In U.S. history, the relationship between
Thomas Jefferson and slavery was a complex
one in that Jefferson worked to gradually
end the practice of slavery while himself
owning hundreds of African-American slaves
throughout his adult life. Jefferson's position
on slavery has been extensively studied and
debated by his biographers and by scholars
of slavery.Starting in 1767 at age 24, Jefferson
inherited 5,000 acres of land and 52 slaves
by his father's will. In 1768, Jefferson began
construction of his Monticello plantation.
Through his marriage to Martha Wayles in 1772
and inheritance from his father-in-law John
Wayles, in 1773 Jefferson inherited two plantations
and 135 slaves. By 1776, Jefferson was one
of the largest planters in Virginia. However,
the value of his property (land and slaves)
was increasingly offset by his growing debts,
which made it very difficult to free his slaves
and thereby lose them as assets.In his writings
on American grievances justifying the Revolution,
he attacked the British for sponsoring the
slave trade to the colonies. In 1778, with
Jefferson's leadership, slave importation
was banned in Virginia, one of the first jurisdictions
worldwide to do so. Jefferson was a lifelong
advocate of ending the trade and as president
led the effort to criminalize the international
slave trade that passed Congress and he signed
in 1807, shortly before Britain passed a similar
law.In 1779, as a practical solution to end
slavery, Jefferson supported gradual emancipation,
training, and colonization of African-American
slaves rather than unconditional manumission,
believing that releasing unprepared slaves
with no place to go and no means to support
themselves would only bring them misfortune.
In 1784, Jefferson proposed federal legislation
banning slavery in the New Territories of
the North and South after 1800, which failed
to pass Congress by one vote. In his Notes
on the State of Virginia, published in 1785,
Jefferson expressed the beliefs that slavery
corrupted both masters and slaves alike, supported
colonization of freed slaves, suspected that
African-Americans were inferior in intelligence,
and that emancipating large numbers of slaves
made slave uprisings more likely. In 1794
and 1796, Jefferson manumitted by deed two
of his male slaves; they had been trained
and were qualified to hold employment.
Historians now accept that after the death
of his wife Martha, Jefferson had a long-term
relationship with her half-sister, Sally Hemings,
a slave at Monticello. Jefferson allowed two
of Sally Hemings's surviving four children
to "escape", the other two he freed through
his will after his death. The children were
the only family to gain freedom from Monticello.
In 1824, Jefferson proposed a national plan
to end slavery by the federal government purchasing
African-American slave children for $12.50,
raising and training them in occupations of
freemen, and sending them to the country of
Santo Domingo. In his will, Jefferson freed
three other male slaves, all older men who
had worked for him for decades. In 1827, the
remaining 130 slaves at Monticello were sold
to pay the debts of Jefferson's estate.
== Early years (1743–1774) ==
Thomas Jefferson was born into the planter
class of a "slave society," as defined by
the historian Ira Berlin, in which slavery
was the main means of labor production and
elite slaveholders were the ruling class.
He was the son of Peter Jefferson, a prominent
slaveholder and land speculator in Virginia,
and Jane Randolph, granddaughter of English
and Scots gentry. Peter Jefferson died suddenly
in 1757, leaving the 14-year-old Thomas a
large estate. When Jefferson turned 21, he
inherited 5,000 acres (20 km2) of land, 52
slaves, livestock, his father's notable library,
and a gristmill. In 1768, Thomas Jefferson
began to use his slaves to construct a neoclassical
mansion known as Monticello, which overlooked
the hamlet of his former home in Shadwell.
Both were in Albemarle County in the Piedmont
area.
Starting in 1769, Jefferson served in the
Virginia House of Burgesses for six years.
He proposed laws that severely restricted
free blacks from entering or living in Virginia:
he would have banished children whose fathers
were of African origin and exiled any white
woman who had a child with a black man. Jefferson
suggested that any free black found in violation
of the laws would be in jeopardy of the lynch
mob. According to the historian John Ferling,
the Burgesses did not pass the laws "because
they were excessively restrictive even for
Jefferson's times."As an attorney, Jefferson
represented people of color as well as whites.
In 1770, he defended a young mulatto male
slave in a freedom suit, on the grounds that
his mother was white and freeborn. By the
colony's law of partus sequitur ventrum, that
the child took the status of the mother, the
man should never have been enslaved. He lost
the suit. In 1772, Jefferson represented George
Manly, the son of a free woman of color, who
sued for freedom after having been held as
an indentured servant three years past the
expiration of his term. (The Virginia colony
at the time bound illegitimate mixed-race
children of free women as indentured servants:
until age 31 for males, with a shorter term
for females.) Once freed, Manly worked for
Jefferson at Monticello for wages.In 1773,
the year after Jefferson married the young
widow Martha Wayles Skelton, her father died.
She and Jefferson inherited his estate, including
11,000 acres, 135 slaves, and £4,000 of debt.
With this inheritance, Jefferson became deeply
involved with interracial families and financial
burden. As a widower, his father-in-law John
Wayles had taken his mulatto slave Betty Hemings
as a concubine and had six children with her
during his last 12 years. The Wayles-Hemings
children were three-quarters English and one-quarter
African in ancestry; they were half-siblings
to Martha Wayles Jefferson and her sister.
Betty Hemings and her 10 mixed-race children
(4 of which she had before being with Wayles)
were among the slaves who were moved to Monticello.
