Framing a Legend: Exposing the Distorted History of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings

by Mark Andrew Holowchak

What kairos shows, however, for Jefferson's moral-sense ethics is that sometimes the right thing to do done before the time is right for its doing is the wrong thing to do. As Aristotle said, “Having such [moral] feelings (path) at the right times, about the right things, toward the right people, for the right end, and in the right way…is endemic to virtue.”

In addition, there were changes in the Republican Party—the avowed assimilation of Federalists within the Republican party73—that

The survival of the union was always foremost in Jefferson's mind—no more than at the time of the Missouri question.

But this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror.

practiced law with honesty and integrity and even argued pro bono six appeals in freedom suits for claimants of mixed descent,

Hasty and wholesale condemnation of Jefferson on slavery or any other issue, I maintain, is a better barometer of the ignorance and hypocrisy of hostile critics, than of Jefferson. Who are we to challenge his exemplary record of involvement and achievement?