From: George Mason’s University’s History News Network http://www.hnn.us
Gary Wills Interview
Garry Wills (#20339) by editor on October 15, 2003 at 8:31 PM
AN INTERVIEW WITH GARRY WILLS BY Jacob Stockinger The Capitol Times (Wisconsin) http://www.madison.com/captimes/features/stories/58827.php Q:Just as you seek to revise our notion of the papacy and the Roman Catholic Church, your new book seems to want to revise our understanding of Thomas Jefferson as a national icon. What is the main thesis of your new book " 'Negro President': Jefferson and Slave Power"? The book is about the "three-fifths" clause in the Constitution. It required that black slaves counts as three-fifths of a person for purposes of determining a state's representation in Congress. That meant the South had an advantage that often provided the margin of victory. It entered into presidential elections only in 1800 when Thomas Jefferson, who was from the South, beat John Adams, who was from the North, in the House after tying him in the Electoral College because he had extra votes just from the owning of slaves. The North was very upset with this. If representation had been based on free people only, the South would have had only 43 percent of the first Congress. They wanted blacks counted as complete persons and the North didn't want them to count at all since they were slaves and couldn't vote. It was a negotiated bargain. The North said half, the South said three-quarters and so on until it finally got bargained down to three-fifths. This kept coming up over and over. When he wanted to expand America, Jefferson did so first by the Louisiana Purchase, which had many slaves and plantations in it. The North wanted to remove the clause, but Jefferson had to protect his Southern agrarian base, especially when he wanted to expand the country by acquiring Florida and Cuba. This struggle about slave power was behind a lot of Jefferson's activities. Q: How else did it figure our history? Jefferson, George Washington and James Madison schemed very hard to get the national capital put down in slave territory. It started out in New York City, then was moved to Philadelphia. But
in Philadelphia you could only keep a slave for six months before freeing him, unless you sent him down further south into slave territory and then brought him back, and that caused a lot of trouble for slave owners. So they chose Alexandria, Va., part of today's Washington, D.C., as the capital because it was a slave city. Twelve of our presidents were slaveholders, including Ulysses S. Grant. That's an astonishing number, more than 25 percent. That would not have happened had the capital been kept in Philadelphia. This book is a whole aspect of slavery that was pervasive and that we have overlooked in the past. People say, "I never knew." But Jefferson would have lost if it hadn't been for slaves and that's why Massachusetts Representative Timothy Pickering dubbed him "the Negro President." Q: It seems there is a major irony involved in such use of slave power. There is. Blacks had a decisive influence, but it was used against them. They were used as hostages and had no power. Quite the opposite. In key votes in Congress, over and over the three-fifths clause made the difference. When the Southerners in Congress invoked the gag rule to say you can't discuss slavery, the three-fifths clause was actually used to prevent the freeing of blacks. What would have happened without the three-fifths clause? Hypothetical history is always suspect. But what would have happened if that had not been the case? The Constitution would not have been adopted and the Union would not have come into being. That's why the Northerners, who hated it from outset, went along with it. It was a question of having that plus a country, or of not having a country at all. And they said they would take the country. Q: How long did it last? It continued in effect right up until the 13th Amendment was passed after the Civil War. There were slaves in Washington right through the Civil War. Lincoln fought the Civil War in a slave city. The White House was served by slaves. Q: Why has this been so overlooked? There's been a great shirking from the issue of slavery. Abolitionists were declared radicals and it was a sore point with many people. To this day there are people who say the Civil War wasn't really fought about slavery, which is total nonsense. It was all about slavery. You have to put yourself in the mind of the Southerner. Slavery was on their mind all the time because they lived in a very dangerous situation. They knew slaves would rebel if they weren't
put down and if outside agitators weren't kept out. It penetrated every aspect of their lives. But they didn't want to admit that at the time. Q: What kind of reception do you anticipate for the book? There has been a great reassessment of Jefferson going on for some time, not only for the Sally Hemmings incident but also his using agrarian issues as a protection for slavery. So it will be a better reception than it would have been a few years ago. I admire Jefferson and do not wish that Adams had won the presidency in 1800. You can analyze all this without making it a trash Jefferson thing. I admire Washington more than any other politician of the time, but he also had his flaws. All the founders have had their fluctuations, their ups and downs. People ask, "Why didn't the founders free their slaves?" Nobody freed their slaves who had a political career in front of them. There were people who freed them, but they were not in politics. When I was growing up, there was a myth that Jefferson had freed his slaves. It wasn't true. Jefferson said they can't be here because they would annihilate us. They had to be shipped elsewhere. There was great anguish and hysteria when Toussaint L'Ouverture led a successful slave rebellion in Haiti. They thought America could be next. Q: What is your next project? It's about Henry Adams as a historian. He wrote "In Search of Jefferson," a nine-volume history of Jefferson's administration that is pretty much neglected today in favor of his better known autobiography "The Education of Henry Adams." But I argue that these are real masterpieces of American history and 19th century prose. He has a complex and interesting view of Jefferson. Many people see them as an attack on Jefferson, but they're not. Jefferson was the first founder who had a national vision and tried to get away from elitist federal politics. On the other hand, he did make a lot of terrible mistakes.