Jefferson was in France during the Constitutional Convention, which, for the sake of the country and his reputation, was probably a good thing. His tenure as a wartime governor was, to say the least, far from glorious. Most of the Declaration of Independence is a laundry list of grievances that is actually fairly banal. He was unscrupulous in his attacks on a government of which he was a prominent member. His greatest accomplishment as president, the Louisiana Purchase, violated his principles regarding the interpretation of the Constitution. The Kentucky Resolutions can be viewed as a precursor to secession. His embargo was a disaster. And that doesn’t even include his equivocation on slavery, and the Sally Hemings thing.
As with Hamilton, there are plenty of blots on his record, his undisputed intellectual brilliance notwithstanding. His claim to indispensability rests on four things:
- The second paragraph of the Declaration, which, while anything but “self-evident,” has inspired Americans and people throughout the world since 1776;
- His moderation, and willingness to accept most of Hamilton’s financial system, after the 1800 election, without which our political system might be very different today;
- His role in fighting the excesses of the Federalists after 1796, which may well serve as a template for the current resistance to Trump; and
- His vision of an America run by yeoman farmers, which persists even in the face of a Hamiltonian economic system, and continues to motivate the Palin wing of the GOP today.
Would American history have been dramatically different if, say, Madison had been the leader of the Republican Party between 1796 and 1808? My guess is no, but it is debatable, and we’ll never know.