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Jefferson's slaves were his collateral
The deleted passage
In his original draft of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson called slavery a cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty. Most of the other members of Congress came from slaveowning southern states, and they edited the passage out. Jefferson was furious.
Debt at Monticello
Monticello, the neoclassical house he spent his life building and rebuilding, depended on the people who worked it. Like many tobacco planters in Virginia, he was deep in debt, and he needed his slaves as collateral against it. His father-in-law had been a debt collector, so he knew better than anyone what ruin looked like. Freeing them would have cost him the labor, the estate, and the house.
The will
When Jefferson died, his will freed his children by Sally Hemings and no one else. The rest were sold on the block, and families were scattered to different parts of the South. Washington's will, by contrast, laid down measures for his slaves to be set free.
What did the deleted passage actually accuse?
Jefferson's draft blamed King George III for the slave trade, saying he had waged cruel war against human nature and kept open a market where men were bought and sold. Jefferson later wrote in his autobiography that South Carolina and Georgia objected to the clause. He added that some northern delegates, whose merchants carried enslaved people on their ships, were also uneasy. Congress cut the passage before adopting the Declaration on the 4th of July 1776.
How could enslaved people be used as collateral?
Virginia law classed enslaved people as property, which meant they could be mortgaged, sold, or inherited like land or livestock. Lenders accepted them as security because they had a ready resale value. This tied the wealth of planters to the enslaved workforce in a direct way. When Jefferson died in 1826, his estate owed debts that the Thomas Jefferson Foundation puts at roughly $100,000.
What did Washington's will do differently?
George Washington's will directed that the 123 enslaved people he owned outright be freed after the death of Martha Washington. Martha signed the order that freed them in January 1801, about a year after George's death in December 1799. Enslaved people from the Custis estate, which Martha had brought to the marriage, could not be freed by his will. They passed to the Custis heirs.
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