The Dark Side of Thomas Jefferson
SMITHSONIAN
A new portrait of the founding father challenges the long-held perception of Thomas Jefferson as a benevolent slaveholder
By
Smithsonian Magazine
As Jefferson was counting up the agricultural profits and losses of
his plantation in a letter to President Washington that year, it
occurred to him that there was a phenomenon he had perceived at
Monticello but never actually measured.(...) What Jefferson set out clearly for the first time was that he
was making a 4 percent profit every year on the birth of black children.
The enslaved were yielding him a bonanza, a perpetual human dividend at
compound interest. Jefferson wrote, “I allow nothing for losses by
death, but, on the contrary, shall presently take credit four per cent.
per annum, for their increase over and above keeping up their own
numbers.” His plantation was producing inexhaustible human assets. The
percentage was predictable.
In another communication from the early 1790s, Jefferson takes the 4 percent formula further and quite bluntly advances the notion that slavery presented an investment strategy for the future. He writes that an acquaintance who had suffered financial reverses “should have been invested in negroes.” He advises that if the friend’s family had any cash left, “every farthing of it [should be] laid out in land and negroes, which besides a present support bring a silent profit of from 5. to 10. per cent in this country by the increase in their value.”
In another communication from the early 1790s, Jefferson takes the 4 percent formula further and quite bluntly advances the notion that slavery presented an investment strategy for the future. He writes that an acquaintance who had suffered financial reverses “should have been invested in negroes.” He advises that if the friend’s family had any cash left, “every farthing of it [should be] laid out in land and negroes, which besides a present support bring a silent profit of from 5. to 10. per cent in this country by the increase in their value.”
After Jefferson’s death in 1826, the
families of Jefferson’s most devoted servants were split apart. Onto the
auction block went Caroline Hughes, the 9-year-old daughter of
Jefferson’s gardener Wormley Hughes. One family was divided up among
eight different buyers, another family among seven buyers.
Joseph Fossett, a Monticello blacksmith, was among the handful of slaves freed in Jefferson’s will, but Jefferson left Fossett’s family enslaved. In the six months between Jefferson’s death and the auction of his property, Fossett tried to strike bargains with families in Charlottesville to purchase his wife and six of his seven children. His oldest child (born, ironically, in the White House itself) had already been given to Jefferson’s grandson. Fossett found sympathetic buyers for his wife, his son Peter and two other children, but he watched the auction of three young daughters to different buyers. One of them, 17-year-old Patsy, immediately escaped from her new master, a University of Virginia official.
Joseph Fossett spent ten years at his anvil and forge earning the money to buy back his wife and children. By the late 1830s he had cash in hand to reclaim Peter, then about 21, but the owner reneged on the deal. Compelled to leave Peter in slavery and having lost three daughters, Joseph and Edith Fossett departed Charlottesville for Ohio around 1840. Years later, speaking as a free man in Ohio in 1898, Peter, who was 83, would recount that he had never forgotten the moment when he was “put up on the auction block and sold like a horse.”
In 1998, DNA TESTING Later Proved the Descendants of Sally Hemings were related to Thomas Jefferson.
Jeffersons Split Over Hemings Descendants
Joseph Fossett, a Monticello blacksmith, was among the handful of slaves freed in Jefferson’s will, but Jefferson left Fossett’s family enslaved. In the six months between Jefferson’s death and the auction of his property, Fossett tried to strike bargains with families in Charlottesville to purchase his wife and six of his seven children. His oldest child (born, ironically, in the White House itself) had already been given to Jefferson’s grandson. Fossett found sympathetic buyers for his wife, his son Peter and two other children, but he watched the auction of three young daughters to different buyers. One of them, 17-year-old Patsy, immediately escaped from her new master, a University of Virginia official.
Joseph Fossett spent ten years at his anvil and forge earning the money to buy back his wife and children. By the late 1830s he had cash in hand to reclaim Peter, then about 21, but the owner reneged on the deal. Compelled to leave Peter in slavery and having lost three daughters, Joseph and Edith Fossett departed Charlottesville for Ohio around 1840. Years later, speaking as a free man in Ohio in 1898, Peter, who was 83, would recount that he had never forgotten the moment when he was “put up on the auction block and sold like a horse.”
In 1998, DNA TESTING Later Proved the Descendants of Sally Hemings were related to Thomas Jefferson.
Jeffersons Split Over Hemings Descendants
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By Leef Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 17, 1999; Page B1 CHARLOTTESVILLE, May 16 – They may not look alike or accept that they're related, but when the descendants of Thomas Jefferson and one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, sat down at a white-linen luncheon this afternoon, it was like an episode of "Family Feud."
Before people even tucked in their napkins, goodwill lost its footing and the bickering began. The occasion was the 86th annual meeting of the Monticello Association, a group of 700 descendants of Thomas Jefferson and his wife, Martha. This year, for the first time, about 35 descendants of Hemings, long thought by some to have been the mistress of the third president, were invited as guests.
The motion to remove the guests lost, 33 to 20. But from that point on, those in attendance said later, the tone of the gathering became more contentious.
Read about Sally Hemings HERE (WIKI)
Read more about the Jefferson-Hemings Controversy HERE
If you don't have our app, Mobile Generated News (MoGN), get it HERE Today!
Check the blog for regular updates. Where Tech, Money, and Politics collide!
Monday, May 17, 1999; Page B1 CHARLOTTESVILLE, May 16 – They may not look alike or accept that they're related, but when the descendants of Thomas Jefferson and one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, sat down at a white-linen luncheon this afternoon, it was like an episode of "Family Feud."
Before people even tucked in their napkins, goodwill lost its footing and the bickering began. The occasion was the 86th annual meeting of the Monticello Association, a group of 700 descendants of Thomas Jefferson and his wife, Martha. This year, for the first time, about 35 descendants of Hemings, long thought by some to have been the mistress of the third president, were invited as guests.
The motion to remove the guests lost, 33 to 20. But from that point on, those in attendance said later, the tone of the gathering became more contentious.
Read about Sally Hemings HERE (WIKI)
Read more about the Jefferson-Hemings Controversy HERE
If you don't have our app, Mobile Generated News (MoGN), get it HERE Today!
Check the blog for regular updates. Where Tech, Money, and Politics collide!
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