CHAPTER 6
Slavery—Wrestling with the Language of Captivity
In Complaisance to the Language of Captivity
Like the hatter, Thomas Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration of Independence suffered amendments that stripped it of some important contents. This chapter outlines a valuable lesson to be learned from one of Jefferson’s failures.
On a trip to Jefferson’s home, Monticello, or Madison’s Montpelier, one might hear the tour guide say, “the Founders never dealt with the issue of slavery, but left it to future generations.” Is that true? Did Jefferson fail to deal with the issue of slavery?
Depending on how they are counted, Jefferson listed twenty five grievances against king and parliament. Aside from the 25th grievance, the average word count is about 23 words per grievance. The 25th, the one about slavery, included 168 words. The famous “we hold these truths” sentence was only 42 words. The evidently important slavery grievance from Jefferson’s draft reads:
“He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or 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 to 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 upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.”[1]
Of the Declaration of Independence, and specifically the slavery grievance, John Adams said:
“I was delighted with its high tone, and the flights of oratory with which it abounded, especially that concerning Negro Slavery, which though I knew his Southern brethren would never suffer to pass in Congress, I certainly never would oppose.”[2]
The slavery issue was an important issue to Jefferson. He attempted to make the practice illegal in Virginia on more than one occasion. Why then is it thought that Jefferson put off the issue of slavery for future generations? Why is he so criticized when it comes to the slavery issue? Obviously, because he owned slaves. But it is also because of the lack of a detailed history. Our limited understanding of Jefferson’s views on slavery and his attempt to solve the problem of slavery, allows it to appear to us today that he did nothing about it.
Things might have gone differently had Jefferson been more aggressive about including the expression of his mind with that of the expression of the American mind. He stayed out of the debate on the document for good reason, but perhaps he should not have remained aloof from every argument.
If Jefferson would have defended the Language of Liberty in regards to slavery, would it have resulted in liberty in later years? Would the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Civil Rights of the 1960’s need to be violent struggles for liberty? Or, had those words not been deleted from the document, would history have allowed for a more peaceful advancement of liberty?
What happened? Why was the slavery grievance removed? According to Jefferson,
“The clause too, reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished to continue it.”[3]
Jefferson kept himself out of the debate and Congress removed the slavery grievance to appease South Carolina and Georgia. As a result of this “complaisance,” the evil of slavery did not improve.
Many of the Framers in 1776 believed that slavery would eventually collapse by its own weight of evil. Slavery did disappear in some areas of the country and worsened in others. The two states who won the debate during the Second Continental Congress seemed to expand the slavery culture the most. Their Language of Captivity won the day in 1776 and resulted in a future of captivity for almost one hundred more years.
At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, South Carolina and Georgia finally agreed that the institution of slavery needed to be abolished. The Convention inserted some anti-slavery provisions into the Constitution, but by the 1830’s slavery was more deeply rooted in the culture of South Carolina and Georgia than ever before.
Anti-Slavery Provisions in the Constitution
In a speech to the Scottish Anti-Slavery Society in Glasgow, Scotland, on March 26, 1860, Frederick Douglass highlights the anti-slavery provisions in the Constitution. The question before Douglass was whether the Constitution was a pro-slavery document or not. His conclusion was that the Constitution was not pro-slavery and had provisions that would lead to the abolition of slavery. Of the Constitution he said:
“Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand, it will be found to contain principles and purposes entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.”[4]
Frederick Douglass was born a slave. He began to educate himself while in bondage. He eventually escaped and traveled to Europe. People were so impressed with his intellect and oratory skills that he quickly gained fame. His new European friends pooled their money and purchased his freedom. He returned to the United States and before his death, he sent an emotionally stirring forgiveness letter to a former master, became an advisor to five U.S. presidents, and acquired a fortune worth more than 300 thousand dollars (equal to over 8 million in 2019 dollars).
In Douglass’ Glasgow speech, his personal task was to counter an earlier speech given by George Thompson in Glasgow on February 27, 1860. Mr. Thompson declared that the Constitution was a pro-slavery document, an opinion that Douglass refuted brilliantly.
