Jefferson, Spokesman of American Liberty?

At the age of 77, in 1821, he wrote a political autobiography. He described in great detail his activities. In it he attempted to show his consistent opposition to slavery. After Independence he was elected to the House of Burgesses of Virginia. He describes one bill that failed of passage: “the time had not yet come….”

The bill on the subject of slaves was a mere digest of the existing laws respecting them, without any intimation of a plan for a future & general emancipation. It was thought better that this should be kept back, and attempted only by way of amendment whenever the bill should be brought on. The principles of the amendment however were agreed on, that is to say, the freedom of all born after a certain day, and deportation at a proper age. But it was found that the public mind would not yet bear the proposition, nor will it bear it even at this day. Yet the day is not distant when it must bear and adopt it, or worse will follow. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them. It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation and deportation peaceably and in such slow degree as that the evil will wear off insensibly, and their place be pari passu filled up by free white laborers. If on the contrary it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up. We should in vain look for an example in the Spanish deportation or deletion of the Moors. This precedent would fall far short of our case.

Here we have the essence of TJ’s position. Abolish slavery by attrition and deportation of free Blacks.

To get around the stain of racism on our eloquent architect of freedom, especially freedom of religion, there are excuses made along the lines of, well, “he was a man of his times.” Aside from the feeling that he should have been able to “rise above his times,” we can easily find numerous examples, from the most varied social strata, who didn’t share his views.

“Man of his times”?

George Tucker, a Virginia essayist, poet, and novelist, observed that Jefferson did not seem to realize that beauty lay in the eye of the beholder: Jefferson’s wholly subjective notion of the superior comeliness of whites did not necessarily reflect the views of the Creator. To which Jefferson answered that “we have indeed an innate sense of what we call beautiful” and that sense was based upon objective laws of harmony, symmetry, and proportion established in the minds of men by the Author of Nature. But Tucker would have none of this invocation of Heaven and the Most High: he insisted that Jefferson’s theory of black inferiority had actually led masters to mistreat their slaves. “After all,” he remarked caustically, “whether the blacks are uglier or handsomer than the whites, can prove nothing as to their inferiority in the endowments of the mind, unless we are to take it for granted that beauty and genius always go together, a proposition for which Mr. Jefferson ought not to contend.”

John Davis, an English traveler, said that the whites owed their alleged superiority to their education, not to their biology or skin-coloration: “They {the blacks] would be the equal of their masters in virtue, knowledge and manners had they been born free, and with the same advantages in the scale of society. It is to civilization that even Europeans owe their superiority over the savage.”

Alexander Hamilton, was opposed to slavery. He inherited four, which he freed.

Dr. Benjamin Rush, Philadelphia physician, in 1773, a member of the Jeffersonian circle, published An Address on the Slavery of the Negroes in America in which he reported that travelers returning from Africa had found the natives to be ingenious, humane, and strongly attached to their family and friends — all of which proved, he contended, that “they were equal to the Europeans, when we allow for the diversity of temper and genius which is occasioned by climate. . . .We have many well-attested anecdotes of as sublime and disinterested virtue among them as ever adorned a Roman or a Christian character.” The idleness, unreliability, and pilfering attributed to them by American slaveowners Rush set down as “the genuine offspring of slavery.”

Henri Grégoire, Bishop of Blois, a noted contemporary opponent of slavery, compiled a series of case histories of distinguished blacks which proved, to the Bishop’s satisfaction, that Jefferson’s doubts about the intellectual capacities of blacks were without foundation. Jefferson ridiculed the project: his [Bishop Grégoire’s] credulity, “Jefferson observed, “has made him gather up every story he could find of men of color (without distinguishing whether black, or of what degree mixture) however slight the mention or light the authority on which they are quoted.” But, Jefferson added, “as to Bishop Grégoire, I wrote him …. a very soft answer.” But if he gave soft answers, he demanded hard evidence — and this, he was convinced, had yet to be produced.

Edward Coles gave one of the best refutations to the excuse that “he was a man of his times.”

