When we think of Thomas Jefferson, our third president, many would cite his penning of the Declaration of Independence’s iconic phrases promising a country in which “all men are created equal” with “unalienable rights” to enjoy “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Then, of course, there’s his image on the nickel and his likeness on Mount Rushmore, a spot he won both for that seminal document announcing the 13 colonies split from England and his 1803 Louisiana Purchase, during his first Presidency, which doubled the size of the U.S. Some may also point out that he was a politician who railed against the evils of slavery in print, while keeping hundreds of slaves on his plantation and having many children with his late wife’s Martha’s enslaved half-sister Sally Hemings.
The paradoxical elements of the lifelong idealist are explored on the History Channel’s six-hour docuseries tracking Jefferson’s political and personal progression from birth on a Virginia plantation in 1743 to his death on the Fourth of July 1825 (the same day as that of his frenemy and predecessor president John Adams).
“The idea is to show Jefferson warts and all and to talk about him as a human being who did good things and things that were not so great,” says Harvard law professor and Jefferson biographer Annette Gordon-Reed (Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy), one of several historians commenting on his legacy and life (depicted in dramatic re-creations). “We are trying to the fullest extent,” she adds, “to present a realistic picture of this man who had many strengths and many weaknesses.”
In offering insights about Jefferson and his times, this illuminating series also reflects how much of today’s partisan issues were in play 250 years ago including the right to vote, the national debt, Federal vs. states’ power, and the viability of tariffs.
The son of a wealthy planter, Jefferson honed many of his political positions at the University of William and Mary, becoming a strong advocate of individual rights as he studied the Enlightenment movement that believed that science and reason, not religion, would improve humanity. (Unfortunately, the philosophy also pushed false science claiming European whites were at the top of the chain intellectually, while Black people were at the bottom.)
Despite his lifelong contradictions on the slavery question, once he entered politics, Jefferson was often called a radical — he consistently backed the French Revolution — and an atheist. In reality, he, like such fellow founding fathers as Benjamin Franklin and James Madison, was a deist who believed in a God that created the world but then left it alone. (He also denied the divinity of Jesus and the Bible’s miracles.)
While he was George Washington’s Secretary of State in 1792, the rising political star founded, along with Madison, the Democratic Republican Party, whose goals disagreed with those of the first President. Jefferson and his party pushed voting rights for all [white] men, strongly propounded the separation of church and state, and wanted a small national government and more power for the states. Even as Secretary of State, he opposed Federalists like Washington, Adams, and Alexander Hamilton, who favored a stronger central government run by the wealthy.
When Jefferson ascended to the presidency, after a term as Adam’s second-in command, he reduced taxes and the national debt and repealed the Alien and Sedition Act. All in on expanding the country’s “Manifest Destiny,” he acquired Spanish Florida and, in a momentous decision, completed a deal with Napoleon Bonaparte to purchase the vast Louisiana Territory from France, thereby doubling the size of the United States. Once again, his ideals falter; he wrote about respecting much about the tribes as their way of life was decimated as settlers and the army moved westward.
In Jefferson’s second term, he finally signed the end of the international slave trade, taking effect in 1808, though existing slavery was allowed to continue in much of the country. But his popularity began to wane after his attempts to forestall a new war with England by installing tariffs on their goods failed. “That caused a lot of economic turmoil,” says Gordon-Reed, “and then we went to war [in 1812] anyway.”
His outsized contributions to the development of the country didn’t end with his presidency. He went on to create the University of Virginia, West Point, and the Library of Congress, among other accomplishments, says Gordon-Reed. “He was a constant from the beginning of the Revolution and up through the early American Republic.”
Though his inspiring words were often at odds with his sometimes cold and calculating deeds, his biographer still finds our fourth president admirable in many ways: “I would judge him as an extraordinary person who had flaws that we can’t discount but overall an amazingly positive force in early American history.”
Thomas Jefferson, Monday, February 17, 8/7c, History