Thomas Jefferson: American Revolution, Independence & Controversy w/ Thomas Kidd | BRI Scholar Talks

0:00 you know jefferson has the greatest defense of the equality of humankind in world history and so that puts a special burden on him uh to live up to that standard um and definitely by modern sensibilities he does not but uh you know if you ask why did he not act decisively personally or

0:21 politically against slavery i mean there were some important things he did politically about slavery i mean he signed the ban on the international further imports of of enslaved people uh as president and that’s pretty important but but uh you know people were always wanting him to do more in the anti-slavery movement

0:42 [Music] hi this is tony williams senior fellow at bri and we want to welcome you to another episode of scholar talks for this episode we’re honored to have scholar thomas kidd who is going to discuss his new book thomas jefferson a biography of spirit and flesh as part of

1:02 our new exciting series on the american founders now the guiding question for this series is what core contribution did this founder make to liberty and constitutional self-governance thomas kidd is research professor of church history at midwestern baptist theological seminary in kansas city missouri and a senior research scholar

1:24 at baylor university’s institute for studies of religion he is the author of numerous books on early america and religious history including biographies of the founders patrick henry and and ben franklin he was one of the hundred scholars who wrote for the bri’s massive resource on u.s history life liberty in the pursuit

1:45 of happiness and appeared on a previous scholar talk to discuss benjamin franklin and the american revolution so check that out as well tommy i want to thank you for joining thank you for having me yeah you know the reason why i love this new biography that you have thomas jefferson uh a biography of spirit and flesh is that

2:06 you know jefferson is just such a things like character you feel like you can spend a lifetime studying him and you really have uh and you could just you don’t necessarily get answers right he’s sort of more enigmatic the more the more you study him but you know you’ve tried to grapple with a lot of those contradictions and paradoxes and and

2:28 jefferson alive i think he becomes even more human so i so i really love the book great job thank you sure sure and as i said you do see him as a as a man call it of of numerous complexities maybe paradoxes uh maybe more cynically contradictions uh and so so how do you explain all of that

2:49 generally why why is he so paradoxical why is he so enigmatic and and and as a as a related question you know why has he always been sort of maybe from his lifetime but then even right up through today uh such sort of a lightning rod for for how we think and feel about the founders thanks yeah i i think one of the reasons

3:11 why jefferson is so complicated is because he he is preeminently obviously an intellectual um and he has so many different intellectual and cultural themes sort of echoing around in his brain um that i think he he doesn’t ever quite

3:33 get committed to to one over the other and so there’s you know the republican ideology that a lot of historians see is you know one of the great engines ideologically of the revolution and there’s christianity which he grows up in in a you know conventionally but strongly anglican

3:53 uh church background in colonial virginia there’s uh ancient greek philosophy especially epicureanism uh which is is really more about the pursuit of tranquility than than pleasure for jefferson although it takes some directions in pleasure seeking too and uh you know we we could mention

4:15 others but that probably i think when push comes to shove the the tradition that he follows the most instinctively is his tradition of being a virginia gentleman an aristocrat um and and all those those traditions there’s some overlap for instance with the republican ideology and christianity

4:35 uh about the belief in the need for virtue and in the public sphere in a republic um but there are other places where i think that those traditions sit very uneasily together and i do think that jefferson is driven by ideas and if we have a situation where he he just

4:55 never quite settles on which of these priorities are going to be the sort of commanding authority in his in his life that that causes some dissonance and and what critics would call hypocrisy um and and you know i it’s easy to call people hypocrites in you know per in the perspective of 200 years later but but i there is

5:18 definitely some major dissonance in jefferson’s life and the the reason why i think he’s such a lightning rod is it’s really because of the declaration of independence i mean the declaration of independence is the most uh influential political document in american history certainly and and probably in world history

5:38 and it has this soaring evocation of of uh our equality because of our common creation by god um all men are created equal and are doubted by their creator and yet jefferson was a slave owner and he was deeply dependent on uh slavery and his personal and financial life

5:58 uh and were now virtually certain uh that that he had a long-standing sexual relationship with sally hemmings and so it’s it’s the prominence of the declaration paired up with the way that he actually lived his life and and he promoted the declaration as being this kind of world historical

