In her beautiful book American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence, Pauline Maier, a historian at MIT who died on Monday of lung cancer, described Thomas Jefferson as “the most overrated person in American history.” Is this statement a classic case of revisionism from a bookish scholar with no sense of reality or an accurate assessment of a man who avoided active combat during the entire course of the Revolutionary War? At the very least, TJ has to be one of the most ironic, if not hypocritical, men in our history: the author of “all men are created equal” owned as many as 177 slaves when he wrote those (empty?) words …
prior probability asks, what’s wrong with this famous picture? Who was left out at the Founding of the Republic?
prior probability 
I can’t speak Jefferson on that kind of micro level but I do find that type of analysis really interesting. So much of history is partial myth and trying to sort it out is an overwhelming challenge.
Definitely a hypocrite. Not only did he own over 177 slaves but he also had several children with one Sally Hemmings and refused to free their children. The slaves and the native americans were left out of this picture.
Allow me to say this in Jefferson’s defense … TJ (like all of us) may have been hypocrite, but he was an eloquent and noble hypocrite …
Sure, he is a colossal hypocrite but that is a different question than the one being applied here. The same goes for George Washington and so many other heroes of the revolution. If you apply a 2013 sensibility to them, they all suck, right?
I think a flexible Constitution is necessary because: (1) they guys obviously did not have it all figure out if they thought slavery was okay, and (2) it was a very different world in 1789. But I’m changing the subject more than this post should allow.
Great points … maybe Maier was wrong; maybe TJ is the most “underrated” in our history (I am thinking here of his decision to go through with the Louisiana Purchase and his pivotal role in the Virginia & Kentucky Resolutions, which seem very relevant now to the implementation of ‘Obamacare’)