Thomas Jefferson

NAME Thomas Jefferson. He was often referred to by contemporaries as the "Sage of Monticello," a title that reflected his vast intellect and philosophical retirement. 

WHAT FAMOUS FOR Thomas Jefferson was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third President of the United States. He is world-renowned as the principal author of the Declaration of Independence. He expanded the United States significantly through the Louisiana Purchase and championed the strict separation of church and state, declaring that there should be a "wall of separation" between the two.

BIRTH Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743, at the family home, a one-and-a-half-story farmhouse in Shadwell, Albemarle County, Virginia. The third of ten children, most of whom died early in life. (1)

FAMILY BACKGROUND Jefferson's father, Colonel Peter Jefferson, was a land surveyor who was one of the surveyors who helped lay out the Virginia–North Carolina border. 

Jefferson's mother, Jane Randolph, was of old Virginian aristocracy, the daughter of Isham Randolph, a ship's captain and sometime planter. Jefferson and his mother did not have a close relationship. When her house burnt down, his first question was "what about my books?" — it never occurred to him to invite his homeless mother into his own home. (2)

CHILDHOOD Seven of Jefferson's first nine years were spent at Tuckahoe, the Randolph estate on the James River near Richmond. When Jefferson was nine, the family moved back to their Shadwell home. 

When not at school, young Thomas went with his father to hunt deer and turkeys along the Rivanna River. He also liked to go for long walks in the mountains. Colonel Jefferson died when Thomas was 14. (3)

EDUCATION Jefferson began his childhood education under the direction of tutors at the Randolph Tuckahoe estate, alongside the Randolph children. In 1752, at the age of nine, Thomas began attending the school of the Reverend William Douglas, a Scottish Presbyterian minister, where he studied Latin, Greek, and French. He also learned to ride horses and began to appreciate the study of nature.

At the age of 14, in 1757, Thomas was sent to the classical school of the Reverend James Maury, near Gordonsville, Virginia. While boarding with Maury's family, he studied history, science, and the classics.

At age 16, in 1760, Jefferson entered the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, where he studied mathematics, metaphysics, and philosophy under Professor William Small. In 1762, Professor Small suggested to America's first law professor, George Wythe, that he supervise the legal training of the star student. Jefferson studied law with Wythe, who became his friend and mentor. Jefferson was admitted to the bar of the General Court of Virginia in 1767.

CAREER RECORD 1767 — Admitted to the bar of the General Court of Virginia. Lived with his mother at the Shadwell family home and practiced law up and down the Valley from Staunton to Winchester. His client list featured members of Virginia's elite families, including members of the Randolph family.

1769–1775 — Represented Albemarle County in the Virginia House of Burgesses, beginning May 11, 1769 and ending June 20, 1775.

1776 — Principally responsible for drafting the Declaration of Independence, regarded as the strongest and most eloquent writer among the Founding Fathers.

1779–1781 — Served as Governor of Virginia.

1782 — Appointed a peace commissioner to assist Benjamin Franklin and John Adams in peace negotiations, but his ship was icebound in Chesapeake Bay and his appointment was withdrawn.

1783 — As chairman of the Currency Committee, devised the dollar and cents system still used to this day.

1784–1789 — Sent by the Confederation Congress to Europe to join Franklin and John Adams as ministers for purposes of negotiating commercial trade agreements with England, Spain, and France. Departed Boston on July 5, 1784. Served as United States Minister to France between 1785 and 1789. Was present in Paris during the storming of the Bastille and consulted with the Marquis de Lafayette while the latter drafted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

1790–1793 — Served as the first Secretary of State under President Washington. Resigned in 1793 in protest at Alexander Hamilton's attempts to centralize government and what Jefferson regarded as his financial impropriety. Retired to his Virginian farm for the next four years.

1791–1793 — Co-founded the Democratic-Republican Party with James Madison, organized to oppose Hamilton's Federalist Party. The party came to power in 1800 and dominated national and state affairs until the 1820s.

1797–1801 — Served as Vice President to President John Adams after coming second in the 1796 presidential election.

1801–1809 — Served two terms as the third President of the United States.

