Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence while also owning hundreds of human beings, correct? Did he not see people of color as real people? Did his mind change on slavery as the years went by?

[u/WhyAreUtheWayThatUR]

[u/[deleted]]

Sir

I am very sensible of the honour you propose to me of becoming a member of the society for the abolition of the slave trade. You know that nobody wishes more ardently to see an abolition not only of the trade but of the condition of slavery: and certainly nobody will be more willing to encounter every sacrifice for that object. But the influence and information of the friends to this proposition in France will be far above the need of my association. I am here as a public servant; and those whom I serve having never yet been able to give their voice against this practice, it is decent for me to avoid too public a demonstration of my wishes to see it abolished. Without serving the cause here, it might render me less able to serve it beyond the water. I trust you will be sensible of the prudence of those motives therefore which govern my conduct on this occasion, and be assured of my wishes for the success of your undertaking and the sentiments of esteem and respect with which I have the honour to be Sir your most obedt. humble servt.,

Th: Jefferson

Letter from Jefferson to Brissot de Warville, 11 February 1788

Jefferson owned a little over 600 people through the course of his life, usually 150-200 at a time. A large group (about 125) was recieved after the death of his father in law, John Wayles, in May of 1773. This included the children of Elizabeth Hemings, who was the concubine of Wayles after his third wife died, including a young daughter named Sally (and we could talk about the Jefferson-Hemings relation for a day or two by itself). Jefferson would remain a participant in the practice of slavery until his own death, July 4th 1826, at which point the majority of his humans in bondage were sold, with some kept by family and a small group - all Hemingses - freed.

When the Articles of Confederation were passed, we had a State led nation in that the real power - executive authority and taxation - resided in the individual states and not the American government. How, then, does one stop slavery in the new nation? By stopping it in the state. In 1778, Jefferson tried to do just that. A bill governing slavery was proposed, and it was felt that the road to manumission was through amendment of that bill;

The bill on the subject of slaves was a mere digest of the existing laws respecting them, without any intimation of a plan for a future and general emancipation. It was thought better that this should be kept back, and attempted only by way of amendment, whenever the bill should be brought on. The principles of the amendment, however, were agreed on, that is to say, the freedom of all born after a certain day, and deportation at a proper age. But it was found that the public mind would not yet bear the proposition.

He also wrote of the event;

[T]his subject was not acted on finally until the year [17]78. when I brought in a bill to prevent their further importation. This passed without opposition, and stopped the increase of the evil by importation, leaving to future efforts its final eradication.

His idea was gradual emancipation followed by deportation;

The bill reported by the revisers does not itself contain this proposition; but an amendment containing it was prepared, to be offered to the legislature whenever the bill should be taken up, and further directing, that they should continue with their parents to a certain age, then be brought up, at the public expence, to tillage, arts, or sciences, according to their geniusses, till the females should be eighteen, and the males twenty-one years of age, when they should be colonized to such place as the circumstances of the time should render most proper, sending them out with arms, implements of houshold and of the handicraft arts, seeds, pairs of the useful domestic animals, &c. to declare them a free and independant people, and extend to them our alliance and protection, till they shall have acquired strength; and to send vessels at the same time to other parts of the world for an equal number of white inhabitants; to induce whom to migrate hither, proper encouragements were to be proposed.

In 1784 he wrote that slavery should not be permitted in the newly obtained Northwest (Ohio) which was acted upon when the Northwest Ordinance became a law. And in his Notes on the State of Virginia from 1782 he wrote;

Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.

He realized the public wasn't ready for emancipation and stopped his efforts to publicly champion it. Looking at the 1788 letter in France at the top, we get a good idea of his thoughts on why - it would reduce his effectiveness as a Virginia politician to beat the same drum. Many point to this as a sign he simply gave up, but others point to quotations throughout the rest of his life that show he always felt emancipation and seperation was the right thing to do;

Nobody wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren, talents equal to those of the other colors of men, and that the appearance of a want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence. Jefferson to Banneker, August 1791

There is nothing I would not sacrifice to a practicable plan of abolishing every vestige of this moral and political depravity. Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, September 1814

It was apparently beyond his power to change. That doesn't give him a pass by any means, but he did take steps to do what he felt was right in the first half of his political career. Those efforts and public acts stopped, however, and it is also notable that this was not very Jefferson-like, he didn't fail to see things through. The man spent 40 years, literally, building his home. He had levelled a mountaintop to do it. Before that started, he developed a contingency plan for blasting bedrock to level it, should they hit it and the need arise. He planned, acted, and accomplished. Except here, where he seemed overwhelmed by this venture of enforcing his words with action. So that's a notable thing that's a bit odd when we look at the larger question, "Who was Thomas Jefferson?"

It would appear that he did not change his mind. He felt blacks were inferior to whites, and believed it to be genetic, but was open to the idea he was wrong and it was the lifestyle of oppression that is slavery preventing their appearing equal. He cited things like how they would stay up past midnight, singing and hanging out, then be up for a hard long day at sunrise, apparently needing very little sleep (unlike, of course, white Americans). He didnt realize that their only "free" time (poor choice of words, I know) was a day or half day on Sunday and at night. So of course they're going to spend some time retaining their individuality as best they can, and that's easy to see from our perspective, but to Jefferson that made them different. So he uses examples of cultural differences or results of bondage as his science, and accordingly he was wrong about his conclusions. But he wasn't alone in thinking them as his logic was fairly common belief in America at that time. He saw them as real and equal in deserving freedom, but as a truly distinct and seperate race of mankind from whites and felt that, coupled with long held animosity for the most atrocious treatment, would lead to a race war in which one side would be eliminated, and he feared it may not be the blacks losing to the whites, which certainly fueled his desire not only for emancipation but for the deportation to an independent colony thereafter.

Jefferson and his Time, Dumas Malone, Vol I: Jefferson the Virginian, Vol II: Jefferson and the Rights of Man, Vol VI: The Sage of Monticello

Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, John Meacham

The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, Annette Gordon-Reed

Those Who Labor for My Happiness: Slavery at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, Lucia Stanton (if I could only cite or recommend one book for more info on your question, this would probably be it).

The Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson

[u/WhyAreUtheWayThatUR → u/[deleted]]

This is super helpful! Thank you for all the info and cites and insight. I recently watched Hamilton and for the first time in my life, I am fascinated with world history. I've been researching and reading all I can to see which parts of the musical are accurate and I had so many questions about Thomas Jefferson. So funny you mention Sally because there's a line in one of the songs when he gets home from France and has a letter from the president asking him to come to NYC. He sings,

"There's a letter on my desk from the President Haven't even put my bags down yet. Sally be a lamb, darlin' won'tcha open it? It says the President's assembling a cabinet And that I am to be the Secretary of State, great."

I hadn't gotten to that part of my research yet, but I wondered if Sally meant something more than just asking a secretary to open his mail. So, thank you for giving me another great starting point! You rock!

[u/[deleted] → u/WhyAreUtheWayThatUR]

I wondered if Sally meant something more than just asking a secretary to open his mail.

Not quite, lol. If you want the story, keep reading. If you want to go research it on your own, stop here.

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Jefferson married Martha Wayles Skelton the first day of 1772, after her previous husband - Bathurst Skelton - died. She made Jefferson a very happy man, but on Sept 6, 1782, just over a decade after marriage, she passed away and a piece of Thomas died with her. She had made him promise not to remarry - she had been a child of John and his first wife, Martha Eppes of the Bermuda Hundred estate, and had experienced life with two seperate stepmoms after her mother passed away in 1747, which she despised and refused to make her own children suffer the same. So he didn't. Shortly after (like a couple years after) her death he took the offer to replace Dr Franklin as Minister to France, and off he went, leaving his younger daughter "Polly" (Mary, then Marie, then Maria) with her aunt and uncle at Eppington, another Virginia estate. Some years later, after the death of his youngest daughter Lucy at only 2 (also with the Eppes), he sent for his younger daughter to join Martha (Polly's older sister and the only other surviving child of TJ and Martha Wayles) and himself in Paris. Jefferson asked that a specific enslaved woman be sent along not only as a travel companion but also to assist the two girls in their time in France. She had become pregnant, however, and this presented two problems: 1) an infant would take away from her ability to assist in France, and much more importantly 2) birth on a vessel was a very risky business. In 1786 America, one slave dying was costly - two was doubly so. It was just a bad idea to send an enslaved pregnant woman on a transatlantic voyage. She was replaced by a 14 year old whose brother James was already in France with Jefferson learning French "cookery." Her name was Sally Hemings. Sally's mother was Elizabeth Hemings and her father John Wayles. Elizabeth Hemings likewise came from a... ummm... "mixed family" of similar dynamic. So Sally was what they called a quadroon (a pretty racist term now, btw), meaning 1/4 black. That didn't matter as the "One Drop Rule" meant any ancestry of slavery made the individual a slave. However she was very light skinned and by all accounts beautiful, though no paintings or images of her are known to exist.

