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Niggerology, Part 1
I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in endowments both of body and mind.
âThomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1785
TO JUSTIFY THEIR AVERSION to emancipation, both to themselves and to increasingly skeptical observers from foreign lands, slaveholders adhered to what Ira Berlin has called âthe logic of subordination, generally finding the sources of their own domination in some rule of nature or law of God.â Desperate to cloak their nakedly unreasonable system in the respectable garb of rationality, members of the propertied elite increasingly turned to the comforting pronouncements of scientific racism.
With his Notes on the State of Virginiaâa seminal document in the American branch of this nefarious traditionâThomas Jefferson gave himself and his peers just what they needed. First published in France, Notes reached American readers in 1785. It included a stunning section, ostensibly based on Jeffersonâs âobservationsâ of Negroes, which suggested that blacks were little more than childlike, animalistic creatures doomed to lives of permanent subservience. His ludicrous, inflammatory absurdities, relayed in the careful prose of âlearned discourse,â set a poisonous precedent for the seemingly endless examples of racist pseudo-scholarship that would follow. Winthrop Jordan has called Jeffersonâs remarks on the Negro âthe most influential utterances on the subjectâ until the mid-nineteenth century. Nearly sixty years after Jefferson, Josiah Nott, another âscholarâ dedicated to proving Negro inferiority, memorably dubbed his brand of science âniggerology.â In setting the stage for Nott and his cohorts, Jeffersonâs Notes made the self-styled philosopher-scientist the preeminent niggerologist of his time.
While Jefferson claimed to be conflicted about slavery, he evidently harbored few doubts regarding the apparently insurmountable inferiority of Negroes. Joseph Ellis has written that the sage of Monticello âwas a staunch believer in white Anglo-Saxon supremacy, as were several other leading figures in the revolutionary generation.â Yet none of his like-minded peers had dared to offer their potentially caustic summations in such carefully fashioned prose. Unlike George Washington, whom John Adams once described as having âthe gift of silence,â Jefferson could rarely resist sharing his thoughts with the world.
Notes was published in the United States the year before Robert Burns offered a poetic explanation of the Negroâs plight in two lines of âThe Ordinationâ: âHow graceless Ham leugh at his dad, / Which made Canaan a nigger.â Burns echoes the long-held idea that blackness derived from a divine curse; the luckless wretches who bore its stamp were sentenced by the Creator to eternal servitude. Jefferson alludes to the concept when wondering if Negroes could be ânurturedâ to a higher state of existence beyond what Nature appeared to ascribe to them. Both Burnsâs poem and Jeffersonâs Notes reflect the influence of Enlightenment thinking in Europe. Montesquieuâs Spirit of the Laws exerted a recognizable influence on many of the leading intellectuals of the Revolutionary generation. Published in 1748, in addition to its authorâs disquisitions on types of government and principles of governing, Spirit suggests that man can improve his natural state by acquiring, among other things, knowledge and religion. In other words, basic human nature is universal but can be affected by environment and culture. Other voices of the Enlightenment argued that some âtypesâ of mankind could not be improved. David Humeâs essay âOf National Characters,â also published in 1748, was amended five years later to include the authorâs contention that ânegroes and in general all other species of men . . . are naturally inferior to the whites.â Without challenging Montesquieuâs notion of the âlaws of human nature,â Jefferson speculates that âtime and circumstanceâ may be responsible for blacksâ lowly status. (The other emerging theory behind blacksâ alleged inferiority was that they were created in a different time and place from white men, a hypothesis to which we will return shortly.)
Jefferson entered the discussion just as scientists, influenced by Carolus Linnaeusâs taxonomic system of the 1730s, had begun a quest to classify just about everythingâincluding human beings. Almost inevitably, these efforts led to hierarchical categories not entirely dissimilar to those offered by a concomitant system of thought, the Great Chain of Being. Proponents of the Chain argued that Man belonged somewhere in the middleâabove Beasts and below Angels. As quasi-science met quasi-philosophy, the ranking of living things (including men) was increasingly based on supposedly measurable anatomic differences. No matter the criteria, blacks usually suffered by comparison.
