|
|
| & etc |
FEEDBACK
(C)1998-2012
All Rights Reserved.
Site last updated
13 January, 2012
|
|
|
| Thomas Jefferson on Slavery From Notes on the State of Virginia 1781
Under the
mild treatment our slaves experience, and their wholesome, though coarse,
food, this blot in our country increases as fast, or faster, than the whites.
During the regal government, we had at one time obtained a law, which imposed
such a duty on the importation of slaves, as amounted nearly to a prohibition,
when one inconsiderate assembly, placed under a peculiarity of circumstance,
repealed the law. This repeal met a joyful sanction from the then
sovereign, and no devices, no expedients, which could ever after be attempted
by subsequent assemblies, and they seldom met without attempting them,
could succeed in getting the royal assent to a renewal of the duty.
In the very first session held under the republican government, the assembly
passed a law for the perpetual prohibition of the importation of slaves.
This will in some measure stop the increase of this great political and
moral evil, while the minds of our citizens may be ripening for a complete
emancipation of human nature.
...
Many of the
laws which were in force during the monarchy being relative merely to that
form of government, or inculcating principles inconsistent with republicanism,
the first assembly which met after the establishment of the commonwealth
appointed a committee to revise the whole code, to reduce it into proper
form and volume, and report it to the assembly... The plan of
the revisal was this. The common law of England, by which is meant,
that part of the English law which was anterior to the date of the oldest
statutes extant, is made the basis of the work. It was thought dangerous
to attempt to reduce it to a text: it was therefore left to be collected
from the usual monuments of it. Necessary alterations in that, and so much
of the whole body of the British statutes, and of acts of assembly, as
were thought proper to be retained, were digested into 126 new acts, in
which simplicity of stile was aimed at, as far as was safe. The following
are the most remarkable alterations proposed:
... To make slaves
distributable among the next of kin, as other moveables.
...
To emancipate all slaves born after passing the act. The bill reported
by the revisors does not itself contain this proposition; but an amendment
containing it was prepared, to be offered to the legislature whenever the
bill should be taken up, and further directing, that they should continue
with their parents to a certain age, then be brought up, at the public
expence, to tillage, arts or sciences, according to their geniusses, till
the females should be eighteen, and the males twenty-one years of age,
when they should be colonized to such place as the circumstances of the
time should render most proper, sending them out with arms, implements
of houshold and of the handicraft arts, feeds, pairs of the useful domestic
animals, &c. to declare them a free and independant people, and extend
to them our alliance and protection, till they shall have acquired strength;
and to send vessels at the same time to other parts of the world for an
equal number of white inhabitants; to induce whom to migrate hither, proper
encouragements were to be proposed. It will probably be asked, Why
not retain and incorporate the blacks into the state, and thus save the
expence of supplying, by importation of white settlers, the vacancies they
will leave? Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten
thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained;
new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many
other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions
which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the
other race. -- To these objections, which are political, may be added others,
which are physical and moral. The first difference which strikes
us is that of colour. Whether the black of the negro resides in the
reticular membrane between the skin and scarf-skin, or in the scarf-skin
itself; whether it proceeds from the colour of the blood, the colour of
the bile, or from that of some other secretion, the difference is fixed
in nature, and is as real as if its seat and cause were better known to
us. And is this difference of no importance? Is it not the
foundation of a greater or less share of beauty in the two races?
Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expressions of every passion
by greater or less suffusions of colour in the one, preferable to that
eternal monotony, which reigns in the countenances, that immoveable veil
of black which covers all the emotions of the other race? Add to
these, flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form, their own judgment
in favour of the whites, declared by their preference of them, as uniformly
as is the preference of the Oranootan for the black women over those of
his own species. The circumstance of superior beauty, is thought
worthy attention in the propagation of our horses, dogs, and other domestic
animals; why not in that of man? Besides those of colour, figure,
and hair, there are other physical distinctions proving a difference of
race. They have less hair on the face and body. They secrete
less by the kidnies, and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them
a very strong and disagreeable odour. This greater degree of transpiration
renders them more tolerant of heat, and less so of cold, than the whites.
