He certainly deserves kudos for the following quote, in which he captured the argument against “intellectual property” centuries before the internet brought that issue to the forefront:
I know. I’m comparing the content of their thought, on balance, taking account of all the good and the bad points; by that measure, Hamilton’s is to be preferred.
FWIW, Paul Johnson, in his A History of the American People, observed that Jefferson was a man in constant struggle between his principles and his appetites. (At that, he paints a more flattering picture of Jefferson than Gore Vidal in his historical novel Burr.)
To be fair, that was the view of all but the most radical abolitionists. Even Lincoln was a “colonizer” almost to the end of his administration/life. (See What Lincoln Believed: The Values and Convictions of America’s Greatest President, by Michael Lind.)
Even the wise and compassionate Ben Franklin had this to say:
What can you say about a man for whom Swedes aren’t white enough?
I saw your newer responses, but I should’ve responded to this earlier…
I think historians overplay that. Outside of the want of a Bank of the United States, Jefferson wasn’t really anti-industrialist, nor Hamilton anti-agrarian. I don’t think anything either man did really influenced the industrial nature our economy eventually became. That was entirely Adam Smith’s invisible hand kickin’ ass and takin’ names.
Come to think of it, why is it that different races have different body odors? (Not a myth – this is something I noticed for myself, in junior-high-school locker rooms, long before I learned it was a racial stereotype.)
America would have become an industrial power a lot sooner if Hamilton had had his way. He founded the Society for the Establishment of Useful Manufactures. He was the one who wanted public subsidies (“bounties”) to stimulate infant industries. (An approach implemented much later, in a half-assed way, in the form of protective tariffs on imported products.) In these respects, Henry Clay and Abraham Lincoln were his direct lineal ideological descendants (again, see Lind’s What Lincoln Believed.)
Enough so, I should add, to warrant taking Jefferson’s statue out of the Jefferson Memorial, and rededicating it to Hamilton!
Jefferson’s not my favorite founding father, but I certainly think he deserves our respect. I’ve sometimes felt sorry for him (yeah, I know); he saw the problems in the Virginia lifestyle and even tried to fix them early in life (he eventually realized that if he was going to get anywhere at all with his ideas, he would have to drop the ‘abolishing slavery’ thing), but at the same time he couldn’t overcome his own personal flaws enough to live up to his own ideals. I think maybe he wasn’t equipped to come anywhere near it.
After reading some about him, I think he was really handicapped by his own upbringing; he was effectively a minor prince and had never known anything but the Southern cycle of lavish spending, debt, and dependence on slavery. Southerners lived in constant debt, and he seemed to be a compulsive spender. He wanted to free the slaves, in an idealistic way, but couldn’t begin to do so, so eventually he just dropped it. (To be fair, it was, legally, extremely difficult for an owner to free slaves–the Southern governments deliberately made it nearly impossible. They knew that some owners would free their slaves if given the chance, and didn’t want the difficulties.)
I’m not sure we can blame him for thinking the slaves should be sent back to Africa, either. It’s not easy for us to recognize now, but nearly everyone back then was convinced that freeing the slaves would lead directly to a race war and general bloodshed and misery for both races. Sending freed people back to Africa was considered the humane, reasonable thing to do in order to avoid a terrible war. Sure, it was a rotten idea, but no one expected that we’d be able to make the transition at all.
Especially after what happened in Haiti in 1791.
Goes a long way towards explaining why “abolitionist” was as dirty a word in the antebellum South as “Communist” was in 1950s America. Pride and greed were factors – but even more importantly, fear.
Yes. I think to dismiss Thomas Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers with “well, they were bad, they owned slaves and should have freed them”–without knowing the complex and frightening situations they were dealing with–is just shallow and unrealistic. Most people (including myself) have no real idea of the actual circumstances at the time.
To make the OP mad, judging them by the standards of their own times, these were some forward-thinking men who tried to set up a new way of government according to higher ideals than had ever been accomplished before. Most of them knew well the evils of slavery, but they also knew that to try to abolish it at that time would simply render their entire experiment a failure from the first–it would never have gotten off the ground at all. So they tried to set it up so that it would be possible to exterminate slavery in the future, and that was pretty much the best that could be done.
