OF THE SADDLE AND SIRLOIN CLUB 225 



AUTHOR OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 



88. The third president of the United States was Thomas 

 Jefferson. His family had been in Virginia for a century and 

 a quarter at the time of his birth, April 2, 1743, their pursuits 

 being purely agricultural. On the death bed, his father, George 

 Jefferson, when Thomas was fourteen, left an injunction that 

 he should be educated at William and Mary College. In after 

 life he often stated that if he were forced to choose between 

 the education and the estate his father left him, he would let 

 the latter go. He was a prodigious scholar, excelling in math- 

 ematics and the sciences, a skilled violinist, and a robust athlete. 

 His professor. Dr. Small, friend of Erasmus Darwin, "prob- 

 ably fixed the destinies" of his life. On graduation he entered 

 upon the study of law under the guidance of the Virginia jurist, 

 George Wythe. In April, 1764, he acceded to the management 

 of his father's estate and gave most of his attention to the culti- 

 tivation and improvement of his lands. In 1767 he was admitted 

 to the bar, but throughout his political life he always main- 

 tained himself to be professionally a farmer, and steered clear 

 of all alliances and interests that would bias his judgment. 



In 1769 he was elected to the Virginia house of burgesses, 

 but since on the third day of the session resolutions against the 

 stamp act were adopted, the royal governor forthwith dissolved 

 it. In 1774 he prepared the "Draught of Instructions" for the 

 delegates to the Continental congress, which denied the right 

 of the electors of Britain to rule over the colonies, since the 

 colonial legislators could not pass laws affecting Britain. 

 Thomas Jefferson was a member of the committee that drew 

 up Virginia's military defense plan and in 1775 was sent to 

 Congress where he was appointed chairman of the committee 

 of five that drafted the Declaration of Independence. Mr. Jef- 

 ferson himself did the writing, but many emendations and 

 improvements were made by the Congress. He always insisted 



