Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862

Close upon this followed a fiercer grapple,—his third great legislative attack on slavery. In his revision of the Virginia laws he reported “a bill to emancipate all slaves born after the passing of the act.” Attached to this was a plan for the instruction of the young negroes thus set free.

To follow Jefferson and understand him, we must bear in mind that the Virginia which educated him was not behind a dozen smaller States in fertility, enterprise, and republican feeling. Its best men were haters of slavery. The efforts of its leaders were directed to other things than plans for taxing oysters or filching the gains of free negroes. Forth from the Virginia of that time were hurled against negro slavery the thrilling invectives of Patrick Henry, the startling prophecies of Madison, and the declaration of Washington, “For the abolition of slavery by law my vote shall not be wanting.”

For a mirror of that Virginia statesmanship, in its dealings with human rights, take the “Dissertation on Slavery with a Proposal for the Gradual Abolition of it in the State of Virginia, written by St. George Tucker, Professor of Law in the University of William and Mary, and one of the Judges of the General Court in Virginia,” published in 1791. It proves, that, between the passage of the act of 1782 allowing manumission and the year 1791, more than ten thousand slaves had been set free. One is tempted to believe that the new Massachusetts school caught its fire from this old Virginia school; for this friend of Jefferson speaks of “the inconsistency of invoking God for liberty in our Revolution and imposing on our fellow-men who differ from us in complexion a slavery ten thousand times more cruel than the grievances and oppressions of which we complained.” Such was the utterance of the Virginia school of statesmanship in which Jefferson was trained.

And his views progressed, as we should expect. On the occasion of a call for instructions to the first Virginia delegates to Congress respecting an address to the King, Jefferson drew up a paper, which, though greatly admired, was thought too bold. In one passage he goes beyond his masters, and says,—“For the most trifling reasons, and sometimes for no conceivable reasons at all, his Majesty has rejected laws of the most salutary tendency. The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in these Colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state. But, previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves we have, it is necessary to exclude all further importations from Africa. Yet our repeated efforts to effect this, by prohibiting and by imposing duties which might amount to prohibition, have been hitherto defeated by his Majesty’s negative,—thus preferring the advantages of a few British corsairs to the lasting interests of the American States, and to the rights of human nature, deeply wounded by this infamous practice.”

These words are hot and bright, but they are mere sparkles compared to the full-flaming orb of freedom which our statesman gave afterward. For, take the Declaration of Independence, as it issued from Carpenter’s Hall, after slavery-loving planters of the South and money-loving ship-owners of the North had, as they thought, made it neutral, and we all, North and South, recognize in it the boldest anti-slavery document extant. Why else do Northern demagogues ridicule it, and Southern demagogues revile it? Yet Jefferson made it far stronger and sharper against negro slavery than it is now. Look closely at the well-known fac-simile:—

he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemissphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither, this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christianking of Great Britain determined to keep open a market andwhere MEN should be bought & sold he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this determining to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold:execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which hehas deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom healso obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the libertiesof one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the livesof another.

There stands to this day that precious original,—hot first-thoughts and cold second-thoughts, all in Jefferson’s own hand. Look for a moment at the rich current of internal evidence running through that rough draught, and through all its erasures, changes, and emphatic markings,—evidence of the deepest hatred not only of all tyranny, but of all slavery. Thus, after he had written the passage, “determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold,” the idea continues hot in his mind; for, after smouldering a few moments, it flames forth again, is written again in the same phrasing, with the same show of emphasis, before he bethinks himself to erase it. Then, too, the words Christian and MEN are the only words emphasized by careful pen-printing in large letters;—and this labored movement of his pen marks the injury which he deemed the greater; for the largest letters and deepest emphasis are reserved for MEN. Evidently, that word points out the wrong which, as Jefferson thought, “a candid world” would forever regard as the supreme wrong.

We have now noted Jefferson’s battle against slavery in the founding of the Republic: let us go on to his work in the building of the Republic.

In 1782 he gave forth the “Notes on Virginia.” His opposition to slavery is as fierce here as of old, but it takes various phases,—sometimes sweeping against the hated system with a torrent of facts,—sometimes battering it with a hard, cold logic,—sometimes piercing it with deadly queries and suggestions,—and sometimes, with his blazing hate of all oppression, biting and burning through every pro-slavery theory.

But in taking up the “Notes,” we must understand the relation of Jefferson’s way of thinking to his way of working. In his thinking, the slave system was evidently a violation of the whole body of good principles, for he calls it an “ evil ”;—a violation of morality, for he calls it an “ enormity ”;—a violation of justice, for he calls it a “ wrong ”;—a violation of republican pretensions, for he calls it a “ hideous blot ”;—a violation of the healthy action of our institutions, for he calls it a “ disease ”;—a violation of our whole public happiness, for he calls it a “ curse .” But his way of working was more calm and cool,—often displeasing those whose plans of action are formed far from any direct entanglement in the slave system.

This union of fervent thought and cool action has, of course, brought upon Jefferson the invectives of two great classes. One class have looked merely at his thinking, and have distrusted him as a dreamer. To these he is a dealer in oracles, at second-hand, from Voltaire and Diderot. The other class have studied his plans of practical philanthropy, with all his shrewd researches and homely discussions in agriculture, finance, mechanics, and architecture, and have ridiculed him as a tinker. To such Jefferson seems a grandmotherly sort of person,—riding about in a gig arranged to register the length of his rides,—walking about in boots arranged to register the length of his walks,—weatherwise, and profound in dealing with smoky chimneys and sheep-breeding.