Why exactly do you think that Jefferson is not a good person personality-wise? We know of his actions, but what of just how he is?
Correction; I don't think he's a hero, or a villain. Due to my lack of interest of learning about him - which isn't deep or anything, he just genuinely does not interest me - I can come across as being harsher towards him than how I do with many of the other founders. The ideology someone could be a saint, or pure evil; is kind of a childish fairytale view. When judging historical figures, you need to see them as the people that they are, not statues of fictional heroes upon a pedestal. And in almost every case with a founder; they are just morally gray people. On one hand; Jefferson was the author of the Declaration Of Independence, a ballsy job not many were willing to commit to and do. And on the other; he was an asshole, manipulative politician, pedophile, etc. People often times seem conscripted to choose between seeing controversial historical figures as heroes, or villains. With the downfall being missing the reasonable answer that is the ambiguity and complexity of humanity. It's a common side affect to trying to objectify these real human people as saints, or sinister people to either only condone or condem. Because the end result is; the polarization. There isn't going to be a completely terrible or completely great person.
Anyway, in many cases; it's subjective wether someone's shortcomings outweigh their accomplishments. And I'm not here to personally countdown every misdeed in Jefferson's life to give an answer. But I will say that; from most of what I've heard, I am not fond of Jefferson in any aspect. I'll spare the details about his relationship with slavery and the Hemming's case — not out of the intent to dismiss those disgusting acts, but because I don't feel like repeating what has already be told repeatedly. And we are really judging on his “personality” here, so let's just take from the perspective of his own time.
He was a sexist, and supported rapists.
“More so than most founders, Thomas Jefferson dwelled on disorderly women. He noted that his good-hearted male assistant “loses all power over himself and becomes almost frenzied” when in the company of women. Jefferson was against imposing harsh penalties on rapists lest disorderly women use the rape charge as “an instrument of vengeance against an inconstant lover and of disappointment to a rival.” He condemned French women who engaged in public petitioning and protests for abandoning their families and nourishing “all our bad passions.” He blamed France's Queen Marie Antoinette for an “inflexible perverseness and dauntless spirit," manipulation of the king, and the violence of the French Revolution. He commented, “I should have shut the Queen in a convent, putting harm out of her power.” Jefferson's misogynist tendency to blame women for all public problems was simply an extreme example of the founders' deep distrust of public women.
Not surprisingly, many founders joined fraternal organizations where men could escape from women to enjoy male camaraderie. Social groups like the Freemasons, martial institutions such as the Society of the Cincinnati, and political clubs like Democratic Societies were male-only organizations that invited members to congregate, socialize, network, deliberate, plan, and make decisions regarding their families, businesses, communities, and nation without women's presence, intervention, or interference.”
(source — The Gendering of American Politics: Founding Mothers, Founding Fathers, and Political Patriarchy, by Mark E. Kann)
He was super racist, even for his day.
Granted, throughout Jefferson's life, he was always publicly disagreeing towards slavery, despite enslaving 600 people. Jefferson called slavery a “moral depravity”, and he believed that slavery was a great threat to their new nation. And he also thought that slavery was a terrible contradiction to the laws of nature, which was that everyone had a right to personal liberty.
But that is all severely less applauding when Jefferson's belief in the necessity of abolition was intertwined with his racist beliefs — as in, Jefferson didn't care if slaves were freed or not, he still thought they were inferior and didn't deserve to be in America with white folks. He thought that white Americans and enslaved black people constituted two separate nations, and that they could never live together peacefully, or even in the same country, abolishment or not.
Jefferson also believed that black people were racially inferior, and even had the capability of children;
“for, men, probably of any colour, but of this color we know, brought up from their infancy without necessity for thought or forecast, are by their habits rendered as incapable as children of taking care of themselves, and are extinguished promptly wherever industry is necessary for raising the young. in the mean time they are pests in society by their idleness, and the depredations to which this leads them. their amalgamation with the other colour produces a degradation to which no lover of his country, no lover of excellence in the human character can innocently consent.”
(source — from Thomas Jefferson to Edward Coles, [August 25, 1814])
And he was actually terrified what freed slaves might do to their previous owners, that he supported deporting black people out of the United States ( Freed or not ) in favor of protecting planation owners.
Which is the whole meaning behind Jefferson's well-known quote; “we have a wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go”
All of which, was pretty racist even by his day-in-age. Trust me, there are plenty more admirable abolitionists that did not agree with this same sickening ideology.
He was a shitty person and friend.
So, I'm not going to bring up his rivalry with Adams because they were both petty and ridiculous.
Thaddeus - also known as Tadeusz - Kosciuszko ( 1746-1817 ), was a Polish engineer, and firm believer in liberty. Kosciuszko traveled to America during the American Revolution and even fought in the war, and later gained even greater recognition in defense of his native Poland. And he was also an abolitionist, and hated slavery.
Yet, he was also great friends with Jefferson. Who had called him; “as pure a son of liberty as I have ever known.” The major difference between Kosciuszko and Jefferson as abolitionists, was that Kosciuszko was actually willing to act on his word.
In 1798, Kodciuszko left the United States and returned to the Russian-controlled sector of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Jefferson had helpfully provided him with a passport in a false name and arranged for his secret departure to France. But before leaving that same year, Kodciuszko wrote out a will and entrusted Jefferson to be the executor. In the document, Kosciuszko - long before the American Civil War - pleaded for the emancipation of America's black slaves. His plan was to leave his American estate to buy the freedom of the enslaved, including Jefferson's own, and to educate them for independent life and work as to help supply them after they would be freed from the planations.
“I Thaddeus Kosciuszko being just in my departure from America do hereby declare and direct that should I make no other testamentory disposition of my property in the United States I hereby authorise my friend Thomas Jefferson to employ the whole thereof in purchasing Negroes from among his own or any others and giving them Liberty in my name, in giving them en education in trades or othervise and in having them instructed for their new condition in the duties of morality which may make them good neigh bours good fathers or moders, husbands or vives and in their duties as citisens teeching them to be defenders of their Liberty and Country and of the good order of Society and in whatsoever may Make them happy and useful, and I make the said Thomas Jefferson my executor of this”
(source — Will of Tadeusz Kosciuszko, [May 5, 1798])
In October 1817, Kosciuszko passed. But even before such, in September, he wrote a letter to Jefferson reminding him of the deal; “—of which money, after my death, you know the fixed destination.” And yet, Jefferson waited until he was of age 77, to claim that he was too old to fill in the request, and that it was too complicated legally. After the case was passed around through a couple of other men who all refused to fullfil it; and I don't believe it was ever completed.
He was a manipulative politician.
He did that imperious, artificial sympathy shit of dressing poor to make himself appear more relatable and humanizing to people. Which in the end; is just insulting and arrogant, but even politicians ( And celebrities ) do things like that today and get away with objectifying others simply because of class differences.
And also, he was such a rich coward that half the rumors and slander he had spread around weren't even by himself — but he had instead just paid many journalists to do his dirty work for him, all while he could appear innocent and too sensible to get into the crossfire of political slander.
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