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Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves
by Henry Wiencek
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He launched the nailery in 1794 and supervised it personally for three years. “I now employ a dozen little boys from 10. to 16. years of age, overlooking all the details of their business myself.” He said he spent half the day counting and measuring nails. In the morning he weighed and distributed nail rod to each nailer; at the end of the day he weighed the finished product and noted how much rod had been wasted.
The nailery “particularly suited me,” he wrote, “because it would employ a parcel of boys who would otherwise be idle.” Equally important, it served as a training and testing ground. All the nail boys got extra food; those who did well received a new suit of clothes, and they could also expect to graduate, as it were, to training as artisans rather than going “in the ground” as common field slaves.
Some nail boys rose in the plantation hierarchy to become house servants, blacksmiths, carpenters or coopers. Wormley Hughes, a slave who became head gardener, started in the nailery, as did Burwell Colbert, who rose to become the mansion’s butler and Jefferson’s personal attendant. Isaac Granger, the son of an enslaved Monticello foreman, Great George Granger, was the most productive nailer, with a profit averaging 80 cents a day over the first six months of 1796, when he was 20; he fashioned half a ton of nails during those six months. The work was tedious in the extreme. Confined for long hours in the hot, smoky workshop, the boys hammered out 5,000 to 10,000 nails a day, producing a gross income of $2,000 in 1796. Jefferson’s competition for the nailery was the state penitentiary.
The nailers received twice the food ration of a field worker but no wages. Jefferson paid white boys (an overseer’s sons) 50 cents a day for cutting wood to feed the nailery’s fires, but this was a weekend job done “on Saturdays, when they were not in school.”
Exuberant over the success of the nailery, Jefferson wrote: “My new trade of nail-making is to me in this country what an additional title of nobility or the ensigns of a new order are in Europe.” The profit was substantial. Just months after the factory began operation, he wrote that “a nailery which I have established with my own negro boys now provides completely for the maintenance of my family.” Two months of labor by the nail boys paid the entire annual grocery bill for the white family. He wrote to a Richmond merchant, “My groceries come to between 4. and 500. Dollars a year, taken and paid for quarterly. The best resource of quarterly paiment in my power is Nails, of which I make enough every fortnight [emphasis added] to pay a quarter’s bill.”
In an 1840s memoir, Isaac Granger, by then a freedman who had taken the surname Jefferson, recalled circumstances at the nailery. Isaac, who worked there as a young man, specified the incentives that Jefferson offered to nailers: “Gave the boys in the nail factory a pound of meat a week, a dozen herrings, a quart of molasses, and peck of meal. Give them that wukked the best a suit of red or blue; encouraged them mightily.” Not all the slaves felt so mightily encouraged. It was Great George Granger’s job, as foreman, to get those people to work. Without molasses and suits to offer, he had to rely on persuasion, in all its forms. For years he had been very successful—by what methods, we don’t know. But in the winter of 1798 the system ground to a halt when Granger, perhaps for the first time, refused to whip people.
Col. Thomas Mann Randolph, Jefferson’s son-in-law, reported to Jefferson, then living in Philadelphia as vice president, that “insubordination” had “greatly clogged” operations under Granger. A month later there was “progress,” but Granger was “absolutely wasting with care.” He was caught between his own people and Jefferson, who had rescued the family when they had been sold from the plantation of Jefferson’s father-in-law, given him a good job, allowed him to earn money and own property, and shown similar benevolence to Granger’s children. Now Jefferson had his eye on Granger’s output.
Jefferson noted curtly in a letter to Randolph that another overseer had already delivered his tobacco to the Richmond market, “where I hope George’s will soon join it.” Randolph reported back that Granger’s people had not even packed the tobacco yet, but gently urged his father-in-law to have patience with the foreman: “He is not careless...tho’ he procrastinates too much.” It seems that Randolph was trying to protect Granger from Jefferson’s wrath. George was not procrastinating; he was struggling against a workforce that resisted him. But he would not beat them, and they knew it.
At length, Randolph had to admit the truth to Jefferson. Granger, he wrote, “cannot command his force.” The only recourse was the whip. Randolph reported “instances of disobedience so gross that I am obliged to interfere and have them punished myself.” Randolph would not have administered the whip personally; they had professionals for that.
Most likely he called in William Page, the white overseer who ran Jefferson’s farms across the river, a man notorious for his cruelty. Throughout Jefferson’s plantation records there runs a thread of indicators—some direct, some oblique, some euphemistic—that the Monticello machine operated on carefully calibrated brutality. Some slaves would never readily submit to bondage. Some, Jefferson wrote, “require a vigour of discipline to make them do reasonable work.” That plain statement of his policy has been largely ignored in preference to Jefferson’s well-known self-exoneration: “I love industry and abhor severity.” Jefferson made that reassuring remark to a neighbor, but he might as well have been talking to himself. He hated conflict, disliked having to punish people and found ways to distance himself from the violence his system required.
Thus he went on record with a denunciation of overseers as “the most abject, degraded and unprincipled race,” men of “pride, insolence and spirit of domination.” Though he despised these brutes, they were hardhanded men who got things done and had no misgivings. He hired them, issuing orders to impose a vigor of discipline.
With five simple words in the Declaration of Independence—“all men are created equal”—Thomas Jefferson undid Aristotle’s ancient formula, which had governed human affairs until 1776: “From the hour of their birth, some men are marked out for subjection, others for rule.” In his original draft of the Declaration, in soaring, damning, fiery prose, Jefferson denounced the slave trade as an “execrable commerce ...this assemblage of horrors,” a “cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberties.” As historian John Chester Miller put it, “The inclusion of Jefferson’s strictures on slavery and the slave trade would have committed the United States to the abolition of slavery.”
That was the way it was interpreted by some of those who read it at the time as well. Massachusetts freed its slaves on the strength of the Declaration of Independence, weaving Jefferson’s language into the state constitution of 1780. The meaning of “all men” sounded equally clear, and so disturbing to the authors of the constitutions of six Southern states that they emended Jefferson’s wording. “All freemen,” they wrote in their founding documents, “are equal.” The authors of those state constitutions knew what Jefferson meant, and could not accept it. The Continental Congress ultimately struck the passage because South Carolina and Georgia, crying out for more slaves, would not abide shutting down the market.
“One cannot question the genuineness of Jefferson’s liberal dreams,” writes historian David Brion Davis. “He was one of the first statesmen in any part of the world to advocate concrete measures for restricting and eradicating Negro slavery.”
But in the 1790s, Davis continues, “the most remarkable thing about Jefferson’s stand on slavery is his immense silence.” And later, Davis finds, Jefferson’s emancipation efforts “virtually ceased.”
Somewhere in a short span of years during the 1780s and into the early 1790s, a transformation came over Jefferson.
The very existence of slavery in the era of the American Revolution presents a paradox, and we have largely been content to leave it at that, since a paradox can offer a comforting state of moral suspended animation. Jefferson animates the paradox. And by looking closely at Monticello, we can see the process by which he rationalized an abomination to the point where an absolute moral reversal was reached and he made slavery fit into America’s national enterprise.
We can be forgiven if we interrogate Jefferson posthumously about slavery. It is not judging him by today’s standards to do so. Many people of his own time, taking Jefferson at his word and seeing him as the embodiment of the country’s highest ideals, appealed to him. When he evaded and rationalized, his admirers were frustrated and mystified; it felt like praying to a stone. The Virginia abolitionist Moncure Conway, noting Jefferson’s enduring reputation as a would-be emancipator, remarked scornfully, “Never did a man achieve more fame for what he did not do.”
Thomas Jefferson’s mansion stands atop his mountain like the Platonic ideal of a house: a perfect creation existing in an ethereal realm, literally above the clouds. To reach Monticello, you must ascend what a visitor called “this steep, savage hill,” through a thick forest and swirls of mist that recede at the summit, as if by command of the master of the mountain. “If it had not been called Monticello,” said one visitor, “I would call it Olympus, and Jove its occupant.” The house that presents itself at the summit seems to contain some kind of secret wisdom encoded in its form. Seeing Monticello is like reading an old American Revolutionary manifesto—the emotions still rise. This is the architecture of the New World, brought forth by its guiding spirit.
In designing the mansion, Jefferson followed a precept laid down two centuries earlier by Palladio: “We must contrive a building in such a manner that the finest and most noble parts of it be the most exposed to public view, and the less agreeable disposed in by places, and removed from sight as much as possible.”
The mansion sits atop a long tunnel through which slaves, unseen, hurried back and forth carrying platters of food, fresh tableware, ice, beer, wine and linens, while above them 20, 30 or 40 guests sat listening to Jefferson’s dinner-table conversation. At one end of the tunnel lay the icehouse, at the other the kitchen, a hive of ceaseless activity where the enslaved cooks and their helpers produced one course after another.
During dinner Jefferson would open a panel in the side of the fireplace, insert an empty wine bottle and seconds later pull out a full bottle. We can imagine that he would delay explaining how this magic took place until an astonished guest put the question to him. The panel concealed a narrow dumbwaiter that descended to the basement. When Jefferson put an empty bottle in the compartment, a slave waiting in the basement pulled the dumbwaiter down, removed the empty, inserted a fresh bottle and sent it up to the master in a matter of seconds. Similarly, platters of hot food magically appeared on a revolving door fitted with shelves, and the used plates disappeared from sight on the same contrivance. Guests could not see or hear any of the activity, nor the links between the visible world and the invisible that magically produced Jefferson’s abundance.
Jefferson appeared every day at first light on Monticello’s long terrace, walking alone with his thoughts. From his terrace Jefferson looked out upon an industrious, well-organized enterprise of black coopers, smiths, nailmakers, a brewer, cooks professionally trained in French cuisine, a glazier, painters, millers and weavers. Black managers, slaves themselves, oversaw other slaves. A team of highly skilled artisans constructed Jefferson’s coach. The household staff ran what was essentially a mid-sized hotel, where some 16 slaves waited upon the needs of a daily horde of guests.
The plantation was a small town in everything but name, not just because of its size, but in its complexity. Skilled artisans and house slaves occupied cabins on Mulberry Row alongside hired white workers; a few slaves lived in rooms in the mansion’s south dependency wing; some slept where they worked. Most of Monticello’s slaves lived in clusters of cabins scattered down the mountain and on outlying farms. In his lifetime Jefferson owned more than 600 slaves. At any one time about 100 slaves lived on the mountain; the highest slave population, in 1817, was 140.
Below the mansion there stood John Hemings’ cabinetmaking shop, called the joinery, along with a dairy, a stable, a small textile factory and a vast garden carved from the mountainside—the cluster of industries Jefferson launched to supply Monticello’s household and bring in cash. “To be independent for the comforts of life,” Jefferson said, “we must fabricate them ourselves.” He was speaking of America’s need to develop manufacturing, but he had learned that truth on a microscale on his plantation.
Jefferson looked down from his terrace onto a community of slaves he knew very well—an extended family and network of related families that had been in his ownership for two, three or four generations. Though there were several surnames among the slaves on the “mountaintop”—Fossett, Hern, Colbert, Gillette, Brown, Hughes—they were all Hemingses by blood, descendants of the matriarch Elizabeth “Betty” Hemings, or Hemings relatives by marriage. “A peculiar fact about his house servants was that we were all related to one another,” as a former slave recalled many years later. Jefferson’s grandson Jeff Randolph observed, “Mr. Js Mechanics and his entire household of servants...consisted of one family connection and their wives.”
For decades, archaeologists have been scouring Mulberry Row, finding mundane artifacts that testify to the way that life was lived in the workshops and cabins. They have found saw blades, a large drill bit, an ax head, blacksmith’s pincers, a wall bracket made in the joinery for a clock in the mansion, scissors, thimbles, locks and a key, and finished nails forged, cut and hammered by nail boys.
The archaeologists also found a bundle of raw nail rod—a lost measure of iron handed out to a nail boy one dawn. Why was this bundle found in the dirt, unworked, instead of forged, cut and hammered the way the boss had told them? Once, a missing bundle of rod had started a fight in the nailery that got one boy’s skull bashed in and another sold south to terrify the rest of the children—“in terrorem” were Jefferson’s words—“as if he were put out of the way by death.” Perhaps this very bundle was the cause of the fight.
Weaving slavery into a narrative about Thomas Jefferson usually presents a challenge to authors, but one writer managed to spin this vicious attack and terrible punishment of a nailery boy into a charming plantation tale. In a 1941 biography of Jefferson for “young adults” (ages 12 to 16) the author wrote: “In this beehive of industry no discord or revilings found entrance: there were no signs of discontent on the black shining faces as they worked under the direction of their master....The women sang at their tasks and the children old enough to work made nails leisurely, not too overworked for a prank now and then.”
It might seem unfair to mock the misconceptions and sappy prose of “a simpler era,” except that this book, The Way of an Eagle, and hundreds like it, shaped the attitudes of generations of readers about slavery and African-Americans. Time magazine chose it as one of the “important books” of 1941 in the children’s literature category, and it gained a second life in America’s libraries when it was reprinted in 1961 as Thomas Jefferson: Fighter for Freedom and Human Rights.
In describing what Mulberry Row looked like, William Kelso, the archaeologist who excavated it in the 1980s, writes, “There can be little doubt that a relatively shabby Main Street stood there.” Kelso notes that “throughout Jefferson’s tenure, it seems safe to conclude that the spartan Mulberry Row buildings...made a jarring impact on the Monticello landscape.”
It seems puzzling that Jefferson placed Mulberry Row, with its slave cabins and work buildings, so close to the mansion, but we are projecting the present onto the past. Today, tourists can walk freely up and down the old slave quarter. But in Jefferson’s time, guests didn’t go there, nor could they see it from the mansion or the lawn. Only one visitor left a description of Mulberry Row, and she got a glimpse of it only because she was a close friend of Jefferson’s, someone who could be counted upon to look with the right attitude. When she published her account in the Richmond Enquirer, she wrote that the cabins would appear “poor and uncomfortable” only to people of “northern feelings.”
The critical turning point in Jefferson’s thinking may well have come in 1792. As Jefferson was counting up the agricultural profits and losses of his plantation in a letter to President Washington that year, it occurred to him that there was a phenomenon he had perceived at Monticello but never actually measured. He proceeded to calculate it in a barely legible, scribbled note in the middle of a page, enclosed in brackets. What Jefferson set out clearly for the first time was that he was making a 4 percent profit every year on the birth of black children. The enslaved were yielding him a bonanza, a perpetual human dividend at compound interest. Jefferson wrote, “I allow nothing for losses by death, but, on the contrary, shall presently take credit four per cent. per annum, for their increase over and above keeping up their own numbers.” His plantation was producing inexhaustible human assets. The percentage was predictable.
In another communication from the early 1790s, Jefferson takes the 4 percent formula further and quite bluntly advances the notion that slavery presented an investment strategy for the future. He writes that an acquaintance who had suffered financial reverses “should have been invested in negroes.” He advises that if the friend’s family had any cash left, “every farthing of it [should be] laid out in land and negroes, which besides a present support bring a silent profit of from 5. to 10. per cent in this country by the increase in their value.”
The irony is that Jefferson sent his 4 percent formula to George Washington, who freed his slaves, precisely because slavery had made human beings into money, like “Cattle in the market,” and this disgusted him. Yet Jefferson was right, prescient, about the investment value of slaves. A startling statistic emerged in the 1970s, when economists taking a hardheaded look at slavery found that on the eve of the Civil War, enslaved black people, in the aggregate, formed the second most valuable capital asset in the United States. David Brion Davis sums up their findings: “In 1860, the value of Southern slaves was about three times the amount invested in manufacturing or railroads nationwide.” The only asset more valuable than the black people was the land itself. The formula Jefferson had stumbled upon became the engine not only of Monticello but of the entire slaveholding South and the Northern industries, shippers, banks, insurers and investors who weighed risk against returns and bet on slavery. The words Jefferson used—“their increase”—became magic words.
Jefferson’s 4 percent theorem threatens the comforting notion that he had no real awareness of what he was doing, that he was “stuck” with or “trapped” in slavery, an obsolete, unprofitable, burdensome legacy. The date of Jefferson’s calculation aligns with the waning of his emancipationist fervor. Jefferson began to back away from antislavery just around the time he computed the silent profit of the “peculiar institution.”
And this world was crueler than we have been led to believe. A letter has recently come to light describing how Monticello’s young black boys, “the small ones,” age 10, 11 or 12, were whipped to get them to work in Jefferson’s nail factory, whose profits paid the mansion’s grocery bills. This passage about children being lashed had been suppressed—deliberately deleted from the published record in the 1953 edition of Jefferson’s Farm Book, containing 500 pages of plantation papers. That edition of the Farm Book still serves as a standard reference for research into the way Monticello worked.
By 1789, Jefferson planned to shift away from growing tobacco at Monticello, whose cultivation he described as “a culture of infinite wretchedness.” Tobacco wore out the soil so fast that new acreage constantly had to be cleared, engrossing so much land that food could not be raised to feed the workers and requiring the farmer to purchase rations for the slaves. (In a strangely modern twist, Jefferson had taken note of the measurable climate change in the region: The Chesapeake region was unmistakably cooling and becoming inhospitable to heat-loving tobacco that would soon, he thought, become the staple of South Carolina and Georgia.) He visited farms and inspected equipment, considering a new crop, wheat, and the exciting prospect it opened before him.
The cultivation of wheat revitalized the plantation economy and reshaped the South’s agricultural landscape. Planters all over the Chesapeake region had been making the shift. (George Washington had begun raising grains some 30 years earlier because his land wore out faster than Jefferson’s did.) Jefferson continued to plant some tobacco because it remained an important cash crop, but his vision for wheat farming was rapturous: “The cultivation of wheat is the reverse [of tobacco] in every circumstance. Besides cloathing the earth with herbage, and preserving its fertility, it feeds the labourers plentifully, requires from them only a moderate toil, except in the season of harvest, raises great numbers of animals for food and service, and diffuses plenty and happiness among the whole.”
Wheat farming forced changes in the relationship between planter and slave. Tobacco was raised by gangs of slaves all doing the same repetitive, backbreaking tasks under the direct, strict supervision of overseers. Wheat required a variety of skilled laborers, and Jefferson’s ambitious plans required a retrained work force of millers, mechanics, carpenters, smiths, spinners, coopers, and plowmen and plowmen.
Jefferson still needed a cohort of “labourers in the ground” to carry out the hardest tasks, so the Monticello slave community became more segmented and hierarchical. They were all slaves, but some slaves would be better than others. The majority remained laborers; above them were enslaved artisans (both male and female); above them were enslaved managers; above them was the household staff. The higher you stood in the hierarchy, the better clothes and food you got; you also lived literally on a higher plane, closer to the mountaintop. A small minority of slaves received pay, profit sharing or what Jefferson called “gratuities,” while the lowest workers received only the barest rations and clothing. Differences bred resentment, especially toward the elite household staff.
Planting wheat required fewer workers than tobacco, leaving a pool of field laborers available for specialized training. Jefferson embarked on a comprehensive program to modernize slavery, diversify it and industrialize it. Monticello would have a nail factory, a textile factory, a short-lived tinsmithing operation, coopering and charcoal burning. He had ambitious plans for a flour mill and a canal to provide water power for it.
Training for this new organization began in childhood. Jefferson sketched out a plan in his Farm Book: “children till 10. years old to serve as nurses. from 10. to 16. the boys make nails, the girls spin. at 16. go into the ground or learn trades.”
Tobacco required child labor (the small stature of children made them ideal workers for the distasteful task of plucking and killing tobacco worms); wheat did not, so Jefferson transferred his surplus of young workers to his nail factory (boys) and spinning and weaving operations (girls).
He launched the nailery in 1794 and supervised it personally for three years. “I now employ a dozen little boys from 10. to 16. years of age, overlooking all the details of their business myself.” He said he spent half the day counting and measuring nails. In the morning he weighed and distributed nail rod to each nailer; at the end of the day he weighed the finished product and noted how much rod had been wasted.
The nailery “particularly suited me,” he wrote, “because it would employ a parcel of boys who would otherwise be idle.” Equally important, it served as a training and testing ground. All the nail boys got extra food; those who did well received a new suit of clothes, and they could also expect to graduate, as it were, to training as artisans rather than going “in the ground” as common field slaves.
Some nail boys rose in the plantation hierarchy to become house servants, blacksmiths, carpenters or coopers. Wormley Hughes, a slave who became head gardener, started in the nailery, as did Burwell Colbert, who rose to become the mansion’s butler and Jefferson’s personal attendant. Isaac Granger, the son of an enslaved Monticello foreman, Great George Granger, was the most productive nailer, with a profit averaging 80 cents a day over the first six months of 1796, when he was 20; he fashioned half a ton of nails during those six months. The work was tedious in the extreme. Confined for long hours in the hot, smoky workshop, the boys hammered out 5,000 to 10,000 nails a day, producing a gross income of $2,000 in 1796. Jefferson’s competition for the nailery was the state penitentiary.
The nailers received twice the food ration of a field worker but no wages. Jefferson paid white boys (an overseer’s sons) 50 cents a day for cutting wood to feed the nailery’s fires, but this was a weekend job done “on Saturdays, when they were not in school.”
Exuberant over the success of the nailery, Jefferson wrote: “My new trade of nail-making is to me in this country what an additional title of nobility or the ensigns of a new order are in Europe.” The profit was substantial. Just months after the factory began operation, he wrote that “a nailery which I have established with my own negro boys now provides completely for the maintenance of my family.” Two months of labor by the nail boys paid the entire annual grocery bill for the white family. He wrote to a Richmond merchant, “My groceries come to between 4. and 500. Dollars a year, taken and paid for quarterly. The best resource of quarterly paiment in my power is Nails, of which I make enough every fortnight [emphasis added] to pay a quarter’s bill.”
