Kevin et al,
As a descendant of people who were enslaved in Virginia your statement: "the moral evil of slavery,........very well may have been so deep and so pervasive as to render moot ......desire to find moral heroism in the choices of the founders". My sentiments exactly; I am a living witness! Indeed "Founding Fathers" is what they were! Best regards. EVP
----- Original Message -----
From: Kevin - hardwikr Hardwick <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Mon, 19 Dec 2011 20:45:29 -0000 (UTC)
Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] Hemings-TJ, Charlottesville newspaper
Henry—
Regarding your comment:
“Regarding the manumission of James Hemings, Turner writes: "James (a
French-trained chef) quickly became an alcoholic and committed suicide
-- reinforcing Jefferson's often expressed fear that freeing slaves
who had not been raised to care for themselves in a very hostile
Virginia would do them no favor." . . . No evidence exists to show that Jefferson drew
any conclusion about African-American incompetence from James
Hemings's suicide.”
I have not immersed myself in the TJ literature to anywhere near the degree that so many others who post here have done. But can I fairly infer from your omission of a rebuttal that Turner is correct that TJ “often expressed fear” that freed slaves who had not been “raised to care for themselves” would “do them no favor”? I have certainly seen this kind of claim made by other slave owners, as a justification for continuing to own slaves—so a priori, it strikes me as at least plausible that Jefferson might have ascribed to this kind of belief.
As an aside, this kind of environmentalism, while surely self-serving, strikes me as less harsh than the full blown pro-slavery argument. Jefferson’s arguments in favor of continuing slavery strike me as somewhat less rigid than those of, for example, the authors of the pro-slavery petitions that Frederika Teute edited and published in the WMQ some years ago. After all, Jefferson seems to have implied that the civil incompetence he ascribed to people born into slavery was a result of the institution itself, and not (as the authors of the pro-slavery petitions maintained) the result of an hereditary, essential racism. Jefferson’s writings are, to my eye anyway, ambiguous, since he hinted strongly at racist beliefs in his NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA. But he consistently refused to extend these implications to their full conclusions, in quite the stark fashion as did, say, the Pinckneys during the Philadelphia Convention debates, or Richard Furman in his open letter to the Governor of South Carolina following the Denmark Vesey insurrection, or John C. Calhoun in his argument that slavery constituted a “positive good.”
Anyway, digressions aside, it does seem to me to be a fairly common thing for people to fixate on evidence that confirms their existing beliefs, and to glide easily over evidence that does not. So if Jefferson did in fact believe that persons raised as slaves could not well fend for themselves, then it would not be especially surprising that he would draw the conclusions that Turner asserts that he did. The more troublesome issue, then, at least so far as Turner’s arguments go, is not the plausibility of the inference he ascribes to Jefferson, but rather the fact that, as you say, there is no evidence that Jefferson actually drew that conclusion. I find it plausible that he could have done so, countervailing evidence of the kind you describe not-with-standing. But the claim that he did indeed arrive at such a conclusion is not warranted by any actual evidence.
Finally—a quote from an excellent new study by William Van Cleve, A SLAVEHOLDER’S UNION: SLAVERY, POLITICS, AND THE CONSTITUTION IN THE EARLY AMERICAN REPUBLIC (University of Chicago Press, 2010). Van Cleve’s study is first rate, and deserves to be widely read. In his introduction, Van Cleve writes: “This study gives particular attention to two aspects of the problem of historical contingency that arise in the political and legal history of slavery. The first is the extent to which the actions of individual leaders made a significant difference in the outcome of various decisions. I agree with Sir Isiah Berlin that proper moral judgments about past actions can be made only after one fully appreciates the actual degrees of freedom—the realistic choices—available to human actors.” (p. 12)
Van Cleve gracefully suggests, it seems to me, a way forward from the kind of moralistic impasse at which we so often find ourselves when discussing historical evil in any of its its aspects, and with regard to Jefferson and Hemings in particular. If Van Cleve is right—much of his argument is circumstantial, so I don’t think his book can be held to be definitive, although it is very suggestive—then the assumption that Jefferson had much meaningful room to maneuver, even had he been inclined to do so, deserves greater scrutiny. Even had Jefferson found the moral vision and courage to follow Washington’s example, it might very well have made little larger political difference (outside of course the very real difference it would have made in the lives of Jefferson’s slaves). The moral evil of slavery, in other words, may very well have been so deep and so pervasive as to render moot our desire to find moral heroism in the choices of the founders.
All best wishes,
Kevin
___________________________
Kevin R. Hardwick
Associate Professor
Department of History, MSC 8001
James Madison University
Harrisonburg, Virginia 22807
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