Thomas Jefferson and slavery
Encyclopedia
Thomas Jefferson
, a world-famous advocate of liberty, lived in a slave society; he had a 5,000-acre plantation
and owned hundreds of slaves during his lifetime. He relied on slavery
to support his family's lifestyle. Jefferson's contemporary racial views that African Americans were inferior to whites and needed supervision were rationalized into his Enlightenment
ideals that condemned slavery. While strongly opposed to the slave trade, as president Jefferson in 1806 successfully called on Congress to pass legislation to end it, which he signed.
The Thomas Jefferson Foundation and most historians now believe that, as a widower, Jefferson had a "shadow family"; he had a 38-year-relationship with his mixed-race slave Sally Hemings
and four surviving children with her. As they were seven-eighths European in ancestry, they were legally white although born into slavery. He formally freed seven male slaves, only two in his lifetime. He let his oldest "natural" son and daughter Beverly and Harriet Hemings
"walk away" in 1822 when they came of age. In 1826, he freed five male slaves in his will, including two "natural" sons, Madison
and Eston Hemings
. The remaining 130 slaves at Monticello were sold in 1827 to pay the debts of Jefferson's estate. Jefferson's spending, the low price for tobacco, and family issues put him in great debt, from which he did not recover before his death.
or, indeed, of the efforts he made to curb and eliminate it."
Historian Peter Onuf stated Jefferson was well-known for his "opposition to slavery, most famously expressed in his ... Notes on the state of Virginia
." Biographer John Ferling said that Thomas Jefferson claimed to be "zealously committed to slavery's abolition."
The historian David Brion Davis
noted that after Jefferson returned to the US in 1789 from France, what was notable was his "immense silence." He took no action to challenge slavery. Paul Finkelman wrote that Jefferson's greatest failing was "his inability to join the best of his generation in fighting slavery and in his working instead to prevent any significant change in America's racial status quo."
. In 1768, Thomas Jefferson began to use his slaves to construct a neoclassical mansion known as Monticello
, which overlooked Shadwell.
Starting in 1769, Jefferson served in the Virginia House of Burgesses
for six years and proposed laws that severely restricted free blacks
from entering or living in Virginia. Jefferson authored legislation that would have banished children whose father was of African origin and exiled any white woman who had a child with a black man. Jefferson suggested that any free black found in violation of the laws would be in jeopardy of the lynch mob. According to historian John Ferling, the proposed laws failed to pass the Virginia body "because they were excessively restrictive even for Jefferson's times."
In 1769, Jefferson advertised in the Virginia Gazette, offering a reward up to 10 £, for the capture of his 35-year-old runaway male shoemaker slave named "Sandy". The ad said Sandy was left handed, not very tall, and "light skinned", cunning, an alcoholic
, and when drinking could be violent. Such advertisements were common in Virginia
at this time.
In 1770, before his courtship of Martha Wayles Skelton
, daughter to prominent planter
John Wayles
, Jefferson defended a young mulatto
male slave in Virginia
. He sued for freedom on the grounds that his mother was white and freeborn, and thus he should be free according to the principle of partus sequitur ventrum
, that the child took the status of the mother. The male slave lost his suit. In a case in 1772, Jefferson represented George Manly, the son of a free woman of color
, suing to secure his freedom after having been held as an indentured servant
three years past the expiration of his term. (Under the law at the time, illegitimate male children of free women were bound as indentured servants until the age of 31.)
In 1773, the year after Jefferson married Martha Wayles, her father died and she and Jefferson inherited his estate, including 135 slaves, and £4,000 of debt. With these additional slaves, Jefferson held the second highest number of slaves in Albermarle County, Virginia
, owning as many as 187 slaves at Monticello
. He sold some slaves to pay off the Wayles' estate's debt. From this time, Jefferson took on the duties of owning and supervising his large chattel estate at Monticello
. Slavery supported the life of the planter class in Virginia. According to the historian Lucia Stanton, Jefferson was a "demanding taskmaster"; although he desired to keep his slaves healthy and nourished. The number of slaves from this time onward at Monticello would fluctuate under and over 200.
. Trying to reassert British authority over the area, Dunmore issued a Proclamation in November 1775 which offered freedom to slaves who abandoned their rebel masters and joined the British army. Dunmore, a slave owner like other elite planters, helped initiate a mass exodus of tens of thousands of slaves across the South; Jefferson would lose some of his own slaves as runaways. Jefferson and other colonials saw Dunsmore's action as an attempt to incite a massive slave rebellion, and opposed it.
In 1776, when Jefferson co-authored the Declaration of Independence
, he wrote, "He has excited domestic insurrections among us."
This reference to Dunmore and the British using slaves against the colonists replaced the words of the first draft: "he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us." The Continental Congress removed the accusation that King George III had forced the African slave trade on the Colonies. In part it read, "captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither." Jefferson did not condemn slavery in the Declaration, but he condemned the King for "inciting American Negroes to rise in arms against their masters". Some in Congress wanted to keep Jefferson's paragraph, but "some southern gentlemen" were in favor of the slave trade.
In 1778 with Jefferson's support and probably authorship, the Virginia General Assembly banned importing slaves into Virginia. It was one of the first jurisdictions in the world to ban the slave trade, and all other states eventually followed.
As governor of Virginia during the Revolution, Jefferson signed a bill to promote military enlistment by giving white men land, "a healthy sound Negro...or £60 in gold or silver." He brought some of his household slaves to serve in the Governor's mansion. In January 1781, Jefferson fled the capital and left his slaves behind as British forces invaded. Several slaves, including Mary Hemings
, were taken by the British as prisoners of war, and later released in exchange for British soldiers. In 2009 Hemings was honored as a Patriot
by the Daughters of the Revolution (DAR), making all her female descendants eligible for membership in that heritage society. In June 1781, the British arrived at Monticello and Jefferson fled again, but his slaves helped protect his valuables and family, at risk to themselves.
In 1782, the Virginia General Assembly repealed the 1723 slave law and made it easier for slaveholders to manumit slaves. Unlike some of his contemporaries, such as George Washington
, who freed all his slaves in his will, or Robert Carter
, who freed nearly 500 in his lifetime, Jefferson formally freed only two slaves in his life, and allowed two others (his "natural" children) to "escape" in 1822. Freed slaves were not required to be deported. From 1782 to 1810, the proportion of free blacks in Virginia increased dramatically from less than 1 percent to 13.5 percent, as slaveholders moved by Revolutionary ideals freed their slaves.
, Thomas Jefferson wrote an amendment or bill that would abolish slavery
. However, "he never did propose this plan" and "Jefferson refused to propose either a gradual emancipation scheme or a bill to allow individual masters to free their slaves". In terms of a gradual emancipation plan, he refused to add it as an amendment when others asked him to saying, "better that this should be kept back."
On March 1, 1784 Jefferson submitted to Continental Congress the Report of a Plan of Government for the Western Territory. This proposed legislation gave instructions on how U.S. Territories could be accepted by Congress as new states and prohibited slavery
by 1800 in the Northwest Territory
. On April 23, Congress accepted Jefferson's ordinance; however, denied that slavery would be outlawed. Jefferson claimed that Southern representatives defeated his original proposal. After 1784, Jefferson remained publicly silent on or did nothing to oppose slavery.
On September 15, 1793, Thomas Jefferson agreed in writing to free his slave James Hemings
. Hemings had been trained as a French chef while Jefferson was ambassador to Paris from 1785 to 1789. He freed Hemings in February 1796, more than two years later, after he had trained his brother as a replacement to Jefferson's satisfaction. According to one historian, Jefferson's manumission was not generous; he said the document "undermines any notion of benevolence." With freedom, Hemings worked in Philadelphia and traveled to France
. About the same time, in 1794 Jefferson freed James' older brother Robert Hemings by allowing him to buy his freedom. These were the only two slaves he freed by manumission
in his lifetime.
As U.S. Secretary of State, Jefferson, under President Washington's authorization, issued $40,000 in emergency relief and 1,000 weapons to colonial French slave owners in Saint Domingue (Haiti) in order to suppress a slave rebellion. President Washington gave the slave owners in Saint Domingue (Haiti) $400,000 as repayment for loans they had granted to the Americans during the American Revolutionary War
.
In 1797, Jefferson became Vice President to President John Adams
. In 1800, Thomas Jefferson became President of the United States. During the Presidential election of 1800, Thomas Jefferson won more votes than John Adams
; he was aided by the South's having slaves counted in the total population as 3/5ths persons, as written in the Constitution. This increased the electoral votes controlled by the Southern states. Jefferson became President because of this advantage, and would have lost without it.
. He offered James Hemings
, his former slave whom he had freed in 1796, the position of White House chef. Hemings refused, choosing to stay away from Jefferson although his kin were still held at Monticello
. (Unable to afford travel to Spain, Hemings apparently became depressed and turned to drinking. He later committed suicide
at age 36.) Jefferson's slaves worked and lived in the White House, and at least one would eventually be born there.
In September 1802, James Callender, Jefferson's former ally against the Federalist Party, published an account in the Richmond Recorder, that Jefferson had a slave-concubine named Sally Hemings
by whom he had several children. Callender had previously been denied the appointment of postmaster of Richmond
, Virginia
by President Jefferson. The Federalist Party soon picked up this account and published it in their respective papers. Jefferson did not respond to the accusations, but his family later defended him from such accounts.
