Americans in great numbers are rediscovering their Founding Fathers in such best-selling books as Joseph Ellis's Founding Brothers, David McCullough's John Adams, and my own Undaunted Courage, about Lewis and Clark. There are others who believe that some of these men are unworthy of our attention because they owned slaves -- Washington, Jefferson, Clark among them, but not Adams. They failed to rise above their time and place, though Washington, but not Jefferson, freed his slaves upon his death. But history abounds with ironies. These men, the Founding Fathers and Brothers, established a system of government that, after much struggle, and the terrible violence of the Civil War, and the civil rights movement led by black Americans, did lead to legal freedom for all Americans and movement toward equality.

Let's begin with Thomas Jefferson, because it is he who wrote the words that inspired subsequent generations to make the heroic sacrifices that transformed the words "All men are created equal" into reality.

In the fall of 1996 I was a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin. The History Club there asked me to participate in a panel discussion called "Political Correctness and the University." The professor seated next to me taught American political thought in the Political Science Department. I remarked to her that when I began teaching I had required students to read five or six books each semester, but I had cut that back to three or four or else the students would drop my course. She said she had the same problem. She had dropped Thomas Jefferson's writings from the required reading list. She did, she said, have Vine Deloria's God Is Red on it. She said she wanted her students to get the Native American point of view.

"You are in Madison, being paid by the citizens of Wisconsin to teach their children American political thought, and you leave out Tom Jefferson?"

"Yes," she replied. "He was a slaveholder." More than half the large audience applauded.

Jefferson owned slaves. He did not believe that all were created equal. He was a racist, incapable of rising above the thought of his time and place, and willing to profit from slave labor.

Few of us entirely escape our times and places. Thomas Jefferson did not achieve greatness in his personal life. He had a slave as mistress. He lied about it. He once tried to bribe a hostile reporter. His war record was not good. He spent much of his life in intellectual pursuits in which he excelled, and not enough in leading his fellow Americans toward great goals by example. Theodore Roosevelt called him our worst President. Jefferson surely knew slavery was wrong, but he didn't have the courage to lead the way to emancipation. If you hate slavery and the terrible things it did to human beings, it is difficult to regard Jefferson as a great man, or a good man. He was a spendthrift, always deeply in debt. He never freed his slaves. Thus the sting in Dr. Samuel Johnson's mortifying question, "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of Negroes?"

In his only book, Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson's chapter on slavery includes this passage: "The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it. If a parent could find no motive either in his philanthropy or his self-love, for restraining the intemperance of passion towards his slave, it should always be a sufficient one that his children are present. But generally it is not sufficient. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives loose to his worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances."

He knew slavery was wrong and that he was wrong in profiting from the institution, but apparently could see no way to relinquish it in his lifetime. He thought abolition of slavery might be accomplished by the young men of the next generation. They were qualified to bring the American Revolution to its idealistic conclusion because, he said, these young Virginians had "sucked in the principles of liberty as if it were their mother's milk." This despite what he had written about the effect of slavery on the slave owner's children.

Of all the contradictions in Jefferson's contradictory life, none is greater. Of all the contradictions in America's history, none surpasses its toleration first of slavery and then of segregation. Jefferson hoped and expected that Virginians of Meriwether Lewis's and William Clark's generation would abolish slavery, yet he said not a word to them about his dream. His writing showed that he had a great mind and a limited character.

William Clark owned a slave called York. They were the same age. York went with him on the Great Expedition, which crossed the hitherto unexplored continent. He paddled, pushed, hauled, made and broke camp, hunted, stood ready to fight Indians, went hungry and was often exhausted, carried his rifle, and was prepared to protect Captain Clark's life at the risk of his own. When the Corps of Discovery got back to St. Louis, and every man who had gone on the expedition got double pay and a land grant, York received nothing.

York asked Clark, How about my freedom? His owner said that that was out of the question. He asked Clark to sell him to an owner in Louisville so he could live with his wife and family. Not possible, Clark replied, and he complained, "York is but of very little Service to me, insolent and Sulky. I gave him a Severe trouncing the other Day and he has much mended Sence." In 1816, more than a decade after the expedition, Clark finally freed York, and gave him a wagon and a mule so he could move goods between Nashville and Louisville and make a living. Clark, like Jefferson, like all slaveholders and many other white members of American society, regarded Negroes as inferior, childlike, untrustworthy -- and of course as property. Clark and his fellows got such ideas not from observation, not from York's actions -- or the actions of many, probably most, slaves -- but from a prejudice so deeply rooted that nothing, it seemed, could pull that plant from the ground.

