Hero or Hypocrite - Thomas Thesis

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" By commerce, one should read the relationship between master and slave in general. Here, Jefferson speaks as a true man of the Enlightenment who cannot accept the degrading submission of a human being.

On the other hand, some of his arguments against slavery are related to manners. Manners should probably be here less regarded as the social conventions of the time, but rather as some sort of collective conscience that should oppose the idea of enslaving another individual. More so, the people's morale, as well as the respect for people tolerating slavery, will be broken by perpetuating slavery.

3. The Sally Hemings Case

The controversy surrounding Sally Hemings is well-known, although it has never been fully proven. Sally Hemings was owned by Jefferson's father-in-law and rumors appeared that Jefferson had fathered five children with Sally Hemings. At that moment, the controversy started as a political quarrel in fact, in an attempt to discredit Jefferson, but the story was not denied by him and did eventually gain more foot in the society.

The dualist nature of Jefferson regarding slavery is clear in this case as well. If he did indeed father Hemings's children, one could then support the idea that none of his racist allegations from query XIV is true. However, he does not deny or admit publicly his acts, which makes things more ambivalent.

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At the same time, one needs to consider that, as a political figure, he would have all interest to hide or deny any such charges, even if it was not the case of a slave, lest it might harm his political career.

4. Conclusion

The analysis in this paper has shown that Jefferson was one of the forefront representatives of the Enlightenment and his writings are a proof in this sense. His theoretical work point towards an idealistic approach, one that believes slavery is wrong. Despite some unusually racist writings in 1784, most of his works seem to follow this line. However, he never does anything to translate this into practice. His words remain on paper and are never acted upon. The best explanation for this is probably that Jefferson is a political character, one who is afraid to see anything destabilizing the new nation. Obtaining its independence and maintaining it was difficult enough and adding to that a thorough reformation, such as abolition would imply, would have threatened the nations stability.

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