Edward Coles, onetime private secretary to James Madison and a neighbor of Jefferson’s at Monticello, called upon Jefferson, “the revered father of all our political and social blessings,” to sound the tocsin for the gradual emancipation of the slaves in Virginia and thereby remove what Coles called — and here he took the words from Jefferson himself — “this degrading feature of British colonial policy.” Coles argued that if Jefferson put the full weight of his immense prestige unequivocally on the side of the antislavery movement, he would crown all his achievements and consecrate his memory for all eternity. In the hope of bestirring the “patriarch” at Monticello, Coles used a familiar Jeffersonian argument: the people must be led by an elite of natural aristocrats whose function, said Coles, was “to arouse and enlighten the public sentiment which in matters of this kind ought not to be expected to lead, but to be led.” Even if Jefferson remained quiescent at Monticello, Coles declared his intention of actually doing something about slavery: he would sell his estate near Charlottesville and establish his slaves as free men on farms on the free soil of Illinois. What did Thomas Jefferson think of this idea which, if it did nothing more, would set an example to Virginia slave-owners, afflicted, as was Jefferson himself, by the pangs of conscience?

Knowing Jefferson’s strong aversion to slavery, Coles could hardly have expected the reply he received. Instead of approving Coles’s plan and giving him his blessing, Jefferson dashed cold water on the whole idea. The slaves, he said, would fail as free farmers because their previous condition of servitude had made them as “incapable as children of taking care of themselves.” Since the experiment was certain to collapse, he ad­vised Coles to remain in Virginia and “come forward in the public councils, become the missionary of this doctrine [emancipation] truly christian; insinuate and inculcate it softly but steadily.” In short, he counseled Coles to become an apostle but to keep his profile low — the course of action Jefferson had pursued for thirty years without visible effect.

Perhaps even more astonishing to Coles was Jefferson’s refusal to permit his name to figure at all in this enterprise. He found the appropriate analogy in the Iliad: “This, my dear sir,” he told Coles, “is like bidding Old Priam to buckle [on] the armour of Hector.... The enterprise is for the young. .. . It shall have all my prayers, and they are the only weapons of an old man.” Never before had he expressed such confidence in the efficacy of prayers.

To Coles, Jefferson repeated the maxim he had consistently acted upon in dealing with slavery: nothing was to be gained, and much might be lost, by moving too precipitately. A successful social reformer did not rush in where revolutionaries might fear to tread: he carefully prepared and cautiously tested the ground before he ventured upon it, and, above all, he made sure that public opinion was prepared to follow him. He recited the familiar litany: the only thing that could prevent the eventual overthrow of slavery was a premature effort on the part of overeager zealots to hasten the inevitable day of deliverance. In the meantime, it made no sense to preach to scoffing nonbelievers, especially as the effect of such exhortations would almost certainly delay the emancipation of the slaves and thereby aggravate the risk of a slave insurrection.

A second and probably more decisive reason for Jefferson’s rejection of Coles’s plan was that it treated free blacks as permanent residents of the United States and even raised the disquieting possibility that they might become active citizens. As he grew older, the impossibility of the two races coexisting in the same country became to him increasingly self-evident. No plan of emancipation that did not provide for the removal of the blacks from the United States had the slightest interest for him. His abhorrence of miscegenation intensified, if that were possible, with the passage of time. “The amalgamation of whites with blacks,” he told, “produces a degradation to which no lover of his country, no lover of excellence in the human character, can innocently consent.” The admixture of “Negro blood” would prove fatal to the republic.

In Illinois, Coles enjoyed the peace of mind and clear conscience forever denied Jefferson. He settled seventeen former slaves as tenant farmers on a tract of land near Edwardsville, Illinois, and gave them an opportunity to acquire ownership of 160-acre tracts on easy terms. When Frances Wright visited Edwardsville in the 1820s, she reported that “the liberated blacks spoke of their former master with tears of gratitude and affection.” Several paid daily visits to Coles to inquire if there were anything they could do for their former master.

Edward Coles really struck a blow for freedom; Jefferson’s hand remained poised for a blow he never found an opportunity to strike. The vital difference between the two men as exponents of the rights of man was that whereas Coles did not insist upon removing the free blacks from the United States, Jefferson made it a sine qua non of emancipation.

In discouraging Edward Coles from going to Illinois and declining to bestir himself in the antislavery cause, Jefferson did not admit that he was letting down the friends of freedom. He believed that by publishing his opinions in the Notes on Virginia he had done all that he could do and, indeed, all that he could reasonably be expected to do, against slavery; the passage of thirty years had merely confirmed the views he had then expressed. Anyone who wished to discover how he felt about slavery had only to consult the Notes on Virginia: there, set down in print, was everything he thought about slavery, the blacks themselves, and the manner in which the institution could be most efficaciously abolished. In short, Jefferson was on record, and no good purpose could be served by repeating the sentiments and arguments already advanced in the Notes on Virginia. It was, he made clear, his final sermon from his Virginia mount.

