Thomas Jefferson, the prize-winning presidential historian Jon Meacham notes, embodies both "the very best and the very worst" of the United States. Yet, even for Meacham, defining what it means to be "Jeffersonian" requires a moment of reflection.
Initially, he suggests, it signified a leaning towards states' rights and limited government before the civil rights movement. But then, pausing, Meacham recalls President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s portrayal of Jefferson as an "apostle of liberty" who would have championed the fight against the Nazis in World War II.
