When historians are faced with competing interpretations of the past, they often look at primary source material as part of the process of evaluating the different arguments. Below are primary source materials relating to Thomas Jefferson's relationship with slavery. The first document is an excerpt from a draft of the Declaration of Independence largely written by Thomas Jefferson. This excerpt was removed from the final version of the declaration. The second document is a selection from Jefferson's 1785 book on the state of Virginia, relating to slaves and slavery. The third document is a letter Jefferson wrote while serving in Paris as the U.S. minister (ambassador) to France in 1788, and the fourth is a letter from April 1820 expressing his feelings regarding the Missouri Compromise, which admitted Missouri as a slave state and created a northern boundary for slavery in the west- ern territories. Carefully read the primary sources and answer the following questions. Decide which of the primary source documents support or refute Wilson's and Finkelman's arguments about Jefferson. Which of the two historians' arguments is best supported by the primary source documents? If you find that both arguments are well supported by the evidence, why do you think the two historians had such different interpretations about Jefferson? Based on the ethical standard you choose in Part I and these documents, how would you assess Jefferson's relationship with slavery? You may consider how Jefferson's views change over time. What has using primary sources to evaluate the Wilson and Finkelman arguments taught you about making ethical assessments of historical figures? Primary Source 1 Thomas Jefferson, a draft section omitted from the Declaration of Independence (1776) He [King George III] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people [Africans] 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 [disgusting] 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, & 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. Source: Jefferson, Thomas. "Thomas Jefferson, June 1776, Rough Draft of the Declaration of Independence," 1776. The Thomas Jefferson Papers Series 1. General Correspondence. 1651- 1827. American Memory, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Primary Source 2 Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (1787) It will probably be asked, Why not retain and incorporate the Blacks into the State [after emancipation], and thus save the expense of supplying, by importation of white settlers, the vacancies they will leave? Deep-rooted prejudices entertained by the Whites; ten thousand recollections by the Blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions, which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race. To these objections, which are political, may be added others, which are physical and moral. . . . Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me, that in memory they are equal to the Whites; in reason much inferior, . . . and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless and anomalous. . . . To our reproach it must be said, that though for a century and a half we have had under our eyes the races of Black and of Red men, they have never yet been viewed by us as subjects of natural history. I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the Blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the Whites in the endowments both of body and mind. It is not against experience to suppose, that different species of the same genus, or varieties of the same species, may possess different qualifications. Will not a lover of natural history then, one who views the gradations in all the races of animals with the eye of philosophy, excuse an effort to keep those in the department of man as distinct as nature has formed them? This unfortunate difference of colour, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people. Many of their advocates, while they wish to vindicate the liberty of human nature, are anxious also to preserve its dignity and beauty. Some of these, embarrassed by the question 'What further is to be done with them?' join themselves in opposition with those who are actuated by sordid avarice [greed] only. Among the Romans emancipation required but one effort. The slave, when made free, might mix with, without staining the blood of his master. But with us a second is necessary, unknown to history. When freed, he is to be removed beyond the reach of mixture. . . . There must, doubtless, be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people, produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one

part, and degrading. . . . For if a slave can have a country in this world, it must be any other in preference to that in which he is born to live and labor for another. Source: Jefferson, Thomas. "Laws, Query XIV." Notes on the State of Virginia. London: Printed for John Stockdale, Opposite Burlington- House, Piccadilly, 1787. 229-271. Primary Source 3 Thomas Jefferson, Letter to M. Warville [a Frenchman] (February 11, 1788) Sir, I am very sensible of the honor you propose to me, of becoming a member of the society for the abolition of the slave-trade. You know that nobody wishes more ardently, to see an abolition, not only of the trade, but of the condition of slavery: and certainly nobody will be more willing to encounter every sacrifice for that object. But the influence and information of the friends to this proposition in France will be far above the need of my association. I am here as a public servant, and those whom I serve, having never yet been able to give their voice against the practice, it is decent for me to avoid too public a demonstration of my wishes to see it abolished. Without serving the cause here, it might render me less able to serve it beyond the water. I trust you will be sensible of the prudence of those motives, therefore, which govern my conduct on this occasion, and be assured of my wishes for the success of your undertaking, and the sentiments of esteem and respect, with which I have the honor to be, Sir, your most obedient, humble servant, Th: Jefferson. Source: Jefferson, Thomas. "Jean Plumard Brissot de Warville to Thomas Jefferson, February 11, 1788," 1788. The Thomas Jefferson Papers. Series 1: General Correspondence, 1651-1827. American Memory, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Primary Source 4 Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Holmes (April 22, 1820) I thank you, dear Sir, for the copy you have been so kind as to send me of the letter to your constituents on the Missouri question [the admission of Missouri as slave state]. . . . The cession of that kind of property [slaves] (for so it is misnamed) . . . would not cost me a second thought, if, in that way, a general emancipation and expatriation could be effected: and, gradually, and with due sacrifices, I think it might be. But as it is, we have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other. Of one thing I am certain, that as the passage of slaves from one State to another, would not make a slave of a single human being who would not be so without it, so their diffusion over a greater surface would make them individually happier, and proportionally facilitate the accomplishment of their emancipation. . . . Th: Jefferson.

Source: Jefferson, Thomas. "Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes, April 22, 1820," 1820. The Thomas Jefferson Papers, Series 1: General Correspondence, 1651-1827. American Memory, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.Source: Jefferson, Thomas. "Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes, April 22, 1820," 1820. The Thomas Jefferson Papers, Series 1: General Correspondence, 1651-1827. American Memory, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C