Thomas Jefferson and Black Americans
Author of Declaration of Independence Believed Blacks Inferior
Oct 5, 2009
In the late 1780s, as the first congress under the new constitution debated the issue of slavery, the words of Thomas Jefferson, the esteemed author of the Declaration of Independence, were often quoted to justify both the institution of black slavery and the necessity for keeping the races separate.
Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia
In 1780, while the war for independence was still being fought, the secretary to the French legation in Philadelphia sent out a questionnaire to the newly independent states requesting detailed information about each of them, with the goal of establishing increased commerce between them and their French allies. Jefferson almost immediately began preparing a response on behalf of Virginia. Because of his other preoccupations, and his own obsession with completeness and accuracy, Notes on the State of Virginia was not published in its final form in America until 1788.
How Jefferson Viewed the Race Problem
Jefferson favored the eventual elimination of the slave trade. In the meantime, though, what was to be done with the existing black population? Jefferson was absolutely opposed to any integration of the races. His reasons included:
- “deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites;”
- “ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained;”
- “the circumstance of superior beauty [among whites];”
- “a very strong and disagreeable odour [among blacks].”
These and other considerations, Jefferson concluded, would “produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race.” Noting that no scientific study had yet been done on the differences between the races, he went on to maintain, “as a suspicion only,” that the blacks were “inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind.”
How Jefferson Proposed to Deal with the Problem
Jefferson supported an act to emancipate all slaves born after the act’s passage. Children would stay with their parents until a certain age, then be educated “at the public expense” until the females were eighteen and the males twenty-one. When that age was reached, they would be “colonized to such place as the circumstances of the time should render most proper;” sent out with tools, household and craft implements, weapons, animals, etc.; and declared “a free and independent people” to whom would be offered “our alliance and protection....” At the same time, ships would be sent to other parts of the world to collect “an equal number of white inhabitants” to replace the black population.
Writing to Jared Sparks in February of 1824, at the age of 80, Jefferson reaffirmed his belief in the desirability of removing all blacks from the United States, and outlined a method for doing so which involved leaving black children with their mother for “a few years” and then relocating them to foreign shores. He acknowledged “some constitutional scruples,” and also some “scruples of humanity” about separating infants from their mothers, but concluded that “this would be straining at a gnat, and swallowing a camel.” Jefferson’s words in his Notes on the State of Virginia and elsewhere belied his earlier words about equality and were unfortunately used as a defense of both slavery and segregation.
Sources:
Jefferson, Thomas. Writings (Notes and Selection by Merrill D. Peterson). The Library of America, 1984, pp. 264-270.
Tise, Larry E. The American Counterrevolution: A Retreat from Liberty, 1783-1800. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1998, pp. 439-451.
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