How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

by Clint Smith

Jefferson believed that it was impossible for Blacks and whites to live peacefully alongside one another after the emancipation of the enslaved, stating in his 1821 autobiography, “The two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them.” In a letter written to his friend Jared Sparks on February 4, 1824, Jefferson reflected on the possibility of the expatriation of Black people through “the establishment of a colony on the coast of Africa.” But he had already discarded African colonization as unfeasible because of the expense. “I do not say this to induce an inference that the getting rid of them is for ever impossible. For that is neither my opinion, nor my hope,” he wrote to Sparks. “But only that it cannot be done in this way. There is, I think, a way in which it can be done,” he continued, “that is, by emancipating the after-born, leaving them, on due compensation, with their mothers, until their services are worth their maintenance, and then putting them to industrious occupations, until a proper age for deportation.” He had come to believe that the Caribbean was a promising destination. “St. Domingo is become independant [sic], and with a population of that colour only; and, if the public papers are to be credited, their Chief offers to pay their passage, to recieve [sic] them as free citizens, and to provide them employment.” What Jefferson was proposing was that the government pu...