Thomas Jefferson Owned Slaves, but He Hated Slavery

So, I just finished writing my final research paper for my US History I class, and I believe that y’all will like it. It’s about Thomas Jefferson, specifically his views and actions related to slavery. With our founding fathers under fire for owning slaves, I thought that this essay could be valuable by educating you all on the truth about Jefferson, so that you have the knowledge to fight back the next time you hear someone dissing the author of the Declaration of Independence. I stay object and fair in my essay, so I do acknowledge the bad along with the good.

Enjoy, I know I did writing it.

 

Thomas Jefferson and His Complex Relationship with the Institution of Slavery

As one of the founding fathers of the United States of America, and as her third president, Thomas Jefferson recieves a great deal of respect and reverence from modern Americans. As a slave owner, however, he also recieves abundant disparagement and hate. Yet, despite his position as the owner of persons, Jefferson publicly and frequently opposed slavery. To make sense of his seemingly paradoxical relationship with slavery demands a deep look at his personal circumstances, his interaction with slavery, his views on slavery, and his plan to end it. Despite his racist views, Thomas Jefferson did practically everything he could to fight against slavery and the suffering it caused, though in this regard he had little success.

Thomas Jefferson was born on his father’s Virginia plantation on April 13, 1743. Scholar, architect, inventor, lawyer, revolutionary, founding father, diplomat, president—Jefferson lived an amazing life defined by diverse talents and impressive accomplishments. In 1772, he married Martha Wayles Skelton, with whom he had six children, though only two survived to adulthood. His marriage to Martha produced the happiest years of his life before her tragic death ten years into it. Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence he himself had penned, at the ripe age of 86.

Jefferson owned more than 600 slaves over his illustrious lifetime, the first of whom he acquired from his father’s inheritance at age fourteen, along with his 5,000 acre plantation. He later inherited even more slaves from his father-in-law, John Wayles. He purchased less than twenty, some of whom he bought in order to unite them with their spouses. The remainder of his slaves came into his possession though the natural population growth of those he already owned. These slaves ran and maintained his farms, buildings, and home of Monticello. Jefferson treated those slaves he personally interacted with well, and in a letter to an overseer of his, Manoah Clarkson, he made clear that he desired similar treatment for the rest of his slaves: “my first wish is that the labourers may be well treated.” Sadly, his wishes went unregarded. Slaves at Monticello and his other properties, from which he was often absent, received more or less the same treatment from their overseers as the average American slave. They suffered violence often, and occasionally, barbarous cruelty. Jefferson sold over 110 slaves, occasionally at their own request or for misbehavior, but mostly because he needed money. He gifted an additional 85 to family members and to his daughters for dowries, yet he only freed a handful, either before or upon his death.

One of the slaves who had a close relationship with Jefferson, and who he eventually freed, was James Hemings. Jefferson inherited James at age nine from his master, John Wayles, who was also his father, making James the half-brother to Jefferson’s wife. As a teenager, he and his brother Robert served as personal attendants of Jefferson’s after his election as wartime governor of Virginia in 1779. He trusted them, even with the task of evacuating his wife and children to safety when British forces threatened to attack Richmond. As a result of this position, James was afforded many luxuries unknown to plantation slaves. He had finer clothes, and permission to hire himself out to earn money when his services were not required. When Jefferson was appointed as the American Minister to the French court in 1784, he brought James with him to Paris and had him study French cooking. After three years of study, he became head chef at Jefferson’s Parisian home and de facto American embassy, the Hôtel de Langeac. Here, he would have prepared meals for European aristocrats, authors, scientists, and many other prestigious guests. Despite being his slave, James received payment from Jefferson for this job, though only half as much as his previous chef cuisinier. With a portion of his earnings, James hired a tutor to help him improve his French. After mastering the language, he certainly would have learned that in France, any slave could petition the courts for their freedom, yet curiously, he decided not to. After he returned to the United States, as a slave, in 1789, he soon became Jefferson’s chef again, this time while he was secretary of state in Philadelphia. He cooked for individuals of the same caliber as those in Paris, and this time he received the same pay as Jefferson’s free staff. In Philadelphia, he again could have claimed his freedom, yet he did not. Regardless, a few years later, Jefferson offered James emancipation:

