How can we understand the man who was a lifelong opponent of slavery and a lifelong slaveholder; who wrote "all men are created equal" but considered himself the owner of more than six hundred human beings over the course of his life; who entrusted his children, his buildings, and his business enterprises to the care of his slaves but published negative views of the mental and physical capacities of black people; who often expressed his aversion to the mixing of races but, the weight of evidence suggests, sustained a lasting relationship with an African-American woman, his own slave?
Acclaimed as author of the Declaration of Independence and "architect" of American democracy, Thomas Jefferson is as famous for his contradictions. He was a conspicuous personification of the profound inconsistencies in a nation that espoused liberty and enslaved a fifth of its inhabitants.
Through his celebrity as the eloquent spokesman for liberty and equality as well as the ancestor of people living on both sides of the color line, Jefferson has left a unique legacy for descendants of Monticello's enslaved people as well as for all Americans.
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The links to the right lead to more information on these topics. Extraordinary Ancestors summarizes Monticello's position on the existence of a relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, with links to other on-line resources. Jefferson and Slavery reviews his statements and actions related to the institution and has a link to his quotations on the subject over a fifty-year period.