Jefferson and Thurmond

I should say that I’m extremely doubtful Jefferson could have peacefully talked the south into abolition no matter how hard he tried. I don’t mean this as any kind of apologetic for either him or the South. I simply don’t see any support for what power or reasoning could have overcome Southern economic interests and bigotry.

I did know about Washington, though I’m pretty sure I learned it from “Cartoon History of the United States” rather than my history class. It’s a little more impressive than that cherry tree thing they prattle on about in elementary school.

I don’t think it’s very plausible that he could have peacefully ended slavery. Undoubtedly, he could have done more.

I don’t think Washington by himself can take Jefferson from “champion of liberty” to “comparable to Strom Thurmond.” His writings are still an amazing thing even if he failed to live up to them, and he was (probably) relatively progressive on race for someone of his time and place.

NPR has two excellent segments on “presidential slavery.” The first is this “discussion”:http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1519717 with Henry Wiencek and Gary Wills. The second is an “interview”:http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1499821 with Wiencek about his book. (See the link to a review posted in the first comment above.) Washington was ruthless with his slaves. If you only listen to some of the latter segment, at least go through minutes 6:00-9:00. Some of what Wiencek has to say is really shocking.

This whole subject has been (not surprisingly) discussed a lot in recent years. There was an article in the Atlantic by Conor Cruise O’Brien for instance that got a lot of attention (at least a couple of years before the DNA results were known). There’s an excellent book on Jefferson’s changing (changing for the worse, interestingly) views on slavery, The Wolf by the Ears. Don’t know who wrote it, I’ll have to look…

When Jefferson died, they had to sell off pretty much all of his belongings to pay his debts. If you visit Monticello, on the tour they talk about the long strange trip it’s been attempting to find and buy up his belongings. Even if he’d wanted to free his slaves, I doubt he could have gotten away with it because of his debts. It’s still not much consolation however.

A few random thoughts.

Washington did free his slaves at his death. There is a new book out (forget the details) on GW and slavery suggesting that this was not an easy decision and that it was only late in life that GW decided that revolutionary values meant that slavery was a problem. GW was also the best business men of all the founders.

For Jefferson, the standard is not so much Washington as the folks who were moving to the midwest with their slaves and freeing them there. TJ knew about it, he was asked to help, he tried to talk them out of it. TJ is frustrating because he is so contradictory on slavery. He has the strong rhetoric about inalienable rights, he treats slavery as a wrong, but he is never willing to act on that wrong – it is always delay, or distraction, or TJ speaking about his death (a sign that TJ is depressed.)

If TJ had burned his political capital and talked about slavery, Virginia’s very close decision in 1830 might have turned towards gradual emancipation like New York rather than towards stronger slavery like the cotton south.

As for Jefferson and debt, the story gets better. Jefferson’s expenses exceeded the operating income of Montecello. So, every few years he would sell a few slaves to cover his bills. He prided himself on being generous – he waited until people turned 16 before selling them away from their parents. His massive debt late in life came when he co-signed a note for a friend who went bankrupt in the crash of 1819. TJ continued to live well after that.

Finally, with Sally Hemings, the total quantity of narrative, neighborhood, family, and genetic evidence means that TJ and Sally Hemings had four surviving children together. The more limited genetic and historical evidence for Tom Woodson suggests that he was not a child of Jefferson and Hemings. Finally, remember that Hemings was Martha Wayles Jefferson’s half sister and looked very like her. TJ had long-term relations with two sisters, one white and one black.

TJ is a fascinating subject.

Ted K.

I’d second, third, or fourth – lost count reading the comments – the idea that GW’s freeing of the slaves *is* part of the standard history.

The fact that everyone around Washington apparently tried to dissuade him, does take some of the heat off Jefferson. Freeing slaves was not a common event. Wasn’t there also a difference in the personal wealth of Washington and Jefferson at the end? Jefferson was always near poverty, as I remember, and maybe he thought his estate couldn’t *afford* it?

Anyway I think we tend to forget what an extraordinary person Washington was. “Father of his country” sounds sentimental and corny, but he was just that. Jefferson may have been less of a person – most other people were -, but he was more the thinker and the theoretician, and that’s why he deserves a very honored place in history.

1. Jefferson couldn’t have done much about the 3/5 compromise, seeing as he wasn’t at the Constitutional Convention–he was the U.S. ambassador to France. It’s doubtful he even knew the specifics of what was being debated, as the deliberations were secret. It’s a common misrecollection of history, but a misrecollection nonetheless.

2. Washington freeing his slaves is part of the common history, though perhaps not overemphasized. It was made a big deal of at (still privately-held) Mt. Vernon when I visited.

This page has a pretty interesting overview of the Virginia elite’s (Washington, Madison, Jefferson, etc.) attitudes toward slavery and their actions.

I’m not sure what should have been done about the 3/5ths Compromise. If my recollection of it is correct, it seems to be widely misunderstood today.

As I recall, the Southern states would have much preferred slaves counted as 5/5ths a person because it would have given the South more political power. Many in the North would have preferred the slaves to be counted as 0/5ths a person, but that tended to legitimize the claim that slaves were property rather than people.

