Comparing Jefferson's Views On Slavery And Freedom

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, wrote these infamous words to express that these rights should be protected by their government, and at the time under British rule, they weren’t. Jefferson’s words proclaimed America’s ideals of freedom and equality, which still resonate throughout the world. But if the Creator endows the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the question became why this didn’t apply to African America people. The first thing to understand about slavery is why Europeans
That two such contradictory developments were taking place simultaneously over a long period of our history, from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth, is the central paradox of American history.” Throughout the 18th and 19th century, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and many other slave owners publically expressed that they were horrified and disgusted by the slave trade but owned slaves themselves. Jefferson called slavery a “hideous blot” on America. The problem was that slavery was convenient and abolishing it would require more work than just pushing down their morals and keeping it. Questions arose of where else Americans could find free labor and how can the economy function without the use of slaves? Jefferson suggested at a time that until the government was ready to colonize Africa and send slaves back, they could not be freed. His idea was justified in the sense that it wouldn’t be fair to just send them back to
In Fitzhugh’s Cannibals All! he states, “Whilst, as a general and abstract question, negro slavery has no other claims over other forms of slavery, except that from inferiority, or rather peculiarity, of race, almost all negroes require masters, whilst only the children, the women, the very weak, poor, and ignorant, among the whites, need some protective and governing relation of this kind.” He argued that people of African descent were inherently incapable of living life on their own and their masters are so noble as to help them out. The American government justified their position on the liberty of slaves through the Dred Scott decision of 1857. Scott lived with his master in Illinois and Ohio in the 1830s and 1840s where under the Northwest Ordinance, slavery was prohibited. Scott argued that he had been automatically freed, and his case went up to the Supreme Court. The Court disagreed, stating that no person descended from black Africans may be a citizen of the US, because you must willingly give consent to live under American law. The Court also decided that because Scott was not a citizen, he did not have the legal right to file a suit for his freedom at all. The Court stated that the Ordinance of 1787 couldn’t confer freedom or citizenship on African Americans within the Northwest Territory. With the Court’s decision, if slaves were not considered citizens,