Kevin and colleagues, for some particularly thought-provoking analysis  
of this vexed subject, I'd recommend the three (I think it's three)  
relevant essays Peter Onuf has in his The Mind of Thomas Jefferson  
(2007; Library of Congress catalog info at  http://lccn.loc.gov/2006014637 
  ).

All the best,

Jurretta Heckscher

On Dec 21, 2011, at 12:18 PM, Hardwick, Kevin - hardwikr wrote:

> Henry--
>
> Paul Finkelman yesterday brought to my attention a fairly powerful  
> argument (chapter six, "'Treason against the hopes of the World,'  
> Jefferson and Slavery," in Finkelman, SLAVERY AND THE FOUNDERS:   
> RACE AND LIBERTY IN THE AGE OF JEFFERSON, second edition, (M.E.  
> Sharpe, 2001), pp. 129-162) that Jefferson's thought and action with  
> regard to slavery amounts to a deep and shameful moral cowardice.   
> "Because Jefferson was the author of the Declaration of Independence  
> and a leader of the American enlightenment, the test of his position  
> on slavery is not whether he was better than the worst of his  
> generation, but whether he was the leader of the best," Finkelman  
> writes, "not whether he responded as a southerner and a planter, but  
> whether he was able to transcend his economic interests and his  
> sectional background in order to implement the ideals he  
> articulated."  As Finkelman powerfully argues, "Jefferson fails the  
> test."  (p 129)  Finkelman suggests that Jefferson properly should  
> be understood as "the intellectual godfather of the racist  
> pseudoscience of the American school of Anthropology," and that  
> "proponents of scientific racism, such as Josiah Nott, Samuel  
> Cartwright, and Samuel G. Morrison, apparently learned their science  
> from him." (p. 134)
>
> It may well be that the dichotomy I have drawn in earlier posts to  
> this thread (and that I draw in my teaching on the subject) is  
> either too simplistic or else simply false, with regard to Jefferson  
> at least.  I earlier drew a distinction between the environmental  
> argument that the experience of slavery itself malnourished the  
> civic capacity of the slave, on the one hand, and the racist and  
> essentialist argument that slaves, and persons of African ancestry  
> more generally, were incompetent (especially in the civic sense) by  
> nature.  It is easy enough to find examples of persons drawing this  
> distinction in later generations--for example, in the speeches and  
> writings of Freedmen's Bureau officers working in the South in the  
> immediate aftermath of the Civil War, or in the thought of Booker T.  
> Washington.
>
> I had thought I had good reason to suggest that Jefferson at least  
> hinted at this distinction as well.    This would make some a priori  
> sense, in as much as Jefferson consistently argued that the work  
> performed by a person across his life shaped his civic potential-- 
> that, in other words, the project of fashioning an enduring republic  
> depended on the quality of its citizens, and that the kind of work  
> citizens performed did much to shape their capacity to be good  
> republican citizens.  It is not much of a stretch, then, to connect  
> the argument that certain kinds of work can shape civic dispositions  
> in a positive fashion to an argument that other kinds of work can be  
> destructive to civic character.  Jefferson did in fact make this  
> argument with regard to factory work.  But I had also perceived, or  
> thought I perceived, that he extended the thought to slavery, and  
> argued that slavery was pernicious in part because the condition of  
> being a slave rendered the slave incapable of being a citizen.   
> Paul's argument, however, suggests that insofar as slavery is  
> concerned, this is not the argument that Jefferson made, and that  
> Jefferson is better understood as a precursor to the kind of awful  
> "slavery is a positive good" argument made by John C. Calhoun or  
> William Fitzhugh.
>
> I confess at this point to being on the fence.  Paul's essay has, at  
> the very least, persuaded me that I need to revisit this issue.  I   
> much would welcome the thoughts and guidance of others here.
>
> Well wishes,
> Kevin
> ___________________________
> Kevin R. Hardwick
> Associate Professor
> Department of History, MSC 8001
> James Madison University
> Harrisonburg, Virginia 22807








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