In today's
selection -- the paradox between Thomas Jefferson's authorship of the
Declaration of Independence and his ownership of slaves. When he
drafted the Declaration of Independence Jefferson wrote that the slave
trade was an "execrable commerce ...this assemblage of horrors," a
"cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights
of life & liberties." Yet when he had the opportunity in 1817 due
to a bequest from Revolutionary War hero Thaddeus Kosciuszko, he did not
free his slaves. Jefferson owned more than 600 slaves in his lifetime
and at any given time approximately 100 slaves lived on Monticello. In
1792, Jefferson calculated that he was making a 4 percent profit per
year on the birth of black children. Jefferson's nail boys alone
produced 5,000 to 10,000 nails a day, for a gross income of $2000 in
1796, $35,000 in 2013.
"With five simple
words in the Declaration of Independence -- 'all men are created equal'
-- Thomas Jefferson undid Aristotle's ancient formula, which had
governed human affairs until 1776: 'From the hour of their birth, some
men are marked out for subjection, others for rule.' In his original
draft of the Declaration, in soaring, damning, fiery prose, Jefferson
denounced the slave trade as an 'execrable commerce ...this
assemblage
of horrors,' a 'cruel war against human nature itself, violating its
most sacred rights of life & liberties.' ...
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"But in the 1790s,
... 'the most remarkable thing about Jefferson's stand on slavery is
his immense silence.' And later, [historian David Brion] Davis finds,
Jefferson's emancipation efforts 'virtually ceased.' ...
"In 1817,
Jefferson's old friend, the Revolutionary War hero Thaddeus Kosciuszko,
died in Switzerland. The Polish nobleman, who had arrived from Europe in
1776 to aid the Americans, left a substantial fortune to Jefferson.
Kosciuszko bequeathed funds to free Jefferson's slaves and purchase land
and farming equipment for them to begin a life on their own. In the
spring of 1819, Jefferson pondered what to do with the legacy.
Kosciuszko had made him executor of the will, so Jefferson had a legal
duty, as well as a personal obligation to his deceased friend, to carry
out the terms of the document.
"If Jefferson had
accepted the legacy, as much as half of it would have gone not to
Jefferson but, in effect, to his slaves -- to the purchase price for
land, livestock, equipment and transportation to establish them in a
place such as Illinois or Ohio. Moreover, the slaves most suited for
immediate emancipation -- smiths, coopers, carpenters, the most skilled
farmers -- were the very ones whom Jefferson most valued. He also shrank
from any public identification with the cause of emancipation. ...
"In
the 1790s, as Jefferson was mortgaging his slaves to build Monticello,
George Washington was trying to scrape together financing for an
emancipation at Mount Vernon, which he finally ordered in his will. He
proved that emancipation was not only possible, but practical, and he
overturned all the Jeffersonian rationalizations. Jefferson insisted
that a multiracial society with free black people was impossible, but
Washington did not think so. Never did Washington suggest that blacks
were inferior or that they should be exiled.
"It is curious
that we accept Jefferson as the moral standard of the founders' era, not
Washington. Perhaps it is because the Father of his Country left a
somewhat troubling legacy: His emancipation of his slaves stands as not a
tribute but a rebuke to his era, and to the prevaricators and
profiteers of the future, and declares that if you claim to have
principles, you must live by them."
Author: Henry Weincek
Publisher: Smithsonian magazine
Date: October 2012
Pages: 1, 10, 11
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