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Early life and political career
3rd President of the United States
First term
Second term
Post-presidency
Legacy
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Since his death, Founding Father and third U.S. president Thomas Jefferson has been an iconic American figure depicted in many forms. Jefferson has often been portrayed by Hollywood, and has been depicted in a wide range of forms including alternative timelines, animation, documentary, small cameos, and fictionalized interpretations.
Since 1869, Jefferson appears on the United States two-dollar bill.[1] In January 1938, the United States Mint announced an open competition for a new design for the American nickel, to replace the Buffalo nickel, to feature early Jefferson on the obverse, and Jefferson's home, Monticello on the reverse.[2] Jefferson has since appeared on these coins, deemed the Jefferson nickel.
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Main article: Presidents of the United States on U.S. postage stamps § Thomas Jefferson |
Jefferson's likeness over the years has been finely depicted on the face of the various postage issues that honored him. The first issue to depict Jefferson was issued in 1856, nine years after the Post Office issued its first two stamps of Washington and Franklin in 1847. Almost as popular and famous as George Washington, Jefferson appears comparatively less often on U.S. postage issues, and unlike Washington and Franklin, appears on just two commemorative issues, one in 1904, the other on the AMERIPEX presidential issue of 1986. His remaining depictions are confined to regular issues.[4]
On August 19, 1861, while the American Civil War was wreaking havoc across Virginia and elsewhere, the Post Office issued a 5-cent buff (yellow-brown) colored stamp that honored Thomas Jefferson. The engraving used to produce the image was modeled after a portrait by Gilbert Stuart. The engraver for this issue was William Marshall, who also engraved Washington's image for several issues of this period.[5] This Jefferson issue occurs in several distinct shades of brown. This image was again reprinted on February 3, 1863 in a dark brown color.[6] Also in 1861, Jefferson became the first U.S. president to appear on a Confederate stamp: a 10¢ value in blue, reissued in 1862 with its color changed to rose-pink.
Statues of Thomas Jefferson can be found in the United States and in other countries.
Jefferson is one of the four presidential portrait sculptures carved into Mount Rushmore in South Dakota from 1927 to 1941. It was designed and supervised by sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who called his work the Shrine of Democracy.
Clotel; or, The President's Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States is an 1853 novel by United States author and playwright William Wells Brown about Clotel and her sister, fictional slave daughters of Thomas Jefferson. Brown, who escaped from slavery in 1834 at the age of 20, published the book in London. He was staying after a lecture tour to evade possible recapture due to the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. Set in the early nineteenth century, it is considered the first novel published by an African American,[7][8] and is set in the United States. Three additional versions were published through 1867.
The novel explores slavery's destructive effects on African-American families, the difficult lives of American mulattoes or mixed-race people, and the "degraded and immoral condition of the relation of master and slave in the United States of America".[9] Featuring an enslaved mixed-race woman named Currer and her daughters Althesa and Clotel, fathered by Thomas Jefferson, it is considered a tragic mulatto story. The women's relatively comfortable lives end after Jefferson's death. They confront many hardships, with the women taking heroic action to preserve their families.
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