The two most obviously anti-slavery provisions in the Constitution are Article 1, section 9, which allowed for the elimination of the slave trade after 1808 and Article 1, section 2, that counted slaves as three-fifths of a person. Of Article 1, section 9, Douglass said:
“Men, at that time, both in England and in America, looked upon the slave trade as the life of slavery. The abolition of the slave trade was supposed to be the certain death of slavery. Cut off the stream, and the pond will dry up, was the common notion at the time.
“…the American statesmen…regarded slavery as an expiring and doomed system, destined to speedily disappear from the country. [The Constitution] is anti-slavery, because it looked to the abolition of slavery rather than to its perpetuity…it showed that the intentions of the framers of the Constitution were good, not bad.”[5]
Of Article 1, section 2, regarding the three-fifths clause, Douglass said:
“It is a downright disability laid upon the slaveholding States; one which deprives those States of two-fifths of their natural basis of representation. A black man in a free State is worth just two-fifths more than a black man in a slave State, as a basis of political power under the Constitution. Therefore, instead of encouraging slavery, the Constitution encourages freedom by giving an increase of “two-fifths” of political power to free over slave States. So much for the three-fifths clause; taking it at its worst, it still leans to freedom, not slavery; for, be it remembered that the Constitution nowhere forbids a coloured man to vote.”[6]
The Founders inserted these anti-slavery provisions into the Constitution in an attempt to eventually eliminate the practice.
The Abundant Fruit of Captivity in South Carolina and Georgia
By 1860, South Carolina had the largest population of slaves by percentage, 57%.[7] More people were captive than free in that state. They had the second largest increase in slavery from 1790 to 1860 with a 376% increase. Georgia had the largest increase at 1579%.[8]
It seems more than a coincidence that the Civil War began in South Carolina[9] and that they seceded first. There are numerous nineteenth century quotes from people of South Carolina and Georgia that illustrate just how deeply rooted the slave culture had become.
John C. Calhoun, Senator from South Carolina, said:
“The defense of human liberty against the aggressions of despotic power have been always the most efficient in States where domestic slavery was to prevail.”[10]
James H. Hammond, Representative from South Carolina, said:
“To such a country [slavery] is as natural as the climate itself, as the birds and beasts to which that climate is congenial…It is equally the order of Providence that slavery should exist among a planting people, beneath a southern sun…
…it is no evil. On the contrary, I believe it to be the greatest of all the great blessings which a kind Providence has bestowed upon our glorious region. For without it, our fertile soil and our fructifying climate would have been given to us in vain. And as to its impoverishing and demoralizing influence, the simple and irresistible answer to that is, that the history of the short period during which we have enjoyed it has rendered our southern country proverbial for its wealth, its genius, and its manners…
…Sir, I do firmly believe that domestic slavery, regulated as ours is, produces the highest toned, the purest, best organization of society that has ever existed on the face of the earth…”[11]
Notice some “freedom-centric” words in the quotes above. Those words may sound like freedom, but they are woven into the filthy tapestry of slavery—captivity of the most evil kind.
Jefferson may have written “all men are created equal,” a contradiction to his practice of owning slaves, but he never connected those words with a justification of slavery. “All men are created equal” was his hope. It was his goal. It was an idea he aspired to, even if he was not living that idea in its entirety. As Abraham Lincoln said, America “was conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”[12]
Jefferson continued to promote this “proposition” throughout his life. In 1779 he proposed a law for emancipation in Virginia.[13] In Congress, in 1794, he was one vote shy of outlawing slavery in the whole Western territory.[14] Query 18 in his Notes on the State of Virginia denounced slavery.[15] In 1806, as the President, he publicly supported abolition with words that echoed the slavery grievance. He urged Congress to:
“…withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights which have been so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the morality, the reputation, and the best interests of our country, have long been eager to proscribe.”[16]
Congress agreed and passed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves. Jefferson signed the bill into law on March 2, 1807 and it took effect, as per the Constitution, January 1, 1808.[17]
But, despite Jefferson’s lifetime efforts to abolish slavery, the fact still stands that the slavery grievance was defeated in Congress. The slave culture that deepened after the grievance clause was rejected, eventually evolved into the abhorrent idea that slavery must exist for liberty to prevail.
