{"id":60512,"date":"2020-08-05T20:04:13","date_gmt":"2020-08-06T00:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.umw.edu\/greatlives\/?post_type=lecture&#038;p=60512"},"modified":"2024-04-30T10:23:47","modified_gmt":"2024-04-30T14:23:47","slug":"thomas-jefferson","status":"publish","type":"lecture","link":"https:\/\/www.umw.edu\/greatlives\/lecture\/thomas-jefferson\/","title":{"rendered":"Thomas Jefferson: Paragon of Democracy or Racist Hypocrite?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<section class=\"wp-block-umw-hero alignfull umw-custom-block umw-hero umw-hero--dark-text umw-hero--white umw-hero--with-no-media\"><div class=\"umw-hero__inner\"><div class=\"umw-hero__media\"><\/div><div class=\"umw-hero__title\"><div class=\"container\"><div class=\"umw-hero__title__wrapper\"><div class=\"umw-hero__eyebrow\">thomas jefferson<\/div><h1 class=\"umw-hero__title__header\">Paragon of Democracy or Racist Hypocrite?<\/h1><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block-umw-hero-ctas alignfull\"><div class=\"umw-hero__links\"><div class=\"container\"><div class=\"umw-hero__links__wrapper\">\n\n\n\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n<div class=\"wpv-view-output\" data-toolset-views-view-editor=\"b10a1e05d89dd9f0cba0bb824ada7480\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-toolset-views-view-editor wpv-gutenberg-view-wrapper-61885\">\n\n\n<div id=\"wpv-view-layout-61885-CATTR53fe3e144b941f274e22f2d1ea3faac1\" class=\"js-wpv-view-layout js-wpv-layout-responsive js-wpv-view-layout-61885-CATTR53fe3e144b941f274e22f2d1ea3faac1\" data-viewnumber=\"61885-CATTR53fe3e144b941f274e22f2d1ea3faac1\" data-pagination=\"{&quot;id&quot;:&quot;61885&quot;,&quot;query&quot;:&quot;normal&quot;,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;disabled&quot;,&quot;effect&quot;:&quot;fade&quot;,&quot;duration&quot;:500,&quot;speed&quot;:5,&quot;pause_on_hover&quot;:&quot;enabled&quot;,&quot;stop_rollover&quot;:&quot;false&quot;,&quot;cache_pages&quot;:&quot;enabled&quot;,&quot;preload_images&quot;:&quot;enabled&quot;,&quot;preload_pages&quot;:&quot;enabled&quot;,&quot;preload_reach&quot;:1,&quot;spinner&quot;:&quot;builtin&quot;,&quot;spinner_image&quot;:&quot;\/\/www.umw.edu\/greatlives\/wp-content\/plugins\/toolset-blocks\/embedded\/res\/img\/ajax-loader.gif&quot;,&quot;callback_next&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;manage_history&quot;:&quot;enabled&quot;,&quot;has_controls_in_form&quot;:&quot;disabled&quot;,&quot;infinite_tolerance&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;max_pages&quot;:1,&quot;page&quot;:1,&quot;base_permalink&quot;:&quot;\/greatlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lecture\/60512?wpv_view_count=61885-CATTR53fe3e144b941f274e22f2d1ea3faac1&amp;wpv_paged=WPV_PAGE_NUM&quot;,&quot;loop&quot;:{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;name&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;data&quot;:[],&quot;id&quot;:0}}\" data-permalink=\"\/greatlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lecture\/60512?wpv_view_count=61885-CATTR53fe3e144b941f274e22f2d1ea3faac1\">\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n          <h2 class=\"lectureDate\">Lecture Date: August 11, 2020<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Great Lives, Thomas Jefferson  2020\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/447150831?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"533\" height=\"300\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<div class=\"topicSummary\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/www.umw.edu\/greatlives\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2020\/08\/Thomas-Jefferson-300x300.jpg\" class=\"attachment-medium alignright\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" style=\"\" srcset=\"\/\/www.umw.edu\/greatlives\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2020\/08\/Thomas-Jefferson-300x300.jpg 300w, \/\/www.umw.edu\/greatlives\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2020\/08\/Thomas-Jefferson-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, \/\/www.umw.edu\/greatlives\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2020\/08\/Thomas-Jefferson-150x150.jpg 150w, \/\/www.umw.edu\/greatlives\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2020\/08\/Thomas-Jefferson-768x768.jpg 768w, \/\/www.umw.edu\/greatlives\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2020\/08\/Thomas-Jefferson-1140x1140.jpg 1140w, \/\/www.umw.edu\/greatlives\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2020\/08\/Thomas-Jefferson-50x50.jpg 50w, \/\/www.umw.edu\/greatlives\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2020\/08\/Thomas-Jefferson-75x75.jpg 75w, \/\/www.umw.edu\/greatlives\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2020\/08\/Thomas-Jefferson.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p>In recent years, as biographers have reinterpreted significant historical lives, there has been a tendency toward denigrating the reputations of a number of previously hallowed individuals. <\/p>\n<p>In this process -- referred to, sometimes derisively, as \u201crevisionism\u201d -- perhaps no figure in American history has suffered greater decline in stature than Thomas Jefferson.<\/p>\n<p>To be sure, the third President had enemies in his own times, including one who ineloquently referred to him as a \u201cson of a bitch\u201d and a \u201cred-headed rascal.\u201d Others, in contrast, revered him as the \u201cSage of Monticello,\u201d emphasizing his immortal precept that \u201call men are created equal.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>In a letter to James Madison dated February 17, 1826, Jefferson implored his friend and presidential successor to \u201ctake care of me when dead.\u201d  He need not have worried, at least for his immediate posterity.  Indeed, for more than a century following his July 4, 1826 death, the preponderance of historical opinion -- either diminishing or ignoring altogether his involvement with slavery and his racist views \u2013 was so uniformly in Jefferson\u2019s favor that one historian, writing in the 1940s, declared that \u201cthe enemies of Thomas Jefferson are all dead or else are in hiding.