Finkelman

Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson. By Paul Finkleman. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1996. Pp. 227

The Founding Fathers brought forth a country built on life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Jefferson declared that all men were created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Many of the Founders owned slaves; Washington, Jefferson, George Mason, and the majority of southern founders served as noted examples. But historians traditionally credited these men with the prescience to understand the wickedness and moribund economics of slavery. Henry Wienciek’s Imperfect God explored George Washington’s personal struggle with slavery. He finally resolved to free his own slaves, but demurred from freeing his wife’s chattel. Finkleman indicted the Founders for their inconsistent actions and rhetoric regarding slavery. After exploring the general evidence of the Founders complicity in the peculiar institution, Finkleman articulated the slave-filled narrative of the man most identified with the peculiar institution among the Founding generation: Thomas Jefferson.

Finkleman traces the pro-slavery bent in the Revolutionary and Early Republican Eras to the Constitutional Convention. The gathered delegates cared little for democratic innovation. The protection of property and the maintenance of the established social order took the preeminent place in the negotiations surrounding the formation of the institutions of the American government. Finkleman argued that the Constitution became a covenant with death from the multitude of concessions given to the southern aristocrats whose livelihoods depended on their human chattel. Although southerners owned the nation’s slaves, they often enjoyed support from Mid-Atlantic politicians interested in preserving property rights at all cost. The author pointed out that next to real estate, slaves were far an away the most valuable property owned by revolutionary Americans.

The implementation of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 particularly galled Finlkeman. Congress voted a ban on slavery in what would become the Midwest, but the leaderships of the several states carved out of the Northwest Territory continued to flirt with the institution of slavery for nearly fifty years after congress passed the ban. The actions of William Henry Harrison played a major role in Finkleman’s analysis of the Northwest Territories. Harrison, a native Virginian and a supporter of slavery’s introduction in Illinois and Indiana, introduced measured during his time as territorial governor severely curtailing the rights of Blacks in Indiana. Not until 1848 were all people in bondage liberated in the Illini State.

The government’s relatively monotonous passage of the 1793 Fugitive Slave Law also attracted the author’s attention. The bill’s passage served as an example of the Constitution’s pro-slavery creation. Northern members seemed little disposed to fight the bill on constitutional grounds, and in its final form only five members of congress voted against the legislature authorizing American to hunt each other.

Finkleman’s final two chapters critiqued the most controversial Founder, Thomas Jefferson. During the Clinton administration a wholesale rehabilitation of Thomas Jefferson occurred. Historians argued that Jefferson’s main interest centered in the ideals of the enlightenment; science and education, progress and (perhaps a little libertine) freedom filled the ambitious mind of the third President of the United States. Willard Randall’s biography opened with Jefferson thinking of his school days. Noted secularist Christopher Hitchens argued that calling Jefferson a paradox was lazy. But Finkleman’s work ran against the current of the times. Along with Lucia Stanton, who argued that Jefferson became more and more convinced of Black inferiority, Finkleman’s work argued that Jefferson maintained an antipathy to African Americans throughout his long life.

Finkleman skillfully argued his case, and his analysis of Thomas Jefferson damned the Master of Monticello in ways unforeseen by contemporaries. But Finkleman’s focus on Jefferson unfairly painted too many of the Founders into an anachronistic understanding of race and the consequences of slavery. Even Jefferson, historian Thomas West wrote, believed Blacks were men. While a necessary piece of historiography for the Early Republican Period, Jefferson and his contemporaries were not in any way the slaveholders of the succeeding generation. Never did Jefferson and his peers argue slavery was a positive good.

Miles Smith Texas Christian University

Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson. By Paul Fineklman. (2nd Edition. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharp, Inc., 2001.

With his second edition, Paul Finkelman, Chapman Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tulsa, contends that historians of the founding and early republic era have all to often failed to understand the centrality of the slavery issue to the beginnings of the nation. Citing Elkins’ and McKitrick’s The Age of Federalism as a prime example, Finkelman agues that the formation of the nation, its self-identity, and its voice in foreign affairs, among many items, are described and analyzed by scholars from a race-neutral or slavery-absent perspective. Therefore, Finkelman looks at this founding age, this “Age of Jefferson,” which lasts roughly from the signing of the Declaration of Independence to the death of the “Master of Montecello,” and discovers a slave nation, whose founding contains the stench of racism and barbarity.

