Jefferson's Plagiarism : Slavery in the Land of the Free

“Slavery is so vile and miserable an estate of man...”

-John Locke, Two Treatises of Government

Locke's TwoTreatises of Government

“[Slavery is a] slow Poison, which is daily contaminating the Minds & Morals of our People.” 

–George Mason 

George Mason's Views on Slavery

Thomas Jefferson based the framework of the Declaration of Independence on the ideologies and writings of John Locke and George Mason.  Particularly, Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights.  Jefferson proclaims in his writing that “all men are created equal,” and that these men, who are equal, “are endowed… with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  We must then ask the question, why was slavery permitted to exist in the United States after the Revolutionary War and the signing of the Declaration of Independence?

Today, mainstream media’s breaking news includes alleged plagiarisms by Melania Trump, sparking adversarial news outlets to point out alleged plagiarisms by President Obama and Hillary Clinton.  One can only imagine what mainstream media would have thought about Thomas Jefferson and the Second Continental Congress’s Declaration of Independence.  Would they be outraged? Impressed? Moved? Disgusted?  I guess that would assume on the political opinions of Jefferson, in general, and what news broadcast is on the T.V.

Anatole France would be completely fine with Trump and Obama's alleged plagiarism, and also Jefferson's.  The French journalist and poet, France, said that “when a thing has been said and said well, have no scruple.  Take it and copy it." [1]  Jefferson, suffering an illness, was put in charge of authoring the Declaration, and heeded to France's advice.  The language that Jefferson uses in the Declaration are clearly derived, borrowed, plagiarized, or whatever you feel necessary to describe it as, from Mason's May 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights.  

Ben Franklin and John Adams pushed Jefferson into authorship of the document.  Pauline Maier points out that Franklin’s fit of gout and Jefferson’s Virginian status gave great political advantages to the process; expanding support for independence to the agricultural south.[2]  The support in Virginia was already gaining strength.  In June of 1776, Prince William County Baptists petitioned on the grounds of “contending for the civil rights & liberties of mankind against the enslaving scheme of a powerful enemy.”[3] Another, more intriguing, reason for Jefferson’s selection was due to what Maier refers to as the “obnoxiousness” of John Adams.[4]  

Jefferson owned over 150 slaves when writing the Declaration.  He also fathered at least one child with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, according to DNA evidence released in 1998.[5]  This makes Jefferson an interesting selection as an author.  Although a slave-owner, Jefferson “revealed an almost instinctive dislike of slavery.”[6]  Further, Jefferson would have preferred to be in Virginia, assisting in drafting their state constitution “with an explicit provision” for gradual abolition rather than writing the Declaration of Independence.[7]  Virginia’s Declaration of Rights, written by George Mason in May of 1776, laid the framework to key language used by Jefferson.  Primarily, Mason's concept that “all men are born equally free… and have certain… natural rights… of Life and Liberty… Property…and obtaining Happiness.”[8]  Jefferson was not given the opportunity to go to Virginia, instead his language in the Declaration “delivered a deathblow to American slavery” in the future.[9]  Maier explains that Jefferson’s language in the Declaration made it easy for abolitionist advocates to argue that all men were in fact, equal.[10]  This would not take place in the immediate future, as Jefferson and many founding fathers wanted a slow, gradual abolition of slavery in the country, yet it would take over half a century and hundreds of thousands to die for slavery to meet its end.

Portion of Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776)

Now, to the important question.  Why did a nation based on the elements of equality, liberty, and freedom not abolish the slave trade or institution of slavery at its inception?  Evidence suggests the social and economic importance of slavery outweighed the urge and moral right to abolish the institution.

Economics:

You do not need an economics chart to understand that slave labor will increase the profit margin.

After the Seven Years’ War, the British found themselves in economic distress; the Americans after the Revolutionary War were not immune from the same problem.  A nation, especially a new nation, must be economically stable to rise to the status of a world power.  An English Economist surmised that “the Negroe-trade…may justly be termed an inexhaustible fund of wealth… to this [American] nation.”[11]  The slave trade provided free labor in an environment that needed men.  The typical colonial family was large, not due to a want of a large family, rather a want of more hands to help operate the daily needs of a farm.  Slavery was free labor for a population where “most of the inhabitants of every colony made their living from the soil.”[12]  

Slavery itself could be turned as a profit for slave owners.  A slave owner could purchase a slave for a one-time payment.  That payment could turn into decades of slave labor and/or the birth of more slaves (which could be sold).  The initial investment could be paid off rather quickly and the profit margin for the slave owner would be rather significant.  The basic diagnosis is that slaves were not treated or seen as humans, but property.  Take a runaway ad from Thomas Jefferson himself, as summation of the mentality towards slaves.

