Chapter XIX: Clouds Deepening (2)

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

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

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

But in taking up the "Notes," we must understand the relation of Jefferson's way of thinking to his way of working. In his thinking, the slave system was evidently a violation of the whole body of good principles, for he calls it an "_evil_";--a violation of morality, for he calls it an "_enormity_";--a violation of justice, for he calls it a "_wrong_";--a violation of republican pretensions, for he calls it a "_hideous blot_";--a violation of the healthy action of our institutions, for he calls it a "_disease_";--a violation of our whole public happiness, for he calls it a "_curse_." But his way of working was more calm and cool,--often displeasing those whose plans of action are formed far from any direct entanglement in the slave system.

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

But whether men have cavilled at him for a dreamer or laughed at him for a tinker, they have been mainly foolish, for they have cavilled and laughed at the very combination which made him powerful. In no other American have been so happily blended highest skill in theory and highest strength in practice.

The remarks, in the "Notes on Virginia," on the colored race are clear and fair. He studied carefully and stated fully all that could be learned in his time. On the whole, his examination greatly encourages those who hope good things for that race. But one distinction must be made. As to those profound views of the character and destiny of the race which come only by observation of a long historic development, in a wide range of climate, in great variety of social position, Jefferson could, as he confesses, know almost nothing,--for the same reason that the keenest observer of William the Conqueror's Norman robbers and Saxon swineherds would have failed to foretell the great dominant race which has come from them by free growth and good culture. But, on the other hand, of all that comes by observation of the daily life of the black race, as it then was, he knew almost everything.

He declares that the black race is inferior to the white in mind, but not in heart. The poems of black Phillis Wheatley seem to him to prove not much; but the letters of black Ignatius Sancho he praises for depth of feeling, happy turn of thought, and ease of style, though he finds no depth of reasoning. He does not praise the mental capacity of the race, but, at last, as if conscious, that, if developed under a free system, it might be far better, he quotes the Homeric lines,--

"Jove fixed it certain that whatever day
Makes man a slave takes half his worth away."

And shortly after, he declares it "a _suspicion_ only that the blacks are inferior in the endowments of body or mind,"--that "in memory they are equal to the whites,"--that "in music they are more generally gifted than the whites with accurate ears for time and tune."

But there is one statement which we especially commend to those in search of an effective military policy in the present crisis. Jefferson declares of the negroes, that they are "at least as brave as the whites, and more adventuresome." May not this truth account for the fact that one of the most daring deeds in the present war was done by a black man?

Still later, Jefferson says,--"Whether further observation will or will not verify the conjecture that Nature has been less bountiful to them in the endowments of the head, I believe that in those of the heart she will be found to have done them justice. That disposition to theft with which they have been branded must be ascribed to their situation, and not to any depravity of the moral sense. The man in whose favor no laws of property exist probably feels himself less bound to respect those made in favor of others. When arguing for ourselves, we lay it down as fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give reciprocation of right,--that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience; and it is a problem which I give to the master to solve, whether the religious precepts against the violation of property were not framed for him as well as his slave,--and whether the slave may not as justifiably take a little from one who has taken all from him as he may slay one who would slay him. That a change in the relations in which a man is placed should change his ideas of moral right and wrong is neither new, nor peculiar to the color of the blacks."

Here Jefferson puts forth that very idea for which Gerrit Smith, a few years ago, was threatened with the penalties of treason.

But to quote further from the same source:--

"Notwithstanding these considerations, which must weaken their
respect for the laws of property, we find among them numerous
instances of the most rigid integrity, and as many as among their
instructed masters, of benevolence, gratitude, and unshaken
fidelity. The opinion that they are inferior in the faculties of
reason and imagination must be hazarded with great diffidence."

The old hot thought blazes forth again in the chapter on "Particular Manners and Customs." Can men speak against the proclamations of Abolition Conventions after such fiery words from Jefferson?

