The Wrong Way to Look at the Past

Americans are used to learning history through the stories of great men. Think of Thomas Jefferson: He drafted the Declaration of Independence; he was the first secretary of state and our third president; he even died, poetically, on the Fourth of July. Though he’s frequentlydiscussed alongside other Founding Fathers, in the public consciousness,Jefferson stands on his own, like a titan. But the historian Annette Gordon-Reed, in her Pulitzer Prize–winning , reminds us that Jefferson’s life was intimately connected with those of the Hemingses, a family he enslaved. , Hamilton Cain writes.