In his famous 1861 “Cornerstone Speech,” Alexander Stephens from Georgia, Vice-President of the Confederacy, said:
“The new [Confederate] Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to…African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the ‘rock upon which the old Union would split.’ He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away… Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it—when the “storm came and the wind blew, it fell.”
Our new [Confederate] government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science.
. . . look with confidence to the ultimate universal acknowledgement of the truths upon which our system rests? [The Confederate States of America] is the first government ever instituted upon the principles in strict conformity to nature, and the ordination of Providence, in furnishing the materials of human society. Many governments have been founded upon the principle of the subordination and serfdom of certain classes of the same race; such were and are in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature’s laws.”[18]
It seems incomprehensible, but Alexander Stephens and others in his day actually believed they were following natural law principles. They believed that the physical characteristics of Africans, i.e. darker skin, stronger bone and muscle structure, etc., were proof that nature intended for them to be laborers and the “white race” having “intellectual superiority,” was intended to be their masters. They believed that those physical traits were well suited for the tropical regions (the south) of America. The thought was that the south was foreordained to host the practice of slavery. They also believed that because the practice was growing in the south, not diminishing, it was evidence that God ordained the practice.
It was a disgusting perversion of natural law and a stain upon humanity that these ideas prevailed in many regions of our country. This oppressive perversion was a direct result of mingling the Language of Captivity with the Language of Liberty.
The idea that “all men are created equal” took much longer to apply to African slaves because those words did not have the company of the principled words that slavery was “violating [the] most sacred rights of life & liberty.” This idea that “All men are created equal” was not accompanied by the policy of America’s desire to “prohibit or to restrain this execrable [a historical expletive] commerce.” Jefferson and others failed to defend the Language of Liberty and because of that failure, South Carolina and Georgia won.
Their Language of Captivity prevailed. So much so that Jefferson’s original draft[19] was not published for decades. John Adams speculated as to the reason.
“I have long wondered that the original [draft] has not been published. I suppose the reason is, [Jefferson’s] vehement phillipic against negro slavery.”[20]
It is easy to imagine a different world had the slavery grievance language been preserved.
The New Federal Constitution Abolishes Slavery
“The New Federal Constitution Abolishes Slavery” could have been the headline in 1787 had the slavery grievance been preserved in the Declaration of Independence. Every grievance enshrined in the Declaration became forever etched into the culture of America. If someone were to argue that Jefferson did NOT capture “the expression of the American mind” as it was in 1776, they could not dispute that he and Congress succeeded in shaping and influencing the future expression of the American mind.
After the Declaration was passed, America suffered the casualties of war. Then she fell into a deep depression and runaway inflation. The weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, our first constitution, led to trade wars and other ills. It caused the States to treat each other like foreign countries. Through it all, each state experimented with self-governance and the practical application of the principles of ‘76. The list of grievances was their guide.
“All men are created equal,” “self evident truths,” “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” etc. are important truths, but they were ideas, not application. The grievances were the guide to policies that needed to be implemented to prevent the same abuses.
Eleven years after the Declaration of Independence, in 1787, the Framers gathered in Philadelphia to craft, “a more perfect union,” a new federal constitution, our second constitution, to replace the first attempt. This was America’s opportunity to use wisdom and reason to develop a form of government that would forever throw off the shackles of tyranny. Each and every grievance in the Declaration was solved in the Constitution of 1787, and those that were not thoroughly solved were addressed in the Bill of Rights a few years later. Here are some examples:
Declaration- “He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.”
Constitution- “If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it…” (Article I, section 7, clause 2)
Declaration- “He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.”
Constitution- “The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish…” (Article III, section 1)
Declaration- “For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury.”
Constitution- “The Trial of all Crimes…shall be by Jury…” (Article III, section 2, clause 3)[21]
Declaration- “For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments.”
