^ That's exactly the sort of myth making I'm talking about. Jefferson used his office to expand slavery into the Louisiana Territory, while banning the importation of slaves from outside the US to the new territory. It seems enlightened enough until you realize that there was a major glut of slaves in Virginia and elsewhere - only South Carolina allowed the importation of slaves at this time - and that he sold much of his excess labor to the newly developing cotton industry in the deep south. If you are genuinely concerned about someone's well-being you don't engineer an opportunity to make a quick buck off of their misery.
He even went as far as proposing that the northern parts of the Louisiana Territory be turned into a giant Indian Reservation. It was convenient that these territories were unsuitable for plantation agriculture, and that barring new settlers would have indefinitely maintainted the stranglehold on political power that the southern states enjoyed.
The deeper you dig into any politicians career, the more reprehensible they seem to become. In fact, to address Bruce's question about monuments, I wouldn't be opposed to making Mount Rushmore a plain mountain again. I'm not sure I would be in favor of doing so, but have to ask, what purpose does a monument to any individual man or woman serve?
You create a space for people to put that person on a pedestal and make up wild stories like Jefferson Davis being opposed to slavery. You wind up with politicians trying to make "disparaging" one of the founding fathers a crime. It's absolutely ridiculous. Even the suggestion of a plaque added to a monument to give a more balanced view gets some folk's red up.