The distinction between “public” and “private” that Jefferson cultivated has encouraged commentators to distinguish between what he said (and might have believed) and what he did (and perhaps could not do) about slavery, bridging the yawning gap between precept and practice with judgments about his character. But I suspect that Jefferson was not gripped by guilt over slavery or torn by its contradictions. If he had been, he could not have found refuge at Monticello from the “torments” of political life, for he would have been constantly, inescapably tormented by his personal failure to take any effective action against this most barbarous and unjust institution. The “real” Jefferson was an enlightened slaveholder, evidently satisfied with the self he so arduously fashioned, not a guilt-ridden schizophrenic.
Jefferson was a moralist acting (or not acting) in accord with his own enlightened, teleological understanding of history’s moral imperatives. He did not stand at the bar of conscience or moral judgment and find himself wanting, as modern moralists would like to imagine. To the contrary, his enlightened moral sense, the “pure” principles that guided both his private life and his political career, constituted the solid and enduring foundation of his character, as he understood it.
Our moral sense leads us to take Jefferson apart, with the hope of isolating and preserving something in his life — or at least some inspiring words, however intended — that we can live by. But Jefferson’s moral sense worked in the opposite way, not simply to reconcile or suppress what we like to see as fundamental, irreconcilable personal conflicts but rather to underwrite an abiding self-assurance that verged on self-righteousness. Jefferson the moralist lived comfortably with himself. He also lived comfortably at Monticello, where family members and slaves (including enslaved family members) struggled constantly to fulfill Jefferson’s idealized conception of domesticity.
Jefferson’s life and his thought are inextricably linked. Jefferson was no more a bundle of contradictions and conflicting impulses than we sophisticated, self-conscious moderns know ourselves to be: he made sense to himself and he can make more sense to us now if we engage him on his own terms and in his own cultural and moral contexts. I also believe that a fresh, historically informed engagement with Jefferson’s thoughts both complicate and make more vital the political principles that he articulated so eloquently and that continue to exercise such a powerful influence in our national self-understanding.
Jefferson’s conception of the world historical significance of the American Revolution and his vision of the new nation’s boundless promise remain inspiring, and it is hard for modern Americans to resist the complacent conclusion that the United States today represents the fulfillment of his prophecy, that his future is our past.