1819 — Co-founded the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. The university's first classes met on March 7, 1825. 

APPEARANCE Jefferson was six feet two and a half inches in height, large-boned, slim, erect, and sinewy, and was nicknamed because of his tall figure and spindly limbs. He had a very ruddy complexion, red hair that became sandy as he aged, hazel-flecked grey eyes, and a long, high nose. 

He had big feet, wearing size 12½ shoes. 

Jefferson stood and walked straight and, owing to his plentiful hair, with no need of a wig. 

The writer Gore Vidal once observed: "For those who believe the old saw that an honest man must have a direct gaze, I refer them to a contemporary's report that the shiftiest-eyed man he had ever met was Thomas Jefferson." (3)

A 48-year-old Jefferson in 1791, in a portrait by Charles Willson Peale

FASHION In the fashion of his time, Jefferson dressed in a long, dark coat — usually blue, and in summer generally of silk — a ruffled stock or cravat in place of the modern necktie, a red waistcoat, short knee breeches, and shoes with bright buckles. 

Except during his days of courtship and married life, Jefferson paid little attention to clothes. Never a fan of formal affairs, he was often reported to have worn his pajamas while meeting with foreign dignitaries. When he was President, Jefferson made a habit of plainness, both in dress and in matters of ceremony. (3)

CHARACTER Urban and cultivated, Jefferson was courteous, bowing to everyone he met. There was grace in his manners, and his frank and earnest address, quick sympathy, and vivacious, informing talk gave him an engaging charm. On the debit side, he was chilly and impenetrable and seemed cold to strangers. (3)

SPEAKING VOICE Jefferson was a poor public speaker with a thin, fine voice. He talked with his arms folded and hated public speaking so much that he gave only two speeches during his entire presidency — one per term. (2)

SENSE OF HUMOUR Though it is a biographical tradition that Jefferson lacked wit, Molière and Don Quixote appear to have been among his favourite reading, suggesting a taste for comic writing. (3)

RELATIONSHIPS Thomas Jefferson married a young widow, 23-year-old Martha Skelton (1748–1782), described as small and pretty, on New Year's Day, 1772, at the Forest, Charles City County. 

They had six children: Martha Jane, an unnamed son, Mary (called Polly by Jefferson), and two daughters both named Lucy. Four of their children died in infancy. After the death of the fourth child in 1782, Martha succumbed to grief and prolonged illness, dying on September 6, 1782. Jefferson vowed never to remarry. (3)

Mary died in 1804; Jefferson had inscribed on her tombstone two lines from the Iliad: "If in the house of Hades, men forget their dead, yet will I even there remember my dear companion."

Only Martha, his firstborn child, outlived him.

Portrait of Jefferson's daughter, Martha by Thomas Sully

Jefferson also had at least one child, a light-skinned boy called "yellow Tom," with his teenage black chambermaid, Sarah "Sally" Hemings. Sally Hemings was the daughter of widowed planter John Wayles and a mixed-race woman he kept as a slave, Betty Hemings. Sally and her siblings were three-quarters European and half-siblings of Jefferson's wife, Martha Wayles Skelton. She had olive skin and long straight auburn hair, coming to Monticello as an infant as part of Martha's inheritance. (3)

MONEY AND FAME In 1819, Jefferson's close friend Wilson Cary Nicholas carelessly defaulted on a $20,000 bank loan and then died shortly afterwards. Jefferson had co-signed for the loan and was now liable for the debts. Upset and embarrassed, he suffered from gross indigestion for several days. 

By the age of 83 he was completely broke and deeply in debt. He was allowed to sell lottery tickets, the winner receiving the former president's land, but the lottery was not a success and he died in debt. 

Jefferson's all-round genius was summed up by President John F. Kennedy, who once said to his Nobel Prize-winning guests: "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House — with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone." (3)

FOOD AND DRINK  After serving as ambassador to France, Jefferson brought back to America a taste for ice cream, which he delighted in serving to his guests. 

