In the book The American Political Tradition, by Hofstadter, Jefferson, in the author's opinion, is an extremely complex man. Jefferson is generally considered an incredibly important and respected figure in American history, but as Hofstadter explains, over time, Jefferson has been heavily overdramatized and is much less the person he is commonly said to be. Hofstadter claims that Jefferson was a massive hypocrite, as his ideals are completely contradictory to his actions most of the time. Gathering Hofstadter's views on Jefferson; Jefferson is not the man he is usually portrayed as, but rather a hypocrite whose place in American history has been existentially exaggerated. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay In his book, Hofstadter argues that Jefferson was rather hypocritical, as his ideals were largely contradictory to the way he actually lived his life. Jefferson wanted the United States to be a meritocracy, a country in which skilled workers would constitute the upper class. While Jefferson wanted a meritocracy, Jefferson always fully supported the people he surrounded himself with, the wealthy upper class politicians of the United States. According to Hofstadter, “under his leadership, Virginia reformers abolished primogeniture and brought about…” (27). This helps show how Jefferson's ideals largely contradict who he is as a person. Jefferson was the full beneficiary of primogeniture upon his father's death. Because of the primogeniture laws, Jefferson received “2,700 acres and a large number of bonds” (26). Jefferson abolished primogeniture later in his life, but never had to really work for anything because immediate wealth was granted to him. In addition to the abolition of primogeniture, Jefferson worked for a long time on a project on the emancipation of slaves and the total abolition of slavery. Again, another contradictory action, since Jefferson was a benevolent slave owner who owned over 600 slaves, and although he tried to free the slaves, he never freed the ones he owned. One of the reasons he never carried out his slavery project was, as Jefferson stated in Hofstadter, "that the public mind would not endure the proposition...Yet the day is not not far from where he will have to endure and adopt her, or worse, he will follow. » (29). Jefferson was too afraid to go against public opinion, even though he was considered a "revolutionary", because he would never in his lifetime go against public opinion. “...after writing the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute for Religious Liberty, he avoided expressing his most unacceptable ideas in public” (33). Jefferson's choice to never go against majority opinion is one of the many reasons why Hofstadter argues that Jefferson is really not a true "revolutionary" and that Jefferson's hypocrisy is the a leading proponent of exaggerating his place in history. being a very complex man, part of it has to do with his thoughts versus his expressed opinions. Jefferson always sided with the masses on all major issues, but in reality, what he actually felt about something differed from his stated opinion. For example, Hofstadter uses a quote from Charles M. Wiltse: "He stays apart from the masses, and if he demands equality for all men, it is not because he believes that all men areequal, but because he believes that they must be” (26). Hofstadter uses this quote to show that Jefferson, a man who truly believes that he is better than the people, sides with the people on the issue that all men are equal. Once again, his ideas contradict his actions. Another position taken by Jefferson is that he completely believed that the agrarian United States was what it should be, and that these "Jeffersonians" (people who followed Jefferson's agrarian ideals) would be the face of the nation. As Hofstadter claims, "...but when he entered the White House, it was after satisfying the Federalists that he and they had reached some sort of understanding" (44). Jefferson, fully believing in a “Jeffersonian democracy,” still largely supported the people he surrounded himself with, the Federalists, who believed in federalism, a concept far from being a Jeffersonian democracy. Jefferson, as the quote explains, believed in something that was far from federalism, but clearly his "strong" beliefs were shattered when he appeased the nation's prominent Federalists. Jefferson's appeasement of the Federalists is a sign of weakness in his thoughts, as he transformed his original thoughts into those that were influenced by the Federalists. He appeased them to win their vote, but during his presidency he stayed true to his word on agreed-upon intentions. In most cases, Jefferson's true thoughts were never reflected in the statements he made to the public, which highlights the fact that people really couldn't trust the things he said , there was usually an underlying opinion that he did not reveal. In American history, Thomas Jefferson is known and praised for his accomplishments and the way he helped shape America, but Hofstadter explains that Jefferson had major failures that are never really talked about. American history around Jefferson is always known to be only positive, and one would never know that he had massive failures in his past, because his "overdramatized" accomplishments drown out his failures. One such failure was the Embargo Act of 1807. The Embargo Act was intended to get Britain and France to end maritime seizures and give the United States the power that they deserve by fundamentally restricting American exports to Britain and France. As Hofstadter explains: "The embargo not only failed to force Britain and France to respect American rights on the high seas, but it also caused economic paralysis in the trading cities of the Northeast and farms and plantations in the West and South. Jefferson finally admitted that the fifteen months of his operation cost more than a war” (51). Hofstadter uses this example because it shows that this was an incredibly significant failure on Jefferson's part, one that resulted in expenses amounting to more than the cost of a war. Not only did Jefferson fail to create the Embargo Act, but even afterward, he continued to prohibit commerce, creating the Nonintercourse Act, which only opened commerce to a limited portion of Europe. In American eyes, the act of no sex was a horrible decision, because by appeasing Britain and France, Jefferson was psychologically showing and declaring that America was weaker than Britain and France in continuing to authorize maritime seizures. Another of Jefferson's failures besides the Embargo Act was Jefferson's vision of an "agrarian America." It was a resounding failure because, as Hofstadter wrote, “…it is expansionism – what John Randolph called “the..