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Thomas Jefferson's Opinions
on African Americans and Slavery
Thomas
Jefferson to Benjamin Banneker (famous African-American genius)
Philadelphia Aug. 30. 1791.
Sir,
I thank you
sincerely for your letter of the 19th. instant and for the Almanac it
contained. no body wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you
exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren, talents equal to
those of the other colours of men, & that the appearance of a want of them
is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence both in
Africa & America. I can add with truth that no body wishes more ardently
to see a good system commenced for raising the condition both of their
body & mind to what it ought to be, as fast as the imbecillity of their
present existence, and other circumstance which cannot be neglected, will
admit. I have taken the liberty of sending your almanac to Monsieur de
Condorcet, Secretary of the Academy of sciences at Paris, and member of
the Philanthropic society because I considered it as a document to which
your whole colour had a right for their justification against the doubts
which have been entertained of them. I am with great esteem, Sir, Your
most obedt. humble servt. Th. Jefferson
To Henri
Gregoire Washington,
February
25, 1809
SIR,
-- I have
received the favor of your letter of August 17th, and with it the volume
you were so kind as to send me on the "Literature of Negroes." Be assured
that no person living wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a complete
refutation of the doubts I have myself entertained and expressed on the
grade of understanding allotted to them by nature, and to find that in
this respect they are on a par with ourselves. My doubts were the result
of personal observation on the limited sphere of my own State, where the
opportunities for the development of their genius were not favorable, and
those of exercising it still less so. I expressed them therefore with
great hesitation; but whatever be their degree of talent it is no measure
of their rights. Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior to others in
understanding, he was not therefore lord of the person or property of
others. On this subject they are gaining daily in the opinions of nations,
and hopeful advances are making towards their re-establishment on an equal
footing with the other colors of the human family. I pray you therefore to
accept my thanks for the many instances you have enabled me to observe of
respectable intelligence in that race of men, which cannot fail to have
effect in hastening the day of their relief; and to be assured of the
sentiments of high and just esteem and consideration which I tender to
yourself with all sincerity. (Signature)
Thomas
Jefferson On Slavery (from Notes on the State of Virginia)
.... It will
probably be asked, Why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the
state, and thus save the expense of supplying, by importation of white
settlers, the vacancies they will leave? Deep rooted prejudices
entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of
the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions
which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into
parties, and produce convulsions, which will probably never end but in the
extermination of the one or the other race. - To these objections, which
are political, may be added others, which are physical and moral. The
first difference which strikes us is that of colour. - Whether the black
of the negro resides in the reticular membrane between the skin and
scarf-skin, or in the scarf-skin itself; whether it proceeds from the
colour of the blood, the colour of the bile, or from that of some other
secretion, the difference is fixed in nature, and is as real as if its
seat and cause were better known to us. And is this difference of no
importance? Is it not the foundation of a greater or less share of beauty
in the two races? Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the
expressions of every passion by greater or less suffusions of colour in
the one, preferable to that eternal monotony, which reigns in the
countenances, that immovable veil of black which covers all the emotions
of the other race? Add to these, flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of
form, their own judgment in favour of the whites, declared by their
preference of them, as uniformly as is the preference of the Oranootan for
the black women over those of his own species. The circumstance of
Superior beauty, is thought worthy attention in the propagation of our
horses, dogs, and other domestic animals; why not in that of man? Besides
those of colour, figure, and hair, there are other physical distinctions
proving a difference of race. They have less hair on the face and body.
They secrete less by the kidneys, and more by the glands of the skin,
which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odour. This greater degree
of transpiration renders them more tolerant of heat, and less so of cold
than the whites. Perhaps too a difference of structure in the pulmonary
apparatus, which a late ingenious [1] experimentalist has discovered to be
the principal regulator of animal heat, may have disabled them from
extricating, in the act of inspiration, so much of that fluid from the
outer air, or obliged them in expiration, to part with more of it. They
seem to require less sleep. A black after hard labour through the day,
will be induced by the slightest amusements to sit up till midnight, or
later, though knowing he must be out with the first dawn of the morning.
They are at least as brave, and more adventuresome. But this may perhaps
proceed from a want of forethought, which prevents their seeing a danger
till it be present..- When present, they do not go through it with more
coolness or steadiness than the whites. They are more ardent after their
female: but love seems with them to be more an eager desire, than a tender
delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation. Their griefs are transient.
Those numberless afflictions, which render it doubtful whether heaven has
given life to us in mercy or in wrath, are less felt, and sooner forgotten
with them. In general, their existence appears to participate more of
sensation than reflection. To this must be ascribed their disposition to
sleep when abstracted from their diversions, and unemployed in labour. An
animal whose body is at rest, and who does not reflect, must be disposed
to sleep of course. Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason,
and imagination, it appears to me that in memory they are equal to the
whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found
capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and
that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous. It would be
unfair to follow them to Africa for this investigation.
