and light into Jefferson’s young mind, that every filthy weed of tyrannic quibble or pro-slavery paradox must have been shrivelled.
And the young statesman grew under this influence as we should expect. In his twenty-seventh year he sat in the Virginia House of Burgesses, and his first effort in legislation was, in his own words, “an effort for the permission of the emancipation of slaves, which was rejected, and, indeed, during the regal government nothing liberal could expect success.” His whole career in those years, whether as public man or private man, shows that his hatred of slavery was bitter. But there was such a press of other work during this founding period, that this hatred took shape not so much in a steady siege as in a series of pitched battles. The work to be done was immense, and Jefferson bore the bulk of it. He took upon himself one-third of the revising and codifying of the Virginia laws, and did even more than this. He undertook, in his own words, “a distinct series of labors which formed a system by which every fibre would be eradicated of ancient or future aristocracy.” He effected the repeal of the laws of entail, and this prevented an aristocratic absorption of the soil; he effected the abolition of primogeniture, and this destroyed all chance of rebuilding feudal families; he effected a restoration of the rights of conscience, and this overthrew all hope of an Established Church; he forced on the bill for general education,—for thus, he said, would the people be “qualified to understand their rights, to maintain them, and to exercise with intelligence their parts in self-government.” In all this work his keen common sense always cut his way through questions at which other men stopped or stumbled. Thus, in the discussion on primogeniture, when Isaac Pendleton proposed, as a compromise, that they should adopt the Hebrew principle and give a double portion to the eldest son, Jefferson cut at once into the heart of the question. As he himself relates,—“I observed, that, if the eldest son could eat twice as much, or do double work, it might be a natural evidence of his right to a double portion; but being on a par in his powers and wants with his brothers and sisters, he should be on a par also in the partition of the patrimony. And such was the decision of the other members.”
But such fierceness against the bulwarks of aristocracy, and such keenness in cutting through its heavy arguments, carried him farther. Logic forced him to pass from the attack on aristocracy to the attack on slavery, just as logic forces the Confederate oligarchs of to-day to pass from the defence of slavery to the defence of aristocracy. He was sure to fight this vilest of tyrannies, and he gave quick thrusts and heavy blows. In 1778 he brought in a bill to prevent the further importation of slaves into Virginia. “This,” he says, “passed without opposition, and stopped the increase of the evil by importation, leaving to future efforts its final eradication.” Years afterward he wrote as follows:—“I have sometimes asked myself whether my country is better for my having lived at all: I do not know that it is. I have been the instrument of doing the following things.” Of these things there were just ten. Just ten great worthy deeds in a life like Jefferson’s!—and one of these he declares “the act prohibiting the importation of slaves.”
Close upon this followed a fiercer grapple,—his third great legislative attack on slavery. In his revision of the Virginia laws he reported “a bill to emancipate all slaves born after the passing of the act.” Attached to this was a plan for the instruction of the young negroes thus set free.
To follow Jefferson and understand him, we must bear in mind that the Virginia which educated him was not behind a dozen smaller States in fertility, enterprise, and republican feeling. Its best men were haters of slavery. The efforts of its leaders were directed to other things than plans for taxing oysters or filching the gains of free negroes. Forth from the Virginia of that time were hurled against negro slavery the thrilling invectives of Patrick Henry, the startling prophecies of Madison, and the declaration of Washington, “For the abolition of slavery by law my vote shall not be wanting.”
For a mirror of that Virginia statesmanship, in its dealings with human rights, take the “Dissertation on Slavery with a Proposal for the Gradual Abolition of it in the State of Virginia, written by St. George Tucker, Professor of Law in the University of William and Mary, and one of the Judges of the General Court in Virginia,” published in 1791. It proves, that, between the passage of the act of 1782 allowing manumission and the year 1791, more than ten thousand slaves had been set free. One is tempted to believe that the new Massachusetts school caught its fire from this old Virginia school; for this friend of Jefferson speaks of “the inconsistency of invoking God for liberty in our Revolution and imposing on our fellow-men who differ from us in complexion a slavery ten thousand times more cruel than the grievances and oppressions of which we complained.” Such was the utterance of the Virginia school of statesmanship in which Jefferson was trained.
And his views progressed, as we should expect. On the occasion of a call for instructions to the first Virginia delegates to Congress respecting an address to the King, Jefferson drew up a paper, which, though greatly admired, was thought too bold. In one passage he goes beyond his masters, and says,—“For the most trifling reasons, and sometimes for no conceivable reasons at all, his Majesty has rejected laws of the most salutary tendency. The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in these Colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state. But, previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves we have, it is necessary to exclude all further importations from Africa. Yet our repeated efforts to effect this, by prohibiting and by imposing duties which might amount to prohibition, have been hitherto defeated by his Majesty’s negative,—thus preferring the advantages of a few British corsairs to the lasting interests of the American States, and to the rights of human nature, deeply wounded by this infamous practice.”
These words are hot and bright, but they are mere sparkles compared to the full-flaming orb of freedom which our statesman gave afterward. For, take the Declaration of Independence, as it issued from Carpenter’s Hall, after slavery-loving planters of the South and money-loving ship-owners of the North had, as they thought, made it neutral, and we all, North and South, recognize in it the boldest anti-slavery document extant. Why else do Northern demagogues ridicule it, and Southern demagogues revile it? Yet Jefferson made it far stronger and sharper against negro slavery than it is now. Look closely at the well-known fac-simile:—
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 hemissphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither, this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain determined to keep open a market
There stands to this day that precious original,—hot first-thoughts and cold second-thoughts, all in Jefferson’s own hand. Look for a moment at the rich current of internal evidence running through that rough draught, and through all its erasures, changes, and emphatic markings,—evidence of the deepest hatred not only of all tyranny, but of all slavery. Thus, after he had written the passage, “determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold,” the idea continues hot in his mind; for, after smouldering a few moments, it flames forth again, is written again in the same phrasing, with the same show of emphasis, before he bethinks himself to erase it. Then, too, the words Christian and MEN are the only words emphasized by careful pen-printing in large letters;—and this labored movement of his pen marks the injury which he deemed the greater; for the largest letters and deepest emphasis are reserved