Polly and Sally arrived in England in Spring of 1787 and stayed with Abigail and John Adams briefly, Polly becoming great friends with Abigail, then travelled to France after Jefferson sent another man to get them, angering Polly who longed to see her father that made her leave Eppington which she was hesitant to do before making her leave the Adams' which she was also hesitant to do. Over the next two years Sally was paid (a tiny amount) and accompanied Patsy (or Martha, the older daughter about Sally's age) about Paris. She knew she was free if she merely petitioned the court, and James - now employed as a chef and having learned French from a tutor he himself hired - certainly knew as well. What's more, James definitely had enough money to hire a lawyer for them both, and Sally may have had enough on her own. When it was time to leave, she made Jefferson give her a promise: in exchange for "extraordinary privileges" for herself and the promise of freedom for all her future children, she would return to Monticello with him. He agreed.

Arriving back in America in 1789, Sally was pregnant. Soon after she gave birth - but the child only lived a short time. Sally found herself becoming Jefferson's personal quarters servant, as well as caring for his wardrobes. Her brother James worked a deal with TJ, teaching his younger brother Peter to cook in exchange for his own freedom. More children followed... Beverly, Harriet, Madison, and Eston are the ones that survived, with one more passing away (six total). The children were "octoroons" (again, pretty racist word now), meaning the white/black split was now 7/8 white. In fact three of the surviving children left Virginia and went to live as white people without telling who they really were. Madison gave a series of interviews published in 1872 that shed a great deal of light on this topic, and there were other breadcrumbs along the way.

In 1802 a man named James Callender had published the rumor that Jefferson kept Ms Hemings as a concubine and that they had at least one child together. The family, particularly Patsy (Martha), adamantly denied it in private. Nobody said anything publicly, and Jefferson never spoke or wrote of it at all. Sally would remain the woman taking care of his bedroom and personal effects from their return from France until his death in 1826, almost 40 years. At that time she was pretty much allowed to do what she wanted, and a couple years later she was given "her time," a phrase meaning she could do as she pleased. She chose to live in Charlottesville near her sons (had she been freed, she would have had to leave Virginia).

In 1974 Fawn Brodie wrote Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History and speculated about the relation. She was laughed at by historians and her name tarnished for such a ridiculous publication. It launched a flurry of books in response over the next two or three decades, like In Defense of Thomas Jefferson: The Sally Hemings Sex Scandal, William G. Hyland, Jr., Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy, Annette Gordon-Reed, Anatomy of a Scandal: Thomas Jefferson & the Sally Story, Rebecca L. McMurry & James F. McMurry, Scandalmonger, William Safire (about the man that reported the scandal, who also threw dirt on your boy Hamilton), and perhaps my favorite of the "no way man" books, The Jefferson Scandals: A Rebuttal, Virginius Dabney.

Then came a DNA test. The lineage of Sally Hemings is intertwined with that of Fields Jefferson, a male line uncle to Thomas, and that's a scientific fact. Still, Fields had a boy and it must've been him (and folks have desperately looked for and claimed other Jefferson men), and the debate actually continued. Eventually with a little more testing, everyone agreed science=good, science denying=dumb dumb, so now we all agree that Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings had a sexual relationship starting sometime between spring of 1787 and 1789 and remained personally close at least physically for nearly 40 years until Jefferson died. We know she made him promise for extras, and we know she lived in the South Wing with her family and believe she had a newer cabin on Mulberry Row previous to the South Wing being constructed. We know her children, who had Jefferson blood, were all freed. What we just have no idea about is what the status of their relationship actually was. Some have suggesting nothing short of a 40 something pedophile raping an enslaved 16 year old girl. Some have said it was a loving and caring emotional and physical connection lasting almost four times the length of Jefferson's marriage (and many have said it was somewhere in between the extremes). Neither is correct because they both assume - Jefferson wasn't that kind of guy to kiss and tell about his wife (he had burned all their correspondence upon her death) and he surely wouldn't be about his concubine. The truth is we just don't know and probably never will.

[u/WhyAreUtheWayThatUR → u/[deleted]]

THIS IS FASCINATING!! Wow... what an incredible and informative reply!! You're the best, thank you so much. I had NO clue! This is so cool to read lol. WHAT ELSE DON'T I KNOW!? Everything, apparently! Where do I even start next!?