Thomas Jefferson: Freedom’s Philosopher

Jefferson wrote this sentence at Monticello on September 23, 1800, in the middle of a bitter presidential campaign, in a letter to Benjamin Rush, the Philadelphia physician who had signed the Declaration of Independence beside him.

He was describing the clergy who hoped for a national established church, among them Episcopalians and Congregationalists, and who saw him as the obstacle. "And they believe rightly," he wrote, "for I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

It was not a passing remark. Jefferson drafted Virginia's Statute for Religious Freedom in 1777, and when he wrote his own epitaph he listed it with only two other achievements: the Declaration and the founding of the University of Virginia. The line from the Rush letter is cut into the wall beneath the dome of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington.

In this portrait Jefferson stands at ease in a dark coat and olive vest, white cravat at his throat, a book under one arm and the other hand raised, palm open, as if in mid-sentence. Behind him a stone eagle perches on a carved pedestal, and the sky goes to gold at the edges. The quotation sits below in cream.