Betty's youngest child, Sally Hemings, was
an infant in 1773. Betty Hemings' descendants
were trained and assigned to domestic service
and highly skilled artisan positions at Monticello;
none worked in the fields. Over the years,
some served Jefferson directly for decades
as personal valets and butlers.
These additional slaves made Jefferson the
second-largest slaveholder in Albermarle County.
In addition, he held nearly 16,000 acres of
land in Virginia. He sold some slaves to pay
off the debt of Wayles' estate. From this
time on, Jefferson took on the duties of owning
and supervising his large chattel estate,
primarily at Monticello, although he also
developed other plantations in the colony.
Slavery supported the life of the planter
class in Virginia. The number of slaves then
at Monticello fluctuated from under to over
200.
In collaboration with Monticello, now the
major public history site on Jefferson, the
Smithsonian opened an exhibit, Slavery at
Jefferson's Monticello: The Paradox of Liberty,
(January – October 2012) at the National
Museum of American History in Washington,
D.C. It covered Jefferson as a slaveholder
and the roughly 600 slaves who lived at Monticello
over the decades, with a focus on six slave
families and their descendants. It was the
first national exhibit on the Mall to address
these issues. In February 2012, Monticello
opened a related new outdoor exhibition, Landscape
of Slavery: Mulberry Row at Monticello, which
"brings to life the stories of the scores
of people—enslaved and free—who lived
and worked on Jefferson's 5,000 acre plantation."
(On the Internet at http://www.slaveryatmonticello.org/mulberry-row
)
== 
Revolutionary period (1775–1783) ==
In 1775, Thomas Jefferson joined the Continental
Congress as a delegate from Virginia when
he and others in Virginia began to rebel against
the British governor Lord Dunmore. Trying
to reassert British authority over the area,
Dunmore issued a Proclamation in November
1775 that offered freedom to slaves who abandoned
their rebel masters and joined the British
army. Dunmore's action provoked the mass exodus
of tens of thousands of slaves from plantations
across the South during the war years; some
of Jefferson's slaves also took off as runaways.The
colonials opposed Dunmore's action as an attempt
to incite a massive slave rebellion. In 1776,
when Jefferson co-authored the Declaration
of Independence, he referred to the Lord Governor
when he wrote, "He has excited domestic insurrections
among us." In the original draft of the Declaration,
Jefferson condemned King George III of forcing
the African slave trade on the American colonies
and "inciting American Negroes to rise in
arms against their masters." The Continental
Congress, however, due to Southern opposition,
forced Jefferson to purge this language in
the final draft of the Declaration. Jefferson
did manage to make a general criticism against
slavery by maintaining "all men are created
equal." Jefferson did not directly condemn
domestic slavery as such in the Declaration,
as Jefferson himself was a slaveowner. According
to Finkelman, "The colonists, for the most
part, had been willing and eager purchasers
of slaves."In 1778 with Jefferson's leadership
and probably authorship, the Virginia General
Assembly banned importing slaves into Virginia.
It was one of the first jurisdictions in the
world to ban the slave trade, and all other
states except South Carolina eventually followed
prior to the Congress banning the trade in
1807.As governor of Virginia for two years
during the Revolution, Jefferson signed a
bill to promote military enlistment by giving
white men land, "a healthy sound Negro...or
£60 in gold or silver." As was customary,
he brought some of his household slaves, including
Mary Hemings, to serve in the governor's mansion
in Richmond. In the face of British invasion
in January 1781, Jefferson and the Assembly
members fled the capital and moved the government
to Charlottesville, leaving Jefferson's slaves
behind. Hemings and other slaves were taken
as British prisoners of war; they were later
released in exchange for British soldiers.
In 2009, the Daughters of the Revolution (DAR)
honored Mary Hemings as a Patriot, making
her female descendants eligible for membership
in the heritage society.In June 1781, the
British arrived at Monticello. Jefferson had
escaped before their arrival and gone with
his family to his plantation of Poplar Forest
to the southwest in Bedford County; most of
his slaves stayed at Monticello to help protect
his valuables. The British did not loot or
take prisoners there. By contrast, Lord Cornwallis
and his troops occupied and destroyed another
Jefferson property, Elkhill in Goochland County,
Virginia, northwest of Richmond. Of the 27
slaves they took as prisoners, Jefferson later
noted that at least 24 had died of disease
in the prison camp. Similarly, more troops
on both sides died of disease than of warfare
in those years of poor sanitation.
While claiming since the 1770s to support
gradual emancipation, as a member of the Virginia
General Assembly Jefferson declined to support
a law to ask that, saying the people were
not ready. After the United States gained
independence, in 1782 the Virginia General
Assembly repealed the slave law of 1723 and
made it easier for slaveholders to manumit
slaves. Unlike some of his planter contemporaries,
such as Robert Carter III, who freed nearly
500 slaves in his lifetime, or George Washington,
who freed all his slaves in his will of 1799,
Jefferson formally freed only two slaves during
his life, in 1793 and 1794. Virginia did not
then require freed slaves to leave the state.
From 1782 to 1810, as numerous slaveholders
freed their slaves, the proportion of free
blacks in Virginia increased dramatically
from less than 1% to 7.2% of blacks. Jefferson
later allowed two slaves to "walk away" in
1822, and freed five more in his will, but
130 slaves were sold from Monticello in 1827
after his death.
