ond Continental Congress, he served as a
member of the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence. That historic document, except for
minor alterations by John Adams and Benjamin Franklin and others made on the floor of Congress, was
wholly the work of Jefferson. In 1783 he was again in the Continental Congress where he drafted a plan
for a decimal system of coinage based on the dollar and drew up a proposed ordinance for the government
of the Northwest Territory, which, although not then adopted, was the basis for the very important
Ordinance of 1787. Though absent when the Constitution was drafted and adopted, Jefferson gave his
support to a stronger central government and to the Constitution, particularly with the addition of the Bill of
Rights. Jefferson was the first President inaugurated in Washington, a city he had helped to plan. He
believed that the Federal government should be concerned mostly with foreign affairs, leaving the states
and local governments free to adminis
...