Will Wilkinson rails against relativistic defense of Thomas Jefferson's slaveholding that posit that it was somehow okay to be a slaveholder in the late eighteenth century because a lot of other people were doing it too:
Now it seems to me that you actually do want to incorporate a slightly relativistic approach to evaluating people. If you compare a dictator like Francisco Franco to a dictator like Charles V, I think it's got to be relevant that in Franco's time there was a viable and well-known alternative to dictatorship. As soon as Franco passed from the scene, a morally responsible leader like King Juan Carlos was able to shift the country to democracy rather than simply try to rule as a good dictator. But to blame the sixteenth century heir to a multinational empire for not embracing fundamental liberal political reforms seems silly as such reforms just weren't part of the consciousness of the time -- it wasn't within the realm of the possible.
Somewhat similarly, when you look back at the record of Abraham Lincoln he said and believed a lot of stuff that would count as unforgivably racist were you to say or believe it today. But he lived in the middle of the nineteenth century and his views were clearly progressive ones relative to the times in which he lived as reflected in the fact that his policies were a boon to African-Americans even though the underlying sentiments didn't always reach the standards of contemporary egalitarianism.
But this, to me, is really where Jefferson starts to look terrible. The idea that chattel slavery was morally wrong was in wide circulation in Jefferson's time. Outside of the southern states, it was conventional wisdom that this was a bad institution. And Jefferson was not only aware of the view that slavery was bad, he appears to have found the evidence convincing. But he was too selfish, personally, to make the sacrifices that would have been involved in freeing his slaves and he was unwilling to take any meaningful political risks on behalf of the anti-slavery cause.
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Heads in the Sand
I tend to think Thomas Jefferson truly believed that the Union would collapse if the worthiness of slavery came to dominate American political discourse. And I'm certainly no staunch defender of the man or the president (particularly his second term). I also think his views, upon reflection in Virginia near the end of his life, had evolved from his 1801-09 term. Yet, above all else, Jefferson possessed a lifelong weakness for understanding matters in concrete terms (with few exceptions: e.g., opposition to the Federalist Party, post-1798) as opposed to the abstract. He was a man of ideas, but, in part due to his mediocre rhetorical abilities, relied heavily upon his surrogates, especially James Madison, to enact his agenda.
Jefferson also wished to remain popular among the masses, whatever he thought of their collective or individual intellect, and thus he chose to avoid the subject. Most importantly, the anti-slavery movement barely registered during his presidency and for a long time after, save for discussions about returning slaves to Africa, etc. Besides, he considered the eviction of Federalist judges from the bench something of a higher priority.
Lastly, it is worthy to note that Jefferson died in 1826, only six years after the Missouri Compromise, and still five years before Nathaniel Turner ushered in his "fires of jubilee," and even longer before the US Congress imposed a gag order on slavery. It remains an open question if he would have adopted the "slavery as a positive good" ideology that came to describe increasingly paranoid southern politicians in the 1840s, rather than the "necessary evil" of earlier times.
Posted by M. E. G. | June 1, 2008 3:06 PM