Constitution- “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government…” (Article IV, section 4)
It is reasonable to assume that had the slavery grievance stayed in the Declaration, it would have simmered and percolated in society and slavery would have likely been resolved during the convention of 1787, just as every other grievance. At the very least, it would have taken another step closer to abolition.
Instead, they not only kicked the can down the road to 1808, but the 1808 compromise significantly inflated the value of a slave because it limited the future supply. It only limited the supply rather than abolishing the practice because the constitution only gave authority to regulate the importation of slaves, not the authority to abolish it altogether. That limited supply drove the culture of the slave holding states to look upon the slaves as chattel, not any different than their livestock. Property to be bred and worked into exhaustion.
The Framers compromised on the slavery grievance in 1776 and removed it from the Declaration. This action made it easier to compromise again, on the slavery grievance, in 1787. Thus we see the Language of Captivity prevailing on the slavery issue in 1776 and again in 1787.
It is said that the Declaration of Independence never would have passed had the slavery grievance not been removed – as if independence from Great Britain would not have happened. That is simply not true. Independence and the Declaration are two different things. The Declaration may not have passed, but Congress had already voted for independence on July 2, 1776.
The town of Worcester, Massachusetts passed the very first Declaration of Independence on Oct. 4, 1774. Over the next 21 months, 90 ‘sovereign’ colony and local declarations would be made. The largest colony, Virginia, whom all other states looked to for guidance, declared independence in May of 1776. Virginia gave specific instructions to Richard Henry Lee to, on June 7, 1776, put forth the motion:
“That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”
Lee’s “Resolution for Independancy” was voted on and passed on July 2nd.
Perhaps the slavery grievance would have prevented the passage of the Declaration of Independence, but it would not have prevented the colonies from declaring independence. Preventing the Declaration would have been a travesty. It would have robbed the world of the self evident truths contained therein, but it would not have stopped independence.
In all likelihood, the Declaration would still have passed. It just may not have been a “Unanimous Declaration of Independence.” It would have been absent South Carolina and Georgia and perhaps North Carolina. It may not have had unanimity, but it still would have had the power of self-evident truths. The Language of Liberty would still have been presented to the “tribunal of the world,” and it would have carried with it the potentially liberating words of the slavery grievance.
Jefferson’s Estate Struggles
As a result of Jefferson’s complacency, history is confused about him and his legacy. On one hand he is revered as a great philosopher of freedom. On the other, he is called an evil white slave owner. He is accused not only of fathering slave children, but now of raping the mother of those children, Sally Hemmings. As a result, the Language of Liberty no longer resonates and his personal estate struggles.
At Monticello, tour guides continue to tell the story of Jefferson’s slave mistress Sally and their children as a matter of DNA fact. Yet, the DNA story was debunked and retracted only two months after it broke in 1998.[22] Slavery has become such a focal point at Monticello that it overshadows Thomas Jefferson’s amazing intellect and vision of Liberty for all people regardless of birth.
As a point of clarification, there is tremendous value to exploring the historical life and times of the slaves of Monticello. That history should be presented as part of the struggle for liberty rather than a distraction from it.
Instead of praising the words “all men are created equal,” modern detractors diminish that liberty language. They follow those words by pointing out how contradictory they appear because they were written by a slave owner. We should not hide behind the historical fact that Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner, but it should be acknowledged that in 1776, though he was far from a slave, he too was oppressed by king and parliament. He had drafted the words “all men are created equal,” not because the concept was being practiced in 1776, but because he hoped that humankind would begin to practice the concept in his lifetime and beyond. The continual diminishing of those words does nothing to liberate the slaves of his day or the slavery of today. It serves only to hinder those liberty words from fulfilling their destiny, to make equality, for all humans, a reality. It is not speaking the Language of Liberty.
To praise the phrase “all men are created equal,” penned by a slave owner who hoped to see the practice abolished, is not to cause injury to those slaves. The horrors of slavery are acknowledged. Recognizing the importance of those words is to continue Jefferson’s hope that one day we can fully exercise such an important natural law truth. Jefferson made this same point in relation to the Revolutionary War and the injuries America inflicted upon England.