== Following the Revolution (1784–1800)
==
Some historians have claimed that, as a Representative
to the Continental Congress, Thomas Jefferson
wrote an amendment or bill that would abolish
slavery. But according to Finkelman, "he never
did propose this plan" and "Jefferson refused
to propose either a gradual emancipation scheme
or a bill to allow individual masters to free
their slaves." He refused to add gradual emancipation
as an amendment when others asked him to;
he said, "better that this should be kept
back." In 1785, Jefferson wrote to one of
his colleagues that black people were mentally
inferior to white people, claiming the entire
race was incapable of producing a single poet.On
March 1, 1784, in defiance of southern slave
society, Jefferson submitted to the Continental
Congress the Report of a Plan of Government
for the Western Territory. "The provision
would have prohibited slavery in all new states
carved out of the western territories ceded
to the national government established under
the Articles of Confederation." Slavery would
have been prohibited extensively in both the
North and South territories, including what
would become Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee.
His 1784 Ordinance would have prohibited slavery
completely by 1800 in all territories, but
was rejected by the Congress by one vote due
to an absent representative from New Jersey.
However, on April 23 Congress accepted Jefferson's
1784 Ordinance without prohibiting slavery
in all the territories. Jefferson said that
southern representatives defeated his original
proposal. Jefferson was only able to obtain
one southern delegate to vote for the prohibition
of slavery in all territories. The Library
of Congress notes, "The Ordinance of 1784
marks the high point of Jefferson's opposition
to slavery, which is more muted thereafter."
Jefferson's Ordinance of 1784 did influence
the Ordinance of 1787, that prohibited slavery
in the Northwest Territory.From the 1770s
on, Jefferson wrote of supporting gradual
emancipation, based on slaves being educated,
freed after 18 for women and 21 for men (later
he changed this to age 45, when their masters
had a return on investment), and transported
for resettlement to Africa. All of his life,
he supported the concept of colonization of
Africa by American freedmen. The historian
Peter S. Onuf suggested that, after having
children with his slave Sally Hemings, Jefferson
may have supported colonization because of
concerns for his unacknowledged "shadow family."The
historian David Brion Davis states that in
the years after 1785 and Jefferson's return
from Paris, the most notable thing about his
position on slavery was his "immense silence."
Davis and other historians believe that, in
addition to having internal conflicts about
slavery, Jefferson wanted to keep his personal
situation private; for this reason, he chose
to back away from working to end or ameliorate
slavery.As US Secretary of State, Jefferson
issued in 1795, with President Washington's
authorization, $40,000 in emergency relief
and 1,000 weapons to colonial French slave
owners in Saint Domingue (Haiti) in order
to suppress a slave rebellion. President Washington
gave the slave owners in Saint Domingue (Haiti)
$400,000 as repayment for loans the French
had granted to the Americans during the American
Revolutionary War.In 1796, according to the
Constitution at the time, Jefferson became
vice president after John Adams won slightly
more electoral votes in their competition
for the presidency. Because they were from
different political parties, they had difficulty
working together. (Later the Constitution
was amended so that candidates for these two
positions had to be elected as a ticket representing
the same political party.)
In 1800, Jefferson was elected as President
of the United States over Adams. He won more
electoral votes than Adams, aided by southern
power. The Constitution provided for the counting
of slaves as 3/5ths of their total population,
to be added to a state's total population
for purposes of apportionment and the electoral
college. States with large slave populations,
therefore, gained greater representation even
though the number of voting citizens was smaller
than that of other states. It was only due
to this population advantage that Jefferson
won the election. This advantage also aided
southern states in their Congressional apportionment;
thus, the planter class held disproportionate
power nationally for decades, and southerners
dominated the office of the presidency well
into the 19th century.
== As President (1801–1809) ==
=== Moved slaves to White House ===
Like other slave-owning presidents, Jefferson
brought slaves to work in the White House.
He offered James Hemings, his former slave
freed in 1796, the position of White House
chef. Hemings refused, although his kin were
still held at Monticello. (Hemings later became
depressed and turned to drinking. He committed
suicide at age 36.) Jefferson's slaves worked
and lived in the White House, and at least
one would eventually be born there.
=== Haitian independence ===
After Toussaint Louverture had become governor
general of Saint-Domingue following a slave
revolt, in 1801 Jefferson supported French
plans to take back the island. He agreed to
loan France $300,000 "for relief of whites
on the island." Jefferson wanted to alleviate
the fears of southern slave owners, who feared
a similar rebellion in their territory. Prior
to his election, Jefferson wrote of the revolution,
"If something is not done and soon, we shall
be the murderers of our own children."By 1802,
when Jefferson learned that France was planning
to re-establish its empire in the western
hemisphere, including taking the Louisiana
territory and New Orleans from the Spanish,
he declared the neutrality of the US in the
Caribbean conflict. While refusing credit
or other assistance to the French, he allowed
contraband goods and arms to reach Haiti and,
thus, indirectly supported the Haitian Revolution.
This was to further US interests in Louisiana.
Defeated in Saint-Domingue by late 1803, the
French withdrew from their imperial ambitions
in the western hemisphere, as this colony
had generated the highest revenues. In 1803,
Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase.