I mean, suppose you were at the Constitutional Convention and you wanted to end slavery. If you want slaves counted as 5/5ths you give the South more political power (as if slaves don’t the way massa tells them to vote), and giving the South more political power is not a good strategy for ending slavery. At the same time, trying to diminish Southern political power by counting slaves as 0/5ths tends to reinforce the claim that slaves are merely property and now human beings endowed with inalienable rights, no?

Anyone?

Yep, just so. (And of course slaves weren’t allowed to vote, not even 3/5 of a vote – the 3/5 rule applied to how the population was counted for the purpose of deciding how many Congressional representatives a state was entitled to. It’s one of the weird ironies of the whole situation that it was the presence of vast numbers of slaves that kept pro-slavery presidents, representatives and senators, and (very crucially) Supreme Court justices in office. The South always outnumbered the North, because of the slaves, who couldn’t vote, so with those numbers, the South kept getting its way, which is why the Missouri Compromise happened, and the Fugitive Slave Law, and the Dred Scott decision – and the Civil War. A grotesque arrangement. As Jefferson said, we had the wolf by the ears, and dared not let go.)

According to Gary Wills, Jefferson was eventually elected President because of the 3/5 rule. I think he was the only one for which it was decisive, though the proxy “slave power” of slaveholders in the South created by the rule was a major sore spot in regional relations in the early US. It’s an interesting point to ponder, one that Wills says is underemphasized in most histories: the slaveholders derived not only economic value from their slaves, but considerable political power as well, because these people who couldn’t actually vote were partially counted in the census.

Doug,

Interesting, too, what I’ve recently read in The Counsins’ Wars: while Ohio and Indiana were free states, they also had statuts banning blacks from residence (or was it entry?) in their territory.

You say this as if this is somehow contradictory. This is completely misrepresenting the opinion of most opponents of slavery in the 19th century. The majority (including President Lincoln) were not egalitarians who believed that blacks and whites should be equal; they were people who simply did not want black slaves to compete with white freemen in the labor market. The fact is that despite victory in the Civil War, when the North understood the costs involved, it resigned itself, after a few years, to the subjugation of Blacks by Whites in the South, as long as the North was dominant over the South nationwide.

“I hate self-righteous presentism anyway, and for all I know I would have done exactly the same or worse if I’d been in his position.

I thought you were against cultural relativism?”

Eh? I am. I don’t see any contradiction. Of course I would have been wrong if I had acted that way – but that doesn’t (to say the least) rule out the possibility that I would have. Fact-value distinction, sort of thing.

“It’s often quite easy to use the, “victim of his times” argument (lord knows, I’ve used it before) but Jefferson’s own intellectual height makes it clear that he wasn’t a victim of the attitude that slaves’ natural place was in servitude.”

Yes, and furthermore, the thought was certainly available to him. He corresponded with people who criticised him sharply on slavery. And the Adamses never stopped giving him a hard time on the subject. (Abigail Adams mentions Sally Hemings at least once in a letter to Jefferson – something about how young she is to be a sort of nanny for Jefferson’s daughter in Paris, if I remember correctly.)

JPM —

The distinction is that slaves weren’t allowed to vote at all; even when they were given the right to vote, the Jim Crow regulations allowed southern leaders to restrict voting access, while (I believe) attaining representative power from the large population of former slaves. I’d like to know the increase (if any, but I think there had to be) in represenatives in the South after the passing of the fifteenth amendment.

Any history buffs?

I apologize for the spelling errors: I have a nasty cut from an oyster shell on my right thumb, and it’s rather disruptive.

On the question of how well known it is that Washington freed his slaves (in his will), a check of “George Washington” and “freed his slaves” finds 2,240 hits. Most pretty prominent. I think one clearly cannot say, at the least, that this has not been well known for several years.

“great people can have great flaws”

People who have great flaws are not great people.

Eh? I am. I don’t see any contradiction.

I was just uh…amused at where a commitment to universal values begins to be inflected with worries about presentism, i.e. judging by present values.

…

I’d note that one of the lessons of Jefferson, as of so many others, is that great people can have great flaws.

I thought it was that privilege matters more than ideology.

That’s what my mother told me at any rate.

> The fact is that despite victory in the Civil War, when the North understood the costs involved, it resigned itself, after a few years, to the subjugation of Blacks by Whites in the South, as long as the North was dominant over the South nationwide.

Not quite; check out the circumstances of Rutherford B. Hayes’ election. Slammed the brakes on Reconstruction.

> The distinction is that slaves weren’t allowed to vote at all; even when they were given the right to vote, the Jim Crow regulations allowed southern leaders to restrict voting access, while (I believe) attaining representative power from the large population of former slaves.

First Jim Crow laws were in the North (I believe). But the end of Reconstruction ended not just voting access, but also any other standing in society, for almost a century, and prompted northward migration.

The whole legacy is shameful, but shared amongst many; finding the Founding Fathers culpable (in that their efforts were insufficient) smacks of self-righteous moralising. (Brits didn’t have the economic incentives to continue what they’d helped institute; but you wanna cotton up to child labour in Manchester?)

