Historians debate whether North Carolina's 'Mecklenburg Declaration' preceded and influenced Jefferson's Declaration of Independence

You only have to look at the fact that George Mason published the line 'life, liberty, and purs

When President Thomas Jefferson died 200 years ago, on July 4, 1826, he asked that he be remembered in his epitaph for three accomplishments: 'Author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia.'

However, some North Carolina historians now argue that Jefferson would have been expelled from his own university for plagiarizing America's founding document — and then lying about his authorship of it.