Politically Incorrect Jefferson

The modern-day image of Jefferson as a social and political liberal would be shattered after a single reading of his Bill for Proportioning Crimes and Punishments. Capital punishment is maintained for murder and treason while rescinded for all other crimes. Even so, other crimes receive some rather harsh and politically incorrect penalties.

Consider these examples:

"If any person commit petty treason, or a husband murder his wife, a parent his child, or a child his parent, he shall suffer death, by hanging, and his body be delivered to Anatomists to be dissected" (Sec. IV).

"Whosoever committith murder by poisoning, shall suffer death by poison" (Sec. V).

"Whosoever shall be guilty of rape, polygamy, or sodomy with man or woman, shall be punished; if a man, by castration, a woman, by boring through the cartilage of her nose a hole of one half inch in diameter at the least" (Sec. XIV).

"Whosoever committith a robbery, shall be condemned to hard labour four years in the public works, and shall make double reparation to the persons injured" (Sec. XX).

"All attempts to delude the people, or to abuse their understanding by exercise of the pretended arts of witchcraft, conjuration, enchantment, or sorcery, or by pretended prophecies, shall be punished by ducking and whipping, at the discretion of a jury, not exceeding fifteen stripes" (Sec. XXIX).

There's no way that Thomas Jefferson could ever run for political office today holding these views.