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Thomas Jefferson on Slavery |
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".... It will probably be asked, Why not retain and incorporate the blacks
into the state, and thus save the expense of supplying, by importation of
white settlers, the vacancies they will leave?"
Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand
recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new
provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other
circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions, which
will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other
race. - To these objections, which are political, may be added others, which
are physical and moral. The first difference which strikes us is that of
colour. - Whether the black of the negro resides in the reticular membrane
between the skin and scarf-skin, or in the scarf-skin itself; whether it
proceeds from the colour of the blood, the colour of the bile, or from that
of some other secretion, the difference is fixed in nature, and is as real
as if its seat and cause were better known to us. And is this difference of
no importance? Is it not the foundation of a greater or less share of beauty
in the two races? Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the
expressions of every passion by greater or less suffusions of colour in the
one, preferable to that eternal monotony, which reigns in the countenances,
that immovable veil of black which covers all the emotions of the other
race? Add to these, flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form, their own
judgment in favour of the whites, declared by their preference of them, as
uniformly as is the preference of the Oranootan for the black women over
those of his own species. The circumstance of Superior beauty, is thought
worthy attention in the propagation of our horses, dogs, and other domestic
animals; why not in that of man? Besides those of colour, figure, and hair,
there are other physical distinctions proving a difference of race. They
have less hair on the face and body. They secrete less by the kidneys, and
more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a very strong and
disagreeable odour. This greater degree of transpiration renders them more
tolerant of heat, and less so of cold than the whites. Perhaps too a
difference of structure in the pulmonary apparatus, which a late
ingenious[1] experimentalist has discovered to be the principal regulator of
animal heat, may have disabled them from extricating, in the act of
inspiration, so much of that fluid from the outer air, or obliged them in
expiration, to part with more of it. They seem to require less sleep. A
black after hard labour through the day, will be induced by the slightest
amusements to sit up till midnight, or later, though knowing he must be out
with the first dawn of the morning. They are at least as brave, and more
adventuresome. But this may perhaps proceed from a want of forethought,
which prevents their seeing a danger till it be present..- When present,
they do not go through it with more coolness or steadiness than the whites.
They are more ardent after their female: but love seems with them to be more
an eager desire, than a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation.
Their griefs are transient. Those numberless afflictions, which render it
doubtful whether heaven has given life to us in mercy or in wrath, are less
felt, and sooner forgotten with them. In general, their existence appears to
participate more of sensation than reflection. To this must be ascribed
their disposition to sleep when abstracted from their diversions, and
unemployed in labour. An animal whose body is at rest, and who does not
reflect, must be disposed to sleep of course. Comparing them by their
faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me that in
memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one
could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the
investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless,
and anomalous. It would be unfair to follow them to Africa for this investigation.
We will consider them here, on the same stage with the whites, and where the
facts are not apocryphal on which a judgment is to be formed. It will be
right to make great allowances for the difference of condition, of
education, of conversation, of the sphere in which they move. Many millions
of them have been brought to, and born in America. Most of them indeed have
been confined to tillage, to their own homes, and their own society: yet
many have been so situated, that they might have availed themselves of the
conversation of their masters; many have been brought up to the handicraft
arts, and from that circumstance have always been associated with the
whites. Some have been liberally educated, and all have lived in countries
where the arts and sciences are cultivated to a considerable degree, and
have had before their eyes samples of the best works from abroad.
The Indians, with no advantages of this kind, will often carve figures on
their pipes not destitute of design and merit. They will crayon out an
animal, a plant, or a country, so as to prove the existence of a germ in
their minds which only wants cultivation. They astonish you with strokes of
the most sublime oratory; such as prove their reason and sentiment strong,
their imagination glowing and elevated. But never yet could I find that a
black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never saw
even an elementary trait of painting or sculpture. In music they are more
generally gifted than the whites with accurate ears for tune and time, and
they have been found capable of imagining a small catch. [2] Whether they
will be equal to the composition of a more extensive run of melody, or of
complicated harmony, is yet to be proved. Misery is often the parent of the
most affecting touches in poetry. Among the blacks is misery enough, God
knows, but no poetry. Love is the peculiar oestrum of the poet. Their love
is ardent, but it kindles the senses only, not the imagination. Religion
indeed has produced a Phyllis Whately [3] but it could not produce a poet.
