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Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson is a American leader and political philosopher, author of the Declaration of Independence, and the third president of the United States. (1801-1809) Jefferson was among the most brilliant American exponents of the Enlightenment, t ....

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.... grievances against Great Britain. Virginia leaders instead adopted a more legalistic set of instructions,, and Summary View was published anonymously as a pamphlet. As Jefferson's authorship became widely known, however, he moved suddenly into the front rank of American political theorists. In the pamphlet, Jefferson argued that the original settlers of the colonies came as individuals rather than as agents of the British government. The colonial governments they formed therefore embodied the natural right of expatriates from one country to select the terms of their subjection a new ruler. Colonial legislatures and the British Parliament, he ....