Jefferson, the genius of politics, could see no way for African Americans to live in society as free people. He embraced the worst forms of racism to justify slavery, to himself and those he instructed. The limitations he displayed in refusing both to acknowledge the truth of his own observations on the institution, and his unwillingness to do something, anything, to weaken and finally destroy it, brand him as an intellectual coward.

In Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson describes the institution of slavery as forcing tyranny and depravity on master and slave alike. He also wrote about the character and morals of blacks in words that drip with the most vulgar assertions: Negroes have produced no scholars or poets (without mentioning that it was illegal in the South to teach a slave how to read or write); they smell different and bad; they engage in sex constantly but always without love. He said things about these fellow human beings that would make members of a nineteenth-or twentieth-century lynch mob feel comfortable. He knew -- how could a man with his agile mind not know -- that these were all lies. He left America's first and greatest moral problem to his successors. He could not rise above convenience. To be a slaveholder meant one had to regard the African American as inferior in every way. One had to believe that the worst white man was better than the best black man. If you did not believe these things you could not justify yourself to yourself. So Jefferson could condemn slavery in words, but not in deeds.

Jefferson had slaves at his magnificent estate, Monticello, who were superb artisans, shoemakers, masons, carpenters, cooks. But like every bigot, he never said, after seeing a skilled African craftsman at work or enjoying the fruits of his labor, "Maybe I'm wrong." He already knew that. He ignored the words of his fellow revolutionary John Adams, who said that the Revolution would never be complete until the slaves were free.

Jefferson left another racial and moral problem for his successors, the treatment of the Native Americans. He had no positive idea of what to do with or about the Indians. He handed that problem over to his grandchildren, and theirs.

The author of the Declaration of Independence threw up his hands at the questions of women's rights. It is not as if the subject of votes for women and other rights never came up. Abigail Adams, at one time a close friend of Jefferson, raised it. But Jefferson's attitude toward women was at one with that of the white men of his age. He wrote about almost everything, but almost never about women, not his wife or his mother and certainly not Sally Hemmings. He contrasted American and Parisian women he observed when he was ambassador to France. In America, Jefferson noted with approval, women knew their place, which was in the home and, more specifically, in the nursery. Instead of gadding frivolously about town as Frenchwomen did, chasing fashion or meddling in politics, American women were content with "the tender and tranquil amusement of domestic life" and never troubled their pretty heads about politics.

So it is of particular irony to admit that Jefferson was as remarkable a man as America has produced. "Spent the evening with Mr. Jefferson," John Quincy Adams wrote in his diary in 1785, "whom I love to be with.... You can never be an hour in the man's company without something of the marvelous." And even Abigail Adams wrote of him, "He is one of the choice ones of the earth."

Jefferson was born rich and became well educated. He was a man of principle (except with regard to slaves, Indians, and women). His civic duty was paramount to him. He read, deeply and widely -- more than any other President of the United States except, possibly, Theodore Roosevelt. He wrote well and with more productivity and skill than any other President, except, perhaps, Theodore Roosevelt. He was not a great public speaker, but in small groups he shone. Wherever Jefferson sat was the head of the table. Those few who got to dine with him around a small table always recalled his charm, wit, insights, queries, explanations, gossip, curiosity, and above all else his laughter.

Jefferson's range of knowledge was astonishing. Science in general. Flora and fauna specifically. Geography. Fossils. The classics and modern literature. Languages. Politicians of all types. Politics, state by state, county by county. International affairs. He was an intense partisan. He loved music and playing the violin. He wrote countless letters about his philosophy, observations of people and places. He composed powerful essays, not always about politics -- his head and heart essay is perhaps the best known. In his official correspondence, Jefferson maintained a level of eloquence not since equaled. I've spent much of my professional life studying Presidents and generals, reading their letters, examining their orders to their subordinates, making an attempt to judge them. None match Jefferson.

In spite of these rare abilities, Jefferson was not a hero. His great achievements were words. Except for the Louisiana Purchase, his actions as President fall short. But those words! He was the author of the Declaration of Independence. The second paragraph begins with a perfect sentence--"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" (an affirmation he did not live out). Eventually, with Lincoln, who articulated these truths and lived them, and slowly afterward, the idea made its progress.

Abraham Lincoln, who grew up in a free state, struggled for more than a half-century with his own feelings about slavery. At one point he wanted to ship all slaves back to Africa. But in 1865, in his Second Inaugural, shortly before his death, he clarified his conclusion unequivocally. He said the whole country was guilty of the fact of slavery, not just the South. All of us.

