Posted on 07/14/2020 4:54:09 PM PDT by longtermmemmory
Thomas Jefferson wrote that “all men are created equal,” and yet enslaved more than six-hundred people over the course of his life. Although he made some legislative attempts against slavery and at times bemoaned its existence, he also profited directly from the institution of slavery and wrote that he suspected black people to be inferior to white people in his Notes on the State of Virginia.
Throughout his entire life, Thomas Jefferson was publicly a consistent opponent of slavery. Calling it a “moral depravity”1 and a “hideous blot,”2 he believed that slavery presented the greatest threat to the survival of the new American nation.3 Jefferson also thought that slavery was contrary to the laws of nature, which decreed that everyone had a right to personal liberty.4 These views were radical in a world where unfree labor was the norm.
Browse a selection of Jefferson quotes about Race and Slavery » More on this topic in Slavery at Jefferson's Monticello: Paradox of Liberty » At the time of the American Revolution, Jefferson was actively involved in legislation that he hoped would result in slavery’s abolition.5 In 1778, he drafted a Virginia law that prohibited the importation of enslaved Africans.6 In 1784, he proposed an ordinance that would ban slavery in the Northwest territories.7 But Jefferson always maintained that the decision to emancipate slaves would have to be part of a democratic process; abolition would be stymied until slaveowners consented to free their human property together in a large-scale act of emancipation. To Jefferson, it was anti-democratic and contrary to the principles of the American Revolution for the federal government to enact abolition or for only a few planters to free their slaves.8
Although Jefferson continued to advocate for abolition, the reality was that slavery was becoming more entrenched. The slave population in Virginia skyrocketed from 292,627 in 1790 to 469,757 in 1830. Jefferson had assumed that the abolition of the slave trade would weaken slavery and hasten its end. Instead, slavery became more widespread and profitable. In an attempt to erode Virginians’ support for slavery, he discouraged the cultivation of crops heavily dependent on slave labor—specifically tobacco—and encouraged the introduction of crops that needed little or no slave labor—wheat, sugar maples, short-grained rice, olive trees, and wine grapes.9 But by the 1800s, Virginia’s most valuable commodity and export was neither crops nor land, but slaves.
Jefferson’s belief in the necessity of ending slavery never changed. From the mid-1770s until his death, he advocated the same plan of gradual emancipation. First, the transatlantic slave trade would be abolished.10 Second, slaveowners would “improve” slavery’s most violent features, by bettering (Jefferson used the term “ameliorating”) living conditions and moderating physical punishment.11 Third, all born into slavery after a certain date would be declared free, followed by total abolition.12 Like others of his day, he supported the removal of newly freed slaves from the United States.13 The unintended effect of Jefferson’s plan was that his goal of “improving” slavery as a step towards ending it was used as an argument for its perpetuation. Pro-slavery advocates after Jefferson’s death argued that if slavery could be “improved,” abolition was unnecessary.
Jefferson’s belief in the necessity of abolition was intertwined with his racial beliefs. He thought that white Americans and enslaved blacks constituted two “separate nations” who could not live together peacefully in the same country.14 Jefferson’s belief that blacks were racially inferior and “as incapable as children,”15 coupled with slaves’ presumed resentment of their former owners, made their removal from the United States an integral part of Jefferson’s emancipation scheme. Influenced by the Haitian Revolution and an aborted rebellion in Virginia in 1800, Jefferson believed that American slaves’ deportation—whether to Africa or the West Indies—was an essential followup to emancipation.16
Jefferson wrote that maintaining slavery was like holding “a wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go.”17 He thought that his cherished federal union, the world’s first democratic experiment, would be destroyed by slavery. To emancipate slaves on American soil, Jefferson thought, would result in a large-scale race war that would be as brutal and deadly as the slave revolt in Haiti in 1791. But he also believed that to keep slaves in bondage, with part of America in favor of abolition and part of America in favor of perpetuating slavery, could only result in a civil war that would destroy the union. Jefferson’s latter prediction was correct: in 1861, the contest over slavery sparked a bloody civil war and the creation of two nations—Union and Confederacy—in the place of one.
