In Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774), Jefferson writes of King George III’s unwillingness to use his “negative” to abort unjust proposals. Jefferson again writes similarly is in his first draft of Declaration of Independence, two years later. Jefferson here lists a “long train of abuses & usurpations,” at the hand of King George III. Those, he adds, are “begun at a distinguished period, & pursuing invariably the same object.” Those abuses are indicative of “arbitrary power,” and it is the right, even duty, of those abused to throw off such discretionary abuse of authority and establish such government, by consent of the people, in accordance of the will of the people.[1]
The abuses Jefferson limns in his draft of the Declaration are many, at least 25—some complaints he lists are compound claims—and he lists last and devotes the most ink to introduction of slavery into the colonies.
he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, & murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.[2]
Some things are worth underscoring in Jefferson’s passage on slavery.
To begin, there is Jefferson’s use of capital letters for the word men. Nowhere else in his draft does he do use capitals. That shows philosophically and unequivocally that Jefferson considered Blacks as men, not as chattel, and that argues decisively against the naïve view, articulated by too many in the secondary literature, that the Declaration was not meant to include Blacks. Blacks, qua men, are deserving of the same axial rights as all other men.
Next, Jefferson accuses the king of Tartuffery—religious hypocrisy. George III is a “Christian king,” yet he is guilty of “piratical warfare”: taking people, who have done nothing to offend him, and conveying them like cattle to America. The king certainly did not introduce slavery to America, and Jefferson is not accusing George of that. That occurred in 1619, when Dutch merchants brought some 20 Africans, indentured servants, to Jamestown, Virginia. Those who settled in America eventually thought that Africans were a cheaper and more abundant labor source than other indentured servants, mostly penurious Europeans, and so the practice continued. Yet the king, Jefferson asserts, has “prostituted his negative”—that is, he has availed himself of none of presumably numerous legislative opportunities for nullifying or even minifying slave trading. George III could have put an end to the transplantation of Blacks, but he did not.
Last and most importantly for this essay, there is a layered argument in the Declaration of Independence that has hitherto gone unnoticed. George III has been implicitly sanctioning the opprobrious institution, which strips men of their God-given rights and makes commercial gains of them without their sanction of will, by refusal to stop the slave trade. While colonists make use of slaves brought to the colonies, King George, through abuses and usurpations, makes slaves of his colonial subjects. Thus, there are two levels of slaves: colonists, who are not deserving of the same rights and treatments of other British citizens perhaps because of their “voluntary” transplantation, and transplanted Blacks, who are the property of the colonists or the slaves of the “slaves.”
How significant is that?
It is difficult to say. Jefferson might have had in mind two notions. One, introduction of slavery was a means of keeping colonists preoccupied with slaves, so that they would not see that George was making slaves of them. Second, getting colonists inured to the institution of slavery—to men of one kind treating men of another kind as inferiors—would make them somewhat less uncomfortable with being treated as slaves—viz., as men without rights. Such notions, however, are mere speculations.
Yet George III then encourages the slaves of the slaves, Blacks who have been stripped of their humanity by being stripped of their rights, to rise up in revolt against their white masters by joining the British in the Revolutionary War. His inducement is freedom from their insufferably oppressive condition—a condition for which he, through his own refusal to act, is in large part responsible. Nonetheless, by the same argument, the colonists, stripped of their humanity by being stripped of their rights, are entitled to rise up against the king, as George III is implicitly sanctioning a generic argument with the conclusion that any people stripped of their rights have a right to revolt. Thus, the king himself is thereby sanctioning implicitly colonial revolution.
We might cash out thus the argument.
- George III has not used his negative to end the slave trade to America.
- So, George III is implicitly endorsing slavery (1).
- George III bids the African slaves of the Colonists to rise up, in revolt, against the Colonists.
- If premise 3, George III must recognize that slavery is an evil.
- So, George III recognizes that slavery is an evil (3 & 4).
- George III has slowly made slaves of the Colonists by stripping them of their rights.
- So, George III cannot object to the American Colonists rising up, in revolt, against him and England (5 & 6).
- So, George III, in asking black slaves to rise up, in revolt, against American Colonists, is implicitly enjoining American Colonists to rise up, in revolt, of him and England (7).
