FREE ESSAY ON THOMAS JEFFERSON ON SLAVERY

THOMAS JEFFERSON ON SLAVERY

Thomas Jefferson on Slavery
"We Hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,
Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness—"(Jefferson). These words are arguably the
most recognized words ever written in American history and are the backbone of our
countries right to freedom.
Thomas Jefferson, the author of The Declaration of Independence, is one of the few
historical American leaders that need no introduction. Jefferson was born on April 13th,
1743 in Albemarle county, Virginia. Jefferson was a man of many talents that included,
but not limited to, law, politics, writing, architecture, and planting. The three
achievements that Jefferson wanted to be remembered for, which were inscribed on his
tombstone, are, the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, the introduction
of the Virginia bill of religious liberty, and the founding of the University of
Virginia. Jefferson not only founded the University of Virginia but "He conceived it,
planned it, designed it, and supervised both its construction and the hiring of the
faculty"(Borden). Jefferson is considered one the greatest pioneers of America, but one
issue that troubled him throughout his lifetime was slavery and his ownership of more
than two hundred slaves.
The question that puzzles most Americans is, how could the man who wrote, "All men are
created equal" own slaves? This question has been asked over and over throughout the
history of our great nation. This is the thing that contemporary Americans find most
vexing about him. In order to answer this question we first must explore the society and
times that Jefferson grew up in and considered being the standard.
In 18th - century Virginia, slavery was the fabric of society. Slavery was the backbone
of Virginia's economy and was common with plantation owners of this time. Although
slavery was the norm in Jefferson's lifetime, this cannot be used to justify his
ownership of slaves.
Jefferson spoke out tirelessly throughout his life against the institution of slavery,
slave trading, and for the right of black people to be free. Most people in today's
society would probably argue that he was a hypocrite for owning slaves and at the same
time, denouncing slavery. We must place ourselves in Jefferson's times and not judge on
today's standards. "Do not mistake me. I am not advocating slavery. I am justifying the
wrongs we have committed on foreign people…On the contrary, there is nothing I
would not sacrifice to a practicable plan of abolishing every vestige of this moral and
political depravity" (Jefferson). 
The question on his ownership of slaves should be stated in more historical terms: How
did a man who was born into a slave holding society, whose family and friends owned
slaves, who inherited a plantation that was dependant on slave labor, decide at an early
age that the institution of slavery was morally wrong and declare that it should be
abolished? When we examine this question in a more historical context, it could be argued
that Jefferson went against his society and his own self-interest to denounce slavery and
urge its abolition.
When the question of his ownership is explained this way, another question usually
follows: If Jefferson knew holding slaves was wrong, why did he continue to enslave them.
He did not release any of his slaves while he was living, although he gave five of them
their freedom in his will. Jefferson's decision to continue ownership of slaves is
probably one that cannot be answered in our lifetime. One might argue that he needed the
labor to keep up his plantation, others might say that the slaves did not want to leave
because they were treated so well. Yet another view that might be taken, was Jefferson's
idea of emancipation.
Jefferson did not believe that if slaves were given their freedom and introduced into the
community, that they would be able to assimilate themselves into eighteenth-century
Virginia. "The cession of that kind of property, for so it is misnamed, is a bagatelle
which would not lost me a second thought, if in that way a general emancipation and
expatriation could be effected; and gradually, and with due sacrifices, I think it might
be"(Jefferson).
The answer to slavery for Jefferson was the emancipation of slaves. He thought that it
would do more harm than good to abolish slavery with no plan for the slaves. Jefferson
conveyed this point when he wrote:
…it will probably be asked, why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the
state, and this save the expense 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 provocation; 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 one or the other race (Jefferson).
Jefferson can not be accused of being a bigot for seriously doubting that a racially
integrated society of white Europeans and black Africans was truly feasible. This
observation by Jefferson was remarkable in that harsh prejudices between blacks and
whites have occurred throughout history and still continue today. Jefferson's plan for
emancipation called for the gradual removal of slaves from America to the coast of
Africa. In a letter to Jared Sparks in 1824 Jefferson wrote:
In the disposition of these unfortunate people, there are two rational objects to be
distinctly kept in view. First. The establishment of a colony on the coast of Africa,
which may introduce among the aborigines the arts of cultivated life, and the blessings
of civilization and science. By doing this, we make to them some retribution for the long
course of injuries we have been committing on their population. And considering that
these blessings will descend to the "nati natorum, et qui nascentur ab illis, we shall in
the long run have rendered them perhaps more good than evil… The second object, and
the most interesting to us, as coming home to our physical and moral characters, to our
happiness and safety, is to provide an asylum to which we can, by degrees, send the whole
of that population from among us, and establish them under our patronage and protection,
as a separate, free and independent people, in some country and climate friendly to human
life and happiness (Jefferson).
Jefferson did not just want to emancipate the slaves, he also proposed that the white
Americans educate and train them to be a self-sufficient society which included providing
them with the necessary materials to establish a colony on the coast of Africa in which
they could life in harmony with themselves. His first attempt at emancipation was in 1769
before the Virginia Legislature, as he recalled in his autobiography: "I made one effort
in that body for the permission of the emancipation of slaves, which was rejected: and
indeed during the regal government, nothing liberal could expect success"(Jefferson).