"The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual
exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting
despotism, on the one part, and degrading submission on the other.
Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an
imitative animal. If a parent could find no motive either in his
philanthropy or his self-love for restraining the intemperance of
passion toward his slave, it should always be a sufficient one
that his child is present. But generally it is not sufficient. The
parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of
wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves,
gives a loose rein to the worst of passions, and thus nursed,
educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by
its odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain
his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances." (Here
fire begins to flicker up around the words.) "And with what
execration should a statesman be loaded, who, permitting one half
the _citizens_" (note the word) "to trample on the _rights_" (note
the word) "of the other, transforms those into despots and these
into enemies, destroys the morals of the one and the _amor
patriae_ of the other! And can the liberties of a nation be
thought secure, when we have removed their only firm basis,--a
conviction in the minds of the people that their liberties are the
gifts of God, that they are not to be violated but with His
wrath?" (Now bursts forth prophecy. The whole page flames in a
moment.) "Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God
is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever; that, considering
numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel
of Fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events;
that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The
Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a
contest."

Well may Jefferson say, immediately after this, that "it is impossible to be temperate and to pursue this subject through the various considerations of policy, of morals, of history natural and civil." For no Abolitionist ever branded the slave-system with words more fiery.

In 1784 Jefferson drew up the ordinance for the government of the Western Territory. One famous clause runs thus:--

"After the year 1800 of the Christian era there shall be neither
slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said States,
otherwise than in punishment of crimes whereof the party shall
have been convicted to be personally guilty."

In Randall's "Life of Jefferson," a work in many respects admirable, this clause is glossed with the declaration that Jefferson intended merely to prevent an immense new importation of slaves from Africa to fill the Territory; but Mr. Randall would have shown far greater insight, had he added to this half-truth, that the idea of legally grasping and strangling this curse flows from the ideas of the "Notes" as hot metal flows from fiery furnace,--that the Ordinance of 1784 was but a minting of that true metal drawn from those old glowing thoughts and words.

But Jefferson's hatred of slavery is not less fierce in his letters.

Dr. Price writes a pamphlet in England against slavery, and straightway Jefferson seizes his pen to urge him to write more, and more clearly for America, and more directly at American young men, saying, in encouragement,--"Northward of the Chesapeake you may find, here and there, an opponent to your doctrine, as you may find, here and there, a murderer." He speaks hopefully of the disposition in Virginia to "redress this enormity,"--calls the fight against slavery "the interesting spectacle of justice in conflict with avarice and oppression,"--speaks of the side hostile to slavery as "the sacred side." The date is 1785.

This welcome to Dr. Price's onslaught will serve as antidote to Mr. Randall's poisonous declaration, that Jefferson was opposed to interference with slave institutions by those living outside of Slave States.

In 1786 Jefferson wrote to correct M. de Meusnier's statement of the efforts already made for emancipation; and, referring to the holding of slaves by a people who had clamored loudly and fought bravely for freedom, he says,--

"What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man,--who
can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment, and death itself,
in vindication of his own liberty, and, in the next moment, be
deaf to all those motives whose power supported him through his
trial, and inflict on his fellow-men _a bondage one hour of which
is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in
rebellion to oppose_!"

Here, in Jefferson himself, then, is the source of that venom with which earnest men, throughout the land, are stinging to death the organization which stole his name to destroy his ideas.

In 1788, Jefferson, being Minister at Paris, receives a note from M. de Warville tendering him membership in the Society for the Abolition of the Slave-Trade. Jefferson is forced by his peculiar position to decline, but he takes pains to say,--"You know that nobody wishes more ardently to see an abolition not only of the trade, but of the _condition_ of slavery."

Here is no non-committalism, no wistful casting about for loop-holes, no sly putting out of hooks to catch backers, not the feeblest germ of quibble or lie. The man answers more than he is asked. Is there not, in the present dearth, something refreshing in this old candor?

But some have thought Jefferson's later expressions against slavery wanting in heartiness. Let us examine.

The whole world knows, that, when a wrong stings a man, making him fierce and loud, his _direct_ expressions have often small value; but that his _parenthetical_ expressions often have great value. This is one of the simplest principles in homely every-day criticism, serving truth-seekers, wherever wordy war rages, whether among statesmen or hackmen.

Now, in Jefferson's letter to Dr. Gordon,--written in 1788,--he is greatly stirred by his own recital of the shameful ravages on his property by the British army. Just at the moment when his indignation was at the hottest, there shot out of his heart, and off his pen, one of these side-thoughts, one of these fragments of the man's ground-idea, which, at such moments, truth-seekers always watch for. Jefferson says of Cornwallis,--

"He destroyed all my growing crops of corn and tobacco; he burned
all my barns containing the same articles of the last year, having
first taken what corn he wanted; he used, as was to be expected,
all my stock of cattle, sheep, and hogs, for the sustenance of his
army, and carried off all the horses capable of service,--of those
too young for service he cut the throats; and he burned all the
fences in the plantation, so as to make it an absolute waste. _He
carried off also about thirty slaves. Had this been to give them
their freedom, he would have done right_."

But we turn to a seeming discrepancy between these thousand earnest declarations of Jefferson the private citizen, and the cold, formal tone of Jefferson the Secretary of State. In this high office he reclaims slaves from the Spanish power in Florida, and demands compensation for slaves carried off by the British at the evacuation of New York. For a moment that transition from personal warmth to diplomatic coolness is as the Russian plunge from steam-bath to snow-heap.

Yet, if truth-seekers do not stop to moan, they may easily find a complete explanation. As private citizen, in a State, dealing with his home Government, Jefferson had the right to move heaven and earth against slavery, and bravely he did it; but, as public servant of the nation, dealing with foreign Governments, his rights and duties were different, and his tone must be different. As a private person, writing for man as man, Jefferson forgot readily enough all differences of nation. He wrote as readily and fully of the hideousness of slavery to Meusnier and Warville in France, or to Price and Priestley in England, as to any of his neighbors; but, as public servant of the nation, writing to Hammond or Viar, representatives of foreign powers, he made no apology for our miseries. England might be ready enough to act the part of Dives, but Jefferson was not the statesman to put America in the attitude of Lazarus,--begging, and showing sores.

But we have to note yet another change in Jefferson's modes of work and warfare.

As he wrought and fought in this second period, which, for easy reference, we call the building period, he was forced into new methods. In the former period we saw him thinking and speaking and working against every effort to found pro-slavery theories or practices. Eagerness was then the best quality for work, and quickness the best quality for fight. But now the case was different. An institution which Jefferson hated had, in spite of his struggles, been firmly founded. The land was full of the towers of the slave aristocracy. He saw that his mode of warfare must be changed. His old way did well in the earlier days, for tower-builders may be driven from their work by a sweeping charge or sudden volley; but towers, when built, must be treated with steady battering and skilful mining.

In 1797, Jefferson, writing to St. George Tucker, speaks of the only possible emancipation as "a compromise between the passions, prejudices, and real difficulties, which will each have their weight in the operation." Afterwards, in his letters to Monroe and Rufus King, he advocates a scheme of colonization to some point not too distant. But let no man, on this account, claim Jefferson as a supporter of the do-nothing school of Northern demagogues, or of the mad school of Southern fanatics who proclaim this ulcerous mass a beauty, and who howl at all who refuse its infection. For, note, in that same letter to St. George Tucker, the fervor of the Jeffersonian theory: bitter as Tucker's pamphlet against slavery was, he says,--"You know my subscription to its doctrines." Note also the vigor of the Jeffersonian practice: speaking of emancipation, he says,--"The sooner we put some plan under way, the greater hope there is that it may be permitted to proceed peaceably to its ultimate effect." And now bursts forth prophecy again. "_But if something is not done, and soon done, we shall be the murderers of our own children_." "If we had begun sooner, we might probably have been allowed a lengthier operation to clear ourselves; but every day's delay lessens the time we may take for emancipation."

