In March 1801, Captain Meriwether Lewis received a letter from Thomas Jefferson, the newly inaugurated president and a family friend, asking Lewis to become his private secretary. At the time, Lewis was a twenty-seven-year-old captain serving as the paymaster for the First Infantry Regiment. Over the next two years, Jefferson tutored Lewis on the lands west of the Mississippi and in the sciences of astronomy, botany, and anatomy in anticipation of an exploratory expedition to the Pacific Ocean. But both Jefferson and Lewis recognized the need to find a capable second officer for the expedition, and the man Lewis wanted to fill this coveted position was William Clark.

In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson drafted his official instructions for a great expedition to explore the Louisiana Territory and asked his private secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, to lead it. Once assembled, the Corps of Discovery would operate like a small frontier garrison with rigidly maintained discipline. In the end, the group went forward remarkably prepared for what they would encounter over the next few years, a testament to the thorough planning of President Jefferson.

On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee introduced into the Second Continental Congress what has come to be known as the Lee Resolution, calling for a complete separation from Great Britain. This leap of faith into the unknown space of independence finally had been publicly demanded and a contentious debate ensued. Congress created a committee to draft a declaration of independence in the event they chose that course of action. The committee included Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Robert Livingston, Roger Sherman, and Thomas Jefferson, and chose Jefferson to be the main penman.

Thomas Jefferson’s revolutionary journey began in the 1760s and culminated in his masterfully written Declaration of Independence in 1776. But in between these events, Jefferson crafted one of the most impactful statements ever for American independence. Entitled A Summary View of the Rights of British America, it was perhaps the most logical assessment of the true relationship between Great Britain and her American colonies; concepts that Jefferson had refined over the course of several years.

n 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act, the first internal tax on the American colonies, and thus began a decade of missteps by the British. That same year, Thomas Jefferson concluded his time studying law under George Wythe and began his brief but successful law career. In colonial Virginia, there were two levels of courts – county courts, which were scattered throughout the colony, and the General Court of Virginia in Williamsburg. Jefferson opted to bypass the county courts and try for immediate admittance to the General Court. His brilliance recognized, Jefferson was accepted, and at age twenty-four, he joined a small group of much older attorneys considered the best in the colony, including George Wythe, Edmund Pendleton, and Richard Bland.

Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743, in a small farmhouse on the frontier of western Virginia, in today’s Albemarle County. His father, Peter Jefferson, was a mountain of a man and well-respected throughout the region as a surveyor who ranged far and wide over the western portions of the colony. Peter’s work brought him significant wealth and put him in contact with the leading authorities in the colony. Sadly, in the summer of 1757, when Tom was fourteen, his father got sick and passed away, leaving behind a widow and eight children and a sizeable, debt-free estate. One of his father’s dying wishes was for Tom to complete his education, and in March 1760, Jefferson entered the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg.

The presidential election of 1800 ended in a tie, as the two Democratic-Republican candidates, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, each received 73 electoral votes. Burr had been added to the ticket to carry his home state of New York, but it was assumed that nationally Jefferson would get the most votes and Burr the second most. When that did not happen, the election moved to the United States House of Representatives in accordance with Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution.

The presidential election of 1800 was one of the most controversial and consequential in the history of the United States. It represented a true changing of the guard as the Federalist party of Washington, Hamilton, and Adams gave way to the Democratic-Republican ideals of Jefferson and Madison and took the United States in a different direction for a generation to come.

The first contested United States presidential election took place in the fall of 1796, pitting Thomas Jefferson against Vice President John Adams. Arguably, no presidential election in the country’s history has ever featured a choice between two such American titans. Jefferson was the leader of the Democratic-Republicans who were pro-French and favored strong states’ rights. Adams was the favorite son of the Federalist Party that was pro-British and favored a strong central government. For the most part, the election split along geographic lines with Adams capturing the north and Jefferson the southern states, plus Pennsylvania.