Thank you for your reply Scott Cassingham. Finally did the research to discover that Edwin Betts was writing mostly in the 1940’s and 1950’s, with a final book in 1966. So relatively recent. He was located in Virginia, near Monticello. Given the era he wrote in, and being white, his passing over Jefferson’s flaws is par for the era and region he was writing for. That he was an apologist, is a word that reserve for Saint Augustine, and Vladimir Lenin, as they figured out ways to explain either why Rome was falling, and that it was not the fault of Christianity, or that advanced economies did not revolt, which is why communism took hold in Russia. Betts merely related a highly edited version of Jefferson’s life, which was par for the course, in his time and for Virginia, given the politics.

Agree with you, that Betts should be re-evaluated, based on current and perhaps future discoveries, about Jefferson. Perhaps a preface, stating this was the sort of biography that was to be expected in a segregated Southern state, at that point in time. Considering it more an artifact of its time and place, than what would today be thought of as a thorough biography.

A Code of Ethics for History should have been implicit, but was in certain areas, or for certain people, curtailed. As it has been throughout history. That such actions are now being questioned, and more information being brought to the discipline and the public is all to the good. What history teaches perhaps more than anything else, is that the past is not what we thought it was.