In 1804, President Jefferson strongly opposed the slave uprising in Saint Domingue, now Haiti
, and instituted policies to undermine the new state. Jefferson encouraged the French Emperor Napoleon to attack and recolonize the new Haitian republic led by Toussaint Louverture, and lent France $300,000 "for relief of whites on the island." Jefferson intended to weaken Toussaint's army and enable slavery to be reestablished. He wanted to alleviate the fears of Southern slave owners, who feared a similar rebellion. Prior to his election, Jefferson wrote of the revolution, "If something is not done and soon, we shall be the murderers of our own children." His administration imposed a trade embargo, retaining it long after Napoleon's forces were defeated in Haiti. Like the European nations, the US did not offer diplomatic recognition to Haiti when the new nation declared independence in 1804.
In 1806, to discourage free blacks from living in the state, the Virginia General Assembly
modified the 1782 slave law, enabling the re-enslavement of freedmen who remained in the state for more than 12 months. This forced newly freed blacks to leave enslaved kin behind.
In March 1807, Jefferson signed a bill ending the importation of slaves into the United States. By 1808, the international slave trade was banned in every state but South Carolina. By that time, with the growth of the domestic slave population, slaveholders did not mount much resistance to the new law. Jefferson did not lead the campaign to prohibit the international slave trade. The value of slaves in the US increased as demand rose, and slaveholders such as Jefferson benefited from rising prices. Concern over preventing slave rebellions was a factor for ending the slave trade, as slaveholders found newly imported African slaves were more openly rebellious.
(present-day Ohio and nearby states) in order to emancipate them. By 1820, Jefferson denounced Northern meddling with Southern slavery policy. On April 22, Jefferson criticized the Missouri Compromise
passed by the U.S. Congress. The Missouri Compromise banned slavery "in the Louisiana Territory
north of the 36° 30´ latitude line". Missouri
permitted slavery while Maine
banned slavery when the two states were admitted by Congress. In a letter to John Holmes, Jefferson claimed slavery was a complex issue and needed to be solved by the next generation. Jefferson wrote that the Missouri Compromise was a "fire bell in the night" and "the knell of the Union". On April 13, Jefferson wrote to William Short
that he feared the Union would dissolve, stating that the "Missouri question aroused and filled me with alarm." In regards to whether the Union would remain for a long period of time Jefferson wrote, "I now doubt it much."
Jefferson continued to struggle with debt after serving as President. He used his hundreds of slaves as collateral to his creditors. This debt was due to Jefferson's lavish lifestyle, imported goods, art, etc. He frequently entertained guests for extended periods at Monticello, and served them expensive wine and food. It also was due to his helping support his only surviving daughter, Martha Jefferson Randolph
, and her family; she separated from her husband, who had become abusive from alcoholism and mental illness (according to different sources).
Jefferson freed only five slaves in his will, all males of the Hemings family: Madison
and Eston Hemings
, the younger sons of Sally Hemings
, to be freed at age 21 (Madison was freed almost immediately and Eston was "given his time" so that he was freed before he was 21); her half-brother John Hemings
, and her nephews Joseph (Joe) Fossett and Burwell Colbert. He gave Burwell Colbert, who had served as his butler and valet, $300 for purchasing supplies used in the trade of "painter
and glazier
". He freed John Hemings and Joe Fossett, who were each given an acre on Jefferson's lands to build homes for their families. Because Jefferson did not free Fossett's wife or their eight children, they were sold to four different slave owners. Fossett worked for years to buy them back to give them freedom. Jefferson requested the state legislature allow the freedmen to remain in Virginia to be with their families, who remained enslaved under Jefferson's heirs. The legislature allowed this.
In 1827, an auction of 130 slaves took place at Monticello. The sale lasted for five days despite the cold weather. The slaves brought prices over 70% of their appraised value. Within three years, all of the black families at Monticello had been sold and dispersed. Some were purchased by free relatives, such as Mary Hemings Bell, who worked to try to reconstitute the families.
Jefferson ran every facet of the four Monticello farms and left specific instructions to his overseers when away or traveling. Slaves in the mansion, mill, and nailery reported to one general overseer appointed by Jefferson, and he hired many overseers, some of whom were considered cruel at the time. Jefferson, in his Farm Book journal, visually described in detail both the quality and quantity of purchased slave clothing and the name of each slave who received the clothing. Some historians have pointed out that Jefferson maintained many slave families together on his plantations; the historian Bruce Fehn says this was consistent with other slave owners at the time. Like them, Jefferson shifted the "cost of reproducing the workforce to the workers' themselves." He could increase the value of his property without having to buy additional slaves. He tried to reduce infant mortality, and wrote, "[A] woman who brings a child every two years is more profitable than the best man on the farm." The stability of the families can also be seen as showing the African Americans' preferences. They had some agency in how they lived.
Jefferson encouraged slaves to marry at Monticello, and would occasionally buy and sell slaves to keep families together. In 1815, he said that his slaves were "worth a great deal more" due to their marriages. Married slaves, however, had no legal protection or recognition by the law; masters could separate slave husbands and wives any time desired.
Jefferson sometimes gave incentives in money or clothes to slaves in important positions for work. Jefferson’s slaves probably worked from dawn to dusk. Although no record exists that Jefferson had slaves taught, several enslaved men at Monticello could read and write.
Jefferson worked slave boys ages ten to 16 in his nail factory on Mulberry Row. After it opened in 1794, for the first three years, Jefferson recorded the productivity of each child. He selected those who were most productive to be trained as artisans: blacksmiths, carpenters, and coopers. Those who performed the worst were assigned as field laborers.
Like most slaveholders, Jefferson authorized his overseers to use physical violence against the slaves, though probably not as much as some of his neighbors. Jame Hubbard was a slave in the nailery who ran away on two occasions. The first time Jefferson did not have him whipped, but on the second he ordered him to be severely flogged. Hubbard was likely sold after spending time in jail. Stanton says children suffered physical violence. When a 17-year-old James was sick, one overseer whipped him "three times in one day." Violence was commonplace on plantations, including Jefferson’s. According to Marguerite Hughes, Jefferson used "a severe punishment" like whippings when runaways were captured and he sometimes "sold" them to "discourage other men and women from attempting to gain their freedom." Some other slaveholders disagreed with the practices of flogging and jailing slaves during Jefferson's time.
Slaves had a variety of tasks: Davy Bowles was the carriage driver, including trips to take Jefferson to and from Washington D.C. or the Virginia capital. Betty Hemings
, a mixed-race slave inherited from his father-in-law with her family, was the head of the house slaves at Monticello, who were allowed limited freedom when Jefferson was away. Four of her daughters served as house slaves: Betty Brown; Nance, Critta and Sally Hemings
. The latter two were half-sisters to Jefferson's wife. Another house slave was Ursula, whom he had purchased separately. The general maintenance of the mansion was under the care of Hemings family members as well: the master carpenter was Betty's son John Hemings
; his nephews Joe Fossett, as blacksmith, and Burwell Colbert, as Jefferson's butler
and painter, also had important roles.
slave Betty Hemings
and the widower John Wayles
, Jefferson's father-in-law. Jefferson inherited all of the Hemings family from the chattel estate of Wayles. As Sally grew up at Monticello, she was assigned as nursemaid-companion to Jefferson's daughter, Maria. Hemings was described as a "light colored and decidedly good looking" mulatto
. She and her siblings by Wayles were the half-siblings of Jefferson's wife. By Virginia law, she was a slave because her mother was a slave; she took her status by the principle of partus sequitur ventrum
, established in Virginia law in 1662.
In 1787, Sally was chosen to accompany Maria to sail to to Paris, where they joined Jefferson, then the Minister to France. Sally was around 15 to 16 years of age. Jefferson began a sexual relationship with Hemings while they were in Paris, and she became pregnant. Her son Madison Hemings
later recounted that she agreed to return with Jefferson to the United States only after he agreed to free her children at the age of 21. (She could have sought freedom in France, which had abolished slavery.)
Upon returning to Monticello, Hemings gave birth to her first child, who died as an infant. Hemings worked as a seamstress. She had six more children with Jefferson; four survived to adulthood. The journalist Callender alleged as early as 1802 that Jefferson was the father of her children, but for a long time historians discounted such material as motivated by political opponents. Jefferson's grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph said that all the children resembled Jefferson and that one of the boys "looked almost exactly like him." He told the historian Henry Randall that Peter Carr was the father of Hemings' children, an account adopted by James Parton and later 20th-century historians as well, such as Merrill Peterson and Dumas Malone
.
In the 1960s, the historian Winthrop Jordan
analyzed the timeline of Jefferson's activities developed by Dumas Malone
and found that Jefferson was at Monticello when each of Hemings' children was conceived. This overturned a Jefferson family defense; his daughter had said that he was gone for more than a year before the birth of Eston Hemings. Malone had argued against Jefferson's paternity as a matter of "character", which suggested that the historian was uneasy about the idea of the relationship and held the president up as an icon.
A 1998 DNA
test conducted by Dr. Eugene Foster showed there was a match between the Jefferson male line and a descendant of Eston Hemings
. His team's conclusion was that, given the historical evidence, it was most likely that Thomas Jefferson was the father of Eston Hemings and of Sally's other children. His nephews Peter and Samuel Carr, named by Jefferson's grandchildren as father(s) of Hemings' children, had no genetic connection at all to the Hemings' descendants.
