Thomas Jefferson Survives: American Independence in His Time and Ours

“Does Thomas Jefferson still matter?” ask two leading historians on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Thomas Jefferson has been reinvented more than perhaps any American president in history. In the nineteenth century, slavery’s defenders invoked Jefferson’s defense of states’ rights while abolitionists drew on his antislavery writings in support of their cause. After the Civil War, Jefferson’s reputation declined because of his association with secession and disunion...