FAMOUS LAWYERS IN AMERICAN HISTORY
1743–1826
T
homas Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743, near Charlottesville, Virginia.1 His father was a successful planter and his mother, Jane Randolph Jefferson, a member of a prominent Virginia family. Jefferson received his early education from private tutors and a Presbyterian school, studying Latin, Greek, French, history, science, and the classics. His father died when Jefferson was fourteen, and he inherited approximately five thousand acres of Virginia land and around two hundred enslaved people. Jefferson enrolled in the College of William and Mary at Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1760, at the age of sixteen and was a serious student.2 He studied natural philosophy and writers such as John Locke, Francis Bacon, and Montesquieu. After graduating, Jefferson studied law with George Wythe, the most prominent attorney in Virginia, passed the Virginia bar exam, and began practicing in 1766. He represented plantation owners in cases involving land sales and disputes about enslaved people. House of Burgesses and Continental Congress. Jefferson was elected to the House of Burgesses, the legislature of colonial Virginia, in 1769. That same year, he began construction of Monticello, his hilltop mansion, on land inherited from his father, 24 San Antonio Lawyer® | sabar.org
Thomas Jefferson By Harry Munsinger
and he remodeled it throughout his life. In 1772, Jefferson met and married Martha Wales Skelton, an attractive young widow whose dowry doubled his land and the number of people he enslaved.3 He was elected as a delegate to the Continental Congress and arrived in Philadelphia on June 21, 1775, in a carriage pulled by four horses and attended by three enslaved people dressed in livery. He was the youngest member of the Virginia delegation to the Continental Congress and was relatively unknown at the time. Declaration of Independence. Jefferson showed himself to be an excellent writer in a pamphlet he published in 1775 entitled A Summary View of the Rights of British America.4 In the pamphlet, Jefferson wrote that Parliament and King George had no authority to govern America, and the colonies should be free to control their own destiny. Jefferson supported independence and drafted a resolution outlining the reasons for separating from England, but when Congress made changes before adopting his resolution, Jefferson left in disgust and went back to Monticello to tend to his wife Martha, who was experiencing a difficult pregnancy. He returned to the convention on May 14, 1776, and was selected to draft the Declaration of
Independence because he was the best writer at the convention. The committee included John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Livingston, Roger Sherman, and Thomas Jefferson. They delegated the drafting to Adams and Jefferson, and Adams assigned the initial writing to Jefferson. No one at the convention thought the Declaration of Independence would be an important document, so Adams did not feel he was giving up anything by assigning the work to Jefferson. Adams spent his time leading debates on the floor of Congress because he felt debating independence was the more important job. Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence in just a few days, using materials he collected or had written earlier. He showed his draft to Adams and Franklin, who made a few minor changes and then submitted it to the Continental Congress for debate and passage. The Congress made several changes and deleted materials dealing with King George. Jefferson regarded any change to his document a debasement but had no authority to object. On July 4, 1776, Congress approved the Declaration of Independence and had copies made, and the members of the Continental Congress signed it on August 2, 1776. They kept the
