Throughout Thomas Jefferson’s life, he advocated that freedom was a natural given right of mankind, but yet he was one of the largest slave owners in Virginia. In many aspects of Jefferson’s life he did do things to help the overall bettering of our great nation, slavery was not one of those things. Through the eyes of Thomas Jefferson emancipating slavery was not something to be done in his lifetime, but for that of someone else’s.
Thomas Jefferson once said, “No defender of slavery, I concede that it has its benevolent aspects in lifting the Negro from savagery and helping prepare him for that eventual freedom which is surely written in the Book of Fate”. Not condoning the acts of slavery, but also not belittling it. Most people would say that in the way of slavery, Thomas Jefferson was a hypocrite, and those people would be correct. Thomas Jefferson preached for freedom, even stating in the United States Constitution that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Which is one of the most well known quotes from the constitution, and the constitution is the foundation on which our country was founded on. So how could the author of those lines have been such a hypocrite? One of the largest slave holders in Virginia, Jefferson took full advantage of slavery, the exact opposite of what he preached. In 1784 Jefferson said this about slavery, “That after the year 1800 of the Christian era, there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said states”, explaining that slavery would be an issue for someone else to fix, not him.
Jefferson may have defended the fact that he owned slaves by the fact that he treated his slaves better than most other slave owners did, considering the time period and where he lived. Though that still is not an excuse, owning slaves, no matter how they are treated is still taking all freedom away from that person. Although Jefferson may have treated his slaves “nicely” for the time, allowing some to live in dwellings, and giving them slight amounts of freedom during times when he was away, like letting them work for profit. He also would have considered the fact that he allowed certain slaves to master different skills, including cooking, nail making, blacksmithing, and sewing. No matter which way you look at how Jefferson interacted with his slaves, it doesn’t change the fact hat he still was a slave owner, and no matter how many mediocre “freedoms” they were given will change that. Jefferson also claimed that slaves would not know what to do with freedom if they were given it, and in 1789 he said this about it, “As far as I can judge from the experiments which have been made, to give liberty to, or rather, to abandon persons whose habits have been formed in slavery is like abandoning children.”
In 1770 Jefferson said "Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the author of nature, because necessary for his own sustenance." The statement Jefferson gave is a complete contradiction to what the basis of slavery is. Jefferson may have said that “all men were born free” but what he believed is that all white men were born free. In his life time, he made few, if any attempts to stop slavery. No one knows if Thomas Jefferson endorsing the emancipation of slavery would have done anything, but we do know that it wouldn’t have hurt the cause. I think he just did not want slavery to be abolished, not blaming it on his time period he lived in. He and everyone around him used slavery too much.
Overall Jefferson’s statements about the freedom of mankind, and “all men are created equal” don’t match up to the actions that Jefferson did. He claimed that he didn’t support slavery, but was one of the biggest slave owners in Virginia. Even when Jefferson died he did not free all of his slaves, proving once and for all that did in fact actually support slavery, not oppose it.
Works Cited:
http://thinkexist.com/quotations/slavery/4.html
http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/quotations-slavery-and-emancipation
Works Cited:
http://thinkexist.com/quotations/slavery/4.html
http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/quotations-slavery-and-emancipation
Strong thesis and strong conclusion! You use effective support as well, with pertinent quotes and facts. Nice photo, word count, and use of language throughout. Good citation as well. Well done!
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