Jefferson was also instrumental in ending of slave trading. In 1776, Jefferson proposed a
bill to end slave trading. In 1778 Virginia adopted it as law. In a biography written
about Jefferson, it stated that, "The may session of the 1778 also, notwithstanding the
exigencies of the war, was distinguished by a civil transaction which in intimately
connected with the reputation of Mr. Jefferson and the honor of our country, namely the
abolition of slave trade "(Coates). This bill proposed stern penalties for the
introduction of any slaves into Virginia and provided for the immediate release of any
that were brought in illegally. Virginia led by example and was followed by Pennsylvania,
Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. "In 1794 congress of the United States
interdicted the trade from all ports of the union under severe penalties" (Coates). 
It is also not well known that in Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration of
Independence he denounced slavery and the slave trade.
He has waged cruel was against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of
liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and
carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their
transportation thither. This practical warfare, the opprobrium of INFIDEL powers, is the
warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where
MEN should be bought and 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 on 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 (Jefferson). 
Most people did not know that this passage existed because the Continental Congress
edited it out. This hurt Jefferson very much. The passage also answers the question of
whether Jefferson meant to include blacks in the language of the declaration.
Another issue that has threatened Jefferson's character is that of his alleged affair
with Sally Hemmings. Jefferson has been accused of fathering one or more of her children.
The first public accusation of this was in 1818 by James T. Callendar. Although nothing
was made of it, Callendar wrote in the Richmond Recorder, "It is well know that the man,
whom it delighteth the people to honor, keeps, and for many years has kept, as his
concubine, one of his own slaves. Her name is SALLY"(Callendar). 
These allegations have continued long after Jefferson passed away. Most of these
allegations were brought about from the descendants of Sally Hemmings. Recent DNA tests
have once again brought these allegations to the attention of contemporary Americans. The
DNA tests provided ["strong evidence" suggesting that Thomas Jefferson was the "likely
biological father"of at least one of the male children (Eston Hemmings)] (Coates). By
just reading the headlines, one might be lead to believe that the allegations have been
proven true.
The blood samples were taken from descendants of Tom Woodson and Easton Hemmings, Sally
Hemmings oldest and youngest sons respectively. A sample was also taken from descendants
of Jefferson's uncle, Field Jefferson. The DNA from each sample was compared and the
results showed that the DNA from Easton Hemmings and Field Jefferson were a match and the
DNA from Woodson did not match either of the other two. This is significant because it
had been alleged, through oral family history, that Thomas Jefferson fathered Tom
Woodson. It proves that Sally Hemmings was not truthful in her accounts to her sons that
Jefferson was there father.
One explanation for the match in the DNA is that Easton Hemming's father was a male
relative of Jefferson. An article in the Washington Post discounts this theory. "No other
Jefferson males were know to have spent substantial time at the estate"(Coates). The
point made was that they didn't spend "substantial time" at Monticello, but proves that
they did spend some time there.
Upon a close review of the DNA evidence, one thing that comes to the forefront, the DNA
tests do not prove, without a reasonable doubt, that Jefferson was the father of any of
Sally Hemmings children. "Even the DNA evidence, while definitely scientific, is not at
all conclusive, since it does not specifically identify only Thomas Jefferson as the
possible father" (Coates). Natalie Bober, an award winning author, stated," I think we
must consider who Thomas Jefferson was. The idea that Thomas Jefferson could have had a
young mulatto mistress in a house overflowing with young children whom he adored is
inconsistent with everything we know about the real Thomas Jefferson"(Bober). 
Thomas Jefferson was a magnificent man and a great statesman. His masterpiece, the
Declaration of Independence, was the single most important episode in the development of
the American ideal of equality and freedom. Although Jefferson was a slave owner, he
denounced the institution of slavery and proposed the concept of emancipation. He led the
way for the abolishment of slave trading.
Many people call him a hypocrite; I call him a hero to America. His Declaration of
Independence laid down the framework for the abolishment of slavery. In Abraham Lincoln's
Gettysburg address, which ultimately ended slavery, [He declared that not only the
essential meaning of the Civil War, but also the national purpose itself was epitomized
in Jefferson's phrase, "all men are created equal"] (Will).
In conclusion, Jefferson's name has always been synonymous with that of slave owner.
Jefferson struggled with this his whole life. On the other hand, he was indirectly
instrumental in the abolition of slavery. "Jefferson had taken what was merely a national
struggle, the American struggle for independence and cast it in rhetoric that made it a
human struggle. And by doing so, he sowed the seeds of the end of the peculiar
institution of slavery" (Will). Thomas Jefferson should be remembered as the founding
father that arguably did more for our great country than any other man or women of his
time. 
Bibliography
Works Cited
Bober, Natalie. " Interviews by Ken Burns" 11 Nov. 98
Borden, Morton. "The American Presidency: Thomas Jefferson Biography" 19 Nov. 98
Callendar, James T. " Sally Hemmings Accusation" 15 Nov. 98
Coates, Robert E. "Jeffersonian Perspective: DNA & Sally Hemmings" 15 Nov. 98
Coates, Robert E. "Life of Thomas Jefferson" 23 Nov. 98
"Constitution Distrubution: The Declaration of Independence" 11 Sep. 98
Jefferson, Thomas. "Thomas Jefferson on Politics & Government: Racial Policy" Quotations
from 
University of Virginia 9 Nov. 98 
Jefferson, Thomas. Autobiography Transcription 1996 by William Morris II 15 Nov. 98
Jefferson, Thomas. "Thomas Jefferson on Slavery" The American Revolution-an HTML Project
11 Sep. 98 
Neligh, R. D. Return to Common Sense "All Men = All Mankind" 27 Nov. 98
Vidal, Gore. "Interview by Ken Burns" 15 Nov. 98
Will, George. "Interview by Ken Burns" 15 Nov. 98