UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES: “Flight from Monticello: Thomas Jefferson at War.”

 ". . .In authoring the Declaration, Jefferson’s achievements and contradictions are an embodiment of the story even more than is widely realized: from his initial effort to retain ties with the monarchy to being a leader in the effort against it; to the vast gap between his stated ideals of equality and his actions as an enslaver; to his desperate flight from the British army five years after he wrote the Declaration that set the war in motion.

Revolutionary Revelations

How a young Jefferson’s plea to the king helped ignite the fight for independence

In the summer of 1774, Thomas Jefferson retreated to Monticello and wrote a secret plea meant to avert disputes with the British — a document that instead helped set America on the path to independence.

 

By Michael Kranish

 

 

 In challenging British rule, Thomas Jefferson would face the contradiction between enslavement and “all men are created equal.”

 

". . .Almost from the moment that Jefferson wrote the Declaration, his intent in saying that “all men are created equal” has been one of the most intensely debated issues in the country’s history.

>  It goes to the heart of the American story, characterized as aspirational, hypocritical and everything in between.

Whatever Jefferson meant, there is no debate that the Declaration and its call that all men are created equal has inspired at least 120 nations and peoples to adopt their own versions, leading it to be called the greatest spark for democracy the world has known. 

Nearly a century after the Declaration was written, President Abraham Lincoln elevated its status as a foundational document amid the Civil War and debate over slavery.

Yet it has also been noted that when it was written, the Declaration in effect excluded the enslaved and Native Americans — famously not mentioning slavery in a compromise to appease southern states.

Washington Post reporter Michael Kranish is a former fellow at the International Center for Jefferson Studies and the author of “Flight from Monticello: Thomas Jefferson at War.”