Stamped from the Beginning

In 1776 the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia writes up the Declaration of Independence. The task of drafting it goes to Thomas Jefferson, who is 33 and a fairly unimportant figure within Congress. Writing against the claim of American inferiority (to Europeans), Jefferson asserts: “all Men are created equal.” No one can say for sure whether Jefferson seeks to include the enslaved in this statement or if the word “created” hints at the still-raging debates over polygenesis. In the same document he rebukes the British for attempting to encourage the enslaved to “rise in arms among us.” Regardless of Jefferson’s intention, however, the assertion that all men are created equal has a powerful impact, helping lead Massachusetts and Vermont to abolish slavery. 

It is impossible to say what Jefferson’s vision of freedom and equality means given that he is actively holding 200 people in bondage when he writes it. When Jefferson demands “freedom” from the English, what he truly seeks is arguably power. While Jefferson is writing, hundreds of thousands of enslaved people are simultaneously asserting their right to freedom, emancipating themselves by fleeing from plantations. Yet these freedom efforts—along with those of women resisting gendered oppression—are systematically dismissed and excluded from the Declaration. 

Crucially, revolutionary American leaders want freedom in the form of a free market—the ability to trade beyond the British Empire (and thus exponentially increase the profits from slavery and the slave trade). Scottish philosopher and economist Adam Smith supports this in his enormously influential The Wealth of Nations. In it, Smith calls Africa “barbarous and uncivilized” and praises the new system of government being developed in America. Following the resolution to declare independence in 1776, Jefferson’s fellow delegates edit the Declaration. A group of Southern representatives remove a reference to slavery as a “cruel war against human nature,” worrying that this will stimulate the abolitionist movement.

After the Declaration of Independence is issued on July 4, 1776, the Revolutionary War ensues. Jefferson and his family leave their main house, Monticello, hiding in another spot on the 10,000 acres of land that surrounds it. During this time Jefferson composes Notes on the State of Virginia, which he doesn’t intend to publish. In it, he reflects on slavery, straddling both anti-slavery and anti-abolitionist as well as racist and anti-racist positions. General George Washington, meanwhile, is more unequivocal in his belief that the time is not right to fight for abolition. He makes the strange argument that anti-Black “prejudice” is decreasing on its own, and that it would be dangerous to launch a “frontal attack” on it via abolition.

In Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson lays out a plan that he will continue to endorse for the rest of his life: Black people in America should be educated, freed, and then sent back to Africa. He emphasizes  Black people’s supposed deficiencies and in doing so becomes “the preeminent American authority on Black intellectual inferiority.” The reality evident on his own plantation is that Black people are just as intelligent and capable as any white person, as demonstrated by the enormous and complex range of skills that enslaved Black people develop during this period. Runaway adverts, including those written by Jefferson himself, frequently mention the “ingenious” cunning and skill of fugitives, yet enslavers do not count this as evidence of Black intellectual capability.

Overall, Notes on the State of Virginia is brimming with paradoxes about Black people: that they are more adventurous and short-sighted than white people, that they have a greater capacity for love but lower sensitivity to pain, and that, bizarrely, they like sleeping more but need to sleep less than their white counterparts. Jefferson also asserts that Native Americans, unlike Black people, are “in body and mind equal to the whiteman.” Kendi suggests that these confused statements are typical of Jefferson’s writing on race, which tends to straddle many different conflicting positions while always ultimately ending up being racist.

In 1782, Jefferson is still recovering from the impact of the Revolutionary War when his wife, Martha, dies. Partly in order to distract himself from the pain of losing her, Jefferson travels to Paris as a diplomat in 1784. He sends word back to Monticello that tobacco production should be ramped up at the same time as he promises abolitionists that he earnestly shares their desire to see an end to slavery. Jefferson sends the still-unpublished Notes on the State of Virginia, and in 1786, a rogue printer publishes a French translation without first alerting him. After this happens, Jefferson signs off on an English translation, which is published in 1787. The book proves enormously popular.

This same year, Samuel Stanhope Smith delivers the annual lecture of the prestigious American Philosophical Society, advocating for climate theory. He argues that “Europeans, and Americans are, the most beautiful people in the world.” Yet moving to a colder climate and assimilating into white civilization can, he argues, erase Black people’s inferiority. Ideas like this translate into a system in which biracial people—whether enslaved or free—tend to be treated better than those of entirely African descent. Some light-skinned Black people respond to this by discriminating against those of darker skin, while others choose to act in solidarity with all other Black people. Smith’s lecture concludes that, on account of climate theory principles, slavery has actually benefited those subjected to its tortures.  

At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, slavery is initially taken off the agenda. However, after some time, delegate James Wilson, a future Supreme Court justice, argues that enslaved Black people should count as 3/5 of a person when it comes to political representation. This “compromise” is virtually unopposed, except for the lone dissenting voice of the abolitionist Eldridge Gerry. The 3/5 solution appeals to both assimilationists—who believe that, with the right efforts, Black people will one day prove worthy of being counted as full persons—and segregationists, who consider the 3/5 designation permanent. All explicit references to slavery are removed from the constitution in order to mask the hypocrisy of the document, centered as it is on freedom.

In the summer of 1787, Jefferson’s daughter Polly and her enslaved maid, 14-year-old Sally Hemings, arrive in Paris. Jefferson, now 44, begins having sex with Hemings, who cannot have had any choice in the matter due to her enslaved status. Throughout his life, Jefferson denounces racial “amalgamation,” keeping this position even after he becomes the father of numerous biracial children with Hemings. Faced with returning to America with Jefferson when she is 16, Hemings attempts to turn to French officials in order to secure her freedom. In response, Jefferson gives her “extraordinary privileges” and promises that their children will all be freed. The two have as many as seven children together and those who survive into adulthood are granted freedom at the point as per Jefferson’s promise.

In 1791, enslaved Africans in Haiti rebel against their enslavers. It is a beginning of a revolution that Jefferson and other enslavers around the world hope the Black rebels will lose, worried that the enslaved in their own countries will be inspired by this tremendous assertion of freedom.