Talk:Thomas Jefferson

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June 25, 2006	Good article nominee	Listed
June 15, 2008	Peer review	Reviewed
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December 6, 2015	Good article nominee	Not listed
Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on April 13, 2017, April 13, 2018, and July 4, 2019.
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Kyle Keeler (2023-2-23). "How Wikipedia Erases Indigenous History". Slate. Retrieved 2023-12-1. Wikipedia's page on Jefferson, himself an architect of Indian Removal, draws on outdated scholarship from the 1970s to argue that Jefferson wanted what "was best for American Indians." One sentence alludes to recent scholarship arguing that Jefferson removed Native peoples to gain land. During a discussion about Jefferson's role in removal, the editor responsible for almost a quarter of the pages for Washington, Jefferson, and Ulysses S. Grant made false, racist claims, writing, "We certainly don't want to connotate any negativity towards Jefferson, do we? Okay, we can mention that many tribes were war like, xenophobic, refused to assimilate and that for everyone's own good and general welfare it was deemed best to keep the two diametrically opposed cultures in separate parts of the country." {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |access-date= and |date= (help)

Inventions[edit]

The inventions section of this article is pretty inaccurate. Most of the inventions this article credits Jefferson with were not things that he invented but rather gadgets that he saw elsewhere and added to his house. For example, Jefferson did not invent the Great Clock he just designed the appearance of it. That's also the case with the swivel chair. Here is a page from Monticello that explains the difference between what Jefferson invented and the pre-existing technologies that he adopted or made improvements upon. https://www.monticello.org/thomas-jefferson/thomas-jefferson-and/jefferson-technology/#inventions 50.217.1.254 (talk) 16:19, 18 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Fluff in lead[edit]

There's multiple problems with the current lead that I attempted to improve.

First of all, the lead implies (albeit you can interpret it differently) that Jefferson's anti-Indian policies were a novum in American history up until that point.

That's completely wrong. Washington was labeled by the Iroquois as Hanödaga꞉nyas — which means "town destroyer" in the Seneca language. Many of the American Founding Fathers wanted to or actually did ethnically cleanse, forcefully assimilate, or war against Native Americans at least inside of what is now called the eastern part of the United States. Implying that Jefferson "started" the process of Indian removal is laughable and completely wrong. Most of the intellectual justification was already being developed far before he ever assumed the presidency. This belongs far more on the pages surrounding Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, and other early American political figures, rather than Jefferson.

Jefferson was a slave owner, but condemned the slave trade in his draft of the Declaration of Independence and signed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves in 1807.

Comes across as WP: PEACOCK to me. (I'd argue, as many historians on the matter do, that banning the import of slaves actually makes the current "supply" of them inherently more valuable.)

And I'd bet it's only used as a "balance" sentence to this:

Since the 1790s, he was rumored to have had children by his slave Sally Hemings; according to scholarly consensus, Jefferson probably fathered six children with Hemings

As historians have variously portrayed Jefferson as a hypocrite who never actually intended to end slavery, a revolutionary anti-slavery figure who made pragmatic compromises on the matter throughout his political career, or as an anti-slavery figure who gradually grew to accept and support the continuation of slavery towards the end of his life, as indicated by the Notes on the State of Virginia, I think it would be best if the two above sentences are removed and replaced with:

Scholars have radically differing opinions on his views and relationship with slavery.

Selectively quoting different aspects of his life where he took positions that could be classified as "anti-slavery" (Declaration of Independence, ban on importing slaves, private quotations) and "pro-slavery" (continued ownership of enslaved humans, relationship with Sally Hemmings, and so on) and having that take up an entire paragraph seems like massive bloat, considering that a majority of presidents before 1865 owned enslaved individuals at some point in their lives. KlayCax (talk) 00:16, 22 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Tagging @Anwegmann:. KlayCax (talk) 00:16, 22 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I also think that "libertarianism" should be removed from the lead. Whether Jefferson's actual thoughts on the matter could be classified as such is disputable at best.

Almost every part of the American political spectrum (like the Founders in general) selectively quotes aspects of the Founding Fathers to justify their views. KlayCax (talk) 00:19, 22 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]