I once admired Thomas Jefferson, seeing him as a great man with a tragic flaw: The writer of the inspiring words “all men are created equal” owned slaves. Now, I see Jefferson as an egregious hypocrite, who willfully betrayed the ideals he espoused.
I reached this conclusion after visiting Monticello, Jefferson’s famous Virginia estate, last summer. Previously, I didn’t realize the extent of Jefferson’s slave ownership, and I lazily—and ignorantly–excused it as a common ethical blind spot of his time. Below are facts I learned from my tour guide at Monticello, from the Monticello website and from other readings.
*Jefferson often denounced slavery. He wrote in 1774, “The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state.” Yet over the course of his life he owned a total of 600 slaves, who worked on his Monticello farm and other holdings.
*Jefferson was a “brutal hypocrite” even when judged by the standards of his time, according to historian Paul Finkelman. He notes that “while many of his contemporaries, including George Washington, freed their slaves during and after the revolution–inspired, perhaps, by the words of the Declaration–Jefferson did not.” Jefferson also “dodged opportunities to undermine slavery or promote racial equality.” For example, as a Virginia state legislator, Jefferson “blocked consideration of a law that might have eventually ended slavery in the state.”
*Jefferson was not a kind slave-owner, my guide at Monticello said, because that is a contradiction in terms. Although there is no evidence that Jefferson beat slaves himself, he employed overseers who did. The Monticello website says the overseer William Page had a reputation as a “terror” among slaves and was described as “peevish & too ready to strike.”
*DNA testing and other evidence have convinced most historians that Jefferson fathered six children with a slave, Sally Hemings. Hemings is believed to have been the daughter of Jefferson’s father-in-law, John Wayles, and one of his slaves. That means Hemings was the half-sister of Jefferson’s wife, Martha, who died in 1782.
*Some writers, grotesquely, have romanticized the relationship between Jefferson and Hemings. As our Monticello guide pointed out, a relationship between a master and slave cannot be consensual, let alone romantic. The relationship might have begun as early as 1787, when Jefferson took Hemings to Paris for two years. He was 43, she 14. Jefferson never freed Hemings. After his death in 1826, Jefferson’s daughter Martha allowed Hemings to leave Monticello and live out her days in nearby Charlottesville.
*Jefferson freed only two slaves in his lifetime and another five in his will, all members of the Hemings family. One man freed by Jefferson’s will had a wife and eight children, who remained enslaved and were sold to four different owners. Jefferson apparently thought black slaves wouldn’t be greatly affected by the forced dissolution of their families. He wrote that “love seems with them to be more an eager desire, than a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation. Their griefs are transient.”
The United States has come a long way since Jefferson’s era. Our moral progress is exemplified by the fact that a black man is President. But this country still falls far short of its professed ideals of peace, equality, justice and liberty for all. Perhaps if Jefferson had set a better ethical example, we would have come further by now.
John Horgan directs the Center for Science Writings, which is part of the College of Arts & Letters. This column is adapted from one originally published on his ScientificAmerican.com blog, “Cross-check.”
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