The Pathetic Decline of Thomas Jefferson

At the beginning of his new book A Slaveholders' Union: Slavery, Politics, and the Constitution in the Early American Republic, George William Van Cleve juxtaposes earlier and later letters of Thomas Jefferson on slavery.

Jefferson wrote the first letter on August 7, 1785 to Richard Price, an English radical. Price had published a pamphlet earlier that year, entitled Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution, in which he had, among other things, argued that the logic of the American Revolution required the abandonment of slavery:

The negro trade cannot be censured in language too severe. It is a traffic which, as it has been hitherto carried on, is shocking to humanity, cruel, wicked, and diabolical. I am happy to find that the united states are entering into measures for discountenancing it and for abolishing the odious slavery which it has introduced. Till they have done this, it will not appear they deserve the liberty for which they have been contending. For it is self-evident that if there are any men whom they have a right to hold in slavery, there may be others who have had a right to hold them in slavery. I am sensible, however, that this is a work which they cannot accomplish at once. The emancipation of the negroes must, I suppose, be left in some measure to be the effect of time and of manners. But nothing can excuse the united states if it is not done with as much speed, and at the same time with as much effect, as their particular circumstances and situation will allow. I rejoice that on this occasion I can recommend to them the example of my own country. In Britain, a negro becomes a freeman the moment he sets his foot on British ground.

In writing to Price, Jefferson positioned himself as a sympathetic ally who expected that most enlightened Americans would eventually come to see the correctness of Price's argument (paragraph breaks added):

From my acquaintance with that country [America] I think I am able to judge with some degree of certainty of the manner in which it [Price's pamphlet, in which he argued that the continued existence of slavery was inconsistent with the American Revolution] will have been received. Southward of the Chesapeak it will find but few readers concurring with it in sentiment on the subject of slavery.

From the mouth to the head of the Chesapeak, the bulk of the people will approve it in theory, and it will find a respectable minority ready to adopt it in practice, a minority which for weight and worth of character preponderates against the greater number, who have not the courage to divest their families of a property which however keeps their consciences inquiet.

Northward of the Chesapeak you may find here and there an opponent to your doctrine as you may find here and there a robber and a murderer, but in no great number. In that part of America, there being but few slaves, they can easily disencumber themselves of them, and emancipation is put into such a train that in a few years there will be no slaves Northward of Maryland.

In Maryland I do not find such a disposition to begin the redress of this enormity as in Virginia. This is the next state to which we may turn our eyes for the interesting spectacle of justice in conflict with avarice and oppression: a conflict wherein the sacred side is gaining daily recruits from the influx into office of young men grown and growing up. These have sucked in the principles of liberty as it were with their mother's milk, and it is to them I look with anxiety to turn the fate of this question.

Thirty-five years later, however, in his famous April 22, 1820 letter to John Holmes, Jefferson was inveighing against those who advocated restriction of slavery in Missouri as guilty of "treason against the hopes of the world":

If they [the advocates of restriction] would but dispassionately weigh the blessings they will throw away against an abstract principle more likely to be effected by union than by scission, they would pause before they would perpetrate this act of suicide on themselves and of treason against the hopes of the world.

And the following year, in a February 13, 1821 letter to John W. Taylor (which I cannot find online), Jefferson was reduced to fulminating against advocates of restriction as "Northern bears [who] seem bristling up to maintain the empire of force."

The illustration, entitled Smelling Out a Rat, "shows Richard Price seated at a desk, he turns to look over his right shoulder at a vision of an enormous Edmund Burke, his spectacles, nose, and hands emerge from the haze, a crown in one hand and a cross in the other, on his head an open copy of his 'Reflections on the Revolution in France....' Hanging on the wall is an illustration of the beheading of Charles I titled, 'Death of Charles I, or the Glory of Great Britain.'"

Jefferson Cries Wolf in the Night? 3

In his book The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath: Slavery and the Meaning of America, Robert Pierce Forbes argues persuasively that Thomas Jefferson’s April 22, 1820 “fire bell in the night” letter to John Holmes – previously discussed here and here – was, let us say, a trifle disingenuous.