Having been at great expence [sic] in having James Hemings taught the art of cookery, desiring to befriend him, and to require from him as little in return as possible, I do hereby promise and declare, that if the said James shall go with me to Monticello in the course of the ensuing winter, …and shall there continue until he shall have taught such person as I shall place under him for that purpose to be a good cook, this previous condition being performed, he shall be thereupon made free…

James accepted the offer, and on February 5, 1796, Thomas Jefferson freed him. Sadly, only five years into his freedom, James comitted suicide. The only suspected reason for this was his fondness of alcohol.

Undoubtedly, the most significant of Jefferson’s slaves was Sally Hemings, James’s younger sister, who came to Monticello as only a toddler. In 1787, at age fourteen, she accompanied Jefferson’s daughter Maria to serve as a maid and domestic servant in the Hôtel de Langeac. There, she would have received training for her job, including in the care and maintenance of clothing. Sally learned French, accompanied the Jefferson sisters on social outings, and occasionally received payment for her work. While in Paris, she became Jefferson’s concubine. The nature of their relationship and sexual encounters will remain a mystery. When the time came for Jefferson to return to the United States, Sally, aware she had a claim to liberty in France, refused to go with him. With the bargaining chip of her compliance, she negotiated with Jefferson for extraordinary privileges for herself and her future children before finally agreeing to return with him to Monticello as a slave. From then on, she had an easy life, and had several children with Jefferson. As her son Madison Hemings put it, “it was her duty, all her life which I can remember, up to the time of father’s death, to take care of his chamber and wardrobe, look after us children and do such light work as sewing.” As part of her deal, all of her children were freed upon coming of age, and were taught skills during childhood that could sustain them in freedom. From the writings of one of them, Madison, comes most of what we know of Sally. Jefferson treated her well for the remainder of his life, and upon his death, she unofficially gained her freedom at last.

Although Jefferson’s interactions with slaves and slavery can send a mixed message, his personal views on the matter leave no room for interpretation. For his entire life, Jefferson passionately believed that slavery was a great evil that should be destroyed. In a letter to Thomas Cooper, Jefferson stated that he believed slavery violated the natural rights of Africans, and in reference to the institution, he wrote, “there is nothing I would not sacrifice to a practicable plan of abolishing every vestige of this moral and political depravity.” In one of the early drafts of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson included among the accusations of King George III a scathing rebuke for his role in furthering the American slave trade, the most vicious indictment contained in the early draft by far.

[H]e has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. [T]his piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. [D]etermined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

This passage alone unquestionably exhibits that Thomas Jefferson harbored a burning hatred of slavery in every fiber of his being.

Jefferson clearly despised slavery, and he also had a specific plan to stop it. The first step in his mind, and the only one he lived to witness, was the outlaw of the transatlantic slave trade, so that no more free blacks would get sucked into this generational cycle of oppression. Then, he thought that the worst parts of slavery, the violence and the cruelty, should be improved. After that, all slaves born after a certain date would be declared free, followed by the complete emancipation of any remaining slaves some time later. The last step of his plan, a part that was crucial to him, was to remove freed slaves from the United States and to settle them abroad. Jefferson did not believe that free blacks and whites could coexist in America without disaster. He said as much in his book Notes on the State of Virginia:

Why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the state, and thus save the expence [sic] of supplying, by importation of white settlers, the vacancies they will leave? Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race.

This view led to Jefferson’s famous quote on slavery, “we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go.” By this, Jefferson meant that if slavery were to continue, it would destroy the union in a civil war over the issue (which it did), but on the other hand, mass, forced emancipation would lead to racial strife and violence (which it did). He believed that emancipation would have to be a democratic process.