6:19 document uh and this great statement which it is of human equality um and that that almost necessarily means that his own life is going to be scrutinized about how well especially according to modern sensibilities he lived up to those standards and in in important ways it does it doesn’t present a very pretty picture

6:40 yeah great and and as a follow-up you know it’s interesting that you know we we criticize them and and you have a correct caution against sort of modern sensibilities or are modern sort of moralistic viewpoints but you know in many ways you know there’s some some contradictions some paradoxes even with living up to his own

7:01 ideals at the time right and and being virtuous and living up to the ideals of liberty and equality for all and so forth so i don’t i don’t know if you can see even by the standards of his day some some criticism you can i mean he he was uh confronted about um some of those problems in his personal

7:21 life i mean there there were people for instance even in his social sphere who called on him to do more about slavery than he had done to emancipate his own slaves uh there were there were key moments where he was confronted by fellow virginian slave owners who said you know

7:42 you’ve said that slavery is immoral uh you’ve said that it’s immoral in the categories of you know christianity and the enlightenment and so forth and um and yet you still own slaves and and it’s not easy under virginia law at jefferson’s time to free your slaves and it would have been even less easy for jefferson because he

8:02 candidly as a financial disaster um but but jefferson i think is confronted directly with the prospect for instance of emancipating his slaves and getting them out of the state of virginia which would be required if he was going to emancipate his slaves and he would usually respond he wasn’t

8:23 regularly confronted with this sort of thing but when he got that sort of push from contemporaries he would say well you know i really admire what you’re doing and i’ll pray for you which is strange for jefferson to say that he’s going to pray for them but he really wouldn’t do anything else and so i that to me as a historian is is

8:43 that’s a key uh issue is it’s all well and good for us to look back and say he should have been a modern american person and been you know morally perfect just like us uh but but if he was criticized that way during his own lifetime then that you know that’s i think that’s fair game to criticize

9:04 him morally about not living up to that standard right right uh and and uh so uh if you want if we can do it like a deep dive on on politics here now what complexities do you see as sort of as in sort of maybe changing political views or stances i mean you know he’s the author of the declaration and american

9:25 ideals but then he goes to france and they seem to shift a little bit in the 1790s he’s in the opposition the centralization then of course he’s you know as president kind of facing uh the realities of being president running a country so so do you do you see some some changing views or or maybe there’s something unifying in there

9:48 i think that the biggest change is uh in the politics of the 1790s um you know he he’s certainly familiar with political controversy and rivalry in the 1770s and 80s but there’s the galvanizing experience of being one of the patriot leaders and during the war there there’s a papering over of

10:10 differences between the various patriot leaders um and and then he’s uh out of america for a number of years in paris as you said and then and he’s being apprised by madison all the time about what is happening in in the united states and in virginia in particular but he really is uh you know tested by

10:33 fire as it were when he gets back and he is part of washington’s administration and realizes as he sees it that he has very fundamental philosophical and ideological differences especially with alexander hamilton and and he begins to talk about this um

10:55 as that people like hamilton are what he would call sort of political heretics i mean he talks about this in the language of religion that they’ve apostasized from the founding tradition and it’s so soon i mean it’s you know we’re only a few years past the end of the revolutionary war but but they’re already talking about it in terms of you

11:17 know and and probably your listeners are familiar with some of this i mean it’s a difference between supporting britain or france in international affairs it’s a question of is the french revolution basically a good or a bad thing jefferson thinks you know maybe even in its violent stages that the french revolution is a is a glorious sister revolution uh with the american

11:39 revolution and so and you know the federalists don’t think that at all um and so that that’s the big shift i think is that jefferson goes from somewhat of a consensus model during the revolution to this extremely partisan as partisan as anything you get today

12:00 model in the 1790s that he thinks is ultimately resolved by his being elected president in 1800 which he calls the revolution of 1800 is sort of the you know the great resolution of of the terrible uh political divide of the 1790s is that the people sort of restore order by electing him as president

12:23 right and and he just happens to be that guy who’s gonna score these republican principles uh to america great after all this centralizing monarchism of hamilton and washington so now his his i we can talk about this all day right i his his religious views were extraordinarily complex um to say the