Apart from the fact that the letter conveniently catapulted Holmes, a loyal Republican, to the United States Senate, Forbes notes that other contemporaneous Jefferson correspondence is free of the doom-and-gloom predictions the letter contains. In fact, what stands out is that the tone of Jefferson’s letters depends on the identity of the recipient. “Jefferson reserved his tone of fatalism for northerners and anticompromise southerners.”

Procompromise confidantes like president James Monroe heard a different message from the Sage of Monticello. Forbes cites, for example, a letter that Jefferson wrote three weeks later to the president. In the letter, dated May 14, 1820, Jefferson gushed about the nation’s future prospects (emphasis added):

Dear Sir,

—Your favor of the 3d is received, and always with welcome. These texts of truth relieve me from the floating falsehoods of the public papers. I confess to you I am not sorry for the non-ratification of the Spanish treaty. Our assent to it has proved our desire to be on friendly terms with Spain; their dissent, the imbecility and malignity of their government towards us, have placed them in the wrong in the eyes of the world, and that is well; but to us the province of Techas will be the richest State of our Union, without any exception. Its southern part will make more sugar than we can consume, and the Red river, on its north, is the most luxuriant country on earth. Florida, moreover, is ours. Every nation in Europe considers it such a right. We need not care for its occupation in time of peace, and, in war, the first cannon makes it ours without offence to anybody. The friendly advisements, too, of Russia and France, as well as the change of government in Spain, now ensured, require a further and respectful forbearance. While their request will rebut the plea of proscriptive possession, it will give us a right to their approbation when taken in the maturity of circumstances. I really think, too, that neither the state of our finances, the condition of our country, nor the public opinion, urges us to precipitation into war. The treaty has had the valuable effect of strengthening our title to the Techas, because the cession of the Floridas in exchange for Techas imports an acknowledgement of our right to it. This province moreover, the Floridas and possibly Cuba, will join us on the acknowledgement of their independence, a measure to which their new government will probably accede voluntarily. But why should I be saying all this to you, whose mind all the circumstances of this affair have had possession for years? I shall rejoice to see you here; and were I to live to see you here finally, it would be a day of jubilee. But our days are all numbered, and mine are not many. God bless you and preserve you muchos años.

Forbes correctly observes, “Nothing in Jefferson’s boldly activist letter to Monroe reveals any trace of pessimism for the nation’s prospects.”

Likewise, Forbes points to Jefferson’s letter to his old friend the Marquis de Lafayette dated December 26, 1820, in which Jefferson described “Missouri” as involving little more than political posturing and “noise”:

With us things are going on well. The boisterous sea of liberty indeed is never without a wave, and that from Missouri is now rolling towards us, but we shall ride over it as we have over all others. It is not a moral question, but one merely of power. Its object is to raise a geographical principle for the choice of a president, and the noise will be kept up till that is effected. All know that permitting the slaves of the south to spread into the west will not add one being to that unfortunate condition, that it will increase the happiness of those existing, and by spreading them over a larger surface, will dilute the evil everywhere, and facilitate the means of getting finally rid of it, an event more anxiously wished by those on whom it presses than by the noisy pretenders to exclusive humanity. In the meantime, it is a ladder for rivals climbing to power.

To antislavery men and northerners, however, Jefferson purported to convey fear and uncertainty. In a letter written on December 26, 1820 – the same day that he wrote to Lafayette – to Pennsylvanian Albert Gallatin, “a pronounced Republican opponent of slavery then serving as U.S. minister to France," Jefferson reverted to pessimism, clearly designed to persuade the influential Gallatin to support and lobby for compromise. Although the Missouri question was nothing but a Federalist plot, it had stirred up a hornets’ nest, and secession was not out of the question unless cooler heads prevailed (emphasis and paragraph breaks added):

But nothing has ever presented so threatening an aspect as what is called the Missouri question. The Federalists, completely put down and despairing of ever rising again under the old divisions of Whig and Tory, devised a new one of slave-holding and non-slave-holding States, which, while it had a semblance of being moral, was at the same time geographical, and calculated to give them ascendency by debauching their old opponents to a coalition with them. Moral the question certainly is not, because the removal of slaves from one State to another, no more than their removal from one country to another, would never make a slave of one human being who would not be so without it. Indeed, if there were any morality in the question it is on the other side; because by spreading them over a larger surface their happiness would be increased, and burden of their future liberation lightened by bringing a greater number of shoulders under it.

