Thomas Jefferson, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America, is remembered for having been a worldly man and a strong believer in the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. However, he was criticized in his own time and continues to be a subject of criticism today, being labelled as a hypocrite. Though Jefferson valued religious and social freedoms, he felt that this only applied to some people. Despite his writing that the slave trade was abominable, he did not believe all men were created equal, and owned hundreds of slaves at his estate of Monticello.
When Jefferson wrote that "all men are created equal," what he really meant was that all free men were created equal. What's more, Jefferson fostered a hierarchy among the slaves he kept, offering more generous pay to some, and nothing but the minimum of food and clothing to others. Those who worked in the house or were favored for other reasons earned a higher pay, breeding conflict and resentment among the slave-laborers on his estate. Jefferson's actions assert that while he thought all free men were created equal, enslaved peoples were to be organized by their merit.
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