That year and once the Haitians declared independence
in 1804, President Jefferson had to deal with
strong hostility to the new nation by his
southern-dominated Congress. He shared planters'
fears that the success of Haiti would encourage
similar slave rebellions and widespread violence
in the South. Historian Tim Matthewson noted
that Jefferson faced a Congress "hostile to
Haiti", and that he "acquiesced in southern
policy, the embargo of trade and nonrecognition,
the defense of slavery internally and the
denigration of Haiti abroad." Jefferson discouraged
emigration by American free blacks to the
new nation. European nations also refused
to recognize Haiti when the new nation declared
independence in 1804. In his short biography
of Jefferson in 2005, Christopher Hitchens
noted the president was "counterrevolutionary"
in his treatment of Haiti and its revolution.Jefferson
expressed ambivalence about Haiti. During
his presidency, he thought sending free blacks
and contentious slaves to Haiti might be a
solution to some of the United States' problems.
He hoped that "Haiti would eventually demonstrate
the viability of black self-government and
the industriousness of African American work
habits, thereby justifying freeing and deporting
the slaves" to that island. This was one of
his solutions for separating the populations.
In 1824, book peddler Samuel Whitcomb, Jr.
visited Jefferson in Monticello, and they
happened to talk about Haiti. This was on
the eve of the greatest emigration of U.S.
Blacks to the island-nation. Jefferson told
Whitcomb that he had never seen Blacks do
well in governing themselves, and thought
they would not do it without the help of Whites.
=== Virginia emancipation law modified ===
In 1806, with concern developing over the
rise in the number of free blacks, the Virginia
General Assembly modified the 1782 slave law
to discourage free blacks from living in the
state. It permitted re-enslavement of freedmen
who remained in the state for more than 12
months. This forced newly freed blacks to
leave enslaved kin behind. As slaveholders
had to petition the legislature directly to
gain permission for manumitted freedmen to
stay in the state, there was a decline in
manumissions after this date.
=== Ended international slave trade ===
In 1806, Jefferson denounced the international
slave trade and called for a law to make it
a crime. He told Congress in his 1806 annual
message, such a law was needed to "withdraw
the citizens of the United States from all
further participation in those violations
of human rights ... which the morality, the
reputation, and the best of our country have
long been eager to proscribe." Congress complied
and on March 2, 1807, Jefferson signed the
Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves into
law; it took effect 1 January 1808 and made
it a federal crime to import or export slaves
from abroad. No such legislation could have
taken effect prior to January 1, 1808, on
account of the provisions of Article I, Section
9, Clause 1, of the United States Constitution.
By its Slave Trade Act 1807, Great Britain
prohibited the slave trade in its colonies.
The nations cooperated in enforcing interdiction
of the slave trade on open seas.
By 1808, every state but South Carolina had
followed Virginia's lead from the 1780s in
banning importation of slaves. By 1808, with
the growth of the domestic slave population
enabling development of a large internal slave
trade, slaveholders did not mount much resistance
to the new law, presumably because the authority
of Congress to enact such legislation was
expressly authorized by the Constitution,
and was fully anticipated during the Constitutional
Convention in 1787. Jefferson did not lead
the campaign to prohibit the importation of
slaves. Historian John Chester Miller rated
Jefferson's two major presidential achievements
as the Louisiana Purchase and the abolition
of the slave trade.
== Retirement (1810–1826) ==
In 1819, Jefferson strongly opposed a Missouri
statehood application amendment that banned
domestic slave importation and freed slaves
at the age of 25 believing it would destroy
or break up the union. By 1820, Jefferson
denounced Northern meddling with Southern
slavery policy. On April 22, Jefferson criticized
the Missouri Compromise because it might lead
to the breakup of the Union. Jefferson said
slavery was a complex issue and needed to
be solved by the next generation. Jefferson
wrote that the Missouri Compromise was a "fire
bell in the night" and "the knell of the Union".
Jefferson said that he feared the Union would
dissolve, stating that the "Missouri question
aroused and filled me with alarm." In regard
to whether the Union would remain for a long
period of time Jefferson wrote, "I now doubt
it much."
In 1798, Jefferson's friend from the Revolution,
Tadeusz Kościuszko, a Polish nobleman and
revolutionary, visited the United States to
collect back pay from the government for his
military service. He entrusted his assets
to Jefferson with a will directing him to
spend the American money and proceeds from
his land in the U.S. to free and educate slaves,
including Jefferson's, and at no cost to Jefferson.
Kościuszko revised will states: "I hereby
authorise my friend Thomas Jefferson to employ
the whole thereof in purchasing Negroes from
among his own or any others and giving them
Liberty in my name." Kosciuszko died in 1817,
but Jefferson never carried out the terms
of the will: At age 77, he pleaded an inability
to act as executor due to his advanced age
and the numerous legal complexities of the
bequest—the will was contested by several
family members and was tied up in the courts
for years, long after Jefferson's death. Jefferson
recommended his friend John Hartwell Cocke,
who also opposed slavery, as executor, but
Cocke likewise declined to execute the bequest.
In 1852 the U.S. Supreme Court awarded the
estate, by then worth $50,000, to Kościuszko's
heirs in Poland, having ruled that the will
was invalid.Jefferson continued to struggle
with debt after serving as president. He used
his hundreds of slaves as collateral to his
creditors. This debt was due to his lavish
lifestyle, long construction and changes to
Monticello, imported goods, art, etc. He frequently
entertained house guests for extended periods
at Monticello, and served them expensive wines
and food. He also incurred debt in helping
support his only surviving daughter, Martha
Jefferson Randolph, and her large family.
She had separated from her husband, who had
become abusive from alcoholism and mental
illness (according to different sources),
and brought her family to live at Monticello.