Perhaps too a difference of structure in the pulmonary apparatus, which
a late ingenious [1] experimentalist has discovered to be the principal
regulator of animal heat, may have disabled them from extricating, in the
act of inspiration, so much of that fluid from the outer air, or obliged
them in expiration, to part with more of it. They seem to require
less sleep. A black, after hard labour through the day, will be induced
by the slightest amusements to sit up till midnight, or later, though knowing
he must be out with the first dawn of the morning. They are at least
as brave, and more adventuresome. But this may perhaps proceed from
a want of forethought, which prevents their seeing a danger till it be
present. When present, they do not go through it with more coolness
or steadiness than the whites. They are more ardent after their female:
but love seems with them to be more an eager desire, than a tender delicate
mixture of sentiment and sensation. Their griefs are transient.
Those numberless afflictions, which render it doubtful whether heaven has
given life to us in mercy or in wrath, are less felt, and sooner forgotten
with them. In general, their existence appears to participate more
of sensation than reflection. To this must be ascribed their disposition
to sleep when abstracted from their diversions, and unemployed in labour.
An animal whose body is at rest, and who does not reflect, must be disposed
to sleep of course. Comparing them by their faculties of memory,
reason, and imagination, it appears to me, that in memory they are equal
to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be
found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid;
and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous.
It would be unfair to follow them to Africa for this investigation.
We will consider them here, on the same stage with the whites, and where
the facts are not apocryphal on which a judgment is to be formed.
It will be right to make great allowances for the difference of condition,
of education, of conversation, of the sphere in which they move.
Many millions of them have been brought to, and born in America.
Most of them indeed have been confined to tillage, to their own homes,
and their own society: yet many have been so situated, that they might
have availed themselves of the conversation of their masters; many have
been brought up to the handicraft arts, and from that circumstance have
always been associated with the whites. Some have been liberally
educated, and all have lived in countries where the arts and sciences are
cultivated to a considerable degree, and have had before their eyes samples
of the best works from abroad. The Indians, with no advantages of
this kind, will often carve figures on their pipes not destitute of design
and merit. They will crayon out an animal, a plant, or a country,
so as to prove the existence of a germ in their minds which only wants
cultivation. They astonish you with strokes of the most sublime oratory;
such as prove their reason and sentiment strong, their imagination glowing
and elevated. But never yet could I find that a black had uttered
a thought above the level of plain narration; never see even an elementary
trait of painting or sculpture. In music they are more generally
gifted than the whites with accurate ears for tune and time, and they have
been found capable of imagining a small catch [2]. Whether they
will be equal to the composition of a more extensive run of melody, or
of complicated harmony, is yet to be proved. Misery is often the
parent of the most affecting touches in poetry. -- Among the blacks is
misery enough, God knows, but no poetry. Love is the peculiar ;oestrum
of the poet. Their love is ardent, but it kindles the senses only,
not the imagination. Religion indeed has produced a Phyllis Whately;
but it could not produce a poet. The compositions published under
her name are below the dignity of criticism. The heroes of the Dunciad
are to her, as Hercules to the author of that poem. Ignatius Sancho
has approached nearer to merit in composition; yet his letters do more
honour to the heart than the head. They breathe the purest effusions
of friendship and general philanthropy, and shew how great a degree of
the latter may be compounded with strong religious zeal. He is often
happy in the turn of his compliments, and his stile is easy and familiar,
except when he affects a Shandean fabrication of words. But his imagination
is wild and extravagant, escapes incessantly from every restraint of reason
and taste, and, in the course of its vagaries, leaves a tract of thought
as incoherent and eccentric, as is the course of a meteor through the sky.
His subjects should often have led him to a process of sober reasoning:
yet we find him always substituting sentiment for demonstration.
