Was Jefferson the “Man of the People”?

In a fifth grade classroom in 1992, students were assigned to write a biographical Social Studies report about the third President of the United States. This report was to recount the great accomplishments and achievements that this President, and “founding father” of the United States made and contributed to society during the span of his life. Certainly as a fifth-grader, seeing the great Thomas Jefferson as anything less than an intelligent, honorable, noble man who contributed to building the United States of America would be absurd. Yet, years later the realization would soon set in (as Smith states in his text) that “Jefferson is the embodiment of the contradiction in the American democracy between its declaration of universal freedom and equality and its practice of slavery.” On one hand, Jefferson would be demanding and fighting for the rights of man and on the other enslaving innocent humans.1
From Smith’s lectures, it was concluded that there are three basic ...