Jefferson, Morality, and the Problem of Slavery

Abstract

tH TOW could Thomas Jefferson, advocate of equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, have justified his ownership of human beings? How, in his draft of the Declaration of Independence, could he have accused King George III and the British nation of imposing slavery on the American colonies? Jefferson never thought that slavery was morally justifiable. In order to grasp his understanding of the issue of personal guilt, we need to historicize Jefferson's moral thought. Much of modern moral understanding begins with the autonomous individual and his rights. We consider all people first and foremost as individuals, fellow claimants to dignity and respect whose inherent and irreducible rights constitute the foundation of modern morality. Our language, borrowed directly from the Declaration, is Jeffersonian. Yet, while the individual is important in his moral thought, Jefferson constantly made judgments about individuals on the basis of his exalted standard of virtuous behavior, recognizing that their capacity to act morally differed widely. In Jefferson's view, men were to be judged according to the manifestation of their moral dispositions. Slaves were beyond-or beneath-such judgments. As long as they were enslaved, they were by definition unable to exercise free will or to enforce claims to rights, inalienable or otherwise, and therefore could not be held morally accountable for their actions. But if slaves were beyond the pale of moral judgment, the institution of slavery nonetheless raised profound moral problems for the new republic. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be Jefferson wrote in his Autobiography, nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government.1