We will
consider them here, on the same stage with the whites, and where the facts
are not apocryphal on which a judgment is to be formed. It will be right
to make great allowances for the difference of condition, of education, of
conversation, of the sphere in which they move. Many millions of them have
been brought to, and born in America. Most of them indeed have been
confined to tillage, to their own homes, and their own society: yet many
have been so situated, that they might have availed themselves of the
conversation of their masters; many have been brought up to the handicraft
arts, and from that circumstance have always been associated with the
whites. Some have been liberally educated, and all have lived in countries
where the arts and sciences are cultivated to a considerable degree, and
have had before their eyes samples of the best works from abroad.
The Indians,
with no advantages of this kind, will often carve figures on their pipes
not destitute of design and merit. They will crayon out an animal, a
plant, or a country, so as to prove the existence of a germ in their minds
which only wants cultivation. They astonish you with strokes of the most
sublime oratory; such as prove their reason and sentiment strong, their
imagination glowing and elevated. But never yet could I find that a black
had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never saw even
an elementary trait of painting or sculpture. In music they are more
generally gifted than the whites with accurate ears for tune and time, and
they have been found capable of imagining a small catch. [2] Whether they
will be equal to the composition of a more extensive run of melody, or of
complicated harmony, is yet to be proved. Misery is often the parent of
the most affecting touches in poetry. Among the blacks is misery enough,
God knows, but no poetry. Love is the peculiar oestrum of the poet. Their
love is ardent, but it kindles the senses only, not the imagination.
Religion indeed has produced a Phyllis Whately [3] but it could not
produce a poet. The compositions published under her name are below the
dignity of criticism. The heroes of the Dunciad are to her, as Hercules to
the author of that poem. Ignatius Sancho has approached nearer to merit in
composition; yet his letters do more honour to the heart than the head.
They breathe the purest effusions of friendship and general philanthropy,
and show how great a degree of the latter may be compounded with strong
religious zeal. He is often happy in the turn of his compliments, and his
style is easy and familiar, except when he affects a Shandean fabrication
of words. But his imagination is wild and extravagant, escapes incessantly
from every restraint of reason and taste, and, in the course of its
vagaries, leaves a tract of thought as incoherent and eccentric, as is the
course of a meteor through the sky. His subjects should often have led him
to a process of sober reasoning: yet we find him always substituting
sentiment for demonstration. Upon the whole, though we admit him to the
first place among those of his own colour who have presented themselves to
the public judgment, yet when we compare him with the writers of the race
among whom he lived and particularly with the epistolary class, in which
he has taken his own stand, we are compelled to enrol him at the bottom of
the column. This criticism supposes the letters published under his name
to be genuine, and to have received amendment from no other hand; points
which would not be of easy investigation. The improvement of the blacks in
body and mind, in the first instance of their mixture with the whites, has
been observed by every one, and proves that their inferiority is not the
effect merely of their condition of life. We know that among the Romans,
about the Augustan age especially, the condition of their slaves was much
more deplorable than that of the blacks on the continent of America. The
two sexes were confined in separate apartments, because to raise a child
cost the master more than to buy one. Cato, for a very restricted
indulgence to his slaves in this particular, took from them a certain
price. But in this country the slaves multiply as fast as the free
inhabitants. Their situation and manners place the commerce between the
two sexes almost without restraint. The same Cato, on a principle of
oeconomy, always sold his sick and superannuated slaves. He gives it as a
standing precept to a master visiting his farm, to sell his old oxen, old
wagons, old tools, old and diseased servants, and every thing else become
useless. . . . The American slaves cannot enumerate this among the
injuries and insults they receive. It was the common practice to expose in
the island Esculapius, in the Tyber, diseased slaves, whose cure was like
to become tedious. The emperor Claudius, by an edict, gave freedom to such
of them as should recover, and first declared that if any person chose to
kill rather than expose them, it should be deemed homicide. The exposing
them is a crime of which no instance has existed with us; and were it to
be followed by death, it would be punished capitally. We are told of a
certain Vedius Pollio, who, in the presence of Augustus, would have given
a slave as food to his fish, for having broken a glass. With the Romans,
the regular method of taking the evidence of their slaves was under
torture. Here it has been thought better never to resort to their
evidence. When a master was murdered, all his slaves, in the same house,
or within hearing, were condemned to death. Here punishment falls on the
guilty only, and as precise proof is required against him as against a
freeman. Yet notwithstanding these and other discouraging circumstances
among the Romans, their slaves were often their rarest artists. They
excelled too in science, insomuch as to be usually employed as tutors to
their masters' children. Epictetus, Terence, and Phaedrus, were slaves.