Further Sources Bear, James A., Jr. Jefferson at Monticello. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1967. Betts, Edwin M. Thomas Jefferson's Farm Book: With Commentary and Relevant Extracts from Other Writings. Charlottesville: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, 1999. Jefferson's original manuscript and a transcription are available online courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Finkelman, Paul. "Jefferson and Slavery: Treason Against the Hopes of the World." In Jeffersonian Legacies, ed. Peter S. Onuf, 181-221. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993. French, Scot A. and Edward L. Ayers. "The Strange Career of Thomas Jefferson: Race and Slavery in American Memory, 1943-1993." In Jeffersonian Legacies, ed. Peter S. Onuf, 418-56. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993. Gordon-Reed, Annette. The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008. Jefferson, Thomas. Notes on the State of Virginia. Edited by William Peden. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1955. Chapters "Laws" and "Manners." Jordan, Winthrop D. White over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968, 461-81. Miller, John Chester. The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1991. Onuf, Peter S. "Every Generation Is an Independent Nation: Colonization, Miscegenation, and the Fate of Jefferson's Children." In The Mind of Thomas Jefferson, 213-35. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007. Stanton, Lucia. Slavery at Monticello. Charlottesville: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, 1996. Stanton, Lucia. "Those Who Labor for My Happiness": Slavery at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012. See selected sources on Jefferson's views on slavery in the Jefferson Portal. See selected sources on Jefferson as slave owner in the Jefferson Portal. Slavery at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, an online exhibition. View information about individuals and life within the enslaved community in the Plantation Database. 1. Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, September 10, 1814, in PTJ:RS, 7:652. Transcription available at Founders Online. 2. Jefferson to William Short, September 8, 1823, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Earl Gregg Swem Library, College of William and Mary. Transcription available at Founders Online. 3. Jefferson to John Holmes, April 22, 1820, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library. Transcription available at Founders Online. 4. Notes, ed. Peden, 163. The 1832 edition is available online. See Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (Boston: Lilly and Wait, 1832), 170. 5. Virginia Constitution, Second Draft by Jefferson [before June 13, 1776], in PTJ, 1:353. Transcription available at Founders Online. 6. Thomas Jefferson: Autobiography, January 6-July 29, 1821, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress. Transcription available at Founders Online. See also 51. A Bill concerning Slaves, June 18, 1779, in PTJ, 2:470-73. Transcription available at Founders Online. 7. Report of the Committee, March 1, 1784, in PTJ, 6:604. Transcription available at Founders Online. 8. Jefferson to John Holmes, April 22, 1820, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library. Transcription available at Founders Online. 9. See, e.g., Jefferson to Benjamin Vaughan, June 27, 1790, in PTJ, 16:579. Transcription available at Founders Online. 10. See Draft of Instructions to the Virginia Delegates in the Continental Congress (MS Text of A Summary View, &c.), [July 1774], in PTJ, 1:130. Transcription available at Founders Online. 11. See Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph, February 18, 1793, in PTJ, 25:230. Transcription available at Founders Online. See also Jefferson to John Strode, June 5, 1805, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress. Transcription available at Founders Online. 12. See Jefferson’s Draft of a Constitution for Virginia, [May–June 1783], in PTJ, 6:298. Transcription available at Founders Online. 13. Notes, ed. Peden, 138. The 1832 edition is available online. See Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (Boston: Lilly and Wait, 1832), 144. 14. Ibid. 15. Jefferson to Edward Coles, August 25, 1814, in PTJ:RS, 7:604. Transcription available at Founders Online. 16. Jefferson to Jared Sparks, February 4, 1824, Catalog–Christie’s, American and European Manuscripts and Printed Books. Transcription available at Founders Online. 17. Jefferson to John Holmes, April 22, 1820, The Thomas Jefferson Papers, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library. Transcription available at Founders Online.
Why is this in Free Republic?
The slave trade was outlawed by the constitution, destined to end in 1808.
Also, many of the slave owners had mortgages on their slaves and couldn’t just sell them as they were collateral on their loans.
I’ll take Jefferson over any of these clowns we have today. That slavery existed is historical fact and was largely an accepted practice in that era. I refuse to judge him by standards of today.
Bkmk
Probably to help set the record straight on perhaps the most enlightened American who ever lived.