Given his views on the subject, it will come as no surprise that Jefferson frequently took action to fight slavery or at least ameliorate it. During his time serving in the colonial Virginia House of Burgesses, he threw his support behind a motion to extend some legal protections to slaves, and he himself introduced a motion to emancipate them, though both failed due to their utter unpopularity. During his second term as president, Jefferson strongly advocated for legislation prohibiting the atlantic slave trade in the United States, and in 1807, he signed into law a bill banning “the importation of slaves into any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States.” The law took effect as soon as the Constitution allowed it.

Jefferson’s animosity towards slavery did not mean that he believed blacks and whites were equal, however. In many ways, he believed that whites and Native Americans were superior to blacks. He went into the most detail about his racial beliefs in Notes on the State of Virginia. Here, he recounted his personal observations of the differences between the races as he saw them. He began with the numerous physical differences, including skin color, hair, body structure, sweat, temperature tolerance, and sleep habits. Jefferson insisted on the significance of these physical differences, and wrote that whites possessed superior beauty to blacks. Jeffeson then assessed the psychological characteristics of African Americans.

They are at least as brave, and more adventuresome. But this may perhaps proceed from a want of forethought, which prevents their seeing a danger till it be present…. They are more ardent after their female; but love seems with them to be more an eager desire, than a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation. Their griefs are transient. Those numberless afflictions, which render it doubtful whether heaven has given life to us in mercy or in wrath, are less felt, and sooner forgotten with them. In general, their existence appears to participate more of sensation than reflection. To this must be ascribed their disposition to sleep when abstracted from their diversions, and unemployed in labour. An animal whose body is at rest, and who does not reflect, must be disposed to sleep of course. Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me, that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous.

Despite his callous appraisal, he added the caveat that, “it will be right to make great allowances for the difference of condition, of education, of conversation, of the sphere in which they move.” He recognized that these deficiencies may have been a result of physical abuse and intellectual deprivation to which African slaves were subject in America, though he rejected that possibility in a later section.

In light of his lifelong dedication to ending slavery, the question arises as to why Jefferson did not free his own slaves. This would seem like the most obvious step if he truly believed what he wrote. Several explanations address this apparent hypocrisy. The first ties in with Jefferson’s racist beliefs; he did not believe that most slaves could take care of themselves if freed, and therefore felt an obligation to protect and provide for those slaves he had until his plan for emancipation materialized. In a letter to Edward Coles, he wrote, “my opinion has ever been that, until more can be done for them, we should endeavor, with those whom fortune has thrown on our hands, to feed & clothe them well, protect them from ill usage, require such reasonable labor only as is performed voluntarily by freemen, and be led by no repugnancies to abdicate them, and our duties to them.” Jefferson’s economic situation likely also played a large role in his decision to keep his slaves. He consistently lived beyond his means (which were considerable), and freeing his workforce would have meant abandoning his Monticello home, his various projects, and his expensive tastes. In addition, Jefferson was saddled with crushing debt, mostly acquired through inheritance, for his whole life; only his untouchable reputation restrained his creditors. This debt holds significance for two reasons: abnegating his financial assets in light of it would ruin him, and slaves were great assets; and debt made it very difficult to free slaves under Virginia law, which was already hard. One law in particular, which would have placed a significant burden on Jefferson, forced slave owners to support any slaves they emancipated who were physically or mentally unhealthy, over the age of 45, or under the age of 21 for boys, or 18 for girls. Jefferson could not have afforded to support all of these former slaves of his with his debt, especially after relinquishing his greatest assets.

In summation, despite the fact that he owned slaves, Thomas Jefferson consistently and resolutely believed that the institution of slavery was wrong. He did practically everything in his power to work towards ending this “moral depravity” and alleviating the suffering of those involved. In most respects, he failed to accomplish that goal, though he did succeed in leading the nation though the first major step in ending slavery: the eradication of the atlantic slave trade in America. He held racist beliefs, but only because of the degrading nature of slavery, which in America, exclusively affected blacks. Though he would not live to see it, the words he penned in 1776 formed the backbone of the abolitionist movement which eventually realized his goals. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”