12:46 least but why did those personal views right uh have such a significant impact upon public debates because it’s one thing to have you know be heterodox and have kind of some interesting religious views but they really impacted the larger public debate you know in the 1790s and 1800s

13:07 came up in elections and so forth so so how did his personal religious views become such a big deal well i think that it’s reminiscent of some of the dynamics you get in in politics today where where there there is uh a tension about whether a candidate’s personal religious beliefs

13:28 are germane to his or her qualifications to serve in public office um and and so it’s become conventional probably since you know 1976 with jimmy carter to expect candidates actually to be able to speak about their own religious convictions um and for instance things

13:49 like are you born again or or not since carter brought that so prominently into into american politics um and and so uh jefferson definitely does not think that once religious beliefs should be a political issue but the federalists think that uh your your religious beliefs

14:09 influence the way that you live and serve in public office and so that it’s fair game and so if we say we want to have a virtuous republic then we need to elect people who are devout and that their devotion uh ordinarily to christianity would then lead them to live a life of integrity and responsibility ideally that this is

14:31 the way it goes um and and jefferson thought that that was out of bounds i mean and and he said your your religious beliefs you know have nothing to do they have as much to do with your political services your opinions on geometry or something like that it’s just it’s he has a very secular view of the relationship between religious belief and public service um and that’s

14:54 just a kind of a classic american divide that the the federalists wanted to make a great issue out of the fact that he had said things already that were obviously critical of some traditional uh christian beliefs and and so they even alleged in 1800 that he was an atheist uh which is not true he was he

15:14 was not an atheist at all but but uh as typical in american politics you go to extremes with these kind of allegations and so they said he was an atheist and sort of put his defenders in a you know defensive stance about somehow saying oh he’s really a christian and and it was pretty weak but but um it made his the

15:36 issue of his personal beliefs pretty important in the 1800 election but what i’m struck by is how many evangelicals especially in the south still voted for jefferson even though they knew he was uh you know a heterodox uh person not a traditional christian and uh and that was because

15:56 their you know priority was the issue of religious liberty not jefferson’s own personal uh beliefs right and and can you can you describe some of this heterodox beliefs i mean not traditional christians you said well what are some of those beliefs says as jefferson sort of grappling with with god and religion in his own life

16:17 well he was pretty guarded about what he would say publicly about his religious beliefs until he retired from politics and then he sort of lets it all out at least in correspondence but um in notes on the state of virginia which he published in the 1780s and was his only full-length book that he ever published

16:39 he did offer some surprisingly skeptical comments uh for instance uh he made it clear that he doubted the historicity of noah’s flood from genesis and he also posited that i think more controversially because it also touches on on his racial

17:00 views that blacks and whites may have been created by god at different times and places effectively as as fundamentally separate races and that that would account in jefferson’s mind for what he saw as the inherent inferiority of of africans and african americans to whites

17:21 um and uh that this is of course appalling especially from an uh modern view about his view of race but at the time it was also just very troubling to any traditional christians because they said we all know that humanity was all created at the same time with adam and eve as genesis describes it so this guy doesn’t believe

17:43 in you know basic issues in the book of genesis from the beginning of the bible and and it goes on from there later you know late in his life he makes clear he does not believe in the doctrine of the trinity he does not believe in the resurrection of christ he does not believe in the divinity of christ and so by that point he he definitely considers himself to be a kind of

18:05 christian but it’s really only in a in an ethical and moral sense but he he believes virtually none of his supernatural claims about christianity other than just the existence of a creator god right right okay fascinating probably talk all day as well as this other this next topic we talked for a very long

18:25 time and probably cuts to the very core of of jefferson’s main contradiction uh and and paradox and and complexity and and that’s obviously slavery and race um you know on one hand we seem to have jefferson as the duck author of the declaration of independence even maybe a lester known fact several

18:46 kind of emancipation schemes uh in virginia and and for the nation and and yet a slave owner and as you said a highly probable uh sexual relationship with sally hemmings and and and his racial views so can you make some sense of that for us

