William Small
Jefferson and other members of the founding generation were deeply influenced by the 18th-century European intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment. Enlightenment philosophy stressed that liberty and equality were natural human rights.
Colonial Americans argued that King George III and Parliament had denied them the basic rights of British citizens. Despite the pervasiveness of slavery in their society, the revolutionary generation envisioned a new American government that secured the rights and freedoms of its citizens. However, these rights and freedoms did not extend to slaves.
Jefferson drew upon his education in law and Enlightenment philosophy when he wrote the Declaration of Independence (1776) and A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774), two treatises that grappled with liberty and slavery.
At the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, colonial Virginia’s capital, he studied mathematics, natural philosophy (science), and political philosophy with Scottish scholar William Small. Through Small, Jefferson was exposed to the leading thinkers of the Enlightenment, who believed rational thought and useful knowledge guaranteed the progress of humanity. Later, as a law student under prominent lawyer and jurist George Wythe, Jefferson absorbed the most important legal principles of the day.
Cover of Jefferson's A Summary View of the Rights of British America (July 1774)Drawing upon Enlightenment criticism of unlawful authority, Jefferson wrote this essay for the Virginia delegation to the First Continental Congress. He accused King George III of imposing illegal control over Virginia’s political decisions, including its desire to restrict or outlaw slavery. Jefferson wrote, “The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies.”
Read a transcript of Jefferson's "A Summary View of the Rights of British America" »
In the Declaration, Jefferson eloquently announced the creation of the new American nation. He presented Americans as a self-governing people committed to the principles of liberty and equality in the face of British tyranny. “All men are created equal,” Jefferson wrote, and the importance of this ideal necessitated that “a people … advance from that subordination in which they have hitherto remained” in order to “institute new government.”
But the founders’ vision did not include one-fifth of the American population: enslaved men, women, and children who labored in nearly every one of the “Free and Independent States.”
Images and videos about the Declaration of Independence
Detail from the first page of Jefferson's Rough Draft of the Declaration of Independence
Detail from John Trumbull's "Declaration of Independence"
Video: Engraving of John Trumbull's Declaration of Independence at Monticello