Jefferson was not only the author of the Declaration of Independence but also an international symbol of American enlightenment. Thus, his anti-Negro ramblingsâthe most intensive ever contrived during the post-Revolutionary eraâestablished a model of rationalized racism that would inflict incalculable damage to blacksâ quest for basic human rights.
âAnimal Urgesâ
According to Jefferson, blacks were âmore ardent after their female: but love seems with them to be more an eager desire, than a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation.â He went on to argue that it was only natural for black men to prefer the superior beauty of white women, just as the âOranootanâ preferred âblack women over those of his own species.â Not everyone embraced Jeffersonâs bodacious claims. One of his fiercest critics was Gilbert Imlay, who in 1792 charged that Jefferson âsuffered his imagination to be carried awayâ when predicting the amatory inclinations of apes. Such speculation, according to Imlay, was âpaltry sophistry and nonsense!â Clement Clark Moore, writing in 1804, challenged Jeffersonâs scientific method: âWhere Mr. Jefferson learnt that the orangoutang has less affection for his own females than for black women, he does not inform us.â
Jefferson may have been familiar with William Smithâs New Voyage to Guinea, which in 1744 told of apes frequently carrying off and sexually assaulting black women in the jungles of Africa. In 1799 Britainâs Charles White, the last major niggerologist of the period, specifically referred to Jeffersonâs Notes to bolster his own âresearchâ comparing black men with apes.
In each of these perverse fantasies, black men are portrayed as wild, simian creatures, whereas black women are described as uninhibited, sexually licentious creatures, perfectly suited as targets for rampant libidinous attacks. (Such characterization also justifies the rape of black women, for how could a gentleman planter possibly cause harm to a being who is designed by nature to want sex all the time, is accustomed to the brutal techniques of uncivilized black men, and has been known to satisfy orangutans? With such a rationale, one can argue that her mere presence is tantamount to âasking for it.â)
Jeffersonâs and Whiteâs unseemly obsession with black sexuality coincided with the scientific communityâs fascination with comparative anatomy. White, for example, claimed to gauge blacksâ intelligence by comparing the size of their skulls to those of whites. At the same time, white scientistsâ fixation with African penises, extant since at least the fifteenth century, peaked in grisly fashion. Charles White provided an indication of just how widespread this mania was and how it was gratified. In An Account of the Regular Gradation in Man, and in Different Animals and Vegetables; and from the Former to the Latter (1799), he enthused, âThat the PENIS of an African is larger than that of an European has . . . been shewn in every anatomical school in London. Preparations of them are preserved in most anatomical museums; and I have one in mine.â
One helplessly imagines a covetous spectator interrupting Whiteâs lecture to ask âWhere can I get one of those?â The proclivity of slaveowners to dismember their captives, while perhaps not as fervent as that exhibited by lynchers in the nineteenth century, nonetheless ensured that sufficient specimens remained in supply to meet the appetites of dedicated collectors such as White. The result of these âstudiesâ was to perpetuate the stereotype of the black man as a potential rapist, whose toxic sperm would infect white purity with the âblot of infectionâ that blackness was thought to carry.
Back in the late eighteenth century, white menâs concerns were exacerbated by the swelling slave population. Viewed in conjunction with the related musings of Patrick Henry and Benjamin Franklin, it becomes clear that the fear of a black penis and the fear of a black planet have long been inextricably connected. Southern politicians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (as well as Republican strategists such as Lee Atwater, who harvested abundant political capital from exactly this sort of psychosexual paranoia) owed an enormous debt of gratitude to Thomas Jefferson.
