Thomas Jefferson, Entered our highest office at 57and served 2 terms: 1801-1809 . “Democratic- Republican” (modern Democrat) Lived from 13.Apr.1743 to July 4, 1826 [aged 83 – 17 yrs after office].
Jefferson was what many would call a “Renaissance Man.” A man of many roles and talents, he was an architect, engineer, surveyor, inventor, lawyer, philosopher and writer. He was an avid student of the great European philosophers of the Age of Reason, one of many historical periods during which all conventional wisdom was held up to fresh intellectual scrutiny.
Jefferson has often come under fire for being an atheist. He called himself a “Deist;” a philosophical religious position that believes God set the universe in perfect motion and then left it on its own. The argument could go either way.
Though he was aided by a number of the Founding Fathers, Jefferson was the largest contributor to the text of the Declaration of Independence and it was physically written in his own hand. He was a great fan of English political philosopher John Locke and even a casual study of the great document will show that he quoted the Englishman frequently and eloquently.
Like his fellow patriot Washington, Jefferson was not nearly as successful in monetary terms as is generally thought. At the time that the British reinvaded the United States during the War of 1812 and burned Washington DC to the ground, what little we had accumulated as a central library was completely destroyed. Jefferson, however, had a private collection of books that rivaled anything we had lost. What is now known as the Library of Congress was begun with his private library, but he was unable to make it a gift at the time because he was broke. He was paid $23,950. It was 1958 before we took steps to protect former presidents financially with the Former President’s Act.