Thomas Jefferson presenting ice cream to guests

He also introduced Americans to fried potatoes, having sampled them in Paris; he described them as "potatoes, fried in the French manner" with beefsteak. He returned from France with a waffle iron and a pasta-making machine, which he used to serve macaroni or spaghetti. Jefferson helped popularize "Mac 'n' Cheese" by serving it to dinner guests during his presidency. (5)

Jefferson was an enthusiastic wine connoisseur. During his ambassadorship to France in the 1780s, he made several tours of European wine regions and sent bottles of the finest back to America. Following his return, he attempted to replicate these wines at Monticello by planting extensive vineyards, but a significant portion were destroyed by vine diseases native to the Americas. Jefferson installed a small, innovative shelved elevator at Monticello to carry wine from his cellar to his dining room.

Jefferson planted some of the first Brussels sprouts in America and also grew tomatoes at Monticello — not to eat, but as a curiosity. Not many colonists at the time realized tomatoes were edible; indeed, many Americans feared them to be poisonous. (3), 

MUSIC AND ARTS Jefferson liked to sing and tended to hum or sing as he walked or rode. He played the violin, sang pleasantly, and amassed over 500 pieces of music, including violin works by Corelli, Handel, and Vivaldi. Christmas celebrations at the White House and at Monticello included Jefferson playing the violin for family and guests. He also enjoyed attending operas. 

He supervised his daughter's music education, hiring Frances Alberti, an Italian immigrant, as a music tutor. Jefferson's oldest daughter, Martha, played harpsichord, and his other daughter, Maria, played guitar. (3)

LITERATURE A naturally succinct writer, Jefferson claimed "the most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do." He generally wrote with his "Polygraph," a machine in which an automatic pen inscribed a facsimile of a manuscript. 

Jefferson liked to invent words: "belittle" was one of his most famous coinages, appearing in his 1780 book Notes on the State of Virginia, in which he wrote: "So far the Count de Buffon has carried this new theory of the tendency of nature to belittle her productions on this side of the Atlantic." Surprisingly, Notes on the State of Virginia was the only book Jefferson published in his lifetime.

Jefferson could read and write in six languages — English, Spanish, French, Latin, Italian, and Ancient Greek — and was fluent in more languages than any other American president to date. He also studied and wrote on Old English and had a knowledge of German, Arabic, Irish, and Welsh.

Jefferson was largely responsible for drafting the 1776 Declaration of Independence, being regarded as the strongest and most eloquent writer among the Founding Fathers. He wrote it between June 11 and 28, 1776, from a floor he was renting in a home at 700 Market Street in Center City Philadelphia. Below in John Trumbull's painting Declaration of Independence, the five-man drafting committee presents its work to the Continental Congress. 

In retirement at Monticello, Jefferson gave up reading newspapers almost entirely, writing to John Norval: "I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it." He went further still, declaring: "The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors."

The one exception to his contempt was the advertisements. Jefferson noted, with characteristic dry wit: "Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper." (6)

In January 1815, Congress purchased Jefferson's personal library for $23,950; the 6,500 volumes became the nucleus of the Library of Congress. (3)

NATURE Jefferson experimented with new varieties of grain at Monticello, introduced the threshing machine into the United States, and was one of the first Americans to employ crop rotation. 

He studied and classified fossils at a time when investigation of such objects was in its infancy. 

When exploring a Native American burial mound on his Virginia estate in 1784, Jefferson avoided the common practice of simply digging downwards. Instead, he cut a wedge out of the mound so that he could walk into it, examine the layers of occupation, and draw conclusions from them — one of the earliest significant works of archaeology in American history. 

When he was Secretary of State, a plant was named after him — the Jeffersonia diphylla — because "in botany and zoology, the information of this gentleman is equaled by few persons in the United States." (3)

PETS Jefferson kept a Shetland sheep among about 40 other sheep on President's Square in front of the White House. In the spring of 1808 it attacked several people, killed a small boy, and was referred to Jefferson as "this abominable animal." After being moved to Monticello, the ram was eventually killed, having killed several other rams. 

Jefferson had little tolerance for dogs that harmed his sheep and once ordered one of his sheepdogs to be hanged for mauling livestock. 

