May 7, 2025 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, how could a man who wrote the words "all men are created equal" in the Declaration of Independence go to his grave without freeing his slaves? Cara Rogers Steven, author of Thomas Jefferson and the Fight Against Slavery, tells the messy story of a man who was both a product of his times... and ahead of them. A special goes out to the Bill of Rights Institute for allowing us access to this audio, originally part of their Scholar Talks series on YouTube.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories. Thomas Jefferson was
a man of both extraordinary words and astonishing contradictions. While
he wrote the Declaration of Independence, they called all men equal.
He would go to the grave without freeing his slaves.
But what kind of a man would write those words
in the first place. You're to tell the story of
(00:31):
Jefferson's views on slavery and the equality of man is
Karen Rogers Stevens, a history professor at Ashland University. Let's
get into the story.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Now. Jefferson inherited enslaved people when he was fourteen years
old and his dad died. Jefferson inherited something like fifty
two 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
(01:08):
had been founded as a seminary, but there had been
a lot of controversies between the Anglican establishment and Virginians,
and at the moment that Jefferson arrived there was a
real shortage of professors. But one person had just shown
up from Aberdeen, Scotland, and Marshall College a professor named
William Small, and WILLIAMS. Small had been tutored by the founders,
(01:31):
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
(01:52):
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
he brought with him from the Scottish Enlightenment. And Jefferson
wasn't only influenced by Small. He also was taken along
(02:13):
by Small to the governor's mansion 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 fuck Here. He
was a man who was actually strongly opposed to slavery.
(02:33):
He wrote in his will that he was deeply remorseful
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,
(02:54):
polished or unpolished, men are men? So right away this
concept of natural equality is present. The fourth member of
this little group was the first law professor in America,
a man named George Wis, who's also famously anti slavery.
He became Jefferson's private tutor of the law, and he
(03:16):
was hugely influential in Jefferson's life, and Jefferson told him
so over and over. So I think that in these men,
and in the documents 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,
(03:39):
he is transformed into somebody who truly believes in natural equality,
and who believes that slavery is wrong. As I mentioned,
slavery was legal, typical, normal, accepted, and it was illegal
to free individual slaves unless one petitioned the governor to
get special permission. And Jefferson tried to change that. So
in seventeen sixty nine, as a young legislator, he co
(04:02):
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
by the other members of the legislature for attempting to
push this forward. Jefferson, as a young lawyer, attempted six
(04:23):
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,
and as far as we know, he failed all six
times to convince a court to grant these individuals freedom. Then,
(04:44):
of course, the Declaration of Independence in seventeen seventy six,
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 are created equal. And a lot of
modern readers get to that line and they say, well,
(05:05):
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 end slavery. What's really
interesting is when you look at the original rough draft
of the Declaration of Independence, you discover there's an entire
paragraph that Jefferson wrote that the other members of the
(05:27):
Congress deleted, 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.
He called out King George after all of the other
bad things that King George had done, like you know,
veaxation without representation and attacking the colonists and encouraging the
(05:51):
native peoples to rise up. The final and 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 colonist's 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.
(06:14):
And he refers to the enslaved people as men capital
letters men. And it's really noteworthy that he does this
because Jefferson 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, mankind. That Jefferson is
very clear that it's not just white males who have
(06:36):
these unalienable natural rights, 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
(06:57):
on the declaration, Jefferson was working on revival in Virginia's
legal code, and we know that Jefferson and his law professor,
Mentor George Witz, wrote an anti slavery amendment for Virginia.
They never brought it forward, but Jefferson later described it,
and in it he and George Wits had devised this
plan to free everybody born after a certain day, educate
(07:18):
them at the expense of the state, and then expatriate them,
send them to another location where they could govern themselves.
And a 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
(07:39):
cost a lot of money, 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 fixing
the wrong of slavery. In seventeen eighty four, Jefferson took
a step in writing the Northwest Ordinance. Jefferson wrote the
(08:01):
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 eighteen hundred.
It failed by one vote. One guy from New Jersey
was sick that day and he didn't show up, and
so the final version, the version that we might be
(08:21):
familiar with, banned slavery north of the Ohio River. But
Jefferson's original version was even more capacious.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
And you've been listening to Cara Rogers Stevens tell the
story of Thomas Jefferson and his views on slavery and
the equality of man, and you're hearing one complicated story
about a man who was born to wealth and privilege
inherits fifty plus human beings, to begin his life in Virginia,
(08:53):
the oldest public university in this country, by the way,
it informs so much of his life about what would
be considered nature's equality or natural equality. And then, of
course the work he did to get the Northwest Ordinance
passed and ultimately, in a second try, banned slavery north
(09:14):
of the Ohio River. When we come back more of
the complicated story of Jefferson on slavery here on our
American stories, and we continue with our American stories and
(09:41):
the story of Thomas Jefferson's views on slavery and the
equality of man with Ashland University's Cara Rogers Stevens. Let's
return to the story.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
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. 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
(10:22):
on Virginia's culture and details all the ways that Virginia
really can't be a republic if it continues to be
a slaveholding 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. Jefferson was
(10:44):
reading and responding to 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 charge that there is something inferior about
(11:05):
Africans and African descended peoples, 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
(11:26):
read this section of his book today, we find it
deeply disturbing. The language is very troubling. 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 asked Thompson to send feedback. And
Thompson wrote back, and he said, I'm going to read
(11:46):
a quote. Though I am much pleased with the dissertation
on the difference between the whites and blacks, and am
inclined to think 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. So Thompson says, love
(12:07):
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. But
what Jefferson did do is he altered it. He softened it.
