Whatever our views on Jefferson the slaveholder and race theorist, he is
but one example--an especially riveting and poignant example, to be
sure--of a more general contradiction (or tragedy) that has fundamentally
shaped our country's history. How do we understand, or even describe, a
nation that launched the first successful experiment in self-government (a
nation of citizens, not subjects) in the modern era, yet also sanctioned
slavery and was led by slaveholding presidents for most of its early
history? In some ways, of course, this contradiction was "resolved" by the
Civil War, but we deal with its legacies every day. The promise
(explicit or implicit) of liberty and equality for all that is such an
inspiring part of our heritage remains unfulfilled--a failure that is all
the more painful *because* of the high expectations generated by the
promise.

Jefferson's life and legacy incorporate both the promise and the failure
to live up to it. It's interesting to speculate about the impact a
genuinely abolitionist Jefferson might have had on the course of our
history, but we are stuck with the history the real Jefferson (and the
rest of our ancestors on this land) helped to shape, and *that* history is
difficult to appraise, I submit, precisely because it is so riddled with
Jefferson-like contradictions.

Douglas Deal
Professor of History and Director of General Education
State University of New York at Oswego
Oswego, NY 13126
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(315)-312-5631 (voice mail)
(315)-312-3577 (FAX)

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