But they were of the race of whites. It is not their condition then, but
nature, which has produced the distinction. Whether further observation
will or will not verify the conjecture, that nature has been less
bountiful to them in the endowments of the head, I believe that in those
of the heart she will be found to have done them justice. That disposition
to theft with which they have been branded, must be ascribed to their
situation, and not to any depravity of the moral sense. The man, in whose
favour no laws of property exist, probably feels himself less bound to
respect those made in favour of others. When arguing for ourselves, we lay
it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation
of right; that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct,
founded in force, and not in conscience: and it is a problem which I give
to the master to solve, whether the religious precepts against the
violation of property were not framed for him as well as his slave? And
whether the slave may not as justifiably take a little from one, who has
taken all from him, as he may slay one who would slay him? That a change
in the relations in which a man is placed should change his ideas of moral
right or wrong, is neither new, nor peculiar to the colour of the blacks.
Homer tells us it was so 2600 years ago.
Jove fix'd it
certain, that whatever day
Makes man a
slave, takes half his worth away.
But the
slaves of which Homer speaks were whites. Notwithstanding these
considerations which must weaken their respect for the laws of property,
we find among them numerous instances of the most rigid integrity, and as
many as among their better instructed masters, of benevolence, gratitude
and unshaken fidelity. The opinion, that they are inferior in the
faculties of reason and imagination, must be hazarded with great
diffidence. To justify a general conclusion, requires many observations,
even where the subject may be submitted to the anatomical knife, to
optical classes, to analysis by fire, or by solvents. How much more then
where it is a faculty, not a substance, we are examining; where it eludes
the research of all the Senses; where the conditions of its existence are
various and variously combined; where the effects of those which are
present or absent bid defiance to calculation; let me add too, as a
circumstance of great tenderness, where our conclusion would degrade a
whole race of men from the rank in the scale of beings which their Creator
may perhaps have given them. To our reproach it must be said, that though
for a century and a half we have had under our eyes the races of black and
of red men, they have never yet been viewed by us as subjects of natural
history. I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks,
whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and
circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body
and mind. It is not against experience to suppose, that different Species
of the same genus, or varieties of the same species, may possess different
qualifications. Will not a lover of natural history then, one who views
the gradations in all the races of animals with the eye of philosophy,
excuse an effort to keep those in the department of man as distinct as
nature has formed them?
This
unfortunate difference of colour, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful
obstacle to the emancipation of these people. Many of their advocates,
while they wish to vindicate the liberty of human nature are anxious also
to preserve its dignity and beauty. Some of these, embarrassed by the
question `What further is to be done with them?' join themselves in
opposition with those who are actuated by sordid avarice only. Among the
Romans emancipation required but one effort. The slave, when made free,
might mix with, without staining the blood of his master. But with us a
second is necessary, unknown to history. When freed, he is to be removed
beyond the reach of mixture.
The
particular customs and manners that may happen to be received in that
state?
It is
difficult to determine on the standard by which the manners of a nation
may be tried, whether catholic, or particular. It is more difficult for a
native to bring to that standard the manners of his own nation,
familiarized to him by habit. There must doubtless be an unhappy influence
on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among
us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of
the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one
part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and
learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the
germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning
to do what he sees others do. If a parent could find no motive either in
his philanthropy or his self love, for restraining the intemperance of
passion towards his slave, it should always be a sufficient one that his
child is present. But generally it is not sufficient. The parent storms,
the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs
in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to the worst of passions,
and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be
stamped by it with odious pecularities. The man must be a prodigy who can
retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. And with
what execration should the statesman be loaded, who, permitting one half
the citizens thus to trarnple on the rights of the other, transforms those
into despots, and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part,
and the amor patriae of the other. For if a slave can have a country in
this world, it must be any other in preference to that in which he is born
to live and labour for another; in which he must lock up the faculties of
his nature, contribute as far as depends on his individual endeavours to
the evanishment of the human race, or entail his own miserable condition
on the endless generations proceeding from him. With the morals of the
people, their industry also is destroyed. For in a warm climate, no man
will labour for himself who can make another labour for him. This is so
true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are
ever seen to labour. And 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 I tremble for my country when I
reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that
considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the
wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among possible events: that
it may become probable by supernatural interference! The almighty has no
attribute which can take side with us in such a contest. - But 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.
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Notes
1. Crawford.
2.
Jefferson's own note: The instrument proper to them is the Banjar, which
they brought hither from Africa, and which is the original of the guitar,
its chords being precisely the four lower chords of the guitar.
If Jefferson
is referring to the banjo here, he is completely wrong: only the ukelele-banjo
has the same tone intervals as the 4 higher strings of the guitar, however
the guitar is tuned in E and the ukelele-banjo in B: other four string
banjo's are tuned like a violin (GMW).
3. This
misspelled reference to Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784) illustrates how
illogical Jefferson could become on race analysis. Considering that she
was an African slave and largely self-taught, the marvel is her
intellectual precocity not only as a poet, but as a fluent classicist and
as a fascinating and brilliant conversationalist - all achieved before her
death at the age of 31.
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