He added phrases like it's a suspicion only that there
(12:31):
is inferiority on the part of Africans, And he emphasized
the need for further scientific research. And he also emphasized
that it didn't matter whether or not there was any
racial superiority, inferiority difference. Rights are the same for all peoples.
And then Jefferson doubled in lengths his section on antislavery,
(12:52):
and he added, 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 of the
people that these liberties are of the gift of God,
that they are not to be violated but with His wrath. Indeed,
(13:14):
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 happened,
God would not be on the side of the white people.
He would be on the side of the enslaved, and
that he might even supernaturally interfere to cause such a
(13:37):
thing to happen. And this is unusual for a man
like Jefferson, mister 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 injust that America would
be punished if they did not find a way to
get rid of it as quickly as possible. Jefferson didn't
(14:04):
want to actually widely publish his book. He several times
mentioned being concerned that Virginia's rule and class would react negatively,
and that they might even make restrictions on the lives
of free black people. And that's not an outlandish concern.
There were reactionary movements in Virginia's ruling class against emancipation.
(14:26):
But he did want to send private copies to the
College of William and Mary. And I think it's because
Jefferson himself became anti slavery at that college. And he
said several times to different correspondents, although he had 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.
(14:49):
He was certain that they would be the ones that
could be persuaded to end slavery. So Jefferson sent copies
of his book to the College of William and Mary,
and in eighteen sixty four the General Winfield Scott, who
was an important Union general, actually published his memoirs. And
in his memoirs he said, in boyhood at William and
(15:10):
Mary College, and in common with most, if not all,
of my companions, I became deeply impressed with the views
given by mister Jefferson in his notes on Virginia in
favor of gradual emancipation of slaves. And I found a
few other people 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
(15:34):
the needle, obviously not enough to stop Virginians from supporting
slavery in the Civil War, but enough to convince some
important individuals to oppose slavery. Now, after Jefferson got swept
up in national politics as Secretary of State and Vice
president and President. He really didn't do as much, But
(15:55):
in eighteen fourteen he got a letter from a young
man named Edward Coles, a young Virginian. 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
(16:16):
I think his reply is often misunderstood. Jefferson wrote back
and said no. But Jefferson, essentially what he said is
I'm old, and 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 seventeen eighties.
(16:37):
The young generation, the generation now coming up into political power,
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 freedom went to Illinois.
(16:58):
But he did become the anti slavery governor of Illinois.
He actually ran for governor specifically to stop Illinois from
passing a pro slavery constitution, and later on supported Lincoln
when Lincoln was elected president from Illinois. Now, on a
personal level, Jefferson struggled with this issue of slavery. He
(17:19):
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. 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 are in debt, you cannot free your slaves
because they aren't collateral for your debts. And Jefferson died
(17:40):
about a million dollars 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,
tried to get an anti slavery bill passed when he
was governor of Virginia in eighteen twenty, and Jefferson said, bravo,
way to go. Oh it failed. And then we know
(18:02):
that in eighteen thirty one, Jefferson had died and his
grandson had now become a member of the Virginia legislature.
Nat Turner's rebellion happened, and the Virginia Legislature 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.
(18:26):
Edward Coles, by the way, he was cheering Thomas Jefferson
Randolph and saying, yes, your grandfather would have wanted you
to do this. So 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
(18:50):
over and all and truly could be free and equal.
He wasn't quite sure how we were going to get there,
but he kept on encouraging younger people to change their worlds,
to disentangle themselves from their prejudice, and to make the
sacrifices needed. Perhaps the question that we should begin with
(19:10):
is how is it that a man who was born
into a slaveholding society where it was illegal even to
free slaves without getting special permission 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
(19:32):
in Africa and Asia parts of Europe. How is it
that he was able to somehow become free enough in
his own mind to realize the equality of mankind and
to support anti slavery And a.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Special thanks to Kara Rogers Stevens, Associate Professor of History
at Ashland University. This was originally from the Bill of
Rights Institute Scholar Talk series on YouTube, and we thank
them for allowing us access to this audio. Go to
www mybri dot org to find out more about what
they do. That's my bri dot org. The story of
(20:08):
Thomas Jefferson and his views on slavery and natural rights.