In an 1840s memoir, Isaac Granger, by then a freedman who had taken the surname Jefferson, recalled circumstances at the nailery. Isaac, who worked there as a young man, specified the incentives that Jefferson offered to nailers: “Gave the boys in the nail factory a pound of meat a week, a dozen herrings, a quart of molasses, and peck of meal. Give them that wukked the best a suit of red or blue; encouraged them mightily.” Not all the slaves felt so mightily encouraged. It was Great George Granger’s job, as foreman, to get those people to work. Without molasses and suits to offer, he had to rely on persuasion, in all its forms. For years he had been very successful—by what methods, we don’t know. But in the winter of 1798 the system ground to a halt when Granger, perhaps for the first time, refused to whip people.
Col. Thomas Mann Randolph, Jefferson’s son-in-law, reported to Jefferson, then living in Philadelphia as vice president, that “insubordination” had “greatly clogged” operations under Granger. A month later there was “progress,” but Granger was “absolutely wasting with care.” He was caught between his own people and Jefferson, who had rescued the family when they had been sold from the plantation of Jefferson’s father-in-law, given him a good job, allowed him to earn money and own property, and shown similar benevolence to Granger’s children. Now Jefferson had his eye on Granger’s output.
Jefferson noted curtly in a letter to Randolph that another overseer had already delivered his tobacco to the Richmond market, “where I hope George’s will soon join it.” Randolph reported back that Granger’s people had not even packed the tobacco yet, but gently urged his father-in-law to have patience with the foreman: “He is not careless...tho’ he procrastinates too much.” It seems that Randolph was trying to protect Granger from Jefferson’s wrath. George was not procrastinating; he was struggling against a workforce that resisted him. But he would not beat them, and they knew it.
At length, Randolph had to admit the truth to Jefferson. Granger, he wrote, “cannot command his force.” The only recourse was the whip. Randolph reported “instances of disobedience so gross that I am obliged to interfere and have them punished myself.” Randolph would not have administered the whip personally; they had professionals for that.
Most likely he called in William Page, the white overseer who ran Jefferson’s farms across the river, a man notorious for his cruelty. Throughout Jefferson’s plantation records there runs a thread of indicators—some direct, some oblique, some euphemistic—that the Monticello machine operated on carefully calibrated brutality. Some slaves would never readily submit to bondage. Some, Jefferson wrote, “require a vigour of discipline to make them do reasonable work.” That plain statement of his policy has been largely ignored in preference to Jefferson’s well-known self-exoneration: “I love industry and abhor severity.” Jefferson made that reassuring remark to a neighbor, but he might as well have been talking to himself. He hated conflict, disliked having to punish people and found ways to distance himself from the violence his system required.
Thus he went on record with a denunciation of overseers as “the most abject, degraded and unprincipled race,” men of “pride, insolence and spirit of domination.” Though he despised these brutes, they were hardhanded men who got things done and had no misgivings. He hired them, issuing orders to impose a vigor of discipline.
It was during the 1950s, when historian Edwin Betts was editing one of Colonel Randolph’s plantation reports for Jefferson’s Farm Book, that he confronted a taboo subject and made his fateful deletion. Randolph reported to Jefferson that the nailery was functioning very well because “the small ones” were being whipped. The youngsters did not take willingly to being forced to show up in the icy midwinter hour before dawn at the master’s nail forge. And so the overseer, Gabriel Lilly, was whipping them “for truancy.”
Betts decided that the image of children being beaten at Monticello had to be suppressed, omitting this document from his edition. He had an entirely different image in his head; the introduction to the book declared, “Jefferson came close to creating on his own plantations the ideal rural community.” Betts couldn’t do anything about the original letter, but no one would see it, tucked away in the archives of the Massachusetts Historical Society. The full text did not emerge in print until 2005.
Betts’ omission was important in shaping the scholarly consensus that Jefferson managed his plantations with a lenient hand. Relying on Betts’ editing, the historian Jack McLaughlin noted that Lilly “resorted to the whip during Jefferson’s absence, but Jefferson put a stop to it.”
“Slavery was an evil he had to live with,” historian Merrill Peterson wrote, “and he managed it with what little dosings of humanity a diabolical system permitted.” Peterson echoed Jefferson’s complaints about the work force, alluding to “the slackness of slave labor,” and emphasized Jefferson’s benevolence: “In the management of his slaves Jefferson encouraged diligence but was instinctively too lenient to demand it. By all accounts he was a kind and generous master. His conviction of the injustice of the institution strengthened his sense of obligation toward its victims.”
Joseph Ellis observed that only “on rare occasions, and as a last resort, he ordered overseers to use the lash.” Dumas Malone stated, “Jefferson was kind to his servants to the point of indulgence, and within the framework of an institution he disliked he saw that they were well provided for. His ‘people’ were devoted to him.”
As a rule, the slaves who lived at the mountaintop, including the Hemings family and the Grangers, were treated better than slaves who worked the fields farther down the mountain. But the machine was hard to restrain.
After the violent tenures of earlier overseers, Gabriel Lilly seemed to portend a gentler reign when he arrived at Monticello in 1800. Colonel Randolph’s first report was optimistic. “All goes well,” he wrote, and “what is under Lillie admirably.” His second report about two weeks later was glowing: “Lillie goes on with great spirit and complete quiet at Mont’o.: he is so good tempered that he can get twice as much done without the smallest discontent as some with the hardest driving possible.” In addition to placing him over the laborers “in the ground” at Monticello, Jefferson put Lilly in charge of the nailery for an extra fee of £10 a year.
Once Lilly established himself, his good temper evidently evaporated, because Jefferson began to worry about what Lilly would do to the nailers, the promising adolescents whom Jefferson managed personally, intending to move them up the plantation ladder. He wrote to Randolph: “I forgot to ask the favor of you to speak to Lilly as to the treatment of the nailers. it would destroy their value in my estimation to degrade them in their own eyes by the whip. this therefore must not be resorted to but in extremities. as they will again be under my government, I would chuse they should retain the stimulus of character.” But in the same letter he emphasized that output must be maintained: “I hope Lilly keeps the small nailers engaged so as to supply our customers.”
Colonel Randolph immediately dispatched a reassuring but carefully worded reply: “Everything goes well at Mont’o.—the Nailers all [at] work and executing well some heavy orders. ...I had given a charge of lenity respecting all: (Burwell absolutely excepted from the whip alltogether) before you wrote: none have incurred it but the small ones for truancy.” To the news that the small ones were being whipped and that “lenity” had an elastic meaning, Jefferson had no response; the small ones had to be kept “engaged.”
It seems that Jefferson grew uneasy about Lilly’s regime at the nailery. Jefferson replaced him with William Stewart but kept Lilly in charge of the adult crews building his mill and canal. Under Stewart’s lenient command (greatly softened by habitual drinking), the nailery’s productivity sank. The nail boys, favored or not, had to be brought to heel. In a very unusual letter, Jefferson told his Irish master joiner, James Dinsmore, that he was bringing Lilly back to the nailery. It might seem puzzling that Jefferson would feel compelled to explain a personnel decision that had nothing to do with Dinsmore, but the nailery stood just a few steps from Dinsmore’s shop. Jefferson was preparing Dinsmore to witness scenes under Lilly’s command such as he had not seen under Stewart, and his tone was stern: “I am quite at a loss about the nailboys remaining with mr Stewart. they have long been a dead expence instead of profit to me. in truth they require a vigour of discipline to make them do reasonable work, to which he cannot bring himself. on the whole I think it will be best for them also to be removed to mr Lilly’s [control].”
The incident of horrible violence in the nailery—the attack by one nail boy against another—may shed some light on the fear Lilly instilled in the nail boys. In 1803 a nailer named Cary smashed his hammer into the skull of a fellow nailer, Brown Colbert. Seized with convulsions, Colbert went into a coma and would certainly have died had Colonel Randolph not immediately summoned a physician, who performed brain surgery. With a trephine saw, the doctor drew back the broken part of Colbert’s skull, thus relieving pressure on the brain. Amazingly, the young man survived.
Bad enough that Cary had so viciously attacked someone, but his victim was a Hemings. Jefferson angrily wrote to Randolph that “it will be necessary for me to make an example of him in terrorem to others, in order to maintain the police so rigorously necessary among the nail boys.” He ordered that Cary be sold away “so distant as never more to be heard of among us.” And he alluded to the abyss beyond the gates of Monticello into which people could be flung: “There are generally negro purchasers from Georgia passing about the state.” Randolph’s report of the incident included Cary’s motive: The boy was “irritated at some little trick from Brown, who hid part of his nailrod to teaze him.” But under Lilly’s regime this trick was not so “little.” Colbert knew the rules, and he knew very well that if Cary couldn’t find his nailrod, he would fall behind, and under Lilly that meant a beating. Hence the furious attack.
Jefferson’s daughter Martha wrote to her father that one of the slaves, a disobedient and disruptive man named John, tried to poison Lilly, perhaps hoping to kill him. John was safe from any severe punishment because he was a hired slave: If Lilly injured him, Jefferson would have to compensate his owner, so Lilly had no means to retaliate. John, evidently grasping the extent of his immunity, took every opportunity to undermine and provoke him, even “cutting up [Lilly’s] garden [and] destroying his things.”
But Lilly had his own kind of immunity. He understood his importance to Jefferson when he renegotiated his contract, so that beginning in 1804 he would no longer receive a flat fee for managing the nailery but be paid 2 percent of the gross. Productivity immediately soared. In the spring of 1804, Jefferson wrote to his supplier: “The manager of my nailery had so increased its activity as to call for a larger supply of rod...than had heretofore been necessary.”
Maintaining a high level of activity required a commensurate level of discipline. Thus, in the fall of 1804, when Lilly was informed that one of the nail boys was sick, he would have none of it. Appalled by what happened next, one of Monticello’s white workmen, a carpenter named James Oldham, informed Jefferson of “the Barbarity that [Lilly] made use of with Little Jimmy.”
Oldham reported that James Hemings, the 17-year-old son of the house servant Critta Hemings, had been sick for three nights running, so sick that Oldham feared the boy might not live. He took Hemings into his own room to keep watch over him. When he told Lilly that Hemings was seriously ill, Lilly said he would whip Jimmy into working. Oldham “begged him not to punish him,” but “this had no effect.” The “Barbarity” ensued: Lilly “whipped him three times in one day, and the boy was really not able to raise his hand to his head.”
Flogging to this degree does not persuade someone to work; it disables him. But it also sends a message to the other slaves, especially those, like Jimmy, who belonged to the elite class of Hemings servants and might think they were above the authority of Gabriel Lilly. Once he recovered, Jimmy Hemings fled Monticello, joining the community of free blacks and runaways who made a living as boatmen on the James River, floating up and down between Richmond and obscure backwater villages. Contacting Hemings through Oldham, Jefferson tried to persuade him to come home, but did not set the slave catchers after him. There is no record that Jefferson made any remonstrance against Lilly, who was unrepentant about the beating and loss of a valuable slave; indeed, he demanded that his salary be doubled to £100. This put Jefferson in a quandary. He displayed no misgivings about the regime that Oldham characterized as “the most cruel,” but £100 was more than he wanted to pay. Jefferson wrote that Lilly as an overseer “is as good a one as can be”—“certainly I can never get a man who fulfills my purposes better than he does.”
On a recent afternoon at Monticello, Fraser Neiman, the head archaeologist, led the way down the mountain into a ravine, following the trace of a road laid out by Jefferson for his carriage rides. It passed the house of Edmund Bacon, the overseer Jefferson employed from 1806 to 1822, about a mile from the mansion. When Jefferson retired from the presidency in 1809, he moved the nailery from the summit—he no longer wanted even to see it, let alone manage it—to a site downhill 100 yards from Bacon’s house. The archaeologists discovered unmistakable evidence of the shop—nails, nail rod, charcoal, coal and slag. Neiman pointed out on his map locations of the shop and Bacon’s house. “The nailery was a socially fractious place,” he said. “One suspects that’s part of the reason for getting it off the mountaintop and putting it right here next to the overseer’s house.”
About 600 feet east of Bacon’s house stood the cabin of James Hubbard, a slave who lived by himself. The archaeologists dug more than 100 test pits at this site but came up with nothing; still, when they brought in metal detectors and turned up a few wrought nails, it was enough evidence to convince them that they had found the actual site of Hubbard’s house. Hubbard was 11 years old and living with his family at Poplar Forest, Jefferson’s second plantation, near Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1794, when Jefferson brought him to Monticello to work in the new nailery on the mountaintop. His assignment was a sign of Jefferson’s favor for the Hubbard family. James’ father, a skilled shoemaker, had risen to the post of foreman of labor at Poplar Forest; Jefferson saw similar potential in the son. At first James performed abysmally, wasting more material than any of the other nail boys. Perhaps he was just a slow learner; perhaps he hated it; but he made himself better and better at the miserable work, swinging his hammer thousands of times a day, until he excelled. When Jefferson measured the nailery’s output he found that Hubbard had reached the top—90 percent efficiency—in converting nail rod to finished nails.
A model slave, eager to improve himself, Hubbard grasped every opportunity the system offered. In his time off from the nailery, he took on additional tasks to earn cash. He sacrificed sleep to make money by burning charcoal, tending a kiln through the night. Jefferson also paid him for hauling—a position of trust because a man with a horse and permission to leave the plantation could easily escape. Through his industriousness Hubbard laid aside enough cash to purchase some fine clothes, including a hat, knee breeches and two overcoats.
Then one day in the summer of 1805, early in Jefferson’s second term as president, Hubbard vanished. For years he had patiently carried out an elaborate deception, pretending to be the loyal, hardworking slave. He had done that hard work not to soften a life in slavery but to escape it. The clothing was not for show; it was a disguise.
Hubbard had been gone for many weeks when the president received a letter from the sheriff of Fairfax County. He had in custody a man named Hubbard who had confessed to being an escaped slave. In his confession Hubbard revealed the details of his escape. He had made a deal with Wilson Lilly, son of the overseer Gabriel Lilly, paying him $5 and an overcoat in exchange for false emancipation documents and a travel pass to Washington. But illiteracy was Hubbard’s downfall: He did not realize that the documents Wilson Lilly had written were not very persuasive. When Hubbard reached Fairfax County, about 100 miles north of Monticello, the sheriff stopped him, demanding to see his papers. The sheriff, who knew forgeries when he saw them and arrested Hubbard, also asked Jefferson for a reward because he had run “a great Risk” arresting “as large a fellow as he is.”
Hubbard was returned to Monticello. If he received some punishment for his escape, there is no record of it. In fact, it seems that Hubbard was forgiven and regained Jefferson’s trust within a year. The October 1806 schedule of work for the nailery shows Hubbard working with the heaviest gauge of rod with a daily output of 15 pounds of nails. That Christmas, Jefferson allowed him to travel from Monticello to Poplar Forest to see his family. Jefferson may have trusted him again, but Bacon remained wary.
One day when Bacon was trying to fill an order for nails, he found that the entire stock of eight-penny nails—300 pounds of nails worth $50—was gone: “Of course they had been stolen.” He immediately suspected James Hubbard and confronted him, but Hubbard “denied it powerfully.” Bacon ransacked Hubbard’s cabin and “every place I could think of” but came up empty-handed. Despite the lack of evidence, Bacon remained convinced of Hubbard’s guilt. He conferred with the white manager of the nailery, Reuben Grady: “Let us drop it. He has hid them somewhere, and if we say no more about it, we shall find them.”
Walking through the woods after a heavy rain, Bacon spotted muddy tracks on the leaves on one side of the path. He followed the tracks to their end, where he found the nails buried in a large box. Immediately, he went up the mountain to inform Jefferson of the discovery and of his certainty that Hubbard was the thief. Jefferson was “very much surprised and felt very badly about it” because Hubbard “had always been a favorite servant.” Jefferson said he would question Hubbard personally the next morning when he went on his usual ride past Bacon’s house.
When Jefferson showed up the next day, Bacon had Hubbard called in. At the sight of his master, Hubbard burst into tears. Bacon wrote, “I never saw any person, white or black, feel as badly as he did when he saw his master. He was mortified and distressed beyond measure....[W]e all had confidence in him. Now his character was gone.” Hubbard tearfully begged Jefferson’s pardon “over and over again.” For a slave, burglary was a capital crime. A runaway slave who once broke into Bacon’s private storehouse and stole three pieces of bacon and a bag of cornmeal was condemned to hang in Albemarle County. The governor commuted his sentence, and the slave was “transported,” the legal term for being sold by the state to the Deep South or West Indies.
Even Bacon felt moved by Hubbard’s plea—“I felt very badly myself”— but he knew what would come next: Hubbard had to be whipped. So Bacon was astonished when Jefferson turned to him and said, “Ah, sir, we can’t punish him. He has suffered enough already.” Jefferson offered some counsel to Hubbard, “gave him a heap of good advice,” and sent him back to the nailery, where Reuben Grady was waiting, “expecting ...to whip him.”
Jefferson’s magnanimity seemed to spark a conversion in Hubbard. When he got to the nailery, he told Grady he’d been seeking religion for a long time, “but I never heard anything before that sounded so, or made me feel so, as I did when master said, ‘Go, and don’t do so any more.’ ” So now he was “determined to seek religion till I find it.” Bacon said, “Sure enough, he afterwards came to me for a permit to go and be baptized.” But that, too, was deception. On his authorized absences from the plantation to attend church, Hubbard made arrangements for another escape.
During the holiday season in late 1810, Hubbard vanished again. Documents about Hubbard’s escape reveal that Jefferson’s plantations were riven with secret networks. Jefferson had at least one spy in the slave community willing to inform on fellow slaves for cash; Jefferson wrote that he “engaged a trusty negro man of my own, and promised him a reward...if he could inform us so that [Hubbard] should be taken.” But the spy could not get anyone to talk. Jefferson wrote that Hubbard “has not been heard of.” But that was not true: a few people had heard of Hubbard’s movements.
Jefferson could not crack the wall of silence at Monticello, but an informer at Poplar Forest told the overseer that a boatman belonging to Colonel Randolph aided Hubbard’s escape, clandestinely ferrying him up the James River from Poplar Forest to the area around Monticello, even though white patrollers of two or three counties were hunting the fugitive. The boatman might have been part of a network that plied the Rivanna and James rivers, smuggling goods and fugitives.
Possibly, Hubbard tried to make contact with friends around Monticello; possibly, he was planning to flee to the North again; possibly, it was all disinformation planted by Hubbard’s friends. At some point Hubbard headed southwest, not north, across the Blue Ridge. He made his way to the town of Lexington, where he was able to live for over a year as a free man, being in possession of an impeccable manumission document.
His description appeared in the Richmond Enquirer: “a Nailor by trade, of 27 years of age, about six feet high, stout limbs and strong made, of daring demeanor, bold and harsh features, dark complexion, apt to drink freely and had even furnished himself with money and probably a free pass; on a former elopement he attempted to get out of the State Northwardly . . . and probably may have taken the same direction now.”
A year after his escape Hubbard was spotted in Lexington. Before he could be captured, he took off again, heading farther west into the Allegheny Mountains, but Jefferson put a slave tracker on his trail. Cornered and clapped in irons, Hubbard was brought back to Monticello, where Jefferson made an example of him: “I had him severely flogged in the presence of his old companions, and committed to jail.” Under the lash Hubbard revealed the details of his escape and the name of an accomplice; he had been able to elude capture by carrying genuine manumission papers he’d bought from a free black man in Albemarle County. The man who provided Hubbard with the papers spent six months in jail. Jefferson sold Hubbard to one of his overseers, and his final fate is not known.
Slaves lived as if in an occupied country. As Hubbard discovered, few could outrun the newspaper ads, slave patrols, vigilant sheriffs demanding papers and slave-catching bounty hunters with their guns and dogs. Hubbard was brave or desperate enough to try it twice, unmoved by the incentives Jefferson held out to cooperative, diligent, industrious slaves.
In 1817, Jefferson’s old friend, the Revolutionary War hero Thaddeus Kosciuszko, died in Switzerland. The Polish nobleman, who had arrived from Europe in 1776 to aid the Americans, left a substantial fortune to Jefferson. Kosciuszko bequeathed funds to free Jefferson’s slaves and purchase land and farming equipment for them to begin a life on their own. In the spring of 1819, Jefferson pondered what to do with the legacy. Kosciuszko had made him executor of the will, so Jefferson had a legal duty, as well as a personal obligation to his deceased friend, to carry out the terms of the document.
The terms came as no surprise to Jefferson. He had helped Kosciuszko draft the will, which states, “I hereby authorize my friend, Thomas Jefferson, to employ the whole [bequest] in purchasing Negroes from his own or any others and giving them liberty in my name.” Kosciuszko’s estate was nearly $20,000, the equivalent today of roughly $280,000. But Jefferson refused the gift, even though it would have reduced the debt hanging over Monticello, while also relieving him, in part at least, of what he himself had described in 1814 as the “moral reproach” of slavery.
If Jefferson had accepted the legacy, as much as half of it would have gone not to Jefferson but, in effect, to his slaves—to the purchase price for land, livestock, equipment and transportation to establish them in a place such as Illinois or Ohio. Moreover, the slaves most suited for immediate emancipation—smiths, coopers, carpenters, the most skilled farmers—were the very ones whom Jefferson most valued. He also shrank from any public identification with the cause of emancipation.
It had long been accepted that slaves were assets that could be seized for debt, but Jefferson turned this around when he used slaves as collateral for a very large loan he had taken out in 1796 from a Dutch banking house in order to rebuild Monticello. He pioneered the monetizing of slaves, just as he pioneered the industrialization and diversification of slavery.
