And he did way more than just publicly fuss about slavery (which, incidentally is in itself more than most people would have done), he worked hard to get the practice ended.
. in 1769, while a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, Jefferson
helped to draft a bill to allow for “manumission by deed” – a procedure
whereby slave-owners could transfer, by deed, their “property interest” in
slaves back to the slaves themselves, setting them free. The bill eventually
passed in 1782, and Jefferson – by then the Governor of the new state –
signed it into law that year;
· as a fledgling practicing lawyer, in 1770, in his argument in the obscure
case of Howell v. Netherland, which involved the freedom or enslavement
of a third-generation mulatto, Jefferson had pled that “we are all born
free” and that slavery was contrary to natural law – an argument the court
dismissed out of hand.
· Jefferson prepared not one but two drafts of a Constitution for the State of
Virginia, one in 1776, one in 1783. The earlier draft would have
prohibited the importation of slaves into the State: “No person hereafter
coming into this county shall be held within the same in slavery under any
pretext whatever.” The 1783 draft went further: “The General assembly
shall not have to power to ... permit the introduction of any more slaves to
reside in this state, or the continuance of slavery beyond the generation
which shall be living on the 31st day of December 1800; all persons born
after that day being hereby declared free.”
· As a member of the federal Congress in 1783-84, Jefferson drafted and
submitted to that body a Report on the Government of the Western
Territories, which Congress enacted into law as the Ordinance of 1784. It
provided that “after the year 1800 of the Christian era, there shall be
neither slavery nor involuntary servitude . . . otherwise than in punishment
of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted to have been
personally guilty” in any part of the United States outside of the original
13 colonies. The slavery prohibition was deleted by Congress from the
final bill – by a single vote. (Under the Articles of Confederation, which
were then in effect, laws could be enacted only if supported by the
delegations of seven States. Six States (Penn., NY, Conn., R.I., Mass.,
Maine) supported Jefferson’s slavery prohibition; three (Virginia
[Jefferson himself dissenting], MD, and SC) opposed it; NC was divided.
New Jersey would have supported the prohibition but its delegate, James
Beatty, was ill and did not attend the session. Jefferson wrote later in his
Autobiography:
“Seven votes being requisite to decide the proposition
affirmatively, it was lost. The voice of a single individual of the
State which was divided [New Jersey] . . . would have prevented
this abominable crime from spreading itself over the new country.
Thus we see the fate of millions unborn hanging on the tongue of
one man, and Heaven was silent in that awful moment! But it is to
be hoped it will not always be silent, and that the friends to the
rights of human nature will in the end prevail.”
· Notes on Virginia was to be the only book Jefferson published in his lifetime,
and an extraordinary book it was. Written in 1781, while Jefferson was
completing his term as Governor of Virginia, in response to a series of
questions about the newly-independent American States posed by Francois
Marbois, secretary to the French Ambassador to the U.S., it was one of the
most influential books of its time, the first comprehensive account of the
conditions of life – biological, geological, meteorological, social, and political
– in the new country. It covered everything from the navigability of each of
Virginia’s rivers, the names of each the 101 bird species then known to inhabit
the State, seasonal changes in wind and rainfall patterns across the State, and
the location of all known deposits of valuable minerals, to a complete
catalogue of the laws of Virginia and the history of its settlement.
Its passages on slavery (quoted in part above) – “worth more,” John
Adams wrote, “than diamonds [and] will have more effect than volumes
written by mere philosophers” – ensured that it would receive a chilly
reception among the Virginia establishment. Jefferson did more than merely
state his opposition to slavery, which was already well-known at the time; he
suggested that the country was already moving, inexorably, driven and guided
by the Almighty Himself, towards emancipation. “I tremble for my country
when I reflect that God is just”:
“It is impossible to be temperate and to pursue this subject through the
various considerations of policy, of morals, of history natural and civil.
We must be contented to hope they will force their way into every one's
mind. I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the present
revolution. The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from
the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the
auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed, in
the order of events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by
their extirpation.”Notwithstanding the time and effort that Jefferson devoted to preparation of
this volume, and the extraordinary value of such a compendium of information
about the New World for scholars, travelers, and statesmen, Jefferson initially
rejected appeals to have it published. “There are sentiments on some subjects
which I apprehend might be displeasing to the country [and] perhaps to the
assembly or to some who lead it,” he wrote to James Madison; “I fear that the
terms in which I speak of slavery [and of our constitution] may produce an
irritation which will revolt the minds of our countrymen against reformation,
[and] indispose the people towards the [two ] great object I have in view – that
is, the emancipation of their slaves – and thus do more harm than good.” Only
when he was reassured by his two most trusted Virginia confidantes – Madison
and James Monroe – that it would not have that unfortunate effect did he agree to
a small private printing; believing that both its “political and physical parts”
might “set our young students into a useful train of thought,” he subsequently
distributed one copy “to every young man at [William and Mary College], for it is
to them I look, to the rising generation, and not to the one now in power, for these
great reformations.”
· When the federal Constitution was adopted in 1791, it contained a provision
that prohibited the federal Congress from interfering with the slave trade until
the year 1808: “The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the
States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the
Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight . . .” In
1806, in his annual message to Congress, Jefferson wrote:
“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.
Although no law you may pass can take prohibitory effect till the first day
of the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, yet the intervening
period is not too long to prevent, by timely notice, expeditions which
cannot be completed before that day.”
Jefferson introduced, Congress passed, and Jefferson signed, a bill prohibiting any
further importation of slaves as of the earliest date the Constitution permitted: January 1,
1808.
