A Great but Flawed Man, August 6, 2006

Conor Cruise O'Brien has here given us an extremely interesting, if troubling, book on Jefferson's views on the French Revolution and slavery. In a nutshell, O'Brien has two charges against Jefferson to bring: first, he believes that Jefferson's support of the French Revolution was for the most part sincere, but convenient. Secondly, and most provocatively, O'Brien not only argues that our third president was a racist, not merely when judged by exacting late Twentieth Century standards, but when judged by Eighteenth Century Virginian standards. And that when white extremists claim to be his genuine heirs, they are not entirely wrong! An extraordinary charge, given the general view of Jefferson as the most 'liberal' and progressive of the Founders. A charge to which we will return momentarily.

But first, Mr. O'Brien's discussion of Jefferson and the French Revolution runs something like this: Slaveholders of the American South were being attacked and ridiculed, not only by their rivals in the northern states but by the French and English, for their hypocrisy. It was this combination of embarrassment about slavery and political struggle with the Federalists that led Jefferson and most of the South to answer their enemies by the amazing stratagem of virtually unconditional support of the French Revolution.

I say amazing, though ingenious comes to mind, because at first blush it would seem that support of the French Revolution would mean support of her humanitarian principles. But Jefferson, the South, and the Republicans needed political support from voters in the North, they needed a unifying theme to counterbalance the particularism and divisiveness of slavery. Their policy of fervent public support for the French Revolution did that very well indeed. Jefferson's party was to successively place three men, himself, Madison and Monroe, in the presidency in the first two decades of the nineteenth century.

But I honestly find the whole discussion of Jefferson's maneuvers, and O'Briens purported shock at them, disingenuous and unconvincing. Imagine! Politicians playing at Politics!!! If anything, we end up impressed by the political acumen of Jefferson and the Republicans. Not only did they make so many people forget that so many of their leaders were slaveowning patricians, but they were able to saddle the Federalists, within a generation of the Revolutionary War, with the defense of the hated British Empire! What I did find deeply disturbing, however, was O'Briens discussion of Jefferson's views of slavery.

What O'Brien tries to show, and I think very much succeeds in showing is, first, that Jefferson's reputation as the outstanding liberal of his generation is sentimental nonsense. Not only did he never seriously consider any practical way of ending the slave/plantation system, but he was among its most ardent defenders. In his beloved Virginia, around the time of his Declaration, he was a member of a committee chosen to revise, modernize and codify the statutes of Virginia, including laws dealing with slaves. Among the enlightened additions to the law that came out of this committee were that no free blacks would be allowed to emigrate into Virginia, though God only knows why they would want to, and any white woman having a child of a black man would have to leave the state! Thus spoke the author of the Declaration of Independence.

Later, during a slave revolt in the French colony Saint Dominique (Haiti), Jefferson behaved in an equally abominable fashion. He sweats blood over the sufferings of the former masters, gone into penurious exile, "Never was so deep a tragedy presented to the feelings of man"! But as to the recently self-emancipated slaves, our third president advises the French, in the person of Louis A. Pichon (the Charge d' Affairs) to reduce Toussaint [the Haitian leader] to starvation after making peace, and in collusion, with England! In other words, Jefferson advises France to abandon the Revolution and Revolutionary Principles because there are free black in the Caribbean! During his second administration, after the failure of the French to retake the island, he imposed an embargo on the Haitians...

Jeffersonians are forever drawing our attention to the words, the magnificent words, on the Jefferson Memorial: "Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever. Commerce between master and slave is despotism. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free." But O'Brien wonders, as do we, about the words that follow those quoted above. Can the man who, in his Autobiography, wrote "Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Native habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them", still be an unquestionable monument in our multi-cultural society?

Why this spiteful, evil, resentful hatred of the slaves (indeed, all black people) who toiled so endlessly for him? Those of us alive today in the United States have little understanding of slavery, having never lived under it, whether as masters or slaves. Perhaps if we were to compare modern slavery with ancient slavery we could shed some more light on the institution of slavery.

Jefferson, Virginians, and other modern slaveowners, were mightily given over to the conceit of comparing themselves to ancient slaveholders. After all, if such paragons of virtue and principle like Brutus and Cato could own slaves, what could be essentially wrong with the "peculiar institution"? This argument is, to be honest, idiotic. Just because Cato is politically incorruptible, an icon (in his own time!) in the resistance to Caesar, does not mean that everything he does is magnificent or beyond reproach. If this were so he would have been able to put together a coalition to thwart Caesar long before Caesar crossed the Rubicon.

The comparison of ancient and modern slavery, however, is interesting. Is there anything that sets them apart? Why did (some) slaves in antiquity rise to such 'recognized' preeminence in science, humanities, or the arts, while this was so rare, as to be nonexistent, in Jefferson's Virginia, the rest of the American South, or, to a lesser extent, Brazil and Haiti? Jefferson himself observes that some ancient slaves excelled in science, insomuch as to be usually employed as tutors to their masters' children. Characteristically, he points out that these slaves, of the Greeks and Romans, "were of the race of whites." Thus it would seem that it is the psuedo-scientific notion of race is what separates ancient and modern forms of slavery. Unfortunately, in the limited space that Amazon allows, this topic must await another review.

In closing I want to say that I don't believe that Jefferson was a premature Nazi, and neither does Mr. O'Brien. But Jefferson's speculations and his actions have given credence to lunatics like Timothy McVeigh claiming our Third President as their hero. These facts should lead us not to the contemptuous dismissal of Jefferson, which is what he did to black people, but rather admiration for what was genuinely admirable in the man, and contempt for what was contemptible. ( )