Thomas Jefferson — Declaration Author, Agrarian Visionary

**Thomas Jefferson** was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, the third President of the United States, and the most intellectually expansive mind of the founding generation. Born in 1743 at Shadwell plantation in Virginia, he inherited wealth, land, and enslaved people — privileges he spent a lifetime both benefiting from and philosophically wrestling with (often inadequately). Educated at the College of William & Mary, he became a lawyer, but his real education was self-directed: he read voraciously in seven languages, maintained a library of over 6,000 volumes (which became the foundation of the Library of Congress), and pursued interests spanning architecture, agriculture, paleontology, linguistics, music, and wine.