A

Master Thoughts

of

Thomas Jefferson

CHAPTER I.

THE NEGRO AND SLAVERY

S FAR as I can judge, from the experiments which have been made to give liberty to, or rather abandon, persons whose habits have been formed in slavery is like abandoning children. Many Quakers in Virginia seated their slaves on their land as tenants; they were distant from me and . I cannot 19. 41. say whether they were to pay rent in money or a share of the produce, but I remember the landlord was obliged to plan their crops for them, to direct all their operations during every season, and according to the weather; but what is more afflicting he was bound to watch them daily and almost constantly to make them work, and even to whip them. A man's moral sense must be very strong if slavery does not make him a thief. He who is permitted by law to have no property of his own can with difficulty conceive that property is founded in anything but force. These slaves chose to steal from their neighbors, became public nuisances, and in most instances were reduced to slavery again. (Letter to Edward Bancroft, 1788.) R. JOHN ADAMS observed that it was

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of no consequence by what name you called your people, whether by that of "freemen" or "slaves";

that in some countries the laboring poor were CALLED

freemen, in others they were called slaves; but that the difference as to the state was imaginary only. What I. 41. matters it whether a landlord, employing ten laborers on his farm, gives them annually as much money as will buy them the necessaries of life, or gives them those necessaries at short hand that the condition of the laboring poor in many countries, that of the fishermen particularly of the Northern States, is as abject as that of slaves.

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HE FIRST establishment (settlement) 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. 1. 58. That suspended, ipso facto, their importation for the present, and the business of the war pressing constantly on the legislature, this subject was not acted on 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 further efforts its final eradication.

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HE BILL on the subject of slaves was a mere digest of the existing laws respecting them, without an intimation of a plan for a future and 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 in. The princi1. 73. ples of the amendment were, however, agreed on, that is to say, the freedom of all born after a cer

tain day, and deportation at a proper age. But it was found that the public mind would not yet bear the proposi

tion, nor will it bear it even at this day. Yet the day is not distant when it must bear it 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 have 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 example in the Spanish deportation or depletion of the Moors. This precedent would fall far short of our case. (Autobiography, 1821.)

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HE 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 aniThis quality is the germ of all education in From his cradle to his grave he is learning

mal.

2. 225. him.

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 aloose to the 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 these into despots, and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and the amor patriae of the other. With the

morals of the people their industry is destroyed. For in a warm climate no man will labor for himself who can make another labor for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labor. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their very 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 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 sides with us in such a contest

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. (Notes on Virginia, 1781.)

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'NHAPPILY it is a case for which both parties require long and difficult preparation. The mind of the master is to be apprised by reflection, and strengthened by the energies of conscience, against the ob

stacles of self-interest to an acquiescence in the rights of others, that of the slave is to be prepared by in14. 296. struction and habit for self-government, and for the honest pursuits of industry and social duty. Both of these courses of preparation take time, and the former must precede the latter but it will yield

in time to temperate and steady pursuit, to the enlargement of the human mind and the advancement of science. We are not in a world ungoverned by the laws and the power of a superior agent. Our efforts are in His hand, and directed by it; and He will give them their effect in His own time., Where the disease is most deeply seated there it will be slowest in eradication. In the Northern States it was merely superficial, and easily corrected. In the Southern it is incorporated with the whole system, and requires time, patience, and perseverance in the curative process. That it may finally be effected and its progress hastened will be (my) last and fondest prayer. (To David Barrow, 1815.)

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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 upon the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, 3. 421 and which the morality, the reputation, and the best interests of our country have long been eager

to proscribe.

*ERE (in Virginia) crime is scarcely heard of.

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Our only blot is becoming less offensive by the great improvement in the condition and civilization of that race (negro), who can now be more ad