And then, of course, there was the Declaration of Independence itself:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain [inherent and]
inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among
men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed ...”
. in 1769, while a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, Jefferson
helped to draft a bill to allow for “manumission by deed” – a procedure
whereby slave-owners could transfer, by deed, their “property interest” in
slaves back to the slaves themselves, setting them free. The bill eventually
passed in 1782, and Jefferson – by then the Governor of the new state –
signed it into law that year;
· as a fledgling practicing lawyer, in 1770, in his argument in the obscure
case of Howell v. Netherland, which involved the freedom or enslavement
of a third-generation mulatto, Jefferson had pled that “we are all born
free” and that slavery was contrary to natural law – an argument the court
dismissed out of hand.
· Jefferson prepared not one but two drafts of a Constitution for the State of
Virginia, one in 1776, one in 1783. The earlier draft would have
prohibited the importation of slaves into the State: “No person hereafter
coming into this county shall be held within the same in slavery under any
pretext whatever.” The 1783 draft went further: “The General assembly
shall not have to power to ... permit the introduction of any more slaves to
reside in this state, or the continuance of slavery beyond the generation
which shall be living on the 31st day of December 1800; all persons born
after that day being hereby declared free.”
· As a member of the federal Congress in 1783-84, Jefferson drafted and
submitted to that body a Report on the Government of the Western
Territories, which Congress enacted into law as the Ordinance of 1784. It
provided that “after the year 1800 of the Christian era, there shall be
neither slavery nor involuntary servitude . . . otherwise than in punishment
of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted to have been
personally guilty” in any part of the United States outside of the original
13 colonies. The slavery prohibition was deleted by Congress from the
final bill – by a single vote. (Under the Articles of Confederation, which
were then in effect, laws could be enacted only if supported by the
delegations of seven States. Six States (Penn., NY, Conn., R.I., Mass.,
Maine) supported Jefferson’s slavery prohibition; three (Virginia
[Jefferson himself dissenting], MD, and SC) opposed it; NC was divided.
New Jersey would have supported the prohibition but its delegate, James
Beatty, was ill and did not attend the session. Jefferson wrote later in his
Autobiography:
“Seven votes being requisite to decide the proposition
affirmatively, it was lost. The voice of a single individual of the
State which was divided [New Jersey] . . . would have prevented
this abominable crime from spreading itself over the new country.
Thus we see the fate of millions unborn hanging on the tongue of
one man, and Heaven was silent in that awful moment! But it is to
be hoped it will not always be silent, and that the friends to the
rights of human nature will in the end prevail.”
· Notes on Virginia was to be the only book Jefferson published in his lifetime,
and an extraordinary book it was. Written in 1781, while Jefferson was
completing his term as Governor of Virginia, in response to a series of
questions about the newly-independent American States posed by Francois
Marbois, secretary to the French Ambassador to the U.S., it was one of the
most influential books of its time, the first comprehensive account of the
conditions of life – biological, geological, meteorological, social, and political
– in the new country. It covered everything from the navigability of each of
Virginia’s rivers, the names of each the 101 bird species then known to inhabit
the State, seasonal changes in wind and rainfall patterns across the State, and
the location of all known deposits of valuable minerals, to a complete
catalogue of the laws of Virginia and the history of its settlement.
Its passages on slavery (quoted in part above) – “worth more,” John
Adams wrote, “than diamonds [and] will have more effect than volumes
written by mere philosophers” – ensured that it would receive a chilly
reception among the Virginia establishment. Jefferson did more than merely
state his opposition to slavery, which was already well-known at the time; he
suggested that the country was already moving, inexorably, driven and guided
by the Almighty Himself, towards emancipation. “I tremble for my country
when I reflect that God is just”:
“It is impossible to be temperate and to pursue this subject through the
various considerations of policy, of morals, of history natural and civil.
We must be contented to hope they will force their way into every one's
mind. I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the present
revolution. The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from
the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the
auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed, in
the order of events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by
their extirpation.”Notwithstanding the time and effort that Jefferson devoted to preparation of
this volume, and the extraordinary value of such a compendium of information
about the New World for scholars, travelers, and statesmen, Jefferson initially
rejected appeals to have it published. “There are sentiments on some subjects
which I apprehend might be displeasing to the country [and] perhaps to the
assembly or to some who lead it,” he wrote to James Madison; “I fear that the
terms in which I speak of slavery [and of our constitution] may produce an
irritation which will revolt the minds of our countrymen against reformation,
[and] indispose the people towards the [two ] great object
is, the emancipation of their slaves – and thus do more harm than good.” Only
when he was reassured by his two most trusted Virginia confidantes – Madison
and James Monroe – that it would not have that unfortunate effect did he agree to
a small private printing; believing that both its “political and physical parts”
might “set our young students into a useful train of thought,” he subsequently
distributed one copy “to every young man at [William and Mary College], for it is
to them I look, to the rising generation, and not to the one now in power, for these
great reformations.”
· When the federal Constitution was adopted in 1791, it contained a provision
that prohibited the federal Congress from interfering with the slave trade until
the year 1808: “The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the
States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the
Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight . . .” In
1806, in his annual message to Congress, Jefferson wrote:
“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.
Although no law you may pass can take prohibitory effect till the first day
of the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, yet the intervening
period is not too long to prevent, by timely notice, expeditions which
cannot be completed before that day.”
Jefferson introduced, Congress passed, and Jefferson signed, a bill prohibiting any
further importation of slaves as of the earliest date the Constitution permitted: January 1,
1808.
And then, of course, there was the Declaration of Independence itself:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain [inherent and]
inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among
men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed ...”
I'm waiting.