The compositions published under her name are below the dignity of
criticism. The heroes of the Dunciad are to her, as Hercules to the author
of that poem. Ignatius Sancho has approached nearer to merit in composition;
yet his letters do more honour to the heart than the head. They breathe the
purest effusions of friendship and general philanthropy, and show how great
a degree of the latter may be compounded with strong religious zeal. He is
often happy in the turn of his compliments, and his style is easy and
familiar, except when he affects a Shandean fabrication of words. But his
imagination is wild and extravagant, escapes incessantly from every
restraint of reason and taste, and, in the course of its vagaries, leaves a
tract of thought as incoherent and eccentric, as is the course of a meteor
through the sky. His subjects should often have led him to a process of
sober reasoning: yet we find him always substituting sentiment for
demonstration. Upon the whole, though we admit him to the first place among
those of his own colour who have presented themselves to the public
judgment, yet when we compare him with the writers of the race among whom he
lived and particularly with the epistolary class, in which he has taken his
own stand, we are compelled to enrol him at the bottom of the column. This
criticism supposes the letters published under his name to be genuine, and
to have received amendment from no other hand; points which would not be of
easy investigation. The improvement of the blacks in body and mind, in the
first instance of their mixture with the whites, has been observed by every
one, and proves that their inferiority is not the effect merely of their
condition of life. We know that among the Romans, about the Augustan age
especially, the condition of their slaves was much more deplorable than that
of the blacks on the continent of America. The two sexes were confined in
separate apartments, because to raise a child cost the master more than to
buy one. Cato, for a very restricted indulgence to his slaves in this
particular, took from them a certain price. But in this country the slaves
multiply as fast as the free inhabitants. Their situation and manners place
the commerce between the two sexes almost without restraint. The same Cato,
on a principle of oeconomy, always sold his sick and superannuated slaves.
He gives it as a standing precept to a master visiting his farm, to sell his
old oxen, old wagons, old tools, old and diseased servants, and every thing
else become useless . . . The American slaves cannot enumerate this among
the injuries and insults they receive. It was the common practice to expose
in the island Esculapius, in the Tyber, diseased slaves, whose cure was like
to become tedious. The emperor Claudius, by an edict, gave freedom to such
of them as should recover, and first declared that if any person chose to
kill rather than expose them, it should be deemed homicide. The exposing
them is a crime of which no instance has existed with us; and were it to be
followed by death, it would be punished capitally. We are told of a certain
Vedius Pollio, who, in the presence of Augustus, would have given a slave as
food to his fish, for having broken a glass. With the Romans, the regular
method of taking the evidence of their slaves was under torture. Here it has
been thought better never to resort to their evidence. When a master was
murdered, all his slaves, in the same house, or within hearing, were
condemned to death. Here punishment falls on the guilty only, and as precise
proof is required against him as against a freeman. Yet notwithstanding
these and other discouraging circumstances among the Romans, their slaves
were often their rarest artists. They excelled too in science, insomuch as
to be usually employed as tutors to their masters' children. Epictetus,
Terence, and Phaedrus, were slaves. But they were of the race of whites. It
is not their condition then, but nature, which has produced the distinction.
Whether further observation will or will not verify the conjecture, that
nature has been less bountiful to them in the endowments of the head, I
believe that in those of the heart she will be found to have done them
justice. That disposition to theft with which they have been branded, must
be ascribed to their situation, and not to any depravity of the moral sense.
The man, in whose favour no laws of property exist, probably feels himself
less bound to respect those made in favour of others. When arguing for
ourselves, we lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give
a reciprocation of right; that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules
of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience: and it is a problem
which I give to the master to solve, whether the religious precepts against
the violation of property were not framed for him as well as his slave? And
whether the slave may not as justifiably take a little from one, who has
taken all from him, as he may slay one who would slay him? That a change in
the relations in which a man is placed should change his ideas of moral
right or wrong, is neither new, nor peculiar to the colour of the blacks.
Homer tells us it was so 2600 years ago.
