John Taylor (1753 – 1824), was a politician and writer. He was a close associate of Thomas Jefferson, and, as Jefferson was not a systematic thinker, many ideas expressed by John Taylor are considered to be the clearest indications of how Jefferson actually thought. A slaveholder and proponent of Jeffersonian “levellism” and “agrarianism,” Taylor exerted a profound influence on American liberalism and conceptions of states’ rights.