Before his refusal of Kosciuszko’s legacy, as Jefferson mulled over whether to accept the bequest, he had written to one of his plantation managers: “A child raised every 2. years is of more profit then the crop of the best laboring man. in this, as in all other cases, providence has made our duties and our interests coincide perfectly.... [W]ith respect therefore to our women & their children I must pray you to inculcate upon the overseers that it is not their labor, but their increase which is the first consideration with us.”
In the 1790s, as Jefferson was mortgaging his slaves to build Monticello, George Washington was trying to scrape together financing for an emancipation at Mount Vernon, which he finally ordered in his will. He proved that emancipation was not only possible, but practical, and he overturned all the Jeffersonian rationalizations. Jefferson insisted that a multiracial society with free black people was impossible, but Washington did not think so. Never did Washington suggest that blacks were inferior or that they should be exiled.
It is curious that we accept Jefferson as the moral standard of the founders’ era, not Washington. Perhaps it is because the Father of his Country left a somewhat troubling legacy: His emancipation of his slaves stands as not a tribute but a rebuke to his era, and to the prevaricators and profiteers of the future, and declares that if you claim to have principles, you must live by them.
After Jefferson’s death in 1826, the families of Jefferson’s most devoted servants were split apart. Onto the auction block went Caroline Hughes, the 9-year-old daughter of Jefferson’s gardener Wormley Hughes. One family was divided up among eight different buyers, another family among seven buyers.
Joseph Fossett, a Monticello blacksmith, was among the handful of slaves freed in Jefferson’s will, but Jefferson left Fossett’s family enslaved. In the six months between Jefferson’s death and the auction of his property, Fossett tried to strike bargains with families in Charlottesville to purchase his wife and six of his seven children. His oldest child (born, ironically, in the White House itself) had already been given to Jefferson’s grandson. Fossett found sympathetic buyers for his wife, his son Peter and two other children, but he watched the auction of three young daughters to different buyers. One of them, 17-year-old Patsy, immediately escaped from her new master, a University of Virginia official.
Joseph Fossett spent ten years at his anvil and forge earning the money to buy back his wife and children. By the late 1830s he had cash in hand to reclaim Peter, then about 21, but the owner reneged on the deal. Compelled to leave Peter in slavery and having lost three daughters, Joseph and Edith Fossett departed Charlottesville for Ohio around 1840. Years later, speaking as a free man in Ohio in 1898, Peter, who was 83, would recount that he had never forgotten the moment when he was “put up on the auction block and sold like a horse.”
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Comments (220)
THOMA IS THE GREATEST AMERICAN PRESIDENT
Posted by RONNESIA ROBINSON on February 12,2013 | 12:03 PM
[3 of 4] Thus, the claim that the abolitionist movement was simply invented out of whole cloth by some folks in America circa 1800 withers and dies under historical scrutiny. This chronology, I submit, also mitigates against absolving Jefferson by appealing to the argument that he was “a man of his time.” Jefferson was too much a man of letters, and too much a man of the world, to have been unaware of at least some of this history, and most certainly would have had some awareness of some of the actions abolishing slavery that occurred in other countries (particularly those in Europe) that were contemporaneous to his own life. And the fact remains that, even in Jefferson’s own time, the question of the morality of slavery was something humanity had been wrestling with for a very long time. [cont'd]
Posted by Mark P. Kessinger on February 8,2013 | 02:17 AM
[cont'd 2 of 4] • 1335, slavery made illegal in Sweden (which then included modern day Norway) • 1416, slavery abolished in the Republic of Ragusa (modern day Dubrovnik, Croatia) • 1435, Pope Eugene IV writes his encyclical, “Sicut Dudum,” which banned enslavement on pain of excommunication; • 1537, Pope Paul III forbids the slavery of indigenous peoples of the Americas, and in any future populations that might later be discovered • 1588, slavery abolished in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth • 1590, slavery banned in Japan by Emperor Toyotomi Hideyhoshi • 1652, slavery banned in the Providence Plantations (in what would later become Rhode Island) • 1701, the British Lord Chief Justice rules that a slave became free upon arrival in England • 1723, Russia abolishes slavery (although it retains serfdom) • 1761, a decree by the Marquis of Pombal abolishes slavery in mainland Portugal, and in Portuguese territories in India • 1775, America’s first abolitionist society, the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, was formed in Philadelphia • 1777, Slavery abolished in Madeira • 1780, Pennsylvania passes “An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery” • 1783, slavery ruled illegal in Massachusetts based on the state’s constitution • 1787, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 was passed by The United States of America in Congress, outlawing any new slavery in the Northwest Territoties (this, along with the various actions occurring in various other states, clearly establishes that the morality of the institution of slavery was very much in the public consciousness at the time the Constitution was drafted) • 1793, Upper Canada (Ontario) abolishes the importation of slaves • 1794, France abolishes slavery in all of its possessions (sadly, it was restored in 1802 by Napoleon) • 1799, the slavery of Scottish coal miners, established in 1606, was ended [cont'd]
Posted by Mark P. Kessinger on February 8,2013 | 02:16 AM
[1 of 2] Adam Griffin writes: "This article has an agenda, history does not." Oh would that it were so! But as Winston Churchill pointed out, "History is written by the victors." The matter was even more succinctly addressed by Napoleon: "What is history but a fable agreed upon?" Even if historians believe themselves to be objective recorders of events and those events' meanings and significance, they are nevertheless influenced by personal and cultural biases, many of which they are often unaware of. Thus, there is always value in interrogating the historical record, particularly in the case of someone such as Jefferson, for whom lionization to the point of near deification has taken place over the years. Another commenter, CTLovesNathanHale, writes: “Chattel slavery was legal throughout human history in every little corner of the planet UNTIL it was outlawed in some states in America after around 1800.” Now, this is simply a misstatement of fact – a misstatement one can only hope is attributable to a lack of awareness of the historical record. The fact of the matter is that in the 6th Century, B.C., over 2,300 years prior to 1800 CE, Cyrus the Great abolished slavery in Persia, and over time, an awareness of chattel slavery’s moral repugnance grew in various parts of the world. By 1800, a number of European countries had already abolished slavery and/or slave trading. Here are a few more historical highlights: • 1117 CE, slavery abolished in Iceland; • 1256, slavery and serfdom abolished, and all serfs released, in the Comune di Bologna: • 1315, Louis X of France decreed that “France” signifies freedom, and that any slave setting foot in France should be freed; • 1335, slavery made illegal in Sweden (which then included modern day Norway) [cont'd]
Posted by Mark P. Kessinger on February 8,2013 | 02:13 AM
This is just another skewed account of the truth. Wiencek doesn't mention that Virginia law didn't allow Jefferson to honor the bequest, nor does he mention that Jefferson, at age 81, two years before his death, knew the bequest would take years to follow through and would be challenged by Tadeusz Kościuszko's relatives and con men alike. Jefferson was right, as he received letters and legal challenges from these people demanding that they were entitled to the money. Jefferson had a chance to reduce his debt, but he STILL refused the bequest. Wiencek is just another mouth piece to keep racial tensions alive and well in America. He would be the last one to tell you that Jefferson expected slaves to work no more than free farmers, that they lived in 10'x 20'log cabins with a fire place and sleeping loft, that they were allowed to have poultry yards and their own fruit and vegetable gardens, were given Sundays, Christmas and Easter off and during the winter months most of them had plenty of free time. Wake up America. This is the side of slavery that has been swept under the rug by the NAACP, Sharpton and the people who fund them. i.e.Wiencek's relatives.
Posted by Matt Clark on February 8,2013 | 05:37 PM
The author's piece of propaganda is so transparantly fraudulent that I'm surprised so many people read it and have positive comments. Jefferson is a giant of human liberty and hardly a hypocrite as the fedgov funded Smithsonian would have you believe. These fedgov and bankster-funded propagandists seek to divide the American people along lines like race, religion, gender -- anything they can seize on to keep us apart on THEIR dreamed for slave plantation. Slavery is alive and well in America, except it isn't chattel slavery. ps Jefferson wrote that the surest guarantee of liberty was to educate all of the people. Jefferson was a lawyer, and the word people specifically encompasses every single human being, including children, slaves, indians, etc. Hmmm, VERY racist of him! pps Chattel slavery was legal throughout human history in every little corner of the planet UNTIL it was outlawed in some states in America after around 1800 -- how VERY evil those white men must have been that they were the first to outlaw slavery! How very evil Jefferson was that he almost managed to outlaw chattel slavery in Virginia around the same time! Folks, learn something and stop reading trash like the Smithsonian pumps out...
Posted by CTLovesNathanHale on February 7,2013 | 02:59 PM
Excellent article, but I am surprised there is no mention of Annette Gordon-Reed's great book "The Hemingses of Moniticello, an American family".
Posted by Ieneke van Houten on February 3,2013 | 03:43 PM
This article about Thomas Jefferson was riveting and shocking. It seems that enough time has passed and sensibilities have changed enough that we can have a more honest presentation of historical information. Our "heroes" were afterall people just like us, melanges of good and not-so-admirable qualities. It is so sad to see that Jefferson's earlier humanist idealism was supplanted by selfishness. But is that so different from the idealism of people of my generation of idealistic hippies who have become corporate raiders, Wall Street thiefs, enslavers of cheap third world laborers? It is a great disservice to present historical figures as saints: it misguides people who accept or attempt to build on historical fabrications, and makes for very boring fare as well.
Posted by Sylvia C. Beeman on January 14,2013 | 06:23 PM
I have read a lot of American history and I have always considered Thomas Jefferson to be a hypocrite and a snake. Your article on his treatment of slaves proves him to be a hypocrite. His underhanded actions during the Washington and Adams administrations, and the manner in which he conducted his political campaigns proves him to have been a snake. He may even have come close to treason in his attempts to undermine Washington's foreign policy in respect to the country's relations with France. Thomas Jefferson was certainly a genius, an innovator and a great thinker, but his personal life casts a dark shadow on his legacy. It is difficult to admire such a man, even though many historians have strived to enhance his stature.
Posted by Bill Heard on January 4,2013 | 08:13 PM
Hello All, Thank you so much Henry Wiencek for the excellent article about TJ. It didn't change my opinion about Jefferson as I'm 1/16th Seneca and Oneida, and his policies were very detrimental to Native Americans. There is a saying some American Indians have for people such as Jefferson. It's "two hearts." I think it's self-explanatory. I hope to see another article about TJ which addresses his affect on Native Americans. Walk In Balance, Theresa
Posted by Theresa Ong on December 26,2012 | 04:10 AM
I can only hope Jefferson put up a struggle while quelling his better Spirit, the one who wrote such revolutionary phrases. Who knows what bitter fruits resulted from the first decades of dissension as idealism faced untrod reality. Or, perhaps, like many of us, we was just following the trends of history, loving justice superficially in his greatness, without making it a part of his struggle for material survival. Perhaps it was not a struggle at all. Great people are often only the conduit for the message. We must not mistake them for the message, especially when they fail it! Is is the message, not the man, that is the foundation of OUR better selves. If Jefferson was so irredeemably embedded in the cruelties of his era that it so defeated his better spirit, we must remember this weakness did not afflict all of his contemporaries. WE DARE NOT give up on Jefferson's words merely because Jefferson failed to live them - and WE must not stop efforts to bring them to reality - because racism is still with us and still virulent. WE must do what Jefferson would not - WE must face the evils of our past AND our present. We must do this because the Message is our truest self, and if we lost faith & hope in the Message that all "are created equal" and "endowed" with "inalienable rights", we will surely inflict more mindless evil upon the future.
Posted by Karyn58 on December 22,2012 | 02:44 PM
This just shows us that the idea of a free human race is a lie. It is an idea, and ideas are used to confuse and thus control, which is what TJ and all the founding fathers did. Humans are not free and they never will be. The nature of mankind is servitude and exploitation on all levels. With our current system, it is merely progressing into a much more efficient method of doing that. The only thing humans can do is make their stay in this experience as painless as possible.
Posted by Anthony P Palillo on December 19,2012 | 11:41 AM
To Dan Mc - I don't think Hamilton was too much better on this issue... he married into a slaveholding family and helped his in-laws sell slaves, after all.
Posted by Eve on December 16,2012 | 07:29 PM
The King, what are you talking about?
Posted by Adam Griffin on December 9,2012 | 06:28 PM
As a European I totally agree and salute you for your words, Phil. "True national pride comes in confronting and accepting the sins of the past and moving on to live as better and united people, reconciled to each others' pasts, and understanding of the trauma in nations that still have an even longer journey to travel towards real freedom and democracy".
Posted by Avelina on December 7,2012 | 02:56 PM
The much expanded Black Legend about Spain in America can after all be contrasted with this type of accounts now surfacing. I am very glad I didn't visit the 'holy' Monticello while I was a Fulbright student in the States 20 years ago and was presented with propaganda of the excellencies in the American Way of Life. That these tales are now told about shows health and maturity in the American society. Sent from Madrid.
Posted by Dr. Avelina M. Martínez on December 7,2012 | 02:49 PM
Jefferson was guilty of treason and insurrection which is a greater crime than owning slaves. How come no one ever writes an article about that part of Jefferson's darkness?
Posted by The King on December 7,2012 | 09:14 AM
This article has an agenda, history does not. We try to apply these larger than human ideals to human beings—albeit great men of their time and ours. Jefferson fell into a trap so many of us do, debt. Just look at our nation. He had dug a hole to big by the time he fully realized it, he came to understand debt makes you a slave—he was a slave to slavery reciprocally with his slaves. Obviously I am not trying to make the "plight" of the slaveholder anywhere near literally being in bondage but we forget the reality of his life, he had to continue slavery on his plantation or his livelihood is gone, his family starves and he fails his most basic job as a patriarch. He knew slaves were human beings, he knew what he was doing with the Declaration of Independence, and he didn't put it on his tombstone for merely reputation—he had a legacy of defending liberty that he felt could transcend his own slavery. And it did. As the Great Emancipator himself wrote, "All honor to Jefferson—to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression. Your obedient Servant A. Lincoln—"
Posted by Adam Griffin on December 5,2012 | 02:49 PM
What people fail to realize is that: over man's approximately two million years on this planet, slavery was the norm, not the exception. All the rhetoric about slavery two hundred years after the fact---in the U.S. is ridiculous. Africans were sold for the most part to traders by their own people. And if anyone thinks slavery is totally eradicated today is smokin' dope. It exists in all parts of the world, whether in Africa in some forms or sweat shoppes around the world. Why don't we hear about these forms of slavery from the black leaders like Jessee Jackson or Al Sharpton? Because there's no government money to be had if they do.
Posted by Frances Annette Hixenbaugh on December 5,2012 | 10:14 AM
I'm glad these articles are being written. It reinforces what slaves and their descendents have known to be true for a century, there was no such thing as the benevolent slave owner. The argument that Thomas Jefferson's penchant for slavery was simply a fault of his era proves false when faced with abolitionist like Kosciuszko, John Adams and Thomas Paine, who were Jefferson's direct peers and in dialogue with him about the inhumanity of slavery. The myth of the benevolent slave owner to assuage the pure brutality of chattel slavery carried out by the founders and others is a slap in the face to those that suffered and died under a unfathomably cruel system. The purposeful omissions of Jefferson's cruel practices at Monticello by historians shows how far reaching loyalties for him have out weighed the importance of historical accuracy. The willingness to dilute, deny and dishonor the suffering of men, women and children owned by Jefferson and other slave owners is a crime unto itself. It is not possible to own 600 people, sell husbands away from wives and parents way from children, whip and maim men women and children for trying to escape, or rape children and be benevolent. No matter the age, to matter the date, no matter the reason.
Posted by Sherise Martin on December 3,2012 | 04:05 PM
Some are arguing FOR Jefferson by saying he was a 'product of his time', but the fact he wrote about eqivocable freedom and he wrote about the ugliness that is slavery, but STILL owned slaves makes him, factually and in action, a hypocrit. But people like to mince words and the truth. Excuses. I always knew he had slaves and that he had an affair and children w/ one of his slave women Sally Hemmings (despite his nasty, racist thinking; what a user), but the fact he owned slaves even AFTER being affected by the Declaration of Independance that he wrote makes the hypocrisy extra concrete. He had a disgusting and deep-seated ignorant view of everything about Africans and African-Americans, from our emotional and artistic capacity to our reasons for being brave. Who made him an authority on every single black person on earth? Every human who existed, exists and will exist has something great to offer. Every human possesses instantaneous value. He had disgusting, shameful views on people that he (and most people in those days and further on) never took the time to UNDERSTAND and APPRECIATE. He even had the unintelligence for reasoning that our darker skin is because of our blood, but yet thinking himself intelligent and a scientist. What an embarrasing excuse for a scientist. Pitiful brute. HE was the inferior one (and all who were like him as well) with his ignorant and literally hateful, intolerant thinking.
Posted by Callie on December 3,2012 | 06:43 AM
Henry Weincek is a brilliant historian and author who has the audacity to write truth to power about American history versus the mythologized "sound bytes" that have plagued and prevented Americans [and the world-at-large] from knowing who the historic figures of America, particularly colonial America, are. Although it has been over two centuries since Thomas Jefferson and George Washington [of Weincek's "An Imperfect God: George Washington and His Slaves and the Creation of America."], America refuses to relinquish the candy coated lies and to tell the true story of the founding of America. These people were human beings, not gods, and their true stories are far more interesting and engaging than the myths. Hats off to Weincek for having the courage of conviction for arguably coming closer to telling the truth about America's early historic record than most anyone. This is particularly true as relates to the "interdependence" of the slave owners and their victims, the chattel slaves, in the creation of America as the first created sovereign nation [and capital] in modern history. That's even though the enslaved are still seeking their freedom and credit for their many unsung contributions as slavery has only been modernized; and the slave owners are still in denial about the benefits they were bequeathed as their inability to stop being in denial about the "peculiar institution" that is the American way skewed in their favor is alive and well, of course. Here's a clue for consideration. As the old axiom goes, "The truth will set you free." That perspective, I believe, is relative to us all!
Posted by Peggy Seats on December 2,2012 | 06:51 PM
I am an English migrant to Australia. Recently I read Adam Hothschild's book "Bury The Chains" which is an account of the British struggle to abolish slavery. From the fascinating excerpt to Wiencek's book here it is obvious that this new book is part of the same story. Slavery was the poisoned chalice inherited from England by newly independent America - an inheritance that developed to include the genocidal treatment of indigenous Americans American history has been, like ours in Australia. a long path away from colonisation - away from the sins of the European imperialists. We might wish that path had been shorter, or more quickly covered but it is harder to eradicate inherited racist thinking than idealism would hope, especially when so much mythology stands in the way. We have a long way to go here too The better world of the future will owe books like these a great debt. They set the records straight by opening up a new, accurate, and more universal history. True national pride comes in confronting and accepting the sins of the past and moving on to live as better and united people, reconciled to each others' pasts, and understanding of the trauma in nations that still have an even longer journey to travel towards real freedom and democracy
Posted by Phil on December 1,2012 | 05:10 PM
I found the article on Thomas Jefferson very enlightening.Did it change my view of his legacy? I would have to say yes. The power of great men is that they stand behind what they say. The power of money talks again!!!
Posted by Toni Wilhelm on November 29,2012 | 02:12 AM
I love this article and it actually helped me do my history essay. Thanks Smithsonian staff and everyone who is involved in the development and shipment of this magazine. :)
Posted by T Ragge on November 29,2012 | 09:45 PM
Thank you for the enlightening article about Jefferson's role in promoting and maintaining slavery. The article opens possibilities for ongoing discussions which can serve to engage citizens in understanding the profound and pervasive role that slavery has had in this country. In terms of Native American populations, Jefferson also demonstrated an inhumane attitude in terms of making agreements that he knew would be reneged by the US, and by using economic leverage to rob the Dakota people in Minnesota of their ancestral lands. Racism and genocide can never leave room for compassion.
Posted by Elizabeth Sommers PhD MPH LAc on November 27,2012 | 07:17 PM
In further defense of Mr. Jefferson from those who choose to call him a hypocrite, equality for Americans is a word that has been expanded in its definition since the founding of our country, 236 years ago. For T.J. and many of our Founding Fathers, the phrase "...that all men are created equal..." meant that "all free, property-owning males are created equal". Fortunately for all races and both sexes, the United States has moved to achieve full legal equality since that time. Every generation is a victim of its vices, misunderstandings and its egotists. Be careful and sparing of judgment, especially of national icons. This practice is capable of national degradation. Our Founding Fathers were men of sufficient capability to bequeath to us a nation that has become the leader of the free world. It is our responsibility to keep it so. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams passed away within hours of one another on July 4th 1826, fifty years, from the day they declared our nation’s independence. Many consider this a sign of divine intervention.
Posted by Tom Rackham on November 25,2012 | 11:19 PM
To demonize T.J. because he owned slaves is a shallow view put forth by the self proclaimed, “more highly evolved”. Henry Wiencek’s new portrait decision is his decision. It is not a decision for all, as to the character of Thomas Jefferson. Many readers enlightened by 200 years of progress in human kind are influenced, by this article, to judge T.J. as a poor example of their modern standards. Many others have an understanding of the changes in education and values throughout history. I doubt that any of us would last long if we were suddenly picked up and plunked down in 1797. Many are saddened and depressed by this article. I certainly am so, by Mr. Wiencek’s tone and sheer misunderstanding of history. I would encourage those readers who have said they will cancel their subscription to Smithsonian to reconsider, or at least to pick one up from time to time so they may comment on the shallow views of the “more highly evolved”.
