“Author of the Declaration of American Independence[,] of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom & Father of the University of Virginia”: when Thomas Jefferson composed the epitaph for his tombstone, these were the three achievements which he listed, as he put it, “as testimonials that I have lived” (Jefferson, Writings 706). Instead of enumerating, for instance, his various political offices – secretary of state, vice president, and president of the United States among them – Jefferson chose to present himself to posterity as a man of the Enlightenment committed to the ideas of political and religious liberty, member of a generation who had given, as he claimed in his last political statement, “the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and...
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Citation: Spahn, Hannah. "Thomas Jefferson". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 01 May 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2354, accessed 09 June 2026.]
