Thomas Jefferson on Politics & Government
32. Racial Policy
In spite of the fact that he owned slaves himself, as was common with plantation owners of his time, Jefferson spoke out tirelessly throughout his life against the institution of slavery and for the right of black people to be free. Apparently there were many factors, financial, social and political, that prevented him from freeing his own slaves. In a letter to Edward Coles (Aug 25, 1814), he wrote, "The laws do not permit us to turn them loose, if that were for their good." To Edward Bancroft he wrote (in 1788), "As far as I can judge from the experiments which have been made, to give liberty to, or rather to abandon persons whose habits have been formed in slavery is like abandoning children." (ME 19:41) Thus, he seems to have sincerely believed that merely freeing the slaves was not the best solution, and that the most important step to take was the elimination of the real source of this injustice, which was the institution of slavery itself. Thus he wrote to Edward Rutledge (in 1787), "I congratulate you, my dear friend, on the law of your State, for suspending the importation of slaves, and for the glory you have justly acquired by endeavoring to prevent it forever. This abomination must have an end. And there is a superior bench reserved in heaven for those who hasten it." (ME 6:173) His overall solution to the slavery problem was to return the blacks to their own African homeland or to some land where they could live as "a free and independent people," and to provide them with implements and skills to establish their own nation.
"Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people [blacks] are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them." --Thomas Jefferson: Autobiography, 1821. ME 1:72
"Do not mistake me. I am not advocating slavery. I am not justifying the wrongs we have committed on a foreign people... On the contrary, there is nothing I would not sacrifice to a practicable plan of abolishing every vestige of this moral and political depravity." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, 1814. ME 14:184
"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." --Thomas Jefferson to Brissot de Warville, 1788. ME 6:428
"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." --Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes, 1820. ME 15:249
"I congratulate you, fellow citizens, on the approach of the period at which you may interpose your authority constitutionally, to withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights which have been so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the morality, the reputation, and the best interests of our country, have long been eager to proscribe." --Thomas Jefferson: 6th Annual Message, 1806. ME 3:421
The Consequences of Slavery
"With what execration should the statesman be loaded who, permitting one half the citizens... to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots, and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and the amore patriae of the other... With the morals of the people, their industry also is destroyed." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XVII, 1782. ME 2:226
"The rights of human nature [are] deeply wounded by this infamous practice [of slavery]." --Thomas Jefferson: Rights of British America, 1774. ME 1:201, Papers 1:130
"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XVIII, 1782. ME 2:227
"As it is, we have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other." --Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes, 1820. ME 15:249
Comparing Black and White
"I have supposed the black man in his present state might not be [equal to the white man]; but it would be hazardous to affirm that equally cultivated for a few generations, he would not become so." --Thomas Jefferson to Chastellux, 1785. ME 5:6, Papers 8:186
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