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But with the coming of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 60s, biographers began to focus increasingly on his personal life, which presaged the end of Jefferson\u2019s secular sainthood. One critic pointed out the irony that \u201cthe leisure that made possible Jefferson\u2019s great writings on human liberty was supported by the labors of three generations of slaves.\u201d<br \/>\nAccordingly, another went so far as to proclaim that \u201cin the multi-racial American future, Jefferson will not be revered. . . .The sound you hear is the crashing of a reputation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Certainly Jefferson\u2019s legacy is nothing if not complicated, rendered nearly inscrutable by the jarring juxtaposition of his words with his works. As one historian so aptly put it: \u201cIn the 19th century, abolitionists used Jefferson\u2019s words as swords; slaveholders used his example as a shield.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There can be no doubt that Jefferson did indeed hold views that most people today would justifiably consider racist. And he himself flatly stated in his Notes on Virginia (1795) that he suspected \u201cblacks to be inferior to the whites.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Yet despite those words\u2014and, more pertinent still, his lifelong ownership of slaves -- there is evidence that he deplored the institution (at least in theory) and, unlike many of his contemporaries, did not extol the institution or employ presumed racial inferiority as justification for enslavement. \u201cWhatever their degree of talent,\u201d he wrote, \u201cit is no measure of their rights.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>At the same time, it should be noted that his disapproval was apparently grounded more in the corrosive effect he believed the institution to inflict upon the white population than in its inhumanity to the blacks themselves. In particular, he feared the damage that it did to the industriousness of whites because, as he famously put it, \u201cIn a warm climate, no man will labor for himself who can make another labor for him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It should further be noted that Jefferson\u2019s various plans for emancipation were invariably accompanied by the requirement that freed slaves be deported. Why so? Because he believed that \u201cthe two races, equally free, cannot live [under] the same government.\u201d And any attempt to do so was fraught -- likely to \u201cproduce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Aside from Jefferson\u2019s written and public pronouncements regarding slavery, the issue is rendered more problematic by his private actions including, most notoriously, the long-rumored relationship with his female slave Sally Hemings -- a liaison now widely presumed to have been true.<\/p>\n<p>As time went on, Jefferson became increasingly discouraged on the slavery issue, concluding that emancipation \u201cis not to be a work of my day.\u201d And, of course, he was right. Yet he maintained a glimmer of hope, writing near the end of his life that \u201ctime, which outlives all things, will outlive this evil also.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Surely Jefferson\u2019s life was a complex one, and any attempt to analyze him raises the question of the extent to which revisionist interpretations should overwhelm an individual\u2019s positive contributions \u2013 which in Jefferson\u2019s case were considerable, among them the authorship of the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom; two terms as President; purchase of the Louisiana Territory; and founding of the University of Virginia.<\/p>\n<p>Beyond that, and more generally, there is the matter of the propriety of judging historical figures by contemporary standards that are often at great variance from the times in which the biographical subject lived. In any case, as mores continue to evolve, the Jefferson debate proceeds undiminished -- and unresolved.<\/p>\n<p>Published in the <a href=\"https:\/\/fredericksburg.com\/opinion\/commentary-thomas-jefferson-paragon-of-democracy-or-racist-hypocrite\/article_fd29f34d-2e48-5e4a-883b-c943930e86e5.html\"><em>Free Lance-Star<\/em><\/a><br \/>\nAugust 9, 2020<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h2 class=\"lectureSpeaker\" style=\"padding-top: 1em;\">Speaker: William B. Crawley<\/h2>\n<div class=\"speakerInfo\">\n<p>UMW Professor Emeritus of History<br \/>\nDirector of the Great Lives<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"umw_cb_additional_links":[[]],"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_advisory_expires_time":"","_advisory_meta_include":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"season":[1187],"class_list":{"0":"post-60512","1":"lecture","2":"type-lecture","3":"status-publish","5":"season-fall-2020","6":"entry"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.3 (Yoast SEO v27.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Thomas Jefferson: Paragon of Democracy or Racist Hypocrite? - Great Lives<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.umw.edu\/greatlives\/lecture\/thomas-jefferson\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Thomas Jefferson: Paragon of Democracy or Racist Hypocrite?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.umw.edu\/greatlives\/lecture\/thomas-jefferson\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Great Lives\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-04-30T14:23:47+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.umw.edu\\\/greatlives\\\/lecture\\\/thomas-jefferson\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.umw.edu\\\/greatlives\\\/lecture\\\/thomas-jefferson\\\/\",\"name\":\"Thomas Jefferson: Paragon of Democracy or Racist Hypocrite? 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