Indispensable

Chapter Three

“IT IS THE WHOLE COLONY”

Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase

Here was buried

Thomas Jefferson

Author of the Declaration of American Independence of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom and Father of the University of Virginia.

IT’S A REMARKABLE LIFE when two terms as president of the United States are not worth mentioning on your gravestone’s epigraph (which you yourself wrote).¹

Thomas Jefferson’s inauguration as the third president of the United States in 1801 was an epochal event. Jefferson, a Republican and the sitting vice president, had defeated John Adams, a Federalist and the sitting president, in the election of 1800. The inauguration was the first time in modern history that a political party peacefully ...