From Miller, The Wolf by the Ears, pp 205–209

When Jefferson heard of a colored person distinguishing himself or herself in the arts, science, or literature, his first question habitually was how much “white blood” this particular individual possessed. He was less surprised to find talent in mulattoes than in pure blacks; in his genetic scale, mulattoes were generally superior to their parents. At this point, blacks might well have protested that the decision had already been rendered against them: if they showed signs of excellence it was attributed to the white genes in their makeup; their deficiencies were ascribed to their “Africanness.”

There is some confusion about his role in the appointment of Benjamin Banneker, a free African-American, as assistant to the commission to lay out the capitol. President Washington made the appointment; some sources report that TJ had recommended him.

On March 12, 1791, when Banneker was 60, the Georgetown Weekly Ledger reported his appointment, remarking that Banneker was “an Ethiopian whose abilities as surveyor and astronomer already prove that Mr. [Thomas] Jefferson’s concluding that that race of men were void of mental endowment was without foundation.”

This shows that TJ’s racism was quite well known to the public.

In August Banneker sent TJ a manuscript of the astronomical almanac that he was planning to publish. Quoting from TJ’s Declaration, he presented a plea for freedom of his enslaved brothers and sisters. TJ replied in a short response that “no body wishes more ardently [than himself] to see a good system commenced, for raising the condition, both of their body and mind, to what it ought to be, as far as the imbecility of their present existence, and other circumstances, which cannot be neglected, will admit.” He also wrote that he was forwarding the manuscript to M. Condorcet, of the French Academy of Sciences—”because [he] considered it as a document, to which your whole color had a right for their justification, against the doubts which have been entertained of them.”

He does not include any comments on the merit of the almanac itself.

Years later, in a letter to his friend Joel Barlow, TJ remarked that Banneker may have had help in developing the calculations for his Almanac, and referring to the “long letter from Banneker, which shows him to have had a mind of very common stature indeed...”

Banneker published his almanac for many years, finally suspending it for low sales.

Jefferson was a Francophile and had many run-ins with the Federalists on this issue. Adams’s Secretary of State, Timothy Pickering, supported the Haitian slave uprising against French rule, led by Toussaint L’Ouverture. Alexander Hamilton, a native of the Caribbean himself, the first U.S. Treasury Secretary, helped L’Ouverture draft a constitution for the new nation.

Jefferson supported the French government in its attempts to suppress the uprising. He was afraid that the Haitian example would spread to the United States and incite slave uprisings. So, in 1801, the interests of Napoleon and Jefferson temporarily intersected. Napoleon was determined to restore French control of St. Domingue and Jefferson was eager to see the slave rebellion crushed.

Through secret diplomatic channels, Napoleon asked Jefferson if the United States would help a French army traveling by sea to St. Domingue. Jefferson replied that “nothing will be easier than to furnish your army and fleet with everything and reduce Toussaint [L’Ouverture] to starvation.”

But Napoleon had a secret second phase of his plan. Once a French army had subdued L’Ouverture and his slave army, Napoleon intended to move his forces to the North American mainland, basing a new French empire in New Orleans and settling the vast territory west of the Mississippi River.

In May 1801, Jefferson picked up the first inklings of Napoleon’s other agenda. Alarmed at the prospect of a major European power controlling New Orleans and thus the mouth of the strategic Mississippi River, Jefferson backpedaled on his commitment to Napoleon, retreating to a posture of neutrality.

Still – terrified at the prospect of a successful republic organized by freed African slaves – Jefferson took no action to block Napoleon’s thrust into the New World.

In 1802, a French expeditionary force achieved initial success against the slave army in St. Domingue, driving L’Ouverture’s forces back into the mountains. But, as they retreated, the ex-slaves torched the cities and the plantations, destroying the colony’s once-thriving economic infrastructure.

L’Ouverture, hoping to bring the war to an end, accepted Napoleon’s promise of a negotiated settlement that would ban future slavery in the country. As part of the agreement, L’Ouverture turned himself in.

Napoleon, however, broke his word. Jealous of L’Ouverture, who was regarded by some admirers as a general with skills rivaling Napoleon’s, the French dictator had L’Ouverture shipped in chains back to Europe where he died in prison.

