Thomas Jefferson and Haitian Emigration - Notes On The State of Virginia

Notes On The State of Virginia

In 1780, Jefferson began answering questions on the colonies asked by French minister François de Marboias. He worked on what became a book for five years, having it printed in France while he was there as U.S. minister in 1785. The book covered subjects such as mountains, religion, climate, slavery, and race. Jefferson discussed his idea of emancipation and blacks. Jefferson wanted a gradual emancipation of freed blacks and deportation to Africa, followed by replacement with white settlers.

In the book Jefferson wrote against the ideas of French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc Comte de Buffon who held that "adverse environmental conditions...affected human beings and animals alike" such as an "assumption that colder climates produce smaller animals" and "nature in America reduces native people to little more than animals and subdues the faculties of European settlers.... associated a supposedly weak libido among American Indians with their ostensible lack of social and cultural achievements." Jefferson cited Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and David Rittenhouse to refute the idea that the climate had stunted the intellect of those of European ancestry. He then rose to the defense of the American Indian in his refutation of Buffon's logic (holding any issues of fertility were due to food shortages and war; and quoting Cayuga Chief Logan's speech about the murder of his family as proof that they were quite capable of eloquence and sentiment). Yet when it came to his thinking on Blacks Jefferson adapted a version of Buffon's thought "by arguing for a connection between what he deemed the negligible intellectual achievement of blacks, their underdeveloped morality, and their inferior beauty. All differences between races, Jefferson asserts are found in nature" thereby dismissing objections that they are a societal construct or a matter of circumstances. Jefferson wrote "The blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distant by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments of both body and mind."

Jefferson wrote that a more visible blush response displayed by Cacausians proved their superiority, writing "Whether the black of the negro resides in the reticular membrane between the skin and scarf-skin, or in the scarf-skin itself; whether it proceeds from the colour of the blood, the colour of the bile, or from that of some other secretion, the difference is fixed in nature, and is as real as if its seat and cause were better known to us. And is this difference of no importance?...Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expressions of every passion by greater or less suffusions of colour in the one, preferable to the eternal monotony, which reigns in the conuntenances, that immoveable veil of black which covers all the emotions of the other race? Add to these, flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form, their own judgment in favour of the whites, declared by their preference of them, as uniformly as is the preference of the Oran-ootan for the black women over those of his own species. The circumstance of superior beauty, is thought worthy attention in the propagation of our horses, dogs, and other domestic animals; why not in that of man?" (Scholar Fawn M. Brodie explains Jefferson's reference to an orangutan stems from confusion at the time "over precisely what an orangutan was: A creature of mythology, a 'man of the woods' but of another species, or a primate yet to be captured and examined.")

This idea about "fixed nature" was Jefferson's rationalized justification for the racial caste of slavery. He made no concessions to the effects of slavery on behavior holding that differences were innate by nature, writing "Besides those of colour, figure, and hair, there are other physical distinctions proving a difference of race. They have less hair on the face and body. They secrete less by the kidnies, and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odour. This greater degree of transpiration renders them more tolerant of heat, and less so of cold, than the whites. Perhaps too a difference of structure in the pulmonary apparatus, which a late ingenious experimentalist has discovered to be the principal regulator of animal heat, may have disabled them from extricating, in the act of inspiration, so much of that fluid from the outer air, or obliged them in expiration, to part with more of it. They seem to require less sleep. A black, after hard labour through the day, will be induced by the slightest amusements to sit up till midnight, or later, though knowing he must be out with the first dawn of the morning. They are at least as brave, and more adventuresome. But this may perhaps proceed from a want of forethought, which prevents their seeing a danger till it be present. When present, they do not go through it with more coolness or steadiness than the whites. They are more ardent after their female: but love seems with them to be more an eager desire, than a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation. Their griefs are transient. Those numberless afflictions, which render it doubtful whether heaven has given life to us in mercy or in wrath, are less felt, and sooner forgotten with them. In general, their existence appears to participate more of sensation than reflection. To this must be ascribed their disposition to sleep when abstracted from their diversions, and unemployed in labour. An animal whose body is at rest, and who does not reflect, must be disposed to sleep of course. Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me, that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous." Scholar Norm Ledgin points out that it appears Jefferson, having seized upon a notion is mentally compelled to reinforce it, not able to see that it puts his logic at risk for Jefferson makes an apparent self-contradiction between the claim blacks "require less sleep" while also claiming they have a "disposition to sleep."

