Sholars today typically refer to Query XIV of his Notes on the State of Virginia as evidence of Jefferson’s racism. Jefferson states that Blacks were likely inferior in imagination, beauty, and intelligence, and more bestial and hasty in romance, but added that such sentiments must be taken cum grano salis—at least, until such time as they can be made objects of careful scientific study. Winthrop Jordan says that Jefferson’s hatred of Blacks in the query is indicative of “libidinous energy” toward Black women. William Cohen says Jefferson’s Notes underscores Jefferson’s “racist beliefs.” Paul Finkelman writes of Jefferson’s “peculiarly cramped kind of hatred” of Blacks which showed that he cared nowise for Blacks, but merely that he reviled the corruptive effects of slavery on Whites, though he lusted after black women.
Thomas Jefferson too was concerned about his comments about Blacks in Notes on Virginia, published while he was in France from 1784 to 1789 but not for the reasons of today’s presentist critics. Jefferson worried that his analysis of Blacks would cause a stir and besmirch his reputation. The issue for him, however, was not his supposed hatred of Blacks, but his pro-Black sentiments. He writes to James Monroe (11 May 1785):
There are sentiments on some subjects which I apprehend might be displeasing to the country, perhaps to the assembly or to some who lead it. I do not wish to be exposed to their censure; nor do I know how far their influence, if exerted, might effect a misapplication of law to such a publication were it made.
In another letter to Monroe (17 June 1785), he says:
I have taken measures to prevent it’s [Notes] publication. My reason is that I fear the terms in which I speak [negatively] of slavery and of our constitution may produce an irritation which will revolt the minds of our countrymen against reformation in these two articles, and thus do more harm than good.
To Charles Thomson (21 June 1785), Jefferson adds
I am desirous of preventing the reprinting this [book], should any book merchant think it worth it, till I hear from my friends whether the terms in which I have spoken of slavery and of the constitution of our State will not, by producing an irritation, retard that reformation which I wish instead of promoting it.
In short, Jefferson was not concerned about his statements that Blacks were less beautiful, less imaginative, less intelligent, and less tender in romance than non-Blacks. Such things little worried him, as they were shared by most others of his day, even most Blacks.
What concerned Jefferson were certain comments not in Query XIV, but in Query XVIII. Here he champions abolition and expresses his concern that Blacks and Whites, once the former are freed, cannot live together. Why? Born to live and labor for another, a slave will prefer to live, once freed, in any country other than the one in which he was born in slavery. So heavy will he feel the unforgettable burden of his former oppression.
Jefferson continues.
Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God?” The inevitable result can only be a racial war and such “convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race.”
In the event of such a racial war, God would have to take a side, and God could not, because of the gross injustice of one race violating the rights of another, take the side of Whites.
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest.
The passage bespeaks a violent revolution. God is just. If God allows for the subjugation of one race at the hands of another, God might have in mind a reversal of situation for justice to be served: Blacks winning that revolution and then being the masters of Whites. The final sentence is a clear articulation that the institution of slavery is in contravention of the will of God, and that Whites, in vigorous support of the institution, will eventually feel the wrath of God. The probability of a huge racial war is the main reason why Jefferson throughout his life countenanced expatriation of Blacks to a country where they could live together and do so peacefully.
Those sentiments in Query XVIII, Jefferson knew, would not sit well with Southerners—fellow Virginians especially. As Joseph Ellis writes: “Jefferson was justifiably concerned that such apocalyptic sentiments would enjoy no supportive audience at all. French readers would be shocked; Virginians would be enraged.”
Then there were other opinions expressed in Query XIV: that Blacks were the equal of all others in affairs “of the heart”; that their tendency to thievery (“may not [a slave] take a little from one, who has taken all from him?”) was due to their unnatural condition; and that “we find among them numerous instances of the most rigid integrity … of benevolence, gratitude, and unshaken fidelity.” This expression of the moral integrity of Blacks, here the equals of all others, is not something expected of a racist, and must have much incensed those who considered Blacks to be human monsters in his day.
Jefferson ends his speculations in Query XVIII on a sanguine note.
I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation.
That emancipation through expatriation he would do little to effect—the time he thought was unpropitious, as the people were not ready for it. And when Jefferson did return late in life to its cost (TJ to Jared Sparks, 4 Feb. 1824), he figured a total of 600 million dollars over the course of 25 years. That figure excluded transportation, food and clothing for a year, and tools for farming and for other trades, which would amount to 300 million dollars more. At a cost of 36 million dollars a year for 25 years, “it is impossible to look at the question a second time.”
Below is a critical look at the History Channel’s six-part series on Thomas Jefferson.
From James Calendar (a drunk) to Annette Gordon-Reed.
You’ve come a long way baby!
And it just won’t end. See the video!
I did.