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1776 All-Stars: Why Thomas Jefferson Is the Most Fascinating Founder
Politics
1776 All-Stars: Why Thomas Jefferson Is the Most Fascinating Founder
The author of the Declaration of Independence may have written "the greatest sentence ever."
Ronald Bailey | From the July 2026 issue
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(Illustration: Joanna Andreasson, ChatGPT-5.4; Source images: Wikimedia)
This is part of 1776 All-Stars, a series about Reason's favorite American Founders. Read more here.
Joanna Andreasson"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will, within the limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others," wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1819. This accords well with the Cato Institute's definition of libertarianism: "the belief that each person has the right to live his life as he chooses so long as he respects the equal rights of others."
Immediately following his definition of rightful liberty, Jefferson properly cautioned, "I do not add 'within the limits of the law'; because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual."
Nearly half a century earlier, as a 27-year-old lawyer in 1770, Jefferson sought freedom for Samuel Howell, who was being held in indentured servitude because his grandmother was white and his grandfather was black. In his legal brief, Jefferson declared,........
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