---
title: "Thomas Jefferson"
chunk: 3/19
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:06:33.894887+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

In 1767, Jefferson was granted admission to the Virginia bar, and lived with his mother at Shadwell. Between 1769 and 1775, he represented Albemarle County in Virginia's House of Burgesses. While serving in the House of Burgesses, Jefferson pursued reforms to slavery, including writing and sponsoring legislation in 1769 to strip power from the royal governor and courts, instead providing masters of slaves with the discretion to emancipate them. Jefferson persuaded his cousin Richard Bland to spearhead the legislation's passage, but it faced strong opposition in a state whose economy was largely agrarian.
As a lawyer, Jefferson took on seven freedom-seeking enslaved people as clients and waived his fee for one he claimed should be freed before the minimum statutory age for emancipation. Jefferson invoked natural law, arguing "everyone comes into the world with a right to his own person and using it at his own will ... This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the author of nature, because it is necessary for his own sustenance." The judge cut him off and ruled against his client. As a consolation, Jefferson gave his client some money, which was conceivably used to aid his escape shortly thereafter. Jefferson's underlying intellectual argument that all people were entitled by their creator to what he labeled a "natural right" to liberty is a theme that he later prominently incorporated into the Declaration of Independence. In 1767, Jefferson took on 68 cases for the General Court of Virginia and was counsel in three notable cases of that era, Howell v. Netherland (1770), Bolling v. Bolling (1771), and Blair v. Blair (1772).
In 1774, Jefferson authored a resolution calling for a boycott of all British goods in protest of the British Parliament's passing of the Intolerable Acts. Jefferson's resolution was later expanded into A Summary View of the Rights of British America, published that year in which he argued that people have the right to govern themselves.

=== Monticello, marriage, and family ===

In 1768, Jefferson began constructing his primary residence, Monticello near present-day Charlottesville, Virginia. Its Italian name means "Little Mountain" in English. Monticello is located on a hilltop overlooking his 5,000-acre (20 km2; 7.8 mi2) plantation. He spent most of his adult life designing Monticello as an architect and was quoted as saying, "Architecture is my delight, and putting up, and pulling down, one of my favorite amusements." Construction was done mostly by local masons and carpenters, assisted by Jefferson's slaves. He moved into the South Pavilion in 1770. Turning Monticello into a neoclassical masterpiece in the Palladian style became Jefferson's lifelong project.
On January 1, 1772, Jefferson married his third cousin, Martha Wayles Skelton, a 23-year-old widow of Bathurst Skelton. She was a frequent hostess for Jefferson and managed the large household. Historian Dumas Malone described the marriage as the happiest period of Jefferson's life. Martha was a skilled pianist; Jefferson often accompanied her on the violin or cello. During their ten-year marriage, Martha bore six children: Martha "Patsy" (1772–1836); Jane Randolph (1774–1775); an unnamed son who lived for only a few weeks in 1777; Mary "Polly" (1778–1804); Lucy Elizabeth (1780–1781); and another Lucy Elizabeth (1782–1784). Only Martha and Mary survived to adulthood. Martha's father, John Wayles, died in 1773, and the couple inherited 135 enslaved people, 11,000 acres (45 km2; 17 mi2), and the estate's debts. The debts took Jefferson years to satisfy, contributing to his financial problems.
Martha later suffered from ill health, including diabetes, and frequent childbirth weakened her. A few months after the birth of her last child, she died on September 6, 1782, with Jefferson at her bedside. Shortly before her death, Martha made Jefferson promise never to marry again, telling him that she could not bear to have another mother raise her children. Jefferson was grief-stricken by her death, relentlessly pacing back and forth for roughly three weeks, and finally emerging to take long rambling rides on secluded roads with his daughter, Martha, who said she was "a solitary witness to many a violent burst of grief".

== Revolutionary War ==

=== Declaration of Independence ===