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Cara Rogers Stevens has done the history profession proud with her new book, and we owe her a huge thanks for revising our understanding of Thomas Jefferson in terms of his lifelong opposition to slavery.

Thomas Jefferson and the Fight Against Slavery, by Cara Rogers Stevens (400 pages, (University Press of Kansas, 2024)

As I’ve had the chance to express here at The Imaginative Conservative and elsewhere, I am endlessly fascinated by the person of Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826). I’ve even had the opportunity (of which I’m proud) to proclaim Thomas Jefferson the equivalent of America, and America the equivalent of Thomas Jefferson. Indeed, what we believe about the one, we believe about the other. Maybe I’m being too Voegelian, but I see Jefferson not just as a man, but as a symbol—perhaps THE symbol—of America, along with the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, and the U.S. Constitution of 1787. I’ve also been deeply influenced by various writers and biographers of Jefferson, including Kevin Gutzman, Rob McDonald, Gilbert Chinard, Merrill Peterson, Dumas Malone, and Hans Eicholz—to name just a few.

And, yet, there are problems with Jefferson (just as there are problems with America). No matter what great things the man thought and did (or the country thought and did), he never manumitted the majority of his slaves, and he might very well have had a long-standing affair with one of his slaves, Sally Hemmings. Her children (whether he was the father or not, though historical consensus is that he was) were all freed. Every other year at Hillsdale, I am blessed to teach a semester-long course on the American Founding. And, the students—no matter what I say or explain in terms of context and complexity—simply cannot get past the hypocrisy of someone declaring that all men are equal but then enslaving those of African ancestry. Understandable on their part, and, not surprisingly, I share their frustration.

Enter the brilliant Cara Rogers Stevens (I’ve had the chance to meet her personally, and she has a magnificent and outgoing personality!), a young scholar and historian at Ashland University. She’s just published her first book, Thomas Jefferson and the Fight Against Slavery, and it’s extraordinary. It’s extraordinary in the research, the argumentation, and the style. Indeed, it’s one of my two favorite books that I’ve read this calendar year (along with Miles Smith’s truly insightful Religion and Republic). And, it’s certainly one of the best books ever written on Jefferson.

Decisively, Stevens proves three things in her book. First, she proves that Thomas Jefferson unquestionably wanted to abolish slavery, and he did so throughout his entire adult life. Second, though, she sadly proves that Thomas Jefferson was, by the standards of our day and, frankly, by any ethical and moral standards of Western civilization, deeply racist against blacks. Third, Jefferson’s anti-slavery views were deeply influential on the two generations that followed his own lifetime. So, while there’s not full redemption of Thomas Jefferson in Stevens’ book, there is partial and just redemption of the man on, at least, the slavery issue.

True to good historical practice, Stevens presents her evidence chronologically. Actually, she begins the book  with an 1814 letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to Edward Coles, who would become a vital governor of Illinois and a leading anti-slavery man. When Coles suggested that Jefferson take up the mantle of emancipation, Jefferson responded that his time was done and that it was incumbent upon Coles and his generation to take up the fight. Stevens also wisely notes that Coles took part of Virginia’s debates on emancipation in the early 1830s (before departing for the West) and saw Jefferson’s grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, assure the audience that his grandfather would have supported full emancipation. From here, Stevens jumps back to Jefferson’s earliest days in the Virginian legislature and follows his life through his death, which occurred, miraculously, on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the same day on which his co-drafter, John Adams, also died.

In what can only be described as her thesis, Stevens writes:

When taking Jefferson’s claims and actions seriously during the process of writing, revising, and publishing Notes on the State of Virginia, we find a revolutionary who was seeking to radically change this society: first through laws and then—honoring the democratic process—by influencing a new and enlightened generation of politicians with antislavery principles and strategies.

To be sure, this is a wonderful summary of Stevens’ book.

Throughout the book, we find Thomas Jefferson always advocating emancipation at different points in his life. In the late 1760s, he wanted the Virginian legislature to abolish slavery. In 1776, we find him, somewhat famously, proposing the end of slavery through the Declaration of Independence in a passage infamously struck out by Congress.

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 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 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.

As Stevens so wisely notes, in this deleted passage, Jefferson refers to blacks as MEN, thus demonstrating that his phrase “all men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence applies to all persons of African descent.

In the mid 1780s, we find Jefferson advocating the abolition of slavery when considering the western territories that Virginia then claimed, and thus becoming, eventually, the anti-slavery passage (Article VI) of Nathan Danes Northwest Ordinance in 1787.

We also find Jefferson—at his best and his worst—in his 1785 (though Stevens demonstrates that the book really came out in several versions over several years, each edition being more anti-slavery than the previous one) Notes on the State of Virginia. In this American classic, Jefferson not only advocated the abolition of slavery but he also, tragically, attempted to show that blacks were physically and mentally inferior to whites.

During his presidency, of course, Jefferson had the Marines take out a slave fortress in North Africa. Then, with Jefferson’s encouragement, Congress abolished American participation in the international slave trade on January 1, 1808, the earliest date according to the Constitutional allowable.

And, that takes us back to the beginning, Jefferson’s letter of 1814, asking Coles and his cohorts to lead the fight against slavery in Virginia.

Again, let me stress, Thomas Jefferson and the Fight Against Slavery is an excellent book. Cara Rogers Stevens has done the history profession proud, and we owe her a huge thanks for revising our understanding of Thomas Jefferson. If I had any complaint, it would be a minor (and perhaps ridiculous) one. Stevens splits infinitives throughout her book. To this 56-year old reviewer, I cringed every time and thought of my English-teacher mother correcting me. But, Stevens is originally a South African, and, maybe (just maybe—ha!), it’s allowed there. After all, even Winston Churchill split his infinitives, so who am I to complain?

But, what a minor complaint. I love Stevens as a historian and as a person. Please celebrate with me, and support her by buying a copy of this indispensable work.

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The featured image of Thomas Jefferson is courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

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