Thomas Jefferson’s Complex Views and Actions on Slavery with Cara Rogers Steven | BRI Scholar Talks

0:05 For this episode of Scholar Talks, the guiding question is what was Thomas Jefferson’s complex use regarding slavery as statesman and slave holder? We are honored to have our guest, Cara Rogers Stevens, who is an Associate Professor of History of the Ashland University, where she is the Co-Director of the Ashbrook Scholar Program.

0:28 She also teaches courses for teachers at Ashbrook, and her first book is Thomas Jefferson and the Fight Against Slavery, published by the University Press of Kansas in their esteemed American Political Thought series. I am Tony Williams, Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute, and I would like to welcome you to another episode

0:50 of the Scholar Talk series on the American founding. Cara, thank you very much for joining me. Oh, thank you so much for having me here. It’s a pleasure. Yeah, I really enjoyed the book. Congratulations. it really gave me, you know, just a real deep dive, sort of into into Jefferson’s views on slavery

1:12 and anti-slavery and all the complexity associated with that. Some, some really balanced judgments and just, just a sweeping story, a very dramatic story, even about his notes on the state of Virginia. So. So I really like the book. Thank you so much. It was a real pleasure to write. I have to say, I found a lot of things that surprised me as I did the research.

1:33 so, yeah, it’s been my pleasure. Good. Well, I was a pleasure to read. So why don’t we, share with our audience some of, some of those insights, and, we’ll start maybe by saying, you know, this is, this is a question that we don’t normally maybe think about too much or hear much about what? Jefferson, we hear so much about him. But something we don’t really dig into is how he did his education

1:57 at the College of William and Mary shaped his views on slavery and the rights of man during this Age of enlightenment. Yeah, it’s it’s very interesting to think about because typically and even in my own case, I got to graduate school thinking, I love the Declaration of Independence. I love this concept that all men are created equal.

2:17 But how could the man who wrote that book have also have enslaved other people? It seems like such a paradox. And as I started to look into Thomas Jefferson, I realized that perhaps the question that we should begin with is, how is it that a man who was born into a slave holding society where it was illegal even to free slaves without getting special permission

2:42 from the governor? Where slavery was accepted? There were no anti-slavery, societies. There was no anti-slavery movement. Slavery was the normal state of affairs in the entire New World, as well as in Africa and Asia and parts of Europe. How is it that he was able to somehow become free enough, in his own mind,

3:03 to realize the equality of mankind, and to support anti-slavery? So I started to look for an explanation. What was it about Thomas Jefferson’s education that perhaps moved him toward anti-slavery beliefs? And I was drawn to the College of William and Mary. Now, Jefferson inherited enslaved people when he was 14 years old, and his dad died.

3:25 Jefferson inherited something like 52 enslaved human beings. And two years later, he shows up at this small, little provincial college, one of the best schools in the South, College of William and Mary. And he got there at the perfect moment. The college had been founded as a seminary, but, there had been a lot of controversies

3:46 between the Anglican establishment and Virginians. At that moment that Jefferson arrived, there was a real shortage of professors. But one person had just shown up, fresh off of a boat from the Scottish Enlightenment from Aberdeen, Scotland, and Marshall College. A professor named William Small and William Small had been,

4:08 tutored by the founders, the fathers of the Scottish Enlightenment. And he took all of these notes on their moral sense philosophies. And then he showed up in Virginia and became the primary professor for Jefferson. He taught mathematics physics literature, rhetoric astronomy meteorology. He was the first to introduce scientific experimentation and observation

4:31 at the College of William and Mary, and he replaced rote memorization with the Socratic method. And so Jefferson was deeply influenced by William Small and by these ideas that that he brought with him from the Scottish Enlightenment. And Jefferson wasn’t only influenced by Small, he also was taken along by Small to the governor’s mansion,

4:55 and he joined a small group of men who had this little musical society. Jefferson played the violin, but they would also have conversation and meals. And this little group was made up of Small, Jefferson, the governor at the time, Francis Fauquier, he was a man who was actually strongly opposed to slavery. He wrote in his will that he was deeply remorseful

5:18 for having participated in the institution, and he wished he could have freed his slaves, but he could not because of the laws. So he did everything he could to provide for them. He wrote the year that Jefferson came to Williamsburg, the governor wrote what men, white, red or black, polished or unpolished men are men.