However, it served to throw dust into the eyes of the people and to fanaticize them, while to the knowing ones it gave a geographical and preponderant line of the Potomac and Ohio, throwing fourteen States to the North and East, and ten to the South and West. With these, therefore, it is merely a question of power; but with this geographical minority it is a question of existence. For if Congress once goes out of the Constitution to arrogate a right of regulating the condition of the inhabitants of the States, its majority may, and probably will, next declare that the condition of all men within the United States shall be that of freedom; in which case all the whites south of the Potomac and Ohio must evacuate their States, and most fortunate those who can do it first.

And so far this crisis seems to be advancing. The Missouri constitution is recently rejected by the House of Representatives; what will be their next step is yet to be seen. If accepted on the condition that Missouri shall expunge from it the prohibition of free people of color from emigration to their State, it will be expunged, and all will be quieted until the advance of some new State, shall present the question again. If rejected unconditionally, Missouri assumes independent self-government, and Congress, after pouting awhile, must receive them on the footing of the original States. Should the Representatives propose force, 1, the Senate will not concur; 2, were they to concur, there would be a secession of the members south of the line, and probably of the three Northwestern States, who, however inclined to the other side, would scarcely separate from those who would hold the Mississippi from its mouth to its source.

What next? Conjecture itself is at a loss. But whatever it shall be you will hear from others and from the newspapers; and finally the whole will depend on Pennsylvania. While she and Virginia hold together, the Atlantic States can never separate. Unfortunately, in the present case she has become more fanatisized than any other State. However useful where you are, I wish you were with them. You might turn the scale there, which would turn it for the whole. Should this scission take place, one of the most deplorable consequences would be its discouragement of the efforts of the European nations in the regeneration of their oppressive and cannibal governments. Amidst this prospect of evil I am glad to see one good effect. It has brought the necessity of some plan of general emancipation and deportation more home to the minds of our people than it has ever been before, insomuch that our governor has ventured to propose one to the Legislature. This will probably not be acted on at this time, nor would it be effectual; for, while it proposes to devote to that object one-third of the revenue of the State, it would not reach one-tenth of the annual increase.

My proposition would be that the holders should give up all born after a certain day, past, present, or to come; that these should be placed under the guardianship of the State, and sent at a proper age to St. Domingo. They are willing to receive them, and the shortness of the passage brings the deportation within the possible means of taxation, aided by charitable contributions. In these I think Europe, which has forced this evil on us, and the Eastern States, who have been its chief instruments of importation, would be bound to give largely. But the proceeds of the land office, if appropriate to this, would be quite sufficient.

God bless you, and preserve you multos años.

Likewise, in yet another letter written on December 26, 1820 (seems to have been a busy catch-up day!), “to his old friend David Baillie Warden, an Irish Presbyterian encyclopedist and dedicated opponent of slavery and racism,” Jefferson sounded similar themes:

But nothing disturbs us so much as the dissension lately produced by what is called the Missouri question: a question having just enough of the semblance of morality to throw dust into the eyes of the people, & to fanaticise them; while with the knowing ones it is simply a question of power. The Federalists, unable to rise again under the old division of whig and tory, have invented a geographical division which gives them 14. states against 10. and seduces their old opponents into a coalition with them. Real morality is on the other side. For while the removal of slaves from one state to another adds no more to their numbers than their removal from one country to another, the spreading them over a larger surface adds to their happiness and renders their future emancipation more practicable.

Jefferson Cries Wolf in the Night? 2

A long time ago, I began to discuss Thomas Jefferson's famous 1820 "fire bell in the night" quote concerning the threat presented by slavery. I want to revive the topic and evaluate the quote by looking at the context.

As I noted in my earlier post, the quote comes from a letter that Jefferson sent on April 22, 1820, about seven weeks after the first Missouri crisis had been resolved by the passage of bills that called for the admission of Maine as well as Missouri as new states, and provided that slavery would not be permitted in the Louisiana Purchase territory (other than the future state of Missouri) above 36 degrees 30 seconds north latitude (which latitude formed the southern border of Missouri). Why did he send this after-the-fact correspondence to an addressee who is now virtually unknown? For that matter, who on Earth was John Holmes, anyway?