Jove fix'd it certain, that whatever day Makes man a slave, takes half his
worth away. But the slaves of which Homer speaks were whites.
Notwithstanding these considerations which must weaken their respect for the
laws of property, we find among them numerous instances of the most rigid
integrity, and as many as among their better instructed masters, of
benevolence, gratitude and unshaken fidelity. The opinion, that they are
inferior in the faculties of reason and imagination, must be hazarded with
great diffidence. To justify a general conclusion, requires many
observations, even where the subject may be submitted to the anatomical
knife, to optical classes, to analysis by fire, or by solvents. How much
more then where it is a faculty, not a substance, we are examining; where it
eludes the research of all the Senses; where the conditions of its existence
are various and variously combined; where the effects of those which are
present or absent bid defiance to calculation; let me add too, as a
circumstance of great tenderness, where our conclusion would degrade a whole
race of men from the rank in the scale of beings which their Creator may
perhaps have given them. To our reproach it must be said, that though for a
century and a half we have had under our eyes the races of black and of red
men, they have never yet been viewed by us as subjects of natural history. I
advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether
originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are
inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind. It is not
against experience to suppose, that different Species of the same genus, or
varieties of the same species, may possess different qualifications. Will
not a lover of natural history then, one who views the gradations in all the
races of animals with the eye of philosophy, excuse an effort to keep those
in the department of man as distinct as nature has formed them?
This unfortunate difference of colour, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful
obstacle to the emancipation of these people. Many of their advocates, while
they wish to vindicate the liberty of human nature are anxious also to
preserve its dignity and beauty. Some of these, embarrassed by the question
`What further is to be done with them?' join themselves in opposition with
those who are actuated by sordid avarice only. Among the Romans emancipation
required but one effort. The slave, when made free, might mix with, without
staining the blood of his master. But with us a second is necessary, unknown
to history. When freed, he is to be removed beyond the reach of mixture.
The particular customs and manners that may happen to be received in that state?
It is difficult to determine on the standard by which the manners of a
nation may be tried, whether catholic, or particular. It is more difficult
for a native to bring to that standard the manners of his own nation,
familiarized to him by habit. There must doubtless be an unhappy influence
on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us.
The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the
most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part,
and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to
imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all
education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he
sees others do. If a parent could find no motive either in his philanthropy
or his self love, for restraining the intemperance of passion towards his
slave, it should always be a sufficient one that his child is present. But
generally it is not sufficient. The parent storms, the child looks on,
catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of
smaller slaves, gives a loose to the worst of passions, and thus nursed,
educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with
odious pecularities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners
and morals undepraved by such circumstances. And with what execration should
the statesman be loaded, who, permitting one half the citizens thus to
trarnple on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots, and
these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and the amor
patriae of the other. For if a slave can have a country in this world, it
must be any other in preference to that in which he is born to live and
labour for another; in which he must lock up the faculties of his nature,
contribute as far as depends on his individual endeavours to the evanishment
of the human race, or entail his own miserable condition on the endless
generations proceeding from him. With the morals of the people, their
industry also is destroyed. For in a warm climate, no man will labour for
himself who can make another labour for him. This is so true, that of the
proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to
labour. And 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? That they are not to be violated but
with his wrath? Indeed 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. - But it is impossible to be temperate and
to pursue this subject through the various considerations of policy, of
morals, of history natural and civil. We must be contented to hope they will
force their way into every one's mind. 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.
notes
1. Crawford.
2. Jefferson's own note: The instrument proper to them is the Banjar, which
they brought hither from Africa, and which is the original of the guitar,
its chords being precisely the four lower chords of the guitar. If Jefferson
is referring to the banjo here, he is completely wrong: only the
ukelele-banjo has the same tone intervals as the 4 higher strings of the
guitar, however the guitar is tuned in E and the ukelele-banjo in B: other
four string banjo's are tuned like a violin (GMW)
3. This misspelled reference to Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784) illustrates how
illogical Jefferson could become on race analysis. Considering that she was
an African slave and largely self-taught, the marvel is her intellectual
precocity not only as a poet, but as a fluent classicist and as a
fascinating and brilliant conversationalist - all achieved before her death
at the age of 31. |
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