Posted by Tom Rackham on November 25,2012 | 12:51 PM
Being of African hertiage, i thought this was a great rad and very educational.
Posted by Adro on November 20,2012 | 01:33 PM
It's sobering to reflect on the words of the man who at one time thought slavery an abomination and the actions of the man he became. The discovery of profit in the ugliest of practices can slowly wear away the integrity of even the most enlightened men and women, can blind them from truths that even they recognize are self-evident. Profiteers (and consumers) today are having the same problem adjusting to the realities of climate change and the destructiveness of a very different practice--fossil-fuel burning. Sadly Jefferson sets an all-too-fallible example for our leaders to follow in resolving the peculiar problems of our own time. Long live George Washington.
Posted by Mark Armacost on November 13,2012 | 05:50 PM
Excellent article. Hamilton > Jefferson
Posted by Dan Mc on November 13,2012 | 04:07 PM
Although there are very heartbreaking stories, Jefferson was a product of his time. That clearly must be understood. He did provide skills for many of his slaves which did help them to earn more & have a better life. Black people were not the only people whipped in that era.Punishment was a norm for all peoples at that time. But I do have a hard time understanding why families were separated. I beleive that upon Jefferson's death his daughter Martha had to deal with tremendous debts and she herself had so many children and an alcoholic husband, that I believe she had great pressure to satisfy the debts. Jefferson believed the slave issue would have to be eliminated but it would have to be for later generations to tackle it since the flegling, fragile new nation needed immediate governing concerns which he handled remarkably.
Posted by Christine Sakarya on November 12,2012 | 06:44 PM
In answer to your question regarding whether the revelations in the article Master of Monticello, written by Henry Wiencek, could change my view of Thomas Jefferson’s legacy, the answer is no, in fact, these revelations fail in all respects. Mr. Wiencek deserves some credit for possibly understanding what he is trying to do, as referenced in his listing, see Contributors, page 2, and quoted here: “Finding moral fault in the founding era is tantamount to poisoning the well,….” However, even here I disagree with Mr. Wiencek. Merely poisoning the well may involve murdering people. I believe trashing and trying to destroy the legacy and the person who has put forth concepts that have become mankind’s greatest hope for the future represents a far greater crime. It is obvious that the author, Mr. Wiencek, recognizes the weak validation of his findings because to defend them, he utilizes a unique, oblique, statement on page 42, 2nd paragraph, quoted here: “We can be forgiven if we interrogate Jefferson posthumously about slavery. It is not judging him by today’s standards to do so. Many people of his own time, taking Jefferson at his word and seeing him as the embodiment of the country’s highest ideals, appealed to him.” As one reads the rest of the article, this statement turns this purported logic on its face which continues to remind the reader that all criticisms are truly the result of Mr. Wiencek’s artful dodge as if they represent the people in Thomas Jefferson’s time. Language and meanings change with the passage of time, and even quotes may be completely misunderstood by changes within a few years. It would be more appropriate, I believe, if Mr. Wiencek admitted the truth--he judges persons and actions by today’s standards. May he continue to bring forth new stories and information about the life of Thomas Jefferson.
Posted by William Hunt on November 12,2012 | 03:56 PM
I wish I could remember where I read about a woman who owned a large Southern plantation in the mid 19th Century and discovered that, compared to the annual cost of feeding and clothing her slaves, it was actually cheaper for her to starve/work them to death and then go and buy what she called "a new crop o' n*****s." I was as horrified by that revelation as by these details of Jefferson's incompehensibly heartless treatment of his slaves. Thank you for a very enlightening article.
Posted by Wanda June on November 11,2012 | 08:52 PM
Slavery – awful practice by today’s standards. But, I cannot condemn anyone for what was done in the past that was in conformity with the law and culture of the times. In order to make the world more friendly, lets have everyone apologize to everyone else for what their ancestors may have done in the slavery area over the past 30,000 years. Then, we can concentrate on today’s and tomorrow’s problems.
Posted by LARRY on November 11,2012 | 01:47 PM
This illuminating article is as harrowing as it is riveting. If accurate, Mr. Wiencek deserves credit for bringing history to life, as he restores critical missing chapters and dispels the hagiography surrounding Jefferson. I look forward to reading more of his bracing work.
Posted by G. S. on November 11,2012 | 04:27 AM
People are claiming these 2 articles debunk this Smithsonian one and Wiencek's book. THEY DONT! **"What Did Thomas Jefferson Really Think About Slavery?" by Jan Ellen Lewis **"Thomas Jefferson Was Not a Monster" by Annette Gordon-Reed -They seem to be repeating the old standard "yes....he owned slaves and did bad stuff but he was a good guy." Example- both writers claim Wiencek misinterpretted Jefferson's declaration that enslaved kids are a guaranted 4% profit. According to them, Jefferson (who they say ALWAYS hated slavery) was not talking about HIS plantation, but Virginia plantations in general. And why would someone who abhorred slavery say this? Well, it wasn't an endorsement or support of slavery, they claim- Jefferson was just running some numbers at the request of foreign parties and Jefferson loved to crunch numbers SOOOO much that he offered that incredibly tempting statement. HUH?! They ignore the letter Wiencek mentioned about Jefferson concluding that his relative could have avoided financial ruin by becoming a slave owner. They ignored (Jan Lewis) or dismissed (Annette Gordon) the hunting and eventual beating of runaway slave James Hubbard and the little boys at the nail foundry. Why hunt a slave, if you hate slavery (and have 100's of other slaves)? The slave is freeing the BOTH of you by leaving. What hater of slavery refuses money to free slaves without a big fincial hit to himself? Both "debunking" articles nitpick Wiencek's prose and use small inaccuracies (4% of Monticellos profits or all planatations?) as a way to steer towards - "See?! Jefferson wasn't a bad guy. He treated his slaves well." The proof? Both authors say that Jefferson wrote letters saying how much he abhorred slavery. Huh? Didn't these letter go out during the same lifetime as letters asking why profits were down at the nail foundry and reinstating brutal overseers? Jefferson wrote a lot of things he didn't really mean. His life spoke the truth.
Posted by alfie747 on November 9,2012 | 04:43 PM
Thank you for the article. Sadly, there are people who will dismiss it as liberal bias and another attack on "dead white men". This is stupid. Jefferson was a profoundly brilliant, amoral, and disturbingly "creepy" man. He had habits and behaviors, and attitudes about race, gender, sex, and class/hierarchy- that he demonstrated in LIFE. His words mean little when he immediately contradicted them. Jeffersons deep moral failure was noted and was unsettling to a number of people DURING THAT TIME. Jefferson was wrong. And George Washington, Thaddeus Kosciusko (who willed Jefferson his fortune in order ot help Jefferson get out the the evil of slavery with out loosing Jefferson's precious money), and many of the overseers that Jefferson looked down on- knew it. There are other forefathers and notables of that era to pull from. Let Jefferson's- the false deity- go. He was more than just imperfect. He was unhealthy to himself and real America (not the parchment paper version). PS- I am definitely renewing my subscription]
Posted by on November 9,2012 | 03:38 PM
[["The comments criticizing Jefferson and all slave holders are based on a very wrong assumption: that being a free black was a good thing in those days."]] [["Henry Wiencek is quoted, 'Finding moral fault in the founding era is tantamount to poisoning the well.' We should always be pursuing and uncovering new facts, reinterpreting old ones and seeking the truth behind the differing interpretations. But let's not kid ourselves. It is hard to imagine an article today that could be more fashionable."]] -Just 2 of the more disturbing comments by poster.To #1- How ridiculous is it for you to suggest that all or most criticism of slavery comes from our ignorance to the fact that whites treated ALL blacks badly- even free ones in the North? Did you even think about what you were posting? So slave owners were the lesser of the multiple evils of America- providing enslaved blacks with a limited scope of physical and sexual abusers. While free blacks and immigrants had to it worse? Its like saying "You're lucky to be stabbed, you could have been shot!" To #2- This article is not a moral reinterpretation of slavery or the abuse of slaves, since George Washington and JEFFERSON HIMSELF clearly stated that the buying, selling,working,and abuse of slaves was WRONG! It was known THEN. Its just that Jefferson did it anyway- despite numerous people offering him an out.Its sad that you have ignored the facts in order to suggest some sort of liberal reading of old and ambigious information. Unless you believe George Washington is some liberal editor on the Smithsonian board, I think the right and wrong was understood even then.
Posted by on November 9,2012 | 03:26 PM
The evil of slavery was not so much in the treatment of the slaves. Many a recalcitrant schoolboy, the young aristocrat in a English public school, the sailors of the British navy at the time were treated with more or less the same harshness by modern standards; standards by the way that often confuse all discipline with cruelty and mistakenly substitute indulgence for the tough love displayed by generations of school marms, nuns and school masters who believed that "reading, riting and rithmatic had to be taught to the tune of a hickory stick," though it was used used more often as a threat than a weapon. Today, of course, the threat of stick is gone, replaced by drug sniffing dogs, raids on lockers, metal detectors at entrances, halls with rent-a-cops and often clinics for venereal diseases and condom give-a-ways. The essential evil of slavery was not in the treatment but in the turning of human beings into mere property devoid of inalienable rights to be used and abused at will.
Posted by dick murphy on November 8,2012 | 01:00 PM
We owe a great deal to Mr. Jefferson for his part in the establishment of our country. This does not, however; excuse all of his behavior. Especially that type of behavior. When I went through school, these patriots were lionized to the point of being gods. I'm glad that the historians of today try to tell the truth, no matter how much it may disturb delusional people.
Posted by Al Schultz on November 6,2012 | 10:11 PM
I actually wonder if the reason he allegedly had children with Sally Hemmings wasn't just because he was so in love with her or attracted, but this was again a political move on his part to control those Hemming slaves since they were his own blood and had to do what Daddy told them to do. Anyone? So he figured maybe slaves that were related to him would be more loyal to him and that is why he had seven children with Sally. To in a way, have slavery in the family through blood so he could control it without being a complete outsider. Like everybody, he had many flaws and shortcomings. All our "heroes" in history turn out to be just like everyone else; struggling with our demons. That's why I don't believe in heroes any more. It's always BS.
Posted by eloise on November 6,2012 | 06:36 PM
Too sad that the Founding Father had such a low moral values. Indeed money makes the mare go.
Posted by Viktoriya on November 6,2012 | 02:49 PM
Jefferson is the chief patient of Smith's diagnosis of hypocrisy against the Declaration and hypocrisy against the Constitution, in the first four paragraphs of Smith's Views on the Powers and Policy, February 7, 1844, in which Smith declared his candidacy for president. Smith's diagnosis applied both to chattel slavery and what Szasz calls "psychiatric slavery": no incarceration but for convicted murderers and politicians whose refusal to carry out their constitutional duties leads to loss of civilian life in internal broils. Now THAT is something that someone ought to remind Romney, the second "Mormon" to run for president. I fully concur with Wiencek's analysis: it seems further that it can be inferred that not Jefferson, but Adams and Franklin, maybe Rufus King, were the best credits for the inimitable Declaration. I just think Wiencek ought to give USA, now, an analysis of Smith's letters to Calhoun, Clay, Blair, and his presidential candidacy announcement, in 1844. Every one of these documents are absolute scorchers! In one of which Smith prophesied: "The God of heaven will come out of His hiding place and vex this nation with a sore vexation: yea, the consuming wrath of an offended God will smoke through the nation with as much distress and woe as independence has blazed through with pleasure and delight." When I look at the language of Smith's documents, I ask where have all the fool historians, like Brookhiser, been? This guy is as good as God because he said as much.
Posted by David Shaw on November 6,2012 | 01:05 PM
Thank you for this article. During this election season it is an excellent reminder of how much we expect of our leaders. To maintain one's principles and yet compromised is perhaps the greatest challenge of our democracy.
Posted by Estelene on November 6,2012 | 10:25 AM
Thomas Jefferson was morally bankrupt, a conniver puts it mildly, he was reprobate, insincere, depraved, inhuman and only Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, and Mussolini were worse. Thank you for shedding the light and dispelling the myths that society still want to believe about TJ, he was such a gifted man intellectually and could have had an even greater legacy, but for all of the good he did and it was immense, his failure after seeing the myths that slaves were inhuman, savages, and so forth he could have trained his slaves and freed them at least upon his death and/or ensured that they would have been sold together. I find it so hard to see all the rationalization for his inhuanity he had children by people (slaves which were the children of other slaves that due to their mothers being used by TJ's ancestors some of them were 1/6 black and he allowed them to be slaves and saw so many of them that worked within his home and they looked just like him. You can look up some of his decendants and hundreds of years later they look remarkably like him; the brow, the nose, the mouth,etc., How inhuman can you be..., Thank you for your research and your courage in publishing these findings.
Posted by Olga Grey on November 4,2012 | 10:16 PM
These revelations not only change my view of Jefferson, but of history, and historians, in general. Who can we trust? At this point, in my mind, no one. What we learned about in school is now claimed to be "air-brushed" to clean up the mans's image. What else has been changed? What new rewrites of history can we expect? The current issue is claiming that Jesus may have been married. Will next month tell us that Hitler was misunderstood? And you have your Jefferson Bible manufactured in China. Pitiful.
Posted by Kevin Bock on November 4,2012 | 10:25 AM
While I'm not defending Jefferson, I would like to point out that at that time, it was SOP for boys at the finest schools to be beaten till the blood flowed, if they made a mistake in their Latin. Beatings went with being subordinate in those days. Sailors and soldiers could be whipped to death for a moment's insubordination. Husbands could "chastize" their wives. Children of all colors were routinely whipped for naughtiness.
Posted by Technomad on November 2,2012 | 01:13 PM
What a revolting man. He was a coward, to boot.
Posted by Jani on November 1,2012 | 06:33 PM
Re: Master of Monticello, Henry Wiencek, Smithsonian magazine, October 2012 [smithsonian.com]. The scriptures is often an exegesis of human nature as it relates to the tertium quid. Regardless of doctrine it asserts an absolute moral standard that rebukes the conscience of any one person or institution. Real faith is stripped of human effort and feeble rites; real joy is a deeply rooted confidence - faith - in the words of christ; not blind obedience, not human logic, nor social consensus - "the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which have ever been offered to man[kind] - the words only of Jesus", [Thomas Jefferson, ca.1771] As author of the most sublime and definitive dignitatis humanae known to mankind - The Declaration of Independence - we believe the sun has risen, not only because we see it, but because by it we see everything else because of it [C.S.Lewis]. No doubt part of the slow but steady evolutionary thinking towards the Second Vatican Council [1965], that of equality and choice. Is-it-not true that truth has multiple interpretations? It seems to me Jefferson's thinking and words were not just genius for his time; but genius for all time. No doubt his times gave him choices difficult to reconcile with his personal faith, much like the times of christ, or our times now. If not mistaken, Jefferson's particular dilemma seems particularly American, that is of; an idealist, leader, businessman, and an individual. Smithsonian's Wiencek story is an extraordinary portrait of a man about the business of his property. While his business leadership skills seems sound and reasonable, his personal individual choices, when confronted, seems benevolent and forgiving. All the while sending his ideals hurling into the future, superbly written!
Posted by Allan E. Vanderley on November 1,2012 | 03:09 PM
Thomas Jefferson, being a profligate spender, was addicted to slavery as a way to make money. He was blinded to the reality that free men are better workers. China was on the verge of collapse until their economy was opened up to the masses of people who for millinia were traders, merchants, and farmers. Free people always are better than slave workers, because who wants to work for another and receive nothing in return?
Posted by Gerald Miller on October 30,2012 | 06:30 AM
Thomas Jefferson was so much in debt by his living far above his means, that he could not wean himself off of his dependency on the output of "his" slaves. The north, largely small farms and and family business enterprises, were far more prosperous, because free men work harder when they receive the fruits of their labors. Slaves never prosper by their labors, only their "owners" do. For the current apologists of the "good life" of slavery over freedom, you will never benefit from history.
Posted by Gerald Miller on October 30,2012 | 06:26 AM
I find it interesting that several commenters dismiss the article as a product of "liberal bias" while making no attempt to refute the evidence it contains. Jefferson obviously was a very great man who played a pivotal role in the founding of our nation. Yet his own words and actions show that he failed to live up to the ideals he expressed in the Declaration of Independence. And his cruelty toward "recalcitrant" slaves was inexcusable. But this just shows that he was a fallible human being, like the rest of us. Why is it so hard for some people to accept that fact?
Posted by Douglas Thompson on October 29,2012 | 11:26 PM
From other biographical readings on tj, it seems to me it might have gotten added: Monteticello operated rather like a company mostly on the edge of bankrupcy...due in large measure to tj's lavish life style and vast academic interests. For instance, I think he sold a large portion of his library, which formed the original basis for that which started the U of V collection. This may help account for what might otherwise seem like hypocritical behavior on tj's part. Also, to tj's credit, he did set up something of a meritocracy for his slaves, allowing some to distinguish themselves...to a much greater extent than other plantation, particularly those on South featuring cotton as the main cash crop. I do not, however, disagree that your offering casts tj in a decidedly less favorible light.
Posted by Don Hines on October 29,2012 | 08:28 AM
Thank you for this revelatory article. Freed Blacks probably didn't have it much easier, but for Jefferson to say that breeding Blacks was most lucrative and to divide up families...that's very telling and very disturbing.
Posted by Linda Rosa on October 27,2012 | 05:05 PM
This article confirmed the view of Jefferson that has developed for me over the past several years. He like so many of today's politicians on the right are great talkers about the principles of the USA, but when those principles impinge upon their bottom lines they may be ignored. Jefferson's letters to Adams and others reveal much of this. He was uncomfortable with any conflict, but especially if it revealed his own feet of very soft clay. He was a political back stabber and the worst kind of conniver. We need to live according to his very great words while we condemn his very venal actions and lifestyle.
Posted by Donald J. Brown on October 25,2012 | 07:56 AM
Henry Wiencek is quoted, 'Finding moral fault in the founding era is tantamount to poisoning the well.' We should always be pursuing and uncovering new facts, reinterpreting old ones and seeking the truth behind the differing interpretations. But let's not kid ourselves. It is hard to imagine an article today that could be more fashionable.
Posted by Thomas Michael Andres on October 24,2012 | 12:54 AM
The comments criticizing Jefferson and all slave holders are based on a very wrong assumption: that being a free black was a good thing in those days. Free blacks did NOT have even the civil protection of slaves. Free blacks were subject to the worst things: being enslaved by other plantation owners or farmers, being robbed, being murdered - with no consequences to the criminals. Slaves, however, were protected because they were the property of someone else, because their owners did NOT permit others to harm their slaves (their assets). Even slaves that escaped to the North where slavery was abolished, suffered the same fate as illegal immigrant often suffer today: being subject to slave wages in the north with the threat of being turned over to legal authorities, who were required by federal law to return slaves to their owners. If you want to know what free blacks experienced in Jefferson's days, it was even worse - far worse - than what free blacks suffered in the South after the 13th amendment's abolishing of slavery: economic slaves living as tenant farmers on white men's properties with the threat of the abhorrent KKK.
Posted by Lanny Landrith on October 24,2012 | 10:59 PM
Historical Fact: On Jan. 10, 1963, Congressman Albert S. Herlong Jr. of Florida read a list of 45 Communist goals into the Congressional Record. The list was derived from researcher Cleon Skousen’s book “The Naked Communist. Goal 29: Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis. Goal 30 Discredit the American founding fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
Posted by Jeff Hiscomm on October 24,2012 | 08:28 PM
Unmasked indeed! It was public knowledge that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, but the extent and brutality of his personal homelife was shocking. Touring Monticello and seeing his very comfortable lifestyle at the expense of others will never be the same. Slavery is and always has been an abomination. Jefferson was selfish and cruel. I am saddened and ashamed that one of our most brilliant Founding Fathers was actually a very ignorant man in his own comfortable life. The suffering of all slaves was intolerable and the concept of slavery deplorable "Bread made with other people's tears never tastes good." Thank you for your eye opening article.
Posted by sdt on October 24,2012 | 04:09 PM
Great article. We already knew that Jefferson was a slaveholder, and that he fathered children with his slave, Sally Hemmings, so the information in this article shouldn't be too shocking. Through my research of my slave-holding ancestors, I have gradually come to the same realization that this article hits us with; we have excused our forefather’s behavior because it’s hard to acknowledge their hypocrisy and still hold on dearly to our relationship. Our ancestor’s took monetary advantage of the slavery system of their time, that in their hearts they knew was wrong. They were our ancestors and we have a familial connection, so I believe the need to defend their behavior is just a human trait. I am a first cousin, 8 generations removed, to Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson had a huge part in the making of this country so in some way, we are ALL his descendants. Jefferson was not perfect, no one is perfect, and our country is not perfect. Jefferson did some good things, he did some bad things; the good he accomplished doesn't excuse the bad, nor does the bad, make the good any less important. Historically it's important to know about all the skeletons in our country's closet.
Posted by Margaret Buchanan on October 23,2012 | 06:16 PM
Irrespective of the feelings I may have for Jefferson, what I find more disconcerting is the fact that "historians" feel motivated to scrub the historical facts at all. Why should anyone EVER believe anything that is printed? Unless a person was actually at the exact moment in time an event happened, some historical hack is going to repaint the image in some fashion. Whatever happened to honesty?
Posted by Randy Nordhagen on October 22,2012 | 12:42 PM
Another great critique of this text can be found at http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2012/10/henry_wiencek_s_the_master_of_the_mountain_thomas_jefferson_biography_debunked.html This scholar also takes issue with Weincek's scholarship and use of sources. You cannot make up or fashion evidence to a flawed argument. Inference is not evidence.