âTransient Griefsâ
Remarkably, Jefferson also fancied himself privy to blacksâ innermost emotions. âTheir griefs are transient,â he wrote in Notes. âThose 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.â Jeffersonâs counterintuitive attempt to establish his captivesâ lack of emotional depth offers proof of Roger Wilkinsâs observation that âto ease their guilt, whites invented and clung to the idea that blacks had no family feeling.â Clearly, Jefferson was disturbed by the idea of slaves having emotions; that discomfort had to be part of his motive to dehumanize them so thoroughly in Notes, which appeared just as he was attempting to consolidate his various holdings and stem his financial difficulties. Part of that effort would involve getting rid of some 161 slaves over the next ten years, either by sale or by gift. Ellis suggests that Jefferson was able to perform such tasks by shielding himself from the âday-by-day realities of slave life.â At Monticello he surrounded himself with pale-skinned house servants and avoided almost all contact with the adult slaves who worked in his fields. Despite this distance, he could write confidently not only of their work habits but also of their fears, dreams, desires, and regrets. Or their alleged lack of them.
Perhaps we can also blame Jeffersonâs distance from Mulberry Row (the slave quarters at Monticello) for his failure to consider that the slavesâ apparent serenity was often, in the words of Paul Laurence Dunbar, âa mask that grins and lies.â One former slave, Henry Watson, didnât publish his memoirs until 1848, but his explanation of slave âmerrimentâ no doubt held true during the glory years of Jeffersonâs more attentive contemporaries: âthe slaveholder watches every move of the slave, and if he is downcast or sadâin fact, if they are in any mood but laughing and singing, and manifesting symptoms of perfect content at heartâthey are said to have the devil in them.â
âPlain Narrationâ
Whereas Montesquieu described man as a being âhurried away bya thousand impetuous passions,â Jefferson described blacks as âinduced by the slightest amusements.â For him, blacksâ inclination toward distraction could be attributed to any number of inadequacies, from their tendency toward sensation rather than reflection, their âdull, tasteless, and anomalousâ imaginations, or perhaps their âwant of forethought.â All of these shortcomings contributed to Jeffersonâs never having encountered a black who had âuttered a thought above the level of plain narration.â
Jeffersonâs slaves included any number of highly skilled artisans, without whom the continuous construction at Monticello would not have progressed beyond his own presumably sharp, tasteful, and superior imagination; it is simply inconceivable that all of them were as inarticulate as Jefferson described. As the owner of what was probably the largest and most extensive private library in the United States, he must also have âencounteredâ narratives written by blacks, which began to appear around 1760. In fact, the writing by blacks during this period amounts to an eloquent counterargument to the allegations put forth by Jefferson and others, as forceful as those later advanced by Gilbert Imlay and Clement C. Moore. By the time Notes was published in the United States, James Gronniosaw, Briton Hammon, and Phillis Wheatley had already published works; Olaudah Equianoâs memoir soon followed. If Jefferson saw any merit in their efforts, he was unwilling to admit it. He pronounced Wheatleyâs poems âbeneath the dignity of criticism.â Ignatius Sanchoâs work was far better in his view, although unequal to that of his white contemporariesâif, that is, it could even be proved that Sancho wrote it himself and âreceived amendment from no other hand.â
Friendly Fire
Abolitionists werenât always much help at combating scientific racism, because all of them didnât necessarily disagree with its chief assertion. However, some did have their own ideas about its cause. Some anti-slavers, who conceded that blacks were inferior or âdepraved,â blamed their condition on the squalid environment in which the majority of them were forced to live. Therefore, their argument went, reform was not possible without emancipation. The environmental perspective had been introduced by John Woolman in Philadelphia in 1754, some twenty years before the meeting of the nationâs first anti-slavery society was held there. In Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes, Woolman suggested that many of the shortcomings attributed to blacks stemmed directly from their enslavement. âIf Oppression be so hard to bear, that a wise Man is made mad by it . . . then a Series of those Things, altering the Behaviour and Manners of a People, is what may reasonably be expected,â he wrote. Woolman, a Quaker, implied that white men, too, would be inferior if they were enslaved.
Dr. Benjamin Rush, a prominent abolitionist in Philadelphia, echoed Woolmanâs contention in 1774, asserting that âSlavery is so foreign to the human mind, that the moral faculties, as well as those of the understanding are debased, and rendered torpid by it.â Such sentiments, albeit well intentioned, did little to sway pro-slavers or anybody else. By 1800, the anti-slavery movement was all but dead.