Here is no trace of the theory inflicting a present certain evil on a great white population in order to do a future doubtful good to a smaller black population. And this has been nowhere better understood than among the slave oligarchs of his own time. Note one marked example.

In 1801, Jefferson was elected to the Presidency on the thirty-sixth ballot. Thirty-five times Delaware, Maryland, and South Carolina voted against him. The following year Mr. Rutledge of South Carolina, feeling an itching to specify to Congress his interests in Buncombe and his relations to the universe, palavered in the usual style, but let out one truth, for which, as truth-searchers, we thank him. He said,--

"Permit me to state, that, beside the objections common to my
friend from Delaware and myself, there was a strong one which I
felt with peculiar force. It resulted from a firm belief that the
gentleman in question [Jefferson] _held opinions respecting a
certain description of property in my State which, should they
obtain generally, would endanger it_."[4]

[4] Benton's _Abridgment_, Vol. II. p. 636.

We come now to Jefferson's Presidency. In this there was no great chance to deal an effective blow at slavery; but some have grown bitter over a story that he favored the schemes to break the slavery-limitation in Ohio. Such writers have not stopped to consider that it is more probable that a few Southern members, eager to drum in recruits, falsely claimed the favor of the President, than that Jefferson broke the slavery-limitation which he himself planned. Then, too, came the petitions of the abolition societies against slavery in Louisiana; and Hildreth blames Jefferson for his slowness to assist; but ought we not here to take some account of the difficulties of the situation? Ought not some weight to be given to Jefferson's declaration to Kerchival, that in his administration his "efforts in relation to peace, slavery, and religious freedom were all in accordance with Quakerism"?

We pass now to the third great period, in which, as thinker and writer, he did so much to brace the Republic.

First of all, in this period we see him revising the translation and arranging the publication of De Tracy's "Commentaire sur l'Esprit des Lois." He takes endless pains to make its hold firm on America; engages his old companion in abolitionism, St. George Tucker, to circulate it; makes it a text-book in the University of Virginia; tells his friend Cabell to read it, for it is "the best book on government in the world." Now this "best book on government" is killing to every form of tyranny or slavery; its arguments pierce all their fallacies and crush all their sophistries. That famous plea which makes Alison love Austria and Palmer love Louisiana--the plea that a people can be best educated for freedom and religion by dwarfing their minds and tying their hands--is, in this book, shivered by argument and burnt by invective.

As we approach the last years of Jefferson's life we find several letters of his on slavery. Some have thought them mere heaps of ashes,--poor remains of the flaming thoughts and words of earlier years. This mistake is great. Touch the seeming heap of ashes, and those thoughts and words dart forth, fiery as of old.

In 1814, Edward Coles attacks slavery vigorously, and calls on the great Democrat to destroy it. Jefferson's approving reply is the complete summary of his matured views on slavery. Take a few declarations as specimens.[5]

[5] Randall, Vol. III., Appendix.

"The sentiments breathed through the whole do honor both to the
head and heart of the writer. Mine, on the subject of the slavery
of negroes, have long since been in possession of the public, and
time has only served to give them stronger proof. The love of
justice and the love of country plead equally the cause of these
people, and it is a mortal reproach to us that they should have
pleaded so long in vain."

"The hour of emancipation is advancing in the march of time. It
will come; and whether brought on by the generous energy of our
own minds or by the bloody process of St. Domingo ... is a leaf of
our history not yet turned over."

"As to the method by which this difficult work is to be effected,
if permitted to be done by ourselves, I have seen no proposition
so expedient, on the whole, as that of emancipation of those born
after a given day."

"This enterprise is for the young,--for those who can follow it up
and bear it through to its consummation. It shall have all my
prayers."

No wonder that this letter of Jefferson to Coles seems to have been carefully suppressed by Southern editors of the Jeffersonian writings.

Take also the letters to Mr. Barrows and to Dr. Humphreys of 1815-17. Disappointment is expressed at the want of a more general anti-slavery feeling among the young men; hope is expressed that "time will soften down the master and educate the slave"; faith is expressed that slavery will yield, "because we are not in a world ungoverned by the laws and power of a Supreme Agent."

