Thomas Jefferson

French theorists said that American native species were inferior to European ones—the former President went to great lengths to show that they were wrong.

Read an excerpt from TIME's special edition about Alexander Hamilton.

Thomas Jefferson's republican simplicity.

Did Thomas Jefferson really believe, “That government is best which governs least?”

How a right-wing smear campaign tried to silence the reality of Thomas Jefferson’s life, and in some ways succeeded.

The Declaration has always been fought over. We can let Trump claim it, or we can take up its battle cry to “alter or to abolish” what’s destroying our country.

Many founders died in despair about the American experiment.

Can our 18th-century institutions survive 21st-century technology?

Americans must live up to “the words that made us.”

The explorers’ crossing of the continent is America’s most famous camping trip. What was it all for?

Americans have long imagined that they set off a global age of revolt. Seen within the era’s wider wars of empire, the story looks rather different.

On the causes of the American Revolution.

Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton may be titans of the American Founding, but these two poles don't describe everything.

Religious liberty owes much to Jefferson and Madison, but the "impregnable wall" doesn't do justice to the founders vision.

But not because the founders wanted to see more guns in the hands of Americans.

We owe it to Americans of all ages to be honest about the country’s past, including its contradictions.

Restoring stability to American politics will require reviving an age-old concept: common ground.

How Charlottesville’s memorial landscape can help us understand — and combat — the White House’s violent plans to reshape the nation’s public spaces.

A Quaker abolitionist hoped to convince the Virginian Founders to end slavery by appealing to their sense of manhood. They were not persuaded.

Telling the full story of the town’s past is an easy way to make a lot of people mad.