An examination of the life of Thomas Jefferson
and his effect on modern racism
Patrick Cogliano
SSCI 203H.02 H: Explorations in the History of Ideas
November 20, 2018
Thomas Jefferson was an important thinker during the American Revolution, the very beginnings of the abolition of slavery, and beyond.
While Jefferson was an incredibly important figure in the creation of our country, he also laid the groundwork for modern racism and the allowance of racist ideas in our country as well. Thomas Jefferson was a founding father of our country, but also the “founding father” of American racism, fascism, and the allowance of these thoughts in our modern, everyday culture. Policies set in motion by Jefferson in the early days of our country’s independence still reverberate in our culture, from the allowance of hateful speech to the abnormally high level of tolerance towards lying and patriarchy in our government.
In his book, Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson famously claims that “I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind. It is not against experience to suppose, that different species of the same genus, or varieties of the same species, may possess different qualifications. Will not a lover of natural history then, one who views the gradations in all the races of animals with the eye of philosophy, excuse an effort to keep those in the department of man as distinct as nature has formed them? This unfortunate difference of color, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people. Many of their advocates, while they wish to vindicate the liberty of human nature, are anxious also to preserve its dignity and beauty. Some of these, embarrassed by the question `What further is to be done with them?’ Join themselves in opposition with those who are actuated by sordid avarice only. Among the Romans emancipation required but one effort. The slave, when made free, might mix with, without staining the blood of his master. But with us a second is necessary, unknown to history. When freed, he is to be removed beyond the reach of mixture.” Though Jefferson wrote that slavery was “evil” in many of his writings, he also believed that “African Americans were incapable of the full fruits of freedom,” and that “to end slavery would be to invite race war.” He contradicts and trips over himself in many writings, and as well he invites a new term: race war in the event of emancipation. I find Thomas Jefferson’s history to be very interesting, especially as he was one of the first presidents to also bring slaves to work at the White House as domestic servants, while simultaneously preaching emancipation. Though it may be easy to form opinions about an incredibly important founding father, it is important to carefully examine his life and politics in context.
Jefferson was an incredibly well-educated and well-rounded man. After a two-year course of study at the College of William and Mary that he began at age seventeen, Jefferson read the law for five years with Virginia’s prominent jurist, George Wythe, and recorded his first legal case in 1767. In two years, he was elected to Virginia’s House of Burgesses. His first political work to gain broad acclaim was a 1774 draft of directions for Virginia’s delegation to the First Continental Congress. Two years later, as a member of the Second Continental Congress and chosen to draft the Declaration of Independence, he put forward the colonies’ arguments for declaring themselves free and independent states. The Declaration has been regarded as a charter of American and universal liberties. The document proclaims that all men are equal in rights, regardless of birth, wealth, or status; that those rights are inherent in each human, a gift of the creator, not a gift of government, and that government is the servant and not the master of the people. After Jefferson left Congress in 1776, he returned to Virginia and served in the legislature. In late 1776, as a member of the new House of Delegates of Virginia, he worked closely with James Madison. Their first collaboration, to end the religious establishment in Virginia, became a legislative battle which would culminate with the passage of Jefferson’s Statute for Religious Freedom in 1786.
During the brief private interval in his life following his governorship, Jefferson completed the one book which he authored, Notes on the State of Virginia. In 1790 he agreed to be the first secretary of state under the new Constitution in the administration of the first president, George Washington. His tenure was marked by his opposition to the policies of Alexander Hamilton which Jefferson believed both encouraged a larger and more powerful national government and were too pro-British. In 1796, as the presidential candidate of the nascent Democratic-Republican Party, he became vice-president after losing to John Adams by three electoral votes. Four years later, he defeated Adams in another hotly contested election and became president, the first peaceful transfer of authority from one party to another in the history of the young nation. The most notable achievements of his first term were the purchase of the Louisiana Territory in 1803 and his support of the Lewis and Clark expedition. His second term, a time when he encountered more difficulties on both the domestic and foreign fronts, is most remembered for his efforts to maintain neutrality in the midst of the conflict between Britain and France. Unfortunately, his efforts did not avert a war with Britain in 1812 after he had left office and his friend and colleague, James Madison, had assumed the presidency.
Jefferson’s personal life tells an even more convincing story in many ways. When Jefferson was fourteen, his father died, and he inherited a sizeable estate of 5,000 acres. That inheritance included the family house at Shadwell. As he grew, Jefferson was given a fine education and was an excellent scholar, according to the many accounts of his various schoolteachers. In early adulthood, Jefferson took a bride, Martha Wayles Skelton, in January 1772. She died in the tenth year of their marriage, permanently damaging Jefferson emotionally and spiritually. The emotional damage from her death shows itself in many areas of his elder life, leading him to have a relationship with one of his many slaves, and furthering the idea that he was incredibly affected by the death of his love. Their marriage produced six children but only two survived into adulthood, Martha and Mary. Along with the land, Jefferson inherited slaves from his father and even more slaves from his father-in-law, John Wayles; he also bought and sold enslaved people. In a typical year, he owned on average 200 slaves; almost half of them were under the age of sixteen. About eighty of these lived at Monticello; the others lived on his adjacent Albemarle County farms and on his Poplar Forest estate in Bedford County, Virginia. Over the course of his life, he owned over 600 enslaved people. Many of the enslaved house servants were members of the Hemings family. Years after his wife’s death, Thomas Jefferson fathered at least six of Sally Hemings’s (a younger daughter of the family) children. Four survived to adulthood and are mentioned in Jefferson’s plantation records. Their daughter Harriet and eldest son Beverly were allowed to leave Monticello during Jefferson’s lifetime, and the two youngest sons, Madison and Eston, were freed in Jefferson’s will.