Conclusion

• Author: Arthur Rizer
• Profession: Director of Justice Policy and a senior fellow at the R Street Institute
• Pages: 191-192

191

CONCLUSION

America’s history is lled with a great many larger-than-life personalities.

Each dominated the political scene for a time, some made dramatic changes

to our systems, and, often, they left the country in a better condition than they

found it. omas Jeerson is a personality of a dierent sort, however. He was

not so dominant because of a larger-than-life personality; rather, he domi-

nated because of his profound, innate ability to communicate. Where many

of our American greats have been tremendous oralists, Jeerson was a writer.

He dened his place in our history books, our hearts, and our minds by his

writings that so fundamentally changed how people all over the globe per-

ceived their realities. e principles he founded the Declaration of Indepen-

dence upon still inspire Americans and people all over the world to ght for

the rights that are justly theirs. e human rights movement, it can be said,

really began with Jeerson’s declaration of rights under natural law, inherent

rights bestowed upon each of us by our mere existence.

at, obviously, raises the man’s most profound contradiction: Jeerson

wrote of grand principles, but lived with the grimy realities all around him.

Slavery, the Haitian revolution, misogynistic tendencies, pettiness, vanity, etc.:

Jeerson was a man who denitely knew what hypocrisy truly meant. ough

in his letters, he seems to argue for some justications for his mistakes like

those just above, the force of those arguments never quite lands. For a man

who made such eective use of ethos, pathos, and logos in his Great works, that

his justifying arguments for slavery do not succeed may be somewhat surpris-

ing. Upon examination, the most likely reason for this failure to truly persuade

is that this brilliant man did, in fact, know right from wrong, and so found it

dicult to mount an argument with logic, passion, and ethics. No, it is most

likely that the reality Jeerson faced as a member of the Virginia gentry in the

1700s and 1800s was just convenient. It aorded him a certain lifestyle.