5:38 So right away, this this concept of natural equality is present. And then the fourth member of this little group was the first law professor in America, a man named George Wythe, who was also famously anti-slavery. He became Jefferson’s private tutor of the law, and he was hugely influential in Jefferson’s life. And Jefferson told him so over and over.

6:00 So I think that in these men and in the the documents of this, of the enlightenment, the concepts of moral sense, philosophy and natural rights that Jefferson was reading, we find this remarkable transformation that from a young man of privilege and wealth, already the owner of enslaved human beings, he is transformed into somebody

6:21 who truly believes in natural equality and who believes that slavery is wrong. Right. Very interesting. oh. To be a fly on the wall during those conversations over dinner? yeah. Absolutely. Right. Good. And in this formative education, as you describe it, both formal, classes and reading,

6:42 but also this in formal education and this sort of enlightenment. So on atmosphere shaped some of his, his, his early thinking as a, as a politician, as a young politician. And so what are some examples of Jefferson’s, early anti-slavery writings and proposals in the, in the House of Burgesses? And particularly, I think, your take on the Declaration of Independence

7:08 Well, I was surprised by how many things Jefferson actually said and did to oppose slavery. I think maybe he doesn’t get enough credit for all of the actions that he attempted to take. So, as I mentioned, slavery was legal. Typical, normal accepted, and it was illegal to free

7:28 individual slaves unless one petitioned the governor to get special permission. And Jefferson tried to change that. So in 1769, as a young legislator, he co-sponsored a bill to make it possible to free individual slaves, and this failed miserably. It was actually a deeply devastating defeat. And Jefferson’s, older cousin, Richard Bland, was kind of excoriated

7:53 by the other members of the legislature for attempting to push this forward. Jefferson, as a young lawyer, attempt six different times that we know of, to get individuals freedom, so unfree individuals who came to him and he took on their cases pro bono and attempted to argue that under the law of nature, all men are created free.

8:14 And as far as we know, he failed all six times to convince a court to grant these individuals freedom. Then, of course, the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Most well-known of Jefferson’s works. The thing he wanted to be remembered for the most, he wrote in this document. You know, we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men

8:37 are created equal. And a lot of modern readers get to that line and they say, well, he must have just meant all white males are created equal, because we know that those are the people who had the power. And if he had meant anybody else, surely he would have done more to to end slavery. What’s really interesting is when you look at the original rough draft

8:59 of the Declaration of Independence, you discover there’s an entire paragraph that Jefferson wrote that the other members of the Congress deleted, or especially the members from South Carolina, Georgia, people who are making money off of the slave trade. Jefferson, in his deleted paragraph, called slavery a war against human rights.

9:20 He called out King George after all of the other bad things that King George had done, like, you know, taxation without representation and attacking the colonists and encouraging the native peoples to rise up. The final and the the culmination of Jefferson’s list of King George’s offenses was that King George had carried on the slave trade, and he had vetoed the colonists

9:42 efforts to ban the slave trade, and Jefferson in no uncertain terms. He says that slavery is, quote, a violation of the most sacred rights of life and liberty, and he refers to the enslaved people as men, capital letters, men. And it’s really noteworthy that he does this because Jefferson

10:03 is not referring to white males when he uses the term men in that paragraph, he’s referring to black men, black women, black children. And so knowing that information, we can read for the word men in the Declaration of Independence, mankind and Jefferson is very clear that it’s not just white males who have these unalienable natural rights,

10:24 it’s everybody. Now that paragraph was removed, but Jefferson still was very clear in the declaration. He didn’t say, we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all white men, that all males are created equal. He left it as broad as possible. All men are created equal, around the same time as he was working on the declaration,

10:44 Jefferson was working on revising Virginia’s legal code. And we know that Jefferson and his law professor mentor, George Wythe, wrote an anti-slavery amendment for Virginia. They never brought it forward. They never found an opportune moment. But Jefferson later described it, and in it, he and George Wythe had devised this plan to free everybody born after a certain day,

11:06 educate them at the expense of the state, and then expatriate them, send them to another location where they could govern themselves. and the state, according to Jefferson, should pay these individuals and take care of them, make sure that they had the supplies that they needed until they could be a successful, self-governing republic. Now, obviously, this plan would have cost a lot of money,

11:28 and perhaps that explains why it never found widespread political support. But it’s informative that that’s how Jefferson was thinking about the justice of, of fixing the wrong of slavery. We know that in the please do you want to ask another question. I just kind of follow up and say that’s, sounds remarkably like the, gradual emancipation plans that were, being passed in the north.

