An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

On March 4, 1801, Jefferson, during that address, told his fellow citizens
about the importance of working for the common good. Jefferson believed
that the common good was an essential ideology that connected everyone. It
was the “voice of the nation” and designed “according to the rules of the
Constitution.” He encouraged citizens to “arrange themselves under the will
of the law, and unite in common efforts for the common good.” He also
reminded them of the importance of protecting minority opinions: “All, too,
will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority
is in all cases to prevail, that will be rightful must be reasonable; that the
minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to
violate would be oppression.” 12 It is tempting to think of Jefferson as a
complicated man, who internally toiled with his belief in freedom and
democracy, and his enslavement of Africans and his policies that
dispossessed thousands of Indigenous peoples. Jefferson was no doubt a
brilliant thinker, but he was an enslaver and settler, and only believed in the
equality of white men.
His belief in enslavement and dispossession was very explicit in his
written work, including in Notes on the State of Virginia. He first published
the book privately in France in 1781, and then published an English version
in Britain in 1787. 13 It was the only full-length book Jefferson published in
his lifetime and was written in response to questions about Virginia. While
its discussion is about one particular place, its ideological underpinnings
extend beyond Virginia. For my purposes, the book is important for how he
discussed Black people and enslavement and Native peoples.
In a chapter in the book titled “Laws,” Jefferson responded to the idea of
abolishing slavery. The proposed bill, although never accepted, would have
essentially traded the enslaved Africans for whites. 14 He asked, “Why not
retain and incorporate the blacks into the state, and thus the expence of
supplying, by importation of white settlers, the vacancies they will leave?”
The first thing Jefferson seemed to fear in this scenario was conflict:
Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand
recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new
provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many
other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce
convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination
of the one or the other race. 15