Perspective views of African Americans by a slave owner, Founding Father, and former President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson. African Americans, according to Jefferson were inferior to whites “in the endowments both of body and mind.” To refute his suspicions about African Americans inferior intelligence, Jefferson set out to investigate, but only to claim that his suspicions were correct rather than refuted. I’m surprised that a man of his intellect would conclude that African Americans inferiority was “a biological condition rather than the consequences of slavery or social” (page 122). However, I’m not surprised because he did own 135 slaves, and politically he wouldn’t dare make the claim that blacks were equal to whites. Jefferson’s only agenda was the preservation of the republican society.
Jefferson’s preservation of the republican society required him to address how African Americans and Native Americans fit into his vision of America’s
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He placed the Native Americans on the same level as whites, stating that what made the Native American equal was their intelligence. He claimed that Native Americans had the potential, but African American did not. He believed their intelligence made them capable of development which could enable them to carry out commands of their moral sense (page 124). While he had major issues with whites cohabitating with blacks, Jefferson had no issues with Native Americans intermarrying and living among whites as “one people.”
However, Jefferson knew that the Native Americans way of life could no longer exist in the expanding United States. For whites to obtain western land, the Native Americans had to give up hunting and turn to agriculture and household manufacture as their new way of life. Therefore, civilizing of Native Americans was a crucial part of Jefferson’s strategy. If they resisted he said they will be dealt