Jefferson unaware of the advanced cultures of African empires and kingdoms in pre-colonial Africa held that one should not judge blacks by their presumably primitive conditions in Africa, but only in their present state where they had been exposed to the influence of Whites. Here he compared them to American Indians and declared them wanting again, "It would be unfair to follow them to Africa for this investigation. We will consider them here, on the same stage with the whites...many have been so situated, that they might have availed themselves of the conversation of their masters; many have been brought up to the handicraft arts, and from that circumstance have always been associated with the whites. Some have been liberally educated, and all have lived in countries where the arts and sciences are cultivated to a considerable degree, and have had before their eyes samples of the best works from abroad. The Indians, with no advantages of this kind, will often carve figures on their pipes not destitute of design and merit. They will crayon out an animal, a plant, or a country, so as to prove the existence of a germ in their minds which only wants cultivation. They astonish you with strokes of the most sublime oratory; such as prove their reason and sentiment strong, their imagination glowing and elevated. But never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never see even an elementary trait of painting or sculpture." Jefferson expounded from this saying "The improvement of the blacks in body and mind, in the first instance of their mixture with the whites, has been observed by everyone, and proves that their inferiority is not the effect merely of their condition of life. ..among the Romans, their slaves were often their rarest artists. They excelled too in science, insomuch as to be usually employed as tutors to their master's children. Epictetus, Diogenes, Phaedon, Terence, and Phaedrus, were slaves. But they were of the race of whites. It is not their condition then, but nature, which has produced the distinction."

In his book White Over Black scholar Winthrop D. Jordan notes that at the same time that Notes was being published in England in 1787 Sally Hemings was on her way to Paris and speculates that "The fact that further writing did not contain such harsh and inaccurate generalizations about people of color may be credited to his subsequent relationship with Sally".

Scholar David Tucker points out Notes exhibits Jefferson's idea that "based solely on their powers of observation and reasoning men can acquire the knowledge they need to organize and improve their lives." He seeks to base his work on evidence, which leads him (in his discussion about minerals) to dismiss the idea that fossilized shells are a result of the Biblical flood of Noah. He dismisses this and other theories as not "sufficiently founded on the facts" but as products of dogmatic assertion or convention. This philosophy is present "even with regard to the question of the faculties of the slaves" where Jefferson attempts to "avoid mere speculation by being embedded in what he claims are facts. (The prejudice at work in Jefferson's thinking in the case of the slaves is importantly another example off convention interfering with the understanding of nature.)" Ledgin points out that in all the race claims within Notes "Jefferson offered no sign of having made a scientific collection of data to support his generalizations". This was a vast difference from his refutation of Buffon's claim that cold climates could only produce small species where Jefferson had "assembled three tables containing data on the number and weight of quadrupeds in North America and Europe" to "undermine the very 'methodological and philosophical underpinnings of Buffon's argument.'... flaunted long lists of specific measurements... relied on three different sources" for his data. Historian Merrill Peterson states that on the subject of race Notes on the State of Virginia is at odds with Jefferson's own academic standards and contains "opinions that seriously embarrassed his philosophy."

