Jefferson's View Research Articles

Jefferson, Morality, and the Problem of Slavery

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

Jefferson's First Declaration of Independence: A Summary View of the Rights of British America Revisited

This essay examines Jefferson's Summary View of the Rights of British America as evidence of his craft as a storyteller. Specifically, I argue that Jefferson deploys a series of narrative renderings, the rhetorical effect of which is to eliminate the possibility of any genuine reconciliation with the English government. On the basis of this interpretation I conclude that the Summary View represents Jefferson's first declaration of independence.

The "Wall of Separation" and Thomas Jefferson's Views on Religious Liberty

I N the first Supreme Court case that dealt with the clause of the First Amendment that declares that Congress shall pass law respecting an establishment of religion, the justices recognized the central importance of the framers' views in defining the proper relationship between church and state. Those views merge from several sources-Thomas Jefferson's I786 Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, James Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance, and Jefferson's letter in i802 to the Danbury Baptists.1 This letter first suggested the euphonious and oftenquoted phrase wall of separation as a guide to the constitutional proximity of government and religion. In the half-century since that first decision, the Supreme Court has steadily refined and adapted the initial concepts and principles, creating different formulations of a constitutional test of nonestablishment. In the early years, long before the issue had reached the courts, the Establishment Clause could have been construed to mean no more than that the several surviving state-established churches were free of federal interference-giving some meaning to the curious language law respecting an Establishment of Religion. After the last state church was disestablished in the I830s, such an interpretation was no longer viable, if, indeed, it had ever been more than a theoretical possibility.

The Baptists, the Bureau, and the Case of the Missing Lines

OME important matters are not in dispute. Often outspokenly anticlerS ical, Jefferson was not himself a godless man. He attended church services in Washington and Charlottesville and contributed money frequently to Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Baptist churches. He talked and wrote about his personal religious beliefs and was far from being the impious atheist and infidel depicted by his detractors. He believed fervently in the one God who had created all men equal. Like his friend the Reverend Joseph Priestley, he rejected the doctrine of the Trinity and usually identified himself as a Unitarian. What always tied him to Christianity was his conviction that the moral teachings of Jesus had never been surpassed. However, although James H. Hutson is correct in saying that Jefferson was a friend of religion, his article is seriously misleading. The Danbury letter was directed at Jefferson's Federalist opponents, but that fact scarcely turns the document into a hasty testament conceived in the heat of a political moment.1 Jefferson's quarrel with the Federalist ministers of New England and their political allies extended back to the drafting of the Constitution. What bothered the Federalist ministers was the Constitution's deliberate omission of any reference to God. Their viewpoint took on political implications and certainly fueled Federalists' attacks on Jefferson, who held very different ideas about the meaning of the secular state. Nonetheless, their position was rooted in sincerely held fears about the viability of a republic that had not placed itself under divine aegis. Jefferson's contrary views were just as carefully considered. To say that the position of either party was merely political distorts what had been on both sides of the issue the subject of reflection over many years. Jefferson had not used the phrase of separation before the Danbury letter, but it captured well enough what he had believed long before his election to the presidency. Jefferson was, of course, not the first person to use the metaphor of a wall in discussing questions about churches and the political order. Rather than speculating about why Jefferson made changes in the text of the Danbury letter, we might more profitably consider the possible meaning of

Editorial: The Enduring Legacy of Roger Williams: Consulting America's First Separationist on Today's Pressing Church-State Controversies

Roger Williams ranks as one of America's most distinguished thinkers. Curiously, he is also among the least known. Most American history texts, if they mention him at all, note merely that he was a Puri tan preacher who came to Massachusetts from England in 1631, only to be banished four years later for his rebellious and unorthodox reli gious views. Some texts go on to identify him as the founder of the Rhode Island colony, where he lived until he died in 1683, but little else is mentioned. Williams was indeed a prominent, if somewhat controversial, Puri tan preacher, but he is best known for being the first American to ad vance the view that religion and government are separate institutions whose purposes should not be mixed. He was, in other words, America's first church-state separationist. In fact, the of separa tion metaphor, usually attributed to Thomas Jefferson in an 1802 let ter to the Danbuiy Baptist Association, was first used by Williams. In 1644, he wrote that the Bible taught there to be a hedge or of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world. Scholars are fond of stressing that Williams was concerned about protecting the church from the state, whereas Jefferson felt the wall was necessary to protect the state from the church. While this wom-out distinction is generally accurate, there were far more like nesses than differences in Williams's and Jefferson's views on church state relations. Clearly, both believed that a flexible boundary between the institutions of religion and government preserved the health and integrity of both. In its interpretations of the religion clauses of the First Amend ment, the U.S. Supreme Court frequently looks to history to ascertain

A New Perspective on Jefferson's Views on Church-State Relations: The Virginia Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom in Its Legislative Context

A New Perspective on Jefferson's Views on Church-State Relations: The Virginia Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom in Its Legislative Context

Race and the Moral Foundation of the American Republic: Another Look at the Declaration and the Notes on Virginia

In the Declaration of Independence, as well as in his public writings and private correspondence, Thomas Jefferson articulated principles and expressed opinions which have the utmost relevance for racial justice. In this paper I propose to explore the implications of Jefferson's views as expressed in the Declaration and to compare them with what he says about slavery and the black race elsewhere, especially in the Notes on the State of Virginia. In what follows I will argue that the Declaration's assertion of self-evident practical truths points to a kind of moral reasoning which is incompatible with the so-called method Jefferson employs in examining blacks as a race (as distinct from his views on slavery) in the Notes. And against the prevailing scholarly tendency to diminish the importance of the Declaration as a statement of our deepest political principles (Arendt 1963; Pocock 1975; Wood 1969) or to interpret it in novel and unconvincing ways (Wills 1978), I will argue that the self-evident truths of the Declaration are morally superior to Jefferson's so-called scientific attempt to derive values from facts, which is his ill-conceived and contradictory project in Query #14 of the Notes. In the most important studies of this question to date, regardless of how they interpret Jefferson's treatment of race, scholars have tended to stress the basic consistency of Jefferson's positions in the Declaration and the Notes. Thus, for example, Daniel Boorstin, in his early influential study, The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson, argues that all of Jefferson's works are informed by the Enlightenment faith that science and reason will bring about

Jefferson vs. Hume

O_ N March 2, 764, Thomas Jefferson, then a young law student in Williamsburg, Virginia, purchased an edition in six large quarto volumes of David Hume's History of England, a work he read through with great eagerness admiration. I remember well the enthusiasm with which devoured it when young, he wrote nearly fifty years later, and the length of time, the research reflection which were necessary to eradicate the it had instilled into my mind.' The poison was Hume's compelling presentation of certain aspects of English history that seriously the prevailing whig view of the British constitution, Jefferson's resentment toward Hume as a poisoner of unwary readers became more vocal more pronounced as he grew older. When during his presidency he read a book by John Baxter that appeared to correct republicanise (as well as plagiarize) Hume's history, he approved it later exerted himself to have it reprinted in America as an alternative to Hume. In his retirement right up to the end of his life, Jefferson continued in his correspondence to attack Hume his history, sometimes in extravagant terms, as when he claimed that Hume's history had undermined the free principles of the English government or when, in 824, he referred to the philosopher-historian as degenerate son of science, this traitor to his fellow men.2 Though earlier generations paid little attention to Jefferson's rhetorical vendetta against Hume's history, in our own time it has earned him no small amount of criticism. For while many of the great nineteenth-century English historians liberals shared Jefferson's view of Hume, to present-day students his rage despair at the unquestioning acceptance of Hume hardly appear seemly, inasmuch as the historical interpretations

Jefferson's and Madison's legacy: The death of the national news council

The history of the National News Council's creation and demise demonstrates that there are well‐grounded rationales in social vision between those who supported the concept of the NNC and those who believe its etablishment was ill‐founded. This article suggests that the root of the NNC controversy lies in the differences between Madison and Jefferson's perspectives on the place of information in society. Madison and Jefferson's view on press freedom and responsibility may be as important to the debate about the NNC's status as the more frequently cited pragmatic considerations such as the Council's infrastructure or management. The philosophic issues raised here are ethical at base, and should be considered by critics contemplating vehicles for media accountability.

Reginald C. Stuart. <italic>The Half-way Pacifist: Thomas Jefferson's View of War</italic>. Buffalo: University of Toronto Press. 1978. Pp. x, 93. $10.00

Reginald C. Stuart. The Half-way Pacifist: Thomas Jefferson's View of War. Buffalo: University of Toronto Press. 1978. Pp. x, 93. $10.00 Get access Stuart Reginald C.. The Half-way Pacifist: Thomas Jefferson's View of War. Buffalo: University of Toronto Press. 1978. Pp. x, 93. $10.00. Robert Mccolley Robert Mccolley University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 86, Issue 2, April 1981, Page 454, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/86.2.454 Published: 01 April 1981

The Half-Way Pacifist: Thomas Jefferson's View of War

The Half-Way Pacifist: Thomas Jefferson's View of War

The Half-Way Pacifist: Thomas Jefferson's View of War

The Half-Way Pacifist: Thomas Jefferson's View of War

The Half-Way Pacifist: Thomas Jefferson's View of War

The Half-Way Pacifist: Thomas Jefferson's View of War

Jefferson and the Scottish Enlightenment: A Critique of Garry Wills's Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence

G ARRY Wills's study of the intellectual background to that most famous of all American political documents, the Declaration of Independence, is nothing short of revolutionary.' In what is surely the most ambitious effort to investigate the political philosophy underlying the Declaration since Carl Becker published his monograph in I922,2 Wills, with enormous ingenuity, has attempted a thorough reinterpretation of Jefferson's meaning as it emerges in the document. His thesis, simply put, is that there are really three Declarations: the Declaration as political document (the Declaration adopted by Congress); the Declaration as symbol of nationhood (the Declaration as a product of later reinterpretation); and the Declaration as philosophical treatise (the Declaration as written by Jefferson). The major emphasis of Wills's monograph, and that which provides the subtitle of his book, is on this third DeclarationJefferson's Declaration.3 The heart of his analysis the term is Wills's is his contention that, far from bearing the imprint of Lockean political theory, the Declaration, as Jefferson originally intended it, can be properly understood only if it is analyzed as a product of the Scottish Enlightenment, and that Jefferson's views on the nature of man and society derived not fromrJohn Locke's Two Treatises of Government but from the works of Thomas Reid, David Hume, Adam Smith, Lord Kames, Adam Ferguson, and Francis Hutcheson. Hutcheson's system of moral philosophy particularly, Wills contends, contains the key to decoding the theory of the nature and proper functions of government embedded in the Declaration. To his central argument Wills attaches several others in defense of his theory of three Declarations: that the Declaration, to those who signed it, held none of the significance as a

The Half-Way Pacifist: Thomas Jefferson's View of War.

The Half-Way Pacifist: Thomas Jefferson's View of War.

Jefferson's Summary View as a Chart of Political Union

HOMAS JEFFERSON'S early concept of a desirable union for * America has been imperfectly analyzed, especially in its relation ito opinions of his contemporaries. Traditionally his name is associated with strict construction, state rights, and Declaration to justify break from British Empire (nominally, from king). This preconception has perhaps delayed a proper estimate of his full views. By many he is dismissed as an unpractical defender of individual and of local government, as one who obstructed America's patent need during and just after Revolution for an enduring cohesion in political life. His latest biographer has recorded indictment that in 1774 attempt at reform of British-American relations alien to Jefferson's mind, that in his heart he was resigned to rebellion.' This negative evaluation is sharply challenged by a review of his ideas and deeds in that period.2 Fundamentally these bear out Paul Leicester Ford's thesis that the dominant principle of his creed was that all powers belonged to people, and that governments, constitutions, laws, precedent, and all other artificial clogs and 'protections', are entitled to respect and obedience only as they fulfilled their limited function of aiding-not curtailing-the greatest freedom of individual.3 Close study establishes at same time Jefferson's consistent defense of one particular constitutional principle as a powerful means to this ultimate objective of all political organization. He became convinced that a skilful diffusion of *Mr. Lewis, formerly Assistant Professor of History at University of Detroit, received his Ph.D. from University of Michigan in 1946. He is continuing his research on Jefferson's political ideas to i789. 'Marie Kimball, Jeferson: The Road to Glory, i743-i776 (New York, 1943), 243. Dr. Dumas Malone is nearing publication of first volume of an extended biography of Jefferson. Graciously detailing his reactions to present writer's manuscript, he has declared privately that he questions how much valued empire on any terms at this time. Self-government what he was most interested in. Letter to present writer, August 28, I947. 2 Such a review has been made on a broad scale by present writer in his Jefferson and American Union, I769-178i (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan, 1946). Additional research on this work is contemplated before it is published. 3P. L. Ford, ed., The Writings of Thomas lefferson (New York, i892-i899), I, xxi.