Jefferson's declaration that all men are created equal is quoted all over the world. Everyone, everywhere, knows these words. Those words, as the great historian Samuel Eliot Morison has said, "are more revolutionary than anything written by Robespierre, Marx, or Lenin, a continual challenge to ourselves, as well as an inspiration to the oppressed of all the world."

Jefferson was the author of the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, a doctrine that spread throughout the United States. He is the father of our religious freedom. It is, next to the words of our independence, his greatest gift, save only perhaps our commitment to universal education, which also comes to us via Jefferson.

In 1779, when Jefferson introduced "A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom" in the Virginia legislature, he wrote: "no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship... whatsoever... nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion...." In Notes on the State of Virginia he wrote, "The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." In his most famous utterance on religion, Jefferson said, "I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

A pity that he did not introduce "A Bill for Emancipation" in the Virginia legislature and swear "eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind and work of man, including slaves."

Religious liberty did not happen throughout the United States all at once, of course, but as Jefferson's great biographer Dumas Malone wrote: "Jefferson's vision extended farther and comprehended more than that of anybody else in public life, and, thinking of himself as working for posterity, he was more concerned that things should be well started than that they be quickly finished."

More than anyone else, even Benjamin Franklin, it is Jefferson who implanted in the United States the notion that everyone is entitled to universal education. He put no limit on the amount of time or money he would invest in education. When he was eighty years old he made the architectural plans for the University of Virginia -- what he liked to call his "academical village." (In 1976 the American Institute of Architects voted his design "the proudest achievement of American architecture in the past 200 years.") When the school opened, March 7, 1825, it had five faculty members and forty students. Jefferson was startled to learn that most of the students were found by the faculty to be "wretchedly prepared." He immediately began to work on improving the elementary and secondary education in Virginia.

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 was based on Jefferson's "Report of a Plan of Government for the Western Territory" written three years earlier. In it, he made certain that when the populations of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan were large enough, these and other territories would come into the Union as fully equal states. They would have the same number of senators and representatives as the original thirteen. They would elect their own governors, and so on. He was the first who had the thought that colonies should be equal to the thirteen original members of the Union. No one before him had proposed such a thing. Empires were run by the "mother country," with the king appointing the governors. It was Jefferson who decided that we wouldn't do it that way in the United States. The territories shall be states. He applied the principles of the Northwest Ordinance to the Louisiana Purchase territories, and by later extension to the West Coast. It was Jefferson who envisioned an empire of liberty that stretched from sea to shining sea.

For Jefferson, the matters he was eager to address, the ones he seized on most, start with the assertion of American independence, exclude the grip of established religion on the minds of men, and provide education for the citizens. These are the accomplishments he chose to put on his tombstone, the ones by which "I wish most to be remembered."

Washington and Jefferson were both rich Virginia planters, but they were never friends. Washington did not have Jefferson's IQ. He was not anywhere near as good a writer. He was not as worldly. He had less formal education than any subsequent President, except Abraham Lincoln. He towered over his contemporaries, literally so. He was a six-foot-three general; his soldiers averaged five-foot-eight. He was not a good general, or so his critics say. His army lost more battles than it won.

But Washington held the Continental Army together, "in being" as the military expression puts it, and he had a masterly judgment of when and where and how to strike the British in order to raise morale among his soldiers and throughout his country -- perhaps most symbolic was his crossing the Delaware River at Christmas-time in 1776, when in a lightning week of campaigning he picked off the British garrisons at Trenton and Princeton, taking many prisoners and valuable supplies. The next winter he spent with his soldiers in a freezing Valley Forge. From there, he directed the strategy of the war, turned the Continental Army from a ragtag collection into a solid regular army, forced the politicians in Congress to support him, and emerged as the one who would lead the nation through the Revolutionary War.

Washington's character was rock solid. He was constant. At the center of events for twenty-four years, he never lied, fudged, or cheated. He shared his army's privations, though never pretended to be "one of the men," and was careful to keep a distance between himself and his subordinates and his enlisted men. They respected him, even loved him. Washington came to stand for the new nation and its republican virtues, which was why he became our first President by unanimous choice and, in the eyes of many, including this author, our greatest.