As Jefferson's children, the Hemings children were seven-eighths European by ancestry, and at that time legally white under Virginia law. Jefferson gave Hemings and her children special treatment, most importantly: freedom. As the four surviving Hemings children came of age, Jefferson freed them, both indirectly, by allowing Beverly and Harriet Hemings
to "run away" in 1822, and directly, through his will for Madison and Eston. Jefferson never sent anyone after the young slaves in 1822 or tried to find them; his overseer provided money for Harriet's trip. After Jefferson's death, his daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph gave Sally Hemings "her time", allowing her to leave Monticello and live with her freed sons in Charlottesville. The Hemings were the only slave family to leave Monticello as free persons. At the time of the 1830 census, the census taker classified the three Hemingses as white. Three of the four Hemings children identified as white as adults and lived in white communities.
In his 1873 memoir, Madison Hemings
, Sally Heming's son and Jefferson's carpenter apprentice at Monticello, had claimed Jefferson was his father. Madison and his brothers were trained to be carpenters by Jefferson's master carpenter John Hemings
, Sally Heming's half-brother. Madison Hemings referred to his mother Sally as Jefferson's "slave woman". He said that Heming's children were happy because they knew they would not be slaves forever. They were allowed access to the main Monticello
mansion house and could visit freely with their mother Sally.
Jefferson supported gradual emancipation and deportation of freed blacks, as he feared their presence would contribute to a slave revolt.
Owning a copy of Suetonius
, a Roman biographer, Jefferson may have borrowed the phrase "wolf by the ears", a saying attributed to Tiberius
. Jefferson, in essence, had claimed slavery was an dangerous animal (the wolf) and could not be contained. Any attempt to contain slavery would lead to violence.
According to Greg Warnusz, Jefferson held contemporary 19th-century beliefs that blacks were inferior to whites in terms of "potential for citizenship," and he wanted them deported. He claimed to be interested in helping both races in his proposal: gradually freeing slaves after age 45 (when they would have repaid their owners investment), and resettling them in Africa
. Jefferson's plan was for a whites-only society without any blacks.
While privately proposing an end of slavery, Jefferson was a slaveholder and advocated slavery's expansion. According to James W. Loewen, Jefferson's character "wrestled with slavery, even though in the end he lost." Loewen says that understanding Jefferson's role with slavery is significant in understanding current American social problems.
In an 1814 letter to Edmund Cole titled "Slavery and the Younger Generation", Jefferson put forth some of his views on slaves and the institution of slavery. Discussing gradual emancipation with forced deportation he said:
He stated his views of African Americans with:
Jefferson put forth his views on mixed-race marriages (miscenegation) between whites and blacks: "Their amalgamation with the other color produces a degradation to which no lover of his country, no lover of excellence in the human character can innocently consent."
His last page starts with an acknowledgement of his advancing age and that younger people will have to work to abolish slavery
and Merrill Peterson, disregarded "very strong circumstantial evidence" that supported Jefferson as the father of Hemings' children. Both Malone and Peterson had severely criticized the book, Thomas Jefferson; An Intimate History (1974), by Fawn M. Brodie
, which examined circumstantial evidence supporting Jefferson's paternity. They had earlier suggested that Jefferson's nephew Peter Carr was the father, chiefly because Jefferson's grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, had identified him as such. A 1998 DNA study conclusively disproved any connection between Carr and the Hemings descendants. Because of Brodie's use of psychological analysis, Malone and Paterson accused her of "slander", "nonsense", and "psychological speculation". They wrote to CBS criticizing its broadcast that publicized Brodie's work. Halliday said they failed "to make any scholarly analysis" regarding Sally's son Madison Hemings' 1873 claim of Jefferson's paternity.
According to his assessment of Jefferson, Peterson wrote that the statesman would find having a sexual affair with a slave repulsive. Jefferson made statements against miscegenation
. The historian John C. Miller said that Jefferson deplored racial mixing. Halliday showed that Peterson and Miller disregarded historical evidence that was contrary to their respective opinions.
In his 1993 biography of the president, the historian Joseph Ellis
claimed that Jefferson "lacked the capacity for the direct and physical expression of his sexual energies". Ellis's "impotency" theory for Jefferson as a widower was contradicted by the fact that Jefferson was able to and kept his wife Martha Jefferson constantly pregnant during their ten-year marriage. When the 1998 DNA study was released showing a match between a Hemings descendant and the Jefferson male line, Ellis became convinced that Jefferson had a long-term sexual relationship with Hemings.
Before the mid to late twentieth century, historians generally discounted the reports by James Callender, an early 19th-century journalist who reported on Jefferson's children by Hemings; he was described as unreliable, motivated by revenge and an "unscrupulous scandalmonger". The biographer Michael Dury in his 1990 book portrayed Callender as a "radical idealist" who desired to expose any corruption among the Founding Fathers.
Jefferson had first encouraged and paid Callender to write against his political enemies. As a result, Callender was jailed nine months in prison and fined $200 for his political opinions under the Federalist Sedition Act
. After the journalist's imprisonment, Jefferson refused to see him and denied Callender a postmaster appointment for Richmond
. On September 1, 1802 Callender, who wrote for the Richmond Recorder, claimed Jefferson for many years had "kept, as his concubine, one of his own slaves. Her name is SALLY." Dury claimed that although Callander was known for exaggerations, he did not purposely make false statements and was not "an encourageable liar." If there were factual errors, Callender would correct them.
Some also claim of DNA evidence that Sally Heming's children were fathered by Jefferson. These claims are generally refuted by those who were closest to him, most notably his oldest grandson. In letters written by the nineteenth century biographer Henry Randall, he recounts a conversation which he had with Thomas Jefferson Randolph
, Jefferson's oldest grandson. Colonel Randolph (as he was known) recounted that Sally Hemings was the mistress of Jefferson's nephew, Peter Carr. He commented, "their connection…was perfectly notorious at Monticello." Randolph also stated that "he had never seen a motion or a look or a circumstance which led him to suspect for an instant that there was a particle more of familiarity between Mr. Jefferson and Sally Hemings than between him and the most repulsive servant in the establishment."
A noted recent work that pushes the claims of the Jefferson-Heming relationship is the book by Fawn M. Brodie, Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History. This book has been criticized by numerous Jefferson biographers and scholars. Dumas Malone, a Pulitzer Prize
-winning Jefferson biographer, said of Ms. Brodie's book, "This determined woman carries psychological speculation to the point of absurdity. The resulting mishmash of fact and fiction, surmise and conjecture, is not history as I understand the term….To me the man she describes in her more titillating passages is unrecognizable."
Jefferson had opportunities to disassociate himself from slavery. In 1782 after the American Revolution, Virginia passed a law making manumission
legal by the slave owner. The abolition of slavery was becoming a reality. Yet, Jefferson's ideals never kept in step with those of the antislavery advocates. By contrast, so many other slaveholders freed slaves in the first two decades after the Revolution that the proportion of free blacks in Virginia rose from less than one percent in 1790 to 8.3 percent in 1810.
Historians use Jefferson's correspondence with Edward Coles
as an example of his anti-slavery views. Coles believed Jefferson would help him with his plan to free his slaves, and wrote to Jefferson about it in 1814. In Jefferson's response, the first part of the letter seemed to support Coles' plan and the anti-slavery movement, but further on Jefferson discouraged Coles from emancipating his slaves, saying:
Jefferson claimed to want to protect slaves from ill usage and to employ them in reasonable labor, though at the same time insisted that Coles should not free his slaves.
(Note: Coles took his slaves to present-day Illinois, a free territory, where he freed them and gave them land purchased for their use, 160 acres to each head of household. He also helped provide employment for them to get started.)
In 1907, Joseph Lemen claimed that Thomas Jefferson and his ancestor James Lemen
held a secret compact to defeat slavery from expanding in the Northwest Territory
. According to Lemen family papers, Jefferson secretly gave James Lemen money in 1785 to start anti-slavery churches in Illinois. The historian James A. Edstrom concluded in 2004 that the alleged Jefferson-Lemen compact is "myth."
Jefferson claimed in 1777 and 1778 to have authored bills that would have emancipated slaves, liberated the children of slaves, and deported them from the colonies. Jefferson claimed to have withdrawn the legislation and said the "public
mind" would not be able to accept emancipation at this time. But, there is no evidence from Jefferson's collective writings that he authored such legislation.
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
, a world-famous advocate of liberty, lived in a slave society; he had a 5,000-acre plantation
Plantation
A plantation is a long artificially established forest, farm or estate, where crops are grown for sale, often in distant markets rather than for local on-site consumption...
and owned hundreds of slaves during his lifetime. He relied on slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
to support his family's lifestyle. Jefferson's contemporary racial views that African Americans were inferior to whites and needed supervision were rationalized into his Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
ideals that condemned slavery. While strongly opposed to the slave trade, as president Jefferson in 1806 successfully called on Congress to pass legislation to end it, which he signed.