In August 1814, the planter Edward Coles and
Jefferson corresponded about Coles' ideas
on emancipation. Jefferson urged Coles not
to free his slaves, but the younger man took
all his slaves to the Illinois and freed them,
providing them with land for farms.In April
1820, Jefferson wrote to John Holmes concerning
slavery:
there is not a man on earth who would sacrifice
more than I would, to relieve us from this
heavy reproach [slavery] ... we have the wolf
by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor
safely let him go. Justice is in one scale,
and self-preservation in the other.
Jefferson may have borrowed from Suetonius,
a Roman biographer, the phrase "wolf by the
ears", as he held a book of his works. Jefferson
characterized slavery as a dangerous animal
(the wolf) that could not be contained or
freed. He believed that attempts to end slavery
would lead to violence.Despite his debt, Jefferson
carried out his promise to Sally Hemings about
freeing their children: in 1822, he allowed
Beverly and Harriet Hemings to "walk away",
to leave Monticello and go north, a few months
apart. He authorized Edmund Bacon, the overseer,
to give Harriet $50 and to ensure that she
was put on a stagecoach to go north. She was
the only female slave he freed.
The U.S. Congress finally implemented colonization
of freed African-American slaves by passing
the Slave Trade Act of 1819 signed into law
by President James Monroe. The law authorized
funding to colonize the coast of Africa with
freed African-American slaves. In 1824, Jefferson
proposed an overall emancipation plan that
would free slaves born after a certain date.
Jefferson proposed that African-American children
born in America be bought by the federal government
for $12.50 and that these slaves be sent to
Santo Domingo. Jefferson admitted that his
plan would be liberal and may even be unconstitutional,
but he suggested a constitutional amendment
to allow congress to buy slaves. He also realized
that separating children from slaves would
have a humanitarian cost. Jefferson believed
that his overall plan was worth implementing
and that setting over a million slaves free
was worth the financial and emotional costs.Jefferson's
will of 1826 called for the manumission of
Sally Hemings' two remaining sons Madison
and Eston Hemings, and three older men who
had served him for decades and were from the
larger Hemings family. Jefferson included
a petition to the legislature to allow the
five men to stay in Virginia, where their
enslaved families were held. This was necessary
since the legislature tried to force free
blacks out of the state within 12 months of
manumission.
== Posthumous (1827–1830) ==
At his death, Jefferson was greatly in debt,
in part due to his continued construction
program. The debts encumbered his estate,
and his family sold 130 slaves, virtually
all the members of every slave family, from
Monticello to pay his creditors. Slave families
who had been well established and stable for
decades were sometimes split up. Most of the
sold slaves either remained in Virginia or
were relocated to Ohio.Jefferson freed five
slaves in his will, all males of the Hemings
family. Those were his two natural sons, and
Sally's younger half-brother John Hemings,
and her nephews Joseph (Joe) Fossett and Burwell
Colbert. He gave Burwell Colbert, who had
served as his butler and valet, $300 for purchasing
supplies used in the trade of "painter and
glazier". He gave John Hemings and Joe Fossett
each an acre on his land so they could build
homes for their families. His will included
a petition to the state legislature to allow
the freedmen to remain in Virginia to be with
their families, who remained enslaved under
Jefferson's heirs.Because Jefferson did not
free Fossett's wife or their eight children,
they were sold at auction. They were bought
by four different men. Fossett worked for
years to buy back his family members. While
Jefferson made no provision for Sally Hemings,
his daughter gave the slave "her time", enabling
her to live freely with her sons in Charlottesville,
where they bought a house. She lived to see
a grandchild born free in the house her sons
owned. Wormley Hughes was also given an informal
freedom; he gained the cooperation of Thomas
Jefferson Randolph in buying his wife and
three sons so that some of his family could
stay together at Randolph's plantation.
In 1827, the auction of 130 slaves took place
at Monticello. The sale lasted for five days
despite the cold weather. The slaves brought
prices over 70% of their appraised value.
Within three years, all of the "black" families
at Monticello had been sold and dispersed.
Some were bought by free relatives, such as
Mary Hemings Bell, who worked to try to reconstitute
her children's families.
== Sally Hemings and her children ==
For two centuries the claim that Thomas Jefferson
fathered children by his slave, Sally Hemings,
has been a matter of discussion and disagreement.
In 1802, the journalist James T. Callender,
after being denied a position as postmaster
by Jefferson, published allegations that Jefferson
had taken Hemings as a concubine and had fathered
several children with her. John Wayles held
her as a slave, and was also her father, as
well as the father of Jefferson's wife Martha.
Sally was three-quarters white and strikingly
similar in looks and voice to Jefferson's
late wife.In 1998, in order to establish the
male DNA line, a panel of researchers conducted
a Y-DNA study of living descendants of Jefferson's
uncle, Field, and of a descendant of Sally's
son, Eston Hemings. The results, published
in the journal Nature, showed a Y-DNA match
with the male Jefferson line. In 2000, the
Thomas Jefferson Foundation (TJF) assembled
a team of historians whose report concluded
that, together with the DNA and historic evidence,
there was a high probability that Jefferson
was the father of Eston and likely of all
Hemings' children. W. M. Wallenborn, who worked
on the Monticello report, disagreed, claiming
the committee had already made up their minds
before evaluating the evidence, was a "rush
to judgement," and that the claims of Jefferson's
paternity were unsubstantiated and politically
driven.Since the DNA tests were made public,
most biographers and historians have concluded
that the widower Jefferson had a long-term
relationship with Hemings. Other scholars,
including a team of professors associated
with the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society,
maintain that the evidence is insufficient
to conclude Thomas Jefferson's paternity,
and note the possibility that other Jeffersons,
including Thomas's brother Randolph Jefferson
and his five sons, who often fraternized with
slaves, could have fathered Hemings' children.Jefferson
freed two slaves of the extended Hemings family
in the 18th century. He allowed two of Sally's
children to leave Monticello without formal
manumission when they came of age; five other
slaves, including the two remaining sons of
Sally, were freed by his will upon his death.
