October 15, 2003
Wills’ Book Examines ‘Slave Vote’ in
Jefferson’s Election
EVANSTON, Ill.
--- The presidential election of 1800 is one of the most thoroughly
studied events in our history, yet few treatments
of it recognize the perverse power of the “slave vote” in
Thomas Jefferson’s victory, according to a new book by Garry
Wills, the widely acclaimed professor of history at Northwestern
University.
“Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power” (Houghton
Mifflin, Nov. 3, 2003), the new book by Pulitzer Prize-winning
Wills, makes a compelling argument that the “slave power” --
the power slave states wielded over non-slave states -- was at
the core of the South’s and Jefferson’s political ascendancy.
Like other Southerners of the time, Jefferson took every step
he could to prevent challenges to the protection and extension
of slavery. Through the three-fifths clause of the U.S. Constitution,
an extraordinary source of political and economic power, Southerners
made sure that slavery was embedded in the legislative process
itself. In a bargain to secure ratification in the South, the agreement
decreed that each slave held in the United States would count as
three-fifths of a person for representation of a state in the House
of Representatives and, consequently, in the Electoral College.
Largely ignored
by historians, the “federal ratio” made
the margin of difference in the election of 1800. Though Jefferson
received eight more votes than John Adams in the Electoral College,
at least 12 were not based on citizenry that could express its
will, but on the federal ratio, a key electoral tool for maintaining
slavery against a majority of white voters.
Jefferson’s contemporary critics argued fiercely that the “slave
power” assured his victory, challenging the boast that the
election of 1800 was a second revolution, based on the express
will of a popular majority.
Agreeing with
Jefferson’s Federalist critics on that point,
Wills offers a disturbing perspective of an election that was hailed
as a triumph of stability in the young, constitutional system.
The incumbent was ousted without violence, and the election was
applauded for demonstrating that control of the vast political
power of the national government could pass peacefully from one
political party to another.
Missing from
those optimistic accounts is the federal ratio’s
influence on that passing of power, Wills says, and on the politics
of the new nation.
Timothy Pickering,
the former secretary of state under George Washington and John
Adams, was a central player in the politics
that plagued Jefferson. He coined the term “negro president” and
made it current among Jefferson’s Federalist critics. Jefferson,
who Wills otherwise views as a giant in our nation’s history,
played a critical role in the persistence of this country’s
racial divide, Wills contends, while Pickering, a relatively controversial
contemporary, towers over him on this haunting issue.
With “Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power,” Wills
joins modern historians’ growing awareness of the pervasiveness
of slavery’s effects on our early history. But he insists
that he does not mean for his book “to join an unfortunate
trend toward Jefferson-bashing.” The slave power had nothing
to do with Jefferson’s approval of slavery, but rather with
the political use of it to fend off challenges to the Southern
economic base, he says.
Jefferson’s efforts to maintain and expand slavery were
based on a simple political and economic calculus. The Constitution
rewarded too well any new slave territories for Jefferson to throw
away the advantage, Wills says. Because the North almost always
had a majority of seats in Congress, Southerners – with Jefferson
in the lead – were determined to gain the territory that
would make the federal ratio give them a majority.
“My Jefferson is a giant but a giant trammeled in a net
and obliged to keep repairing and strengthening the coils of the
net,” says Wills.
Known for
the depth of his thought and the gracefulness of his writing,
Wills is the author of more than 20 widely read books
on American culture and politics. “Lincoln at Gettysburg” won
the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, for its close textual analysis
of the Gettysburg Address, and the National Book Critics Circle
Award.
Wills delivered
the 2002 Julius Rosenthal Foundation Lecture Series on “Jefferson and the Slave Power” at
Northwestern University School of Law. |