One founding father gets a lot of honor in our country – he has a monument in our nation’s capital, cities and streets across the nation are named for him, he is recognized as the writer of the Declaration of Independence, and currently sits (according to a 2021 C-SPAN poll of historians) at number seven on a list of best Presidents – Thomas Jefferson.

By far the most read and most quoted document written by Thomas Jefferson is the Declaration of Independence. We were taught that famous section as young school children:

“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…”

While that document written in 1776 is significant in our history and development as a country, I propose that a 1781 book written by Jefferson has had just as much or more significance on the history of our country. The book is called “Notes of the State of Virginia”. According to Monticello.org:

The origin of Notes was a request for information about Virginia made to members of the Continental Congress by the secretary to the French legation in Philadelphia, François Marbois. Jefferson received the request indirectly, in late summer of 1780, from Joseph Jones, a member of the Virginia delegation to the Congress. Jones believed the thirty-seven year-old Jefferson, then governor of Virginia, the person best suited to answer the queries.

The book is a rare unveiling of the worldview of one of the most well-known Americans from the founding of this nation. It is really interesting to read if you like to read those sorts of things. The book is divided into Jefferson’s answers to 23 queries that Marbois asked. Jefferson response to Query XIV (14) helps to lay to groundwork for the continuation of chattel slavery for another 80 years, the Jim Crow south that emerged from the ashes of the Civil War and continued implicit bias and discrimination that persist today. The reason I believe the foundation for these eras were established with Jefferson is because of his outsized influence during his life and his honor and reverence shown to him after his death even until this day.

Marbois’ 14th query was about the administration of justice and the description of the laws in Virginia. Jefferson begins his answer by describing the basic structure of the counties and the judiciary that are responsible for the criminal and civil matters:

The state is divided into counties. In every county are appointed magistrates, called justices of the peace, usually from eight to thirty or forty in number, in proportion to the size of the county, of the most discreet and honest inhabitants. They are nominated by their fellows, but commissioned by the governor, and act without reward. These magistrates have jurisdiction both criminal and civil. If the question before them be a question of law only, they decide on it themselves; but if it be a fact, or of fact and law combined, it must be referred to a jury. In the latter case, of a combination of law and fact, it is usual for the jurors to decide the fact, and to refer the law arising on it to the decision of the judges.

…The penalty for different categories of offenses…

If any free person commit an offence against the commonwealth, if it be below the degree of felony, he is bound by a justice to appear before their court, to answer it on indictment or information. If it amount to felony, he is committed to jail; a court of these justices is called; if they on examination think him guilty, they send him to the jail of the general court, before which court he is to be tried first by a grand jury of 24, of whom 13 must concur in opinion; if they find him guilty, he is then tried by a jury of 12 men of the county where the offence was committed, and by their verdict, which must be unanimous, he is acquitted or condemned without appeal. If the criminal be a slave, the trial by the county court is final.

…The hierarchy of the courts…

There are three superior courts, to wit, the high court of chancery, the general court, and court of admiralty. The first and second of these receive appeals from the county courts, and also have original jurisdiction, where the subject of controversy is of the value of ten pounds sterling, or where it concerns the title or bounds of lands. The jurisdiction of the admiralty is original altogether. The high court of chancery is composed of three judges, the general court of five, and the court of admiralty of three. The two first hold their sessions at Richmond at stated times, the chancery twice in the year, and the general court twice for business civil and criminal, and twice more for criminal only. The court of admiralty sits at Williamsburg whenever a controversy arises.

There is one supreme court, called the court of appeals, composed of the judges of the three superior courts, assembling twice a year at stated times   at Richmond. This court receives appeals in all civil cases from each of the superior courts, and determines them finally. But it has no original jurisdiction.

…A history of the Virginia constitution…

The general assembly was constituted, as has been already shown, by letters-patent of March the 9th, 1607, in the 4th year of the reign of James the first. The laws of England seem to have been adopted by consent of the settlers, which might easily enough be done whilst they were few and living all together. Of such adoption, however, we have no other proof than their practice till the year 1661, when they were expressly adopted by an act of the assembly, except so far as ‘a difference of condition’ rendered them inapplicable. Under this adoption, the rule, in our courts of judicature was, that the common law of England, and the general statutes previous to the 4th of James, were in force here; but that no subsequent statutes were, unless we were named in them, said the judges and other partisans of the crown, but named or not named, said those who reflected freely. It will be unnecessary to attempt a description of the laws of England, as that may be found in English publications. To those which were established here, by the adoption of the legislature, have been since added a number of acts of assembly passed during the monarchy, and ordinances of convention and acts of assembly enacted since the establishment of the republic.

Jefferson addresses some notable variations to the British model of dealing with debtors, providing for the poor and sick, how the state handles and recognizes marriage, how the state deals with foreigners who want to become citizens, land ownership, slaves being passed on to heirs after the death of the master just like other property, the exchange rate and much more. He goes is into great detail in answering the query concerning the administering of justice and the laws in Virginia.