Jefferson once had a mockingbird that he taught to peck food from his lips and to hop up the stairs after him. (3)

Image by ChatGBT

HOBBIES AND SPORTS Jefferson was an avid collector and player of marbles. 

A good horseback rider, he often rode for pleasure. 

The dome on his Monticello home concealed a billiard room — in Jefferson's day, billiards was illegal in Virginia. (3)

SCIENCE AND MATHS In 1783, as chairman of the Currency Committee, Jefferson devised the dollar and cents system still used in the United States to this day. 

Jefferson invented many small practical devices; he is credited with inventing the lever-operated double door opener, still often seen on trains and buses, and the folding chair — both the common type and the shooting-stick type now used by sports spectators. He is also credited with the invention of the swivel chair, the first of which he created and used to write much of the Declaration of Independence. 

Jefferson introduced the threshing machine to the United States and was one of the first Americans to employ crop rotation. (3)

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY Jefferson was a freethinker, influenced by Rousseau and a champion of religious freedom. Like many intellectuals of his era, he was a deist, replacing revelation and tradition with reason. He cut out of his Bible all supernatural elements — including the Resurrection and the Virgin Birth — because he did not accept them, though he approved of Jesus's moral philosophy. The closing words of the Gospels in Jefferson's Bible read: "There they laid Jesus and rolled a great stone to the mouth of the sepulchre and departed."

Jefferson was raised Episcopalian at a time when the Episcopal Church was the state religion in Virginia. Before the American Revolution he was a vestryman in his local church, but he later removed his name from those available to become godparents, as his Deist beliefs opposed Trinitarian theology. 

Convinced of the need to keep church and state separate, he believed unwaveringly in freedom of religion. Jefferson refused to issue a Thanksgiving proclamation and declared that there should be "a wall of separation between church and state." He wrote in his Notes on Virginia: "Millions of innocent men, women and children since the introduction of Christianity have been burned, tortured, fined and imprisoned, yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half of the world fools and the other half hypocrites."

The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was drafted by Jefferson in 1777 in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and adopted by the Virginia General Assembly on January 16, 1786. It became the basis for the establishment clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and led to freedom of religion for all Americans. It is one of only three accomplishments Jefferson instructed to be placed in his epitaph. (3)

PRESIDENCY Thomas Jefferson's path to the presidency began with one of those constitutional mishaps that make you wonder whether the Founding Fathers had tested their machinery before putting it into service. In the election of 1800, Jefferson and Aaron Burr each received 73 electoral votes, producing a deadlock that sent the decision to the House of Representatives. There, legislators spent seven days and 35 ballots proving that indecision can be every bit as strenuous as action. Finally, on February 17, 1801, the House cast a 36th ballot and elected Jefferson the nation's third president.

For his inauguration, Jefferson chose not to arrive in regal splendor but instead walked from his boarding house to the Capitol. This was intended to demonstrate what he called "Republican simplicity"—a refreshing concept in an age when European rulers were still rather attached to crowns, uniforms, and being carried about by other people.

As president, Jefferson presided over one of the greatest real-estate bargains in history. In 1803, he purchased the Louisiana Territory from France for 50 million francs plus the cancellation of debts worth another 18 million francs. The transaction worked out to less than three cents an acre, a price so low that even today it would seem suspicious. The deal doubled the size of the United States and remains the largest land sale ever completed.

The expansion came at a cost for Native Americans. Jefferson's administration also began developing policies that encouraged the removal of Native tribes westward into the Louisiana Territory, setting in motion a process whose consequences would echo through American history.

Jefferson's record on slavery was similarly complicated. He signed the 1807 Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves, ending the legal importation of enslaved people into the United States. Yet he refused to recognize Haiti after its successful slave revolution and supported trade restrictions intended to isolate the new nation. The prospect of enslaved people successfully overthrowing their masters was, from the perspective of many American slaveholders, precisely the sort of precedent they preferred not to advertise.

The federal government was also astonishingly small by modern standards. Jefferson had just one clerk and one messenger to assist him, and because Congress had not yet seen fit to fund presidential staff, he paid both men himself. Today, a White House intern probably receives more administrative support than the President of the United States did in 1801.

