"Among the many legacies left by Thomas Jefferson, democracy may be the most lasting. Author of the Declaration of Independence, champion of the Bill of Rights, and a founder of the Democratic-Republican party, Jefferson has passed on to the American people his abiding faith in the ability of citizens to govern themselves. Of the assumptions that make American politics possible, none is more fundamental. Yet it must be said that the legacy left by this high-minded and idealistic philosopher, who was also a hard-headed and pragmatic politician—this egalitarian owner of slaves—is by no means simple. At the very least, as Charles Wiltse suggested almost half a century ago, Jefferson has left Americans with a divided conception of democracy. On the one hand, in advocating equality and popular sovereignty, he paved the way for a tradition of social democracy that extends from Albert Gallatin to Andrew Jackson to FDR and the progressive reformers of the twentieth century. On the other hand, as a believer in liberty and limited government, he can be seen as the source of a tradition of democratic individualism that runs from John Taylor to John C. Calhoun to contemporary conservatives who champion personal rights and advocate restrictions on the role of the state. "This double emphasis in Jefferson's thought," concludes Wiltse, "has left American democracy a dual tradition.""