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, GrorcE 
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, 
Georce 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. JEr- 
FERSON himself did the writing, but many emendations and 
improvements were made by the Congress. He always insisted 