Jefferson argued that to revere the Language of Liberty in the Declaration was not to pour salt in the wounds of the English, or even the slaves – it was to “cherish the principles”[23] of the document.
The lessons learned by Jefferson’s mistakes are valuable in our personal pursuits to speak the Language of Liberty. His desire was to capture the expression of the American mind and yet, his silence sowed the seeds of captivity and we suffer the fruit of captivity today. As a result, he stepped back from the debate and let the Language of Captivity delete some very important words in the document.
It can be argued that the Declaration would never have passed if slavery was left in the document. Maybe that is true. It is easy to speculate. It is easy to be an armchair historian. Perhaps Jefferson’s actions were more controlled by the tone and spirit of the occasion than we realize. Regardless, America would have taken a different path had the slavery grievance (the Language of Liberty) been maintained in the Declaration of Independence.
[1] Slavery Grievance, Declaration of Independence, 1776
[2] Col. Pickering’s Observations Introductory to Reading the Declaration of Independence, at Salem, July 4, 1823
[3] The Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1790
[4] Frederick Douglass speech before the Scottish Anti-Slavery Society in Glasgow, Scotland on March 26, 1860
[5] Frederick Douglass speech before the Scottish Anti-Slavery Society in Glasgow, Scotland on March 26, 1860
[6] Frederick Douglass speech before the Scottish Anti-Slavery Society in Glasgow, Scotland on March 26, 1860
[7] 1860 Federal census
[8] United States Census Bureau
[9] The civil war began when the Confederates attacked Fort Sumter, South Carolina on April 12, 1861
[10] Congressional Debates, 24th Congress, 2nd Session, 1836-37
[11] Register of Debates in Congress, Vol. XII, Feb 1, 1836
[12] Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863, emphasis added
[13] “51. A Bill concerning Slaves, 18 June 1779,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed September 29, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-02-02-0132-0004-0051. [Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 2, 1777 – 18 June 1779, ed. Julian P. Boyd. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950, pp. 470–473.]
[14] The Territorial Governance Act, See Plan of Government for the Western Territory, Report of the PLAN OF GOVERNMENT FOR THE WESTERN TERRITORY, REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE (Mar. 1, 1784), in 6 PAPERS OF JEFFERSON, supra note 18, at 581–617.
[15] Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVIII: Manners, Thomas Jefferson, 1781
[16] Sixth Annual Message to Congress, December 2, 1806
[17] Article I, section 9 of the Constitution specifically prohibited Congress from passing any law regulating the importation of slaves before 1808. Article V prohibited the ability to amend Article I, section 9. Jefferson saw to it that slave trafficking was made illegal on the first day possible.
[18] Augusta, Georgia, Daily Constitutionalist, March 30, 1861
[19] See Appendix for Jefferson’s original draft
[20] Letter from Adams to Timothy Pickering, August 6, 1822
[21] Article III, section 2, clause 3 was the only provision for protecting trial by jury in 1787 when the Constitution was written. In 1789 Congress submitted what is now known as the Bill of Rights, for ratification. The states ratified the Bill of Rights in 1791. There, trial by jury was further protected in Amendments 5, 6, and 7.
[22] Original article: “Jefferson Fathered Slave’s Last Child,” by Eugene A. Foster, et al, Nature Magazine, November 5, 1998; Retraction: “Reply:The Thomas Jefferson Paternity Case,” by Eugene A. Foster, et al, Nature Magazine, January 7, 1999;
Note of Interest: “…I have said publicly, both before and after publication of our article, that our results could not be conclusive…My experience with this matter so far tells me that no matter how strongly I say that the study is not conclusive and no matter how often I repeat it, it will not stop the media from saying what they want…And I truly regret that. In fact, I am angered by it…It has been painful to me to see my work over interpreted and sensationalized by the media.” Email from Dr. Eugene Foster to Herbert Barger, November 11, 1998, “In Defense of Thomas Jefferson: The Sally Hemings Sex Scandal” by William G. Hyland Jr, 2009
[23] Letter from Jefferson to James Madison, August 30, 1823