Founding Rapist: Judging Thomas Jefferson by the Standards of His Time

by Robert Jensen

Conclusive evidence is in from new DNA tests: Thomas Jefferson fathered children with Sally Hemings.

To put it more bluntly: The primary author of the Declaration of Independence and third president of the United States raped one of more than 600 people he enslaved, starting when she was a teenager.

Does that seem disrespectful or ahistorical?

First, let’s deal with the often-heard claim that we shouldn’t judge people of another era by the standards of our time. Jefferson’s defenders argue that, yes, he owned slaves and expressed ugly racist beliefs, but those practices and ideas were prevalent in the world in which he lived, implying there was no way he could have acted or thought differently. This approach avoids a simple question: Were there people expressing alternative ideas at the time?

Of course there were—not only people of African descent but also some of Jefferson’s peers. Among them was Thomas Paine, another major figure in the establishment of the United States who is best known for his 1776 pamphlet Common Sense. What is less well known about Paine is that he was an active opponent of slavery. The year after he arrived in America in 1774, he published an anti-slavery article in the Pennsylvania Journal and the Weekly Advertiser. A few weeks later an anti-slavery society was formed in Philadelphia, with Paine as a founding member. His article started with a clear condemnation of slavery and the Americans who supported it:

That some desperate wretches should be willing to steal and enslave men by violence and murder for gain, is rather lamentable than strange. But that many civilized, nay, Christianized people should approve, and be concerned in the savage practice, is surprising; and still persist, though it has been so often proved contrary to the light of nature, to every principle of Justice and Humanity, and even good policy, by a succession of eminent men, and several late publications.

Jefferson certainly was familiar with Paine and the arguments against slavery. Jefferson certainly was aware of the existence of the idea that all humans had an equal claim to liberty and the argument that Africans should be considered human in these matters. There were many different ideas about the institution of slavery and racism in play at the time. We‘re not judging Jefferson by the standards of our time when we point out how he used racism to justify the barbarism of slavery. We are acknowledging that others in Jefferson’s time—including the man who wrote “These are the times that try men’s souls” in The American Crisis—articulated anti-slavery and anti-racist principles, at the same time Jefferson was in 1781 writing in his “Notes on the State of Virginia” about the natural inferiority of blacks.

In that work, Jefferson explained that skin color is crucial, which led him to conclude, “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 immoveable veil of black which covers all the emotions of the other race?” Smell was an issue for Jefferson as well. Blacks “secrete less by the kidnies, and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odour,” he explained. Among his other “insights” into Africans:

• “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.”
• “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.”

On the question of sexuality, Jefferson believed in the “superior beauty” of whites, noting “the preference of the Oranootan [orangutan] for the black women over those of his own species.” He also observed that black men “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.” It is unclear whether when Jefferson had sex with Hemings he was trying to provide a little tenderness in her life that black partners apparently could not. Nor is it clear whether Jefferson spent much time wondering whether his preference for a black woman meant he had something in common with the Oranootan. I don’t pretend to have insight into Jefferson’s state of mind or motivations.

While it may seem harsh to many Americans, Jefferson raped Hemings, likely starting when she was 14 and he was 44.

That description is not defamatory. Rape is defined as sex without consent. Slaves do not consent to their enslavement. To ask whether an enslaved person consents to any specific command from an enslaver is a meaningless question. Jefferson owned Hemings. Jefferson had sex with Hemings. Therefore, Jefferson raped Hemings, who under conditions of enslavement could not give meaningful consent. That conclusion doesn’t deny that Hemings and other enslaved people had some measure of agency, depending on their circumstances, and could make thoughtful choices. It only acknowledges legal and social facts.

This is hardly surprising, given that white slave owners routinely raped their slaves. When stated generically—“white masters sometimes raped their African slaves”—the statement doesn’t spark controversy. What reason is there to assume Jefferson was different? Yes, he denounced slavery as immoral and politically untenable, but he continued to own other human beings so that he could live in the manner to which he had become accustomed. Why would we expect him to be incapable of forcing at least one of them to have sex? Why should the same term applied to other enslavers not be used to describe Jefferson’s conduct?

Many Americans seem to need to tell a different story about Jefferson, even when acknowledging these realities. Take, for example, the way a liberal television journalist, the late Bill Moyers, described the interaction between master and slave as he discussed “the contradiction at the heart of the American experience”:

The hands of Thomas Jefferson that wrote, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” also stroked the breasts and caressed the thighs of a slave woman named Sally Hemings, who bore him six children and whom he never acknowledged.

It’s not clear how Moyers knew that Jefferson “stroked” and “caressed” Hemings, given that rapists typically do not concern themselves with the experience of their victims. It is possible Jefferson developed feelings for her that were manifested in some degree of tenderness and that the tenderness was reciprocated. Without evidence, it’s difficult to know. What we do know is that Moyers’ choice of language elides the reality of the relationship between slave owner and slave, turning rape into lovemaking.

Some may want to dismiss all this as self-righteous moralizing or DEI propaganda. It’s neither. Following the facts is not the imposition of ideology but a step toward honest history, toward acknowledging that the stories that some prefer to tell about this country are as much myth as fact. Better to face the ugly, brutal, violent racist history of the country; understand that our affluent society is the product of that history; and then recognize that such violence continues to protect our affluence and perpetuate racialized disparities in the worldwide distribution of wealth.

It matters whether we tell the truth about what happened centuries ago, just as it matters whether we tell the truth about more recent history. If we can’t, we will never honestly face the present, which does not bode well for the future.

[This essay is adapted from my 2005 book, The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege.]