11:53 Yes absolutely. and I think that Jefferson believed, like many northerners, believed, that the first step to ending slavery was to cut off the slave trade. And then the second step was a gradual plan, so that the economic shock to the state wouldn’t be too severe, but also to make sure that individuals weren’t being abandoned without any skills or wealth to take care of themselves.

12:15 And Jefferson had a plan for how to take care of enslaved people and make sure they were successful in transitioning to freedom. Was always on in mind. In 1784, Jefferson, took a step in writing the Northwest Ordinance. So a lot of, your audience might be familiar with the final version, the 1787 version of the Northwest Ordinance.

12:36 But Jefferson wrote the first version, and in it, he included a proviso that would have abolished slavery and prevented slavery from getting set up in any new federal territory after the year 1800, and this proviso it failed by one vote. One guy from New Jersey was sick that day, and he didn’t show up.

12:56 And so, the final version, the version that we might be familiar with, banned slavery north of the Ohio River. But Jefferson’s original version was even more capacious, and would have would have dealt with all federal territories. And around the same time, Jefferson was writing a constitution for the state of Virginia in which he banned slavery. After the year 1800.

13:17 But this constitution was not selected. And then also in the 1780s, Jefferson was working on his book, Notes in the State of Virginia, in which he had a lot to say about slavery and opposing slavery. So private actions we can maybe get to a little bit more later. But definitely Jefferson had many different approaches to trying to

13:38 end or stop the spread of slavery in his early years as a politician. Right ideas. Copious amounts of evidence for that. and you know, we don’t do counterfactuals as historians, but, man, the history of the, of the West and of the United States would have been extremely different over the course of the 19th century, had that actually passed by that by that one vote.

14:01 Yeah. So, you know, a great segue into the Notes on the Slave State of Virginia, because that’s that’s a big part in a very dramatic and interesting part of your book. and so that’s my next question is, how should we understand his very complex views, not only on slavery but of race? Right. Which which are very controversial.

14:22 today, in, his book Notes on the State of Virginia. Yeah. So if you read Notes on the state of Virginia, you’ll discover Jefferson talking about all different facets of the state, from its geography to its climate, to its population, to its politics. And he talks about slavery in a few different places.

14:42 In one section, he recounts the anti-slavery bill that he and George Wythe had worked on in another place. There’s an entire chapter called manners that is devoted to the culture of Virginia, and in that chapter, Jefferson entirely focuses on the negative impact of slavery on Virginia’s culture and details all the ways

15:03 that Virginia really can’t be a republic if it continues to be a slave holding state, because owning slaves turns people into tyrants. That’s basically his argument. But Jefferson also spent quite a bit of time discussing race and racial classifications. And what I found is that Jefferson was reading and responding to the,

15:26 the typical enlightenment European scientist’s position on race. And in one part, he is trying to defend America against the charge that America’s climate, and therefore its people, are inferior to Europe. In another part, he deals with the the charge that there is something inferior about Africans and African descended peoples.

15:48 And Jefferson, like most European scientists, believe that the white race was superior. He was questioning whether or not African peoples were permanently different and inferior, or merely temporarily different, and perhaps not inferior. When we read this section of his book today, we find it deeply disturbing.

16:09 The language is is very troubling. at the time that Jefferson wrote it, it was less so. It was more typical to talk in those kind of terms. But what I found most interesting is that Jefferson sent a draft of this book to a friend of his, Charles Thompson, Secretary of the Congress and another scientist, and asked Thompson to send feedback.

16:32 And Thompson wrote back and he said, I’m going to read a quote, though I am much pleased with the dissertation on the difference between the whites and blacks, and I’m inclined to think that the latter a race lower in the scale of being. Yet for that very reason, and because such an opinion might seem to justify slavery, I should be inclined to leave it out.