In giving birth to the layered argument in the passage and in underscoring the king’s Tartuffery, Jefferson must have often reflected on the hypocrisy of colonists, who had taken in the transported Blacks and accepted them as slaves. That the king might be responsible at least indirectly for the transplantation of slaves to the continent does not exculpate colonists for using the slaves as slaves. A person, knowing certain goods to be stolen and accepting them as a gift, is equally guilty and deserving of inculpation as the stealer. If I graciously receive a gift of a vibrantly healthy potted rhododendron from my friend Bohdan though I know that Bohdan has stolen the plant from Olha, then I, like Bohdan, am guilty of thievery.
A difficulty is that these first Africans were likely indentured servants, not slaves. If so, then we come to the dicey issue of degrees of slavery, for slavery may have been legally an absolute condition, but it was not so in practice. In Lynchburg, for instance, slaves who were skilled laborers were greatly in demand, and sometimes had the luxury of choosing to work over the course of a year for one businessman to the exclusion of others. They too were frequently incentivized with bonuses for outstanding productivity. Moreover, it was standard practice to pay slaves for working overtime. So, it was possible for a slave to work sufficiently hard and, if unscarred by misbehavior, for him to buy freedom for himself and his family. Any slave could be freed for the right price. Thus, all slaves were to all intents and purposes indentured servants. The only difference was the price of emancipation. For a slave, the price of freedom was very large, and for most hors prix—that is, out of reach. Such things are indicative of slavery not being an absolute condition, as it is customarily taken to be, but a relative condition. Again, men forced through impressment to labor as sailors on British ships in times of war were nominally free, yet they were in reality less free than slaves on Southern plantations. They were forced into service and removed, often by thousands of miles, from family and friends. They too were beaten when they disobeyed. And so, the process from indentured servants to slaves, overall, was gradual. The notion of degrees of slavery invites debate concerning the issue of degrees of inculpation.
Finally, the undue length and the placement of the passage in Jefferson’s first draft are revelatory. There are 168 words in the passage. No other grievance comes near to it in length. That argues for the strength of Jefferson’s conviction that slavery is opprobrious. Moreover, that Jefferson positions the lengthy grievance in the last place is indicative that he considers the grievance to be his coup de grace.
We must acknowledge the entrenchment of slavery at the time—the year is no longer 1619—and the South’s economic dependency on it. In that regard, the issue of eradication of the vile institution is like the many nations’ position today on global warming. Implementation of immediate actions to combat global warming will not be without serious and enormous short-term economic implications for any country, hence their reluctance to take action.
Jefferson’s anti-slavery passage, we know, was excised by Congress, and so it did not appear in the Declaration of Independence. The reason was certainly that slavery, widely practiced in the South, was a divisive issue and the Declaration of Independence was to be a pronouncement about which all states would be in agreement. Inclusion of the lengthy grievance, Jefferson should have seen, would have been reason for large dissention among members of Congress that would have led to unneeded controversy. The moment was kairotic and dissention needed to be avoided at all costs. The issue of slavery would have to be shelved and debated on another occasion.
Jefferson expressed contempt that the excised passage was not included in the final draft. He said in notes on the Continental Congress: “the clause…, reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina & Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who on the contrary still wished to continue it. our Northern brethren also I believe felt a little tender under those censures; for tho’ their people have very few slaves themselves yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others.”[3]
Charges of hypocrisy aside, Jefferson is to be lauded for articulating his anti-slavery views in his draft of the document, even if the paragraph was axed. By doing so, he was sticking out his neck, so to speak, by placing himself at odds with most others from the South, his own state especially, on slavery. The passage did reach the hands of others in the Congress and Jefferson’s opposition to slavery became widely known by members. In that regard, the excised passage was not then without effect and ought not now to be without effect. Yet today’s scholars often conveniently overlook the risk Jefferson was taking in crafting that passage.
Enjoy the accompanying video (below), sans Donna….
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[1] Thomas Jefferson, Summary View of the Rights of British America, in The Scholars’ Thomas Jefferson, ed. M. Andrew Holowchak (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2021), 3–16.
[2] Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, Original Draft, in The Scholars’ Thomas Jefferson, ed. M. Andrew Holowchak (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2021), 28–29.
[3] Thomas Jefferson, “Notes of Proceedings in the Continental Congress, 7 June–1 August 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-01-02-0160, accessed 19 May 2022.
