The Jefferson memorial is a magnificent national monument is one of the founding fathers of the country, the third President of the United States.

The fate of the son of a planter from Virginia was contradictory. His first children's memory was the trip to the hands of a servant to a new father's home. After inheriting some money, he became the owner of a hundred slaves, after his wife died, his girlfriend has become a slave-quadroon Sally Hemings. But it was President Thomas Jefferson signed the act prohibiting importation of slaves in the United States. Energetic nature has generously shown himself: Jefferson bought from France Louisiana, sent the American fleet in the Mediterranean sea against suggestive Europe the horror of pirates, founded the military school of West point. However, the main business of his life was the famous Declaration of independence.

When the war for independence British overseas colonies, Jefferson was a delegate to the Continental Congress, a representative body of the rebels. He is fast friends with the leader of the Congress, the future of second U.S. President John Adams. In 1776, Congress directed the ad hoc Committee to write the draft document declaring the independence of the colonies from Britain. The Committee Adams included Jefferson, and on whose shoulders lay the burden. In just seventeen days the young lawyer (Jefferson was 33 years old) wrote the text of the enormous political and spiritual power.

Perhaps the most important document is its preamble, which Jefferson found full formulation of human rights. Here is this passage: "We proceed from the self-evident truth that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". It is the day of the adoption of the Declaration, July 4, celebrated in the United States as independence Day.

The construction of the Jefferson memorial began in 1939 and ended during the Second world war, in 1943. Architect John Russell Pope designed the neoclassical building: a portico with ionic columns, the rotunda, the dome. Inside the rotunda stands almost six-meter statue of Thomas Jefferson. At first it was a plaster: during the war all the bronze went to the military. In the metal statue was cast only after the war.

On the inner walls of the rotunda hosted carved in stone the most famous sayings of Jefferson, including excerpts from the Declaration of independence. Critics argued that some of these phrases, taken out of context can mislead: some of them were not written by Jefferson, the meaning is distorted by other reductions.

The memorial is located on the South side of the Tidal Basin, just outside of downtown Washington. Not all tourists get here, and for good reason: it is quiet, calm and very beautiful. The memorial is surrounded by cherry – seedlings in 1912 Tokyo gave Washington. Sakura bloom here every spring for two weeks, making a stunning backdrop to the monument.