16:53 So Thompson says, love what you’ve done, dude. But what you said about black people and their inferiority, it might seem to justify slavery. Why don’t you just delete the whole section? Jefferson did not take Thompson’s advice. He left the section in. And of course, you know, I mentioned we don’t do counterfactuals, but it

17:13 it is fascinating to think, what if he had just deleted all of that? But what Jefferson did do is he altered it. He softened it pretty dramatically. He added phrases like, it’s a suspicion, only that there is inferiority on the part of Africans. And he emphasized the need for further scientific research.

17:33 And he also emphasized that it didn’t matter whether or not there was any racial superiority, inferiority difference, rights or the same. Natural rights are the same for all peoples. And then Jefferson doubled in length his section on anti-slavery, so that entire chapter on Virginia’s manners or culture

17:54 became twice as long after he got Thompson’s advice. And he added, I’m going to read another quote. This is one of the most famous Jefferson quotes against slavery. I believe it’s in his memorial in Washington, D.C. he said, can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds

18:14 of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God, that they are not to be violated, but with his wrath. Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just that. His justice cannot sleep forever. And Jefferson went on to basically predict that, there would at some point be a slave revolt, and that when that happens,

18:36 God would not be on the side of the white people. He would be on the side of the, of the enslaved. and that he might even supernaturally interfere to cause such a thing to happen. And this is unusual for a man like Jefferson. Mr.. Enlightenment rationality, to be talking about divine interference in human events but it’s a sentiment that he seems to have echoed a couple times through his life, this idea that slavery was so unjust

19:00 that America would be punished if they did not find a way to, to get rid of it as quickly as possible. Right. And I think use words like unremitting despotism and tyranny and injustice is kind of interesting, to, to look at the language he uses to, to describe slavery and its effects. Yeah absolutely. Yeah. Good.

19:21 you know, a really fascinating part. your take on the notes on the state of Virginia is not only by what you just described in terms of its content, but also Jefferson’s, hoped for impact of it. And so my question is, what was significant about him wanting college

19:42 students, particularly, William and Mary, but also perhaps, wider than that, to read the notes of the state of Virginia, sort of, a primer on, sort of being leaders and citizens and the future of Republican government. So in the early 1780s, when Jefferson was working on his book

20:03 and thinking about printing it, he several times mentioned being concerned that Virginia’s ruling class would react negatively to the book and that they might even punish free people, make make restrictions on the lives of free black people in Virginia. And that’s not an outlandish concern. There were, reactionary movements in Virginia’s ruling class

20:26 against emancipation petitions, in the 1780s. So Jefferson didn’t want to actually widely publish his book, but he did want to send private copies to the College of William and Mary. And going back to the beginning of our conversation, I think it’s because Jefferson himself became anti-slavery at that college.

20:47 He knew young men who were tutored by George Wythe were becoming anti-slavery. And he said several times the different correspondence, although he’d given up hope for his own generation to fully live out the principles of equality, young men who had been brought up in this atmosphere of freedom and revolution and liberty, he was certain that they would be the ones that could be persuaded to end slavery.

21:09 So Jefferson sent copies of his book to the College of William and Mary, and in 1864 the, the General Winfield Scott, who was a an important union general, actually published his memoirs. And in his memoirs he said in boyhood at William and Mary College, and in common with most, if not all of my companions,

21:31 I became deeply impressed with the views given by Mr. Jefferson in his Notes on Virginia in favor of gradual emancipation of slaves. And I found a few other people who who specifically called out Jefferson in his book at the college as the reason that they became anti-slavery. So Jefferson’s strategy was partially successful. He moved the needle, obviously

21:53 not enough to stop Virginians from supporting slavery in the Civil War but enough to convince some important individuals to oppose slavery. Very good. Yeah. That’s it. I encourage my audience to to to get out there, reread, this book because, that section on, on notes and how it developed and his intended

22:16 audience and, and the reception of Europe fascinating, fascinating dramatic story. All right. Well, we have time for one more question. And it is a pretty broad question. and, you know, I think it’s the larger, larger question that everyone wants to ask about Thomas Jefferson. And so, you know, what were his his complex actions and viewpoints related to slavery,

22:37 you know, on the national level, on the, you know, state level, both the statesman and and, of course, his own personal failings. Yeah. So on the national level, of course, we know Jefferson was our third president. Jefferson, very strongly believed that the Constitution should be strictly followed and that it limited what presidents could do.

