Thomas Jefferson is a man who really needs no introduction. He was recognized as a luminous writer who was appointed to draft the Declaration of Independence. Congress formally approved the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Jefferson owned many slaves that worked for him. He would often even sell his slaves to buy others. Why then would he write in the Declaration of Independence, “all men are created equal”? Is it possible that Thomas Jefferson was a hypocrite and only wrote what the population wanted to see? Did Thomas Jefferson enjoy owning slaves just as his other wealthy peers did? Neither one of those is true. Thomas Jefferson thought slavery was morally wrong and he thought that it should be abolished. We will take a closer look at Thomas Jefferson and his days of slave ownership. We will discuss how Jefferson would come to own slaves, how he tried to help them overcome slavery, and what he would do while in office or politics to set them free.
Many citizens failed to realize that Jefferson was a slave owner by inheritance and the Virginia law would prohibit him to setting them free. With Jefferson owning land, he needed cheap labor to work his land to make it as productive as it could be. Without slave labor he would not have been able to afford his home, land and lifestyle. During that era, owning slaves was an economic decision. See without slaves, poor whites would have to provide the cheap labor so necessary for the cultivation of tobacco and rice, and their low wages would preclude their ever owning property. (Kennedy, 2010) Thomas Jefferson’s father owned many slaves that would be passed down to him once his father died. Throughout his life, Jefferson was straddled with a level of debt that would not all...
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...zed them to the best of their abilities. He did in fact write, “all men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence. He was known for his strive and dedication to change the way people viewed slavery. It was a struggle throughout his tenure in office to abolish slavery, but as history shows, it set the stage for many other of our leaders to build on.
Works Cited
Kennedy, D. M. (2010). The American Pageant. Boston: Wadsworth.
Post, D. G. (2001, 07 02). Temple Universtiy. Retrieved 07 07, 2010, from Words Fitly Spoken: http://www.temple.edu/lawschool/dpost/slavery.PDF
Welling, G. M. (2005, 11 07). From Revolution to Reconstruction . Retrieved 07 07, 2010, from From Revolution to Reconstruction : http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/P/tj3/writings/slavery.htm
Wilson, D. L. (1992). Thomas Jefferson and the Character Issue. The Atlantic Monthly , 270 (5), 57-74.
There are many contradictions pertaining to slavery, which lasted for approximately 245 years. In Woody Holton’s “Black Americans in the Revolutionary Era”, Holton points out the multiple instances where one would find discrepancies that lie in the interests of slaveowners, noble figures, and slaves that lived throughout the United States. Holton exemplifies this hostility in forms of documents that further specify and support his claim.
Thomas Jefferson was a slave holder and the primary writer of the Declaration of Independence. Many will assume he was a racist and pro-slavery, but unless one were to look deeper into why Jefferson would even own slaves, this assumption is very believable. I would say Thomas Jefferson was a hypocrite, but he was justified hypocrite. As I think about why would Jefferson would want the abolishing of slaves, but on the other hand own slaves, it seems a bit hypocritical, but we must take a moment and really think was his hypocrisy justifiable? During this era nearly every successful white man owned slaves, so why would Jefferson not own them himself? Slaves were not just considered property, but they had valuable characteristics about them. They
Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner himself, originally wrote in the Declaration of Independence that all slaves should coexist with society, but he ended up revoking his opinions. Notes on the State of Virginia, written by Thomas Jefferson was a story that had conflicting ideas about African Americans and their role in society. During Jefferson’s time period, whites often regarded African Americans simply as slaves, or even a different species altogether. Slaves were regarded as culturally, physically, and mentally different from their white counterparts. Americans started to become dependent on their slaves, which made them want to keep their dominant relationship even more than before. Jefferson believed
Franklin, J., Moss, A. Jr. From Slavery to Freedom. Seventh edition, McGraw Hill, Inc.: 1994.
Although living in a place where slavery was accepted, he called it "moral depravity" and believed that slavery presented the greatest threat to the survival of the new American nation. Jefferson wrote letters to his peers admitting that slavery is wrong and the he has a plan for emancipation.B In 1778, Jefferson drafted a Virginia law that prohibited the importation of enslaved Africans. In 1784, he proposed an ordinance that would ban slavery in the Northwest territories.2 Thomas Jefferson owned over 200 slaves and only freed few slaves upon his death. Jefferson treated his slaves well.3 Jefferson hardly ever allowed his slaves to be overworked or whipped. His slaves worked on his large plantation, he needed the slaves to raise his livestock and cash crops. Jefferson, although treating his slaves well, considered his slaves property.4 When he needed to he sold and bought them, he also punished the slaves that disobeyed him. Even though Jefferson opposed slavery, he still owned them at the same time making him a hypocrite.