Posted by Jeannine Keefer on October 22,2012 | 09:48 AM
Prof. Weincke has given us a scholarly history of one of our iconic heroes while placing him in the real context of understanding slavery and race in America. The omissions and distorts of pro-Southern historians have been exposed in this brilliantly written article. The fact remains that slavery was maintained by violence and that families were torn apart. Jefferson, in all his greatness, and indeed he made great contributions to our nation, he could not escape the evils of slavery, He embodies the American hypocrisy of declaring "equality for all" while embracing racism.
Posted by John Graves on October 21,2012 | 09:41 PM
Wow, what an eye opener. It seems it is always about the "money" and not about what's right. Makes sex in the capital by two consenting adults seem like small incidents by many past leaders. I'm glad there is a Henry Wiecek to expose the past. Why should people, even if they are dead, be defended for horrible crimes against mankind? We are led to believe that our founding fathers were superhuman. They are just like those today,human. Some care about others and some only themselves.
Posted by S Clizer on October 21,2012 | 05:46 PM
It is true that President Thomas Jefferson made a statement: All Men Created Equal. These are empty words. He did not live his life respecting the equality of all men. In fact, he was cruel and money making was his top agenda. I deeply admire Henry Wiencek for bringing the truth out. Our leaders need to correct the false image of Thomas Jefferson some how. All men are created equal theoretically but no where it is practiced. I believe we should be able to say what we practice-political or wealth status should not camaflouge it. thank you. Jagjeet
Posted by Jagjeet Johal on October 20,2012 | 05:26 PM
That's not to say you can't respect Jefferson's other works. Commenters seem to think if someone is racist you can't appreciate anything they've done which is why they're so offended by this article. You can be upset by something a persons done but still recognize they've done greatness in other areas. It doesn't make the evilness any less awful or ok but it also doesn't make the brilliance any less brilliant. Both can exist simultaneously. It's also not a matter of revisionist history when we find new facts and add to our knowledge of history. If we ignored new facts to stick to our old myths because they're more comfortable, that would be revisionist history as that would be ignoring what we now know actually happened in place of what we preferred did. We need to get over our love of turning our historical figures into untouchable gods and simply see them as men; men who existed in a history we're always learning more about rather than who we know everything there is to know about and who's books are simply closed to any new knowledge. Would Jefferson himself ever be for the latter of closing our minds and setting our ways?
Posted by Jen on October 20,2012 | 05:26 AM
I'm appalled at so many people attempting to explain away Jefferson's behavior and to instead attack the author. This did not change my view of Jefferson but rather of our current society as a whole. Yes, Jefferson was a slaveholder. Did you think someone who owned other people was a benevolent father? Would slaves have attempted escape numerous times and risked the consequences that came with that if they were getting rewards for their work instead of beatings? If Washington as well as Jefferson's friend had freed their own slaves how can people say Jefferson was powerless to do the same? Did we read the same article? Jefferson didn't free his slaves because he didn't want to, as plain as that. He wasn't the one who was a victim in a situation that was forced, he simply liked having the wealth and privilege slavery afforded him. And saying it was a different time is also incorrect as there were always abolitionists. As long as people were doing immoral things, others have always been against them. The entire country was never 100% in favor of slavery and those who were still can be called racists, no matter the time period. Anyone who can rationalize owning another human being because they believe themselves superior are racist. The era doesn't change what is an essentially evil concept, it doesn't convince people who would benefit from that but would normally be morally opposed to change their minds. Greed does.
Posted by Jen on October 20,2012 | 05:25 AM
Apart from the obvious linguistic shift away from using the word 'slavery,' we really have to question to what extent things have really changed between capital and free, or nearly-free, labor.
Posted by yahbut on October 19,2012 | 03:05 PM
While Thomas Jefferson did much to assist in the founding of our great nation he was a yellow belly. He always got other people to do his dirty work. Whether it was punishing his slaves or bringing up controversial topics to fellow leaders he always got someone else to do the task. On slavery I do think he felt bad about slavery and wished he could free his slaves, however he was land and slave rich; but cash poor. He could not have afforded to pay workers to work his land and nail factory so in a way he was trapped. He enjoyed his "good life" too much to put actions to his wishes concerning slavery.
Posted by Selena on October 18,2012 | 06:36 PM
The following critical review of Wiencek's corresponding book ("Master of the Mountain") is revelatory in its point-by-point dismantling of Wiencek's "scholarship": http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/17/what-did-thomas-jefferson-really-think-about-slavery.html Smithsonian Magazine might want to rethink its vetting process for articles, or at least publish a follow-up.
Posted by Kimberlee Cloutier-Blazzard on October 18,2012 | 04:30 PM
In true liberal fashion Henry Wiencek has a history of criticizing, and of putting in a bad light, people long dead who are unable to defend themselves. He is a literary coward and his deliberate attempts to destroy peoples' patriotic pride in our great nation and its founders are dangerous. Like many present day historians Wiencek appears ignorant of the fact that he is applying our contemporary values and beliefs to the founders and others who lived in another torally different word and in another far distant time. One can only speculate how historians two hundred years from now will judge Henry Wiencek. Contemporary Smithsonian bureaucrats evidently endorse Wiencek and his left leaning views. The Smithsonian has seemingly devolved from a once great organization that supported our nation's founding to a left leaning entity that does not. I, and my family, are canceling our Smithsonian membership and support because of this one article that addresses Thomas Jefferson in the October 2012 magazine.
Posted by Charles Barnes on October 18,2012 | 03:45 PM
In the October 2012 issue, I just read Henry Wiencek's very revealing article (Master of Monticello) about (what I would term) the moral depravity or perhaps more charitably, the duplicity of Thomas Jefferson on the slave issue Stripped of the myths created by the hagiographic accounts of Jefferson's life and view on this contentious subject, Wiencek confronts us with the real Jefferson-the one who penned those majestic and immortal words of freedom in the Declaration of Independence while engaging in and perpetuating a system of human bondage for profit. Interestingly enough, towards the end of the piece, the author, in comparing Jefferson to George Washington on the issue of slavery, ultimately concludes, "Never did Washington suggest that blacks were inferior or that they should be exiled." This, despite the fact that our first President was the owner of numerous slaves himself (some acquired as a result of his marriage to Martha) whose freedom was delayed until after his death. Guess Washington didn't believe African Americans were inferior but it was nonetheless acceptable to enslave them. Curious. It seems in his effort to debunk one myth, Wiencek may have unwittingly created another. This, I am afraid, is the danger of hero worship.
Posted by Dale M. Wiley on October 16,2012 | 01:13 PM
Henry Weincek tells us that "In a strangely modern twist, Jefferson had taken note of the measurable climate change in the region . . ." Imagine that! All these many years ago, a leading thinker of the age had the insight to observe climate change. Kind of makes one wonder how long this phenomenon has been going on, doesn't it? It makes me wonder why Smithsonian and other publications persist in treating climate change with such shock and alarm. Thomas Jefferson adapted; so should we.
Posted by Gary Schinnell on October 16,2012 | 12:24 PM
WOW! What a breathtaking article by Henry Wiencek! Thanks to Mr. Wiencek & Smithsonian staff for having the curiosity & courage to give us a fresh look at our "National Treasure," Thomas Jefferson. By uncovering an historian's "cover up" of Jefferson's eager embrace of the slave marketplace, one where babies of slaves are actually more valuable than the crops slaves labor to produce, you have created a new opportunity for a healthy, fact-based, and yes, highly emotional dialogue about the role of slavery in America. My own interest in this topic emerged late in life from reading Doris Kearn's Team of Rivals, tracing Abraham Lincoln's path to the Presidency and his role as President. I wondered what people of Lincoln's day thought about slavery. Among the most insightful was Karl Marx, so savvy about the real "crop" from slavery--baby slaves-in-waiting for the auction block. Jefferson was no doubt brilliant, as JFK alluded to when saluting Nobel Prize winners at a White House dinner, "I want to tell you how welcome you are to the White House. I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone." Yet, there has always been something creepy, "unhealthy" about the clash between his thoughts and behavior. The way Wiencek's article weaves the voices of the slave-holders and those of the slaves is compelling. I leave this article juggling views of Monticello. Was it a marvel of invention; an example of a good man trying to make the best of a bad system; or a Jonestownian experiment by a smart, highly emotionally disturbed man with an insatiable sense of entitlement? Looking at a map of the Confederacy & Union alongside today's red and blue states highlights just how important this conversation will be. Sincerely, Albie Davis
Posted by Albie Davis on October 15,2012 | 04:44 PM
Before I allow the article on Thomas Jefferson to tarnish by view of him, I would be interested in Henry Wiencek sharing with us how the document regarding the whipping of "nail boys" was omitted from history by historian Edward Betts. If he tucked it "away in the archives of the Massachusetts Historical Society", would he not assume that some day it would be found and then become part of TJ's history? How was the document found in 2005? The answer to this question appears to be of great importance and totally ommited from his article. It has been well documented that TJ's son-in-law, Colonel Thomas Mann Randolph, was "not of sound mind" throughout most of his marriage to TJ's daughter, Martha. Perhaps, knowing that whatever was written to and about TJ would be for all the world to know in the future, Colonel Randolph wrote untruths in his farm report...just a thought. Randolph lived most of his marriage with his father-in-law who raised and provided everything for Randolph and Martha's children...maybe a little jealousy there? Those are just my thoguhts; but I really would like to know more about the hiding of the original plantation report from Randolph to Jefferson and how it was discovered in 2005. Trudy Miles
Posted by Trudy Miles on October 15,2012 | 03:39 PM
I'm disappointed but not shocked at some of the racist views expressed. Lanny Landrith calls blacks animals (yes, he dresses it up in pseudo-economic terms, but his intent is obvious.) The fact blacks WERE freed and did NOT engage in the rapacious behavior he alludes to is proof that racists who support slavery still exist among us. And charges of 'revisionism' don't hold up, no matter what RA Shaul, et al say. The fact is Jefferson knew slavery was wrong. The fact is his violence was hidden from view by Betts. The disparity between Jefferson's public persona and his private behavior was common knowledge at the time, simply look at Franklin and Washington. If you can't handle the truth that's your problem, not a problem for history.
Posted by Bob Puharic on October 15,2012 | 12:12 PM
Once more for the cheap seats: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A BENEVOLENT SLAVEHOLDER!!! Slaveholding at its ESSENCE is malevolence.
Posted by beqi brinkhorst on October 15,2012 | 09:57 AM
What a hipocrite. All leaders and icons have there flaws, but given his role in US history - he showed a mercenary regard for his own wealth and well being at the most obscene cost possible.
Posted by andrew forbes on October 15,2012 | 09:17 AM
The revelations of this article deeply sadden me. Jefferson was a hero, a man of his time, true, but nonetheless benevolent and a humanitarian so we thought. We admired his great intellect and compassion, that he treated his human property well by the standards of the time. Now we learn that much of this image is bogus. Shamefully deceived by historian Edwin Betts in the 1950s, we have continued the deification of Jefferson who cared more for the income produced by children than their well being under the whip. The end justified the means with total disregard of morality. If he were living in the 21st century, Jefferson likely would be a hedge fund manager.
Posted by David C Blackwell on October 14,2012 | 12:34 PM
This article about Jefferson was a revelation !!! His emphasis on industry and its profit making requirements, reminds me of the situation today with private equity firms. Their ideology blinds them to the effect on other human beings. The institution of slavery was ingrained into the Southern economy of the pre-Civil War , just as profit making holds few restrictions for financial institutions and corporations in the 21st century.
Posted by Marjorie Jacobs on October 14,2012 | 10:55 AM
One person commented on Abraham Lincoln's alleged racism. The one Lincoln quote used as evidence of alleged racism is his saying that freed slaves were not ready to be full citizens. This was NOT a racist remark. It was a remark about the slave mentality, which has nothing to do with race. In the Old Testament the Hebrews had been slaves for decades when Moses delivered them from Egypt and brought them through the desert. Notice what happened when any difficulty occurred: The Hebrews would whine and complain that they were better off in Egypt as slaves. This is the slave mentality. That's why most revolutions that free a long-time enslaved people, rarely result in a freed people because the freed people have a slave mentality and end up with another dictator: e.g. French got rid of kings and ended with emperor (Napoleon); Cubans got rid of Batista and ended up with Castro; Russians got rid of Czars, and got communism, and got rid of communism, and ended up with Putin. Our American revolution succeeded because American colonists had been governing themselves for more than a century; American colonists were among the freest people in the world until England tried to pay their huge debts by taking American colonists without their permission or input. Lincoln told a group of free blacks that - when joined by newly freed slaves - the newly freed slaves would NOT be able to assume regular citizen roles. That's NOT racism. That's recognition of the slave mentality.
Posted by Lanny Landrith on October 13,2012 | 09:56 PM
The Smithsonian article is highly INCOMPETENT. You simply canNOT discuss Jefferson and slavery without discussing Jefferson's description of the slavery dilemma: Being a slave owner was like "holding a wolf by the ears." If you let the wolf (slaves) go, they will turn on you. The article FALSELY implies that freeing the slaves was a simple matter when freeing them would have resulted in the wolf - gangs of freed blacks - attacking the community. Most slaves did NOT have real job skills and thus would have become wolves: gangs just like present-day inner-city gangs. ANY COMPETENT HISTORIAN KNOWS THIS. Washington may have prevented this because he gave his freed slaves land (e.g. what is now known as Gum Springs. Even though I am convinced that Washington was greater than Jefferson, we don't know what happened to Washington's freed slaves. Freed slaves enjoyed few rights. For example, a white man murdered a black man, and could NOT be prosecuted because the 3 witnesses who witnessed the murder were black men and were legally not allowed to be witnesses. The Smithsonian article and other comments about how Jefferson should have at least freed his slaves in his will, do NOT mention one essential fact: Jefferson was deep in debt because he had co-signed a huge debt to help a friend, and the friend defaulted on the debt causing Jefferson to be responsible for the debt. Thus, Jefferson was NOT free to free his slaves because legally they HAD TO BE USED to help pay off his debts. His freeing a few slaves was probably illegal. Jefferson's comparing owning slaves to holding a wolf by the ears, and Jefferson's debts preventing him from freeing his slaves HAVE TO BE INCLUDED IN ANY DISCUSSION of Jefferson and slavery. And if they are NOT included, you may know with absolute certainty that the author or commentator is NOT a Jefferson scholar. The overwhelming number of Jefferson historians know this.
Posted by Lanny Landrith on October 13,2012 | 09:45 PM
Based on the article and comments, the Founding Fathers who opposed slavery (Washington after his soil no longer supported labor intensive crops, Franklin, and Hamilton) did not benefit from it economically. For them, was there an opportunity cost for opposing slavery? Also, the topic of our history’s lawful slavery is a safe humanitarian topic for educators and historians. Why is not more attention focused on our present day humanitarian crises? Do we even know what these crises are? Or will we have to depend on the future generations to examine, judge, and condemn the injustices of our time?
Posted by Teresa Stoddard on October 13,2012 | 08:21 PM
This article lays bare only part of the hypocrisy and evil heritage of slavery which stills hangs over these United States. Jefferson's serial rape of Sally Hemmings and maybe others is ignored. No restitution was ever paid to American slaves thus violating a basic principle of the Anglo-American legal system. This failure to pay just compensation for the taking of both the slaves liberty and labor without just compensation is a crime against humanity of the worst imaginable crime. The destruction of families over multiple generations lives as one of humanities great acts of barbarism. The poverty and second class citizenship in economic and social terms of African Americans is a blemish that stains America. How could America engage in such barbarism and not even pay it's victims a dimes worth of reparations? This question is embodied in the lives of African Americans today, one hundred and fifty years after the Civil War. Justice remain undone.
Posted by John H. Armwood on October 13,2012 | 08:10 PM
How did we not know this? While it is disappointing to learn Jefferson was just a hypocrite when it came to his own ambition and greed, it is appalling to learn that the historians have deliberately hidden these realities. Whitewash slavery...go back and read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" again.
Posted by Teresa Odell on October 13,2012 | 07:08 PM
"Massachusetts freed its slaves on the strength of the Declaration of Independence, weaving Jefferson’s language into the state constitution of 1780." Someone who might disagree with this statement would be John Adams. It was Adams who drafted the Masschusetts' constitution of 1780. And Adams was jealous of the attention that was paid to Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence. His personal library had a copy of his book "Discourses on Davila" (now housed at the Boston Public Library and available online), in the margins of page 89, Adams wrote, "The Declaration of Independence of 4 July 1776 contained Nothing but the Boston Declaration of 1772 and the Congress Declaration of 1774. Such are the Caprices of Fortune." and, "This Declaration of Rights was drawn by the little John Adams. The mighty Jefferson by the Dec. of Independence 4 July 1776 carried away the glory of both the great and the little.”
Posted by C. E. Hughes on October 13,2012 | 04:30 PM
While Jefferson obviously had strong feelings about slavery, he was eager to profit from it by whatever means necessary. In doing so he simply shows us that he is another great man in history who is far from perfect.Most of the truly great men in world history had some great imperfection. While he may have lagged behind Washington on the moral issue of slavery he still remains a cornerstone of this country. As with other great men his accomplishments should not be lessened by his actions on this issue.
Posted by Oliver Wood on October 13,2012 | 03:46 AM
Reading this article did change my perception of Thomas Jefferson. People that still kneel at the altar of Jefferson would do well to read and think; as his sort of American enterprise ( circa 1790) to this day continues at the cost of others.
Posted by Connie McCarter on October 12,2012 | 05:47 PM
This article is yet another revisionist attempt to discredit Mr. Jefferson. It does not change my view of this great man. Patricia Broemmel
Posted by Patricia Broemmel on October 12,2012 | 03:38 PM
My friend, Shannon Lanier, 6th great grandson of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson and their family, see Jeffersons Children by Shannon Lanier and Jane Feldman, could shed some important light on your article..Perhaps by talking to the extended family, you might be able to understand the mosaic of American families that create the culture in which we now live. I appreciated the detail of the economic principals you outline. government teacher Santa Fe New Mexico
Posted by Meredith Tilp on October 12,2012 | 01:01 PM
As the Scholars Commission Report, "The Jefferson-Hemings Controversy", which vindicates Jefferson, begins making gains in the intellectual community, leftist revisionists desperately seek other ways to destroy Jefferson's memory and the Founding seeds of American exceptionalism, for which they hold blinding contempt.
Posted by L.B. Samms on October 12,2012 | 09:05 AM
When considering Jefferson or the Founding Fathers with respect to the issue of slavery, it's first only reasonable to recall that none of these men created the immoral institution of slavery or championed it. It was a fact of life in the colonies and the newly-created nation. Jefferson knew that slavery was morally reprehensible, but ejecting his freed slaves into 18th century America would probably not have accomplished much and might have done more harm than good to those very individuals he was attempting to help. Jefferson as slaveholder doesn't negate his credibility as a believer in the equality of all people before God. Jefferson didn't claim to be an emancipator. He was a politician operating within the confines of his time and he was also eminently human. It's disappointing that he couldn't find a way to square his philosophical view of humankind with an everday acceptance of the black slave in his home as his equal in ability, intelligence, etc. But, in this view, he was --sadly--probably not that different from any of his contemporaries. Some 50 years later, Abraham Lincoln hadn't gotten much farther than Jefferson. In his debates with Douglas in 1858, Lincoln assured his listeners that he wasn't advocating for social equality of the black man. Lincoln, like Jefferson before him, favored repatriation of the black man and doubted that blacks and whites could live harmoniously together. I don't see how 'revelations' of the sort discussed in this new book raise the intellectual bar. On the contrary, this type of 'research' is caviling and cynical. It seems to exist only for the purpose of tearing down some very great thinkers, who, like all of us--including the author of this new book--- have uniquely human failings.
Posted by Amy De Rosa on October 11,2012 | 04:21 PM
Alexander Hamilton was a prime proponent of manumission or freedom of slaves, along with Benjamin Franklin. He was also an advocate for a banking system that could promote investment in advancing technology for manufacturing by free labor and vast internal improvements in this country. Jefferson was his avowed enemy. Jefferson wrote that blacks were not real human beings, and yet he lowered himself to father children with his slaves. (Which was well known at the time.) Hamilton consistently warned Washington that Jefferson's embrace of the sans cullotes radicals bloodletting (leading Jefferson to openly advocate the necessity for continuous bloody revolutions)in France would lead to a dictatorship. But it would seem he wasn't for any slave revolts because he didn't consider them to be human. Immediately after Jefferson's Vice President Aaron Burr killed Hamilton and had a warrant out on him from New Jersey, Jefferson held dinners and entertainments in Burr's honor.
Posted by Thingumbobesq on October 11,2012 | 03:20 PM
An extraordinary and important piece. Thank you for writing it.
Posted by john eskow on October 10,2012 | 08:21 PM
Having done my Masters Thesis on the formation of factions in Washington's first administration, I plowed through a great deal of letters written by Jefferson. He was just like most of his peers when it came to slaves. There was no doubt that Jefferson was very smart, but I think the real brains behind him were Madison's.
Posted by Bob Callard on October 10,2012 | 06:17 PM
fascinating article. I thought I already knew a lot about Jefferson, but the research and writing here really chrystalized in my mind a colorful and nuanced picture of, not Jefferson the individual necessarily, but the community of Monticello that enabled his intellectual, scientific, and high-socity pursuits. (as obama might say, he didn't build that (Monticello) all by himself. As a prior visitor to Monticello, I have a couple crazy ideas. America likes its "living history" pioneer villages, places like Williamsburg. Are there any such "living history" slave plantations? I would pay money for both the experience of reenacting a Jefferson social dinner, perhaps one night from the upstairs guest perspective, and one night from the downstairs slave perspective. Or has their been any thought to rebuilding Jeffferson's slave quarters and factories and people them with reenactors.....just thinking...
