TODAY IN HISTORY
Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743, at Shadwell in Albemarle County, Virginia. He was educated at the College of William and Mary and read law under the eminent Virginia jurist George Wythe. A member of the group of Virginia radicals who opposed Parliamentary policy from the early stages of the American Revolution, Jefferson came to special prominence in 1774 as the author of the influential pamphlet A Summary View of the Rights of British America. The following year he was elected to the Second Continental Congress, where he was chosen to draft the Declaration of Independence at the age of 33.
After the American colonies declared independence from Britain, Jefferson worked for the revision of the laws of his home state of Virginia in order to bring them into conformity with the principles he had articulated in the Declaration. Near the close of the Revolution, he also served two terms as Virginia’s governor. After a brief retirement that ended with the death of his young wife of 10 years, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson, in 1782, Jefferson returned to Congress and crafted legislation that laid the foundation for governance of America’s western territories.
Although he had drafted a
Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom in 1777, Virginia’s General Assembly postponed its passage. In January 1786, through the efforts of James
Madison, the bill was passed as An Act for Establishing Religious Freedom. Pioneering in its affirmation of the absolute right to freedom of belief (or unbelief) — in Jefferson’s words, “meant to comprehend, within the mantle of it’s protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of every denomination” — it was widely hailed in Europe, where Jefferson was then serving as America’s minister to France, and has since been recognized as a landmark in the development of human rights.
Returning to the United States after the ratification of the Constitution, Jefferson served as the nation’s first secretary of state and then as its vice president. During these years, he became the first leader of one of the nation’s two earliest political parties, the Republican Party, from which today’s Democratic Party descends.
In the election of 1800, which he and his followers framed as a contest between aristocratic Federalists and the more democratic Republicans, Jefferson defeated his old friend John Adams to become the third president of the United States. In that capacity he skillfully merged the roles of president and party leader, setting a precedent that all presidents since have followed. Highlights of his two-term presidency included the acquisition of the vast Louisiana Territory from France and Jefferson’s initiation and guidance of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
These achievements were in some measure offset in his second term by the Embargo of American maritime commerce and navigation, a desperate attempt to keep the young nation out of war with Britain. The deeply unpopular Embargo failed and was repealed as Jefferson left office. War with Britain followed in 1812, and in 1814 the British set fire to the U.S. Capitol, destroying the fledgling Congressional Library. As an inveterate collector of books, Jefferson was able to sell his superb personal library to Congress in 1815 as the foundation of the new Library of Congress.
The last years of his life were spent in retirement at his Virginia estate, Monticello, in the house he designed. Although Jefferson had no formal architectural training, his influential designs and lifelong commitment to the importance of architecture in the life of the nation did much to establish a distinctive American classicism. And in the eight years before his death on July 4, 1826 — the 50th anniversary of American independence — Jefferson founded, designed, and directed the building of the University of Virginia.
Jurist, diplomat, writer, philosopher, architect, gardener, statesman, and principal founder of the Library of Congress, Thomas Jefferson requested that only three of his many accomplishments be noted on his tomb at Monticello: “Author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia.”
Grand old flag
Although it did not become official until July 4, on April 13, 1818, a new flag was flown over the U.S. Capitol for the first time. The flag’s 13 stripes represented the original colonies; its 20 stars symbolized the number of states in the Union at that time. Congressman Peter H. Wendover arranged for the flag to be hoisted over the Capitol in Washington D.C. on the same day it was received there. The flag was mailed by naval officer and War of 1812 hero, Samuel Chester Reid. Wendover and
Reid had collaborated on a bill to standardize the addition of stars on the flag to correspond to states in the union. Reid designed the flag; his wife and her friends sewed it.
Reid arranged the 20 stars to form one large star on the blue canton of this flag. He described this design in a letter to his son decades later. American flags with the stars arranged this way came to be known as great star or grand luminary flags.
The arrangement of stars on American flags would not be standardized until 1912 when the flag was changed from 46 to 48 stars.
The first national flag, emblazoned with 13 stripes and 13 stars, was modified in 1795 when Kentucky and Vermont entered the Union after Congress passed the Flag Act of 1795 calling for 15 stripes and 15 stars. The Ft. Mchenry flag that inspired Francis Scott Key to write The Star Spangled Banner during the War of 1812 met this standard.
Source: Library of Congress