Upon the whole, though we admit him to the first place among those of his
own colour who have presented themselves to the public judgment, yet when
we compare him with the writers of the race among whom he lived, and particularly
with the epistolary class, in which he has taken his own stand, we are
compelled to enroll him at the bottom of the column. This criticism
supposes the letters published under his name to be genuine, and to have
received amendment from no other hand; points which would not be of easy
investigation. The improvement of the blacks in body and mind, in
the first instance of their mixture with the whites, has been observed
by every one, and proves that their inferiority is not the effect merely
of their condition of life. We know that among the Romans, about
the Augustan age especially, the condition of their slaves was much more
deplorable than that of the blacks on the continent of America. The
two sexes were confined in separate apartments, because to raise a child
cost the master more than to buy one. Cato, for a very restricted
indulgence to his slaves in this particular, [3] took from them a certain
price. But in this country the slaves multiply as fast as the free
inhabitants. Their situation and manners place the commerce between
the two sexes almost without restraint. -- The same Cato, on a principle
of ;oeconomy, always sold his sick and superannuated slaves. He gives
it as a standing precept to a master visiting his farm, to sell his old
oxen, old waggons, old tools, old and diseased servants, and every thing
else become useless. `Vendat boves vetulos, plaustrum vetus, ferramenta
vetera, servum senem, servum morbosum, & si quid aliud supersit vendat.'
Cato de re rustica. c. 2. The American slaves cannot enumerate this
among the injuries and insults they receive. It was the common practice
to expose in the island
Suet. Claud. 25.
of Aesculapius, in the Tyber, diseased slaves, whose cure was like to become
tedious. The Emperor Claudius, by an edict, gave freedom to such
of them as should recover, and first declared, that if any person chose
to kill rather than to expose them, it should be deemed homicide.
The exposing them is a crime of which no instance has existed with us;
and were it to be followed by death, it would be punished capitally.
We are told of a certain Vedius Pollio, who, in the presence of Augustus,
would have given a slave as food to his fish, for having broken a glass.
With the Romans, the regular method of taking the evidence of their slaves
was under torture. Here it has been thought better never to resort
to their evidence. When a master was murdered, all his slaves, in
the same house, or within hearing, were condemned to death. Here
punishment falls on the guilty only, and as precise proof is required against
him as against a freeman. Yet notwithstanding these and other discouraging
circumstances among the Romans, their slaves were often their rarest artists.
They excelled too in science, insomuch as to be usually employed as tutors
to their master's children. Epictetus, Terence, and Phaedrus, were
slaves. But they were of the race of whites. It is not their
condition then, but nature, which has produced the distinction. -- 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 favour no laws of property exist, probably feels himself
less bound to respect those made in favour of others. When arguing
for ourselves, we lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just,
must give a 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 colour of the blacks. Homer tells us it was so 2600 years ago.
[1. Crawford. ]
[2. The instrument proper to them is the Banjar, which they brought hither from Africa, and which is the original of the guitar, its chords being precisely the four lower chords of the guitar. ]
[3. {Tos dolos etaxen orismeno nomismatos omilein tais therapainisin.} -- Plutarch. Cato.
]
Jove fix'd
it certain, that whatever day
Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away.
But the slaves
of which Homer speaks were whites. 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 better 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. To justify
a general conclusion, requires many observations, even where the subject
may be submitted to the Anatomical knife, to Optical glasses, to analysis
by fire, or by solvents. How much more then where it is a faculty,
not a substance, we are examining; where it eludes the research of all
the senses; where the conditions of its existence are various and variously
combined; where the effects of those which are present or absent bid defiance
to calculation; let me add too, as a circumstance of great tenderness,
where our conclusion would degrade a whole race of men from the rank in
the scale of beings which their Creator may perhaps have given them.