He continues on into proposed changes to the English common that are pending in the legislature. For example, creating a more precise way to allow aliens to become citizens, establish religious freedom and setting aside funds to hire workers to ensure that the roads stay in good condition. One of the proposed bills was most interesting:

To emancipate all slaves born after passing the act. The bill reported by the revisers does not itself contain this proposition; but an amendment containing it was prepared, to be offered to the legislature whenever the bill should be taken up, and further directing, that they should continue with their parents to a certain age, then be brought up, at the public expence, to tillage, arts, or sciences, according to their geniusses, till the females should be eighteen, and the males twentyone years of age, when they should be colonized to such place as the circumstances of the time should render most proper, sending them out with arms, implements of household and of the handicraft arts, seeds, pairs of the useful domestic animals, &c. to declare them a free and independant people, and extend to them our alliance and protection, till they shall have acquired strength; and to send vessels at the same time to other parts of the world for an equal number of white inhabitants; to induce whom to migrate hither, proper encouragements were to be proposed.

Essentially this proposed bill would have required the slaves to be educated in specific areas up to a certain age, then supplied with arms, seed and cattle, then sent off to some other place to establish themselves there. As Jefferson continues, they would send out ships to get other white people to coming into Virginia to take the place of the slave labor force that they would lose (of course the white laborers would be paid for their work). This is where Jefferson begins to lay out his view of people with African descent. He starts with a hypothetical question that a person might ask after reviewing that emancipation proposal:

It will probably be asked, Why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the state, and thus save the expence of supplying by importation of white settlers, the vacancies they will leave?

 …He then gives some answers to that question…

Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions, which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race.

Jefferson realized that former slaves could never truly be a part of the society because of the deep seeded prejudice of whites. He also points out that the blacks would never forget the atrocities they and their families suffered while enslaved. For those two main reasons he believes that blacks could never be incorporated into the state. That’s not all though he continues:

To these objections, which are political, may be added others, which are physical and moral. The first difference which strikes us is that of colour. Whether the black of the negro resides in the reticular membrane between the skin and scarfskin, or in the scarfskin itself; whether it proceeds from the colour of the blood, the colour of the bile, or from that of some other secretion, the difference is fixed in nature, and is as real as if its seat and cause were better known to us. And is this difference of no importance? Is it not the foundation of a greater or less share of beauty in the two races? Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expressions of every passion by greater or less suffusions of colour in the one, preferable to that eternal monotony, which reigns in the countenances, that immovable veil of black which covers all the emotions of the other race? Add to these, flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form, their own judgment in favour of the whites, declared by their preference of them as uniformly as is the preference of the Oran ootan (orangutan) for the black woman over those of his own species. The circumstance of superior beauty, is thought worthy attention in the propagation of our horses, dogs, and other domestic animals; why not in that of man?

Jefferson, who only a few years earlier wrote “All men are created equal…”, here writes that because of the color of the skin of negroes they are inherent less beautiful than whites. He goes on to talk about the flowing hair and the symmetry of the face to try and justify his views. But the most insidious way he makes the point that whites are more inherent beautiful than blacks is the statement that male orangutans desire black women more than they desire female orangutans. Unfortunately he continues:

Besides those of colour, figure, and hair, there are other physical distinctions proving a difference of race. They have less hair on the face and body. They secrete less by the kidnies, and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odour.

This guy is a piece of work. Thomas Jefferson is regarded as an intelligent man, he started a university (University of Virginia) and he spent much of his life reading and writing essays and pamphlets etc. Which makes the things he is saying all the more dangerous. Continuing he says:

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 the first dawn of the morning. They are at least as brave, and more adventuresome. But this may perhaps proceed from a want of forethought, which prevents their seeing a danger till it be present. When present, they do not go through it with more coolness or steadiness than the whites.

There’s more…

They are more ardent after their female; but love seems with them to be more an eager desire, than a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation.

Essentially Jefferson is saying that black males are like animals in heat and they do not love females like the white men display affection and tenderness. As an aside, here is one question had immediately after reading this: Was Thomas Jefferson attempting to show some tenderness to his slave Sallie Hemings, who he was raping and he fathered up to six children? It is a legitimate question.

On he goes…

Their griefs are transient. Those numberless afflictions, which render it doubtful whether heaven has given life to us in mercy or in wrath, are less felt, and sooner forgotten with them.

This “black people do not experience pain like other people” or “black people exhibit an almost supernatural ability to endure physically” argument is still begin made over 200 years after Jefferson made it.