19:07 sure well i think that this is one of those places where you see those cross-cutting impulses in his in his mind and then the way that he lived um where and this is not that unusual among the major southern founders that you could get people like patrick henry or george mason to admit in the 1780s that that slavery

19:29 was immoral especially in christian categories and knowing everything that chattel slavery in particular came along with the abuse and coercion and violence they they knew that it was immoral in the way that it was practiced um but someone like patrick henry would sort of say what what what can i do i mean i’m i’m totally dependent on this

19:49 financially and so um i don’t really know how to get out of this and and jefferson is that way too um it’s just as we said in the beginning you know jefferson has the greatest defense of the equality of humankind in world history and so that puts a special burden on him uh to live up to

20:10 that standard um and definitely by modern sensibilities he does not but uh you know if you ask why did he not act decisively personally or politically against slavery i mean he there were some important things he did politically about slavery i mean he signed the ban on the international further imports of of enslaved people uh as

20:33 president and that’s pretty important but but uh you know people were always wanting him to do more in the anti-slavery movement um he he told himself that there was really no way feasibly that you could do emancipation in the short term and that if you did it precipitously it would lead to a genocidal race war

20:55 which is pretty grim stuff but but that’s you know i think jefferson honestly thought that but that became a way he said if we can figure out what to do about that issue through say colonizing the free freed slaves in africa or somewhere else then then maybe we’ll get to a point where we can make this more feasible and and to

21:17 you know that sounds like an excuse but that’s i think jefferson sincerely also held that view um and and then personally i mean he is just utterly dependent on his slaves financially and his finances are a disaster anyway so i i just don’t think realistically he’s going to do anything on a personal

21:39 level about his slaves and he doesn’t then that means that you know when he dies hundreds of people have to be auctioned off partly to pay off his personal debts right right and i say yeah we can talk to you all day um but but in our our last few minutes remaining um you know despite all of these paradoxes and and

22:00 complexities contradictions you know what were perhaps some of the most important ways that he thomas jefferson advances liberty and self-governance right well i i did come away from them talking a lot about the the tensions between his public ideals and personal life that’s for sure but but i did come

22:22 away with a deeper appreciation for uh jefferson’s political ideals in many ways i mean he he definitely is a champion of limited government um and even though he can’t control his own spending he does and as president insist on uh strict limitation shockingly strict

22:42 limitations on federal spending uh except in the matter of the louisiana purchase which was such a great deal that everybody was kind of like okay well it costs a lot but let’s go ahead and do it anyway um i i think certainly uh his his belief in equality by creation i mean has been used for enormous great

23:04 good in american history of course claimed by abraham lincoln martin luther king jr for very different uh purposes but still i mean it’s that it’s the kernel of that idea that we’re equal before god and that’s the that’s the basis of our equality uh and then i i think also religious liberty i think i think is is a

23:25 an almost unalloyed contribution that jefferson makes to uh to the tradition of of liberty of saying you know we we really need to let people seek god worship god or not according to the dictates their conscience and get the government out of playing favorites in religion get to stop the government from sponsoring

23:47 the established churches establishment of religions the first amendment calls it and really just have a free market of religion in america uh and and it’s it’s kind of wonderful looking back and seeing how in spite of jefferson’s skepticism about christianity that it creates this sort of wonderful alliance between jefferson

24:08 and lots and lots of evangelical christians who just want to be left alone to worship god and preach the gospel and evangelize and jefferson defends them to the health on that issue and that i think that’s an inspiring example of how important that tradition of religious liberty is right and a great note to finish on i i

24:29 love civil and religious liberty bringing americans together so yeah so that’s great uh thomas kidd author of thomas jefferson a biography in spirit and flesh and author of numerous other books i want to thank you very much for joining us again thanks tony and thank you all for joining us on this episode of scholar talks please

24:49 check out our other interviews in this series on the american founders and check out our past interviews and scholar talks on the american founding including robert mcdonald on thomas jefferson david stewart on george washington lindsay schravinski on washington’s cabinet and bradley thompson on the

25:09 declaration of independence among others and check out bri’s numerous resources on the founding including life liberty in the pursuit of happiness and the updated being an american thank you