Here on our American Stories
And we returned to our American stories. Thomas Jefferson was
a man of both extraordinary words and astonishing contradictions. While
he wrote the Declaration of Independence, they called all men equal.
He would go to the grave without freeing his slaves.
But what kind of a man would write those words
in the first place. You're to tell the story of
(00:31):
Jefferson's views on slavery and the equality of man is
Karen Rogers Stevens, a history professor at Ashland University. Let's
get into the story.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Now. Jefferson inherited enslaved people when he was fourteen years
old and his dad died. Jefferson inherited something like fifty
two 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
(01:08):
had been founded as a seminary, but there had been
a lot of controversies between the Anglican establishment and Virginians,
and at the moment that Jefferson arrived there was a
real shortage of professors. But one person had just shown
up from Aberdeen, Scotland, and Marshall College a professor named
William Small, and WILLIAMS. Small had been tutored by the founders,
(01:31):
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
(01:52):
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
he brought with him from the Scottish Enlightenment. And Jefferson
wasn't only influenced by Small. He also was taken along
(02:13):
by Small to the governor's mansion 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 fuck Here. He
was a man who was actually strongly opposed to slavery.
(02:33):
He wrote in his will that he was deeply remorseful
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,
(02:54):
polished or unpolished, men are men? So right away this
concept of natural equality is present. The fourth member of
this little group was the first law professor in America,
a man named George Wis, who's also famously anti slavery.
He became Jefferson's private tutor of the law, and he
(03:16):
was hugely influential in Jefferson's life, and Jefferson told him
so over and over. So I think that in these men,
and in the documents 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,
(03:39):
he is transformed into somebody who truly believes in natural equality,
and who believes that slavery is wrong. As I mentioned,
slavery was legal, typical, normal, accepted, and it was illegal
to free individual slaves unless one petitioned the governor to
get special permission. And Jefferson tried to change that. So
in seventeen sixty nine, as a young legislator, he co
(04:02):
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
by the other members of the legislature for attempting to
push this forward. Jefferson, as a young lawyer, attempted six
(04:23):
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,
and as far as we know, he failed all six
times to convince a court to grant these individuals freedom. Then,
(04:44):
of course, the Declaration of Independence in seventeen seventy six,
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 are created equal. And a lot of
modern readers get to that line and they say, well,
(05:05):
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 end slavery. What's really
interesting is when you look at the original rough draft
of the Declaration of Independence, you discover there's an entire
paragraph that Jefferson wrote that the other members of the
(05:27):
Congress deleted, 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.
He called out King George after all of the other
bad things that King George had done, like you know,
veaxation without representation and attacking the colonists and encouraging the
(05:51):
native peoples to rise up. The final and 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 colonist's 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.
(06:14):
And he refers to the enslaved people as men capital
letters men. And it's really noteworthy that he does this
because Jefferson 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, mankind. That Jefferson is
very clear that it's not just white males who have
(06:36):
these unalienable natural rights, 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
(06:57):
on the declaration, Jefferson was working on revival in Virginia's
legal code, and we know that Jefferson and his law professor,
Mentor George Witz, wrote an anti slavery amendment for Virginia.
They never brought it forward, but Jefferson later described it,
and in it he and George Wits had devised this
plan to free everybody born after a certain day, educate
(07:18):
them at the expense of the state, and then expatriate them,
send them to another location where they could govern themselves.
And a 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
(07:39):
cost a lot of money, 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 fixing
the wrong of slavery. In seventeen eighty four, Jefferson took
a step in writing the Northwest Ordinance. Jefferson wrote the
(08:01):
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 eighteen hundred.
It failed by one vote. One guy from New Jersey
was sick that day and he didn't show up, and
so the final version, the version that we might be
(08:21):
familiar with, banned slavery north of the Ohio River. But
Jefferson's original version was even more capacious.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
And you've been listening to Cara Rogers Stevens tell the
story of Thomas Jefferson and his views on slavery and
the equality of man, and you're hearing one complicated story
about a man who was born to wealth and privilege
inherits fifty plus human beings, to begin his life in Virginia,
(08:53):
the oldest public university in this country, by the way,
it informs so much of his life about what would
be considered nature's equality or natural equality. And then, of
course the work he did to get the Northwest Ordinance
passed and ultimately, in a second try, banned slavery north
(09:14):
of the Ohio River. When we come back more of
the complicated story of Jefferson on slavery here on our
American stories, and we continue with our American stories and
(09:41):
the story of Thomas Jefferson's views on slavery and the
equality of man with Ashland University's Cara Rogers Stevens. Let's
return to the story.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
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. 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
(10:22):
on Virginia's culture and details all the ways that Virginia
really can't be a republic if it continues to be
a slaveholding 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. Jefferson was
(10:44):
reading and responding to 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 charge that there is something inferior about
(11:05):
Africans and African descended peoples, 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
(11:26):
read this section of his book today, we find it
deeply disturbing. The language is very troubling. 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 asked Thompson to send feedback. And
Thompson wrote back, and he said, I'm going to read
(11:46):
a quote. Though I am much pleased with the dissertation
on the difference between the whites and blacks, and am
inclined to think 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. So Thompson says, love
(12:07):
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. But
what Jefferson did do is he altered it. He softened it.
