Thomas Jefferson on Race, Revolution, and Morality: History Revisited and Revised
By Edwin S. Gaustad
Dr. Edwin S. Gaustad is Professor Emeritus, The University of California, Riverside. A graduate of Baylor University, 1947, and Brown University, Ph.D. in 1951, he is the author of a dozen books in America`s religious history, the latest of which is Sworn on the Altar of God: A Religious Biography of Thomas Jefferson published by Eerdmans in 1996 for $15. He is the recipient of Baylor`s Distinguished Alumnus Award.
The textbook Thomas Jefferson lingers in our minds: author of the Declaration of Independence, third president of the United States, and a man of wide-ranging scientific and architectural interests. If the textbook writer still had a few lines to spare, one might learn something of Jefferson`s strong dedication to religious freedom: on his tombstone he ranked his writing of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom with his composition of the Declaration of Independence. And that`s about all that the textbooks told us; we perhaps feel lucky to remember that much as we wander around the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D. C.
But historians have been busy of late, re-examining many facets of Jefferson`s life and suggesting that major re-evaluations are in order. Some have even gone so far as to argue that the Jefferson Memorial is a mistake and the profile on Mount Rushmore an embarrassment. Other historians strongly disagree, and so the books, articles, talk shows, and PBS specials pour forth. So, what is the fuss all about? Contention has been largely concentrated in three areas, each of which will be examined in turn.
1. First, Jefferson and race, or more narrowly, Jefferson and slavery. That Jefferson was, along with his Virginia land-owning neighbors, a slaveholder has long been duly acknowledged. But especially in the last two decades, far more attention has been given to this fact and to the inconsistencies or contradictions in the Jeffersonian character suggested by this circumstance, along with several others that are closely related. For example, Jefferson (unlike Washington) did not free most of his slaves during his lifetime, nor in his will did he provide for any general emancipation. Moreover, while he condemned slavery as a brutal and inhumane institution, he did little, particularly in his later years, to threaten or overturn the system. And finally, in his Notes on the State of Virginia (published in 1787), Jefferson on the basis of limited observation advanced the notion, "as a suspicion only, that the blacks…are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind." This moved Jefferson beyond the status of just a slaveholder to that of a racist.
In 1977 John Chester Miller published The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery; here he recounted with both fairness and thoroughness the racist assumptions of the Anglo-Saxon society of which Jefferson was all too much a part. Even other Enlightenment figures (David Hume, for example) made presumably "scientific" observations regarding the denizens of tropical climes as opposed to those who lived in the temperate zones. And, as Miller notes, only by thinking of blacks as inherently inferior could Jefferson soften the haunting guilt with which the institution of slavery filled him. Since 1977, several other historians have gone beyond Miller in finding little if anything to redeem Jefferson from the stigma of slaveholder and racist. In the words of Paul Finkelman, while Jefferson spoke as "a liberty-loving man of the Enlightenment," he acted as "a self-indulgent and negrophobic Virginia planter."
2. Revisions regarding Jefferson and revolution concern not his activity in the American Revolution but his attitude toward the revolution that erupted in France in 1789. The major reviser here is Conor Cruise O`Brien who in a recent book (The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, published in 1996) sees Jefferson`s dedication to liberty as being one without rational limits or sensible discriminations. Jefferson, O`Brien writes, would continue to have faith in the French Revolution, no matter what atrocities had been or would be committed. For this revolution had become, for Jefferson, not an historical movement to weigh and analyze, but a mystical article of faith impervious to actual events.
Because Jefferson`s support of France did not waver in the early 1790s, O`Brien is willing to see him as even the patron saint of terrorism in general. The author takes as his sacred text a portion of a letter that Jefferson wrote in 1793 to his sometime private secretary, William Short, regarding the excesses of the French Revolution: "My own affections have been deeply wounded by some of the martyrs to this cause, but rather than it should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated." O`Brien`s entire book can be understood as a thundering exposition of that text. And in his Epilogue he concluded that Jefferson embraced "a wild liberty, absolute, untrammeled, universal." Since any violence committed in the name of liberty is justifiable, O`Brien asserts, "We cannot even say categorically that Jefferson would have condemned the bombing of the Federal building in Oklahoma City and the destruction of its occupants." Here history may not be revisited, but it is certainly revised.
3. Any attention to the subject of Jefferson and morality leads, sooner or later, to a consideration of the alleged affair between Jefferson and Sally Hemings, his slave and house servant both in Paris and back in Monticello. In 1802, a political operative named James Callender produced a campaign document designed to advance the fortunes of John Adams`s Federalist Party and dash the prospects of Thomas Jefferson`s Republican Party. The Sally Hemings story was tailored and designed to do the trick. And so, by means of tabloid journalism, "Black Sally" entered into the pages of American history, kept alive through the election of Jefferson to a second term as president in 1804, but largely dropped from view thereafter.
Then in 1974, Fawn Brodie published Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, the centerpiece of which was a more sustained effort to elevate the Hemings affair to the level of historical truth. Brodie`s technique drew much from the psychohistorical methods current at the time. And though she adduced no new historical data regarding "Black Sally," she wrote well and her book proved to be enormously popular. So popular, in fact, that a leading author and newspaper editor, Virginius Dabney, took up the implied challenge to the third president`s honor by writing in 1981 The Jefferson Scandals: A Rebuttal. Dabney considered Brodie`s central thesis to be "unproved and unprovable," a position that he defended at some length. And there, one might be tempted to say, the matter rests. But, in fact, this titillating matter does not rest, as every new biography must deal in some way with the alleged affair. Most recently, Annette Gordon-Read has written Thomas Jefferson and Sallv Hemings: An American Controversy (1997), offering further proof, should any be needed, that the story stays alive.
