Thomas Jefferson

A split record. Jefferson pardoned everyone convicted under the Sedition Act and let it expire, and his Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, written earlier, shaped the First Amendment's approach to church and state. As president, though, he encouraged state prosecutions of hostile Federalist editors, and the Embargo Act enforcement of 1808 used broad search and seizure powers. He enslaved more than 600 people over his lifetime, the starkest gap between his words on liberty and his practice.