Ledgin points out that Jefferson realizes he is "practicing science poorly in this area". Indeed even in his racial claims Jefferson remains divided; hedging many of his statements. He ascribes characteristics to blacks but with phrases introducing uncertainty "this may perhaps proceed from…" Holding that one cannot expect anyone to behave in a civilized manner when they have no contact with a civilized society and believing Africa was devoid of civilization he insists that it "would be unfair" to take any account of conditions there as demonstrative of their nature. For the same reason he holds that the condition of blacks "confined to tillage, to their own homes, and their own society" cannot be held as evidence of their nature either. Claiming that they have yet to produce great works he still holds out the possibility "…they have been found capable of imagining a small catch. Whether they will be equal to the composition of a more extensive run of melody, or of complicated harmony, is yet to be proved." Jefferson judges black poet Ignatius Sancho the greatest of black poets but inferior to any white one, but points out this would only be the case if certainty could be established that he had not been edited which "would not be of easy investigation." Even in long arguments where black slaves are unfavorably compared to the white slaves of ancient Rome his conclusion admits of uncertainty "Whether further observation will or will not verify the conjecture, that nature has been less bountiful to them in the endowments of the head…" and "the opinion, that they are inferior in the faculties of reason and imagination, must be hazarded with great diffidence. To justify a general conclusion, requires many observations, even where the subject may be submitted to the Anatomical knife, to Optical glasses, to analysis by fire, or by solvents. How much more then where it is a faculty, not a substance, we are examining; where it eludes the research of all the senses; where the conditions of its existence are various and variously combined; where the effects of those which are present or absent bid defiance to calculation; let me add too, as a circumstance of great tenderness, where our conclusion would degrade a whole race of men from the rank in the scale of beings which their Creator may perhaps have given them. To our reproach it must be said, that though for a century and a half we have had under our eyes the races of black and of red men, they have never yet been viewed by us as subjects of natural history. I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind."

The historian Paul Finkelman argues that any concerns Jefferson's expressed about slavery within Notes was for the damage it did to whites and white society, not the damage it did to blacks. This is supported by quotes like "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… thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. ...With the morals of the people, their industry also is destroyed. For in a warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him." Finkelman charges Jefferson feared slaves might successfully rebel and called for free blacks to be deported to prevent whites from losing control of their slaves. This is supported by quotes where Jefferson appears to have sympathy for blacks but concludes their happiness is only possible away from whites who enslaved them, which would make violence impossilbe "For if a slave can have a country in this world, it must be any other in preference to that in which he is born to live and labour for another: in which he must lock up the faculties of his nature, contribute as far as depends on his individual endeavours to the evanishment of the human race, or entail his own miserable condition on the endless generations proceeding from him." Besides fear of violence, another reason that Jefferson held that it was necessary to colonize freed blacks out of the country was to prevent the races from inter-breeding "Many of their advocates, while they wish to vindicate the liberty of human nature, are anxious also to preserve its dignity and beauty....Among the Romans emancipation required but one effort. The slave, when made free, might mix with, without staining the blood of his master. But with us a second is necessary, unknown to history. When freed, he is to be removed beyond the reach of mixture."

In Notes Jeferson dismisses the claim that blacks by nature have a "disposition to theft" and a "depravity of the moral sense." Holding that "The man, in whose favour no laws of property exist, probably feels himself less bound to respect those made in favour of others. When arguing for ourselves, we lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation of right: that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience: and it is a problem which I give to the master to solve, whether the religious precepts against the violation of property were not framed for him as well as his slave? And whether the slave may not as justifiably take a little from one, who has taken all from him, as he may slay one who would slay him? That a change in the relations in which a man is placed should change his ideas of moral right and wrong, is neither new, nor peculiar to the colour of the blacks."

The section about slavery and race in Notes ends with Jefferson's often quoted passage about liberty being secure only if people realize it as "the gift of God". In context the quote is not about the need to encourage religion in the American citizenry, but is actually an expression of fear that a slave rebellion (similar to what would occur in 1791 in the Haitian Revolution) would occur on American soil and the outnumbered southern white slaveholders would face slaughter and enslavement by blacks, an event that even prayer wouldn't stop "And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest." Despite these fears the conflicted slaveholding Jefferson can not see a workable path forward "But it is impossible to be temperate and to pursue this subject through the various considerations of policy, of morals, of history natural and civil. We must be contented to hope they will force their way into every one's mind. I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation."