When Jon Meacham published Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, The New York Times situated it in what it called the “flawed giant” school of biography, explaining, “Books in this mode usually present their subjects as figures of heroic grandeur despite all-too-human shortcomings—and so, again, speak directly to the current moment, with its diminished faith in government and in the nation’s elected leaders.”
On Monday, returning to Jefferson and his legacy in an hour-long lecture at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Meacham was most engaging on the subject of our third president’s biggest shortcoming: a posture toward slavery that contradicted his finest words. “With Jefferson’s brilliance and accomplishments, he is immortal,” Meacham said. “Yet because of his flaws, sins, and failures, he strikes us as mortal too—a man of achievement who was susceptible to the temptations and compromises that ensnare all of us, when we're being honest. He was not all he could be.”
But despite his shortcomings, “he left America and the world a better place than it had been when he found it. That he did not live a perfect life, that he failed to deliver on the promise of the Declaration, that he has been condemned as a hypocrite in the eyes of history, are to my mind reasons to engage with him, not excoriate him.”