Foiled Plans

Infuriated by the betrayal, L’Ouverture’s young generals resumed the war with a vengeance. In the months that followed, the French army – already decimated by disease – was overwhelmed by a fierce enemy fighting in familiar terrain and determined not to be put back into slavery.

Napoleon sent a second French army, but it too was destroyed. Though the famed general had conquered much of Europe, he lost 24,000 men, including some of his best troops, in St. Domingue before abandoning his campaign. The death toll among the ex-slaves was much higher, but they had prevailed, albeit over a devastated land.

In 1804, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the radical slave leader who had replaced L’Ouverture, formally declared the nation’s independence and returned it to its original Indian name, Haiti. A year later, apparently fearing a return of the French and a counterrevolution, Dessalines ordered the massacre of the remaining French whites on the island.

Though the Haitian resistance had blunted Napoleon’s planned penetration of the American mainland, Jefferson reacted to the bloodshed by imposing a stiff economic embargo on the island nation. In 1806, Dessalines was brutally assassinated, touching off a cycle of political violence that would haunt Haiti for the next two centuries.

By 1803, a frustrated Napoleon – denied his foothold in the New World – agreed to sell New Orleans and the Louisiana territories to Jefferson. Ironically, the Louisiana Purchase, which opened the heart of the present United States to American settlement, had been made possible despite Jefferson’s misguided collaboration with Napoleon.

“By their long and bitter struggle for independence, St. Domingue’s blacks were instrumental in allowing the United States to more than double the size of its territory,” wrote Stanford University professor John Chester Miller in his book, The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery.

But, Miller observed, “the decisive contribution made by the black freedom fighters … went almost unnoticed by the Jeffersonian administration.”

The loss of L’Ouverture’s leadership dealt another blow to Haiti’s prospects, according to Jefferson scholar Paul Finkelman of Virginia Polytechnic Institute.

“Had Toussaint lived, it’s very likely that he would have remained in power long enough to put the nation on a firm footing, to establish an order of succession,” Finkelman told me in an interview. “The entire subsequent history of Haiti might have been different.”

Jefferson’s Blemish

For some scholars, Jefferson’s vengeful policy toward Haiti – like his personal ownership of slaves – represented an ugly blemish on his legacy as a historic advocate of freedom.

Even in his final years, Jefferson remained obsessed with Haiti and its link to the issue of American slavery.

In the 1820s, the former President proposed a scheme for taking away the children born to black slaves in the United States and shipping them to Haiti. In that way, Jefferson posited that both slavery and America’s black population would be phased out. Eventually, Haiti would be all black and the United States white.

Jefferson’s deportation scheme never was taken very seriously and American slavery would continue for another four decades until it was ended by the Civil War. The official hostility of the United States toward Haiti extended almost as long, ending in 1862 when President Abraham Lincoln finally granted diplomatic recognition.

Robert Parry, Consortium News

The Louisiana Purchase meant a severe worsening of the situation of Black slaves in the territory acquired from France.

Although Jefferson never publicly admitted the fact, the lot of the slaves in Louisiana deteriorated as a result of the American occupation. Prior to 1803, slaves had been guaranteed certain rights by the Code Noir: to be instructed in religion, to cultivate a plot of ground for their own sustenance, to testify in court when white witnesses were not available (not, however, against masters), to observe Sundays as holidays, and to be buried in consecrated ground. Under the Code Noir, husbands and wives could not be sold separately, nor could a child under fourteen years of age be sold away from his or her mother; and slaves could, if mistreated, appeal to the colonial authorities. The Americans changed all that: the first territorial legislature under the new administration designated slaves as real estate, and the Black Code adopted by the Territory of Orleans in 1806 abolished the requirement that slaves be instructed in religion; de­prived slave marriages of legal status; prohibited blacks from testifying against whites; and rescinded the obligation formerly imposed upon mas­ters to provide their slaves with plots of ground. The Black Code likewise permitted the selling of husbands and wives separately and authorized the sale of any child over ten years of age without its mother.

These drastic changes in the status of slaves drew no protest from the white inhabitants of Louisiana; their indignation was reserved for the prohibition of the foreign slave trade—an act of tyranny which, they alleged, was contrary to the principles of the Declaration of Independence.