Washington personifies the word "great." In his looks, in his regular habits, in his dress and bearing, in his generalship and his political leadership, in his ability to persuade, in his sure grip on what the new nation needed (above all else, not a king), and in his optimism no matter how bad the American cause looked, he rose above all others. He established the thought, "We can do it," as an integral part of the American spirit. He was indispensable, in war and in peace, "first in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen." Abigail Adams, again, so insightful in her descriptions of this or that Founding Father, quoted John Dryden to describe Washington: "Mark his majestic fabric. He's a temple sacred from his birth and built by hands divine." Congress wanted Washington's body to rest in a room beneath the Capitol rotunda, somewhat like Napoleon's tomb in Les Invalides. He is buried at his home, Mount Vernon.\\Fn="fn1"1\\Fn

Of the nine Presidents \\Fn="fn2"2\\Fn who owned slaves, only Washington freed his. (One of their descendants is a guide at Mount Vernon.) He resisted efforts to make him into a king and established the precedent that no one should serve more than two terms as President. He voluntarily yielded power. His enemy, George III, remarked in 1796, as Washington's second term was coming to an end, "If George Washington goes back to his farm he will be the greatest character of his age." Napoleon, then in exile, was as stunned as the rest of the world by Washington's leaving office. He complained that his enemies "wanted me to be another Washington." As George Will wrote, "the final component of Washington's indispensability was the imperishable example he gave by proclaiming himself dispensable."

Washington was a slaveholder. In New Orleans, in the late 1990s, George Washington Elementary School was renamed Charles Richard Drew Elementary School, after the developer of hemoglobin. Although I advocate naming schools after Martin Luther King, Jr., or George Washington Carver, and others, I don't see how we can take down the name of the man whose leadership brought this nation through the Revolutionary War and who turned down a real chance to be the first king of the nation.

"But he was a slaveholder," students sometimes say to me.

"Listen, he was our leader in the Revolution, to which he pledged his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor. Those were not idle pledges. What do you think would have happened to him had he been captured by the British Army?

"I'll tell you. He would have been brought to London, tried, found guilty of treason, ordered executed, and then drawn and quartered. Do you know what that means? He would have had one arm tied to one horse, the other arm to another horse, one leg to yet another, and the other leg to a fourth. Then the four horses would have been simultaneously whipped and started off at a gallop, one going north, another south, another east and the fourth to the west.

"That is what Washington was risking to establish your freedom and mine."

Our nation's capital abounds with statues to our president heroes, including the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, and the FDR Memorial. The one that stands out is the Washington Monument, the tallest, grandest, the most superbly designated, and most immediately recognized. It is our tribute to the man who led our nation to victory in the Revolutionary War and who, as our first President, did more than anyone else to create the Republic. Jefferson extended it from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains. Lincoln preserved it. Franklin Roosevelt led it to triumph in the greatest war ever fought. But it was George Washington who set the republican standard. So long as this Republic lasts he will stand first.

Washington's monument was unfinished at the time of the Civil War, which was fitting, as Washington came from Virginia, a state that in 1861 had seceded from the Union, and he was a slaveholder. In his Republic only white men of west European descent could vote. But in his person he was Father of a Union that was expansive not only in its territorial possessions but in its being. In his Republic the blacks would be freed -- albeit after a horrible struggle. He certainly never thought of white women as those who could be full citizens. But the Constitution which he swore to defend would eventually have room in it for freed slaves, for women, for minorities.

The Mall that stretches out from Washington's monument has been the scene of controversy, protest, and persuasion, which is as it should be in a democracy. There more than anywhere, our national discord has been on display, and our national step-by-step progress demonstrated for. There the women's suffrage movement was advocated. There Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke the words that characterized and led the way to civil rights for African Americans and all other Americans, "I have a dream." There citizens gathered in huge numbers to protest the Vietnam War, including my wife and me.

In the shadow of the Washington Monument, we come together to protest, to grieve, to affirm. It is there, above any other place, that we have the monument that stands for our greatest national strength, our democracy, and that symbolizes our greatest national pride, our unity.

The Washington Monument and the Jefferson and Lincoln memorials remind us that greatness comes in different forms and at a price. Jefferson, by his words, gave us aspirations. Washington, through his actions, showed us what was possible. Lincoln's courage turned both into reality.

Slavery and discrimination darken our hearts and cloud our minds in the most extraordinary ways, including a blanket judgment today against Americans who were slave owners in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. That the masters should be judged as lacking in the scope of their minds and hearts is fair, indeed must be insisted upon, but that doesn't mean we should judge the whole of them only by this part.

In his last message to America, on June 24, 1826, ten days before he died on July 4, the same day that John Adams died, Jefferson declined an invitation to be in Washington, D.C., for the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. He wrote, "All eyes are opened, or opening to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born, with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them."

He died with hope, that the future would bring to fruition the promise of equality. For Jefferson, that was the logic of his words, the essence of the American spirit. He may not have been a great man in his actions, or in his leadership, where he did little or nothing to bring about his hope. But in his political thought, he justified that hope.