Mr. Dixon--

Good, we do seem to be making some progress, and that is always heartening.
A few asides before I get to the heart of my argument.

I really would urge you to reread the Scholars Report, especially the
essays by Lance Banning and Paul Rahe.  They both acknowledge that the
issue of the paternity of Hemings children is extremely tricky, and that
good arguments can be made on both sides of the question.  One supports the
report, one dissents from it, but neither is untroubled by the evidence.
You err in asserting that the Scholar's Report exonerates Jefferson in some
sort of unproblematic fashion.  That is far too simplistic a reading of the
measured thoughts of several nuanced scholars.

You also err, and here profoundly, in arguing that the issue of the
paternity of Heming's children defines contemporary slave studies.  The
vast majority of modern studies of slavery simply do not address the issue
at all, of if they do, in only the most peripheral way.  I will refer you
here to three of the best recent studies of slavery: Ira Berlin, MANY
THOUSANDS GONE; Robin Blackburn, THE MAKING OF NEW WORLD SLAVERY; and David
Eltis, THE RISE OF AFRICAN SLAVERY IN THE AMERICAS.  Not one of them even
mentions Jefferson's alledged liason with Hemings.  It is simply not all
that important an issue, in the larger context of the study of American
slavery.  The notion that the question of whether or not Jefferson had sex
with Hemings *defines* contemporary study of slavery is so off base that it
is laughable.  Really.  Honest--no hidden agenda here.  I think the
Jefferson case is worth talking about, but let's keep it in perspective.
In the mean time, I would urge you to read Berlin's book in particular, if
for no other reason than that it is very well written and an extraordinary
synthetic argument that draws upon much of the most recent and exciting
literature.

You have also misread Edmund Morgan, or at least you misrepresent his
conclusion here.  I would be delighted to walk you through the argument,
but unless there is some groundswell of desire from others on this list, I
don't think this is the appropriate forum in which to do that.  I would
suggest that we discuss that privately.

These are, however, minor issues.

I would propose that we instead examine your central claim below, which is
considerably more interesting.  You argue that contractarian political
philosophy is at the heart of American founding, and that it was as fully
articulated in New England and the Middle Colonies as it was in Virginia
(and thus that slavery was not causal to their development).  I think that
is a fair summary of your arguement, and I will proceed forward with the
understanding that it is.  But it is possible of course that I have
misunderstood you.

The first part of this claim--that contractarian political philosophy is
the central idea of the founding, is debateable.  I will refer you here to
Forrest MacDonald, NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM for a more nuanced view of the
streams of thought that fed into the founding, (and that is not to mention
an enormous corpus of work which centers on the ideas of JGA Pocock).  So
let us recognize at the outset that by accepting your position, we are
treading out onto contested ground.  However, that said, there is no
shortage of good scholarship which supports this view too--I am thinking
here in particular of political scientists like Thomas Pangle, but Garrett
Sheldon's study of Jefferson fits this view as well.  So let us agree to
accept this contention, while at the same time acknowledging that it really
is too simplistic a claim, and that we should reserve some attention for
non-contractarian influences, for example the common law, or the influence
of classical republicanism, when we discuss the Founding.

The second part of your claim above is less successful for your purposes,
because every part of 18th century British America was a "society with
slaves," in the very useful terminology which Ira Berlin establishes.  If
slavery had a causal role to play in the development of 18th century
colonial political culture, it surely could plausibly be said to have
influenced the thinking of every cosmopolitan gentleman in the colonies,
regardless of where they lived.  It is safe to say that *every* colonial
gentleman with any experience of urban life or life in a commercial town
had direct personal familiarity with slavery.

Let us leave the second part of your claim aside, however, and focus just
on the first.  A central claim of contractarian political philosophy is
that the individual possesses him or her self.  Self ownership, Locke
argued, was the basis for property rights.  (Second Treatise, par. 26)  It
was the desire to secure property rights, and especially property rights in
oneself, which impelled men out of the state of nature and into civil
society.  Thus, Locke argued, "force without right upon a *man's person*
[my emphasis] makes a war both where there is, and is not, a common judge."
(par. 19)  The quite reasonable desire to avoid this state of war, Locke
says, "is one great reason of men's putting themselves into society and
quitting the state of nature." (par. 21)

This is where the scholarship of David Eltis, among others, comes in.  If
you accept that contractarian political philosophy is premised upon
possessive individualism, the historical question then becomes to figure
out why possessive individualism achieves salience when and where it does.
And here it is striking that precisely those societies which most fully
articulated possessive individualism and its subsequent political
implications were those which most fully developed, at more or less the
same time, the most repressive variants of chattel slavery.  One of those
societies was British colonial Virginia.  I will save more detailed
discussion of Eltis' argument for a later post, if there is any interest in
it.

Back to Edmund Morgan for just a moment.  Morgan makes a similar argument,
although one focused more on practical politics than on political theory.
In 18th century Virginia, Morgan argues, the interests of slave owners and
non-slave-owning white men could run in concert, or at least enough in
concert that non-slave-owning white men would be willing to defer to
slave-owning men's leadership.  The reason this could happen, he says, is
that economic imperatives to extract labor from the poor were deflected
into slavery, thus permitting the development of a society which radically
emphasized the autonomy and independence of individual white men.  I would
hope that the similarity with Eltis' argument is obvious.  In both cases,
radical emphases on liberty and slavery emerge in tight causal linkage.

There is lots more to be said here, but this post is already over long.  So
I will stop to let others chime in.

Kevin


--On Wednesday, April 03, 2002 8:42 AM +0000 "Richard E. Dixon"
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> The paucity of proof normally required for any such allegation as the
> paternity of the Hemings children does not deter a wide swath of those
> today immersed in "slave studies." In fact, it defines them, and raises
> questions about their "imagining the past," to borrow Professor Fordyce's
> revealing phrase. For reasons obscure, it opens the door for the movement
> to "take (Jefferson) down off his pedestal."
>
>     So, you are correct that I considered the paternity allegation the
>     focus of the string and not the "larger moral issue" that you are
> intent on exploring that Jefferson was "morally weak." However, I did not
> ignore your assertion that "Jefferson could not have been Jefferson
> without slavery." I denied it. The intellectual thought of the 17th and
> 18th centuries that was realized in the concept that government is a
> compact of the people, that power flows up, not down, was accepted by
> Adams, Otis, Dickinson and many throughout the colonies that did not own
> slaves. Indeed, in Morgan's seminal treatment, it is the paradox of
> colonial Virginia that the beliefs of liberty and equality were the same
> among both the slave owners and those throughout the colonies who opposed
> slavery. Morgan even defends the moral stature of Jefferson, Washington
> and Madison. Slavery, while an uncomfortable issue in the 1787
> Convention, was not a defining issue in pre-Revolutionary thought.
>
>     The point not to be lost here is that Jefferson's thought was his
>     legacy. There is no basis for asserting that Jefferson's thought
> would have been different if he never owned a slave. In fact, he opposed
> the concept of slavery, he did not defend it, and so, Jefferson's vision
> was unclouded by the economic reality of colonial Virginia.
> ____________________________________________________________________
> Richard E. Dixon
> Attorney at Law
> 4122 Leonard Drive
> Fairfax, VA 22030
> 703-691-0770 fax 703-691-0978
> ____________________________________________________________________
>
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--
Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of History, MSC 2001
James Madison University
Harrisonburg VA 22807
Phone:  540/568-6306
Email:  [log in to unmask]

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