Finkelman argues for the centrality of the slavery issue on two fronts: the presence of slavery debates and compromises in the founding of the government and the ideas of slavery and race in the writings and actions of Thomas Jefferson. In the first half of the book, Finkelman analyzes the slavery debates at the Constitutional Convention as well as some early slavery stances of the nation as seen in the Northwest Ordinance and the national fugitive slave laws. Far from being a slavery-neutral document, the Constitution, through the careful wrangling and positioning of Southerners, became a proslavery document. In an effort to keep the Southern states a part of the new nation, many Northerners capitulated to the demands of the South on the issues of representation, the quelling of potential slave insurrections, and the handling of fugitive slaves. Here, Finkelman echoes the charges of William Lloyd Garrison, who saw the capitulating actions of the Northerners as “a covenant with the devil” and an “agreement with hell” (ix). These compromises also appeared in the Northwest Ordinance, a document many claim to be an example of the anti-slavery bent of the early government. According to Finkelman, the ordinance did nothing to stop the actual amount of slaves in the Northwest region, given the incoherence of the ordinance, and in fact implicitly encouraged the expansion of slavery in the Southwest. The framers then did very little that would look neutral to slavery upon a closer examination.

In the second half of the work, Finkelman turns his attention to the author of the “spirit of the new nation,” Thomas Jefferson, and in Finkelman’s mind, Jefferson falls far short of even his own rhetoric and in some ways becomes the very bane of the Declaration. Given Jefferson’s position as the leader of the American enlightenment and the author of the Declaration, historians should analyze his actions with regard to slavery according to how well Jefferson was able to “transcend his economic interests and his section background to implement the ideals he articulated,” not according to his position as a Virginian slaveholder. When this standard is applied, according to Finkelman, “Jefferson fails the test” (129). Jefferson continued to trade slaves, sell slaves, punish slaves, break up slave families, and even put most of his slaves up on the auction block when he died. He refused to allow his slaves to go to war for the Revolution when it would have provided him financial incentive because it would have granted them their freedom. He tracked down a slave who fled in search of their own liberty, only to sell him shortly after his return. In short, Jefferson embraced slavery and even embraced the racism inherent in American slavery. Some critics, however, look to Jefferson’s statements against slavery in the original draft of the Declaration or his claims of penning Virginia emancipation bills in his Notes on Virginia as evidence of a softness in Jefferson’s views on African slaves. These arguments hold little weight for Finkelman who dismisses Jefferson’s words as rhetoric and misunderstood statements. In the end, Jefferson failed the leadership of the nation because of his unyielding embrace of slavery. In Finkelman’s mind, “Since the Revolution, the world had been looking to Jefferson to take the lead” on the emancipation issue, but Jefferson refused, and among those who failed to place the nation on the solid ground that would lead to equality for all, “[n]o one bore greater responsibility for that failure than the author of the Declaration of Independence—the Master of Montecello.”

Finkelman’s work is quite interesting and strongly argued. Original in neither his use of evidence nor his arguments, he nonetheless provides a nicely constructed synopsis of a revisionist view of both the framers of the constitution as well as Jefferson. He at times, however, overstates his arguments, pushing his evidence and neglecting those items which would contradict him. Overall, Finkelman provides a well-argued interpretation for ONE of the many layers that went into the founding of the nation as well as the personalities of these founders. Unfortunately, Finkelman describes his layer as all too often the only layer that really matters.

Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson. By Paul Finkelman. (Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, c.1996. Pp. xi, 227. $24.95, ISBN 1-56324-591-4.)

Historians continue to grapple with the issues of slavery, race, and the Founding Fathers because these components compose a large part of America's political and social foundation. The University of Tulsa's Chapman Distinguished Professor Paul Finkelman addresses "race and liberty in the Age of Jefferson," in his controversial book Slavery and the Founders. Finkelman has held notable law and history appointments at various universities and colleges. He has authored and edited over fourteen books as well as seventy scholarly publications. Finkelman's distinguished career focuses on examining the intersection of slavery, politics and American law. His illuminating study, Slavery and the Founders examines the contextual meanings of the constitutional compromises of 1787 and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793. The element most controversial resides with the dismantling of Jefferson's mythical image as a "proto-abolitionist." Finkelman uses James Madison's convention notes, published in 1840, as the primary source material to argue that issues concerning slavery pervaded the Constitutional Convention debates more than the issues concerning large versus small states. The first chapter, "Making a Covenant with Death" examines the rhetoric, debates and compromises which dominated the mindset of the Founding Fathers and produced a national compact that favored slavery (2). Finkelman dissects each article, section, and paragraph of the Constitution that affects the institution of slavery. He points out ironically that the word "slavery" was never used in the creation of the document. Slaves are referred to as "other persons" or "Persons held to Service or Labour" and a southern delegate referred to slaves as "quotas of contribution." Finkelman argues that the phraseology employed throughout the three-month Convention illustrates the sensitive nature of the subject.