After much revisiting and revising, where do we stand on these three issues in Jefferson`s life and thought? Let us revisit each item.
1. On slavery and race, it must certainly be acknowledged that the consciousness of historians in general has been markedly raised (though not very generally raised with respect to Jefferson and feminism). One cannot and must not gloss over either his words or his deeds with respect to African Americans and to slavery. Nor, on the other hand, should one forget that his words in his draft of the Declaration of Independence condemning the slave trade were too strong for the Continental Congress to accept. Thus, they were deleted. Also, his draft of the Northwest Ordinance called for the exclusion of slavery in lands both north and south of the Ohio River. His proscription on territory south of the Ohio was deleted. And as president in his second term, Jefferson moved to abolish the slave trade on January 1, 1808, the earliest date that the Constitution allowed. He thought-or allowed himself to hope-that abolition of the slave trade would gradually lead to the abolition of slavery itself, a hope that tragically proved to be in vain.
It is true that in his later years, Jefferson pulled back from some of his more radical, abolition-sounding rhetoric with respect to slavery. And in 1820 he sadly wrote that "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." The wonder is not that slavery and racism had its defenders in late 18th or early 19th century America, and that Jefferson is among them. The more startling wonder is that at the end of the 20th century, racism still pervades the American scene. Something about beams and motes comes to mind.
2. On Jefferson`s fanatical defense of the French Revolution, O`Brien appears to be engaging in that bit of revisionism largely alone. Jefferson did feel strongly about liberty, a fact for which most Americans are profoundly grateful. He did shock both Abigail and John Adams when he took Shays`s Rebellion in Massachusetts in 1786 more calmly than they. He even justified the behavior of the rebels, noting that no country preserves its liberties unless rulers are warned "from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance." To Abigail Adams he wrote in 1787 that "The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all." Then he added, "I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere."
That kind of talk surely unsettled Conor Cruise O`Brien, and it may unsettle many others as well. In any political campaign where the sides arrayed against each other are "law and order" on the one hand versus "freedom and reform" on the other, one need not doubt where Jefferson would stand. But to equate his love of liberty and of popular democracy with mindless acts of terrorism and destruction is itself a mindless act. Jefferson believed in human possibilities, in civilization`s steady advance, and in an "empire of liberty." To him, the obstacles to such a progression were kings, priests, and nobles: that is, a state and a society where resistance was never possible, where freedom was always treasonable. "A little rebellion now and then" could remind Americans of their roots in revolution, even as it could remind them of democracy`s ugly alternative.
3. Was Jefferson a moral man, or a hypocritical lecher and consummate deceiver? First, let it be noted that Jefferson took moral matters very seriously. His so-called "Bible" consisted chiefly in the ethical teachings of Jesus; cutting away all miracle and metaphysical subtlety, the pure "diamonds" of moral instruction and inspiration remained. Denominations disagreed and fought over dogma-not over morality, Jefferson observed. And for him religion`s moral dimension was what mattered; all rational human beings, whatever denomination, could unite on these essential precepts. God has implanted a sure moral instinct into every human breast, Jefferson argued, even as He has granted the ability to hear, taste, smell, and see. To encounter the occasional moral midget or moral deviant no more disproved nature`s prevailing gifts than encountering a blind man suggested that God withheld the blessings of sight from humanity at large.
With respect more specifically to the alleged liaison with Sally Hemings which resulted, according to the true believers, in five children born of this union, one need recall that Jefferson had a horror of miscegenation. As he wrote to his neighbor Edward Coles in 1814, "The amalgamation of white with blacks produces a degradation to which no lover of his country, no lover of excellence in the human character, can innocently consent." If and when blacks were to be freed, they needed to construct their own society somewhere else, perhaps in the Caribbean or in Africa. In addition to the moral question of an illicit relationship with a slave, one can add the political question of the ultimate fate of a nation where miscegenation routinely prevailed.
So what is the historical evidence for a sexual relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings? Simply put, history cannot answer this question. One must answer it on other grounds: the character of Thomas Jefferson (about which we know a great deal), the character of Sally Hemings (about which we know virtually nothing), the logical probabilities of the circumstances, and the political realities of the time. In this welter of uncertainties, I find the most helpful resolution to lie in the character of Jefferson himself. A man of great discipline and self-restraint, he was not a member of the "if it feels good, do it" school of thoughtless action. He calculated carefully the paths ahead, measuring his behavior almost as precisely as he measured the rooms of the Governor`s Palace in Williamsburg. Furthermore, Jefferson in this realm was, if anything, a prude. He advised married women against dancing because of the possible "ambiguity of issue" that might result. He advised young men not to go to Paris until at least thirty years of age, lest their morals be corrupted. This is the man who supposedly had a thirty-eight-year relationship with his enslaved concubine? It boggles the mind.
Finally, in all the revisiting and revising of Jeffersonian scholarship, it is certainly not the case that we are left right back where we started from. Far from it. Rather, we are left with a Jefferson far more complex and nuanced, far more human and fallible, than we would have ever suspected from the text book accounts. Neither saint nor sinner, Jefferson-like the rest of us-is a puzzling and paradoxical mixture of the two.
Edwin S. Gaustad, author of Sworn on the Altar of God: A Religious Biography of Thomas Jefferson, Eerdmans, 1996
