“My views and feelings (are) in favor of the abolition of war – and I hope it is practicable, by improving the mind and morals of society, to lessen the disposition to war; but of its abolition I despair.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743 to 1826)

A draftsman of the U.S. Declaration of Independence; he was the nation’s first secretary of state (1789-94); second vice president (1797-1801); and, as the third president (1801-09), the statesman responsible for the Louisiana Purchase.

In 1803, Jefferson acquired land stretching from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains from cash-strapped Napoleonic France for the bargain price of $15 million, thereby doubling the size of the nation in a single stroke.