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Abstract

History’s pedestal stands as tall as mankind can imagine and the fall from such heights creates in us the adrenaline of the fall, the pain of impact, and worst of all the insecurities of an unsure footing in the world. According to some historians, few have fallen harder than Thomas Jefferson. Annette Gordon-Reed and Peter S. Onuf, two significant modern historians partnered to write, “There has been a reaction to these earlier portraits of Jefferson, and the pendulum appears to have swung all the way in the opposite direction. ‘Jefferson the God’ has given way to ‘Jefferson the Devil’.” Historiographical perspectives on Jefferson, his political views on and relationship with slavery, and his supposed entanglement with Sally Hemings have evolved through the most complex and contested arguments throughout the last two hundred years. Two hundred years of biographies on an icon such as Jefferson fills volumes yielding a monstrous derangement of historiographical content. By a tighter examination of the works surrounding Jefferson before and after one pivotal moment in history, it is clear that Jefferson’s historical reputation is still as Bellot asserted in 1954, “a good barometer by which to judge the state of the weather.” In short, Jefferson’s historiographical legacy is not the fall from veneration as some have claimed, but more a study in fluctuations according to the changing political and social climate of the United States. It is not the pedestal of history that Jefferson falls from; it is on the roller coaster of humanity that we ride with Jefferson.

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