Jefferson nevertheless found time for home improvements. He expanded the White House by adding the colonnades that still connect the residence to what would later become the East and West Wings. Their original purpose was not grandeur but concealment: they were designed to hide stables, storage areas, and other practical necessities that might spoil the view. He also opened the White House to public tours, establishing a tradition that has endured ever since except during periods when the nation found itself occupied with the business of war. 

Jefferson carried his preference for simplicity into the White House. He disliked grand titles and preferred to be addressed as "Mr. Jefferson" rather than "Mr. President," a modesty that was easier to maintain in an era when the federal government consisted of roughly the number of people now employed to manage a medium-sized airport gift shop.

His dinner parties were conducted with similar care. Jefferson limited gatherings to about 14 guests, having concluded that this was the largest number that could comfortably sustain a single conversation. The goal was to ensure that everyone could participate without being stranded at the far end of the table discussing the weather with a distant cousin of someone's brother-in-law. At a time when formal dinners often fragmented into competing conversations, Jefferson preferred a more democratic arrangement.

POLITICS Between 1791 and 1793, Jefferson co-founded the Democratic-Republican Party with James Madison to oppose the Federalist Party led by Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton. The party came to power in 1800 and dominated national and state affairs until the 1820s when it faded away.

Jefferson and George Washington had a poor relationship. Their enmity stemmed from the last year of Washington's second term, when Washington suspected Jefferson of being responsible for scurrilous press attacks on him. Jefferson denied responsibility and Washington accepted his word, but a chill remained between them. Jefferson chose not to attend ceremonies marking Washington's death in 1799 and wrote no note of condolence to Washington's widow.

Jefferson resigned as Secretary of State in 1793 in protest at Hamilton's attempts to centralize government and what he regarded as Hamilton's financial impropriety. He retired to his Virginia farm for the next four years. (4)

SCANDAL Jefferson's presidency was dogged by persistent allegations that he slept with enslaved women. On October 19, 1796, the Gazette published an article accusing him of carrying on an affair with his enslaved chambermaid, Sarah "Sally" Hemings, noting they had "heard the same subject freely spoken of in Virginia, and by Virginia Gentlemen." Jefferson himself never publicly denied the allegation. DNA evidence published in 1998 strongly supported the conclusion that Jefferson fathered at least one of Hemings's children. (4)

Thomas Jefferson, who wrote that "all men are created equal," enslaved over 600 people across his lifetime, freed only five during his lifetime, and retreated from his early calls for gradual emancipation under pressure from Virginia's planter class — with the remaining enslaved people at Monticello auctioned off after his death to pay his debts. 

MILITARY RECORD As Governor of Virginia during the Revolutionary War (1779–1781), Jefferson faced severe criticism for his handling of British raids on Virginia, including the near-capture of himself and the state legislature by British cavalry under Banastre Tarleton in 1781. A subsequent legislative inquiry was initiated but ultimately dropped, and Jefferson was exonerated. (2)

As US Minister to France between 1785 and 1789, he was present in Paris during the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, and sent detailed eyewitness accounts back to John Jay, the US Secretary of Foreign Affairs. Jefferson was deeply sympathetic to the revolutionary cause, though he deplored the violence even before the full horrors of the Reign of Terror became apparent. He left France in September 1789, before the Revolution descended into its bloodiest phase. (7)

As President, Jefferson was determined to keep the United States out of the Napoleonic Wars and laid out seven formal principles of neutrality before Congress, thanking Providence for keeping America from "hastily entering into the sanguinary contest." However, his attempts to enforce neutrality led to serious problems. When both Britain and France began seizing American merchant ships, Jefferson passed the Embargo Act of 1807, banning all trade with Europe. This proved catastrophic — it devastated the American economy, particularly the mercantile Northeast, and was widely regarded as a failure. Jefferson was forced to back down in the last months of his presidency. The trade tensions he left unresolved ultimately helped propel the United States into the War of 1812 under his successor, James Madison. (8)

HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS Jefferson was a chronic migraine sufferer. His migraines lasted about a month at a time and recurred roughly every seven years. Each time, he carried on working through the pain. 