To our reproach it must be said, that though for a century and a half we
have had under our eyes the races of black and of red men, they have never
yet been viewed by us as subjects of natural history. I advance it
therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct
race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites
in the endowments both of body and mind. It is not against experience
to suppose, that different species of the same genus, or varieties of the
same species, may possess different qualifications. Will not a lover of
natural history then, one who views the gradations in all the races of
animals with the eye of philosophy, excuse an effort to keep those in the
department of man as distinct as nature has formed them? This unfortunate
difference of colour, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to
the emancipation of these people. Many of their advocates, while
they wish to vindicate the liberty of human nature, are anxious also to
preserve its dignity and beauty. Some of these, embarrassed by the
question `What further is to be done with them?' join themselves
in opposition with those who are actuated by sordid avarice only.
Among the Romans emancipation required but one effort. The slave,
when made free, might mix with, without staining the blood of his master.
But with us a second is necessary, unknown to history. When freed,
he is to be removed beyond the reach of mixture.
...Slaves guilty of offences punishable in others by labour, to be transported
to Africa, or elsewhere, as the circumstances of the time admit, there
to be continued in slavery. A rigorous regimen proposed for those
condemned to labour.
...
Manners
It is difficult to determine on the standard by which the manners of a nation may be tried, whether catholic or particular. It is more difficult for a native to bring to that standard the manners of his own nation, familiarized to him by habit. There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us. 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 submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do. If a parent could find no motive either in his philanthropy or his self-love, for restraining the intemperance of passion towards 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 to his worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. And with what execration should the statesman be loaded, who permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots, and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and the amor patriae of the other. For if a slave can have a country in this world, it must be any other in preference to that in which he is born to live and labour for another: in which he must lock up the faculties of his nature, contribute as far as depends on his individual endeavours to the evanishment of the human race, or entail his own miserable condition on the endless generations proceeding from him. With the morals of the people, their industry also is destroyed. For in a warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labour. 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 these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: 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. -- But it is impossible to be temperate and to pursue this subject through the various considerations of policy, of morals, of history natural and civil. We must be contented to hope they will force their way into every one's mind. I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation.
From Jefferson's Autobiography1790
In 1769, I became a member of the legislature by the choice of
the county in which I live, & continued in that until it was closed
by the revolution. I made one effort in that body for the permission
of the emancipation of slaves, which was rejected: and indeed, during
the regal government, nothing liberal could expect success.
....
The first establishment in Virginia which became permanent was
made in 1607. I have found no mention of negroes in the colony until
about 1650. The first brought here as slaves were by a Dutch ship;
after which the English commenced the trade and continued it until
the revolutionary war. That suspended, ipso facto, their further
importation for the present, and the business of the war pressing
constantly on the legislature, this subject was not acted on finally
until the year 78. when I brought in a bill to prevent their further
importation. This passed without opposition, and stopped the
increase of the evil by importation, leaving to future efforts its
final eradication.
...
The bill on the subject of slaves was a mere digest of the
existing laws respecting them, without any intimation of a plan for a
future & general emancipation. It was thought better that this
should be kept back, and attempted only by way of amendment whenever
the bill should be brought on. The principles of the amendment
however were agreed on, that is to say, the freedom of all born after
a certain day, and deportation at a proper age. But it was found
that the public mind would not yet bear the proposition, nor will it
bear it even at this day. Yet the day is not distant when it must
bear and adopt it, or worse will follow. Nothing is more certainly
written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free.
Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live
in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible
lines of distinction between them. It is still in our power to
direct the process of emancipation and deportation peaceably and in
such slow degree as that the evil will wear off insensibly, and their
place be pari passu filled up by free white laborers. If on the
contrary it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at
the prospect held up. We should in vain look for an example in the
Spanish deportation or deletion of the Moors. This precedent would
fall far short of our case.
From Jefferson's State of the Nation: 2 December, 1806
I congratulate you, fellow citizens, on the approach of the period at
which you may interpose your authority constitutionally to withdraw
the citizens of the United States from all further participation in
those violations of human rights which have been so long continued
on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the morality, the
reputation, and the best of our country have long been eager to
proscribe. Although no law you may pass can take prohibitory effect
until the 1st day of the year 1808, yet the intervening period is not too
long to prevent by timely notice expeditions which can not be
completed before that day.
Contributed by Gifford, Katya
16 October 2004 |
| |
