Happy Birthday, Thomas Jefferson, US President and Author of the Declaration of Independence

Thomas Jefferson is considered by many “the first cultured President” of the United States. He was born into a privileged family in Albemarle County, Va., on April 13, 1743. His father, Peter, was a plantation owner, and his mother Jane was a daughter in the aristocratic Randolph clan.

Despite his family’s status, he was grounded. History Empire writes, “There were very few things he asked others to do that he wasn’t willing to do himself.” His curiosity and diligence inspired hands-on learning in many fields, including archeology before it was a science.

At the college of William & Mary, Jefferson studied the Scottish Enlightenment, blending his passions for law, philosophy and science. He would draw from his lessons in later years in his “task of nation-building,” The History Channel reports. Much later he founded a college of his own, The University of Virginia.

After graduation he pursued law, and in his 20s began building his home Monticello—Italian for “little mountain”—in Charlottesville, Va., in the Palladian style he’d adopted from the French.

In 1772 he married Martha Wayles Skelton, a 23-year-old widow, who doubled his land holdings. She died 10 years later in childbirth. According to the American Memory Project, only two of his six children with Martha lived to adulthood.

In 1774, Jefferson authored his “Summary View of the Rights of British America,” a precursor to his legendary declaration. Though the delegates of the First Continental Congress chose a separate essay to represent their claims, his writing gave him authority and influence in the political sphere.

Jefferson served as President George Washington’s minister to France, and then as vice president under John Adams, in spite of their conflicting views on states’ rights. In 1800 he was elected president of the United States over Aaron Burr. A tie vote by the electoral committee forced the decision upon the House of Representative, and Alexander Hamilton, who supported neither candidate but disliked Burr more, persuaded the House to choose Jefferson.

During his presidency Jefferson reduced the national debt by a third, abrogated the whiskey tax, secured the Louisiana Purchase, and fought off the Barbary Pirates in the Mediterranean. While attempting to remain neutral during the Napoleonic wars, Jefferson imposed a U.S. embargo, however this was poorly received.

Jefferson died on July 4, 1862, the same day as his rival John Adams, and exactly 50 years after the Declaration of Independence was signed.

In a memorial speech, Daniel Webster perfectly renders the weight of Jefferson’s formidable declaration, recalling John Hancock’s initial hesitation: “While these cities burn, these pleasant fields whiten and bleach with the bones of their owners, and these streams run blood. It will be upon us … if, failing to maintain this unseasonable and ill-judged declaration.”

Time magazine’s Lance Morrow notes that history has rewritten Jefferson’s biography, branding him “a slave-owning hypocrite and racist; a political extremist; an apologist for the vicious, botched French Revolution; and in general, somewhat less the genius remembered in our folklore.”

The Library of Congress addresses some of the criticism leveled at Jefferson. In 1873 Madison Hemings wrote in the Pike County Republican that Jefferson fathered all five of Sally Hemings’ children. Sally Hemings was one of Jefferson’s slaves, and incidentally, was half-sister to Martha Jefferson. In 2000, DNA results from the Monticello/Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation confirmed “the strong likelihood” that Jefferson fathered “one, and perhaps all, of the known children of Sally Hemings.”

According to the American Memory Project, Jefferson had 600 slaves and freed only 10, all of whom were part of the Hemings family.