The identity of the addressee is in fact one clue as to Jefferson’s motivation and purpose in sending the letter. John Holmes, it turns out, was a former Federalist turned Republican politician from the Maine "district" of the state of Massachusetts. For our purposes, the most important thing to know about Holmes is that he served in the House of Representatives as a representative of the Maine district of Massachusetts from March 1817 until he resigned on March 15, 1820 as Maine was about to be admitted as a new state. Three months later, on June 13, 1820, the newly-assembled Maine legislature elected Holmes as one of the state’s first United States Senators.

During the first Missouri crisis, southerners in Congress, irate over northern refusal to admit Missouri as a slave state, tied the pending admission of Maine to the admission of Missouri. It would therefore be logical to think that Mainers would have favored Missouri’s admission in order to realize their long-sought ambition of statehood.

In fact, a large number of Mainers (like Timothy Claimright, whose views I recently discussed) took exactly the opposite view. They favored restriction (i.e., restricting slavery in Missouri) and were furious when they learned that slave interests were holding their own statehood, the merits of which no one questioned, hostage to Missouri’s admission. Determined not to give in to what they perceived to be blackmail, many insisted that their representatives stand firm on Missouri.

John Holmes appeared to be well-positioned to take advantage of this popular outrage. As a delegate to the Maine constitutional convention in the fall of 1819, he had opposed a proposal to exclude black men from the vote:

I know of no difference between the rights of the negro and the rights of the white man; God Almighty has made none; our [Massachusetts] declaration of rights has made none. That declares that “all men (without regard to color) are born equally free and independent.”

When Congress assembled in December 1819, it was Holmes who notified the House that Maine had completed all prerequisites to admission. He soon learned, however, that Maine’s admission was being held hostage to Missouri – and he was outraged. Initially, he protested that the admissions of the two states were “wholly unconnected” and suggested (albeit with some circuitous language) that he “should forfeit the chance of Maine rather than forfeit my opinion.”

By New Year’s day, 1820, however, he was backtracking, apparently endorsing the proposition that “it would be best that the Mother should have twins this time.” Soon after, he convinced another Maine District congressman to join him in supporting Missouri’s unrestricted admission.

Holmes presumably expected that his position would be understood and supported as a reluctant necessity. He was wrong. He soon discovered “that Maine’s citizens considered the move to extend slavery an outrage,” and that he and colleague Mark Langdon Hill (whom Holmes had converted) were the only members of the seven-man Maine District delegation to support Missouri's unrestricted admission. He also “came under withering attack in the northern press and on the floor of Congress.”

By the end of January 1820, Holmes was virtually alone, detested by many of his constituents, and in deep political trouble. Quoting from letters of William King, Maine’s leading politician (and soon to be its first governor), to his half-brother Rufus King of New York, Robert Pierce Forbes has summarized the political landscape as follows:

“In the attempt to associate the admission of Maine and Missouri together,” William [King] wrote his half brother, “the motive is so apparent, that it has excited general disgust in this State.” Maine’s citizens desired statehood, but only “on terms honorable & correct . . . they will not, I am sure, consent to bargain their way along let the consequence be what it may.” John Holmes was the only member of the Maine delegation intending to vote with the South, William informed his brother; “it is hardly fair to judge his motives, altho’ opinions are expressed freely on the subject.” . . . “Mr. Holmes’ course is generally complained of here, and I am inclined to think his constituents will not be disposed to overlook his present conduct.”

When the final vote came on March 2, 1820, Holmes and Mark Hill were the only two members of the Maine District delegation to vote in favor of the Compromise. Holmes, returning to Maine hoping to be elected one of the state's first Senators, instead met "anger and vilification at home for his part as the arch-doughface of the Missouri capitulation."

Jefferson's fire bell letter to Holmes -- in which the revered founding father "tender[ed] the offering of my high esteem and respect" to Holmes "as the faithful advocate of the Union" -- proved to be a godsend:

It could be argued that nothing less than an endorsement from the author of the Declaration of Independence himself could have salvaged Holmes's political career in Maine. Fortunately for him, [Holmes] had exactly that. . . . Armed with this powerful document by the founder of their party, with its forecast of doom for the infant nation, Holmes secured election as one of Maine's first senators from the new state's chastened Republican legislature.