyce Appleby and Terence Ball. Cambridge University Press. 1999 online

Lipscomb, Andrew A. and Albert Ellery Bergh, eds. ''The Writings Of Thomas Jefferson'' 19 vol. (1907) not as complete nor as accurate as Boyd edition, but covers TJ from birth to death. It is out of copyright, and so is online free.

Edwin Morris Betts (editor), ''Thomas Jefferson's Farm Book'', (Thomas Jefferson Memorial: December 1, 1953) ISBN 1-882886-10-0. Letters, notes, and drawings—a journal of plantation management recording his contributions to scientific agriculture, including an experimental farm implementing innovations such as horizontal plowing and crop-rotation, and Jefferson's own moldboard plow. It is a window to slave life, with data on food rations, daily work tasks, and slaves' clothing. The book portrays the industries pursued by enslaved and free workmen, including in the blacksmith's shop and spinning and weaving house.

Boyd, Julian P. et al., eds. ''The Papers of Thomas Jefferson.'' The definitive multivolume edition; available at major academic libraries. 36 volumes covers TJ to March 1802.

''The Jefferson Cyclopedia'' (1900) large collection of TJ quotations arranged by 9000 topics; searchable; copyright has expired and it is online free.

The Thomas Jefferson Papers, 1606–1827, 27,000 original manuscript documents at the Library of Congress online collection

Jefferson, Thomas. ''Notes on the State of Virginia'' (1787), London: Stockdale. This was Jefferson's only book

* Shuffelton, Frank, ed., (1998) Penguin Classics paperback: ISBN 0-14-043667-7

* Waldstreicher, David, ed., (2002) Palgrave Macmillan hardcover: ISBN 0-312-29428-X

* online edition

Cappon, Lester J., ed. ''The Adams-Jefferson Letters'' (1959)

A MANUAL OF PARLIAMENTARY PRACTICE:, for the Use of the Senate of the United States. BY THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Howell, Wilbur Samuel, ed. ''Jefferson's Parliamentary Writings'' (1988). Jefferson's Manual of Parliamentary Practice, written when he was vice-President, with other relevant papers

Melton, Buckner F.: ''The Quotable Founding Fathers'', Potomac Books, Washington D.C. (2004).

Smith, James Morton, ed. ''The Republic of Letters: The Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, 1776–1826'', 3 vols. (1995)

External links

The Works of Thomas Jefferson (1904 - 12 Vols.), Paul Leicester Ford (Editor)- The Online Library of Liberty

The Papers of Thomas Jefferson – Digital Edition

* University of Virginia Jefferson Papers

* B. L. Rayner's 1829 ''Life of Thomas Jefferson'', an on-line etext

* "The Hobby of My Old Age": Jefferson's University of Virginia

* Quotations from Jefferson

* University of Virginia biography

Biography on White House website

A collection of photographs of Thomas Jefferson's architecture

Library of Congress

* Library of Congress: Jefferson exhibition

* Library of Congress: Jefferson timeline

* Thomas Jefferson: A Resource Guide from the Library of Congress

Massachusetts Historical Society

* Thomas Jefferson Papers: An Electronic Archive This digital collection of Thomas Jefferson manuscripts held by the Massachusetts Historical Society includes the page images and transcriptions of Jefferson's Farm Book and Garden Book, also page images of Jefferson's library catalogs and architectural drawings.

National Park Service

* ''Thomas Jefferson's Plan for the University of Virginia: Lessons from the Lawn,'' a National Park Service Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) lesson plan

* Jefferson Memorial, Washington DC

Monticello – Home of Thomas Jefferson

Poplar Forest-Thomas Jefferson's second home

"Frontline: Jefferson's blood: Chronology: The Sally Hemings story (1977), PBS

The Papers of Thomas Jefferson at the Avalon Project

Notes on the State of Virginia from American Studies at the University of Virginia.

Online catalog of Thomas Jefferson's personal library, based on the catalog of books he sold to the Library of Congress in 1815

The Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia, for information on TJ's life and times, written and referenced by historians at Monticello

A Guide to the Executive Papers of Governor Thomas Jefferson, 1779-1781 at The Library of Virginia

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