Thomas Jefferson was both a social conservative and a racist. Raised in an environment where slaveholding was the norm, JeffersonÆs exposure to African-Americans was largely limited to blacks in bondage, and he formulated his racial philosophy based almost solely on this experience. Granted, the question of the morality of slavery weighed on JeffersonÆs mind throughout most of his adult life, and he periodically made attempts to prohibit the slave trade or even emancipate slaves. However, Jefferson clearly considered African-Americans inferior, and his crusade for emancipation entailed the deportation of manumitted slaves. Jefferson could not envision a society in which blacks and whites could live together as equals.
Jefferson grew up in colonial Virginia, where slaves supported the economy of the regionÆs tobacco plantations. JeffersonÆs father carved out a vast estate by acquiring both land and slaves: ôSlaves were ubiquitous in the society in which Jefferson was reared and in which he came to his majorityö (Miller 2). Young Jefferson inherited a share of the familyÆs lands, livestock, and slaves when the elder Jefferson died. Being only a youth when his father passed away, Jefferson had to wait until he reached the age of inheritance to become the owner of several thousand acres of land and more than 20 slaves. Later, when Jefferson married, he became executor of his father-in-lawÆs sizeable estate, and the slaves passed on to Martha Jefferson allegedly included many who were her half sisters and half brothers: ôBy the time he wrote the Declaration of Independence he had become, by inheritance, purchase, and marriage, one of the principal slaveowners and one of the wealthiest men in Virginiaö (Miller 2). Of the several hundred slaves Jefferson owned during his lifetime he liberated only a few, and even bought several more during his presidency. Holding his own wifeÆs half sisters and half brothers in slavery...