Initially the most tenuous aspect facing the delegates dealt with the issue of representation. The smaller states feared a loss of political power and they sought to ensure that their constituents would be adequately represented in the new government. Once the debate over representation got underway the issue of slavery surfaced because the South wanted slaves counted. The South also feared that the new Constitution would destroy their economic institution: slavery. Finkelman dissects the debates surrounding the three-fifths compromise illustrating how the North frequently acquiesced to the South. The reason why anti-slavery delegates voted for the compromise emphasizes their overwhelming desire to protect Northern commercial interests and establish a more efficient and powerful central government. Finkelman argues that this conciliation opened the floodgate for further compromises which assisted in creating a pro-slavery document.

The issue of slavery also influenced the formation of the executive branch. Various options were debated; election of the president by Congress, direct election by the people and election by the state legislatures. Southern delegates readily understood that choosing the president by direct election by the people placed their ability to affect the outcome in peril since blacks lacked suffrage. The Electoral College was formed calculating the number of electors each state received on its total representation within the Congress, therefore including three-fifths of each black increased the political power of the southern states. Hence a "fundamentally antidemocratic" system developed, "at least in part, to protect the interests of slavery" (19).
Southern delegates feared slave emancipation, the inability to retrieve fugitive slaves and taxation on the exports of their staple commodities such as tobacco, indigo, and rice. Charles Coteworth Pinckney, of South Carolina, demanded that the delegates assure that the new federal government insert some sort of security within the Constitution that protected the southern states' economic well-being. Pinckney stated that he would not approve the new Constitution without these assurances. The bargain reached, culminated in what is called the "dirty compromise." The Constitution allowed the slave trade to continue for twenty years and provided an amenable commerce and fugitive slave clauses. The Convention debates and concessions by the northern delegates reveal motives that inherently led to the creation of pro-slavery document.

The author continues his analysis of race and liberty by discussing the ambiguous Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 to illustrate further the ideological stranglehold slavery placed on the new nation. Finkelman asserts that Article IV of the Northwest Ordinance is an ambivalent statute that fails to accomplish what it purported: ban slavery in the territory north of the Ohio River. He dissects the clause and illustrates how it conflicted with other portions of the Ordinance. Bondage continued in the Northwest for the better part of fifty years after Congress initially authorized its implementation (35). Finkelman uses the Illinois and Indiana territory to illustrate the Ordinance's shortcomings. Nowhere did the document address the fact that slaves already existed in the Northwest Territory. Furthermore if, in fact, the slaves were now free, blacks lacked the political power to challenge the continued practice of bondage within the region. "Granting constitutional rights to people is only effective if those people have the power, resources, and liberty to protect their rights" (45).

The Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 also shows the continued juxtaposition between equality, race, and liberty in the Age of Jefferson. The initial desire for a strengthened fugitive slave law began with the case of John Davies. He was a "free" black living in Pennsylvania and later kidnapped by three men from Virginia. The status of Davies and the extradition of the alleged kidnappers spurred a federal debate over extradition and rendition. Ultimately the issue went before Congress and a law allowing slave owners to retrieve their "property" without requiring them to provide adequate proof. Free blacks and Northern antislavery proponents were now in grave danger due to the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793.

The final fourth of the book deconstructs Thomas Jefferson's views on slavery. Finkelman uses Jefferson's own words and actions to dismantle the myth created by many of his biographers. He addresses Jefferson's racist views about blacks in his Notes on the State of Virginia, challenges the idea that this Founding Father hated slavery and forcefully sought to abolish it. By judging Jefferson against his own deeds, words and enlightened eighteenth-century values he pales against his contemporaries who manumitted their slaves and sought to abolish the system. Jefferson freed eight slaves during his lifetime and all of them blood relatives through Sally Hemings. Finkelman points out that regardless of Jefferson's relationship with Sally, the slaves he freed would have been related through marriage.

Slavery and the Founders offers an in-depth look into the role slavery played in forming the Constitution and subsequent legislation. Finkelman's historiographical review serves as an important tool for reviewing the key arguments in the mythmaking of Jefferson. At times the repetition becomes weary and Finkelman's acerbic rhetoric unrestrained. The repetition may have been necessary in order to refocus the reader and establish why the author views Jefferson as an exceptional leader, who failed miserably in reconciling his republican ideals of equality and liberty with his lifetime ownership of slaves. Jefferson looked to the future generation to rectify his deafening silence on the important issues of slavery.