The Thomas Jefferson Foundation and most historians now believe that, as a widower, Jefferson had a "shadow family"; he had a 38-year-relationship with his mixed-race slave Sally Hemings
Sally Hemings
Sarah "Sally" Hemings was a mixed-race slave owned by President Thomas Jefferson through inheritance from his wife. She was the half-sister of Jefferson's wife, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson by their father John Wayles...
and four surviving children with her. As they were seven-eighths European in ancestry, they were legally white although born into slavery. He formally freed seven male slaves, only two in his lifetime. He let his oldest "natural" son and daughter Beverly and Harriet Hemings
Harriet Hemings
Harriet Hemings was born into slavery at Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States, in the first year of his Presidency. Most historians believe her father is Jefferson, who is believed by many historians to have had a relationship with his mixed-race slave...
"walk away" in 1822 when they came of age. In 1826, he freed five male slaves in his will, including two "natural" sons, Madison
Madison Hemings
Madison Hemings, born James Madison Hemings , was born into slavery as the son of the mixed-race slave Sally Hemings; he was freed after the death of his master Thomas Jefferson. Based on historical evidence, most historians believe that Jefferson, United States president, was his father...
and Eston Hemings
Eston Hemings
Eston Hemings Jefferson was born a slave at Monticello, the youngest son of Sally Hemings, a mixed-race slave. Most historians believe that his father was Thomas Jefferson, the United States president. Evidence from a 1998 DNA test showed that Eston's descendants matched those of the male...
. The remaining 130 slaves at Monticello were sold in 1827 to pay the debts of Jefferson's estate. Jefferson's spending, the low price for tobacco, and family issues put him in great debt, from which he did not recover before his death.
Evaluations by historians
The biographer Merrill Peterson said that Jefferson's ownership of slaves "all his adult life has placed him at odds with his moral and political principles. Yet there can be no question of his genuine hatred of slaverySlavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
or, indeed, of the efforts he made to curb and eliminate it."
Historian Peter Onuf stated Jefferson was well-known for his "opposition to slavery, most famously expressed in his ... Notes on the state of Virginia
Notes on the State of Virginia
Notes on the State of Virginia was a book written by Thomas Jefferson. He completed the first edition in 1781, and updated and enlarged the book in 1782 and 1783...
." Biographer John Ferling said that Thomas Jefferson claimed to be "zealously committed to slavery's abolition."
The historian David Brion Davis
David Brion Davis
David Brion Davis is an American historian and authority on slavery and abolition in the Western world. He is the Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University and founder and Director Emeritus of Yale’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition. He is a...
noted that after Jefferson returned to the US in 1789 from France, what was notable was his "immense silence." He took no action to challenge slavery. Paul Finkelman wrote that Jefferson's greatest failing was "his inability to join the best of his generation in fighting slavery and in his working instead to prevent any significant change in America's racial status quo."
Early years (1744-1774)
Thomas was born into the planter class of a slave society, the son of Peter Jefferson, a prominent slaveholder and land speculator in Virginia, and Jane Randolph, granddaughter of English and Scots gentry. Peter Jefferson died suddenly in 1757, leaving the eleven-year-old Thomas a large estate. When Jefferson turned 21, he received 5000 acres (20.2 km²) of land, 52 slaves, livestock, his father's notable library, and a gristmillGristmill
The terms gristmill or grist mill can refer either to a building in which grain is ground into flour, or to the grinding mechanism itself.- Early history :...
. In 1768, Thomas Jefferson began to use his slaves to construct a neoclassical mansion known as Monticello
Monticello
Monticello is a National Historic Landmark just outside Charlottesville, Virginia, United States. It was the estate of Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence, third President of the United States, and founder of the University of Virginia; it is...
, which overlooked Shadwell.
Starting in 1769, Jefferson served in the Virginia House of Burgesses
House of Burgesses
The House of Burgesses was the first assembly of elected representatives of English colonists in North America. The House was established by the Virginia Company, who created the body as part of an effort to encourage English craftsmen to settle in North America...
for six years and proposed laws that severely restricted free blacks
Free people of color
A free person of color in the context of the history of slavery in the Americas, is a person of full or partial African descent who was not enslaved...
from entering or living in Virginia. Jefferson authored legislation that would have banished children whose father was of African origin and exiled any white woman who had a child with a black man. Jefferson suggested that any free black found in violation of the laws would be in jeopardy of the lynch mob. According to historian John Ferling, the proposed laws failed to pass the Virginia body "because they were excessively restrictive even for Jefferson's times."
In 1769, Jefferson advertised in the Virginia Gazette, offering a reward up to 10 £, for the capture of his 35-year-old runaway male shoemaker slave named "Sandy". The ad said Sandy was left handed, not very tall, and "light skinned", cunning, an alcoholic
Alcoholism
Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...
, and when drinking could be violent. Such advertisements were common in Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
at this time.
In 1770, before his courtship of Martha Wayles Skelton
Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson
Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson, born Martha Wayles was the wife of Thomas Jefferson, who was the third President of the United States. It was her second marriage, as her first husband had died young...
, daughter to prominent planter
Planter
Planter may refer to:*A flower pot or box for plants**Jardinière, one such type of pot*A person or object engaged in sowing seeds**Planter , implement towed behind a tractor, used for sowing crops through a field*A coloniser...
John Wayles
John Wayles
John Wayles was a planter, slave trader and lawyer in the Virginia Colony. He is historically best known as the father-in-law of Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States....
, Jefferson defended a young mulatto
Mulatto
Mulatto denotes a person with one white parent and one black parent, or more broadly, a person of mixed black and white ancestry. Contemporary usage of the term varies greatly, and the broader sense of the term makes its application rather subjective, as not all people of mixed white and black...
male slave in Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
. He sued for freedom on the grounds that his mother was white and freeborn, and thus he should be free according to the principle of partus sequitur ventrum
Partus sequitur ventrum
Partus sequitur ventrem, often abbreviated to partus, in the British North American colonies and later in the United States, was a legal doctrine which the English colonists incorporated in legislation related to definitions of slavery. It was derived from the Roman civil law; it held that the...
, that the child took the status of the mother. The male slave lost his suit. In a case in 1772, Jefferson represented George Manly, the son of a free woman of color
Free people of color
A free person of color in the context of the history of slavery in the Americas, is a person of full or partial African descent who was not enslaved...
, suing to secure his freedom after having been held as an indentured servant
Indentured servant
Indentured servitude refers to the historical practice of contracting to work for a fixed period of time, typically three to seven years, in exchange for transportation, food, clothing, lodging and other necessities during the term of indenture. Usually the father made the arrangements and signed...
three years past the expiration of his term. (Under the law at the time, illegitimate male children of free women were bound as indentured servants until the age of 31.)
In 1773, the year after Jefferson married Martha Wayles, her father died and she and Jefferson inherited his estate, including 135 slaves, and £4,000 of debt. With these additional slaves, Jefferson held the second highest number of slaves in Albermarle County, Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
, owning as many as 187 slaves at Monticello
Monticello
Monticello is a National Historic Landmark just outside Charlottesville, Virginia, United States. It was the estate of Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence, third President of the United States, and founder of the University of Virginia; it is...
. He sold some slaves to pay off the Wayles' estate's debt. From this time, Jefferson took on the duties of owning and supervising his large chattel estate at Monticello
Monticello
Monticello is a National Historic Landmark just outside Charlottesville, Virginia, United States. It was the estate of Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence, third President of the United States, and founder of the University of Virginia; it is...
. Slavery supported the life of the planter class in Virginia. According to the historian Lucia Stanton, Jefferson was a "demanding taskmaster"; although he desired to keep his slaves healthy and nourished. The number of slaves from this time onward at Monticello would fluctuate under and over 200.
Revolutionary period (1775-1783)
In 1775, Thomas Jefferson joined the Continental Congress as a delegate from Virginia when he and others in Virginia began to rebel against the British governor Lord DunmoreJohn Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore
John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore was a British peer and colonial governor. He was the son of William Murray, 3rd Earl of Dunmore, and his wife Catherine . He is best remembered as the last royal governor of the Colony of Virginia.John was the eldest son of William and Catherine Murray, and nephew...
. Trying to reassert British authority over the area, Dunmore issued a Proclamation in November 1775 which offered freedom to slaves who abandoned their rebel masters and joined the British army. Dunmore, a slave owner like other elite planters, helped initiate a mass exodus of tens of thousands of slaves across the South; Jefferson would lose some of his own slaves as runaways. Jefferson and other colonials saw Dunsmore's action as an attempt to incite a massive slave rebellion, and opposed it.
In 1776, when Jefferson co-authored the Declaration of Independence
Declaration of independence
A declaration of independence is an assertion of the independence of an aspiring state or states. Such places are usually declared from part or all of the territory of another nation or failed nation, or are breakaway territories from within the larger state...
, he wrote, "He has excited domestic insurrections among us."
This reference to Dunmore and the British using slaves against the colonists replaced the words of the first draft: "he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us." The Continental Congress removed the accusation that King George III had forced the African slave trade on the Colonies. In part it read, "captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither." Jefferson did not condemn slavery in the Declaration, but he condemned the King for "inciting American Negroes to rise in arms against their masters". Some in Congress wanted to keep Jefferson's paragraph, but "some southern gentlemen" were in favor of the slave trade.
In 1778 with Jefferson's support and probably authorship, the Virginia General Assembly banned importing slaves into Virginia. It was one of the first jurisdictions in the world to ban the slave trade, and all other states eventually followed.
As governor of Virginia during the Revolution, Jefferson signed a bill to promote military enlistment by giving white men land, "a healthy sound Negro...or £60 in gold or silver." He brought some of his household slaves to serve in the Governor's mansion. In January 1781, Jefferson fled the capital and left his slaves behind as British forces invaded. Several slaves, including Mary Hemings
Mary Hemings
Mary Hemings, also known as Mary Hemings Bell , was born into slavery, most likely in Charles City County, Virginia, as the oldest child of Elizabeth Hemings, a mixed-race slave held by John Wayles...
, were taken by the British as prisoners of war, and later released in exchange for British soldiers. In 2009 Hemings was honored as a Patriot
Patriot (American Revolution)
Patriots is a name often used to describe the colonists of the British Thirteen United Colonies who rebelled against British control during the American Revolution. It was their leading figures who, in July 1776, declared the United States of America an independent nation...
by the Daughters of the Revolution (DAR), making all her female descendants eligible for membership in that heritage society. In June 1781, the British arrived at Monticello and Jefferson fled again, but his slaves helped protect his valuables and family, at risk to themselves.
In 1782, the Virginia General Assembly repealed the 1723 slave law and made it easier for slaveholders to manumit slaves. Unlike some of his contemporaries, such as George Washington
George Washington
George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...
, who freed all his slaves in his will, or Robert Carter
Robert Carter
Robert Carter or Bob Carter may refer to:*Robert Carter I of Corotoman, aka King Carter , Virginia colonist*Robert Carter III, United States founding father*Robert Carter , Canadian illustrator...
, who freed nearly 500 in his lifetime, Jefferson formally freed only two slaves in his life, and allowed two others (his "natural" children) to "escape" in 1822. Freed slaves were not required to be deported. From 1782 to 1810, the proportion of free blacks in Virginia increased dramatically from less than 1 percent to 13.5 percent, as slaveholders moved by Revolutionary ideals freed their slaves.
Following the Revolution (1784-1800)
Some historians have claimed that, as a Representative to the Continental CongressContinental Congress
The Continental Congress was a convention of delegates called together from the Thirteen Colonies that became the governing body of the United States during the American Revolution....
, Thomas Jefferson wrote an amendment or bill that would abolish slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
. However, "he never did propose this plan" and "Jefferson refused to propose either a gradual emancipation scheme or a bill to allow individual masters to free their slaves". In terms of a gradual emancipation plan, he refused to add it as an amendment when others asked him to saying, "better that this should be kept back."
On March 1, 1784 Jefferson submitted to Continental Congress the Report of a Plan of Government for the Western Territory. This proposed legislation gave instructions on how U.S. Territories could be accepted by Congress as new states and prohibited slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
by 1800 in the Northwest Territory
Northwest Territory
The Territory Northwest of the River Ohio, more commonly known as the Northwest Territory, was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from July 13, 1787, until March 1, 1803, when the southeastern portion of the territory was admitted to the Union as the state of Ohio...
. On April 23, Congress accepted Jefferson's ordinance; however, denied that slavery would be outlawed. Jefferson claimed that Southern representatives defeated his original proposal. After 1784, Jefferson remained publicly silent on or did nothing to oppose slavery.
On September 15, 1793, Thomas Jefferson agreed in writing to free his slave James Hemings
James Hemings
James Hemings was an American mixed-race slave owned and freed by Thomas Jefferson. He was an older brother of Sally Hemings and is said to have been a half-sibling of Jefferson's wife Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson because their father was John Wayles...
. Hemings had been trained as a French chef while Jefferson was ambassador to Paris from 1785 to 1789. He freed Hemings in February 1796, more than two years later, after he had trained his brother as a replacement to Jefferson's satisfaction. According to one historian, Jefferson's manumission was not generous; he said the document "undermines any notion of benevolence." With freedom, Hemings worked in Philadelphia and traveled to France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. About the same time, in 1794 Jefferson freed James' older brother Robert Hemings by allowing him to buy his freedom. These were the only two slaves he freed by manumission
Manumission
Manumission is the act of a slave owner freeing his or her slaves. In the United States before the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which abolished most slavery, this often happened upon the death of the owner, under conditions in his will.-Motivations:The...
in his lifetime.
As U.S. Secretary of State, Jefferson, under President Washington's authorization, issued $40,000 in emergency relief and 1,000 weapons to colonial French slave owners in Saint Domingue (Haiti) in order to suppress a slave rebellion. President Washington gave the slave owners in Saint Domingue (Haiti) $400,000 as repayment for loans they had granted to the Americans during the American Revolutionary War
American Revolutionary War
The American Revolutionary War , the American War of Independence, or simply the Revolutionary War, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers.The war was the result of the...
.
In 1797, Jefferson became Vice President to President John Adams
John Adams
John Adams was an American lawyer, statesman, diplomat and political theorist. A leading champion of independence in 1776, he was the second President of the United States...
. In 1800, Thomas Jefferson became President of the United States. During the Presidential election of 1800, Thomas Jefferson won more votes than John Adams
John Adams
John Adams was an American lawyer, statesman, diplomat and political theorist. A leading champion of independence in 1776, he was the second President of the United States...
; he was aided by the South's having slaves counted in the total population as 3/5ths persons, as written in the Constitution. This increased the electoral votes controlled by the Southern states. Jefferson became President because of this advantage, and would have lost without it.
As President (1801-1809)
Like other slave-owning presidents, Jefferson brought trusted members of his household to work in the White HouseWhite House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
. He offered James Hemings
James Hemings
James Hemings was an American mixed-race slave owned and freed by Thomas Jefferson. He was an older brother of Sally Hemings and is said to have been a half-sibling of Jefferson's wife Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson because their father was John Wayles...
, his former slave whom he had freed in 1796, the position of White House chef. Hemings refused, choosing to stay away from Jefferson although his kin were still held at Monticello
Monticello
Monticello is a National Historic Landmark just outside Charlottesville, Virginia, United States. It was the estate of Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence, third President of the United States, and founder of the University of Virginia; it is...
. (Unable to afford travel to Spain, Hemings apparently became depressed and turned to drinking. He later committed suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
at age 36.) Jefferson's slaves worked and lived in the White House, and at least one would eventually be born there.
In September 1802, James Callender, Jefferson's former ally against the Federalist Party, published an account in the Richmond Recorder, that Jefferson had a slave-concubine named Sally Hemings
Sally Hemings
Sarah "Sally" Hemings was a mixed-race slave owned by President Thomas Jefferson through inheritance from his wife. She was the half-sister of Jefferson's wife, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson by their father John Wayles...
by whom he had several children. Callender had previously been denied the appointment of postmaster of Richmond
Richmond, Virginia
Richmond is the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the United States. It is an independent city and not part of any county. Richmond is the center of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Greater Richmond area...
, Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
by President Jefferson. The Federalist Party soon picked up this account and published it in their respective papers. Jefferson did not respond to the accusations, but his family later defended him from such accounts.
In 1804, President Jefferson strongly opposed the slave uprising in Saint Domingue, now Haiti
Haiti
Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...
, and instituted policies to undermine the new state. Jefferson encouraged the French Emperor Napoleon to attack and recolonize the new Haitian republic led by Toussaint Louverture, and lent France $300,000 "for relief of whites on the island." Jefferson intended to weaken Toussaint's army and enable slavery to be reestablished. He wanted to alleviate the fears of Southern slave owners, who feared a similar rebellion. Prior to his election, Jefferson wrote of the revolution, "If something is not done and soon, we shall be the murderers of our own children." His administration imposed a trade embargo, retaining it long after Napoleon's forces were defeated in Haiti. Like the European nations, the US did not offer diplomatic recognition to Haiti when the new nation declared independence in 1804.
In 1806, to discourage free blacks from living in the state, the Virginia General Assembly
Virginia General Assembly
The Virginia General Assembly is the legislative body of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the oldest legislative body in the Western Hemisphere, established on July 30, 1619. The General Assembly is a bicameral body consisting of a lower house, the Virginia House of Delegates, with 100 members,...
modified the 1782 slave law, enabling the re-enslavement of freedmen who remained in the state for more than 12 months. This forced newly freed blacks to leave enslaved kin behind.
In March 1807, Jefferson signed a bill ending the importation of slaves into the United States. By 1808, the international slave trade was banned in every state but South Carolina. By that time, with the growth of the domestic slave population, slaveholders did not mount much resistance to the new law. Jefferson did not lead the campaign to prohibit the international slave trade. The value of slaves in the US increased as demand rose, and slaveholders such as Jefferson benefited from rising prices. Concern over preventing slave rebellions was a factor for ending the slave trade, as slaveholders found newly imported African slaves were more openly rebellious.
Retirement (1810–1826)
In August 1814, Jefferson told his protege Edward Coles that he thought Coles was wrong to propose transporting his slaves to the Northwest TerritoriesNorthwest Territories
The Northwest Territories is a federal territory of Canada.Located in northern Canada, the territory borders Canada's two other territories, Yukon to the west and Nunavut to the east, and three provinces: British Columbia to the southwest, and Alberta and Saskatchewan to the south...
(present-day Ohio and nearby states) in order to emancipate them. By 1820, Jefferson denounced Northern meddling with Southern slavery policy. On April 22, Jefferson criticized the Missouri Compromise
Missouri Compromise
The Missouri Compromise was an agreement passed in 1820 between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in the United States Congress, involving primarily the regulation of slavery in the western territories. It prohibited slavery in the former Louisiana Territory north of the parallel 36°30'...
passed by the U.S. Congress. The Missouri Compromise banned slavery "in the Louisiana Territory
Louisiana Territory
The Territory of Louisiana or Louisiana Territory was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from July 4, 1805 until June 4, 1812, when it was renamed to Missouri Territory...
north of the 36° 30´ latitude line". Missouri
Missouri
Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...
permitted slavery while Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
banned slavery when the two states were admitted by Congress. In a letter to John Holmes, Jefferson claimed slavery was a complex issue and needed to be solved by the next generation. Jefferson wrote that the Missouri Compromise was a "fire bell in the night" and "the knell of the Union". On April 13, Jefferson wrote to William Short
William Short (American ambassador)
William Short was Thomas Jefferson's private secretary when he was ambassador in Paris, from 1786 to 1789. Jefferson, later the third President of the United States, referred to Short as his "adoptive son". Short, along with Jefferson, was a co-founder of Phi Beta Kappa at the College of William &...
that he feared the Union would dissolve, stating that the "Missouri question aroused and filled me with alarm." In regards to whether the Union would remain for a long period of time Jefferson wrote, "I now doubt it much."
Jefferson continued to struggle with debt after serving as President. He used his hundreds of slaves as collateral to his creditors. This debt was due to Jefferson's lavish lifestyle, imported goods, art, etc. He frequently entertained guests for extended periods at Monticello, and served them expensive wine and food. It also was due to his helping support his only surviving daughter, Martha Jefferson Randolph
Martha Jefferson Randolph
Martha Washington Jefferson Randolph was the daughter of Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States, and his wife Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson. She was born in Monticello, near Charlottesville, Virginia and was named in honor of her mother and of Martha Washington, wife of...
, and her family; she separated from her husband, who had become abusive from alcoholism and mental illness (according to different sources).
Posthumous (1827-1830)
At his death, Jefferson was greatly in debt, in part due to his continued construction program. The debts encumbered his estate, and his family had to sell the slaves from Monticello to pay his creditors.Jefferson freed only five slaves in his will, all males of the Hemings family: Madison
Madison Hemings
Madison Hemings, born James Madison Hemings , was born into slavery as the son of the mixed-race slave Sally Hemings; he was freed after the death of his master Thomas Jefferson. Based on historical evidence, most historians believe that Jefferson, United States president, was his father...
and Eston Hemings
Eston Hemings
Eston Hemings Jefferson was born a slave at Monticello, the youngest son of Sally Hemings, a mixed-race slave. Most historians believe that his father was Thomas Jefferson, the United States president. Evidence from a 1998 DNA test showed that Eston's descendants matched those of the male...
, the younger sons of Sally Hemings
Sally Hemings
Sarah "Sally" Hemings was a mixed-race slave owned by President Thomas Jefferson through inheritance from his wife. She was the half-sister of Jefferson's wife, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson by their father John Wayles...
, to be freed at age 21 (Madison was freed almost immediately and Eston was "given his time" so that he was freed before he was 21); her half-brother John Hemings
John Hemings
John Hemings was born into slavery at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello as part of the large mixed-race Hemings family...
, and her nephews Joseph (Joe) Fossett and Burwell Colbert. He gave Burwell Colbert, who had served as his butler and valet, $300 for purchasing supplies used in the trade of "painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
and glazier
Glazier
A Glazier is a construction professional who selects, cuts, installs, replaces, and removes residential, commercial, and artistic glass. Glaziers also install aluminum storefront frames and entrances, glass handrails and balustrades, shower enclosures, curtain wall framing and glass and mirror...
". He freed John Hemings and Joe Fossett, who were each given an acre on Jefferson's lands to build homes for their families. Because Jefferson did not free Fossett's wife or their eight children, they were sold to four different slave owners. Fossett worked for years to buy them back to give them freedom. Jefferson requested the state legislature allow the freedmen to remain in Virginia to be with their families, who remained enslaved under Jefferson's heirs. The legislature allowed this.
In 1827, an auction of 130 slaves took place at Monticello. The sale lasted for five days despite the cold weather. The slaves brought prices over 70% of their appraised value. Within three years, all of the black families at Monticello had been sold and dispersed. Some were purchased by free relatives, such as Mary Hemings Bell, who worked to try to reconstitute the families.
Monticello slave life
Jefferson encouraged slaves to marry at Monticello, and would occasionally buy and sell slaves to keep families together. In 1815, he said that his slaves were "worth a great deal more" due to their marriages. Married slaves, however, had no legal protection or recognition by the law; masters could separate slave husbands and wives any time desired.
Jefferson sometimes gave incentives in money or clothes to slaves in important positions for work. Jefferson’s slaves probably worked from dawn to dusk. Although no record exists that Jefferson had slaves taught, several enslaved men at Monticello could read and write.
Like most slaveholders, Jefferson authorized his overseers to use physical violence against the slaves, though probably not as much as some of his neighbors. Jame Hubbard was a slave in the nailery who ran away on two occasions. The first time Jefferson did not have him whipped, but on the second he ordered him to be severely flogged. Hubbard was likely sold after spending time in jail. Stanton says children suffered physical violence. When a 17-year-old James was sick, one overseer whipped him "three times in one day." Violence was commonplace on plantations, including Jefferson’s. According to Marguerite Hughes, Jefferson used "a severe punishment" like whippings when runaways were captured and he sometimes "sold" them to "discourage other men and women from attempting to gain their freedom." Some other slaveholders disagreed with the practices of flogging and jailing slaves during Jefferson's time.
Slaves had a variety of tasks: Davy Bowles was the carriage driver, including trips to take Jefferson to and from Washington D.C. or the Virginia capital. Betty Hemings
Betty Hemings
Elizabeth "Betty" Hemings was an American enslaved woman of mixed race, who in 1761 became the concubine of the planter John Wayles of Virginia. He had become a widower for the third time. He had six children with her over a 12-year period...
, a mixed-race slave inherited from his father-in-law with her family, was the head of the house slaves at Monticello, who were allowed limited freedom when Jefferson was away. Four of her daughters served as house slaves: Betty Brown; Nance, Critta and Sally Hemings
Sally Hemings
Sarah "Sally" Hemings was a mixed-race slave owned by President Thomas Jefferson through inheritance from his wife. She was the half-sister of Jefferson's wife, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson by their father John Wayles...
. The latter two were half-sisters to Jefferson's wife. Another house slave was Ursula, whom he had purchased separately. The general maintenance of the mansion was under the care of Hemings family members as well: the master carpenter was Betty's son John Hemings
John Hemings
John Hemings was born into slavery at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello as part of the large mixed-race Hemings family...
; his nephews Joe Fossett, as blacksmith, and Burwell Colbert, as Jefferson's butler
Butler
A butler is a domestic worker in a large household. In great houses, the household is sometimes divided into departments with the butler in charge of the dining room, wine cellar, and pantry. Some also have charge of the entire parlour floor, and housekeepers caring for the entire house and its...
and painter, also had important roles.
Sally Hemings
Sally Hemings was a mixed-race slave who was of three-quarters European ancestry, the youngest of six children of the mulattoMulatto
Mulatto denotes a person with one white parent and one black parent, or more broadly, a person of mixed black and white ancestry. Contemporary usage of the term varies greatly, and the broader sense of the term makes its application rather subjective, as not all people of mixed white and black...
slave Betty Hemings
Betty Hemings
Elizabeth "Betty" Hemings was an American enslaved woman of mixed race, who in 1761 became the concubine of the planter John Wayles of Virginia. He had become a widower for the third time. He had six children with her over a 12-year period...
and the widower John Wayles
John Wayles
John Wayles was a planter, slave trader and lawyer in the Virginia Colony. He is historically best known as the father-in-law of Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States....
, Jefferson's father-in-law. Jefferson inherited all of the Hemings family from the chattel estate of Wayles. As Sally grew up at Monticello, she was assigned as nursemaid-companion to Jefferson's daughter, Maria. Hemings was described as a "light colored and decidedly good looking" mulatto
Mulatto
Mulatto denotes a person with one white parent and one black parent, or more broadly, a person of mixed black and white ancestry. Contemporary usage of the term varies greatly, and the broader sense of the term makes its application rather subjective, as not all people of mixed white and black...
. She and her siblings by Wayles were the half-siblings of Jefferson's wife. By Virginia law, she was a slave because her mother was a slave; she took her status by the principle of partus sequitur ventrum
Partus sequitur ventrum
Partus sequitur ventrem, often abbreviated to partus, in the British North American colonies and later in the United States, was a legal doctrine which the English colonists incorporated in legislation related to definitions of slavery. It was derived from the Roman civil law; it held that the...
, established in Virginia law in 1662.
In 1787, Sally was chosen to accompany Maria to sail to to Paris, where they joined Jefferson, then the Minister to France. Sally was around 15 to 16 years of age. Jefferson began a sexual relationship with Hemings while they were in Paris, and she became pregnant. Her son Madison Hemings
Madison Hemings
Madison Hemings, born James Madison Hemings , was born into slavery as the son of the mixed-race slave Sally Hemings; he was freed after the death of his master Thomas Jefferson. Based on historical evidence, most historians believe that Jefferson, United States president, was his father...
later recounted that she agreed to return with Jefferson to the United States only after he agreed to free her children at the age of 21. (She could have sought freedom in France, which had abolished slavery.)
Upon returning to Monticello, Hemings gave birth to her first child, who died as an infant. Hemings worked as a seamstress. She had six more children with Jefferson; four survived to adulthood. The journalist Callender alleged as early as 1802 that Jefferson was the father of her children, but for a long time historians discounted such material as motivated by political opponents. Jefferson's grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph said that all the children resembled Jefferson and that one of the boys "looked almost exactly like him." He told the historian Henry Randall that Peter Carr was the father of Hemings' children, an account adopted by James Parton and later 20th-century historians as well, such as Merrill Peterson and Dumas Malone
Dumas Malone
Dumas Malone was an American historian, biographer, and editor noted for his six-volume biography on Thomas Jefferson, for which he received the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for history...
.
In the 1960s, the historian Winthrop Jordan
Winthrop Jordan
Winthrop Donaldson Jordan was a professor of history and renowned writer on the history of slavery and the origins of racism in the United States....
analyzed the timeline of Jefferson's activities developed by Dumas Malone
Dumas Malone
Dumas Malone was an American historian, biographer, and editor noted for his six-volume biography on Thomas Jefferson, for which he received the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for history...
and found that Jefferson was at Monticello when each of Hemings' children was conceived. This overturned a Jefferson family defense; his daughter had said that he was gone for more than a year before the birth of Eston Hemings. Malone had argued against Jefferson's paternity as a matter of "character", which suggested that the historian was uneasy about the idea of the relationship and held the president up as an icon.
A 1998 DNA
DNA
Deoxyribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms . The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in...
test conducted by Dr. Eugene Foster showed there was a match between the Jefferson male line and a descendant of Eston Hemings
Eston Hemings
Eston Hemings Jefferson was born a slave at Monticello, the youngest son of Sally Hemings, a mixed-race slave. Most historians believe that his father was Thomas Jefferson, the United States president. Evidence from a 1998 DNA test showed that Eston's descendants matched those of the male...
. His team's conclusion was that, given the historical evidence, it was most likely that Thomas Jefferson was the father of Eston Hemings and of Sally's other children. His nephews Peter and Samuel Carr, named by Jefferson's grandchildren as father(s) of Hemings' children, had no genetic connection at all to the Hemings' descendants.
As Jefferson's children, the Hemings children were seven-eighths European by ancestry, and at that time legally white under Virginia law. Jefferson gave Hemings and her children special treatment, most importantly: freedom. As the four surviving Hemings children came of age, Jefferson freed them, both indirectly, by allowing Beverly and Harriet Hemings
Harriet Hemings
Harriet Hemings was born into slavery at Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States, in the first year of his Presidency. Most historians believe her father is Jefferson, who is believed by many historians to have had a relationship with his mixed-race slave...
to "run away" in 1822, and directly, through his will for Madison and Eston. Jefferson never sent anyone after the young slaves in 1822 or tried to find them; his overseer provided money for Harriet's trip. After Jefferson's death, his daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph gave Sally Hemings "her time", allowing her to leave Monticello and live with her freed sons in Charlottesville. The Hemings were the only slave family to leave Monticello as free persons. At the time of the 1830 census, the census taker classified the three Hemingses as white. Three of the four Hemings children identified as white as adults and lived in white communities.
In his 1873 memoir, Madison Hemings
Madison Hemings
Madison Hemings, born James Madison Hemings , was born into slavery as the son of the mixed-race slave Sally Hemings; he was freed after the death of his master Thomas Jefferson. Based on historical evidence, most historians believe that Jefferson, United States president, was his father...
, Sally Heming's son and Jefferson's carpenter apprentice at Monticello, had claimed Jefferson was his father. Madison and his brothers were trained to be carpenters by Jefferson's master carpenter John Hemings
John Hemings
John Hemings was born into slavery at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello as part of the large mixed-race Hemings family...
, Sally Heming's half-brother. Madison Hemings referred to his mother Sally as Jefferson's "slave woman". He said that Heming's children were happy because they knew they would not be slaves forever. They were allowed access to the main Monticello
Monticello
Monticello is a National Historic Landmark just outside Charlottesville, Virginia, United States. It was the estate of Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence, third President of the United States, and founder of the University of Virginia; it is...
mansion house and could visit freely with their mother Sally.
Views on slavery and race
Historian Junius P. Rodriguez stated, "All aspects of Jefferson's public career suggest an opposition to slavery."Jefferson supported gradual emancipation and deportation of freed blacks, as he feared their presence would contribute to a slave revolt.
Owning a copy of Suetonius
Suetonius
Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, commonly known as Suetonius , was a Roman historian belonging to the equestrian order in the early Imperial era....
, a Roman biographer, Jefferson may have borrowed the phrase "wolf by the ears", a saying attributed to Tiberius
Tiberius
Tiberius , was Roman Emperor from 14 AD to 37 AD. Tiberius was by birth a Claudian, son of Tiberius Claudius Nero and Livia Drusilla. His mother divorced Nero and married Augustus in 39 BC, making him a step-son of Octavian...
. Jefferson, in essence, had claimed slavery was an dangerous animal (the wolf) and could not be contained. Any attempt to contain slavery would lead to violence.
According to Greg Warnusz, Jefferson held contemporary 19th-century beliefs that blacks were inferior to whites in terms of "potential for citizenship," and he wanted them deported. He claimed to be interested in helping both races in his proposal: gradually freeing slaves after age 45 (when they would have repaid their owners investment), and resettling them in Africa
Back-to-Africa movement
The Back-to-Africa movement, was also known as the Colonization movement, originated in the United States in the 19th century, and encouraged those of African descent to return to the African homelands of their ancestors. This movement would eventually inspire other movements ranging from the...
. Jefferson's plan was for a whites-only society without any blacks.
While privately proposing an end of slavery, Jefferson was a slaveholder and advocated slavery's expansion. According to James W. Loewen, Jefferson's character "wrestled with slavery, even though in the end he lost." Loewen says that understanding Jefferson's role with slavery is significant in understanding current American social problems.
In an 1814 letter to Edmund Cole titled "Slavery and the Younger Generation", Jefferson put forth some of his views on slaves and the institution of slavery. Discussing gradual emancipation with forced deportation he said:
- "...the hour of emancipation is advancing, in the march of time. It will come; and whether brought on by the generous energy of our own minds; or by the bloody process of St Domingo, excited and conducted by the power of our present enemy, if once stationed permanently within our Country, and offering asylum & arms to the oppressed, is a leaf of our history not yet turned over."
He stated his views of African Americans with:
- "For men probably of any color, but of this color we know, brought from their infancy without necessity for thought or forecast, are by their habits rendered as incapable as children of taking care of themselves, and are extinguished promptly wherever industry is necessary for raising young. In the mean time they are pests in society by their idleness, and the depredations to which this leads them."
Jefferson put forth his views on mixed-race marriages (miscenegation) between whites and blacks: "Their amalgamation with the other color produces a degradation to which no lover of his country, no lover of excellence in the human character can innocently consent."
His last page starts with an acknowledgement of his advancing age and that younger people will have to work to abolish slavery
- "I have overlived the generation with which mutual labors & perils begat mutual confidence and influence. This enterprise is for the young; for those who can follow it up, and bear it through to its consummation. It shall have all my prayers, & these are the only weapons of an old man."
Jefferson controversy over Sally Hemings
The historians Annette Gordon-Reed in 1997 and E.M. Halliday in 2001 wrote that two prominent twentieth-century Jefferson biographers, Dumas MaloneDumas Malone
Dumas Malone was an American historian, biographer, and editor noted for his six-volume biography on Thomas Jefferson, for which he received the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for history...
and Merrill Peterson, disregarded "very strong circumstantial evidence" that supported Jefferson as the father of Hemings' children. Both Malone and Peterson had severely criticized the book, Thomas Jefferson; An Intimate History (1974), by Fawn M. Brodie
Fawn M. Brodie
Fawn McKay Brodie was a biographer and professor of history at UCLA, best known for Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, a work of psychobiography, and No Man Knows My History, an early and still influential non-hagiographic biography of Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of the Latter Day Saint...
, which examined circumstantial evidence supporting Jefferson's paternity. They had earlier suggested that Jefferson's nephew Peter Carr was the father, chiefly because Jefferson's grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, had identified him as such. A 1998 DNA study conclusively disproved any connection between Carr and the Hemings descendants. Because of Brodie's use of psychological analysis, Malone and Paterson accused her of "slander", "nonsense", and "psychological speculation". They wrote to CBS criticizing its broadcast that publicized Brodie's work. Halliday said they failed "to make any scholarly analysis" regarding Sally's son Madison Hemings' 1873 claim of Jefferson's paternity.
According to his assessment of Jefferson, Peterson wrote that the statesman would find having a sexual affair with a slave repulsive. Jefferson made statements against miscegenation
Miscegenation
Miscegenation is the mixing of different racial groups through marriage, cohabitation, sexual relations, and procreation....
. The historian John C. Miller said that Jefferson deplored racial mixing. Halliday showed that Peterson and Miller disregarded historical evidence that was contrary to their respective opinions.
In his 1993 biography of the president, the historian Joseph Ellis
Joseph Ellis
Joseph John Ellis is a Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College who has written histories on the founding generation of American presidents. His book Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation received the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2001.-Background and teaching:He received his B.A...
claimed that Jefferson "lacked the capacity for the direct and physical expression of his sexual energies". Ellis's "impotency" theory for Jefferson as a widower was contradicted by the fact that Jefferson was able to and kept his wife Martha Jefferson constantly pregnant during their ten-year marriage. When the 1998 DNA study was released showing a match between a Hemings descendant and the Jefferson male line, Ellis became convinced that Jefferson had a long-term sexual relationship with Hemings.
Before the mid to late twentieth century, historians generally discounted the reports by James Callender, an early 19th-century journalist who reported on Jefferson's children by Hemings; he was described as unreliable, motivated by revenge and an "unscrupulous scandalmonger". The biographer Michael Dury in his 1990 book portrayed Callender as a "radical idealist" who desired to expose any corruption among the Founding Fathers.
Jefferson had first encouraged and paid Callender to write against his political enemies. As a result, Callender was jailed nine months in prison and fined $200 for his political opinions under the Federalist Sedition Act
Alien and Sedition Acts
The Alien and Sedition Acts were four bills passed in 1798 by the Federalists in the 5th United States Congress in the aftermath of the French Revolution's reign of terror and during an undeclared naval war with France, later known as the Quasi-War. They were signed into law by President John Adams...
. After the journalist's imprisonment, Jefferson refused to see him and denied Callender a postmaster appointment for Richmond
Richmond, Virginia
Richmond is the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the United States. It is an independent city and not part of any county. Richmond is the center of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Greater Richmond area...
. On September 1, 1802 Callender, who wrote for the Richmond Recorder, claimed Jefferson for many years had "kept, as his concubine, one of his own slaves. Her name is SALLY." Dury claimed that although Callander was known for exaggerations, he did not purposely make false statements and was not "an encourageable liar." If there were factual errors, Callender would correct them.
Some also claim of DNA evidence that Sally Heming's children were fathered by Jefferson. These claims are generally refuted by those who were closest to him, most notably his oldest grandson. In letters written by the nineteenth century biographer Henry Randall, he recounts a conversation which he had with Thomas Jefferson Randolph
Thomas Jefferson Randolph
Thomas Jefferson Randolph of Albemarle County was a planter and politician who served in the Virginia House of Delegates, was rector of the University of Virginia, and was a colonel in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War...
, Jefferson's oldest grandson. Colonel Randolph (as he was known) recounted that Sally Hemings was the mistress of Jefferson's nephew, Peter Carr. He commented, "their connection…was perfectly notorious at Monticello." Randolph also stated that "he had never seen a motion or a look or a circumstance which led him to suspect for an instant that there was a particle more of familiarity between Mr. Jefferson and Sally Hemings than between him and the most repulsive servant in the establishment."
A noted recent work that pushes the claims of the Jefferson-Heming relationship is the book by Fawn M. Brodie, Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History. This book has been criticized by numerous Jefferson biographers and scholars. Dumas Malone, a Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
-winning Jefferson biographer, said of Ms. Brodie's book, "This determined woman carries psychological speculation to the point of absurdity. The resulting mishmash of fact and fiction, surmise and conjecture, is not history as I understand the term….To me the man she describes in her more titillating passages is unrecognizable."
Evidence against anti-slavery claims for Jefferson
Jefferson was a slave owner, owning at times hundreds of slaves. He only freed a handful of slaves.Jefferson had opportunities to disassociate himself from slavery. In 1782 after the American Revolution, Virginia passed a law making manumission
Manumission
Manumission is the act of a slave owner freeing his or her slaves. In the United States before the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which abolished most slavery, this often happened upon the death of the owner, under conditions in his will.-Motivations:The...
legal by the slave owner. The abolition of slavery was becoming a reality. Yet, Jefferson's ideals never kept in step with those of the antislavery advocates. By contrast, so many other slaveholders freed slaves in the first two decades after the Revolution that the proportion of free blacks in Virginia rose from less than one percent in 1790 to 8.3 percent in 1810.
Historians use Jefferson's correspondence with Edward Coles
Edward Coles
Edward Coles manumitted his slaves in 1819, was secretary to James Madison , neighbor and anti-slavery associate of Thomas Jefferson and was the second Governor of Illinois, serving from 1822 to 1826...
as an example of his anti-slavery views. Coles believed Jefferson would help him with his plan to free his slaves, and wrote to Jefferson about it in 1814. In Jefferson's response, the first part of the letter seemed to support Coles' plan and the anti-slavery movement, but further on Jefferson discouraged Coles from emancipating his slaves, saying:
Jefferson claimed to want to protect slaves from ill usage and to employ them in reasonable labor, though at the same time insisted that Coles should not free his slaves.
(Note: Coles took his slaves to present-day Illinois, a free territory, where he freed them and gave them land purchased for their use, 160 acres to each head of household. He also helped provide employment for them to get started.)
In 1907, Joseph Lemen claimed that Thomas Jefferson and his ancestor James Lemen
James Lemen
James Lemen Sr. was an American justice of the peace and minister who was a leader of the anti-slavery movement in Indiana Territory in the early nineteenth century....
held a secret compact to defeat slavery from expanding in the Northwest Territory
Northwest Territory
The Territory Northwest of the River Ohio, more commonly known as the Northwest Territory, was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from July 13, 1787, until March 1, 1803, when the southeastern portion of the territory was admitted to the Union as the state of Ohio...
. According to Lemen family papers, Jefferson secretly gave James Lemen money in 1785 to start anti-slavery churches in Illinois. The historian James A. Edstrom concluded in 2004 that the alleged Jefferson-Lemen compact is "myth."
Jefferson claimed in 1777 and 1778 to have authored bills that would have emancipated slaves, liberated the children of slaves, and deported them from the colonies. Jefferson claimed to have withdrawn the legislation and said the "public
Public
In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individuals, and the public is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the Öffentlichkeit or public sphere. The concept of a public has also been defined in political science,...
mind" would not be able to accept emancipation at this time. But, there is no evidence from Jefferson's collective writings that he authored such legislation.
Race
Dumas Malone explained Jefferson's racism in Notes on the State of Virginia as the "tentative judgements of a kindly and scientifically minded man". Malone lightly covered Jefferson's view that African Americans were inferior to whites. Merrill Peterson claimed that Jefferson's racial bias towards African Americans was "a product of frivolous and tortuous reasoning...and bewildering confusion of principles." Peterson called Jefferson's derogatory racial views on African Americans "folk belief". Peterson did not apply the same scrutiny to Jefferson's miscegenation beliefs.Biographies
- Appleby, Joyce. Thomas Jefferson (2003), short interpretive essay by leading scholar.
- Bernstein, R. B. Thomas Jefferson. (2003) Well-regarded short biography.
- Burstein, Andrew. Jefferson's Secrets: Death and Desire at Monticello. (2005).
- Cunningham, Noble E. In Pursuit of Reason (1988) well-reviewed short biography.
- Crawford, Alan Pell, Twilight at Monticello,http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl/9781400060795.html, Random House, New York, (2008).
- Ellis, Joseph J.Joseph EllisJoseph John Ellis is a Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College who has written histories on the founding generation of American presidents. His book Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation received the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2001.-Background and teaching:He received his B.A...
American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas JeffersonAmerican Sphinx: The Character of Thomas JeffersonAmerican Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson, is a 1996 book written by Joseph Ellis, a professor of History at Mount Holyoke College. It won the 1997 National Book Award .-Overview:...
(1996). Prize winning essays; assumes prior reading of a biography. - Finkelman, PaulPaul finkelmanPaul Finkelman is an American historian and legal scholar. He is the President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law and Public Policy, and Senior Fellow in the Government Law Center at Albany Law School in Albany, NY...
. Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson (2001), esp ch 6–7 - Gordon-Reed, Annette. The Hemingses of Monticello: An American FamilyThe Hemingses of Monticello: An American FamilyThe Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family is a 2008 book by American historian Annette Gordon-Reed. It recounts the history of four generations of the African-American Hemings family, from their African and Virginia origins until the 1826 death of Thomas Jefferson, their master, Sally...
, New York: W.W. Norton, 2007 - Hitchens, C. E.Christopher HitchensChristopher Eric Hitchens is an Anglo-American author and journalist whose books, essays, and journalistic career span more than four decades. He has been a columnist and literary critic at The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Slate, World Affairs, The Nation, Free Inquiry, and became a media fellow at the...
Thomas Jefferson: Author of America (2005), short biography. - Malone, DumasDumas MaloneDumas Malone was an American historian, biographer, and editor noted for his six-volume biography on Thomas Jefferson, for which he received the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for history...
. Jefferson and His Time, 6 vols. (1948–82). Multi-volume biography of TJ by leading expert; A short version is online. Leading historians through essays reconstruct the world that Jefferson created for himself and envisioned for his countrymen. - Pasley, Jeffrey L. "Politics and the Misadventures of Thomas Jefferson's Modern Reputation: a Review Essay." Journal of Southern History 2006 72(4): 871–908. Issn: 0022-4642 Fulltext in Ebsco. A standard scholarly biography.
- Peterson, Merrill D. (ed.) Thomas Jefferson: A Reference Biography (1986), 24 essays by leading scholars on aspects of Jefferson's career. 2 volumes. This is an insightful 58 page essay describing African American life at Monticello and Jefferson's role as a slaveholder. A fold-out genealogy of the Fossett and Hemingway families is included with the essay.