Jefferson served as Secretary of State and Vice President and was elected President of the United States. His retirement to Monticello came with highs and lows. His last years were spent founding the University of Virginia and reestablishing his friendship, after decades of estrangement, from his onetime rival John Adams. Jefferson's influence on and vision for the United States reverberates to this day.

Filmmaker Ken Burns tells the story of Thomas Jefferson, beginning with his youth in the Virginia wilderness and his early political career. Jefferson made himself into a true Renaissance man – a scholar, a philosopher, a diplomat, an aesthete, and an architect. As a young man, he was transformed by the fire of the Enlightenment into America's most articulate voice for human liberty.