Posted by Bill Dudley on October 10,2012 | 05:22 PM
Very interesting read about Jefferson. It didnt change my view/thoughts on him at all, but did provide more substance. Monticello is a beautiful place to visit, but seriously creeped me out when I toured the house. Great to see the author responding to readers. The attempts at rationalizing Jefferson's slave holding is truly sad to read.
Posted by ChristopherD on October 10,2012 | 02:39 PM
I love Jefferson so much, but his actions in regards to being a slave master and the author of the Declaration are just too painful and discouraging to be dismissed. His principles? Very high and soaring ideals; but his feet were of clay. After the Revolution, I'm on the Hamiltonian side. The only way to have a free and prosperous country in the long run is to invest in industrialization. Meanwhile, the old rural values that Jefferson espoused, including "small government" and "no standing army"? Inevitable failure.
Posted by Jim Hassinger on October 9,2012 | 03:38 PM
Author response part 2: Walker Mayo is partly correct when he says that Jefferson denounced slavery his entire life, but these denunciations cannot be taken at face value. Jefferson called this species of discourse his "soft answer" to abolitionists. It was very important to him that his reputation as a progressive be preserved in certain circles. The last time Jefferson seriously wrote about freeing his slaves was in 1788 and he abandoned the idea in the early 1790s when he realized the investment value of slaves. (He never took any action to free slaves, with the exception of Hemingses.) The value of slaves did not decline. Jefferson himself calculated that slave property appreciated 5% to 10% a year. Contrary to what Mr Mayo says, Col. Randolph did order slaves whipped; it's in the records and in my book. Jefferson did not use the Kosciuszko funds for a black school--that's an old, false story that has been debunked. The Kosciuszko will ended up in litigation because Jefferson did not carry it out when he had the chance. After Jefferson's death his grandson Jeff Randolph tried to revive the Kosciuszko bequest and free some slaves, but it was too late. Denise Rogers is absolutely right when she says that the Fossett family could have been spared their painful fate if Jefferson had used the Kosciuszko funds to free them, as they so obviously and richly deserved; but the Fossetts were too valuable on the plantation. Barry Fleckmann and others object to judging Jefferson by modern standards. I have two responses. First, if today we call him a great man, that's a modern judgement; so why not allow him to be judged today on the totality of his actions? Second, in his own time his views and actions on slavery were fiercely challenged by his own friends and by heroes of the Revolution. Why not choose them as representatives of Jefferson's time? On Jefferson's relationship with enslaved women and the Hemings family--I discuss that in the book.
Posted by Henry Wiencek on October 8,2012 | 07:36 PM
Some responses by the Author, part 1. (There have been many good comments and I will try to address as many as I can.) The post by "Alix" is similar to arguments I've heard before. It creates the impression that Virginia law prevented Jefferson from freeing slaves when actually the law did not. In 1782 the Virginia legislature passed a liberal manumission law allowing slave owners to manumit slaves at will (not just "in their will" as Alix writes) without the government approval that had been required previously. Thus, Jefferson could have freed slaves if he wished. In 1806 the General Assembly passed the odious exile law, requiring freed African-Americans to leave their home state within a year unless an exemption was granted, but at-will manumission remained on the books, and no penalty was imposed on an owner. In his will Jefferson freed five men and requested exemptions for them from the 1806 exile requirement. These exemptions were granted. (Some Virginia localities simply ignored the exile law, allowing free African-Americans to remain in their homes without exemption papers.) Jefferson did not free slaves because he was transferring them, as assets, to his heirs, and because he was also piling up human assets that could be liquidated at his death to satisfy his creditors. He spent faster than his enslaved community could reproduce.
Posted by Henry Wiencek on October 8,2012 | 07:35 PM
First off slavery wasn't only in America. Slavery has been around since humans have been doing this thing called agriculture. Secondly, the bible not only supports slavery, but it tells how to do slavery. Thirdly, some people from Africa are just as much to blame as the Americans are, they "sold" slaves to the slave ships. Last note, just because it has been done in the past, other people participated in it from other countries, and the bible supported slavery, none of this means the Americans who participated in slavery are absolved of any wrong doing. I don't even care if the slaves were treated nicely or not, the fact someone had ownership over another individual is just plain wrong.
Posted by oceans on October 8,2012 | 07:28 PM
He had impregnated with a 13 year old child that he owned. Anyone who reads The Notes on the State of Virigina would know he was not benevolent to his chattel in any way, shape or form.
Posted by eshowoman on October 8,2012 | 06:42 PM
Facinating article. As a Virginian I was raised on the old ideas of Jefferson and his slaves. Quite honestly, I haven't really thought about Mr. Jefferson in a long time. Reading this article was a real eye-opener for me. I was saddened that although Mr. Jefferson had high ideals the article shows he was human and a businessman first. I will certainly read more about this incredible man.
Posted by Elizabeth Scott on October 8,2012 | 01:17 PM
Very insightful commentary on the contradictions of Jefferson, an uncomfortable topic that is often excused or glossed over. I am shocked however, that this article makes no mention of Sally Hemmings, the slave whom Jefferson more or less took as a second wife after he became a widower; they had several children together, and it was a subject of much local and national controversy in the 1990's when Jefferson's black descendents petitioned for recognition and acknowledgement.
Posted by a Charlottesville resident on October 8,2012 | 12:49 PM
USA founded on the back of slaves! So America preferred to choose the way of Thomas Jefferson, precisely because slavery had made human beings into money, like “Cattle in the market,” because this is a profitable and convenient for freedom of mad greed. America prefers a grievous sin of hypocrisy and double standards as contradicts the biblical principles. The American ideal of freedom and democracy has always been like Monticello because the slaves invisible.
Posted by Sergey from St-Petersburg on October 8,2012 | 11:13 AM
I was truly saddened when I read this. When I've visited Monticello, I reflect on Jefferson's multifaceted genius, but I also can't help thinking that every time Jefferson thought about a change in Monticello, somebody had to do it. And if Jefferson thought that he liked it better the first way, then somebody had to change things back. And that "somebody" wasn't Thomas Jefferson, not by any means. I can understand that Jefferson probably felt conflicted, schizophrenic, about being a successful slaveowner. And I suspect that he probably considered himself a fairly benevolent slaveowner. Which would not have been any real consolation to his "property." And which can only be partially justified by a claim that despite everything else, Jefferson WAS a creature of his times. Come election day, I hope that readers of this comment consider whether they want to have as president someone who has active disdain for Americans who don't pull in six figure salaries.
Posted by Ed A on October 7,2012 | 07:07 PM
A very interesting and thought provoking article. What I have always read about the history of this period was that in the years leading up to the Civil War slavery for agriculture was on the wane and becoming less profitable. Virginia planters moving to wheat (or away from tobacco) were selling slaves to the West. (Madison is doing the same.) Jefferson's records of the nailery are quite intriguing in this regard. He was definitely finding slavery profitable for manufacturing. Are there any indications of other slave holders exploring the same option? Was there any indication that the South might have developed slave-based manufacturing (!) to rival the factories of the Northeast? Manufacturing required a more educated workforce for sure, and Jefferson seems to have been aware of this. As were the factory owners of the Northeast who worried that establishing public schools would teach too much. While Northern workers were free, it is questionable whether their standard of living was better. I have wondered if (or when) Southern planters realized that sharecropping was more profitable and less hassle than slavery. Exploitation can take many forms. The workers don't have to be owned to be slaves. Can the author remark on this? John Day Foxboro, MA.
Posted by John Day on October 7,2012 | 06:26 PM
As a Black American male born in 1961, this sounds like the USA that I know. Go GW.
Posted by PC on October 7,2012 | 11:10 AM
I am very much opposed to revisionist history. It is not fair or honest to judge an 18th Century man by 21st Century standards. I reject this approach.
Posted by R. A. Shaul on October 6,2012 | 12:48 AM
Thanks to Henry Wiencek and Smithsonian for this engrossing article. More than anything, it brings home for me the sheer folly of hero-making and hero worship. I'm grateful for Wiencek's mention of the attempts to hide or obscure the darker side of Jefferson's actions. It makes no more sense to do that than it does to define Andrew Jackson's contributions to history solely in light of his Indian removal policies -- or to define FDR solely by Japanese internment. Jefferson, FDR, and Jackson were defined by the times they lived in, just as present-day presidents and other political figures are. The hero worship has already begun for Reagan. We can expect it for Obama as well; the revisionism is certain to follow. Let's demand historical accuracy in all cases, and let's do our best to separate it from the public relations we have seen in the case of Jefferson. A request for Smithsonian: Would you please give your online readers the option to view lengthy articles in a single page view? This pagination is downright annoying, and quite unnecessary. Thanks again.
Posted by Ivan Weiss on October 6,2012 | 01:06 PM
I say that, though it is very much different as to what we were to taught to think, Jefferson't violence towards slaves is not new. He had a huge plantation. I think he knew that if it weren't for the slaves, nothing would get done. Although slavery was bad, the times called for anyone with as large an operation as Jefferson's to have slave labor to run it. Violence was a large part of the slave trade and it's a mark on American history that, though we'd like to forget it, we can't ignore its presence and importance in our nation's past.
Posted by Diane Belmont on October 6,2012 | 10:11 AM
Monticello above the clouds? Here's what Jefferson wrote in 1786: "And our own dear Monticello . . . How sublime to look down into the workhouse of nature, to see her clouds, hail, snow, rain, thunder, all fabricated at our feet!" He didn't have Google Earth, but he was there.
Posted by Henry Wiencek on October 5,2012 | 06:35 AM
I was just about to let my subscription to Smithsonian Magazine elapse, but you have saved it by this one article. Reading "Unmasking Thomas Jefferson" by Henry Wiencek, just reminded me of why I love Smithsonian so much. I teach a course on African American Traditions in Bloomfield, New Jersey. This article was very helpful in explaining to my students the rational behind the need to reenforce slavery, amazingly helpful... It really helps people to understand the pure economics behind slavery. Thank you. (I have posted a portion of the article on my course blog, directing students back to this site to read more: http://aatraditions.blogspot.com/2012/10/read-more-about-thomas-jeffersons.html) Prof. Rosalind Nichol African American Traditions Bloomfield College, Creative Arts & Technology Dept. Bloomfield, New Jersey
Posted by Prof. Rosalind Nichol on October 4,2012 | 08:44 AM
This story only confirms what a disgusting hypocrite Jefferson was. He apparently had a low regard for blacks, but thought nothing of bedding them down, Sally Hemings in particular.
Posted by Bruce Benjamin on October 3,2012 | 12:42 AM
Jefferson may have been one of the first industrial entrepreneurs, the first Ford or Edison of his day...but we can only look at history framed in the times as they were, not make assumptions about how he would have reacted with 200 years of history behind him. His enduring document is still strong today, and has been used by dozens of societies including Vietnam. I wonder if 200 years from today we'll be reading the Smithsonian about the Bush's and wars for oil, a sticky nasty black substance that can you believe it...used to run our cars.
Posted by Grace Anderson on October 3,2012 | 05:02 PM
This article is full of so many errors and omissions that it is hard to even begin. But this one I found most interesting. The charge that Jefferson could have freed his slaves at Washington did is untrue. The state of Virginia prevented slave owners from freeing their slaves without severe financial penalties and the requirement that the freed slave leave the state. In the late 1700's a new law was inacted that allowed slave owners to free their slaves in their will. Later in the early 1800's that new law was repealed reverting back to the old law. Washington died in 1799, when the law permited the freeing of slaves in an owners will with no repercusions. Jefferson died in 1824, when that law was no longer in effect. Jefferson also died in debt, due to many various reason, including inheriting debt from family members, and paying wages and profit sharing to his own slaves. His estate could not afford to pay the penalties for liberating his slaves, and any liberated could have been forced to leave the state and their families behind. Would have been nice if the author of this "scholarly" article had included that information. However, just as he accuses other scholars of editting history to suit their needs, he has also done so as well.
Posted by Alix on October 3,2012 | 04:24 PM
The man was a brillant politican as well as a businessman. He played the cards he was dealt. No different than anyone today. For example Bill Clinton talking about family values while having sex in the Oval Office. Times change, people don't. I thought the article was excellent and did not change how I feel about Jefferson one bit. He is and will always be a great man.
Posted by vincent bonomo on October 2,2012 | 12:47 AM
Henry Wiencek. We know nothing of him. We SHOULD. Also, he has strangely left out the fact Jefferson ( and Washington) voted to abolish slavery prior to the American Revolution as members of the Virginia House of Burgesses with the bill failing by one vote. It was stil British-dominated not free AMERICA--acenturies long Hard STRUGGLE to erect civilization with FULL,GENUINE civility. Did Jefferson's great endebtedness have anything to do with holding onto the slaves--he was a slaveHOLDER, not a slaveOWNER because there is no Right to own Others-- and there being no easy way out of his situation? Having lived in France was no good influence on Jefferson! Love him--and I do-- or not he very greatly aided the rise of human Liberty more than any other. In my opinion. My opioion of those on the "left" who love to downgrade Jefferson is not high . I HATE SLAVERY!! Sign me off as regrettably a greatgrandson of a slaveholder. By the way, I strongly suspect slavery began in the North and flowed out of endentured servitude. Who were the slavetraders, but Massachusetts ship owners! David R. Rawls Young people of AMERICA, don't believe somebody just because it is told--check it out yourself,FOR YOURSELF.God bless AMERICA,HOME OF LIBERTY, FREEDOM,AND PEOPLE,who will learn eventually that Love (God's Kind) isWhat this word has too little of
Posted by David R. Rawls on October 2,2012 | 07:51 PM
Thanks for providing accurate information on an individual that holds an esteemed position in American history. What a revelation! What a disappointment! My reaction to the article was extreme disgust for Jefferson and sorrow for his slaves.
Posted by Anita Habberfield on October 2,2012 | 06:30 PM
This story offers insight to his legacy, but does not change my view of his legacy. I read David McCullough's book on John Adams. The interactions between Adams and Jefferson were eye opening. The behind-the-back contrivances of Jefferson and Franklin against Adams while the three were in France during the Revolutionary War left me with a bad taste of both Jefferson and Franklin (not to say that Adams did not have his issues.) Jefferson kept his slaves, although in 1776 he denounced slavery. This is not new. And Jefferson, with all his businesses and political connections, died deep in debt. He was broke. But still, a very good excerpt from what appears to be an enlightening book.
Posted by Doug on October 2,2012 | 06:26 PM
People should know that the founding fathers were not saints. Biggest problem in the world is ignorance and the Smithsonian is doing its best to give people proper perspectives on historical figures.
Posted by Perry Fuchs on October 2,2012 | 06:00 PM
This article only goes to show us how different the "founding fathers" were from what certain parts of our people make them out to be. The same goes for the constitution, held as gospel though it was plainly drafted by people who had a very strong and practical agendas. At the end, money rules!
Posted by Jake on October 2,2012 | 05:14 PM
The article gives a false impression of Jefferson based on half-truths and factual errors. He denounced slavery his entire life. He proposed a plan of abolition during the Revolutionary Era but public opinion in Virginia did not follow his lead. He encouraged every abolition proposal made to him. His opinions did not change in 1792. He stated that the calculations he made for Washington and Arthur Young on the profits of a Va. farm were not to be relied upon. The value of slave property declined after 1792 and Jefferson expressed the hope that it would lead towards emancipation. Former slaves and Bacon left recollections of his kindness and fairness. How can his order to NOT whip slaves be twisted into a regime of cruelty? The author gets his facts confused. For example, Great George had nothing to do with the nailery and Randolph did not order anyone to be whipped. He simply required slaves who had planted tobacco to plant a different article. Jefferson tried to use the Koscuiszko funds for a school for free blacks. Other claimants tied up the legacy and the Supreme Court decided that K. had revoked his will. If Jefferson was so avaricous, why did he make generous contributions bo black churches in Philadelphia and Washington?
Posted by Walker Mayo on October 2,2012 | 04:23 PM
Thomas Jefferson’s mansion stands atop his mountain like the Platonic ideal of a house: a perfect creation existing in an ethereal realm, literally above the clouds. Really? Literally above the clouds? I guess this is for anyone who has never been there, or doesn't have Google Earth.
Posted by Jim Kistler on October 2,2012 | 03:25 PM
I'm glad that Jefferson's true nature is coming to light and I am sure there is much more to learn about Jefferson and Monticello. It's so remarkable how the lwgacy of breaking down families, self worth has lingered for hundreds of years within the black community. On Washingon, he freed his slaves but that does not take away the sin of owning humans as property in the first place.
Posted by iden mccollum on October 2,2012 | 11:53 AM
TJ gets credit for the "All men are created equal" quote in the Declaration of Independence, but during a trip to Williamsburg I was informed that the Declaration of Independence was basically a copy of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, written mostly by George Mason. Maybe TJ had a better publicist than George Mason back then? He should try to get him back to work again; his reputation is getting killed today.
Posted by Jim Kistler on October 2,2012 | 09:58 AM
What I got from this was not that he was evil, or had a dark side. but that he lived in a state where owning slaves was a law, which could not be changed by any provision. except to use the system in ways that homosexuals have to use it today to get there freedoms. yes, human rights mean, human rights. all should be granted them. but for those who didn't follow written law, especially back then were subject to long prison sentences or death. From how the story reads in it's entirety, he seemed to care about his slaves, gave them shelter, fed them, offered incentives. He also seemed to think universally, not grounded in ways that slavery was good for those who wanted to own slaves. but like this article fails to mention; Thomas Jefferson still signed bills ending the importation of slaves from overseas, and abolished the trade of slaves overseas in this time. This article has you believe that he was silent after our declaration of independence, but this is untrue. Slavery is terrible, that is no doubt. However like this article does mention, you can't pass present day judgement on those in the past, as those were very different times. it would be like today we eat animals, then in the future when they no longer eat animals, they call us savages, uneducated, mongers of animal genocide. when for today, it is for food and production of business. I can honestly say, that I can not pass judgement on Jefferson for not only fighting against slavery, but at the very least offering his slaves a chance, where other individuals would have been careless with them or worse. All men were created equal, and Jefferson knew this, and practiced it in legislation, life, and through universal philosophy. A genius in his own time.
Posted by atom Charles on October 1,2012 | 07:34 PM
A house built on a weak and dissolute foundation will never stand. As such, the United States Of America has never been nor never will be the 'home of the free and the brave.' It is a vile, hypocritical lie perpetrated by charlatans, bigots, blustery unprincipled preachers and these Jeffersonian apologists...men and women without backbone and conviction who spout glorious prose about freedom then turn their backs to avoid being a witness to the use of the whip, leg irons, murder and racial taunts. Claims that 'our nation is blessed by God' illustrate a moral numbness and ignorance that is so evil it is hard to describe. The only 'American Exceptionalism' in operation is hypocrisy...and it is exceptional indeed.
Posted by Phil Esteen on October 1,2012 | 03:09 PM
As a Peace Corps volunteer in South Africa in 2006, I gave a little talk about Independence Day to the children at the creche where I was working. I did mention that some of the founding fathers were slaveholders (the talk was translated into SeTswana by the teachers). When one of the teachers asked me why the Founding Fathers were honored when they kept slaves, I was somewhat stumped. I told her that not all of the signers of the Declaration were slaveholders, and many were opposed to slavery. I also added that Washington freed his slaves (I did not mention that emancipation came after his death.) Now, reading about Jefferson, whom I had always admired, I wonder if that teacher might have been right. If Jefferson had kept to his original ideals, and had Monticello run as a free enterprise, would he not have been just as successful? The idea that he viewed the "increase" of his slaves much the same way that he viewed the "increase" of his cattle and horses puts a very different light on Jefferson as a freedom fighter.
Posted by Phyllis Clark on October 1,2012 | 03:04 PM
This was an interesting read ..but for one to actually know that all men are born equal but try to play nice guy when really viewing slaves as investments. what a cuckoo of a dude. George Washington i even respect him more as a leader than the elite false ones
Posted by kc on September 30,2012 | 11:23 PM
TJ denounced slavery and proposed a plan to end it. He encouraged those who sought its abolition until the end of his life. He knew that slavery would not end without a revolution in public opinion. He encouraged the young to continue the struggle. The 1792 calculations on the profitabily of slave labor which he prepared for Washington and Arthur Young did not change his views. Indeed he told W. that the calculations were not to be relied upon and he accepted Young's view that free labor was more profitable. TJ considered the continuation of slavery particularly dangerous following the 1791 slave rebellion in Haiti.onsidered a warning. As every economic historian knows, the Va.economy deteriorated until the end of TJ's life, leaving his land and slaves of little value. His former slaves and E.Bacon left recollections of his humanity and refusal to use the whip. He founded the nailery following his retirement as sec. of state to provide funds to regenerate his farm. He used rewards rather than punishments to encourage the nailboys. Wiencek confuses Great George and his problem with the tobacco crop with Smith George who ran the nailery. There is no basis for his story that Randolph had the nailers whipped. When Lilly took over the nailery, TJ, absent in DC, directed that the boys should Not be whipped. How can a tale of cruelty be twisted from TJ's specific direction that the boys "should retain the stimulus of character." Wiencek even makes up a story about the groceries only being used for the "white family" when grocery items were used for the slaves. The account of Koscuiszko's will leaves out the fact that TJ could not use the money for the education of blacks, as he planned, because of other claimants. The Supreme Court decided in 1852 the the general had revoked his 1798 will. You ask "do [Wiencek's] revelations about Jefferson change your view of his legacy?" Yes for those gullible enough to blindly accept them.
