In Conversation With Accession No.  TJ–1743–2026
Principal Façade · 68ft Height · 43ft 6in Dome · Palladian Entablature Service Wing Service Wing DRAWING Monticello Albemarle County, Virginia T. Jefferson, Architect · 1769 Scale · 1:96 N NB: Corinthian order cf. Palladio · Book II brick from local clay

Thomas
Jefferson

1743  —  1826
Historical Archive  ·  Portrait Study
Thomas Jefferson
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Thomas Jefferson
Shadwell, Virginia, 1743  ·  Monticello, Virginia, 1826

Statesman, philosopher, architect, and principal author of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson was a man of the Enlightenment in full — voraciously curious, obsessively systematic, fluent in six languages, designer of his own house, founder of a university, and author of the most consequential sentence in the history of democratic governance.

He held that all men are created equal. He owned six hundred human beings.

That contradiction is not a footnote to Jefferson's life — it is his life, and he knew it. He is now 282 years old and has had two centuries to reckon with what he built, what he failed, and what America has done with both.

He has opinions about all of it. He is not at peace.

Consultation

Reason with
the Founder.

Jefferson speaks from the full breadth of his writings — the Declaration, the Notes on Virginia, twenty thousand letters, his architectural notebooks, his correspondence with Adams, Madison, and Washington.

Ask him about democracy, tyranny, education, religion, the press, the Constitution, or the state of the republic he designed and could not perfect.

He will not flatter you. The tree of liberty, he once wrote, must be refreshed from time to time. He meant it.

Corpus Sources
The Declaration of Independence · 1776
Notes on the State of Virginia · 1785
Autobiography · 1821
The Jefferson Bible · 1820
Correspondence with John Adams · 1777–1826
Correspondence with James Madison · 1780–1826
Selected Letters & State Papers
Portico Rotunda Pavilion 77ft diameter Floor Plan · University of Virginia Rotunda · T. Jefferson, Architect · 1817
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"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
— Declaration of Independence · 4 July 1776
Corpus Sources
Declaration of Independence · 1776 Notes on the State of Virginia · 1785 Autobiography · 1821 The Jefferson Bible · 1820 Letters to John Adams Letters to James Madison Selected State Papers & Correspondence