Right, that’s what I’m saying, what nnyhav said. Self-righteous moralizing. Although, at the same time – he could have done better. But can’t we all.

Rea,

All said and done, what do you call a species that wields a whip and flogs another human being? Not a human being, in my books. “Those were different times” is no excuse. Before Galileo, most people thought that the earth was flat. But the earth was never flat. Hope you get the drift.

“Is there any evidence that being counted as 3/5ths human at all advanced the claim that slaves are human beings endowed with alienable rights?”

I went back and reviewed some of Madison’s notes from the Convention. I guess what sticks in my mind most are some of the comments made by MORRIS. E.g., “Upon what principle is it that the slaves shall be computed in the representation? Are they men? Then make them citizens, and let them vote. Are they property? Why, then, is no other property included?”

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/debates/808.htm

What did the founding fathers write about precedents for freeing slaves in ancient Rome?

It seems to me that some of them at least would have seen both the moral and the practical precedent – and recognized the practicality of a relatively comfortable approximation to virtue.

>>Interesting, too, what I’ve recently read in The
>>Counsins? Wars: while Ohio and Indiana were
>>free states, they also had statuts banning
>>blacks residence (or was it entry?) in their
>>territory.

>You say this as if this is somehow contradictory.
>This is completely misrepresenting the opinion of
>most opponents of slavery in the 19th century.
>The majority (including President Lincoln) were
>not egalitarians who believed that blacks and
>whites should be equal;

Actually, that’s what I wanted to bring out. The dichotomy: Northern views on race=good; Southern views on race=bad is entirely too common. It’s too easy to skip from opposition to slavery to presuming 21st century views on race for 19th people. Pointing out exclusionary laws in the north is one way to keep a more nuanced view in sight.

“People who have great flaws are not great people.”

We’d not previously established any definition of what constitutes a “great person.” So you are certainly free to assert that, whether as a tautology, or by any other definition you care to submit.

I’ll take the position of disagreeing, lazily, by asserting my original statement as an axiom, and agreeing with Rea that your definition would seem to leave very few examples of “great people” on the ground. Any that could be found must be, as well as terribly admirable, terribly boring.

Can anyone nominate any great people with no significant flaws? Note: from documented history only, not fiction or mythology or religious hagiography (even Moses, Jesus, and Buddha, have some rather significant failings at times, in my readings, anyway).

I’ve always found that the most interesting characters in history are those who have done great things, or thought great thoughts, but were full of odd contradictions and failings, myself. Churchill. Both Roosevelts. Lincoln. Endless list, really. Pointing out and considering their contradictions can be fascinating, no?

Incidentally, Ophelia, I first ran across you on this blog, but, in the way of things, immediately started serendipitiously finding stuff by you elsewhere, as well deliberately finding your website, deliberately blogrolling it, and rapidly became a Great Admirer (though I’m flawed, flawed, deeply flawed).

Drapetomaniac asks “Is there any evidence that being counted as 3/5ths human at all advanced the claim that slaves are human beings endowed with alienable rights?” The southern slaveowners wanted to count their slaves as full humans for the sake of getting more votes-by-proxy for the slaveholders. The northerners rightly objected that this gave the slaveholders too much power. The right reason for this is that slaveholders didn’t necessarily act in the best interests of those whose proxy vote they possessed. I’m not sure what the historical argument was. So they settled on a compromise. In neither case was it discussing the essential personhood of a slave, and in neither case did it involve really giving a vote to slaves, so I don’t see how it’s even about the issue of human beings with inalienable rights.

The difference between Jefferson and Thurmond is simple: Jefferson was a man who couldn’t live up to his own ideals. Except as a friend of segregation, Thurmond never had any ideals to begin with.

Gary —

What counts as a flaw, anyway? For instance, do we count drug use as a flaw? How about gambling or consensual adultery?

You repeat the claim that Jefferson had an affair with Sally Hemings and fathered a child with her as if it were a fact. The truth is that some scientists examined the DNA and said that one of the 6 males in the Jefferson household at the time fathered Heming’s child. That means that, statistically, there is a 83.3% chance that a Jefferson OTHER THAN THOMAS JEFFERSON fathered the child in question. So, with the evidence we now have, no court on Earth would even order Thomas Jefferson to pay child support. There is no preponderance of evidence to support the claim. (Yes, I am aware that no child support enforcement or DNA existed 200 years ago. I am taking artistic license to make a point.)
By the way, I would like to see an independent review of even this conclusion. How do they know that a Jefferson from 20 years after Thomas Jefferson’s death did not father a child with a Hemings woman, other than Sally Hemings?
The whole thing seems political to me, they want to bash Jefferson in order to denigrate America because Jefferson was and is a great American hero.
When Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, he included a condemnation of King George’s approval of the slave trade. The other delegates voted to delete this passage. As president in 1808, Jefferson succeeded in stopping the importation of any more slaves into America. Yes, slavery continued to exist, but he took this step toward ending it, which was the most the people would accept at the time.