Chris Bliley

Thomas Jefferson died on the 4th of July. Not just any 4th. The exact 50th anniversary of the Declaration he wrote. And on that same day, hundreds of miles away, his old friend and rival John Adams died too. You cannot make this up. Here's the story. Everyone knows Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence at just 33 years old. Fewer people know the size of the mind behind it. He was a relentless genius. He taught himself law, architecture, multiple languages, science, and farming. He designed his own home, Monticello, and kept refining it for forty years like he physically could not leave a good idea alone. He tinkered and invented constantly, including a better plow blade that he refused to patent because he believed useful ideas should belong to everyone, not be locked up for profit. He was a book addict on a scale that's hard to picture today. He owned close to 10,000 books in his lifetime. And when the British burned the Capitol and destroyed the Library of Congress in 1814, Jefferson sold his personal collection of roughly 6,500 volumes to the nation to rebuild it. The Library of Congress today essentially grew back from his bookshelves. He served as the nation's first Secretary of State, its second Vice President, and its third President. As President he pulled off the Louisiana Purchase, doubling the size of the country in a single stroke, and sent Lewis and Clark to map a continent. He founded the University of Virginia, designed its buildings himself, and was so proud of it that he asked it to be carved on his tombstone, alongside writing the Declaration and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. Not one word about being President. He wanted to be remembered for what he built and what he taught. And then the ending almost no one learns. He died on July 4, 1826, fifty years to the day after the nation was born. Adams, dying the very same day, reportedly murmured "Thomas Jefferson still survives," not knowing Jefferson had already passed hours earlier. Two founders, two old rivals turned friends, leaving the world together on the country's golden anniversary. Thomas Jefferson. The mind that wrote a nation into existence.

On this night in 1781, one man on a horse saved the American Revolution from losing Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and half of Virginia's government in a single morning. You were never taught his name. June 3, 1781. The British had chased Virginia's entire government out of Richmond. Jefferson, in his final days as governor, and the legislature had fled to Charlottesville, thinking they were safe in the foothills. They were wrong. That evening, 26 year old militia captain Jack Jouett was at a tavern in Louisa County when roughly 250 of the most feared cavalry in the British army came pounding down the road. Their commander: Banastre Tarleton, nicknamed "The Butcher," the man whose dragoons had cut down surrendering Americans at Waxhaws. There was only one place they could be going. Charlottesville. 40 miles away. And the capture of Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, would be the prize of the war. Jouett couldn't outrun them on the main road. So he didn't use it. He swung onto overgrown backwoods trails and the abandoned Old Mountain Road, riding 40 miles through the dark with only the full moon for light. Legend says low hanging branches whipped and scarred his face for life. Tarleton stopped his men for a 3 hour rest. Jouett never stopped. Before sunrise on June 4, he came up the mountain to Monticello and woke Jefferson. Then he rode down into Charlottesville and warned the legislature. Jefferson got out with minutes to spare. British dragoons were coming up his mountain as he left. The legislature escaped over the Blue Ridge to Staunton. Tarleton caught only seven stragglers, one of them a frontiersman serving in the legislature named Daniel Boone. Paul Revere rode about 12 miles in 1775 and got captured before reaching Concord. Longfellow wrote him a poem and made him immortal. Jack Jouett rode 40 miles, lost nothing, saved everything, and got a thank you gift of two pistols and a sword from the Virginia Assembly. No poem. No fame. Almost no memory.