Although not legally freed, Sally left Monticello
with her sons. They were counted as free whites
in the 1830 census. Sally's children were
also treated much differently then other Monticello
slave children. They were educated, and although
it was never officially stated by Jefferson
that they were his children, Madison Hemings
claimed paternity in an article titled, "Life
Among the Lowly," in small Ohio newspaper
called Pike County Republican. Madison Hemings
was angry that at the time of his birth, Jefferson's
daughter Martha and her children came to live
with him at Monticello; thus Jefferson began
to show even more preference towards his "white"
children and grandchildren as opposed to his
children with Hemings, who were still slaves.
Jefferson's grandson T. J. Randolph also felt
animosity towards Jefferson, for he believed
that his grandfather decided that Randolph
was not as intelligent as he, and thus sent
his grandson to an "inferior school" rather
than college. Thus it appears that Jefferson
did in some ways treat his own "white" children
the same way he treated his children with
Sally Hemings.
== Monticello slave life ==
Jefferson ran every facet of the four Monticello
farms and left specific instructions to his
overseers when away or traveling. Slaves in
the mansion, mill, and nailery reported to
one general overseer appointed by Jefferson,
and he hired many overseers, some of whom
were considered cruel at the time. Jefferson
made meticulous periodical records on his
slaves, plants and animals, and weather. Jefferson,
in his Farm Book journal, visually described
in detail both the quality and quantity of
purchased slave clothing and the names of
all slaves who received the clothing. In a
letter written in 1811, Jefferson described
his stress and apprehension in regard to difficulties
in what he felt was his "duty" to procure
specific desirable blankets for "those poor
creatures" – his slaves.Some historians
have noted that Jefferson maintained many
slave families together on his plantations;
historian Bruce Fehn says this was consistent
with other slave owners at the time. There
were often more than one generation of family
at the plantation and families were stable.
Jefferson and other slaveholders shifted the
"cost of reproducing the workforce to the
workers' themselves". He could increase the
value of his property without having to buy
additional slaves. He tried to reduce infant
mortality, and wrote, "[A] woman who brings
a child every two years is more profitable
than the best man on the farm."Jefferson encouraged
slaves at Monticello to marry at Monticello.
He would occasionally buy and sell slaves
to keep families together. In 1815, he said
that his slaves were "worth a great deal more"
due to their marriages. Married slaves, however,
had no legal protection or recognition by
the law; masters could separate slave husbands
and wives any time desired.Jefferson sometimes
gave incentives in money or clothes to slaves
for work in important positions. His slaves
probably worked from dawn to dusk. Although
no record exists that Jefferson organized
formal instruction of slaves, several enslaved
men at Monticello could read and write.Jefferson
worked slave boys ages 10 to 16 in his nail
factory on Mulberry Row. After it opened in
1794, for the first three years, Jefferson
recorded the productivity of each child. He
selected those who were most productive to
be trained as artisans: blacksmiths, carpenters,
and coopers. Those who performed the worst
were assigned as field laborers.According
to historian Lucia Stanton, Jefferson authorized
his overseers to use physical violence against
slaves, though probably not as much as some
of his neighbors. Jamed Hubbard was a slave
in the nailery who ran away on two occasions.
The first time Jefferson did not have him
whipped, but on the second Jefferson reportedly
ordered him severely flogged. Hubbard was
likely sold after spending time in jail. Stanton
says children suffered physical violence.
When a 17-year-old James was sick, one overseer
reportedly whipped him "three times in one
day." Violence was commonplace on plantations,
including Jefferson's. According to Marguerite
Hughes, Jefferson used "a severe punishment"
such as whippings when runaways were captured,
and he sometimes sold them to "discourage
other men and women from attempting to gain
their freedom." Henry Wiencek cited within
a Smithsonian Magazine article several reports
of Jefferson ordering the whipping or selling
of slaves as punishments for extreme misbehavior
or escape.The Thomas Jefferson Foundation
quotes Jefferson's instructions to his overseers
not to whip his slaves, but noted that they
often ignored his wishes during his frequent
absences from home. According to Stanton,
no reliable document portrays Jefferson as
directly using physical correction. During
Jefferson's time, some other slaveholders
also disagreed with the practices of flogging
and jailing slaves.Slaves had a variety of
tasks: Davy Bowles was the carriage driver,
including trips to take Jefferson to and from
Washington D.C. or the Virginia capital. Betty
Hemings, a mixed-race slave inherited from
his father-in-law with her family, was the
matriarch and head of the house slaves at
Monticello, who were allowed limited freedom
when Jefferson was away. Four of her daughters
served as house slaves: Betty Brown; Nance,
Critta and Sally Hemings. The latter two were
half-sisters to Jefferson's wife. Another
house slave was Ursula, whom he had purchased
separately. The general maintenance of the
mansion was under the care of Hemings family
members as well: the master carpenter was
Betty's son John Hemings. His nephews Joe
Fossett, as blacksmith, and Burwell Colbert,
as Jefferson's butler and painter, also had
important roles. Wormley Hughes, a grandson
of Betty Hemings and gardener, was given informal
freedom after Jefferson's death. Memoirs of
life at Monticello include those of Isaac
Jefferson (published, 1843), Madison Hemings,
and Israel Jefferson (both published, 1873).
