America is the melting pot of the whole world, the New World, seen by the rest of the world as the land of opportunity, the land of the free, the green pastures, and the crossroads where virtually all nationalities and races meet. This problem would not have aroused studies and researches a few centuries ago. This study would not have been conducted in other countries because almost all the world’s countries and their people possess unifying attributes that make them distinct and unmistakable for any other nationality, race, culture, and language. “Modern Americans broadly share a sense that members of the revolutionary generation of the 1770s-90s brought about something pre-ordained by the gods: a nation marked by popular government and a market economy.
Some of those leaders, indeed, spoke prophetically, but the fact was that they also knew their movement could have failed and they would surely have hanged together as traitors. Had the British army commanders prosecuted the war more vigorously, they could have nipped the uprising in the bud, and evolution rather than revolution would have kept the colonies within the Empire” (Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation Study Guide). Only America possesses the probability of encountering this problem because of countless causes – immigration, preservation of heritage of immigrants, racial and ethnic differences, and cultural differences to name a few. This is due to the fact that Thomas Jefferson’s contradictions cannot be valid because being contradictory is an American trait.
Being an American individual does not necessarily mean that you are of white, black, red, brown, or yellow complexion, which signifies race. The term “American” has no racial insinuations for virtually all Americans trace their roots from distinct nationalities, races, and ethnic groups and this complication alone can cause innumerable perplexing things. But because of the fact that America had evolved into its present status, all sorts of studies need to be carried out for the purpose of solving the problem. With that, it is apparent within America, there is a contradiction due to the fact that we allow many races to live here, however, there is still prejudice around us. The analysis of the contradiction of Thomas Jefferson is only one of the countless implications brought about by the evolution of America itself.
Thomas Jefferson as a private citizen and public intellectual embodied a wide spectrum of contradictions in his opinions and behavior. He drafted the Declaration of Independence, served as a foreign Ambassador, was elected President of the United States, founded a major university among many other luminous achievements even as he inherited, owned, bought, and sold slaves, wrote and spoke in contradictory ways about the “problem” of slavery, solutions to it, and the irrefutable inferiority of blacks was constantly in debt, likely maintained decades-long concubinage with his slave Sally Hemings, fathered several illegitimate children with her who consequently became his property, and ultimately failed in his promise to free the vast majority of his slaves (Deas, 2004).
People cannot make sense out of Jefferson’s contradictions because they are flawed. If he truly believed slaves should be freed, he would have let his own slaves go free (Ellis, 2000). However, it seems that having contradictions in life is an American trait because we are the land of the free but not everyone has equal rights. With that, Jefferson’s contradictions were flawed due to the fact having them was a part of an American trait that we cannot control.
References
Deas, Michael. (2004). The Radical Mind of Thomas Jefferson. Web.
Ellis, Joseph. (2005). Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation Study Guide. Web.
Ellis, Joseph. (2000). Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation. Knopf.