Thinkers and political figures
Portrait: Rembrandt Peale, 1800, via Wikimedia Commons (opens in a new tab) · Public domain
Thomas Jefferson
- Country
- United States
- Era
- 1743–1826
- Tradition
- Agrarian republicanism
Author of the Declaration of Independence and third president, who argued for the widest possible dispersal of power and property among small farmers while owning more than six hundred enslaved people over his lifetime.
01
Documented positions
Documented positions come from the sources listed. Similarity is this project’s inference from those positions, and is a much weaker claim.
- Wrote that all men are created equal and endowed with unalienable rights, in the Declaration of Independence
- Argued for a strict reading of federal power and against a national bank as unconstitutional
- Favoured an agrarian republic of independent smallholders over commercial and manufacturing concentration
- Drafted the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom and argued for a wall of separation between church and state
- Held and traded enslaved people throughout his life, freeing only a handful, while writing that slavery was a moral evil
- Doubled the territory of the United States through the Louisiana Purchase despite his own doubts about its constitutionality
- Argued that each generation should be free to remake its own constitution rather than be bound by the last
02
Where it sits on each dimension
Wealth and inequality
52
RedistributionMarket outcomes
Evidence: Documented
The state in the economy
78
Active stateLimited state
Evidence: Well documented
Personal liberty
78
Collective orderIndividual freedom
Evidence: Well documented
Tradition and change
60
ContinuityReform
Evidence: Documented
Nation and the world
48
InternationalistNationalist
Evidence: Documented
Religion and the state
12
Secular stateReligion in public life
Evidence: Well documented
Power and its limits
80
Concentrated authorityChecks and pluralism
Evidence: Well documented
Dimensions left unscored, for want of evidence: Environment and growth, Crime and punishment
Sources
- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia · 1785
- Thomas Jefferson et al., Declaration of Independence · 1776
- Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello · W. W. Norton · 2008
Last verified: