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LIE # 4

Thomas Jefferson Was a Racist Who Opposed Equality for Black Americans

In the past, leading civil rights advocates, both black and white, regularly invoked Jefferson as an inspiration for their own efforts, pointing to his lengthy record of legislative proposals and writings on the subject of emancipation and civil rights. But modern portrayal of Jefferson’s views on these issues is just the opposite and is often deliberately misstated. Modern writers claim:

Thomas Jefferson was demonstrably a racist—and a particularly aggressive and vindictive one at that. . . . His flaws are beyond redemption. . . . Jefferson is a patron saint far more suitable to white supremacists than to modern American liberals.¹

Jefferson . . . did not believe that all were created equal. He was a racist.²

Jefferson was a racist. There is no question about that.³

Stephen Lyons, a writer for major national newspapers, adds even another charge:

The venerable Thomas Jefferson has been the subject of a recent rash of bad publicity, including [Garry] Wills’ Negro President. The book is an expansion of three lectures Wills gave at Northwestern University in which he examines the influence on Jeffersonian politics by the infamous “three-fifths slave vote.” . . . The infamous three-fifths vote, or “federal ratio,” a non-negotiable ratification compromise insisted on by the South at the Constitutional Convention, counted each slave as 60 percent of a person. ⁴

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Before unequivocally demonstrating that Jefferson was not a racist, Lyons’ charge concerning the Three-Fifths Clause of the Constitution must be addressed.

Fortunately, the discussion by the Founding Fathers concerning the Three-Fifths Clause is readily available, even online.⁵ It will be evident to anyone reading that discussion that the clause did not deal with the innate worth of any individual. No individual, whether black, white, brown, purple, green, polka-dot, or any other color, was ever considered three-fifths of a person. To the contrary, the Three-Fifths Clause addressed federal representation, not human worth. And it was an antislavery provision inserted by the North (not the proslavery South, as Lyons and others wrongly claim) as a means of reducing the number of proslavery representatives in Congress.

In the Constitution, each state was to receive one federal representative to Congress for every 30,000 inhabitants in the state.⁶ Since slaves accounted for much of the Southern population (almost half the inhabitants of South Carolina and 40 percent of Georgia),⁷ Southern states planned to count their slaves as though they were free inhabitants, thereby using slaves to send more proslavery representatives to Congress.

The antislavery Founders from the North strenuously objected. They wanted only free residents to be counted, thus not only limiting proslavery members from the South but also providing them an incentive for emancipation. If the South wanted more representatives to Congress, it should free its slaves. Governor Morris, a strong opponent of slavery and “The Penman of the Constitution,” argued:

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Upon what principle is it that the slaves shall be computed in the representation? Are they men? Then make them citizens and let them vote. . . . [But t]he admission of slaves into the representation . . . comes to this: that the inhabitants of Georgia and South Carolina . . . shall have more votes in a government instituted for protection of the rights of mankind than the citizens of Pennsylvania or New Jersey who view with a laudable horror so nefarious [wicked] a practice.⁸

Constitutional Convention delegate Luther Martin similarly argued that if the South was going to count its so-called property (that is, its slaves) in order to get more proslavery representation in Congress, then the North would count its “property” (that is, its “horses, cattle, mules, or any other [type of property]”⁹) in order to get more antislavery representation in Congress. Of course, the South objected just as strenuously to this proposal as the North objected to counting slaves.

The final compromise was that only 60 percent of the total slave population (that is, only three-fifths) would be counted to calculate the number of representatives to Congress.¹⁰ This would reduce the number of representatives to Congress from Southern states with large slave populations. The Three-Fifths Clause had nothing to do with the worth of any individual; in fact, Free Blacks in the North and South often were extended the full rights of a citizen, including the right to vote.¹¹ The clause had to do only with calculating representation.¹²

Because previous generations actually read the debates surrounding that clause rather than just quoting some modern author’s mischaracterization of it, black civil rights leaders such as Frederick Douglass identified the Three-Fifths Clause as one of the antislavery provisions of the Constitution.¹³ But Deconstructionist scholars and writers are determined to twist that clause into a tool by which to bash the Founding Fathers—specifically Jefferson, as Lyons has done.

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While the modern charge abounds that Jefferson was a blatant, unrepentant racist, an examination of his actual writings and actions on civil rights will demonstrate just how ridiculous these claims are. It will also make evident why civil rights leaders in previous generations praised Jefferson for his efforts on emancipation.

America in Jefferson’s day, as today, was not homogenous, whether in business, religion, or culture. Many differences were distinguishable by geographic regions. This was especially true on the subject of slavery and civil rights.

In the Northern colonies (Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, etc.), slavery was generally abhorred; blacks were elected to public office (Wentworth Cheswill in New Hampshire in 1768, Thomas Hercules in Pennsylvania in 1793, and others). Blacks also distinguished themselves for their exploits in military service during the Revolution (Peter Salem, Lemuel Haynes, Prince Estabrook, Prince Whipple, and others); and both blacks and whites voted in elections.¹⁴ Blacks could be found pastoring or preaching to largely white churches and congregations (Lemuel Haynes, Richard Allen, Harry Hoosier, and others); and in many churches, blacks and whites attended and worshipped together. While there definitely was some racism in the North, it was largely the exception rather than the rule. In the North, both ministers and political leaders were boldly and unapologetically outspoken for civil rights, and the general stance was for immediate emancipation and equality. Abolition societies abounded and exerted significant influence.

The Southern colonies (North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia) were almost polar opposites. Racism was institutionalized. Churches where both blacks and whites worshipped together, such as those pastored by black minister Andrew Bryan of Georgia, were the exception rather than the rule. The possibility of blacks holding office or voting was virtually nonexistent, and political leaders who spoke out against slavery were attacked. Freedom for slaves? Never! Equality for blacks? Unthinkable! This was the dominant view with only a few individual exceptions, such as Founding Father John Laurens of South Carolina. Abolition societies were rare, and the ones that existed were impotent.

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The Middle colonies (Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware) were somewhat a mix of the two other regions, but they were much closer in philosophy to the Southern colonies than the Northern ones. The majority strongly supported slavery, but there were definitely vocal minority groups advocating civil rights. Institutionalized racism was present but not as rigidly enforced as in the Southern colonies. Many ministers and a few civil leaders—such as Jefferson, George Washington, Richard Bland, George Mason, Richard Henry Lee, William Hooper, William Few, and others—spoke openly for emancipation. But when doing so they often received a cold and sometimes even a hostile reception yet usually not with the virulent reaction and intolerance so common in the Southern colonies.

While the Northern colonies wanted emancipation immediately and the Southern colonies not at all, the Middle colonies believed that if emancipation was to occur, it must be gradual with relocation. Thus the Middle colonies had colonization societies rather than abolition societies. They sought emancipation for slaves, and then planned to transport them back to Africa from whence so many had originally been stolen. This Middle colony approach acknowledged that slavery was wrong, but it also recognized that blacks had greater freedom and opportunity in Africa than in the prejudice-filled Middle and Southern colonies.

The different views in each region required that differing political tactics be used. That is, abolition laws introduced in the North would never have seen the light of day in the South; and the colonization approach of the Middle would have been unacceptable to the other two regions, although each would have opposed it for opposite reasons. Therefore, those wishing to change the national culture on slavery had to start at different levels, depending on the region in which they lived.

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It is evident that Jefferson was acutely aware of these distinct regional differences. A 1785 exchange he had with the Reverend Richard Price of England demonstrates this. Price had sided with America during the Revolution and written several pro-American pieces. He sent one of his pamphlets on the American Revolution to South Carolina where it met a very cold reception. Political leaders there condemned it “because it recommend[ed] measures for . . . abolishing the Negro trade and slavery.”¹⁵ Based on their reaction, Price was concerned that he had misread American intentions toward liberty, and he asked Jefferson whether South Carolina was representative of the other states.

Jefferson reassured Price that South Carolina was not representative of the country on the issue of slavery and then explained to him the three different reactions his pamphlet would likely receive. From the Southern colonies, Jefferson affirmed what Price had already discovered: “Southward of the Chesapeake, it will find but few readers concurring with it in sentiment on the subject of slavery.”¹⁶ The Chesapeake is the large bay between Maryland and Virginia, so “southward of the Chesapeake” means the colonies below or south of Virginia.

Concerning the Middle colonies, Jefferson told him: “From the mouth of the head of the Chesapeake [the Middle colonies], the bulk of the people will approve it in theory, and it will find a respectable minority ready to adopt it in practice.”¹⁷

Regarding the Northern colonies, Jefferson explained:

Northward of the Chesapeake, you may find here and there an opponent to your doctrine as you may find here and there a robber and murderer, but in no greater number. In that part of America, there being but few slaves, they can easily disencumber themselves of them; and emancipation is put into such a train that in a few years there will be no slave northward of Maryland.¹⁸

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Jefferson therefore reassured Price: “Be not therefore discouraged. What you have written will do a great deal of good. . . . I wish you to do more, and wish it on assurance of its effect.”¹⁹

Jefferson explained these geographic distinctions to others as well. He lamented to the Reverend David Barrow, who had lived in Virginia but moved to Kentucky and founded the Kentucky Abolition Society, that emancipation would be slower in the Southern and Middle colonies than the Northern ones.

Where the disease [slavery] is most deeply seated, there it will be slowest in eradication. In the Northern states, it was merely superficial and easily corrected. In the Southern, it is incorporated with the whole system and requires time, patience, and perseverance in the curative process.²⁰

Jefferson was optimistic about change in Virginia, but as he had acknowledged to the Reverend Price his own desire to abolish slavery had placed him in the “respectable minority” in his own state.

But before chronicling Jefferson’s many emancipation declarations and actions, the elephant in the room must be addressed: if Jefferson was indeed so antislavery, then why didn’t he release his own slaves? After all, George Washington allowed for the freeing of his slaves on his death in 1799, so why didn’t Jefferson at least do the same at his death in 1826? The answer is Virginia law. In 1799 Virginia allowed owners to emancipate their slaves on their death; in 1826 state laws had been changed to prohibit that practice.

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As previously acknowledged, Virginia was rigid in its proslavery laws and had been so for more than a century before Jefferson. As early as 1692, it began placing significant economic hurdles in the way of those wanting to emancipate slaves, requiring:

[N]o Negro or mulatto slave shall be set free—unless the emancipator pays for his transportation out of the country within six months.²¹

Subsequent laws imposed even harsher restrictions, mandating that a slave could not be freed unless the owner guaranteed a full security bond for the education, livelihood, and support of the freed slave.²² Then, in 1723 a law was passed that forbade the emancipation of slaves under any circumstance—even by a last will and testament. The only exceptions were for cases of “meritorious service” by a slave, a determination that could be made only by the state governor and his council on a case-by-case basis.²³

But in 1782, for a very short time, Virginia began to move in a new direction. An emancipation law was passed, declaring:

[T]hose persons who are disposed to emancipate their slaves may be empowered so to do and . . . it shall hereafter be lawful for any person, by his or her last will and testament, . . . to emancipate and set free his or her slaves.²⁴

It was as a result of this law that George Washington was able to free his slaves in his last will and testament in 1799.

But in 1806 Virginia repealed much of that law.²⁵ It technically retained emancipation but placed an almost impossible economic burden on emancipators, requiring that freed slaves who were young, old, weak, or infirm “shall respectively be supported and maintained by the person so liberating them, or by his or her estate.”²⁶ The law even allowed a wife to reverse an emancipation made by her husband in his will.²⁷ Furthermore, the law required that a freed slave promptly depart the state or else reenter slavery, thus making it almost impossible for an emancipated slave to remain near his or her spouse, children, or family members who had not been freed. Many, therefore, preferred to remain in slavery with their families rather than become free and be separated from them.²⁸

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It was under these laws that Jefferson was required to operate. In 1814 he lamented to an abolitionist minister friend in Illinois that in Virginia “[t]he laws do not permit us to turn them loose.”²⁹ And even if Jefferson had done so, he certainly did not have the finances required by law to provide a livelihood and support for each of his freed slaves. Jefferson had received the bulk of his slaves—187 of them—through inheritance³⁰ and had done so at a very young age. As he acknowledged: “[A]t fourteen years of age, the whole care and direction of myself was thrown on myself entirely without a relation or friend qualified to advise or guide me.”³¹ He did not have the economic means to conform to that oppressive state law. Recall that at one point his own personal economic shortages had caused him to approach Congress about buying his cherished library in order to generate much-needed operating cash.³²

Part of Jefferson’s cash shortage was caused by a major devaluation of money. After placing large amounts of money in the loan office during the American Revolution, those funds were returned “back again at a depreciation out to him of one for forty.”³³ That is, the amount he received back was worth only 2.5 percent of what it had been worth when he placed it into the government loan office.

Jefferson’s economic hardship was also exacerbated by his practice, unlike other slave owners, of paying his slaves for the vegetables they raised, meat obtained while hunting and fishing, and for extra tasks performed outside normal working hours. He even offered a revolutionary profit-sharing plan for the products that his enslaved artisans produced in their shops.³⁴

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Despite the fact that Jefferson was unable to free his slaves under the requirements of state law, he nevertheless remained a local, national, and even a global voice advocating emancipation. He helped steadily turn the culture in a direction that would allow equal civil rights to eventually be secured for all Americans regardless of race. For this reason, early blacks viewed Jefferson in a much more favorable light than they did many other leaders from the South. In fact, one of the earliest black Americans to acknowledge Jefferson’s relatively advanced views on race—at least when compared to the dominant views of others in the Middle and Southern colonies—was Benjamin Banneker, whom Jefferson hired to survey the brand-new city of Washington, DC.

Banneker was a highly accomplished and self-taught mathematician and astronomer. The scientific almanac he prepared was in high demand because of his accurate predictions for sunsets, sunrises, eclipses, weather conditions and even for his calculation of the recurrence of locust plagues in seventeen-year cycles. Banneker sent a handwritten copy of his almanac to Jefferson, beginning his letter by acknowledging that Jefferson had secured a reputation of favoring civil rights:

[I] hope I may safely admit in consequence of the report which hath reached me that you are a man far less inflexible in sentiments of this nature than many others—that you are measurably friendly and well-disposed towards us and that you are willing to lend your aid and assistance for our relief from those many distresses and numerous calamities to which we are reduced.³⁵

Banneker then appealed to Jefferson to further exert himself in behalf of blacks and throw off any remaining prejudice he might hold:

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Now, sir, if this is founded in truth, I apprehend you will readily embrace every opportunity to eradicate that train of absurd and false ideas and opinions which so generally prevails with respect to us; and that your sentiments are concurrent with mine, which are that one universal Father hath given being to us all, and that He hath . . . made us all of one flesh [Acts 17:26]. . . . Sir, if these are sentiments of which you are fully persuaded, I hope you cannot but acknowledge that it is the indispensable duty of those who maintain for themselves the rights of human nature and who possess the obligations of Christianity to extend their power and influence to the relief of every part of the human race from whatever burden or oppression they may unjustly labor under.³⁶

Having thus expounded to Jefferson on the unequal position of blacks across much of the nation, Banneker then returned to his original purpose in writing Jefferson, presenting him “a copy of an almanac which I have calculated for the succeeding year . . . in my own handwriting.”³⁷ Jefferson responded:

I thank you sincerely for your letter of the 19th instant and for the almanac it contained. Nobody wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit—that nature has given to our black brethren talents equal to those of the other colors of men, and that the appearance of a want [lack] of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence both in Africa and America. . . . I have taken the liberty of sending your almanac to Monsieur de Condorcet, Secretary of the Academy of Sciences at Paris and member of the Philanthropic Society, because I considered it as a document to which your whole color had a right for their justification against the doubts which have been entertained of them. I am with great esteem, sir, your most obedient humble servant.³⁸

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When Jefferson sent the almanac to Marquis de Condorcet, a leading antislavery voice in France, he told him:

I am happy to be able to inform you that we have now in the United States a Negro . . . who is a very respectable mathematician. . . . [H]e made an almanac for the next year, which he sent me in his own handwriting, and which I enclose to you. I have seen very elegant solutions of geometrical problems by him. Add to this that he is a very worthy and respectable member of society. He is a free man. I shall be delighted to see these instances of moral eminence so multiplied as to prove that the want [lack] of talents observed in them [blacks] is merely the effect of their degraded condition, and not proceeding from any difference in the structure of the parts on which intellect depends.³⁹

Many of those today who call Jefferson an unrepentant racist also claim that he believed blacks were inferior to whites. For example, in the true spirit of Academic Collectivism:

Jefferson . . . was convinced . . . blacks had to be seen as lower beings because of their inferiority.⁴⁰

Jefferson . . . believed . . . blacks were inferior to whites in body and mind.⁴¹

Thomas Jefferson . . . thought black people intellectually inferior to whites.⁴²

Thomas Jefferson was not interested in abolition. . . . Thomas Jefferson considered blacks inferior.⁴³

To “prove” this charge, such writers point to comments Jefferson made in his Notes on the State of Virginia (1781) in which he expressed not only his ardent desire for the emancipation of slaves but also twice lightly questioned whether blacks might be inferior.⁴⁴ But the callous conclusion reached by modern Minimalist writers is possible only if they cite just those two Jefferson comments and ignore the rest of the lengthy emancipation treatise from which those statements are cut.

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In fact, in order to mitigate his own two comments, Jefferson openly acknowledged that his personal experience with blacks had been limited almost exclusively to the context of slavery—that is, his personal dealings had been with oppressed blacks who had been denied education. Very few analysts, either then or now, would dispute that under such conditions blacks might well appear inferior in intellectual abilities, for they had absolutely no opportunity to prove otherwise. Jefferson candidly acknowledged his own subjective situation and his lack of objective data on which to base any fixed opinion. He even openly lamented:

To our reproach, it must be said that though for a century and a half we have had under our eyes the races of black and of red men, they have never yet been viewed by us as subjects of natural history. I advance it, therefore, as a suspicion only that the blacks . . . are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind.⁴⁵ (emphasis added)

He also explained that “[i]t will be right to make great allowances for the difference of condition, of education, of conversation, of the sphere in which they move”⁴⁶ (emphasis added). Jefferson understood that slavery was certainly not a favorable condition in which to compare intellectual abilities. He therefore eagerly invited and even sought outside evidence to disprove what he had called his “suspicion only.” Recall that he told Banneker:

Nobody wishes more than I do to see such proofs . . . that nature has given to our black brethren talents equal to those of the other colors of men, and that the appearance of a want [lack] of them is owing [due] merely to the degraded condition of their existence both in Africa and America.⁴⁷

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And he had similarly told Condorcet that “I shall be delighted to see [that] . . . the want [lack] of talents observed in them is merely the effect of their degraded condition, and not proceeding from any difference in the structure of the parts on which intellect depends.”⁴⁸

Jefferson made the same point to Henri Gregoire, a Catholic priest, ardent abolitionist, and leader in the French Revolution. Gregoire had prepared and sent Jefferson a book with the literary compositions of blacks, designed to demonstrate their equal intellectual capacity. Jefferson told him:

Be assured that no person living wishes more sincerely than I do to see a complete refutation of the doubts I have myself entertained and expressed on the grade of understanding allotted to them by nature, and to find that in this respect they are on a par with ourselves. My doubts were the result of personal observation on the limited sphere of my own state, where the opportunities for the development of their genius were not favorable, and those of exercising it still less so. I expressed them therefore with great hesitation; but whatever be their degree of talent, it is no measure of their rights. Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the person or property of others.⁴⁹

Decades after Jefferson had made his two 1781 comments, he lamented to his old friend Joel Barlow, an American diplomat who had served with Jefferson during the American Revolution, about how some had taken his casually expressed “suspicions” and tried to misrepresent them. He pointed to his exchange with Gregoire as an example:

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He wrote to me also on the doubts I had expressed five or six and twenty years ago in the Notes of Virginia as to the grade of understanding of the Negroes. . . . It was impossible for doubt to have been more tenderly or hesitatingly expressed than that was in the Notes of Virginia, and nothing was or is farther from my intentions than to enlist myself as the champion of a fixed opinion where I have only expressed a doubt.⁵⁰

In my opinion, for today’s writers and academics to convert Jefferson’s loosely held and cautiously and rarely expressed “suspicions” into unwavering resolute racism is a complete misrepresentation.

Now let us move from the question of Jefferson’s perception of innate value in black Americans to his actions and writings advocating emancipation and equality—actions and writings largely ignored today.

In 1769 at the age of twenty-six, Jefferson began his political career as a member of the Virginia legislature. Shortly after entering that body, he approached respected senior legislator Richard Bland and proposed that the two of them undertake an “effort in that body for the permission of the emancipation of slaves.”⁵¹ Colonel Bland offered the motion and Jefferson seconded it, but it was resoundingly defeated. In fact, for even proposing that measure, Bland was vehemently “denounced as an enemy of his country” by the other legislators “and was treated with the grossest indecorum.”⁵² Jefferson lamented that as long as Virginia remained a British colony, no emancipation proposal “could expect success”⁵³—a condition that he hoped would change.

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In 1770 Jefferson represented a slave in court, arguing for his freedom. Jefferson explained:

Under the law of nature, all men are born free. Everyone comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the Author of Nature.⁵⁴

Jefferson lost the case. In 1772, he also argued a similar case.⁵⁵

In 1773 and 1774 a number of American colonies, including Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania, passed antislavery laws, all of which were struck down by the king in 1774.⁵⁶ That year Jefferson penned “A Summary View of the Rights of British America.” His purpose was to remind the British that legitimate American concerns were being ignored—one of which was the king’s veto of American antislavery laws.

The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state [by Britain]. But previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves we have, it is necessary to exclude all further importations from Africa. Yet our repeated attempts to effect this . . . have been hitherto defeated by His Majesty’s negative [veto].⁵⁷

In 1776 Jefferson wrote a draft of the original state constitution for Virginia and included a provision that “[n]o person hereafter coming into this country [Virginia] shall be held in slavery under any pretext whatever.”⁵⁸ That provision was rejected by the state convention.

Later in 1776, as a member of the Continental Congress, Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence. Among the grievances impelling America’s separation from Great Britain, Jefferson listed the fact that the king would not allow individual colonies to end slavery or the slave trade, even when they wished to do so:

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He [King George III] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people which never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. . . . He has . . . determin[ed] to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold.⁵⁹

Unfortunately, Jefferson’s antislavery clause was deleted from the Declaration “in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished to continue it.”⁶⁰

Although Jefferson’s clause was not included in the Declaration, the grievance was very real. Following the separation from Great Britain, many individual states were finally able to begin abolishing slavery. Pennsylvania and Massachusetts did so in 1780; Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1784; Vermont in 1786; New Hampshire in 1792; New York in 1799; and New Jersey in 1804.⁶¹

In 1778 Jefferson introduced a bill in the Virginia legislature to at least ban the importation of slaves into Virginia from other countries. According to Jefferson, “This passed without opposition and stopped the increase of the evil by importation, leaving to future efforts its final eradication.”⁶²

In 1779 Jefferson became governor and undertook the next step toward what he had called slavery’s “final eradication” by introducing a measure to “emancipate all slaves born after passing the act.”⁶³ That measure was not successful,⁶⁴ but Jefferson held firm to his personal conviction that “[n]othing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free.”⁶⁵

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In 1781 Jefferson penned answers to twenty-two questions posed him by the secretary of the French delegation to America. Those responses became the book Notes on the State of Virginia (1781) in which Jefferson declared:

The whole commerce between master and slave is . . . the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. . . . And with what execrations [denunciations] should the statesman be loaded who permit[s] one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other. . . . And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis—a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? . . . Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever. . . . [T]he way, I hope, [is] preparing under the auspices of Heaven for a total emancipation.⁶⁶

In 1784 Jefferson returned to service in the Continental Congress where he introduced a provision to end slavery in every territory that would eventually become a state in the nation. His proposal stated that “after the year 1800 of the Christian era, there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said states.”⁶⁷

Jefferson’s law fell one vote short of passage. As he explained:

There were ten states present. Six voted unanimously for it, three against it, and one was divided. And seven votes being requisite to decide the proposition affirmatively [i.e., to pass the measure under the Articles of Confederation], it was lost. . . . Thus we see the fate of millions unborn hanging on the tongue of one man, & heaven was silent in that awful moment! But it is to be hoped it will not always be silent & that the friends to the rights of human nature will in the end prevail.⁶⁸

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In 1786, while Jefferson was serving as American ambassador in France, he responded to an article in a French encyclopedia written by French official Louis Dominique de Meunier stating that Virginia did not allow the emancipation of slaves. Jefferson wanted to make sure that de Meunier knew not only that he had wanted it otherwise but also that someday it would be otherwise:

We must await with patience the workings of an overruling Providence & hope that it is preparing the deliverance of these our suffering brethren. When the measure of their tears shall be full—when their groans shall have involved Heaven itself in darkness—doubtless a God of justice will awaken to their distress.⁶⁹

In 1788 Jacques Pierre de Warville, a leader in the French Revolution, started an antislavery society and invited Jefferson to become a member. Jefferson declined because he was in France as “a public servant” of America, therefore making it inappropriate for him to undertake something of a personal nature.⁷⁰ But he wished hearty blessings on their efforts, reaffirming his private commitment to their goals:

You know that nobody wishes more ardently to see an abolition not only of the trade but of the condition of slavery, and certainly nobody will be more willing to encounter every sacrifice for that object.⁷¹

In 1789 the federal Congress took Jefferson’s antislavery proposal from 1784 and included it in the Northwest Ordinance, thereby causing Minnesota, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin to enter the United States as antislavery states.

In 1805, after nearly forty years of efforts to end slavery, Jefferson bemoaned that it had become a task much more difficult than he had ever imagined, lamenting the national stalemate over the issue:

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I have long since given up the expectation of any early provision for the extinguishment of slavery among us. [While] there are many virtuous men who would make any sacrifices to affect it, many equally virtuous persuade themselves either that the thing is not wrong or that it cannot be remedied.⁷²

In 1807 President Jefferson signed a law long anticipated by antislavery citizens across the nation. Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution had included a provision whereby Congress could ban the importation of all slaves after “the year one thousand eight hundred and eight.” At the time the Constitution was written and ratified, it was believed that within twenty years, the Southern states would be ready to relinquish slavery, and this law would pave the way.

Jefferson happily signed that law, telling a group of Quakers:

Whatever may have been the circumstances which influenced our forefathers to permit the introduction of personal bondage into any part of these states . . . we may rejoice that such circumstances and such a sense of them exist no longer. . . . I sincerely pray with you, my friends, that all the members of the human family may, in the time prescribed by the Father of us all, find themselves securely established in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and happiness.⁷³

In 1808 President Jefferson sent a message to the Reverend James Lemen, an old friend from Virginia who in 1786 had moved to the Northwest Territory at Jefferson’s suggestion to work to ensure that it would be antislavery.⁷⁴ Ohio was first organized from that territory, then Indiana—both as antislavery territories. In 1808, when Illinois was on the verge of becoming the third official territory, President Jefferson privately contacted Lemen, who explained:

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I received Jefferson’s confidential message on October 10, 1808, suggesting . . . the organization of a church on a strictly antislavery basis for the purpose of heading a movement to finally make Illinois a free state. . . . I acted on Jefferson’s plan and . . . the anti-slavery element formed a Baptist church . . . on an antislavery basis.⁷⁵

In 1814 Jefferson corresponded with Edward Coles, private secretary to President Madison. Coles, a Virginia planter, lamented to Jefferson that he wanted to free his slaves but that Virginia law made it impossible. He then asked Jefferson to head a new antislavery movement, to which Jefferson responded:

Your [letter] was duly received and was read with peculiar pleasure. . . . Mine on the subject of slavery of Negroes have long since been in possession of the public, and time has only served to give them stronger root. The love of justice and the love of country plead equally the cause of these people, and it is a moral reproach to us that they should have pleaded it so long in vain and should have produced not a single effort—nay, I fear not much serious willingness to relieve them & ourselves from our present condition of moral & political reprobation . . . [but] the hour of emancipation is advancing; in the march of time, it will come.⁷⁶

But citing his advanced age of seventy-one, Jefferson declined to take the helm of the new movement proposed by Coles. He explained, “This enterprise is for the young—for those who can follow it up and bear it through to its consummation,” but he promised that his greatest contributions to the fight would be his fervent “prayers—and these are the only weapons of an old man.”⁷⁷ He therefore encouraged Coles to take the lead:

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I hope . . . you will come forward in the public councils, become the missionary of this doctrine truly Christian, insinuate & inculcate it softly but steadily through the medium of writing and conversation, associate others in your labors, and when the phalanx [large battalion] is formed, bring on and press the proposition perseveringly until its accomplishment. . . . That your success may be as speedy and complete . . . I shall as fervently and sincerely pray.⁷⁸

Five years later, in 1819, Coles packed up everything, including his slaves, left Virginia, and moved into the “to the country North West of the River Ohio”⁷⁹ (recall that in 1789 Congress had adopted Jefferson’s 1784 provision to make that territory antislavery). When Coles arrived, he settled in the Illinois territory, emancipated all his slaves, gave them each 160 acres, and then joined with the Reverend James Lemen in his antislavery endeavors. Coles later became governor of Illinois.⁸⁰

In 1815 Jefferson corresponded with the Reverend David Barrow, the Virginian who moved to Kentucky and became a cofounder of the Kentucky Abolition Society. Barrow had penned an antislavery work and sent it to Jefferson, who responded:

The particular subject of the pamphlet you enclosed me [emancipation] was one of early and tender consideration with me; and had I continued in the councils [legislatures] of my own state, it should never have been out of sight. . . . We are not in a world ungoverned by the laws and the power of a Superior Agent. Our efforts are in His hand and directed by it; and He will give them their effect in His own time. . . . That it may finally be effected and its progress hastened will be [my] last and fondest prayer.⁸¹

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By 1820 only a little antislavery ground had been gained nationally. In 1789 Congress banned slavery from the Northwest Territory; in 1794 it banned the exportation of slaves from America; in 1808 it banned the importation of slaves into America. But in 1820 Democrats gained control of Congress for the first time. They enacted the Missouri Compromise, thus reversing the 1789 policy and allowing slavery into some federal territories where it had been previously prohibited.⁸² For the first time slavery was being not just tolerated but officially expanded by the federal government.

The Missouri Compromise was strenuously opposed by the few Founding Fathers still alive at that time. Elias Boudinot, a president of Congress during the Revolution and a framer of the Bill of Rights, warned that this new pro-slavery direction by Congress would bring “an end to the happiness of the United States;”⁸³ a frail John Adams feared that lifting the slavery prohibition would destroy America;⁸⁴ James Madison confessed that the new policy “fills me with no slight anxiety,” and foreseeing what would become the Civil War, he worried that pitting slave states against free states would result in “awful shocks against each other.”⁸⁵ But perhaps no one from that generation was as greatly distressed as the elderly seventy-seven-year-old Jefferson, who was dismayed, frustrated, and even depressed by the passage of that law and the retreat from emancipation that it represented. He lamented, “In the gloomiest moment of the Revolutionary War, I never had any apprehensions equal to what I feel from this source.”⁸⁶

Jefferson confided to a fellow political leader:

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I had for a long time ceased to read newspapers or pay any attention to public affairs, confident they were in good hands, and content to be a passenger in our bark [small ship] to the shore from which I am not distant [death]. But this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell [funeral bell] of the Union. . . . I regret that I am now to die in the belief that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776 to acquire self-government and happiness to their country is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons. . . . [This is an] act of suicide on themselves, and of treason against the hopes of the world.⁸⁷

He concluded with a reaffirmation of his desire to end slavery and his frustration at America not having already done so:

I can say with conscious truth that there is not a man on earth who would sacrifice more than I would to relieve us from this heavy reproach in any practicable way. The cession of that kind of “property,” for so it is misnamed, is a bagatelle [an insignificant trifle] which would not cost me a second thought if in that way a general emancipation and expatriation could be effected. . . . But as it is, we have the wolf by the ears and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go.⁸⁸

In 1825 Jefferson corresponded with Frances Wright, a young, energetic antislavery enthusiast. Frances first met Jefferson in 1824 when the famous American hero French general Marquis de Lafayette returned to America for his farewell tour, bringing with him Frances, whom he considered an adopted daughter. When Lafayette returned to France, Frances stayed behind to become an American citizen and help fight slavery. She eventually founded Nashoba, Tennessee, as a model to illustrate Jefferson’s plan of emancipation. Writing a very elderly Jefferson (who would die the next year), she asked him to help her with the effort. Jefferson replied:

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At the age of eighty-two, with one foot in the grave and the other uplifted to follow it, I do not permit myself to take part in any new enterprises, even for bettering the condition of man—not even in the great one which is the subject of your letter and which has been through life that of my greatest anxieties. . . . I leave its accomplishment as the work of another generation, and I am cheered when I see that one on which it is devolved taking it up with so much good will and such minds engaged in its encouragement. The abolition of the evil is not impossible; it ought never therefore to be despaired of. Every plan should be adopted, every experiment tried, which may do something towards the ultimate object.⁸⁹

In 1826, just two weeks before his death, Jefferson reiterated:

On the question of the lawfulness of slavery (that is, of the right of one man to appropriate to himself the faculties of another without his consent), I certainly retain my early opinions.⁹⁰

With such a clear and unbroken train of words and actions against slavery and in favor of emancipation and civil rights, it is no surprise that previous generations of abolitionists and civil rights leaders regularly invoked Jefferson’s words in their own efforts. Sadly, these words and actions are deliberately ignored today by those from all five groups of historical malpractice who decry Jefferson as an unrepentant racist.

But among those early leaders who favorably cited Jefferson was President John Quincy Adams, called the “Hell Hound of Abolition” for his relentless pursuit of that object. In a famous 1837 speech, he told the crowd gathered before him:

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The inconsistency of the institution of domestic slavery with the principles of the Declaration of Independence was seen and lamented by all the southern patriots of the Revolution; by no one with deeper and more unalterable conviction than by the author of the Declaration himself [Jefferson]. . . . Such was the undoubting conviction of Jefferson to his dying day. In the Memoir of His Life, written at the age of seventy-seven, he gave to his countrymen the solemn and emphatic warning that the day was not distant when they must hear and adopt the general emancipation of their slaves.⁹¹

Daniel Webster, whose efforts in the US Senate to end slavery paralleled those of John Quincy Adams in the US House, similarly invoked Jefferson in order to bolster his efforts. In 1845 he issued an address to the nation, reminding them:

No language can be more explicit, more emphatic, or more solemn than that in which Thomas Jefferson, from the beginning to the end of his life, uniformly declared his opposition to slavery. “I tremble for my country,” said he, “when I reflect that God is just—that His justice cannot sleep forever.” “The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest.” . . . [T]o show his own view of the proper influence of the spirit of the Revolution upon slavery, he proposed the searching question: “Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment, and death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment . . . inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose?”⁹²

Abraham Lincoln likewise cited Jefferson to support his own crusade to end slavery and achieve civil rights and equality for blacks, specifically in 1854, when the Democratically controlled Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act. In 1820, when Congress expanded the federal territories in which slavery was permitted through passage of the Missouri Compromise, they had retained a ban on slavery in the Kansas-Nebraska territory (which included not only Kansas and Nebraska but also Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, North Dakota, and South Dakota). But the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act changed those restrictions, allowing slavery into even more territories. Lincoln invoked Jefferson to condemn that act, explaining:

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Mr. Jefferson . . . conceived the idea of taking that occasion to prevent slavery ever going into the northwestern territory . . . and in the first Ordinance (which the acts of Congress were then called) for the government of the territory, provided that slavery should never be permitted therein. . . . Thus, with the author of the Declaration of Independence, the policy of prohibiting slavery in new territory originated. . . . But now [in May 1854], new light breaks upon us. Now Congress declares this [law constructed by Jefferson] ought never to have been.⁹³

Black abolitionists, such as Fredrick Douglass also regularly invoked Jefferson to assist their own efforts. Douglass had lived in slavery until he escaped to New York, later going to work for the Massachusetts antislavery society and also serving as a Zion Methodist Church preacher. During the Civil War Douglass helped recruit the first black regiment to fight for the Union and advised Abraham Lincoln on the Emancipation Proclamation. Following the war he received presidential appointments from four Republican presidents. Concerning Jefferson, Douglass declared:

It was the Sage of the Old Dominion [Virginia] that said—while speaking of the possibility of a conflict between the slaves and slaveholders—“God has no attribute that could take sides with the oppressor in such a contest. I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just and that His justice cannot sleep forever.” Such is the warning voice of Thomas Jefferson, and every day’s experience since its utterance until now confirms its wisdom and commends its truth.⁹⁴

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At a speech in Virginia following the Civil War, Douglass declared:

I have been charged with lifelong hostility to one of the cherished institutions of Virginia [i.e., slavery]. I am not ashamed of that lifelong opposition. . . . It was, Virginia, your own Thomas Jefferson that taught me that all men are created equal.⁹⁵

And describing Jefferson’s dealings with Banneker, Douglass reminded an audience:

Jefferson was not ashamed to call the black man his brother and to address him as a gentleman.⁹⁶

On numerous other occasions Douglass invoked Jefferson as an authority in his crusade to end slavery and achieve full equality and civil rights.⁹⁷ Additional civil rights crusaders who invoked Jefferson in a similarly positive manner included Henry Highland Garnet,⁹⁸ Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,⁹⁹ Colin Powell,¹⁰⁰ and others.

Was Jefferson impeccable on race and civil rights? Certainly not. He recognized and admitted that he had some prejudices, but he also openly acknowledged that he wanted to be proven wrong concerning those views. Yet despite his self-acknowledged weaknesses, Jefferson faithfully and consistently advocated for emancipation and civil rights throughout his long life, even when it would have been easier and better for him if he had remained silent or inactive.

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Had Jefferson been free from the laws of his own state—that is, had he lived in a state such as Massachusetts, New Hampshire, or Connecticut—he likely would be universally hailed today as a bold civil rights leader, for his efforts and writings would certainly compare favorably to those of great civil rights advocates in the Northern states. In fact, if Jefferson had proposed his various pieces of legislation in those states, they would certainly have passed, and he would have been deemed a national civil rights hero. But his geography and circumstances doomed him to a different fate. Modern writers now refuse to recognize what previous generations openly acknowledged: Jefferson was a bold, staunch, and consistent advocate and defender of emancipation and civil rights.