Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power [Hardcover]

Garry Wills (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2003

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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Garry Wills' "Negro President": Jefferson and the Slave Power, despite its title, is not a profile of the Jefferson Presidency. Rather, the book offers a richly detailed study of the United States' tragic constitutional bargain with slavery, and meanders through the lives of several key figures in antebellum American history along the way.

While Thomas Jefferson does play a significant role in Wills' book, the real heroes are the relatively unknown abolitionist Timothy Pickering and, to a lesser degree, John Quincy Adams. Pickering offered a consistent voice of opposition to Jefferson's often secret campaign against Federalist power. Though he could never match Jefferson's charismatic persona, Pickering succeeded in his battle to undo Jefferson's embargo of England--an embargo that Pickering recognized as Jefferson's attempt to undermine the economic prosperity and power of the North. Pickering's ill-fated attempt to secede from the Union, while misguided, would fuel the latter-day abolitionist John Quincy Adams to threaten a similar revolution as the Civil War loomed.

Ultimately, "Negro President" is a book that recovers slavery as a context for understanding early American political life. At times Willis focuses too much on Jefferson, Pickering, or Adams, and the discussion is derailed by his fascination for the moral successes and failures of each personality. Nevertheless, the book addresses a long-neglected subject in American studies and will prove invaluable to readers interested in understanding America's early struggle to balance Northern versus slave-state power. --Patrick O'Kelley

From Publishers Weekly

While Pulitzer-winner Wills (Lincoln at Gettysburg, etc.) rarely writes a book without a distinctive take on its subject, in this shaggy work he's off his game. Originally a set of lectures, this book is only loosely stitched together. Its author is typically combative, but he doesn't stay on subject long, writing instead about what suddenly strikes him. Not that the work doesn't show Wills's characteristic keen intelligence. He bears down hard, for example, on the permeating consequences of the Constitution's three-fifths clause for pre-Civil War history and raises tough questions about conventional accounts of Jefferson's election in 1800 (which depended partly on the "slave vote") and the selection of a site for the capital in slave-holding country. But he never lingers long on what the book purports to be about Jefferson's determination to preserve slavery and the South's power in the U.S.nor does it add much to what we already know and think about Jefferson's agonizing, often hypocritical, struggle with race and slavery. Much of what Wills writes about the hold of slave power on the nation has been written before and more extensively by others. What's freshest is his effort to rehabilitate one of Jefferson's arch-opponents, Federalist Timothy Pickering, an attractive if flawed second-rank character of the early nation. Pickering hated slavery and helped lay the groundwork for later abolitionism. But Wills uses him tendentiously as a foil to Jefferson and never brings him fully to life. So what's the book about? About many fascinating issues surrounding the influence of slavery in the U.S. between 1790 and 1848. But don't look here for coherence and sustained history.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (November 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618343989
• ISBN-13: 978-0618343980
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,398,325 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Garry Wills is one of the most respected writers on religion today. He is the author of Saint Augustine's Childhood, Saint Augustine's Memory, and Saint Augustine's Sin, the first three volumes in this series, as well as the Penguin Lives biography Saint Augustine. His other books include "Negro President": Jefferson and the Slave Power, Why I Am a Catholic, Papal Sin, and Lincoln at Gettysburg, which won the Pulitzer Prize.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

86 of 96 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Did Freedom's Champion Have A Moral Blind Spot?, October 20, 2003

By 

W. C HALL (Newport, OR USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power (Hardcover)

Garry Wills reminds us at the beginning of this book that he's previously written two volumes that praised aspects of Jefferson's life and work. He insists he's still an admirer of Jefferson, though he concedes readers may differ with that claim after they finish this book. The reason? In these chapters, Wills lays out a persuasive case that Jefferson's presidency was largely shaped by the "slave power"--the constitutional provision requiring that each slave be counted as three-fifths of a person in determining congressional representation.

Without the "slave power," Jefferson would have never won the presidency in 1800. Wills examines how Jefferson's determination to preserve and extend the rule of the slave states drove many of his most important decisions. The acquisition of the Louisiana Territory was seen as an opportunity to add more slave territory to the emerging nation. The embargo, one of Jefferson's most controversial acts, seems to make more sense when considered in the light of its positive benefits for the agrarian south and negative impacts on the commerce of the northern states. Even the selection of the site for the nation's capitol, Wills argues, was heavily influenced by the slaveholder's desire for a setting where their values and way of life would be embraced instead of shunned.

Jefferson's questionable political and moral decisions were not made without opposition. Wills sheds the spotlight on, and helps to rehabilitate Timothy Pickering, secretary of war under Washington, secretary of state under Adams, and consistent critic of Jefferson during his years in congress. After Pickering passed from the scene, John Quincy Adams emerged as the chief moral spokesman against the influence of slavery.

To dismiss this book as mere Jefferson-bashing would be facile. As Wills himself notes, though Jefferson devoted much energy to preserving the slave power, he was not the worst offender in this regard; and he did not argue, as some did, that slavery itself was benign. Rather, he says, "Jefferson belonged to that large class of southerners--including the best of them, men like Washington and Madison--who knew that slavery was evil, but felt they could not cut back on the evil without cutting the ground out from under them."

What Wills is asking us to do, I believe, is to set aside our prejudices, pro and con, and re-examine this nation's formative years in the harsh but honest light of how they were corrupted by slavery; and how even today, we are paying the price for the immoral bargains that men of good faith and character believed they were required to make.--William C. Hall

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Jefferson as he really was, Wills as he is., March 2, 2006

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greg taylor (Portland, Oregon United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: "Negro President": Jefferson and the Slave Power (Paperback)

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.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Tragedy of the Three-Fifths Compromise, February 19, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power (Hardcover)

While Wills begins this book by saying that he does not want to disparage Thomas Jefferson or cause people not to admire him, it was impossible not to see him and other Southern presidents like James Madison and James Monroe in a more tarnished light after finishing the book. NEGRO PRESIDENT presents a much clearer picture of how the Three-Fifths Compromise continued the appalling practice of slavery in this country and led the United States inevitably toward the Civil War. Readers learn, too, of the unsung hero of the anti-slavery movement, Thomas Pickering, whose death seems to have finally transformed John Quincy Adams into an unflinching opponent of slavery towards the end of his career. This is a very interesting book that everyone should read. There should be more done to counter the mythology of slavery and the South that has developed in this country since the end of Reconstruction. It's good to know that the Founding Fathers were not "supermen." They were simply the same flawed people that we all are.