Jefferson and Lincoln combined anti-slavery views with firm belief in white supremacy

Evidence

Two historically important examples of the admixture of positive and negative racial beliefs are to be found in the beliefs of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. Jefferson’s writings indicate that he believed black enslavement to be at odds with the U.S. Constitution; yet, he personally owned many slaves. In a letter to a friend, Jefferson spoke about his own attitudes toward slavery: “You know that nobody wishes more ardently to see an abolition not only of the [African slave] trade but of the condition of slavery; and certainly nobody will be more willing to encounter every sacrifice for that object” (Takaki, 1979, p. 43). Although recognizing the contradiction and agonizing over it, Jefferson kept most of his slaves. In addition, there is evidence suggesting that he treated his slaves brutally (Takaki, 1979, p. 44), and Jefferson was perhaps the first American to venture the speculation that blacks were inherently less intelligent than whites (Jefferson, 1972; see also Takaki, 1979, pp. 47–50). As Fredrickson (1975) noted, Lincoln also held complex, contradictory views on race. He had been one of the strong advocates of colonization as a way to solve the race problem; in general, he felt that whites and blacks could not exist as civil equals in the same country. The motives of both men appear to have come from a combination of prejudice—in particular, a distaste for the mixing of black and white races—and an ideological commitment to the white control of major social and political institutions (Fredrickson, 1975; Takaki, 1979). — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3393

Categorization

• SHARE: The Jefferson detail — that he was ‘perhaps the first American’ to speculate blacks were innately less intelligent and yet agonized over slavery’s contradiction — is a specific, darkly fascinating historical nugget worth sending to a history-minded friend.
• XREF: Connects to the Jim Crow scholarship of C. Vann Woodward already cited in this chapter — the point that anti-slavery did not equal anti-racism threads across both passages.