The Virginia Gazette, Williamsburg,  September 14th, 1769

                                "When drunk is insolent and disorderly..."  Shocking!

Basically, there was a significant profit made by wealthy, powerful Americans through the institution of slavery.  The Americans put themselves into a difficult position after their gained independence.  It was the perfect storm to accumulate debt and create a display of vulnerability to foreign powers.  Congress passed the Articles of Confederations in 1781 as the governing document of the country.  Often overlooked in history, the Articles (in effective for almost a decade) were a 180 degree turn from monarchical government that the Americans fought to free themselves.  One important weakness of the Articles was the inability of the National Government to collect taxes.  This is where the perfect storm begins.  The British, after the Seven Years’ War, initiated a system of taxes and acts to sway their national debt accrued from the war.  The Americans did not have the ability to collect a tax.  Worst yet, there was no executive (President) or national courts (Judicial Branch) to enforce the collection of taxes.  No ability to collect taxes, no one to enforce the collection of taxes, and the economic instability of the United States would make them vulnerable to foreign countries.  Their only consistent and significant economic aspect was slavery, which fueled the economic growth the country. 

Detailed Weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation

Social:

Slave Inspection
Library of Congress

Thomas Fleming explains that “few people criticized or objected to slavery… one of the world’s oldest social institutions.”[13]  In fact, to validate slavery, differences between whites and blacks spread throughout.  Ira Berlin surmises attempts by “racialist scientists” to identify physical and psychological differences between whites and blacks.  These scientists would go as far to argue that “black people were a separate species”, which lends credence to the concept of slaves being property. [14]  Although Jefferson may have been an opponent of slavery, the social impact of slavery did not prevent him from owning slaves and offering rewards for their return.[15]  This attitude towards the black race is evidenced further in John Saffin’s 1701 poem, The Negroes Character, in which he describes the character of an African slave as “cowardly and cruel…prone to revenge… [having] Mischief and Murder in their very eyes…libidinous, deceitful, false, and rude…”[16]  The reputation that was put on slaves did not differ greatly from the reputation the English put on the colonists.  Referring to them as quarrelsome, divisive, and in general rude.  The comparison is the attachment and reliance the colonists had on the English was the same that the slaves had on the Americans; this social bond was difficult to break asunder.

The American population reflected a social bond with slavery.  Dr. Peter Van Cleave, Professor of History at Arizona State University, identifies a social hierarchy that comes with independence, and that is dependency.  Dr. Van Cleave surmises that the white “ownership of enslaved peoples, in their minds, makes them independent.”[17]  The dependency of slaves on the white population was significant in the Revolutionary Era.  Slaves made up 41% of Virginia’s population, 34% of North Carolina, 53% of South Carolina, and 37% of Georgia.[18]  This created a reliance on slavery to confirm independence.  The following chart shows the attachment to slavery in each state's written validation to secede during the Civil War era.  Slavery or a State's right to own slaves is the most important topics of the South.

Courtesy of: The Civil War Trust
www.civilwar.org

Abolitionist Movements:

                We will see the creation of a divide, both culturally and geographically, which widens to the tipping point of Civil War after the Revolutionary War.  The North, will become industrially-focused and lead toward complete abolition.  Upon independence, states in the North tended to prohibit the slave trade and then follow-up with the complete elimination of slavery.

Ira Berlin: Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves, Cambridge, London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003.

As the chart shows, there was a consistent and significant drop in the amount of slaves in the Northern states after the Revolutionary War.

                The South, kept with the way of using the land as a means of economic success.  Agriculture was the backbone of the South, and slavery thrived in the Southern states.  This reliance on slavery for economic subsistence was deep-seated in the culture of Southern states.  The attachment to slavery, the growth of land ownership, Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase that doubled the size of the United States, and the world's need for cotton exploded the overall population of slaves in the United States.  This growth in the slave population came even as the North gradually abolished the institution.

