Jefferson Notes on the State of Virginia and Race essays

Jefferson Notes on the State of Virginia and Race essays Thomas Jefferson, a man who penned the words, "All men are created equal," was a slave owner. To many, this is an inconceivable contradictiona hypocritical blasphemy against truth. However, Jefferson was ultimately a man of his times, mired in the social and political climate of his daya day, when slavery was a simple, if not repugnant, fact of life. But how, exactly, did Jefferson feel about racial difference and the justification of slavery' The answer can be clearly found in his work, At the time of its writing, Jefferson's Notes was an important diplomatic document. Jefferson knew that the country desperately needed to have the support of various European nations if it was to successfully break free from the grasp of Great Britain. However, he worried that the image of the United States would be tarnished if the notion that its Indians had been conquered and enslaved. For this reason, he wrote, "An inhuman practice once prevailed in this country of making slaves of the Indians. (This practice commenced with the Spaniards with the first discovery of America)."(61) Thus, Jefferson was keenly resolute in denying that the United States was responsible for enslaving American Indiansand he not only vigorously denied this fact, but shifted the blame onto the original Spanish explorers. However, this begs the questionwhat of the black slavesthe very ones he kept on his plantation' To Jefferson, the answer was clear. Not only was the situation and position of black slaves different, but it was far more dangerous to the survival of the country Indeed, Jefferson not only justifies the continuation of the institution of slavery in his writing, but he refers to a "doom" scenario, where, were slaves to be freed, the cumulative injustices infl ...