23:00 So he didn’t try to issue any executive proclamations banning slavery or anything like that. But what he did do at the earliest possible moment that the Constitution allowed Congress to ban the slave trade, Jefferson urged Congress to do so, and in his letter urging Congress, he again referred to slavery as a violation of human rights,

23:22 using the same language that he had been using all along. And Congress did indeed, ban the slave trade starting January 1st, 1808 and this was a triumph for Jefferson’s presidency. So on the international level, on the national level, Jefferson did what he believed he could. Now, on the state level, I’ve given several different examples of laws

23:45 and constitution, different things that he tried after Jefferson got swept up in national politics as secretary of state and vice president and president, he really didn’t do as much, in Virginia. But in 1814, he got a letter from a young man named Edward Coles, a young Virginian. Many people might be familiar with this letter.

24:06 Edward Coles had decided to free his own slaves by taking them out of Virginia, taking them to Illinois and freeing them there. And he wrote to Jefferson and basically begged Jefferson to speak out once more against slavery. Jefferson wrote back, and I think his reply is often misunderstood. Jefferson wrote back and said, no, he would not try

24:29 to take up a national leadership position of the anti-slavery movement. But Jefferson, essentially what he said is, I’m old and I’ve I’ve already tried everything I can. The public already knows my views on this issue, but Jefferson repeated exactly what he had been saying since the 1780s. The young generation, the generation now coming up into political power,

24:52 must be the one to make this decision, must be the one to be persuaded of the immorality of slavery. So Jefferson urged Edward Coles to become the leader of the anti-slavery movement, and Coles didn’t take his advice. He took his slaves and left Virginia. Freed them, went to Illinois, but he did become, the anti-slavery governor of Illinois.

25:14 He actually ran for governor specifically to stop Illinois from passing a pro-slavery constitution and he made sure that Illinois would remain a free state and later on supported Lincoln when Lincoln was elected president from Illinois. So Jefferson didn’t want to take up a national leadership position because

25:35 just like he always had, he believed that the young generation coming into power needed to make that decision and do the right thing for themselves. Now, on a personal level, Jefferson struggled with this issue of slavery. He never freed the majority of his own enslaved workers, and one important reason is because he was deeply in debt at the time that he died.

25:55 Unlike George Washington, who could free all of his slaves in his will, Jefferson. By the time he passed away, there was a law saying, if you’re in debt, you cannot free your slaves because they are collateral for your debts. And Jefferson died about $1 million in today’s money in debt. So even if he had wanted to, he couldn’t have. But we know that his son in law, Thomas Mann Randolph,

26:18 tried to get an anti-slavery bill passed when he was governor of Virginia in 1820. And Jefferson said, Bravo, way to go. It failed. And then we know that in 1831, Jefferson had died and his grandson had now become a member of the Virginia legislature. Nat Turner’s rebellion happened, and the Virginia legislature

26:39 debated ending slavery, and Thomas Jefferson’s grandson stood up and said, my grandfather always wanted us to end slavery. He would want us to do it now. Let’s abolish slavery. That didn’t work. Edward calls, by the way, was cheering Thomas Jefferson Randolph on and saying, yes, your grandfather would have wanted you to do this. So

26:59 there’s an interesting generational legacy to Jefferson’s anti-slavery efforts. On the one hand, in many ways, Jefferson failed. On the other hand, he moved the needle. He saw a future for America where slavery could be over and all men truly could be free and equal. He wasn’t quite sure how we were going to get there,

27:21 but he kept on encouraging younger people to change their morals, to disentangle themselves from their prejudice, and to make the sacrifices needed to abolish slavery. And I think you can see Jefferson’s influence, even in the writings of Abraham Lincoln. And Lincoln certainly referred to Jefferson and his actions as proof

27:43 that the founding generation would have wanted America to free their slaves, and that America lived up to the Declaration of Independence with the, passage of the 13th Amendment. Right. I just think, well, I mean, he’s often our lightning rod for for these, difficult issues. And so I you’ve given us a lot to think about. So, Cara I want to thank you very much for joining us.

28:03 Congratulations on your brilliant new book, Thomas Jefferson and the Fight Against Slavery. Thank you so much. Thank you. And thank you all for joining us on this episode of Scholar Talks. Please join us and check out our other interviews in our new American Founding series on our channel. Thank you.