In retirement Jefferson became even a more ardent supporter of the extension of slavery, advancing the paradoxical argument that by expanding the extent of US territory to slavery its demise would be hastened.

After 1819, as a result of the political changes that had occurred since 1815 and decisions handed down by the Supreme Court bearing upon the constitutional relations between the states and the federal government, Jefferson became an ardent exponent of the establishment of slavery in the entire Louisiana Purchase.

He regarded the spread of slavery into the region he had acquired from France in 1803 as both desirable and salutary.

Among the arguments they adduced in 1787-1788 for the adoption of the Federal Constitution, Madison and Jefferson had broached the doc­trine that the immense territorial expanse of the United States in itself provided “a republican remedy for the disease most incident to republican government.” Now, in 1819-1821, they prescribed the diffusion of slavery over the national domain as a “republican remedy” for the diseases most incident to the Southern slave economy.

In espousing the diffusionist theory, Jefferson did not admit that he was in any way compromising his position as a champion of freedom. He never pretended that diffusion was a substitute for the emancipation and deportation of the slaves. He assumed that slavery would be mitigated, weakened, and ultimately destroyed if it were permitted to spread over the territories of the United States without congressional hindrance. He succeeded in persuading himself that by dispersing the slaves the number of slaveowners would be increased, large concentrations of slaves would be broken up, and the lot of the slaves would be actually improved. Nor did he ignore the fact that the danger of servile insurrection in the older sections of the Union where large numbers of blacks were held in servitude — Virginia was a conspicuous example—would be lessened. Moreover, he portrayed diffusion as the most practical way of facilitating the deportation of blacks, although he could hardly deny that dispersing them over the American West was a circuitous way to their final destination in Africa or Haiti. Finally, Jefferson argued, the diffusion and the dilution of ownership of slaves would promote their “happiness” by intermingling them temporarily with the white population and disseminating them among humane owners whose moral sense was relatively free of greed and avarice.

Jefferson saw nothing paradoxical in the idea that slavery could be weakened and ultimately destroyed by giving it free rein to expand over the national domain. From the vantage point of Monticello it appeared that the greatest obstacle to emancipation was the concentration of slaves in the hands of a comparatively few wealthy owners who, it seemed, would never willingly sacrifice their property for the good of the community. One of the most salutary effects of the abolition of primogeniture and entail in Virginia, James Madison said, was the breakup and dispersal of large slaveholdings. Jefferson and Madison expected that this process would be accelerated by opening the territories to slaveowners. In that event, they supposed, the ownership of slaves would be diffused among a multitude of small farmers, none of whom would possess more than a few “servants.” Being the owners of a small number of slaves, they would suffer less financial loss than would large owners when faced with the prospect of emancipation and deportation.

With his didactic, moralistic cast of mind and his conviction that the universe was governed by immutable moral laws, Jefferson could not dispense with the assurance that what he did accorded with the intentions of the Author of Nature. It was, therefore, not enough to portray the expansion of slavery into the territories as a program designed merely to bolster the economic and political position of the slave states; to be worthy of serious consideration it had to partake of the nature of a moral crusade. Accordingly, he was constrained to enlist the moral sense in support of the diffusion of slavery and to surround diffusionism with the aura of righteousness, humanitarianism, and divine approbation. It was no small achievement to put a moral imprimatur, peculiarly soothing to the uneasy consciences of moral-minded Southerners, upon the untrammeled expansion of slavery. And he executed this feat without appearing as an apologist for the “peculiar institution.” Indeed, Jefferson viewed himself and his “countrymen” as upholders of virtue, humanitarianism, and constitutionalism. Slavery, it seems, was capable of appropriating and bending to its own ends idealistic impulses, and it is a tribute to its power that in 1819–1821 Jefferson marshaled the full force of his moral idealism to insure its expansion.

Jefferson registered no protest against the efforts of the Missourians to prevent the entry of free blacks. He shivered no lances for free blacks anywhere in the Union, much less in Missouri where, presumably, they would create discontent and perhaps even an insurrectionary spirit among the slaves. He could not believe that permitting free blacks to go West would accelerate emancipation; indeed, as he had frequently said, his objective was to remove them from the United States, not encourage them to settle down as citizens. And so, by his silence on this issue, Jefferson put himself in the anomalous and morally untenable position of advocating the opening of the West to black slaves and closing it to free blacks. Truly, for Jefferson, the Missouri controversy proved to be a Pandora’s box filled with ambiguities, contradictions, paradoxes, and not a few sheer fantasies.