Isaac was an enslaved blacksmith who worked
on Jefferson's plantation.The last surviving
recorded interview of a former slave was with
Fountain Hughes, then 101, in Baltimore, Maryland
in 1949. It is available online at the Library
of Congress and the World Digital Library.
Born in Charlottesville, Fountain was a descendant
of Wormley Hughes and Ursula Granger; his
grandparents were among the house slaves owned
by Jefferson at Monticello.Two major exhibitions
opening in 2012 addressed slavery at Monticello:
the Smithsonian collaborated with Monticello
in Slavery at Jefferson's Monticello: The
Paradox of Liberty, held in Washington, D.C.
It addresses Jefferson as slaveholder and
traces the lives of six major slave families,
including Hemings and Granger, and their descendants
who worked in the household.
At Monticello, an outdoor exhibit was installed
to represent slave life. The Landscape of
Slavery: Mulberry Row at Monticello makes
use of archeological and other research to
establish the outlines of cabins for domestic
slaves and other outbuildings near the mansion.
Field slaves were held elsewhere. (See each
online at https://www.webcitation.org/67RzbOQyr?url=http://www.slaveryatmonticello.org/slavery-at-monticello/life-monticello-plantation/treatment)
== 
Notes on the State of Virginia (1785) ==
In 1780, Jefferson began answering questions
on the colonies asked by French minister François
de Marboias. He worked on what became a book
for five years, having it printed in France
while he was there as U.S. minister in 1785.
The book covered subjects such as mountains,
religion, climate, slavery, and race.
=== Views on race ===
In his Notes, Jefferson contemporarily described
blacks as inherently (fixed nature) inferior
to whites in critical reasoning and beauty,
but superior in musical ability. Jefferson
believed that the bonds of love for blacks
were weaker than those for whites. According
to one scholar, William Peden, this idea about
fixed nature was Jefferson's rationalized
justification for the racial caste of slavery.In
1808, the French abolitionist and priest Henri-Baptiste
Grégoire, or Abbé Grégoire, sent President
Jefferson a copy of his book, An Enquiry Concerning
the Intellectual and Moral Faculties and Literature
of Negroes. In his text, he responded to and
refuted Jefferson's arguments of African inferiority
in Notes on Virginia, citing the advanced
civilizations Africans had developed as evidence
of their intellectual competence. Jefferson
replied to Grégoire that the rights of African
Americans should not depend on intelligence
and that Africans had "respectable intelligence."
Jefferson wrote of the black race,
but whatever be their degree of talent it
is no measure of their rights. Because Sir
Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding,
he was not therefore lord of the person or
property of others. On this subject they are
gaining daily in the opinions of nations,
and hopeful advances are making towards their
re-establishment on an equal footing with
the other colors of the human family.
Dumas Malone, Jefferson's biographer, explained
Jefferson's contemporary views on race as
expressed in Notes were the "tentative judgements
of a kindly and scientifically minded man".
Merrill Peterson, another Jefferson biographer,
claimed Jefferson's racial bias against African
Americans was "a product of frivolous and
tortuous reasoning...and bewildering confusion
of principles." Peterson called Jefferson's
racial views on African Americans "folk belief".
=== Support for colonization plan ===
In his Notes Jefferson wrote of a plan he
supported in 1779 in the Virginia legislature
that would end slavery through the colonization
of freed slaves. This plan was widely popular
among the French people in 1785 who lauded
Jefferson as a philosopher. According to Jefferson,
this plan required enslaved adults to continue
in slavery but their children would be taken
from them and trained to have a skill in the
arts or sciences. These skilled women at age
18 and men at 21 would be emancipated, given
arms and supplies, and sent to colonize a
foreign land. Jefferson believed that colonization
was the practical alternative, while freed
blacks living in a white American society
would lead to a race war.
=== Criticism for effects of slavery ===
In Notes Jefferson criticized the effects
slavery had on both white and African-American
slave society. He believed slavery destroyed
the industriousness of whites stating "no
man can labour for himself who can make another
labour for him". believing slavery was "the
most unremitting despotism" by whites and
"degrading submissions" for blacks. Jefferson
defended blacks, who were stereotyped as thieves,
stating that this was due to their condition
of slavery rather than any moral depravity.
== Evaluations by historians ==
According to James W. Loewen, Jefferson's
character "wrestled with slavery, even though
in the end he lost." Loewen says that understanding
Jefferson's relationship with slavery is significant
in understanding current American social problems.Important
20th-century Jefferson biographers including
Merrill Peterson support the view that Jefferson
was strongly opposed to slavery; Peterson
said that Jefferson's ownership of slaves
"all his adult life has placed him at odds
with his moral and political principles. Yet
there can be no question of his genuine hatred
of slavery or, indeed, of the efforts he made
to curb and eliminate it." Peter Onuf stated
that Jefferson was well known for his "opposition
to slavery, most famously expressed in his
... Notes on the State of Virginia." Onuf,
and his collaborator Ari Helo, inferred from
Jefferson's words and actions that he was
against the cohabitation of free blacks and
whites. This, they argued, is what made immediate
emancipation so problematic in Jefferson's
mind. As Onuf and Helo explained, Jefferson
opposed the mixing of the races not because
of his belief that blacks were inferior (although
he did believe this) but because he feared
that instantly freeing the slaves in white
territory would trigger "genocidal violence".