This growth not only goes against the general understanding of slave mortality rates, but it shows the South's attachment to and importance to the Southern culture and its economics.

          Although the Declaration did not directly address slavery, to Jefferson's disappointment, the Continental Congress had already prohibited the slave trade in 1774.  Connecticut, Delaware, Virginia, Maryland, and both North/South Carolina accepted laws that would either forbid or discourage any importing of slaves (This said nothing of breeding).  And, the decision to stop the slave trade did very little in limiting the amount of slaves in the United States. 

*Only 6% of worldwide importation of slaves came to the United States.

This shows the value of slave breeding to the institution in America.

Petitions to Congress for Abolition of Slavery:

• The 1783 Quaker Anti-Slavery Petition: Cited the Declaration of Independence in formally making the slave trade illegal.
  1783 Quaker Anti-Slavery Petition
• The Petition from the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery (1790): More formal than the Quaker Petition, yet was buried in committee.
  Petition from Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery

The Missing Grievance: 

          Thomas Jefferson did make an attempt to address slavery in his original draft to Congress.  In Jefferson's original draft, he accuses that:

King George II

"He [King George III] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere of to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.  This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain.  Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce.  And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another." 

Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Being his Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and other Writings, Official and Private (Washington, D.C.: Taylor & Maury, 1853-1854). 
This grievance, which blames King George III for the institution of slavery, was completely eliminated from the final draft of the Declaration of Independence.  The leaders for its deletion?  Delegates from South Carolina and Georgia, states which held slavery as a social and economic necessity.

Now, the question at hand is why did a new nation, founding itself on the principles of abolitionist advocates and using terms such as equality, liberty, freedom and natural rights permit the institution of slavery to exist?  Evidence suggests that it was an economic and social necessity to validate their independence and provide some semblance of economic stability to a new, vulnerable nation.

It is no surprise that slavery was a hot-button issue in the debates leading to the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution.  But, why was such an understood evil, allowed to exist in a nation built on freedom?  

Now, it's your turn!  Tell us what you think?

-Why did slavery exist in the United States after the Revolution?

-What made slavery such an economic necessity in the South?

-Why is slavery a difficult topic to discuss in American history?

Post your thoughts?!  Let's Hash Out History!

Some other interesting resources, check them out:

History Channel: Slavery

Smithsonian: Founding Father and Slavery

Slavery Myths Debunked

Was your favorite founding father a slave owner?

Preserve Revolutionary History with the Civil War Trust

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[1] Anatole France Himself: A Boswellian Record by His Secretary, Jean-Jacques Brousson (1925), trans. John Pollock (Read Books, 2007), p. 56. 

[2] Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (New York: Vintage Books, 1997),, 101.

[3] “Petition of the Baptists of Prince William County, Virginia, June 1776,” accessed July 15, 2016. http://www.smithsoniansource.org/display/primarysource/viewdetails.aspx?PrimarySourceId=1012.

[4] Maier, Scripture, 101.

[5] Lois E. Horton, “Avoiding History: Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and the Uncomfortable Public Conversation on Slavery,” in Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory, ed. James O. Horton and Lois E. Horton. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 139.

[6] Thomas J. Fleming, A Disease in the Public Mind: A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War (New York, NY: Da Capo Press, 2013), 29.

[7] Ibid

[8] George Mason, Virginia Declaration of Rights, 1776.

[9] Fleming, Disease, 30.

[10] Maier, Scripture, 197.

[11] David B. Davis, Inhuman Bondage:  The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World (New York: 2006), 80.

[12] Edmund Morgan, The Birth of the Republic 1763-89 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 7.

[13] Fleming, Disease, 15.

[14] Ira Berlin, “Coming to Terms with Slavery in Twenty-First-Century America,” in Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory, ed. James O. Horton and Lois F. Horton (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 16.

[15] Thomas Jefferson, The Virginia Gazette, September 14, 1769.

[16] Fleming, Disease, 18.

[17] Dr. Peter Van Cleave, “The Many Faces of Revolution” (Lecture presented in History Course, HST 406: American Revolution, Arizona State University. Summer Session B 2016).

[18] Morgan, Republic, 96.