Agricultural History Review, Volume 52 Part 1 (2004), p. 119

Roger Kennedy’s account of Thomas Jefferson does not paint him in an admirable light. Kennedy certainly makes a well-documented argument that Jefferson helped to extend the plantation economy and slavery in the South and in doing so passed up the opportunity to promote his agrarian vision. We are told that Jefferson did not avail himself of the opportunity to manumit his slaves, he did not push for an antislavery clause in the land ordinance of 1784, and he discouraged the development of a mixed agricultural and manufacturing economy in the lower Mississippi valley after the Louisiana Purchase. The result was the extension of the plantation system, the concomitant expansion of slavery, the continued degradation of southern land and a dependency on the vagaries of international cotton markets instead of a society of small independent farmers with some mixed manufacturing. Kennedy claims that Jefferson abandoned his vision out of economic self-interest, a psychological need for the approval from southern plantation society and for political expediency. Moreover, we are told that had Jefferson used ‘his talent for persuasion’, southern land may actually have become the ‘seed-bed for family farmers’.

Kennedy offers a good analysis of the ecological and human costs of the way things went and a compelling argument that Jefferson did not use his power to promote a different course of economic development which would have been more humane and ecologically sound. Nonetheless, Kennedy’s analysis should be tempered with a more complete picture of Jefferson’s economic thinking and a less romanticized and naïve vision of hisagrarian ideal. Jefferson came of political age at a time of great economic change. The remnants of feudal society were being discarded and new institutional 120 the agricultural arrangements were emerging in the wake of a wholly different economic order which itself was rapidly transmogrifying. Economic thinkers of the time were attempting to articulate systematically the parameters ofthis new order and so was Jefferson. This was not a simple matter leaving room for much ambiguity and confusion.

When Jefferson spoke of the independent farmer he did not intend that farmers would be independent of markets, he simply meant that they would be able to dictate the rhythms of their work day and would not be forced (as those working in manufacturing were) to spend their days tied to the rhythms of work dictated by the expediencies of machines. Jefferson, following Adam Smith, was taken with the market economy as the natural order of society built around the principles of specialization and free trade. Indeed the South had carved out a particular economic niche based on climate, the labour of slaves and an abundance of accessible land. Jefferson’s promotion of the plantation economy and his disapproval of manufacturing are given greater context against this backdrop. Why engage in manufacturing with all of its concomitant ills when it made more economic sense to specialize in agriculture and then trade? The South had been integrated more fully into ‘world’ markets than the North by the time Jefferson came of political age. Thus, at first glance the South may have seemed to him exemplary of this new economic order, at least in theory. (Obviously there was substantial dissonance between Jefferson’s first-hand economic experience and the orderly framework of economic liberalism which he found so appealing.)

Mr Kennedy’s notion that the alternative to the plantation system was Jefferson’s agrarian ideal ignores the connection between the two. Jefferson certainly might have been able to reconcile his agrarian vision with the plantation system since both were variations around the same economic theme. They were linked through specialization and free trade and the view of the market economy as the natural order. In this sense these two options may not have been as divergent to Jefferson as Kennedy seems to imply. From this purely economistic perspective, Jefferson’s adherence to the plantation system need not be interpreted as a complete abandonment of his agrarian vision but rather part of a world view rooted in early nineteenth-century economic liberalism and embodying all of the confusions therein.

My purpose here is not to exonerate Jefferson in his complacency on the issue of slavery nor on his self-serving motivations for pushing for the expansion of the plantation system. Roger Kennedy’s picture of him is accurate and carefully documented. Nevertheless, the story of Jefferson should to be punctuated with a more history review robust understanding of the economic vision which was foundational to his thinking. At the very least this vision gave him a bit of room to ‘reconcile’ the plantation economy with his agrarian ideal and in doing so to neglect the cause of emancipation.