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A political leader of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; one of the Founding Fathers ; the leader of the Democratic-Republican party. Jefferson was principal author of the Declaration of Independence and served as president from 1801 to 1809, between John Adams and James Madison . He arranged for the Louisiana Purchase , founded the University of Virginia, and built the mansion Monticello . Jefferson is famed as a champion of political and religious freedom, but he was also a slaveholder. ( See Jeffersonian democracy ; Sally Hemings .)