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Twenty-five years before he became President, Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence. Two years before that, he had written A Summary View of the Rights of British America, protesting laws passed by British Parliament. "Let no law be passed by any one legislature," he wrote, "which may step on the rights and liberties or another... The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time." Thomas Jefferson …

…wrote, "are opened or opening to the rights of man." He wrote those words a few days before he died. The words Jefferson wrote for his own tombstone tell us his accomplishments of which he was most proud: "Here lies buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, of the Statue of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and father of the University of Virginia." He did not mention the many government offices he had held.