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Thomas Jefferson and Equality.

by Richard Bondira

    The world has been fed the line, "All men are created equal", as if that were the complete sentence and complete thought. It's also taught as though it were in the Bible or the Bill of Rights. That line is found in neither. It does not have the authority of Heaven nor of the Bill of Rights. Thomas Jefferson, the slave owner, penned that line in the Declaration of Independence. That one incomplete sentence has been taken out of context ever since. No one line has had its meaning so repeatedly distorted in the history of the written word. 

    When Jefferson wrote that line he was not speaking of racial equality at all. He was not making a racial statement of any kind. It would be absurd if he, as a slave owner, did. He never freed any of his slaves so if he believed them his equals, why didn't he free them? Let's look at the entire sentence. Jefferson wrote: "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." In other words, all he's saying is that all men are equal in as much as they all have the same rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. He is speaking of legal rights not racial equality!

   I'll pause here to clarify two minor points. First, Jefferson wrote that one of the unalienable rights for all men is the right to liberty. So, why didn't Jefferson free his slaves the minute he wrote that? Was he a hypocrite?  Not hardly. The Negro was legally considered a beast of burden and property, not a man. This was legally held up by the Dread Scott Decision in which the United States Supreme Court ruled that a slave was property and had no right to be freed just because his master took him to a free state for a while. The Black man was defined as only equal to three fifths of a White man. That was the law of the land. While the Dread Scott Decision came after Jefferson's time no one considered the Negroes equal to the Whites in Jefferson's day. Jefferson did oppose slavery in principle (but that is gone into in detail in the article below so I won't get into that here.), even so, opposing slavery does not automatically mean a belief in equality. The second minor point I want to clarify here is that Jefferson wrote that another one of the unalienable rights of man is the "pursuit of happiness." Well the pursuit of happiness includes the right to hunt and fish. They are not state given privileges. They are God given unalienable rights. For the sake of conservation they can be regulated, but they are rights and not privileges. Now back to the main theme.

    If you want further proof that Jefferson was not making a statement of racial equality you need only read the rest of the Declaration of Independence. Towards the end Jefferson writes of King George that: "He has excited insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions."

    Did you notice something? He called the Indians "merciless Indian savages". Does that sound like racial equality to you? The Negroes were property, the Indians were savages and that was that. (Also, you'll notice in the entire document that Jefferson never mentions women as equal to men enough to vote or equal in any way to men at all. In Jefferson's day women and children were the father or husband's chattel property.) So, all Jefferson was saying in his document was that he opposed the double standards of the British class (caste) system. Under the English Crown the nobles were first class citizens and common men were second class citizens. The people living in the British Islands counted more then the American Colonists who were looked down upon as something less then fully British. Jefferson opposed the double standards in the laws. If a noble committed a certain crime and a common man committed the exact same crime, the noble always got better treatment in prison and a lesser sentence then the common man whose treatment and sentence was always much worse by far. The poor common man could do nothing about it, but the common men who became the rich landed gentry of the colonies were getting fed up with the double standards. They were equal to the nobles in wealth and standard of living and they were now demanding equal treatment under the law and full political representation in government. That was the heart and soul of Jefferson's statement in the Declaration of Independence. It was about getting legal equality for the free men of the colonies and getting equal treatment under the law for nobles and common men alike. It was a White thing and was not meant to include Negro property or Indian savages. Jefferson wanted the social and legal barriers to come down between the people of the British Islands and the British American colonies, between the nobles and the rich landed gentry. In short, the founding fathers were looking out for their own selves and had no loving desire to make what they considered inferior races their equals.

    So long as this world continues to live this lie about Jefferson's totally misinterpreted statement, this world will continue to be torn apart by racial strife. What's the truth about racial equality? The answer is obvious. The races are incompatible and should not be forced to integrate together. Sixty years of racial bloodshed in the USA has proven that. Water and oil do not mix unless a heavy hand (of dictatorship?) shakes them together. As soon as that stops, they naturally separate. So, let nature take its course. Like attracts like in the realm of the mind. Further, there is a statement from the Bible that has the authority of Heaven and that is in Genesis where God commands that each kind shall reproduce after its own kind. Like reproducing like. Therefore, we will be under God's wrath until the world stops the racial mortal sin of race mixing. Racial conservation not mongrelizing integration should be the order of the day. Thus, we will keep pure what God created pure. Keep God's races pure. Oh, and remember, equal treatment under the law at all times!

    Parting question, class,: Do we have equal treatment under the law and justice for all in this country? Well, when one considers how the rich and famous are treated under the law, when one considers how the O.J. Simpson trial went, when one considers how the politicians and law makers are treated in our (their own?) courts one is forced to wonder whether justice is spelled "justice" or "Just Us" by the people who are supposed to be our public servants but, in fact, are becoming our masters. Poor Thomas Jefferson must be turning over in his grave.

    No one who has the ability to get their head out of the clouds, think and reason, and look at the real world around them should be offended by what I have just written. But, unfortunately, this will not include the brain dead liberals. All educated people will agree that it is a pity they are not our intellectual equals. But, I guess that's evolution. Natural selection and survival of the fittest will determine who has interpreted Jefferson correctly. Let the revolution begin and read on.

     This article was first published in the Barnes Review, June 1995.

Thomas Jefferson's Convictions in Black and White.

By William Grimstad

Thomas Jefferson's famed Washington, D.C. memorial features a Jeffersonian quote about equality that, apparently, is deliberately incomplete. The author offers the full statement in this article.

December 4, 2007.