Essay William Wells Brown and the Jefferson and Hemings Scandal

In the end, both Jefferson and Stanton were victorious in their fights. It can be assumed that a major factor of their victories was from their strong will and sharp language. Their use of words made their declaration stronger to all those who read it. And even though they were in different situations and took

Son of former slaves, farmer, astronomer, and author Benjamin Banneker in his letter to Thomas Jefferson in asserts that slavery is erroneous and should be discontinued. During this time period, slaves had no rights or freedom, slaves were property. Banneker was a slavery abolitionist, and wanted to help African Americans. Banneker adopts a respectful yet vexed tone in order to criticize and accuse Thomas Jefferson of being a hypocrite. Thomas Jefferson wrote the lines, “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.”, but he himself owned slaves, so this describes he did not want liberty for African American slaves. Banneker is offended and vexed, judging Jefferson as a hypocrite. Banneker achieves his purpose of judging Jefferson through his prominent use of diction.

“…With respect to them and as Job proposed to his friends, ‘put your souls in their souls instead’,” this comparison of Jefferson to a righteous man in the bible appeals and compliments him while influencing him in the direction Banneker wants him to think. He eases up on his argument when at the end of the expert he sates he doesn’t need Jefferson to find the end-all solution to the horrible institution of slavery, but only wants him to wean from the prejudices that have spawned from owning slaves.

In Benjamin Banneker’s letter to Thomas Jefferson in 1791, soon after the U.S.’s separation from Britain, he uses allusions and juxtaposition in describing the existence of slavery to show Jefferson that while he claims to follow American values of freedom and equality, he does not believe in allowing those same values to African Americans. Thomas Jefferson, the then secretary of state, is persuaded to put himself in the slaves’ shoes and have more compassion towards their oppression.

From the very beginning, when Jefferson is convicted for a murder he did not commit, and all throughout the novel, prejudice is present. The most inherent racism in the trial comes from Jefferson’s defense attorney. While arguing for Jefferson’s release he states, “What you see here is a thing that acts on command. A thing to hold the handle of a plow, a thing to load your bales of cotton, a thing to dig your ditches, to chop your wood, to pull your corn”(Gaines 8). This description of Jefferson strongly resembles that of a slave. The attorney undoubtedly is racist and tries to defend Jefferson in the murder case by depicting him as incapable of planning a murder. He argues that Jefferson deserves mercy on the grounds that he is more similar to a hog than to a man. This statement not only shatters the bit of dignity Jefferson has but also devastates his godmother, Miss Emma. Grant agrees to Miss Emma’s request that he “educate” Jefferson because he wants Jefferson to the fight racism in their community. As Grant tells Jefferson, when

Throughout history John Brown has been described as a terrorist, mentally ill, and a failure among other things. Because he stood strongly for what he believed in, and his goal was eventually achieved he can be seen for the most part as a hero. Brown was described as “an American who gave his life that millions of other Americans be free” (Chowder,6). Brown was a headstrong abolitionist who claimed that he was told by God to end slavery causing him to see himself as “a latter-day Moses” (Chowder, 6). With this, he stopped at nothing to fulfill these expectations. Brown’s heroism is displayed through how he was recounted by others during and after his lifetime, the actions though drastic he took when fighting for what he believed in, and

There is a man known in American history who had the capability of polarizing the two opposing sections of his country, managed to host three different murderous attacks before being halted, and became a very significant name amongst the people of the past and the present. This man is John Brown. Both of which he was very determined to achieve, Brown had high aspirations and detailed goals relating to the discontinuation of slavery. John Brown, a man of self-truth and a powerful internal drive, shapes history in an incredible manor. No abolitionists can compare to the uniqueness and extremity of what he has done.

Benjamin Banneker was a free African American who lived during a time when slavery was still prominent in America. As a free African American, Banneker knew the joys of freedom. In 1791 he wrote a letter to Thomas Jefferson in which he urged Jefferson to put an end to slavery in America by using his powerful influence in the government. Jefferson, a slave owner himself, was a major supporter for independence during the American Revolution; in this letter to Jefferson, Banneker wants to show him that he is contradicting his previous beliefs by not abolishing slavery. Banneker aims to use Jefferson’s own experiences and principles in order to persuade him to get rid of slavery in the states. Banneker is very passionate in his letter to Jefferson, expressing an intense urge for the abolition of slavery. Banneker mainly integrates the mechanics of appeals to logic and ethics, strong diction and logical rhetorical structure in order to persuade Jefferson.

