Thomas Jef-fer-son was one of the great men of the Revolution. He was
not a soldier. He was not a great speaker. But he was a great thinker.
And he was a great writer.
He wrote a paper that was the very beginning of the United States. It
was a paper that said that we would be free from England, and be a
coun-try by our-selves. We call that paper the Dec-la-ra-tion of
In-de-pend-ence.
When he was a boy, Jef-fer-son was fond of boyish plays. But when he
was tired of play, he took up a book. It pleased him to learn things.
From the time when he was a boy he never sat down to rest without a
book.
At school he learned what other boys did. But the dif-fer-ence between
him and most other boys was this: he did not stop with knowing just
what the other boys knew. Most boys want to learn what other boys
learn. Most girls would like to know what their school-mates know. But
Jef-fer-son wanted to know a great deal more.
As a young man, Jefferson knew Latin and Greek. He also knew French and
Span-ish and I-tal-ian.
He did not talk to show off what he knew. He tried to learn what other
people knew. When he talked to a wagon maker, he asked him about such
things as a wagon maker knows most about. He would sometimes ask how a
wagon maker would go to work to make a wheel.
When Jefferson talked to a learn-ed man, he asked him about those
things that this man knew most about. When he talked with Indians, he
got them to tell him about their lan-guage. That is the way he came to
know so much about so many things. Whenever anybody told him anything
worth while, he wrote it down as soon as he could.
One day Jefferson was trav-el-ing. He went on horse-back. That was a
common way of trav-el-ing at that time. He stopped at a country tavern.
At this tavern he talked with a stranger who was staying there.
After a while Jefferson rode away. Then the stranger said to the
land-lord, “Who is that man? He knew so much about law, that I was sure
he was a lawyer. But when we talked about med-i-cine, he knew so much
about that, that I thought he must be a doctor. And after a while he
seemed to know so much about re-li-gion, that I was sure he was a
min-is-ter. Who is he?”
The stranger was very much surprised to hear that the man he had talked
with was Thomas Jefferson.
Jefferson was a very polite man. One day his grand-son was riding with
him. They met a negro. The negro lifted his cap and bowed. Jefferson
bowed to the negro. But his grand-son did not think it worth while to
bow.
Then Jefferson said to his grand-son, “Do not let a poor negro be more
of a gen-tle-man than you are.” In the Dec-la-ra-tion of
In-de-pend-ence, Jefferson wrote these words: “All men are created
equal.” He also said that the poor man had the same right as the rich
man to live, and to be free, and to try to make himself happy.