Yet, at no time during the Missouri controversy, however, did Jefferson depart in the slightest from his conviction that slavery was a terminal evil in the process of working its own destruction. “Nothing is more certainly written in the Book of Fate,” he said in 1821, “than that these people are to be free.” It was also written, he added, that they were to depart the United States as soon as they received their freedom.

In 1797, when Jefferson assumed the presidency of the American philosophical Society, he said that he had “an ardent desire to see knowledge so disseminated through the mass of mankind that it may at last reach the extremes of society, beggars and kings.” Significantly, he made no mention of another extreme more relevant to the American scene — the black slaves and free blacks in the United States. Jefferson’s educational plans were designed for whites only. In his voluminous correspondence there are only two or three references to the education of blacks. In the Notes on Virginia he suggested that black children be educated at the public expense preparatory to being expatriated to Africa or Haiti. In 1815 he stipulated that “the slave is to be prepared by instruction and habit for self-government, and for the honest pursuits of industry and social duty. The former must precede the latter.” But the kind of instruction he envisaged was in the skills required of artisans.

I conclude with one final example of his virulent racism.

In 1817, in his capacity as executor of the estate of his late friend, General Thaddeus Kosciusko, the Polish hero of the War of American Independence, Jefferson discovered that he had been directed by the general’s will to sell about seventeen thousand dollars in government securities and to devote the proceeds to the purchase, manumission, and education of young blacks. He refused to execute this project and as a result the bequest was diverted to other purposes which had nothing to do with furthering the education of blacks.

Sigmund Freud would have had a ball with TJ.

In the course of my investigation I came across the book by Roger Wilkins,¹ Jefferson’s Pillow. His judgment of Jefferson led me to write him as follows:

I’m a retired professor of computer engineering from Virginia Tech and a Unitarian Universalist. I suppose you know that the district that includes the Virginia congregations is named for Thomas Jefferson. Some years ago, following on a particularly insensitive event in Charlottesville some of our black members started a movement to change the name of the district. This failed by a few votes at the district conference, but it is supposed to come up again. I have been researching T.J’s record, in particular, your book and “The Wolf by the Ears.” At first I found, of course, his public statements on slavery, such as lamenting that the ban on slavery in the NW Territory lost by one vote, and so on. But as I got deeper into it, I found that he was truly an incredible racist, beyond “what the times” called for. I was prepared to support the name change-until I read your book. Now I am, shall I say, confused. In your last chapter I seem to read that his public record, such as The Declaration, inspires all who seek liberty and equality; after almost 250 years that is what is uppermost and most important. Names and tradition are important. Is the movement to change the name analogous to the efforts to ban Huckleberry Finn for the frank language Twain uses? It is after all, a condemnation of slavery. I have heard no complaints about Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which uses the same language where appropriate to the story (and which is a much stronger condemnation). The character of Tom himself is of course another issue. I would love to know your view of the TJ name controversy.

Here is his response:

Dear Professor Nadler,

I don’t think that there’s a right answer to your problem. Jefferson was a racist, a blatant user of the body and life of his slave, Sally Hemmings, and a generally self-comforting fellow all around.

But he was also an American patriot and a powerful propagandist for human freedom. Moreover, he was not such a bad president — buying the Louisiana territory and sending Lewis and Clark out to explore the country were pretty good moves, I’d say. He was the founding generation writ large — complex, not consistent, aware of the evil of slavery, but too weak to break out of it — much less to lead others out of it.

We can’t wipe out our history and make it prettier and cleaner than it was. It’s part of what made us who we are — and helps illuminate our problems. You can’t obliterate the past by changing the names of things. You can make the future better by looking at those things about the past which we hate and then trying the best we can to teach our children and grandchildren about the complexities of human life and the need for them to join the efforts of generations past to bring America up to the ideals that we claim animate us as a people.

So, I guess my advice is not to erase Jefferson, but to use him to help us think about the complexities in our national soul and how we can strive to make American life better for everyone.

I drew on a number of sources, especially these three books:

John C. Miller, The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery, The Free Press, New York, 1977

Roger W. Wilkins, Jefferson’s pillow: the founding fathers and the dilemma of Black patriotism, Beacon Press Boston, 2001.

Garry Wills, “Negro President”: Jefferson and the slave power, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 2003.

And … Google!

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