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 a leader of the convention.[29] Jefferson and Adams established a friendship that would last the rest of their lives; it led to the drafting of Jefferson to write the declaration of independence. When Congress began considering a resolution of independence in June 1776, Adams ensured that Jefferson was appointed to the five-man committee to write a declaration in support of the resolution.[30] After discussing the general outline for the document, the committee decided that Jefferson would write the first draft.[31] The committee in general, and Jefferson in particular, thought Adams should write the document. Adams persuaded the committee to choose Jefferson, who was reluctant to take the assignment, and promised to consult with the younger man. Over the next seventeen days, Jefferson had limited time for writing and finished the draft quickly.[32] Consulting with other committee members, Jefferson also drew 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 some 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."[33] A final draft 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."[34] Jefferson viewed the Independence of the American people from the mother country Britain as breaking away from "parent stock", and that the War of Independence from Britain was a natural outcome of being separated by the Atlantic Ocean.[35] Jefferson viewed English colonists were compelled to rely on "common sense" and rediscover the "laws of nature".[35] According to Jefferson, the Independence of the original British colonies was in a historical succession following a similar pattern when the Saxons colonized Britain and left their mother country Europe hundreds of years earlier.[35] After voting in favor of the resolution of independence on July 2, Congress turned its attention to the declaration. Over three days of debate, Congress made changes and deleted nearly a fourth of the text, most notably a passage critical of the slave trade.[36] While Jefferson resented the changes, he did not speak publicly about the revisions. On July 4, 1776, the Congress ratified the Declaration of Independence and the delegates signed the document. The Declaration would eventually be considered one of Jefferson's major achievements; his preamble has been considered an enduring statement of human rights.[36] All men are created equal has been called "one of the best-known sentences in the English language",[37] containing "the most potent and consequential words in American history".[38] The passage came to represent a moral standard to which the United States should strive. This view was notably promoted by Abraham Lincoln, who based his philosophy on it, and argued for the Declaration as a statement of principles through which the United States Constitution should be interpreted.[39] In 1803, in the midst of the Napoleonic wars between France and Britain, Thomas Jefferson authorized the Louisiana Purchase, a major land acquisition from France that doubled the size of the United States. Most of France's wealth in the New World had come from its sugar plantations on Saint-Domingue and Guadeloupe in the Caribbean, but production had fallen after a slave uprising. After sending more than 20,000 troops to try to regain the colony in 1802, France withdrew its 7,000 surviving troops in late 1803, shortly before Haiti declared independence.[95] Having lost the revenue potential of Haiti while escalating his wars against the rest of Europe, Napoleon gave up on an empire in North America and used the purchase money to help finance France's war campaign on its home front.[96][95] Though France was removed as a threat to the United States, Jefferson refused to recognize the new republic of Haiti, the second in the Western Hemisphere, and imposed an arms and trade embargo against it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_jefferson

• published: 11 Nov 2013
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