Posted by Walker Mayo on September 30,2012 | 05:21 PM
Mr Weincek's saga of Thomas Jefferson's fall from grace is spellbinding. From the Olympian heights of "all men are created equal," he spirals down to become the Simon Legree of a sweat shop nail factory, staffed by slave children so angry that they try to kill each other. The whip awaits any child who wavers in his task. Kosciuszko's bequest begets a telling turn. By the end of this sad odyssey the truth about Jefferson is all too self evident. He is a sphinx no more.
Posted by Peter Whittredge on September 30,2012 | 03:32 PM
The article was fascinating. As far as changing my mind about Jefferson, I would have to say that it mostly confirms what I have been thinking about him since reading his Notes on the State of Virginia and his letter to Edward Coles (about Coles' "mistake" in moving to Illinois to free his slaves): for Jefferson, his economic legacy mattered more to him than any moral legacy did. Perhaps he felt that to his neighbors, this would be true, too. Freedom for slaves was an economic impracticality for him. But he was also clearly conflicted on whether black me could be the equals of white men on the intellectual level (though he seems to have thought so of Benjamin Banneker). What disappoints me most is what he did not do with Kosciuszko’s legacy. What happened to Fosset's family need never have happened. I don't believe the claim that some people make about Jefferson being a man of his times; Washington was a man of his times, too, as was Edward Coles. They realized that they couldn't just give lip service to equality. They had to do something about it. Jefferson could not even do that in his will.
Posted by Denise Rogers on September 30,2012 | 03:00 PM
This story provided facts that fortified an already formed opinion. Thomas Jefferson created "dirty-trick politics," sabotaged the presidency of John Adams and kept his own children as slaves and mismanged his business into bankruptcy. Not having fought alongside fellow founding fathers he appears to not have developed the bonds of fellowship and devotion to this nation most of them shared. From what I have read I am sure he would have joined the Confederacy and done all he could to destroy The United States of America.
Posted by John Bradley on September 30,2012 | 02:20 PM
To me, your portrait of Jefferson in the October 2012 issue of Smithsonian was somewhat of an eye opener. I've always been reserved in my judgment of his character, feeling that somethings about him had not previously been disclosed, clearly not as openly and thoroughly as Henry Wiencek's article. I commend the author for the revelations. The sad thing is as kids in elementary school if someone said "Well a bunch of farmers wrote our Constitution," I'd attack that as a putdown, stating my belief that this nation's founders were men of great stature. Well yes, but great stature must be measured against human frailty. After all THAT's how we judge our current political leaders, and likewise we should judge our forebears.
Posted by George R. Taylor on September 30,2012 | 02:01 PM
Disappointing revelations. I want our nation's heroes to be bigger than life, but, as they say in the NFL, "upon further review".... This seems to be the case when evaluating most people of fame. They're actually composed of the same human frailties as the rest of us. I can't say that I feel any personal guilt any more than I feel guilty over Stalinist purges. And to say, "...how deeply ingrained in our nation's culture is the ideal of living in comfort and luxury at the expense of the deprived." Please. Perhaps some day we'll actually learn more about our current president.
Posted by Robert Cothroll on September 30,2012 | 01:29 PM
I knew Jefferson had slaves, but this new view of his life really shows me that he was no better or worse than most politicians, past or present. He spoke out of both sides of his mouth, saying one thing while doing the opposite. I've never thought of the founding fathers as next to godliness, but this new view of Thomas Jefferson made me angry. He was a hypocrite through and through. And he made it onto Mt. Rushmore and many other monuments. What a travesty!
Posted by Leslie Bialik on September 30,2012 | 01:25 PM
I think in large measure most Americans with some knowledge of Jefferson realize that he was a complicated and even likely hypocritical man. Your article was enjoyable, albeit sad. Jefferson was a brilliant man who failed to achieve-quite consciously I might add-the ideals of the Declaration of Independence. I am struck by one new 'revelation', perhaps better stated, a personal epiphany. The well-known and regarded mathematical and numerical precision of Jefferson in the context of an undeniable evil (slavery and human misery) has many parallels to the 'mathematical' evils of 20th century mass inhumanity. Like Jefferson's mathematical precision of describing slaves as a profit generating enterprise at 4 percent per annum, many of the most unspeakable horrors of NAZI Germany, as well as Soviet Russia, with a focus upon numbers over people, divorced otherwise thinking and even feeling people from the unspeakable horrors oversaw. Jefferson reveals that it was possible to live with this otherwise irreconcilable moral incompatibility many years before systematized torture and inhumanity were applied at the level of entire peoples (of course, one can argue that slavery was a mass form of inhumanity, arguably just short of genocide). It is sad, in the end, that such a brilliant and prescient mind never saw the deep rooted contradictions in the ownership and abuse of human beings. And even had he been consciously aware of this, I shudder to imagine it, because it again reminds me of those people who knew what they did was wrong but did it anyway, always ready to mark down a new death as but a numerical statistic.
Posted by Alex H. on September 30,2012 | 03:21 AM
After reading the article about Thomas Jefferson, I am disgusted!!! And I was thinking of getting a copy of his bible. Not now, I don't find him to be a good man. He ranks up there with the Madoff, and the wall street guys!!!
Posted by Beverly Haynes-Love on September 29,2012 | 10:41 PM
I was saddened and disappointed to learn how completely and willingly Jefferson subscribed to the economy of slavery and managed to rationalize his every decision in that regard. He was vital to the creation of a country of high ideals, but he couldn't live up to that ideal personally. It's wonderful that he had the intelligence and insight to propose that "all men are created equal," but he was a hypocrit of mammoth proportions. As the article suggests, Washington deserves the place of moral cornerstone of the founders, not Jefferson.
Posted by Hal McCune on September 29,2012 | 08:54 PM
I have read the complete article pertaining to Thomas Jefferson, and I remain absolute in my opinion that you can't paint an eighteenth century man, by using a twenty-first century brush. Therefore, I steadfastly refuse to judge him.
Posted by Barry Fleckmann on September 29,2012 | 12:41 PM
This evidence is not new, but compiled beautifully in this article. Kudos to the author. What I find more shocking than evidence that Jefferson was an elitist and suffered from feet of clay are the absolving comments by readership. The facts are as follows. He contributed a well crafted mission statement for this country. He had his successes and failures during his presidency. He owned slaves using them as a means to enrich his life and, as far as I know, never apologized for it. Is it really more complicated than that?
Posted by Mary Spork on September 29,2012 | 12:06 PM
I have just read the Thomas Jefferson article and reading your question about whether or not it has changed my opinion about Jefferson leads me to ask you a return question, Are You Nuts? Regardless of anything else about him, he owned slaves and never freed more than 5, all of whom were relatives in the strictest sense. This was slavey where children were kidnapped from their families, used as sex slaves, male and female and sold to work for lazy white people making them richer without sharing any of it with the workers. A state of affairs to which many people in this country are tying their best to return. No American with African heritage (or European heritage who is educated about this country's actual history) has any doubts about what slavery meant no matter who held the slaves, including Thomas Jefferson. Although George Washington freed his slaves, Martha kept hers and she owned more than 300 human beings who were sex slaves and anything else white overseers wanted them to be, lied about and killed or sold down the river if they refused. So once again I ask, Are You Nuts? Exactly what view of his legacy were you asking about? The lie perpetrated by white 'historians' or the real legacy which everyone who isn' fresh off the boat already knows?
Posted by F. C. Nowlin on September 29,2012 | 11:48 AM
Concerning whether this article changes my view of Thomas Jefferson's legacy, I must say, no, it does not. If one were to consider all the unsavory attributes and less than desirable traits of many of our historical figures and world leaders, we would probably have no one to respect and admire when studying history. Jefferson's contributions to our country's early progress, both in statemanship and inventions, will and should, last for eternity.
Posted by Gerald Yokely on September 29,2012 | 11:12 AM
It has changed my admiration and respect for Thomas Jefferson. He may have been one of the greatest founders of the Declaration of Independence and a great architect/ farmer, but he was also a hypocrite. He wrote "All men are created equal" but refused emancipation of his slaves unlike Washington who did free his slaves. Thomas Jefferson was one of the first persons who used the backs of others to enrich his coffers. His ledger book proved all he was interested in was the "bottom line". If i;s meant lashing children and men so be it. Shame on you.
Posted by George Marcotte on September 29,2012 | 10:04 AM
WEB DuBois may be dismissed because he leaned left. But Weincek here documents DuBois' thesis that the written history of slavery in America is merely a lie agreed upon.
Posted by George Harris on September 29,2012 | 09:50 AM
Thank you for providing us with such an interesting piece. I am not surprised. I am just finishing Hamilton's biography and have read the biographies of Franklin and Adams. It would appear that though these men were brilliant and were able to miraculously fashion a process that continues to serve us well after more than two hundred years -- none of them was perfect. Jefferson's bizarre fascination with the radicals of the French Revolution clearly make his cold and business-like view of slavery quite understandable. My concern is centered in two issues. Why are we not taught any of these facts in school? Why are some of our judges so obsessed with what they label as a strict interpretation of the constitution. Madison was a good friend of Jefferson's and a good Virginian and was also not beyond reproach. We need to preserve the ideals that these men espoused while at the same time avoiding a tendency to worship the words they wrote as God given.
Posted by Howard Dubner on September 29,2012 | 09:31 AM
One commenter wrote that Jefferson could not "afford" to free his slaves. However, Thaddeus Kosciuszko died and left Jefferson $20,000 in his will in order that Jefferson might free his slaves. It would have cost Jefferson half of the money to set his freed slaves up in their own small farms or businesses. Jefferson refused the money and did not free his slaves. That, along with his allowing the slaves to be abused, indicates that Jefferson allowed profit and his own material comfort to outweigh any moral imperatives he might have felt. So I do not think that I can say that Jefferson could not afford to free his slaves, however much I wish to preserve the more positive version of Jefferson I have carried in my mind heretofore. It is interesting that, just as the article pointed out, I too have had a much more positive view of Jefferson than of Washington.
Posted by Sarah Turner on September 28,2012 | 02:57 AM
I was fooled. I now consider him a disgusting man. Unfortunately, some of our current politicians behave in a similar manner, though the "currency" they use is no longer humans in bondage.
Posted by Matt on September 28,2012 | 08:43 PM
It is a surprise, indeed, to read in the usually thorough and informative Smithsonian that the "unmasking" of Thomas Jefferson did not include the decades-long relationship and many offspring he fathered by his slave mistress, Sally Hemmings [Hemings]. Perhaps that miserable expose' will be another article, albeit wretched reminder of endless male power and abuse regardless of circumstance and decency. Obviously, there is no way to remove him from Rushmore. Rita Whitmer
Posted by Rita Whitmer on September 28,2012 | 07:41 PM
I think that we sometimes lose sight of the fact our founding fathers were human. Jefferson accomplished many wonderful things and was undoubtedly, a brilliant man. I'm quit sure he believed what he wrote in the Declaration of Independance, but he was a man of his time and that time included slavery to accomplish what had to be done. I feel that this article made me see him in a more human light. He has long been my favorite person in history.
Posted by Elaine Stubbs on September 28,2012 | 06:48 PM
First and foremost, there is no such condition as a benevolent slaveholder. This excerpt from the book served to reinforce this perception. However, he was a product of this period of our history and resided in the slaveholding state of Virginia. He should be accorded his due as being a moving force in the pursuit of America as a free nation. In the end, he should have freed his slaves, absolutely. I guess every human is born with varying degrees of integrity and willpower. He exemplifies many people performing on the public stage and acting as one of our benevolent betters. Their motto is, "Do as I say not as I do."
Posted by donald bruch on September 28,2012 | 05:24 PM
I was greatly surprised at the depth of greed and self-serving attitude of Jefferson. He spoke with "forked tongue". On the one hand wanting to do away with slavery, on the other keeping them, allowing the beatings, using them as collateral, and not allowing their freedom when his friend bequeth him money in a will to free them and help the slaves make new lives.His values were obviously selfish. Jefferson was dispicable, a liar and in truth an ignorant man. Well done article, and hope the new history books reflect his dark moral character.
Posted by antoinette atanasoff on September 28,2012 | 03:50 PM
Come on, people. Any person living today who buys something cheap at Wal-Mart is profiting off human beings being exploited as slave labour. They may be in China, out of sight, but they are no less human. Anyone driving an internal combustion vehicle is melting the polar ice packs and - if they're under about age 50 -- will surely face the environmental retribution. Jefferson was a cog in a system. In order to persuade the southern states to support the Revolution, he and other men of his class had to turn a blind eye to the slaveholders. It's a deal with the devil that they knew was going to haunt the US for generations, a legacy of ugliness that we're still grappling with. BUT: The legacy of ideas Jefferson left is -- as it is for more of us -- better and higher than what he was able to actually attain. So, no, no change. I'm sorry that the rich white men who founded this country didn't have the courage to do more about initiating genuine equality, but given the social structure of the time I'm surprised they were able to accomplish as much as they did. One thing especially rings true right now: "I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and to bid defiance to the laws of their country." - Thomas Jefferson, letter to George Logan. November 12, 1816
Posted by Jan Lind on September 28,2012 | 02:28 PM
I have been an admirer of Jefferson my entire adult life and nothing in this article changed my mind. He was a very complex man, which is hard for many people to understand. Some folks seem to have a need to turn everyone else into a one-dimensional cartoon character so it is easier for them to understand him. Jefferson once equated slavery with holding a wolf by the ear, you can't hold on forever and you can't let go either. America had slavery, which is an incomprehensible cruelty. Jefferson seemed to try and deal with his slaves as individuals, trusted them, felt betrayed when they wronged him and gave them goals to reach which showed he did not think of them as animals. Our forefathers were wise enough to realize that we weren't going to get rid of slavery without bloodletting. It was inevitable. The fact that he was inconsistent and contradictory just gives the rest of us mere mortals hope.
Posted by Joan Peters on September 28,2012 | 10:13 AM
Thomas Jefferson double standard might be the reason why there are a few examples in politics when persons says something because of the knowledge it is what we want to hear, yet in their private lives, in the bottom of their heart they do not endorse what they say. Perhaps that legacy has us in the current state of affairs we live in our country.
Posted by Salvador on September 28,2012 | 06:51 AM
Let's not lecture about how things were "different" 200 yrs ago. What's right is right. What's wrong is wrong. Sure we're still stamping out slavery and human trafficking today, But that does not make the "OK" for now. TJ has toppled off his pedestal for me and seems like a self-serving, capitalistic swine!Sure he had a "brilliant mind"; but so did Adolf Hitler and many mass murderers (Bundy, Dahmer, Atilla, Bin Laden, etc. Let's not praise excrement, "founding father" or not. Just another money grubbing SOB (Son of Benevolence?)!
Posted by Paul Guevara on September 27,2012 | 11:35 PM
This article TOTALLY changes my "view of the legacy of Thomas Jefferson". Seems like he was another two-faced, double-talking politician. His image does not belong on the currency of the United States. Shame on the "historians" who covered up his cruel, money-motivated slave operations. Without the blood, sweat and tears of his "owned" slaves, he probably would have been a nobody.
Posted by Paul Guevara on September 27,2012 | 11:13 PM
Yes, the revelations of Jeferson's home life at Monticello described in Henry Wiencek's fine, well-researched article have certainly changed my view of Jefferson's lagacy. Previously, I had been aware that Jefferson owned slaves as workers on his plantation, like the other Southern "Fathers of our Country," including George Washington. This article is the first I had every seen which describes that he had actually denounced slavery in an original draft of the Declaration of Independence. This would have seemed to be an indication that he was then an early abolitionist. The article then describes his hypocrisy in maintaining his own enslaved work force rather than emancipating them, as did George Washington at Mount Vernon. In addition, despite his earlier feelings reflected in those quotations from that first draft, he kept those slaves, young and old, occupied at such tediously strenuous tasks as raising tobacco and making nails. Unfortunately, Jefferson was obviously not the same man as described to me by my high school American History teacher. The contrast of that image with the apparent reality is disappointing, if not tragic.
Posted by Edward P. McMorrow on September 27,2012 | 10:35 PM
Prior posts have in numerous ways expressed my low opinion of Jefferson and his overblown reputation. However, I came to my opinion after previously reading about Jefferson's tenure as Secretary of State in Washington's administration in which, through various bits of chicanery, Jefferson sought to undercut Washington. In the subsequent years leading up to his election as president in 1800, Jefferson sought political gain while attempting to maintain a pristine reputation by using surrogates for his dirty tricks. In many ways, he was no different in his efforts at self-aggrandizement than a host of other politicians who followed him. So to answer your question: No, the revelations about Jefferson's treatment of his slaves does not change my view of his legacy – it only reinforces my low opinion of him.
Posted by Martin on September 27,2012 | 07:59 PM
The idol has feet of clay. His need for money to sustain the lifestyle he wanted at Monticello overrode the ideals of a younger man. Yes, my view of Jefferson has been changed.
Posted by Celeste Stonecipher on September 27,2012 | 07:35 PM
NO, his ideals do NOT outweigh how he lived. Owning slaves, when he believed differently (so he said) because he wanted to make money...OMG, isn't that what we are blaming for so many of our problems today in this country??? He had no morals, I am ashamed of what this country was founded on. The backs and deaths of native americans and blacks and whoever else the white man could bend to their will. We have a lot to atone for.
Posted by Kathy Spitler on September 27,2012 | 06:30 PM
As a child, Thomas Jefferson was my favorite founding father because we had the same birth day, April 13. When I began studying history and learned that he was a slave owner, I lost respect for him. I have always thought that the phrase should have been "all people are created equal" not all men, which excludes an entire gender.
Posted by Maye Lamb on September 27,2012 | 06:28 PM
As a child, Thomas Jefferson was my favorite founding father because we had the same birth day, April 13. When I began studying history and learned that he was a slave owner, I lost respect for him. I have always thought that the phrase should have been "all people are created equal" not all men, which excludes an entire gender.
Posted by Maye Lamb on September 27,2012 | 06:28 PM
Mr. Weincek's article is an almost comical conflation of vivid descriptions of slavery's horrid character with poorly crafted historical fact and supposition. Unhappily, the result denigrates one of the country's greatest statesman. Historians seem to move through cycles, through fades, and we're in one now that seems hell bent on diminishing Mr. Jefferson's legacy. Unhappily, Mr. Weincek is little more more than part of that fade. Dennis Obermayer
Posted by Dennis Obermayer on September 27,2012 | 05:49 PM
Your article on Thomas Jefferson says that George Washington freed his slaves upon Washington's death. Actually, Washington left the slaves to his wife Martha with instructions in his will they were to be freed upon her death. Martha, fearful the Washington slaves would kill her to obtain early liberation, then freed them herself. George Washington usually gets credit for freeing them upon his death alone.
Posted by Lloyd Carter on September 27,2012 | 11:00 AM
Just read your "disclaimer" that follows the space reserved for readers' comments, and no doubt you will find my recently submitted comments about the Jeffferson article and current changes in your magazine to be offensive. You share a touch of my condition.
Posted by Gerald Morris on September 26,2012 | 02:15 AM
You don't seem to take into account the times in which Jefferson lived. Younger people, now apparently running much of the media, don't even remember what racial attitudes were before the 1960s. And our predominantly liberal college professors, many of them former flower children, haven't done much to explain that matter. Were you given the same situation in which Jefferson found himself, I suspect your behavior might have been the same--or worse. The big difference between him and you folks is that he was brilliant--and you show no signs of sharing that quality. Instead, you're just making a buck by filling up a once-superb publication with scurrilous material, some fact and some merely supposition. Oh, and by the way, it appears those who are currently intent on ruining a wonderful magazine are SUCCEEDING! I won't be renewing my subscription.
Posted by Jerry Morris on September 26,2012 | 02:11 AM
Mr. Jefferson has fallen from grace in my book! I always viewed his ownership of slaves with respect to the times in which he lived. I now know differently. It seems his greed overtook his sense of morality. Also, Mr. Washington has not been given as much respect(in reference to slavery)as he seems to deserve.
Posted by Sue Miller on September 26,2012 | 11:08 PM
Bj4072. You've got to be kidding! Living during Jefferson's time was different; therefore, we shouldn't judge him by today's moral standards. Using this logice would lead one to rationalize any action that was mainstream at the time, e.g. Denying women's suffrage, persecuting witches in Salem, denying homosexuals the rights enjoyed by heterosexuals. No, morality doesn't change with the passing of time. If it's wrong now, it was wrong then and will be wrong in the future!
Posted by William Brown on September 26,2012 | 09:50 PM
I now realize that my visits to Montecello and the Jefferson Memorial were based on false understandings of the realities of Jefferson's life, his personal failures, and onerous hypocracies. What a shame, and bitter dissapointment.
Posted by David Burr on September 26,2012 | 08:51 PM
Thank you Smithsonian and Mr. Wiencek for publishing this valuable article. Thank God Jefferson is on the wrong side of history. As brilliant as he was, at his core - there is "slave rot" - a good versus evil choice. TJ succumb to the siren's logic of his life (culture, family, world) as being dominant over others whose lives meant control of production, little else. The Merchant Ivory movie on TJ left me with the creeps. Imagine, eating in a room with slave servants who watched and judged you because you owned them and they, being humans, had opinions too. Only the dead can't think. To stand this negative imposition of opinion, TJ built it out of his life - slave/servant tunnels and all. There were many founding fathers who were forced into the 3/5th compromise to save the Union. But, they did not own slaves, freed their slaves, and openly opposed slavery. And, it took a civil war with 600,000 dead to stop the economics of slavery, its moral abyss - ALL their implications. One is reminded power of personal choice. TJ traded his vision of Monticello for the black red stain enveloping his legacy. People will cringe at honoring his memory if they know how morally corrupt and weak he was, even among his peers. It is ironic that it took the powerful memory of this man to give a carefully crafted view of what owning slaves had to mean to everyone involved. Even now (Obama's speech at the UN, human trafficking.) - we are faced with pocket book choices. All that cheap shrimp in our stores - the lives of the people who make this product and price available to us are not very different than TJ's nail boys. "Pass the shrimp, please?" "I think not, crackers and vegetables for me , thank you."