ML/NJ
Bookmark
How about he launched a navy and a war to bit@h slap moslem barbary pirates and their slave and ransom industry, and he treated Sally Hemmings and her family well.
Guaranteed Jefferson wasn’t out there with a cat o’ 9 tails.
In any case, his mind gave the world the Declaration of Independence, and he doubled the size of the USA and prevented a giant chunk west of the mississippi from being France. He contributed to science with the Lewis and Clark expedition.
His good far outweighs whether or not he had slaves towards the end of a two millenia era of western slavery.
You’ve been on FR 15 years...and you don’t know?
I read a very old book, a long time ago, which contained testimony from people - including slaves - who were contemporaries of Jefferson, some of whom lived in the house.
According to the book, sometimes slaves would sneak away from Jefferson’s property and set up housekeeping somewhere nearby; Jefferson would investigate as to how well they were doing - and if they were doing well, he’d just ignore and let them go.
Even good-hearted people who hated slavery, but owned slaves, had to be concerned about the welfare of the people if they were simply ‘set free’, without the personal resources to make their way. (Look up what happened to James Hemmings, Jefferson’s personal chef, who appears to be one of the freed people who suicided.)
(By the way: I have never believed that Thomas was the father of Sally’s children. The genetic evidence has only indicated that a male Jefferson fathered Sally’s children, and I believe that it was Randolph. Look up the correspondence between the brothers, and decide for yourself.)
“He thought that white Americans and enslaved blacks constituted two “separate nations” who could not live together peacefully in the same country.”
Well...Blacks enslaved to the Democrat party DO have problems...as we are seeing
The big lie. Jefferson did not enslave anyone.
He inherited the slaves or they were already slaves.
He did not go on campaigns capturing free people and making them slaves.
I feel no guilt regarding that British-imposed institution.
Instead, I am proud that the US got rid of it, and the southern states rejoined the Union.
I also respect the confederate leaders and soldiers. They fought to defend their country.
Though the majority of slave owners in North America were white and the majority of slaves in North America were blacks owned by white owners, those two points were not universally true at any time. There were blacks who owned black slaves and there were whites held as slaves as well. Though the later two points represent a minority of the conditions, it points to how culture and attained status more than race determined many views on slavery.
Slavery was not in the 15th through 19th centuries a cultural phenomena exclusive to North American, nor exclusive to “western civilization”. It was found in many parts of the world at the time, and blacks were not in every case the objects of slavery. Forgotten in most western civilization discussions of slavery is the fact that most slaves brought out of Africa were sold as slaves by blacks in Africa.
All of that needs to be understood to see how Jefferson and others were like all persons, citizens of the times they lived in, even as their ideals held promise of much different and more egalitarian times.
Their history needs to be judged in the full and complete context of their times, not to excuse the errors we see today, but to admit their whole world had different attitudes about many different things than we do today.
People like Jefferson and Washington and others need to be honored for their good they gave us and we don’t need to see them as perfect to accept and honor their good either.
We could remind folks about Martin Luther Kings personal imperfections, which some social movements today would condemn. But I wouldn’t, as the good he did inspire is more important and what we will always honor him for - to see a nation where men would be judged by the content of their character not the color of their skin.
Now, movements like BLM want to reverse that and intentionally judge persons again by the color of their skin not the content of their character.
Not to mention the fact that slavery continued (and continues) to be practiced in Africa and the Middle East long after it ceased to exist in the Western world.
All of the BLM/Antifa types who are so outraged by slavery 200 years ago never seem all that upset by slavery when it's practiced today. Evidently, it's not slavery that upsets them, but the fact that it was once practiced by Westerners.
Great post!!!
You’ll be flamed, but I echo your sentiments.
historical truth to fight the narrative trying to establish that all the founders were bad. Much like the BS claiming ALL the signers of the declaration were just diests. The real fact was they were very devout with a couple of rare exceptions.
None of the media outlets reported on documented facts.
Particularly offensive are the congressional reps who don’t care and just want to report on the anti-american narrative.
The truth is American exceptionalism allowed us to see the wrong and take steps to make it right. Up until the USA you would have to overthrow a king to make change.
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