Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Question for students: Just how evil was Thomas Jefferson?

It's not me asking, but it was more or less what Irish writer Conor Cruise O'Brien asked in his 1996 article, "Thomas Jefferson: Radical or Racist?" Now that have read (or once you have read) Jefferson's letters on the French Revolution -- see the Virtual Reader -- and about his relations with the Hemings family in Annette Gordon-Reed's book, give your response to O'Brien's screed. (These passages from Jefferson's writings on race and slavery may also be informative. You have probably seen them already.) Most present-day historians and commentators would not be as harsh as O'Brien, but many make some basically similar points that, like O'Brien, follow some of the Federalist attacks on Jefferson in his own time. Do you think Gordon-Reed would agree them?