But the image of Negroes as âbrutish, ignorant, idle, crafty, treacherous, bloody, thievish, mistrustful, and superstitiousâ was alive and well. Jeffersonâs Notes had conveniently codified âtruthsâ held to be self-evident by the majority of white Americans at the end of the eighteenth century. In sum, black men and women were best considered as lower primates, emotionally shallow, simple-minded, sexually licentious, and prone to laziness. Contempt for blacks was so widespread, wrote David Cooper in 1772, that children were encouraged âfrom the first dawn of reason, to consider people with a black skin on a footing with domestic animals, formâd to serve and obey.â
A Code of Conduct
Washington and Jefferson were racists, but how racist was their language? As quintessential Southern men of their time, they behaved in public according to entrenched notions of honor, courtliness, and refinement. While violent language was considered beneath a gentleman, some forms of physical violence were not. In Affairs of Honor, Joanne B. Freeman identifies canings and nose-tweakings as acceptable components of the Revolutionary eraâs âgrammar of combat.â When flung at a gentleman, words such as âscoundrel,â ârascal,â and even âliarâ were considered proper cause for retaliation.
In light of such customs, it is no surprise that during the constitutional convention âslaveryâ became in essence the âsâ word, to be avoided out of respect for the delicate sensibilities of the distinguished members from the South. The delegates therefore engaged in shifty wordplay in the interests of civility, calling slaves âpersonsâ or âpersons held to Service or Labour.â In what must be considered the very apogee of irony, the Atlantic slave trade was rechristened âmigrations.â
It is quite likely that Washington and Jefferson engaged in similar euphemisms at home, not out of respect to their captives, but in keeping with their concept of themselves as gentlemen of refinement. In correspondence, Washington referred to his slaves as âthat species of propertyâ (a phrase favored at the convention), âpoor wretchesâ when he was feeling especially compassionate, and âthose who are held in servitudeâ in missives of an official nature. At Monticello, Jeffersonâs elderly slaves were quaintly called âveteran aids,â although the master was known to refer to adult black men as boysâa form of insult that gained in popularity during his time. It is reasonable to assume that the great lengths to which Jefferson shielded himself from the gritty reality of slave life included linguistic buffers as well. Crude terms such as âniggerâ probably were not part of his vocabulary. Such coarseness was more appropriately left to the overseers and white men of the working class, whose tasks included the punishment and supervision of the idle wretches in the fields.
As the eighteenth century wound down, Jeffersonâs peers in the creative arts also condemned the character of the Negro, replacing him in the popular imagination with a grotesque caricature so lowly and egregious that its very presence demanded its ritualistic and cathartic abuse. Taking a cue from their more sober-minded peers who wrote essays and pamphlets, creative writers added their skewed perspectives to the prevalent image of the black American, collectively fashioning a debased character of the sort Henry Louis Gates Jr. has described as âan-Other Negro, a Negro who conformed to the deepest social fears and fantasies of the larger society.â
Apparently what whites desired most in blacks was energetic servility combined with a willingness to laugh away lifeâs troubles. After assessing such Revolutionary literature as John Leacockâs âFall of British Tyrannyâ (1776), J. Robinsonâs âYorkerâs Stratagemâ (1792), and John Murdockâs âTriumph of Loveâ (1795), the brilliant critic Sterling Brown concluded, âThe earliest plays, as [well as] the earliest novels, show the Negro character chiefly as comic servant and contented slave.â
Of the Revolutionary writers, Jefferson deserves special attention for two reasons:
First, because his book endowed such fantasies with respectability and became a handy, influential primer for those who aspired to advance the cause of white supremacy. And its influence was far-reaching; Winthrop Jordan estimates that Jeffersonâs remarks âwere more widely read, in all probability, than any others until the mid-nineteenth century.â
Second, because Jeffersonâs influence continued to rise to unparalleled heights as the sun began to set on the Revolutionary era. Ironically, blacks had played a pivotal role in his long and eventful climb. He had ...