Thomas Jefferson declared that all men were created equal, but
he also owned more than 100 slaves. When others like George
Washington freed their human property during the Revolutionary
War, Jefferson did not, according to New York Times  contributor
Paul Finkelman. Even when Jefferson died, his will freed only
five of his nearly 200 slaves, and those were his children with
love interest and slave Sally Hemings, though she herself
remained enslaved after his passing. We are endlessly fascinated
with Jefferson, in part because we seem unable to reconcile the
rhetoric of liberty in his writing with the reality of his slave
owning and his lifetime support for slavery. Time and again, we
play down the latter in favor of the former, or write off the
paradox as somehow indicative of his complex depths. Neither Mr.
Meacham, who mostly ignores Jefferson's slave ownership, nor Mr.
Wiencek, who sees him as a sort of fallen angel who comes to
slavery only after discovering how profitable it could be, seem
willing to con