Entering now the stormy period of the Missouri Debate, we have one declaration from Jefferson which, at first, surprises and pains us,--the opinion given in a letter to Lafayette, that spreading slavery will "dilute the evil everywhere, and facilitate the means of getting rid of it." The mistake is gross indeed. To all of us, with the political knowledge forced upon us by events since Jefferson's death, it seems atrocious. But unpardonable as such a theory is _now_, was it so _then_?

Jefferson had not before him the experience of these last forty years of weakness and poverty and barbarism in our new Slave States,--and of that tenacity of life which slavery shares with so many other noxious growths. Hastily, then, he broached this opinion. Let it stand; and let the remark on "geographical lines," and the two or three severe criticisms of Northern men, wrested from him in the excitement of the Missouri struggle, be tied to it and given to the Oligarchs. These expressions were drawn from him in his old age,--in his vexation at unfair attacks,--in his depression at the approach of poverty,--in his suffering under the encroachments of disease. Any one of those bold declarations in the vigor of his manhood will forever efface all memory of them.

The opinion expressed by Jefferson, at the same period, that "the General Government cannot interfere with slavery in the States," all our parties now accept--as a _peace_ policy; but if we are forced into an opposite _war_ policy, let our generals remember Jefferson's declaration as to the taking of his slaves by Cornwallis: "_Had this been to give them their freedom, he would have done right_."

But there is one letter which all Northern statesmen should ponder. It warns them solemnly, for it was written a very short time before Jefferson's death;--it warns them sharply, for it struck one whom the North has especially honored. This son of the North had made a well-known unfortunate speech in Congress, and had sent it to Jefferson. In his answer the old statesman declares,--

"On the question of the lawfulness of slavery, that is, _of the
right of one man to appropriate to himself the faculties of
another without his consent, I certainly retain my early
opinions_. On that, however, of third persons to interfere between
the parties, and the effect of Constitutional modifications of
that pretension, we are probably nearer together."

There was a blow well dealt,--though at one now greatly honored. We may refuse the subordinate idea in the letter, but we will glory in that main confession of political faith, in the last year of Jefferson's life; and we will not forget that the last of his letters on slavery chastised the worst sin of Northern statesmanship.

Jefferson, then, in dealing with slavery, was a real political seer and giver of oracles,--always sure to say _something_; whereas the "leading men" who in these latter days have usurped his name are neither political seers nor givers of oracles, but mere political fakirs,--striving, their lives long, to enter political blessedness by solemnly doing and seeing and saying--_nothing_.

Jefferson was a true political warrior, and his battle for human rights compares with the Oligarchist battle against them as the warfare of Cortés compares with Aztec warfare. He is the man full of strong thought backed by civilization: they, the men trying to keep up their faith in idols, trying to scare with war-paint, trying to startle with war-whoop, trying to vex with showers of poor Aztec arrows.

Jefferson was an orator,--not in that he fed petty assemblages with narcotic words to stupefy conscience, or corrosive words to kill conscience, but in that he gave to the world those decisive, true words which shall yet pierce all tyranny and slavery.

Jefferson was the founder of a democratic system, strong and full-orbed: "leading men" have fastened his name to an aristocratic system with mobocratic cries.

This great tree of Liberty which we are all trying to plant will, of course, not grow as _we_ will, but as God and Nature will. Some branches will be exuberant through too great wealth of sunshine,--others gnarled and awry through too great fury of storms. We need find no fault with any growth, but we may admire some branches and prize some fruits more than others. Some grafts set by noblest hands have often blossomed in bad temper and borne fruit bitter and sour. Some fruitage has been of that poor Dead-Sea sort,--splendid in coating, but inwardly ashes,--wretched "protective" schemes and the like. The world may yet see that the limbs of toughest fibre and fruit of richest flavor have come from grafts set by just such strong men in theory and in practice as Thomas Jefferson.

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A STORY OF TO-DAY.