By varying tones used throughout the letter, Banneker’s letter keeps Jefferson intrigued with what Banneker has to say, thus further developing the argument which Banneker is making. The tone which Banneker uses at the beginning of his essay is much more respectful,

Works Cited Sadosky, L. J. (2016). Jefferson, Thomas. Worldbookonline.com. Retrieved from http://www.worldbookonline.com/student/article?id=ar286800&st=thomas+jefferson#tab=homepage Thomas Jefferson. (2009).

     Joseph J. Ellis, a historian who was educated at the College of William and Mary and Yale, is a Ford Foundation Professor of History at Mount Holyoke University. He has written four books on historical topics, centered on the time Jefferson was alive, dealing with issues and personalities Jefferson dealt with firsthand. After authoring a book on a politician such as John Adams, Ellis seems to have felt a need or want to focus on Jefferson, presumably because of his status as founding father and main contributor to the constitution.

The philosophies of Thomas Jefferson are often at odds with one another. On one hand, he looks to enlightenment ideals and writes of natural rights and equalities for all men in his drafting of the Declaration of Independence (more on Jefferson’s and the Enlightenment can be found here). He also proposes legislature that prohibits the spread of slavery to new states. However, his role as a slave owner contradicts his philosophy on liberty in a profound way. His book Notes on the State of Virginia represents the depth of his thought against black people as an equal race to whites, and he includes a breakdown for the reasons that he believes integration is not a viable alternative to the problem of slavery (the full content can be read half way down the page here). Then, there are the facts surrounding his personal relationship with his slave, Sally Hemings and the children he fathered with her. This contradiction of attitude and philosophy is directly related to Jefferson’s cultural influences having grown up surrounded by slavery as an acceptable way of life. He ultimately falls back on society’s view of black people as inferior to justify his way of life, and calm his fears of the possible violent ramifications of emancipating his slaves (this is a reference to slave revolts). For more on this topic see my complete work here.

Benjamin Banneker, the son of former slaves, writes to Thomas Jefferson in 1791 in an effort to denounce slavery in the United States. His letter was written in an era during a time which slavery was commonly practiced in the United States. In his appeals, Benjamin touches on topics of the cruel way blacks were treated and attempts to persuade Thomas Jefferson to reconsider his tolerance of such a heartless system. In his letter, Banneker utilizes ethos, pathos, logos, textual citation, and textual citation to relate to Jefferson about past hardships to possibly accomplish shared view.

The man who started criticizing him as probably the writer Leonard Levy’s in his Book “Jefferson and Civil Liberties: The Darker Side”. In Chapter 14 “Hope and Heritage: Myth and Thomas Jefferson”, Gordon Wood really talks about Jefferson’s personal life. Thomas Jefferson is described as someone who had passion for partisan persecution, someone who didn’t care about the civil liberties, someone who thought he was morally perfect and used to judge people around him. In the chapter, they are comparing him to his friend James Madison. Thomas Jefferson wasn’t thinking about the country like Madison when he was taking decisions. While taking his decisions, he was mostly concerned about what his French friends would think of it than the needs of the American population. The main portion of Jefferson’s life, was his fight to abolish slavery. As it is written in this chapter, Thomas Jefferson hated slavery. He worked really hard to eradicate it in New Western territories. But apparently, he was never able to set all his slaves free. Many recent historians claimed that Jefferson’s acting toward Black people was very disgusting, revolting. Especially for someone who claimed that he wanted to eradicate slavery. During his life, he wanted to make sure that the eradication of slavery will be accompanied by the deportation of Back people of the country. For him, Black people living in a white’s man America was totally unbearable. He was “Racist”. In his

Throughout this course we learned about slavery and it's effects on our country and on African Americans. Slavery and racism is prevalent throughout the Americas before during and after Thomas Jefferson's presidency. Some people say that Jefferson did not really help stop any of the slavery in the United States. I feel very differently and I will explain why throughout this essay. Throughout this essay I will be explaining how views of race were changed in the United States after the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, and how the events of the Jeffersonian Era set the stage for race relations for the nineteenth century.