Featuring: Larry Kenneth Alexander
Transcript:
Thomas Jefferson, the primary author of the Declaration of Independence and a slaveholder, grappled with the profound contradictions of slavery in the emerging American republic. In July 1776, Jefferson urged the First Continental Congress to break decisively from English legal traditions, advocating instead for the adoption of Roman law. He believed English law posed a threat to slavery, as it could challenge the legal foundation of colonial slave codes. However, his efforts failed, and Congress, along with the legislatures of the 13 states, formally adopted English common law as the foundation of American jurisprudence. This decision, coupled with edits to the Declaration of Independence, deeply frustrated Jefferson, who lamented throughout his life that the Founding Fathers had “mangled” the document he authored.
In his later writings, particularly Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), Jefferson expressed his belief that slavery corrupted both the enslaved and the enslavers. He acknowledged that colonial slavery had dubious legal origins, noting that Parliament had abolished colonial slave codes and Negro laws—a grievance reflected in the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson believed that, under English law and international norms, the 500,000 enslaved Black individuals in the colonies were legally free British subjects entitled to liberty. This was further underscored by the Treaty of Paris (1783), in which the United States agreed to free all British subjects. Jefferson argued that Congress’s failure to grant legal due process to Black individuals was both a moral and legal failure, setting a dangerous precedent with intergenerational consequences for the nation’s character.
Jefferson’s reflections reveal his deep concern about slavery’s impact on American society. In Notes on the State of Virginia, he wrote, “There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us.” He feared that the culture of slavery would perpetuate a cycle of moral corruption, particularly among future generations, observing, “The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath… and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities.”
Despite recognizing slavery’s corrosive effects on individuals and society, Jefferson’s own complicity underscored the contradictions and moral failures of the era. These contradictions left an enduring legacy of inequality and injustice. As Jefferson famously wrote, “Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever.”
The unhappy influence of slavery shaped the moral and political fabric of the young nation, leaving behind unresolved tensions that continue to echo in America’s quest for equality and justice.
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