Posted by Julie McCabe on September 26,2012 | 02:23 PM
I wonder how many self-righteous individuals who are so outraged over Jefferson have a darkside too. I agree with e-mail below, Jefferson is a man of his times. It is easy to apply our standards and morals to another time and point with outrage. It was a good article, made for interesting reading, but keep it in context! Case in point Smithsonian, the Enloa Gay should that really be on display!!! Isn't it terrible what we did not that long ago? I can tell you, along with a good many others of my generation, my father was on his way from Europe to the invasion of Japan! With the estimated casualties of that invasion how many of us reading your magazine would not even be here?
Posted by James F. Armstrong on September 26,2012 | 12:12 PM
On Page 46 of the OCt issue ( we get them early at work) you ask in the corner of the page "Do these revelations about Jefferson change your view of his legacy?" The answer is yes...sadly. THe fact that someone back in the 1950's fudged the truth re: "our Master" is really bad. We've been hood-winked into believeing his outer image...the one the article says he tried to project. A better image than the man was. THe truth is re: his farm and the day, etc. given all of that, it was very organized and was a farming machine...to leave out the fact that young children had to be whipped to work in bad circumstances is more than upsetting. THe man was obviously a genius and had very good qualities, but greed, control, and disregard for humanity, excluding his, taints the picture.
Posted by Marilyn on September 26,2012 | 12:03 PM
You asked for whether revelations about Jefferson and his slaves changed my view.....While I deplore slavery, the 18th and 19th centuries were a different time. I remember John F. Kennedy saying, while entertaining Nobel laureates, that "there is more knowledge in this room today except when Thomas Jefferson dined alone." I totally agree....his contributions to America far outweigh his owning slaves.
Posted by Karolyn Holdren on September 26,2012 | 11:25 AM
The article convinced me that once you were a slave owner, once you had "bought into" the system, certain practices were enforced upon you by the nature of what you were doing. That is, you could be a more or less brutal slave owner, but you had to enforce discipline in some way or your investment in the slaves themselves was wasted. So Jefferson had to discipline the little boys who worked in his nail factory, the profits from which fed his family, and rather than whipping them himself, he hired overseers to do the actual punishment for "truancy." The instinct for enslaving other people has not been eradicated from the human race, of course, as we can see from reading the news. The "energy" (Jefferson's word) of the whippings given slaves for various infractions might vary, but the underlying condition of the slaves was the fundamental injustice, which this country keeps working toward the abolition of: All men are created equal or they are not. Jefferson behaved as though his slaves had not been created his equal, despite his ideal for the new nation he helped create. His intellectual grasp of how to maximize the value of the "stock" he owned made him, for a time, a successful capitalist, but it may have worn at his soul. Apparently he could not afford, at the end of his life, to free many of his slaves, and those he freed were probably his own children.
Posted by Carol Cleveland on September 26,2012 | 10:19 AM
First, I could get no browser to get me to the site you list in your Oct. 2012 issue, "smithsonian.com/tj". I arrived here in a roundabout way, after several searches. ... Glad you asked, though. ... My opinion of Thomas Jefferson has almost, but not quite, made a 180 degree turn. Yes, we shouldn't judge yesteryear's actions by today's standards. In the case of TJ, however, it is the CONTRAST of what I was brought up to believe about him and the new evidence in this article that devastates my opinion. ... Now I see an acquisitive, house-proud, arrogant, self-satisfied user of people, all people, not just his slaves. That may have been the norm among rich and privileged Virginians in TJ's day (maybe still is!) but, now, knowing him to have been that kind of man, I've removed him from my mental pedestal. He is rescued from being totally smashed on the floor of my regard by his brilliance, his deliciously curious mind, and the beauty of the University of Virginia campus. ... "Mr. Jefferson" is no longer on my personal list of historical figures I'd like to have lunch with. That's probably because I realize that, since there would be nothing in it for him, he wouldn't even bother to RSVP.
Posted by Rita Stevens on September 26,2012 | 09:58 AM
As a student of black (African-American) history nothing in Mr. Weincek's article is surprising. It is stated that Jefferson wanted "to distance himself from the violence his system required." The system of slavery required violence, not just Jefferson's participation in the system. Neither is it surprising that, if as Mr. Weincek alleges, documents relating to Jefferson were edited by his admiring historians after his death to present his life in a more favorable light. I am anxious to read the entire book to see what other "recently unearthed or long suppressed evidence" Mr. Weincek presents. Do these revelations about Jefferson change my view of his legacy? No. Definitely not. Because it's a given that any person in Jefferson's position (slave owner)was trapped in "the system" as much as their slaves were trapped in the system. For details of the horrible violence the system required to come to light is no news. I've known since day one that it was there.
Posted by Joy Barnes on September 25,2012 | 11:54 PM
My October magazine having landed in my mailbox yesterday, I read the Jefferson story today. Twenty-five years ago I took an American history college class. The instructor was very enamored with TJ and, thus, I was, too. Then came the Sally Hemmings descendants, trying to attend Jefferson family reunions and the resulting whitewashing (no pun intended) of any culpability of TJ's. Sorry, but TJ lost his pedestal. Social issues were no less complex in TJ's time than now. It's regrettable that TJ had feet of clay and sold out to profit at the expense of enslaved people. He is not the first to do so and certainly not the last. While I do not applaud his reported actions, I commend Smithsonian for sharing this added insight into Jefferson's character. Enlightenment is not harmful.
Posted by Donna Wollam on September 25,2012 | 09:39 PM
I left a comment about 24 hours ago. Was it not approved, or is this not monitored? Please let me know, so I'll know whether to use the website or not. Thank you, Steve Smith
Posted by Steve Smith on September 25,2012 | 09:21 PM
I had wondered, after visiting Mt Vernon and Monticello, how Washington and Jefferson could have such reputations as benign masters, when their operations were so large and complex and required so many slaves to do the work. I could not imagine such a large number of enslaved people, all living peacefully in crude quarters next to the grand houses and happily delivering the luxuries enjoyed by the masters. Perhaps it was so at Mt Vernon, but I now realize that there is clear, overwhelming evidence that it was not so at Monticello, and that the evidence has been suppressed until now. We are fortunate that that evidence was not destroyed, and that future generations will not be fed the myth of the "happy Jefferson slaves".
Posted by Harry Childers on September 25,2012 | 06:10 PM
Like many of our "heros", TJ is bigger in death than he was in life. He was a man, who realized that life is a "zero sum game". He invested and trafficked in human flesh, all for his 4% per annum profit. Meanwhile, his human property paid the price. For all of his worthy human traits, TJ must be remembered also as a self righteous man, who like all of us had feet of clay.
Posted by William Brown on September 25,2012 | 02:10 PM
I wasn't surprised about Jefferson, after reading "American Emperor,"and"1812: The Navy's War". Jefferson had lots of faults, but he was a human being.
Posted by R Newman on September 25,2012 | 12:26 PM
The article about Jefferson is a must-read, as it reveals important truths about a US Founding Father. These truths reveal in turn how deeply ingrained in our nation's culture is the ideal of living in comfort and luxury at the expense of the deprived -- an ideal very much alive today. The composer Lou Harrison (1917-2003) wrote: "There has never been a 'big, First Class' civilization that was not founded on slavery. Question: Do we need 'big, First Class' civilizations??"* Harrison's question is well-taken. For years we have held Monticello to be a symbol of the ideals of enlightenment and revolution. Now we understand it better as an empty shell, built as it was on the labor of slaves treated with such cruelty. Let us strive to embrace an ideal of civilization whose greatness is founded on the rejection of cruelty and enslavement in all their forms, and on the equal status of all human beings. ---- *Lou Harrison, _Music Primer: Various Items About Music to 1970_ (New York: C. F. Peters, 1971), p. 44.
Posted by Timothy Tikker on September 25,2012 | 12:15 PM
Facing the reality of either "living the good life based on being a slave owner" or following the instincts of his extremely rational mind, which told him that "all men are created equal" and which would have significantly lessened this "good life," he chose the former. No judgment should be employed in this matter. Jefferson's choice is a fact of history. What should be judged harshly is the one-sided, positive story of Jefferson that is told in the teaching of American history.
Posted by Leonard Scott on September 25,2012 | 11:39 AM
The fallacy was to consider Jefferson above the common man. It's our self congratulatory history that elevates heroes above the mundane pursuit of profit. Even today the captains of industries are loathed to acknowledge any revelatory science that might threaten profits. Our system celebrates the fruits of profit as a glorious production, as long as we don't look behind the curtains.
Posted by Henry Wong on September 25,2012 | 10:54 AM
"all the "new" history seems to be negative to our founding fathers and the history of our great country ..." sounds like you might be among those that was impressed by the rosey picture books like "The Way of an Eagle" painted of our founders. jefferson and others certainly created the greatest country ever in history; but they were not egalitarians who meant for all people regardless of race or wealth to be equal partners in the new american system; and the reforms that brought about a dirt poor black person's vote counting as much as donald trump's is something they would be agast by...
Posted by ejs on September 25,2012 | 10:53 AM
I very much enjoyed "The Master of Monticello". I continue to be an admirer of Thomas Jefferson in light of his work toward our republic, and of his accomplishments. The article revealed that Jefferson was, like all human beings, a flawed man whose work for this country was highlighted over his moral idiosyncrasies. Like most of our Founding Father's, Jefferson was elevated to a status where any personal flaws (his attitude toward slavery namely) were omitted. I believe we live in a society now where the truth can be told, and the individual judged on all aspects of their deeds and being. We can celebrate Jefferson as the writer of our Declaration of Independence and father of our nation, and look callously on his treatment of human beings as a business enterprise. This is the essence of historical analysis; to record, investigate, and bring truth to the one, many, or events that have transpired. I wish to applaud Mr. Wiencek for drawing a comparison between George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Had Thomas Jefferson had done what Washington did, had he made that most important step of treating human beings equally and doing what was morally just as he himself knew, there would have been no need to omit the ugly truth as many historians have done.
Posted by Paul on September 25,2012 | 10:43 AM
The author leaves a lot unsaid with regard to Jefferson's indebtedness--swelled in great degree by the paper money fiasco of the Revolution--during his entire life, but especially toward the end. He also leaves unsaid how Jefferson actually dealt with Kosciuszko' legacy. One must realize that free 10 year old white boys worked hard in 1790 and would have been whipped for truancy. The real truth can be hard to pin down, but this article has something of a subjective attitude.
Posted by Will Ferrell on September 25,2012 | 10:18 AM
As with people today, as a young man, Jefferson was an idealist but as he grew older he became more of a pragmatist. As a young firebrand he could put his talents to writing the declaration of independence, but when faced with the necessities of life, he adjusted his opinions, perhaps expecting the younger men to take up his fight for human rights. In other words, not a perfect man, but one who made a powerful difference at a time ripe for his youthful idealism.
Posted by R. Schofield on September 25,2012 | 09:41 AM
Great article. I suspected routine cover ups by earlier generations of historians as to the conduct of slave owners in general and the founding fathers in particular. I did my own research on TJ and I was struck at once as to his calculating two faced nature. The enlightened populist in Paris and Washington is the manipulating phantom exploiter and torturer in Virginia. In time Mr. Jefferson will become known as Mr. "four percent".
Posted by Jeff on September 24,2012 | 02:06 AM
I read the complete article unsurprised. I once admired Jefferson tremendously, but after reading the truth of history I came to realize he did not walk his talk. Does that make him human, while we see his hypocricy? Thank you SMITHSONIAN for continuing to raise the topics that few other American publications will. The article did invite me to reconsider my opinion of Washington who, I believe, supported some OHIO act disallowing settling there, while he personally proceeded to purchase property there. LB
Posted by Linda Bergeron on September 24,2012 | 10:49 PM
Just the fact that he kept slaves negates the idea that all men are created equal...money money money- drove Jefferson's day as it does ours
Posted by War on September 24,2012 | 10:27 PM
I have not been a fan of Thomas Jefferson since I discovered that upon his death, his slaves were not to be freed, but sold. Washington freed his, and I still think of him as our greatest President, because, being first, he had to do everything right -- and he did. Jefferson, on the other hand, comes down to us as a person who disdained slavery, but would do nothing to eradicate it. In addition, he gave us the Embargo Act, and the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of nullification fame. Some say we can't walk in the shoes of historical figures. We don't have to walk in them, but it IS possible, nay, it is necessary to evaluate their character in light of both then AND now. Wiencek does this admirably. And another great, James Thomas Flexner is worth reading for the picture he presents of Jefferson in his biography of Washington. The truth was bound to come out. Edwin Betts did no favors to Jefferson, nor to historians, nor to the American people when he suppressed the truths he had discovered in Jefferson's Farm Book, but now the evidence is clear; to deny reality is not longer ethically possible. But, Jefferson is thought of as a great Founding Father; he is rightfully honored for the Declaration and it remains his greatest work, and that should never be taken from him. But truth will out. Perhaps what another great man said may have some bearing on this: "The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is." ~ Winston Churchill Yes, Jefferson allowed his slaves to be whipped occasionally, and he sold them down the river. And he slept with slave women and fathered children by them who remained slaves. Sometimes is is hard to bear, but truth is truth, and "...in the end, there it is."
Posted by Steve Smith on September 24,2012 | 08:54 PM
We all do what we do not want to do and don't do what we want to do. It is a part of our humanity. A leader, however, is expected to be accountable. A person of character. Not so we can judge them but so we can aspire to the same. We are guilty of making heroes out of everyone. Including Jefferson. While I respect the office he held, I do not feel the same about the man's character and values. In terms of all men being created equal, it is quite obvious that women then and now do not attain to the equality he ascribed to.
Posted by Brenda Wright on September 24,2012 | 08:49 PM
They should tear down the jefferson memorial, his word there ring hollow. he loved his pocket more,
Posted by John Harris on September 24,2012 | 07:00 PM
Your article "The Dark Side of Thomas Jefferson" completely changed my view ot that man. One of his comments about slavery ("excrable commerce...this assemblage of horrors"} shows his complete hiprocracy, when compared with his personal dealings with slavery. I only wish that I could have lived at the time he did, so that I could have perhaps provoked a duel with that monster of a man, by telling him to his face what a hipocrit and sorry excuse for a human being he really was. I cannot say enough about what an "excrable" person he was.
Posted by DOUGLAS JACKSON on September 24,2012 | 04:52 PM
If this author and other authors on the subject were transported back 200 years, without knowledge of the future, and lived in those times, their outlook, thoughts, and writings might be a mite different . .. In other words, it's easy to see, in this age, how wrong it was then, but not so, living in that time . ..
Posted by bj4072 on September 24,2012 | 04:44 PM
Before retirung, I taught U.S. History for 37 years and never did I lionize Jefferson. It is unfortunate that his personal personna casts such a shodow on his brilliance in other areas. In the end one must separate an individual 's public life from their private world, and evaluations must be made in the context of the time in which that life was lived. Perhaps he was merely a brilliant man with failings and should be judged in thst context.
Posted by Arlene Grob on September 24,2012 | 04:23 PM
I am a subscriber and read the article last night. I was aware that Jefferson was a slave holder and did not free his slaves on his death and science has shown he, or a close relative, had children. with Sally Hennings. But the details in the article that shows him has a cruel, cold-blooded slave owner, using children of slaves to increase the profits of his properties; whipping slaves, including young boys, is appalling. I respect the part of the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence and sent Lewis and Clark to explore the West, but, knowing the details of his personal life, I will never think of Jefferson the same again.
Posted by Joan Smith-Lawrence on September 24,2012 | 10:08 AM
AFTER THE SALLY HEMMINGS STORY CAME OUT, I TOOK MOST OF WHAT I HEARD ABOUT TJ WITH A GRAIN OF SALT. I ALWAYS WONDERED ABOUT THE "ALL MEN CREATED EQUAL" & HOW IT WORKED WITH HIS HOLDING SLAVES. I DECIDED HE WAS PROBABLY ONE OF THOSE THAT DIDN'T SEE HIS SLAVES AS QUITE BEING HUMAN. GREED BEING INTRODUCED AS A FACTOR WAS DISAPPOINTING.
Posted by LINDA MAY on September 24,2012 | 06:07 AM
Tell the History and don't critic people that walked in a time that you cant imagine...
Posted by HAIRSTON on September 23,2012 | 10:34 PM
Having toured many presidential homes open to the public, I was eager to visit Monticello a few years ago. I walked away from it with a strong dislike for Jefferson. His personality was strongly felt, one of self involvement and that everyone, including his own family, existed to bring comfort to his life. The very design and furnishing of that house left no lasting impression of any inhabitant other than Jefferson, and I felt the very air oppressively malignant. I am glad to see scholars finally uncovering the truth about this self serving man who could string together soul stirring words, while lacking one himself.
Posted by Karen Stout on September 23,2012 | 08:53 PM
Yeah, Sarah P., Founding Fathers were against slavery, youbetcha.
Posted by Amy on September 23,2012 | 07:20 PM
My perception of TJ has not changed due to this article as it is just another hit designed to say if founders had warts then the whole system must have warts. TJ was human just like the rest of us and had a weakness for good living. He tried several times to eliminate slavery and was defeated each time. I suppose he finally tried to accomondate himself to that which he could not change. I am not surprised by his note taking of nail production or of the increase in value of slave holdings as he was a serious note taker of all things. I am also not surprised by past historians eliminating negative items or current historians hilighting them. The fact that the surgery on the boy hit by a hammer saved his life may have been due to his value as a human or as a slave. You decide.
Posted by bill jackson on September 23,2012 | 05:03 PM
Curious that the author left out Jefferson's shameful relations with the slave women that he owned. I will never understand why his multi-racial descendants want to take part in the family reunions....I would be embarrassed to have such a poor excuse for a man as a relation!
Posted by Cissy Boyle on September 23,2012 | 04:48 PM
(please do not use my name or address) The author presumes that we should be forgiven for questioning Jefferson by today's standards. I disagree for the same reason that we don't administer justice posthumously. Jefferson's enterprise was extraordinary in his circumstances, which are unimaginable to anyone living today. Yet today in spite of our enlightenment we are still supporting versions of foreign slavery which make possible our high-tech lifestyle and leisure. Smithsonian should know better than to pander for readership in this way. I suggest that you consult with your curatorial staff for future stories.
Posted by William R. Seabrook on September 23,2012 | 03:27 PM
For years I have considered Jefferson a hypocrite. Your article further convinced me that he was that and worse.
Posted by Jean von Schilling on September 23,2012 | 02:27 PM
Congratulations for a politically correct article in 2012. After reading your misleading title, I read the first 11 paragraphs; turned off my flashlight because I failed to find the dark side of Thomas Jefferson. Citing the use of a dumbwaiter? OMG It's time to flush the intelectual toilet in Washington, D.C..
Posted by Gary M. Pouch on September 23,2012 | 01:34 PM
This revisionist history that seems to be so prevalent these days is getting wearisome.....our young people don't seem to be getting as much history of our great country and its early heroes as we of the older generation did...all the "new" history seems to be negative to our founding fathers and the history of our great country including your recent stories on WWII and the "Enola Gay".....
Posted by Ray Feinberg on September 23,2012 | 01:16 PM
Nice fictional story; as no one will ever really know what Jefferson actually did every day since none of us were physically there. Just one story going around my neighborhood changes completely within one week. Can you imagine what hundreds of years does to the actual truth?
Posted by Pamella on September 23,2012 | 08:05 AM
first- there's something wrong with the dating of this report: Oct. 2012- we're not that far yet- but I feel this article only addresses the tip of an hideous iceberg- slavery was abolished not because of humanitarian reasons but because it was no longer financially lucrative- same with Apartheid in South Africa- all of the founding fathers of the US were wealthy (most Freemasons/lawyers)and they drew the Consitution to protect their own financial interests- anyone thinking differently has not sourced true history and the concept "We the People" applied only to them and not to the common man- the so-called un-questionable benevolence of the founders of the US is yet another fallacy/hoax and just goes to show us how well political propaganda has always worked- sad but true
Posted by LSM on September 22,2012 | 09:34 AM
Having been aware for some time of Jefferson's "dual personality" on the issue of slavery, it would be difficult to say that I was.actually surprised by the revelations in the October issue of "Smithsonian." What did surprise me, however, was that Jefferson was so singularly lacking in those humane attributes with which so many of his latter-day apologists have sought to clothe him in the late 20th Century. For him, his slaves appear to have been a matter of commercial gain and little else. If he ever gave any thought to the humanity of his slaves, he quickly banished that thought in favor of the profit he might gain from owning them. It's enough to make one weep to consider that here was the primary author of "all men are created equal, endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights (including) life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
Posted by Karl Reynolds on September 21,2012 | 09:52 PM
Washington may have become amenable to the idea of free blacks based on his experiences with them in battle during the Revolution. I wonder if Jefferson ever read La Rochefoucauld, who lived a century before him. He may have once read and been stung by this aphorism: "Philosophy triumphs over past and future evils, but present evils triumph over it."
Posted by The Sanity Inspector on September 21,2012 | 08:07 PM