[PzLdr]

How great? Lived WAY beyond his means, constantly in debt. Died without freeing any of his slaves. Amazing? Yes. Great? Not so much.

[Pharmboy]

Excellent points and good summary. He was also a rumor-monger and started the rumor that then President Washington was demented. Washington called him on it, Jefferson denied it (Washington knew it to be true) and Washington would never inhabit the same room with Jefferson for the rest of his life.

I will say this: he was a better president than one might have expected.

[DesertRhino]

At least Thomas J,, that amazing man, didn’t have any Nazi fantasies!

[Verginius Rufus]

Jefferson did free a few of his slaves--the children of Sally Hemmings. I think he may have allowed a few to run away without trying to get them back. Earlier there was a cook who had learned French cooking while with Jefferson in France, whom he eventually freed.

While serving in Congress he proposed ideas for the western territories which were adopted with modifications in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. One of them was to prohibit slavery after a certain date. In the Northwest Ordinance that was applied only to the region north of the Ohio River--but the territories south of the Ohio were still claimed by Virginia, North Carolina, or Georgia at that time. (I don't remember if South Carolina had already surrendered its claim to a narrow strip of land extending to the Mississippi.)

[Sam Gamgee]

I am glad you brought this up because despite the fact his personal life and finances were in shambles, he handled the finances of the nation very well.

Just like many of our heroes, he was not perfect.

I think then we as conservatives must always be careful to avoid the character assassinations of our enemies. While it is tempting to point out that Karl Marx was a moocher and lived off the work of others, we should stick to discussing his IDEAS, else our heroes be taken down by those same standards.

Where I fault Jefferson on the ideas front would be his love affair for the French. He failed to foresee that their revolution would fail in a tyranny of bloodletting. In the end though, his love for France and revulsion of the British was a good counter to the love in for the English we had in that tyrant, Alexander Hamilton.

[donmeaker]

Jefferson was restricted by law from freeing his slaves. The reason why he died in debt is the law didn’t prevent him from paying his slaves a salary, which he did.