Featuring: Larry Kenneth Alexander
Transcript:
We gather here today to confront the enduring legacy of one of the darkest stains on our nation’s history. It is a legacy that Thomas Jefferson himself, a slaveholder, the author of our Declaration of Independence, and a man of complex contradictions, recognized as corrosive to the soul of this nation. In his writings, Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), Jefferson warned of the moral and societal degradation wrought by the institution of slavery. Jefferson’s views on slavery were grounded in the law. As a professional lawyer in 1774, he published a summary view of the rights of British America, complaining that Parliament’s exercise of its supreme lawmaking power undermined colonial America’s autonomy. He referred to the American Colonies Act of 1766, which abolished colonial laws denying or questioning parliamentary sovereignty. He then admitted in the Declaration of Independence that slave codes and Negro laws, coined as “most valuable laws,” were abolished by British legislative acts. Further, the Treaty of Paris of 1783, which Congress ratified, freed all British subjects in America, making it clear that the 500,000 Black colonials—free British subjects—should have been set at liberty under the rule of law.
Yet Jefferson’s insights went beyond legal arguments. He feared the cultural and moral corruption that slavery would inflict upon both the enslaved and the enslavers. He wrote, “There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this and learn to imitate it, for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave, he is learning to do what he sees others do. If a parent could find no motive, either in his philanthropy or his self-love, for restraining the intemperance of passion towards his slave, it should always be a sufficient one that his child is present. But generally, it is not sufficient.”
Jefferson feared that the cycle of moral corruption created by slavery would perpetuate itself through generations. He lamented, “The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to his worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it, with odious peculiarities.” These words lay bare Jefferson’s profound understanding of the intergenerational damage wrought by slavery. He recognized that it was not only the enslaved who suffered under this cruel institution, but also the enslavers, whose moral compass and character were eroded by the unchecked exercise of tyranny.
Jefferson’s fears extended beyond the personal to the national. He expressed a deep and trembling concern for the consequences of slavery on the future of the nation, writing, “Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever. The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest.” These words are a stark reminder that Jefferson, despite his participation in the institution of slavery, recognized its inherent evil and the peril it posed to the nation’s soul. He lamented to his dying day that Congress had mangled the Declaration of Independence, failing to address the fundamental contradiction of a nation proclaiming liberty while perpetuating slavery.
Let us not tremble in fear but rise in determination, knowing that we can right the wrongs of our past and forge a future worthy of our highest aspirations. Please share and visit our website at Wells Center on American Exceptionalism and look for future videos in this series.