He could not imagine the blacks living in
harmony with their former oppressors. Jefferson
was sure that the two races would be in constant
conflict. Onuf and Helo asserted that Jefferson
was, consequently, a proponent of freeing
the Africans through "expulsion", which he
thought would have ensured the safety of both
the whites and blacks. Biographer John Ferling
said that Thomas Jefferson was "zealously
committed to slavery's abolition".Starting
in the early 1960s, some academics began to
challenge Jefferson's position as an anti-slavery
advocate having reevaluated both his actions
and his words. Paul Finkelman wrote in 1994
that earlier scholars, particularly Peterson,
Dumas Malone, and Willard Randall, engaged
in "exaggeration or misrepresentation" to
advance their argument of Jefferson's anti-slavery
position, saying "they ignore contrary evidence"
and "paint a false picture" to protect Jefferson's
image on slavery. Academics including William
Freehling, Winthrop Jordan and David Brion
Davis have criticized Jefferson for his lack
of action in trying to end slavery in the
United States, including not freeing his own
slaves, rather than for his views. Davis noted
that although Jefferson was a proponent of
equality in earlier years, after 1789 and
his return to the US from France (when he
is believed to have started a relationship
with his slave Sally Hemings), he was notable
for his "immense silence" on the topic of
slavery. He did support prohibition of the
importing of slaves into the United States,
but took no actions related to the domestic
institution. At the time, the internal slave
trade was growing dramatically and would move
one million people in forced migrations from
the East Coast and Upper South to the Deep
South, breaking up numerous slave families.
In 2012, author Henry Wiencek, highly critical
of Jefferson, concluded that Jefferson tried
to protect his legacy as a Founding Father
by hiding slavery from visitors at Monticello
and through his writings to abolitionists.
According to Wiencek's view Jefferson made
a new frontage road to his Monticello estate
to hide the overseers and slaves who worked
the agriculture fields. Wiencek believed that
Jefferson's "soft answers" to abolitionists
were to make himself appear opposed to slavery.
Wiencek stated that Jefferson held enormous
political power but "did nothing to hasten
slavery's end during his terms as a diplomat,
secretary of state, vice president, and twice-elected
president or after his presidency."According
to Greg Warnusz, Jefferson held typical 19th-century
beliefs that blacks were inferior to whites
in terms of "potential for citizenship", and
he wanted them recolonized to independent
Liberia and other colonies. His views of a
democratic society were based on a homogeneity
of working men which was the cultural normality
throughout most of the world in those days.
He claimed to be interested in helping both
races in his proposal. He proposed gradually
freeing slaves after the age of 45 (when they
would have repaid their owner's investment)
and resettling them in Africa. (This proposal
did not acknowledge how difficult it would
be for freedmen to be settled in another country
and environment after age 45.) Jefferson's
plan envisioned a whites-only society without
any blacks.Concerning Jefferson and race,
author Annette Gordon-Reed stated the following:
Of all the Founding Fathers, it was Thomas
Jefferson for whom the issue of race loomed
largest. In the roles of slaveholder, public
official and family man, the relationship
between blacks and whites was something he
thought about, wrote about and grappled with
from his cradle to his grave.
Paul Finkelman states that Jefferson believed
that Blacks lacked basic human emotions.According
to historian Jeremy J. Tewell, although Jefferson's
name had been associated with the anti-slavery
cause during the early 1770s in the Virginia
legislature, Jefferson viewed slavery as a
"Southern way of life", similar to mainstream
Greek and antiquity societies. In agreement
with the Southern slave society, Jefferson
believed that slavery served to protect blacks,
whom he viewed as inferior or incapable of
taking care of themselves. Historians such
as Peter Kolchin and Ira Berlin have noted
that by Jefferson's time, Virginia and other
southern colonies had become "slave societies,"
in which slavery was the main mode of labor
production and the slaveholding class held
the political power.
According to Joyce Appleby, Jefferson had
opportunities to disassociate himself from
slavery. In 1782, after the American Revolution,
Virginia passed a law making manumission by
the slave owner legal and more easily accomplished,
and the manumission rate rose across the Upper
South in other states as well. Northern states
passed various emancipation plans. Jefferson's
actions did not keep up with those of the
antislavery advocates. On September 15, 1793,
Jefferson agreed in writing to free James
Hemings, his mixed-race slave who had served
him as chef since their time in Paris, after
the slave had trained his younger brother
Peter as a replacement chef. Jefferson finally
freed James Hemings in February 1796. According
to one historian, Jefferson's manumission
was not generous; he said the document "undermines
any notion of benevolence." With freedom,
Hemings worked in Philadelphia and traveled
to France. About the same time, in 1794 Jefferson
allowed James' older brother Robert Hemings
to buy his freedom. These were the only two
slaves Jefferson freed by manumission in his
lifetime. (They were both brothers of Sally
Hemings, believed to be Jefferson's concubine.)
By contrast, so many other slaveholders in
Virginia freed slaves in the first two decades
after the Revolution that the proportion of
free blacks in Virginia compared to the total
black population rose from less than 1% in
1790 to 7.2% in 1810. By then, three-quarters
of the slaves in Delaware had been freed,
and a high proportion of slaves in Maryland.
== See also ==
List of Presidents of the United States who
owned slaves
Slavery — contemporary, historical