The US constitution was written with great vision to create strong nation. The bill of right were written, it provide all humans with rights. The writers of the constitution we hypocrites, they didn’t abide by what they preached. Thomas Jefferson wrote himself “ all men are created equal” but he owned slaves. The founding father didn’t look or even think about slavery when they wrote the constitution. They were pre-occupied in getting the southern state to join the union and sign the new constitution. They southern states believed that the federal government shouldn’t mess with the issue on slavery because slavery was a state issue.
“All men are born free and with equal rights, and must always remain free and have equal rights,” (Thomas Jefferson) This is the famous statement made by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. He is being extremely hypocritical here considering he himself owned a near two hundred slaves. The slaves are still owned and treated as ‘property’. Thomas Jefferson did not have care for the slaves. The equalities discussed in the Declaration were not aimed to all men, they were aimed at specific white men. Frederick Douglass a former slave excellently asks in reaction to Jefferson; “Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?” What he means by “Us” is African American, it could also mean slave considering he was one. It is just so perfectly put because it is obvious the beliefs of Jefferson were not extended to African American’s or slaves. He continues on rather sarcastically “confess the benefits”, this is important because there was very little benefits. (Frederick Douglass, 1852,
He wisely used the issue of slavery to appeal to both the abolitionists and to Negrophobes, Northerners who were afraid of living side-by- side with Negroes and competing with them for jobs. For example, on July 10th of 1959, Lincoln gave a speech in Chicago, a primarily abolitionist town. Lincoln stated that inequality was unnecessary in this country. If all men were created equal then were should look past race, saying, “Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal” (Hofstadter, pg. 148).
Thomas Jefferson also had some dark history. Thomas Jefferson owned many slaves. When Thomas was 14 his father died and left him a 3,000 acre slave plantation with about 30 slaves. At one point he owned up to 600 slaves. There are many people that say Mr. Jefferson may have had a long term relationship with one of his female slaves, Sally Hemmings. It seems that most people agree that they had several children together. It is hard now to imagine what it would have been like to grow up on a slave plantation and to inherit ownership of slaves. Thomas Jefferson must have had many feelings of slavery through the years. Maybe some of the things that he saw on his own plantatio...
After the American Revolution, slavery began to decrease in the North, just as it was becoming more popular in the South. By the turn of the century, seven of the most Northern states had abolished slavery. During this time, a surge of democratic reform swept the North to the West, and there were demands for political equality, economic and social advances for all Americans. Northerners said that slavery revoked the human right of being a free person and when new territories became available i...
Replacing the weakly immuned Indians, African slaves had played an important role in assisting the agricultural development in the South. The very existence of slavery in this Virginian author’s home proved more ironic for a man who so profoundly spoke of freedom. History, however, omitted the reason why he excluded such a mention in his passages. In his original draft, “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” (Wiencek). He was complaisant to censor the issue of slavery in order for all representatives of states, including the southern states who depended on slave labor, and the northern states, who owed very few slaves themselves, to sign the Declaration. If he had not done so, the American Revolution would not have been urged, King George III would have still exercised his monarchical dictation, and democracy would not have been founded in the American nation. Although Jefferson could have prevented the American Civil War by recognizing the African slaves, he decided to prioritize the
For most American’s especially African Americans, the abolition of slavery in 1865 was a significant point in history, but for African Americans, although slavery was abolished it gave root for a new form of slavery that showed to be equally as terrorizing for blacks. In the novel Slavery by Another Name, by Douglas Blackmon he examines the reconstruction era, which provided a form of coerced labor in a convict leasing system, where many African Americans were convicted on triumphed up charges for decades.
Slavery was the core of the North and South’s conflict. Slavery has existed in the New World since the seventeenth century prior to it being exclusive to race. During those times there were few social and political concerns about slavery. Initially, slaves were considered indentured servants who will eventually be set free after paying their debt(s) to the owner. In some cases, the owners were African with white servants. However, over time the slavery became exclusive to Africans and was no limited to a specific timeframe, but life. In addition, the treatment of slaves worsens from the Atlantic Slave trade to th...
Knowles, H. J. (2007). The Constitution and Slavery: A Special Relationship. Slavery & Abolition, 28(3), 309-328. doi:10.1080/01440390701685514
Slavery has been a part of human practices for centuries and dates back to the world’s ancient civilizations. In order for us to recognize modern day slavery we must take a look and understand slavery in the American south before the 1860’s, also known as antebellum slavery. Bouvier’s Law Dictionary defines a slave as, “a man who is by law deprived of his liberty for life, and becomes the property of another” (B.J.R, pg. 479). In the period of antebellum slavery, African Americans were enslaved on small farms, large plantations, in cities and towns, homes, out on fields, industries and transportation. By law, slaves were the perso...