Three Men Who Made America: Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson was born in 1743 in Albemarle County, Virginia, inheriting from his father, a planter and surveyor, some 5,000 acres of land, and from his mother, a Randolph, high social standing. He studied at the College of William and Mary, then read law. In 1772, he married Martha Wayles Skelton and took her to live in his partly constructed mountaintop home, Monticello. As the "silent member" of Congress, Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence. In years following, he labored to make its words a reality in Virginia. Most notably, he wrote a bill establishing religious freedom, enacted in 1786. As a reluctant candidate for President in 1796, Jefferson came within three votes of election. But through a flaw in the Constitution, he became Vice President, although an opponent of President Adams. When Jefferson assumed the Presidency in 1801, the crisis in France had passed. He slashed Army and Navy expenditures, cut the budget, eliminated the tax on whiskey, reduced the national debt by a third, and purchased the Louisiana Territory. Jefferson retired to Monticello, and then died on July 4, 1826.


Richard Norton Smith is best known as a historian and biographer. He has collaborated with Senator Bob Dole on various projects. Among other presidential institutions, Smith was the Director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Presidential Foundation and the Reagan Center for Public Affairs. In 2001, Smith became the director of the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics, supervising the construction of the Institute's landmark home. Since 2006, Smith has been a Scholar in Residence at George Mason University in Washington, D.C. Smith frequently contributes to publications such as, Time, Life and the New York Times and can be seen on C-SPAN and PBS Newshour.

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