Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power | Garry Wills

Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power | Garry Wills | Jefferson as he really was, Wills as he is.

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Negro President: J...

	Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power Garry Wills Houghton Mifflin, 2003 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 21 reviews view larger image
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In "Negro President," the best-selling historian Garry Wills explores a controversial and neglected aspect of Thomas Jefferson's presidency: it was achieved by virtue of slave "representation," and conducted to preserve that advantage.
Wills goes far beyond the recent revisionist debate over Jefferson's own slaves and his relationship with Sally Heming to look at the political relationship between the president and slavery. Jefferson won the election of 1800 with Electoral College votes derived from the three-fifths representation of slaves, who could not vote but who were partially counted as citizens. That count was known as "the slave power" granted to southern states, and it made some Federalists call Jefferson the Negro President -- one elected only by the slave count's margin.
Probing the heart of Jefferson's presidency, Wills reveals how the might of the slave states was a concern behind Jefferson's most important decisions and policies, including his strategy to expand the nation west. But the president met with resistance: Timothy Pickering, now largely forgotten, was elected to Congress to wage a fight against Jefferson and the institutions that supported him. Wills restores Pickering and his allies' dramatic struggle to our understanding of Jefferson and the creation of the new nation.
In "Negro President," Wills offers a bold rethinking of one of American history's greatest icons.

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Not for novices

I was required to read this book for a graduate history class and came away enlightened. In response to those who say the book is not about Jefferson, it is. Pickering and Adams are used as lenses through which Wills examines Jefferson (I have read other books like this). This style of writing may be over-the-head of novice readers not accustomed to reading material that is geared towards professional historians.

This book is intended to make the reader reconsider what they think about Jefferson and what they have been taught about the early republic. Wills shows Jefferson as a mere man and not the giant that celebratory (and earlier) literature would have him be. This may be disconcerting to readers that have been taught that the founding fathers were the paragon of society and humanity.

In response to reviewers claiming that Wills misses this or that, you are right, but miss the point. Wills did not intend to discuss every aspect of Jefferson's political career. He was interested in examining Jefferson's defense of slavery in-so-far as slavery gave Jefferson and other Southerners an advantage over Northern politicians.

You might not like what Wills has to say, but it is hard to argue with his argument.

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Jefferson as he really was, Wills as he is.

This book strikes me as a fairly typical Wills effort. Take a gander at his oeuvre. Is there any public intellectual on the American scene at the moment that casts a wider net? Wills has written about Augustine, Chesterton, Reagan, John Wayne, Jefferson before (see his Inventing America- his study of Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence), Madison, Nixon (Nixon Agonistes contains one of the best explanation of American presidential politics that I have ever read), the role of religion in American politics, conservatism, and the American distrust of government to name just a few topics.. He writes like a prodigy- quickly, sometimes a little sloppily but based on a deep reading of Western culture. I have never read one of his books without copying down a passage or two into my commonplace book (a habit I took up long ago on reading Will's Inventing America). I have also not read any of his recent books without feeling that it was unfinished. He writes quickly and it shows. Some of his work is a little sloppy and needs development. Some of his arguments are brilliant and some are forced.
Consider this volume. Wills is trying to emphasize some of the ways the three-fifths clause of the original Constitution distorted the workings of antebellum politics.
The three-fifths clause was not about voting. In spite of some of the reviewers below, slave owners did not get three extra votes for every five slaves. It was about representation. Slaves were included in the population data that determined the number of representatives a state received in the House of Representatives. But they only counted as three people for every five slaves. So if a state contained 100,000 slaves, it would add a total of 60,000 onto the figure used to determine the number of representatives. In 1800, over 91 % of the blacks in America, free or slave, were in the southern states (this figure is from The South as a Conscious Minority by Jesse Carpenter, p.14). Obviously, the three/fifths clause worked to boost Southern representation. It had enough effect, according to Wills and many others, to provide the South with the decisive votes needed to elect Jefferson president, to pass the notorious gag rules of the 1830s, and to force through many of the so-called "compromises" that spread slavery throughout the Old Southwest.
I agree with Wills, William Freehling, Leonard L. Richards and the others who have been writing about this issue of late. But one weakness of Wills' presentation (as opposed to someone like Freehling in The Road to Disunion) is that Wills fails to bring out one very important point. Even with the three/fifths clause, the South was a minority in the House. The 1800 elections brought as large a proportion of Southerners to the House as they enjoyed in any time in our history. In 1800, the South had 65 Representatives to 77 for the Northern States or 46% of the total (Carpenter, p. 22). Even with the completely unfair boost of the three-fifths clause they still needed northern allies. There were always Northerners or Westerners who had to vote along with the South on ALL the issues that Wills mention. This is perhaps the saddest part of the story of all. The Southern Representatives acted with great unity throughout this period and either found collaborators or were able to bully other Representatives to go along with them. My point is simply that the Slave Power was not just a Southern phenomenon. It was an American phenomenon. Wills does get at this sometimes. I cannot find the quote now but at some point in the book he does mention how many national politicians were willing to compromise with the South in order to further their careers. Even one of the heroes of his tale, J. Q. Adams was guilty of this early in his career.
If you really want to explore thoroughly the Slave Power in early American history then I suggest Freehling's book over this one.
That does not mean that you shouldn't read Wills. He clarifies some of the confusion I have always felt about Jefferson as a politician. In many ways, Jefferson was a modern politician. He knew how to work others to his ends while staying behind the curtain (this may be the only way we can compare Dick Cheney to Thomas Jefferson). Jefferson was also so sure that he was right that to oppose him was treasonous. He was in many ways a not very likable man. None of which diminishes his greatness except for those who can admire only saints. Personally, I find that if you allow yourself to provisionally admire sinners that there are a lot more people to admire.
Wills also shows us Burr in a very different light and makes it clear that in regards to Burr (e.g., Burr's behavior during the 1800 election), that history really has been written by the victors. And while the other reviewers express appreciation for Wills' bringing back Timothy Pickering into history's good graces, I appreciate the way that he tells us the story of J.Q. Adams' struggles against the Slave Power in the House during the 1830s. This is one of the best stories in American history and deserves to be told again and again.
So, yes, read Wills by all means. He may not be a detail guy but he will give you many great insights and will point in the direction of others like Freehling who are great detail guys. Along the way, you get to spend some time with one of the most interesting thinkers currently writing on the American scene.

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Keep to history!

Willis's book is interesting when he's relating history, but all too often he diverts from that to attack other historians views, or try to defend his against perceived attacks from others. That gets old after the first few times.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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