They had high ideals, and they didn’t manage to live up to them, but neither has anyone else in the years since. At least they had them, and left them to us as the best they could give. That’s better than most of us ever manage.
Hm? How so?
Well, I’m in the middle of stuff, and can’t do anything long right now, but I’ll get back to you on that later this morning. Meanwhile, a quotation from Thomas Jefferson for the OP on the race war fear:
I’m guessing she means the compromise at the constitutional convention that said no talk of abolishing the slave trade for twenty years. Virginia’s leaders (and I think Maryland’s) thought and hoped that slavery would become less vital. Northern states thought it should be immediately gone; deeper south states defended it as “biblical” (the more things change…). So, in effect, Virginia’s view kind of “won” - except that in 1817 the problem hadn’t gotten easier to deal with - slavery was even more entrenched.
“How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?”
Samuel Johnson.
Jefferson was one of the chief yelpers.
“I am an aristocrat. I love liberty, I hate equality.”
[url=]-- John Randolph of Roanoke
Sigh. Jefferson didn’t just ‘yelp’–he consistently worked towards a future abolition of slavery, as far as his situtation allowed him to do.
1769-- TJ, age 26, seconds a motion in the Virginia House to allow slaveowners to free their slaves unilaterally. (Defeated)
1776–In the first draft of the Declaration, he criticizes King George III for slavery and for over-riding the Virginia colony’s attempt to ban slavery (Georgia tried too, and was also overruled). The language is removed under pressure from other Southern representatives.
1776–For the new state constitution of Virginia, he includes a clause prohibiting importation of slaves. (Defeated)
1783–In a draft for a new Virginia constitution, he includes a proposal for the gradual emancipation of slaves. (Defeated)
1784–He proposes a law declaring slavery illegal in all western territories–which would have kept Alabama and Mississippi slave-free. The bill loses by one vote–one legislator is too sick to attend.
As President, Jefferson urged Congress to ban the slave trade (which they had been authorized to do), which they did.
I am a fan of Samuel Johnson, but on the subject of American politics he was clueless.
As has ben said, they all had their flaws. But I’m surprised that no one has brought up Jefferson’s action as VP. His actions working against the President, and using the journalist Calendar against Hamilton were despicable. Maybe even treasonous.
He also avoided much of the activity going into building a new nation, preferring to spend extended periods in his beloved Virginia.
Still, the way he expressed natural law theory in the D of I is a big plus.
I chalk the salvery issue up to a man in his time. Adams had the moral high ground on the issue. But who knows if he had lived in a society where the good life he was living in Braintree was due to slavery.
BrainGlutton, it turns out that most of my information on how the founders tried to set up a government that would allow the future abolition of slavery came from a book from the library. So I’m just going to have to go from memory, and I can’t say that I’m all that good at American history.
Anyway, my impression was that they couldn’t hope to abolish slavery right off. First, there was the race war fear and the question of what to do with all the freed slaves, who were largely unequipped to live independently. And in any case, the Southern colonies would not go along with any scheme that abolished slavery, and unity was necessary. If abolition was insisted upon, then it would result in a split nation right from the start–and no hope of abolition in the isolated Southern states anyway.
So people like Washington, Jefferson, and Madison saw slavery as something that would have to be put up with for some time, because of the fear of worse evils. But even so, it couldn’t be tolerated forever.
Part of their efforts was the famous 3/5 clause–not an indicator of the percieved value of slaves, but a political move to lessen the legislative power of the pro-slavery Southerners. The South wanted to eat its cake and have it too, by counting non-voting slaves as people–which would give them more power in the legislature. The Northeners’ attitude was “If they’re people, free them and give them the vote. You say they’re chattel, and in that case you can’t count them as population.” So they had to compromise with the 3/5 thing. In the long term, this gave the South less power than it would otherwise have had.
I can’t remember any more, sorry. I may be misremembering entirely, but that’s the impression I’ve had.
They didn’t figure on Eli Whitney!