“I’m thinking that Mr. King has been subjected to an enormous amount of pain and he’s not—it is almost as if his body is anesthetized to the pain. By that I mean he’s not giving me any indication that he feels what he’s being hit with. He’s being hit with a metal PR-24 and he’s not feeling it… I’m getting concerned, scared. I’m getting a little frightened here now because this gentleman has just been subjected to a multitude of blows with a metal PR-24 and there is no evidence that he is going to go into compliance mode… I was trying to get Mr. King to submit using pain compliance… He gave me no indication, either through facial or through any nonverbal, that he was feeling any pain…” – Stacey Koon, former LAPD officer testifying in the Rodney King trial. Rodney wad hit 56 times with baton and was kicked and stomped by five LAPD officers. He suffered a skull fracture, brain damage and kidney damage

“He turns, and when he looked at me, he made like a grunting, like aggravated sound and he starts, he turns and he’s coming back toward me. His first step is coming towards me, he kind of does like a stutter step to start running…At this point it looked like he was almost bulking up to run through the shots, like it was making him mad that I’m shooting at him. And the face he had was looking straight through me, like I wasn’t even there, I wasn’t even anything in his way.” – Former Ferguson, MO police officer Darren Wilson describing Michael Brown

Thomas Jefferson has more “insights” on the Negro…

In general, their existence appears to participate more of sensation than reflection. To this must be ascribed their disposition to sleep when abstracted from their diversions, and unemployed in labour. An animal whose body is at rest, and who does not reflect, must be disposed to sleep of course. 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 much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid: and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous. It would be unfair to follow them to Africa for this investigation. We will consider them here, on the same stage with the whites, and where the facts are not apochryphal on which a judgment is to be formed.

This dude, Thomas Jefferson believes that black people’s minds are so simple that if they are not acting engage in some activity, they sleep like animals do. He has three categories of the minds functions that chose to compare between black and whites: memory, reason and imagination. Jefferson believes that black are inferior to white in two of the three categories: reason and imagination only allowing that perhaps in memory they are on equal footing with whites. He carefully chooses to only compare the blacks in America (that have been kept uneducated) and not to engage the stories about the great civilizations of Africa, his doubts the veracity of the history by suggesting that it is apocryphal. It goes on…

It will be right to make great allowances for the difference of condition, of education, of conversation, of the sphere in which they move. Many millions of them have been brought to, and born in America. Most of them, indeed, have been confined to tillage, to their own homes, and their own society: yet many have been so situated, that they might have availed themselves of the conversation of their masters; many have been brought up to the handicraft arts, and from that circumstance have always been associated with the whites. Some have been liberally educated, and all have lived in countries where the arts and sciences are cultivated to a considerable degree, and have had before their eyes samples of the best works from abroad. The Indians, with no advantages of this kind, will often carve figures on their pipes not destitute of design and merit. They will crayon out an animal, a plant, or a country, so as to prove the existence of a germ in their minds which only wants cultivation. They astonish you with strokes of the most sublime oratory; such as prove their reason and sentiment strong, their imagination glowing and elevated. But never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never seen even an elementary trait of painting or sculpture. In music they are more generally gifted than the whites, with accurate ears for tune and time, and they have been found capable of imagining a small catch. Whether they will be equal to the composition of a more extensive run of melody, or of complicated harmony, is yet to be proved.

As his continues his asinine argument, Jefferson says that although blacks are in the presents of their sophisticated white masters and some masters have even blessed the people they owned by letting them get educated, they still are so inferior in their mind that they cannot produce even the simplest of art, whether it be painting, sculptures etc. But them Negroes sure can do music good! they have rhythm and can catch beat, though it remains to be seen if they have the intellectual chops to actually create intricate compositions, he says. Jefferson would even go on to try a diss the great poet Phyllis Wheatley:

Misery is often the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry. — Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry. Love is the peculiar oestrum of the poet. Their love is ardent, but it kindles the senses only, not the imagination. Religion, indeed, has produced a Phyllis Whately; but it could not produce a poet. The compositions published under her name are below the dignity of criticism.

First he comments that human misery and affliction can produce deepest poetry – he is right affliction often times does produce great art. Then this disrespectful MF continues with his long form diss, by stating that although blacks definitely have been in misery, they still ain’t got no bars. Then this dude has the audacity to come for Phyllis Wheatley! The Phyllis Wheatley!! He first tries to make it seem like she has a ghost writer then he says even if the words are hers they are beneath me and don’t deserve my critique.  

Ignatius Sancoh has approached nearer to merit in composition; yet his letters do more honour to the heart than the head. They breathe the purest effusions of friendship and general philanthropy, and show how great a degree of the latter may be compounded with strong religious zeal. He is often happy in the turn of his compliments, and his style is easy and familiar, except when he affects a Shandean fabrication of words. But his imagination is wild and extravagant, escapes incessantly from every restraint of reason and taste, and, in the course of its vagaries, leaves a tract of thought as incoherent and eccentric, as is the course of a meteor through the sky. His subjects should often have led him to a process of sober reasoning; yet we find him always substituting sentiment for demonstration. Upon the whole, though we admit him to the first place among those of his own color who have presented themselves to the public judgment, yet when we compare him with the writers of the race among whom he lived and particularly with the epistolary class in which he has taken his own stand, we are compelled to enrol him at the bottom of the column.

There is so much more that could be said about Jefferson and his racist, white supremacist views that unfortunately still persist in the foundation and fabric of our nation.