Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power

I am re-reading Negro President. I think I will give it a third reading at some point. Garry Wills is a Jefferson historian and self-described Jefferson-admirer. (Those who dismiss this book as Jefferson-bashing have not read the book carefully.) This is Wills' third book on Jefferson. In this one he wanted to take a hard look at the problem points of Jefferson's life and career. The true story of our Revolution explains the inevitability of the Civil War and our nation's current polarization. This book eloquently explains why we have the Electoral College, and why Philadelphia with Quaker sensibilities was unacceptable to Southerners as our nation's capital. Wills had to do quite a bit of digging into the election of 1800 to exhume the matter of the Electoral College. The election of 2000 was almost a replay of the election of 1800 in many ways. Wills explains that the Electoral College was a device to give the South more representation (the slave bonus) in presidential elections by counting slaves as three-fifths of a person-yet, these same slaves had no vote of their own. Thus, in presidential elections, a slave-owner cast, in addition to his own vote, three extra votes for every five slaves he owned. The polarization our nation faces today is perplexing until you realize that it goes back to the bickering amongst the founders. For example, Hamilton's longstanding dispute with Burr which led to there "interview " at Wehawkin (interview being code for duel) was not a singularity of the time, but epigrammatic of it. Another book I can recommend is Founding Brothers. Although the ostensible subject is Jefferson, Wills uses Timothy Pickering , an immensely complicated and highly moral man as a foil to Jefferson to flesh out his portrait of Jefferson. Pickering, although dismissed by historians as a minor luminary of the Revolution, and so dismissed by Wills, himself, leaps from the pages of this book as one of the truly interesting Founders. I think it is time to re-discover this amazing fellow Pennsylvanian. It is time to get back to our Yankee roots. Because historians underrate Pickering, you probably never were taught about him in school. In fact, the American history we were taught in school, regardless of whether you attended public or parochial school (I have attended both), was drained of its blood in an attempt to make the facts age appropriate. Unfortunately, this has made us a nation ignorant of our own history. Such a nation cannot be said to be grooming good citizens.

Wills peels away each generation's gloss on Jefferson historiagraphy to reveal a truth larger than any blot on Jefferson's character. Using the federal ratio that allowed slave "property" to be counted toward the congressional representation alloted to the state as a sort of divining rod, Wills locates the hidden pockets of greed behind the Northwest Ordinance, the Louisiana purchase, and Manifest Destiny. I can only hope that Wills' views will be looked back on as the start of a much needed revision to the story of slavery in America presented in our schools and in the popular media.

Gary Wills once more reveals himself as an author of courage who explores controversial issues with a microscopic eye. This time he has the author of America's Declaration of Independence and the nation's third president, Thomas Jefferson, in his analytical sights.Despite being an admirer of Jefferson's and much of what he stood for, Wills also realizes that he was, as a member of the Southern aristocracy, standing in the middle of the fledgling nation's major controversy, which would ultimately rock America to its foundations, that of slavery. While Americans who have studied the history of the nation's early years were aware of the highly controversial three-fifths rule, the service Wills performs in this book is to analyze Jefferson's role in the ongoing debate concerning it and deduce that he was able to become presidency on the strength of a rule that was seen as a compromise between the north and the south on the subject of slavery.Wills sees Jefferson as a "Negro president" in that he was the beneficiary of the controversial rule, achieving the presidency as a result of its application. By having large numbers of slaves counted as three-fifths of a person this segment made it possible for Jefferson to achieve the presidency. With so many slaves located in states where Jefferson had strength, the three-fifths rule provided a rocket thrust which made the difference in the election of 1800. The tragic irony is that fictitious votes of individuals who were not even considered persons in the legal sense, and had no right to vote, made the difference. Slavery ended up serving as a gigantic bonus, providing an electoral boost.This is a debate that is certain to continue, and Wills deserves praise for setting it into motion. In order to know about ourselves as a people we must tackle all questions, no matter how tough or unpleasant. Another point Wills covers is that Jefferson's founding of the University of Virginia, which he considered his proudest accomplishment, was also tied strongly to the ongoing slavery debate between the south and the north. Wills asserts that Jefferson wanted a university in his own state of Virginia to serve as a counter balance to strong anti-slavery sentiments at institutions of learning in the north such as Yale and Harvard.

Critics of this work that carp about small points concerning Jefferson miss the point entirely. The book is a useful corrective that puts slavery ands its preservation front and center in early US history. Too often, early American history barely mentions slavery until is suddenly surfaces to split the country. It was often the only issue that mattered. An abolitionist could not get elected in the Slave states, no matter what other stands they took. They would be lucky to get out alive, since many were beaten, jailed and lynched. The Free states, while solidly prejudiced, stoutly opposed the spread of slavery and the plantation system. The constant push of Slave states to spread slavery to new territories and the resistance of the Free states is the story of America from 1770 to 1865. Thanks to Wills for reminding us of that.

Garry Wills reminds us at the beginning of this book that he's previously written two volumes that praised aspects of Jefferson's life and work. He insists he's still an admirer of Jefferson, though he concedes readers may differ with that claim after they finish this book. The reason? In these chapters, Wills lays out a persuasive case that Jefferson's presidency was largely shaped by the "slave power"--the constitutional provision requiring that each slave be counted as three-fifths of a person in determining congressional representation. Without the "slave power," Jefferson would have never won the presidency in 1800. Wills examines how Jefferson's determination to preserve and extend the rule of the slave states drove many of his most important decisions. The acquisition of the Louisiana Territory was seen as an opportunity to add more slave territory to the emerging nation. The embargo, one of Jefferson's most controversial acts, seems to make more sense when considered in the light of its positive benefits for the agrarian south and negative impacts on the commerce of the northern states. Even the selection of the site for the nation's capitol, Wills argues, was heavily influenced by the slaveholder's desire for a setting where their values and way of life would be embraced instead of shunned. Jefferson's questionable political and moral decisions were not made without opposition. Wills sheds the spotlight on, and helps to rehabilitate Timothy Pickering, secretary of war under Washington, secretary of state under Adams, and consistent critic of Jefferson during his years in congress. After Pickering passed from the scene, John Quincy Adams emerged as the chief moral spokesman against the influence of slavery. To dismiss this book as mere Jefferson-bashing would be facile. As Wills himself notes, though Jefferson devoted much energy to preserving the slave power, he was not the worst offender in this regard; and he did not argue, as some did, that slavery itself was benign. Rather, he says, "Jefferson belonged to that large class of southerners--including the best of them, men like Washington and Madison--who knew that slavery was evil, but felt they could not cut back on the evil without cutting the ground out from under them." What Wills is asking us to do, I believe, is to set aside our prejudices, pro and con, and re-examine this nation's formative years in the harsh but honest light of how they were corrupted by slavery; and how even today, we are paying the price for the immoral bargains that men of good faith and character believed they were required to make.--William C. Hall