Jefferson's health began to deteriorate in July 1825, from a combination of various illnesses and conditions, probably including toxemia, uremia, and pneumonia. By June of the following year he was confined to bed. (3)

HOMES In February 1770, his family house at Shadwell, Virginia burnt down, destroying his library, legal papers, and notes. 

A skilled architect, interior designer, builder, and furniture maker, Jefferson designed his 35-room replacement home at Monticello. Monticello had only two very narrow staircases, as Jefferson considered them a waste of space. 

Among the mechanical contrivances at Monticello was an interior weather vane connected to one on the roof. In its 13 bedrooms, all the beds were simply mattress supports hung on wall hooks. In his study, Jefferson had a revolving chair that enabled him to reach both a desk and a reading stand, and a chaise longue fitted with candlestick holders in both arms to provide light for reading. 

Monticello in 2013 by Martin Falbisoner -

On March 17, 1801, Jefferson moved to the White House as the third American President. Jefferson permitted regular public tours of the executive mansion, initiating a tradition that has continued ever since, except during wartime. (3)

Jefferson used a round table at both the White House and Monticello precisely so that no one sat at its head, eliminating any visible hierarchy among his guests. He deliberately seated his guests "pell-mell" — without assigned seats based on social or diplomatic rank — as a conscious rejection of the formal European court customs he had observed and despised during his time in France. (9)

TRAVEL In 1784, Jefferson departed Boston on July 5, taking his young daughter Patsy and two servants, to join Benjamin Franklin and John Adams in Europe as minister for negotiating commercial trade agreements. During his ambassadorship to France in the 1780s, he made several tours of European wine regions. He returned to the United States in September 1789. (2)

DEATH Jefferson was determined to survive until the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. At 12:45 pm on July 4, 1826, he mumbled "This is the fourth?" When he realized it was indeed the Fourth of July, he murmured "I resign my spirit to God, my daughter to my country," and died peacefully. Remarkably, the second President, John Adams, died a few hours later on the same day. Jefferson's remains were buried at Monticello.

Thomas Jefferson took care before he died to write out the inscription for his own tombstone. It listed his great accomplishments — "author of the Declaration of Independence," author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, and founder of the University of Virginia — but conspicuously omitted the fact that he had once been President of the United States. (4)

APPEARANCES IN MEDIA  The Jefferson Memorial, a neoclassical monument in Washington, D.C., was dedicated on April 13, 1943, on the 200th anniversary of Jefferson's birth. Situated in West Potomac Park at the southern end of the National Mall, the building is modeled after the Pantheon in Rome and features a 19-foot bronze statue of Jefferson inside. (10)

Jefferson has been portrayed in numerous films and television productions, most notably by Ken Howard in the 1972 Broadway musical 1776 and its 1972 film adaptation, and by Nick Nolte in the 1995 television film Jefferson in Paris. 

He appears on the U.S. nickel and the two-dollar bill. 

ACHIEVEMENTS Principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776)

As chairman of the Currency Committee (1783), devised the dollar and cents system still used in the United States

Served as the first Secretary of State (1790–1793)

Co-founded the Democratic-Republican Party (1791–1793) with James Madison

Completed the Louisiana Purchase as President, doubling the size of the United States

Drafted and signed the 1807 Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves

Authored the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1777), the basis for the First Amendment's establishment clause

Co-founded the University of Virginia (1819)

Assembled the personal library that became the nucleus of the Library of Congress (6,500 volumes purchased by Congress in 1815)

Credited with inventing the swivel chair, the folding chair, and the lever-operated double door opener

Introduced ice cream, french fries, waffles, and pasta-making to wider American audiences

Conducted one of the earliest scientific archaeological excavations in American history

Sources: (1) Wikipedia: Thomas Jefferson (2) Monticello.org: Thomas Jefferson (3) Encyclopaedia of Trivia (4) The White House: Thomas Jefferson (5) Food For Thought by Ed Pearce (6) University of Chicago Press — Founders' Constitution: Jefferson to John Norvell, June 11, 1807 (7) Revolution (8) State Of The Union History (9) American Essence (10) National Park Service: Thomas Jefferson Memorial