Compare And Contrast Thomas Jefferson Views On Slavery

Thomas Jefferson’s view on slavery Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner himself, originally wrote in the Declaration of Independence that all slaves should coexist with society, but he ended up revoking his opinions. Notes on the State of Virginia, written by Thomas Jefferson was a story that had conflicting ideas about African Americans and their role in society. During Jefferson’s time period, whites often regarded African Americans simply as slaves, or even a different species altogether. Slaves were regarded as culturally, physically, and mentally different from their white counterparts. Americans started to become dependent on their slaves, which made them want to keep their dominant relationship even more than before. Jefferson believed

Many blacks were unable to read or write, but there were also many African Americans that were more educated than their white counterparts, such as poet Phillis Wheatley. Jefferson often times looked at African Americans next to the white race “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 they are much inferior and in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous” (764). Many times, their imagination, memory, and reasoning would be closely related to whites, they just had a different thought process and a different way of solving problems. Many African Americans never had the opportunity to learn, due to the fact that slave owners wanted remain in power and feel more

The slave owners used these falsified scientific differences to justify what they were doing. Due to the belief that the African Americans secreted less from the kidnies and had altered glands, “ this greater degree of transpiration, renders them more tolerant of heat, and less so of cold than whites” (Jefferson 763). Jefferson believed that the glands were altered in African Americans allowing them to be more tolerant of heat, which reiterated the point that they were meant to work outdoors in the fields. If society believed they were altered to work in the fields, it allowed them feel justified in what they were putting the slaves through. Jefferson stated that African Americans are genetically altered to sleep less, “they seem to require less sleep. A black after hard labour through the day, will be induced by the slightest amusements to sit up till midnight or later, though knowing he must be out with that first dawn of the morning” (764). Jefferson’s claim that slaves truly required less sleep allowed him to deem their long hours on the field as acceptable, because he believed that they didn’t get tired as easily. The scientific facts that Jefferson based his claims on were obviously falsified, but society was still quick in believing what he had