Who is our role model, Jefferson or Lincoln?

Jeff Eboch at the Tenth Amendment Center explains why we can't have it both ways. Either we admire Thomas Jefferson's defense of the rights of the people, or Abraham Lincoln's defense of a union by force:

In light of these facts, no serious student of history or politics could believe that Jefferson and Lincoln possessed similar visions for America. Or that Jefferson would have condoned the violent subjugation of a single sovereign state (let alone 11 of them), or thought Lincoln’s disregard for the Constitution in any way legal or justified.

Rather, he would have known at once that what Lincoln spawned through his belligerence was a government capable of violating its own fundamental law at will; of using illegal force to prevent the governed from withdrawing voluntary consent (regardless of their motivation), and thereby destroying consent altogether. Such a government is incapable of liberty, and antithetical to the very existence of efferson’s America.

For that reason, it is not possible to truly understand, and yet still admire, the words and deeds of both men. Despite his occasional use of the Declaration’s language, Lincoln himself despised Jefferson; demonstrating by his policies that they occupied polar opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, as do their political descendants today.