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Article: Thomas Jefferson, Tarnished Icon?; Scholars Debate True Mettle Of the Founding Father
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- October 17, 1992
- Author:
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Sure, he wrote the Declaration of Independence and spent two
terms in the White House as one of our greatest presidents and built
this marvelous house on a mountaintop and founded a great
university. But for Thomas Jefferson, there are still the character
issues.
Was he a hypocrite? Self-indulgent? A deficit spender?
Did he take a slave, Sally Hemings, as his mistress? (Sally,
they call her around here, as though she might walk in the door.)
Why, despite his public proclamations that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with the unalienable
right of liberty, did Jefferson continue to own as many as 200
slaves? Why did he free only two in his lifetime ...