Kevin,

    Of course, you are right.  TJ's tepid and contradictory racism (note
Sally and TJ) vitiated his promise of equal rights for blacks.
And I for one am willing to leave it there.  Jefferson was a gifted thinker,
a skilled political leader, and not surprisingly a complicated and
self-contradicting human being.  He was neither demi-god nor demon;  just an
intellectually extraordinary but perhaps emotionally and physically ordinary
18th century patrician.

Harold S. Forsythe
----- Original Message -----
From: <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, December 05, 2005 11:23 PM
Subject: Re: TJ et al


> Surely "criminality" depends on what we take "law" to be.
> Jefferson, to my reading, is one of the folk who embedded
> natural law into the American political and constitutional
> lexicon.  It may well be, of course, that Jefferson cannot
> bear the moral weight that subsequent American statesmen have
> asked him to bear--Abraham Lincolm, for example, or Franklin
> Delano Roosevelt, to name two rather important Americans who
> took Jefferson's Declaration of Independence as their point of
> reference for the foundational values of America.  But the
> Lockean natural rights which Jefferson invoked in the
> Declaration have pretty clearly resonated powerfully
> throughout our country's history.
>
> The political tradition of the United States, it seems to me,
> is quintessentially a liberal tradition.  That is to say, it
> is a tradition committed to expanding human liberty, by and
> large.  Jefferson, as much as any other, is responsible for
> articulating American liberalism, in ways that have resonated
> powerfully ever since.
>
> The only way to square a commitment liberalism--by which I
> mean here a commitment to human liberty, autonomy, and
> self-determination--with slavery is to deny the capacity for
> self-determination of the slave.  By Locke's reasoning, only
> those people capable of exercising adult rational faculties
> can participate in the exercise of the sovereignty of the
> people.  Thus, one really important way to reconcile slavery
> with liberalism is to insist that the slaves cannot exercise
> adult rational faculties, and hence must remain dependent on
> those who can.  Whether or not racism has its origins in
> slavery or predated it, the southern effort to defend both
> slavery and a liberal society premised on popular sovereignty,
> both at the same time, certainly gave added strength to
> racism.  Paul Finkelmen had done a fine job editing some of
> the more important of the southern 19th century pro-slavery
> arguments, and I would refer readers to his volume in the
> Bedford document series.  Read it for yourself; draw your own
> conclusions.
>
> Jefferson was partially down that road in the 1780s, when he
> worked out his anaylsis of slavery in his NOTES ON THE STATE
> OF VIRGINIA.  But to my reading, on balance he ultimately
> rejects the argument I limn above.  Jefferson understood
> slavery to violate natural law, and in that sense to be
> criminal.  I don't think it is an inappropriate word to use in
> this context, when we are discussing this particular statesman.
>
> My best,
> Kevin
>
> ---- Original message ----
>>Date: Mon, 5 Dec 2005 20:53:22 -0500
>>From: Joan Brooks <[log in to unmask]>
>>Subject: TJ et al
>>To: [log in to unmask]
>>
>>" If we agree that slavery is criminal and evil, Jefferson
> was as thoroughly implicated in it as it is possible to be. "
>>
>>If "criminal" means breaking the law, then no one in 18th C.
> Va. was "criminal" by having slaves.  Slavery was protected by
> the Constitution until after the Civil War.  It is not
> uncommon for moral conscience and legal rights to be in conflict.
>>
>>What I would find more interesting is a discussion of what
> would have happened in our part of N. America if the
> compromise on slavery had not been included in the
> Constitution.  I remember reading an article in Smithsonian
> many years ago on that topic.  It was fascinating.
>>
>>What folks need to remember is that a compromise is a
> workable solution that satisfies no one.
>>
>>And to Mr. F.:
>>As to distant black relatives for 99% of us long-time
> Virginians-- So what?  I cannot change my ancestors  (or their
> behavior) and would not want to.  I am a genuine American
> hybrid and enjoy the search for my varied forebears.
>>
>>Joan Logan Brooks
>>
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> Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
> Department of History
> James Madison University
>
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