He added phrases like it's a suspicion only that there
(12:31):
is inferiority on the part of Africans, And he emphasized
the need for further scientific research. And he also emphasized
that it didn't matter whether or not there was any
racial superiority, inferiority difference. Rights are the same for all peoples.
And then Jefferson doubled in lengths his section on antislavery,
(12:52):
and he added, 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 of the
people that these liberties are of the gift of God,
that they are not to be violated but with His wrath. Indeed,
(13:14):
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 happened,
God would not be on the side of the white people.
He would be on the side of the enslaved, and
that he might even supernaturally interfere to cause such a
(13:37):
thing to happen. And this is unusual for a man
like Jefferson, mister 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 injust that America would
be punished if they did not find a way to
get rid of it as quickly as possible. Jefferson didn't
(14:04):
want to actually widely publish his book. He several times
mentioned being concerned that Virginia's rule and class would react negatively,
and that they might even make restrictions on the lives
of free black people. And that's not an outlandish concern.
There were reactionary movements in Virginia's ruling class against emancipation.
(14:26):
But he did want to send private copies to the
College of William and Mary. And I think it's because
Jefferson himself became anti slavery at that college. And he
said several times to different correspondents, although he had 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.
(14:49):
He was certain that they would be the ones that
could be persuaded to end slavery. So Jefferson sent copies
of his book to the College of William and Mary,
and in eighteen sixty four the General Winfield Scott, who
was an important Union general, actually published his memoirs. And
in his memoirs he said, in boyhood at William and
(15:10):
Mary College, and in common with most, if not all,
of my companions, I became deeply impressed with the views
given by mister Jefferson in his notes on Virginia in
favor of gradual emancipation of slaves. And I found a
few other people 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
(15:34):
the needle, obviously not enough to stop Virginians from supporting
slavery in the Civil War, but enough to convince some
important individuals to oppose slavery. Now, after Jefferson got swept
up in national politics as Secretary of State and Vice
president and President. He really didn't do as much, But
(15:55):
in eighteen fourteen he got a letter from a young
man named Edward Coles, a young Virginian. 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
(16:16):
I think his reply is often misunderstood. Jefferson wrote back
and said no. But Jefferson, essentially what he said is
I'm old, and 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 seventeen eighties.
(16:37):
The young generation, the generation now coming up into political power,
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 freedom went to Illinois.
(16:58):
But he did become the anti slavery governor of Illinois.
He actually ran for governor specifically to stop Illinois from
passing a pro slavery constitution, and later on supported Lincoln
when Lincoln was elected president from Illinois. Now, on a
personal level, Jefferson struggled with this issue of slavery. He
(17:19):
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. 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 are in debt, you cannot free your slaves
because they aren't collateral for your debts. And Jefferson died
(17:40):
about a million dollars 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,
tried to get an anti slavery bill passed when he
was governor of Virginia in eighteen twenty, and Jefferson said, bravo,
way to go. Oh it failed. And then we know
(18:02):
that in eighteen thirty one, Jefferson had died and his
grandson had now become a member of the Virginia legislature.
Nat Turner's rebellion happened, and the Virginia Legislature 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.
(18:26):
Edward Coles, by the way, he was cheering Thomas Jefferson
Randolph and saying, yes, your grandfather would have wanted you
to do this. So 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
(18:50):
over and all and truly could be free and equal.
He wasn't quite sure how we were going to get there,
but he kept on encouraging younger people to change their worlds,
to disentangle themselves from their prejudice, and to make the
sacrifices needed. Perhaps the question that we should begin with
(19:10):
is how is it that a man who was born
into a slaveholding society where it was illegal even to
free slaves without getting special permission 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
(19:32):
in Africa and Asia parts of Europe. How is it
that he was able to somehow become free enough in
his own mind to realize the equality of mankind and
to support anti slavery And a.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Special thanks to Kara Rogers Stevens, Associate Professor of History
at Ashland University. This was originally from the Bill of
Rights Institute Scholar Talk series on YouTube, and we thank
them for allowing us access to this audio. Go to
www mybri dot org to find out more about what
they do. That's my bri dot org. The story of
(20:08):
Thomas Jefferson and his views on slavery and natural rights.
Here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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