Analysis: Benjamin Banneker Letter to Thomas Jefferson

Date: August 19, 1791

Author: Banneker, Benjamin

Genre: letter

Summary Overview

Written in 1791, Benjamin Banneker’s letter to Thomas Jefferson appealed to the then secretary of state and author of the Declaration of Independence to recognize the same natural rights to liberty that African Americans shared with the white citizens of a recently independent United States of America. A free black resident of Baltimore County, Maryland, Banneker was the most accomplished African American scientist, inventor, and thinker of his day. He helped survey the new District of Columbia and published a series of astronomically calculated almanacs. Despite his own successes, Banneker was aware of the extreme difficulties that enslaved African Americans faced in the United States and, in his letter, sought to hasten the end of that institution by persuading Jefferson—who opposed slavery in theory despite being a slaveholder—of the equality among people of all races, with himself as an example of the capabilities of those of African descent.

Document Analysis

Banneker’s letter to Jefferson came at a time of revolutionary change in the government and spirit of the United States. The nation had formally gained independence less than a decade previously, and Jefferson served as secretary of state of the first executive government formed under the new US Constitution. However, the advances in liberty for the former British colonists had largely left the new nation’s black population behind. In his letter, Banneker seeks to urge Jefferson, one of the leading voices for liberty of the American Revolution, to take up the banner of natural rights on the behalf of the nation’s enslaved population. Believing Jefferson to be capable of being convinced of the equality of the races and the fitness of emancipation, Banneker echoes the language of Jefferson’s own Declaration of Independence in support of his argument and provides a copy of his own scientifically research and written astronomical almanac as proof of the intellectual powers of those of African descent. By challenging Jefferson to be the liberal-minded, equality-driven man that his principles suggested he should be, Banneker hoped to convince Jefferson to speed liberty for those in bondage.

In the opening of his letter, Banneker freely acknowledges the boldness of his action in writing to Jefferson. Jefferson was a powerful politician serving in high federal office; Banneker was a freeman of mixed African and white descent who owned a Maryland farm and had served for just months as a poorly paid assistant in a federal surveying project. As a member of Virginia’s planter elite, Jefferson had political and social power. In contrast, Banneker, despite also being a Southern landowner, was subject to an “almost general prejudice” because of his race. In his letter, Banneker lists some of the main biases that white society held against black Americans, including the belief that people of African descent were of low intelligence, closer to animals than humans. Although Banneker had never been a slave and had, in fact, enjoyed opportunities well beyond those typically available even to free black Americans, he was obviously keenly aware of the pressures of racism and slavery on all members of his race.

With this pitiful situation duly enumerated, Banneker appeals to Jefferson as a man who was above such common misconceptions, despite the fact that Jefferson had not truly shown himself to be so. He goes on to explain why he chose Jefferson as the recipient of his letter, stating that he was reaching out to the statesman as a man whom he believed “in consequence of that report which hath reached me” to be “far less inflexible” on the question of the equality of slavery. Although Banneker does not specifically note which “report” had led him to draw this conclusion, one likely possibility is Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, a brief book published in the United States in 1787 that relays the author’s description of the land, climate, people, and society of his native state. Jefferson had long been considered to hold antislavery sentiments—although he had largely been silent on the question since independence—and in Notes on the State of Virginia hedecries slavery as a “great political and moral evil”; furthermore, he expresses support for the idea of gradual abolition. Armed with this knowledge, Banneker asks Jefferson to join him in overcoming popular ideas about the mental and emotional inferiority of black Americans. Surely, Banneker suggests, a man of Jefferson’s beliefs would agree with him that God had granted all men “the same sensations and . . . the same faculties.” Naturally, it followed that all people were “of the same family.”

Jefferson, however, had previously expressed exactly the opposite sentiment: that those of African blood were naturally intellectually limited. Writing in Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson sets forth his views on the capabilities of African Americans in less-than-flattering terms. Although Jefferson acknowledges that black and white people share similar abilities in terms of memory, he argues that African Americans were far behind white Americans in terms of reason and imagination, commenting specifically that he knows of no black person who can understand the mathematical ideas of Euclid and that Africans lack skills in painting, sculpture, and literature. Jefferson further concludes that Africans’ lack of development in these areas stem from their race and not from their status as slaves because of the intellectual and artistic achievements of Roman-era slaves, whom he believes were held in worse conditions than American slaves. That the conditions and societies of Roman slaves held by emperors and scholars and those of American slaves owned by planters were incomparably different did not strike Jefferson, although none of his Roman examples were agricultural slaves who labored on ancient latifundia.

Thus, Jefferson determines that black persons are inherently inferior to their white counterparts; he qualifies this statement later in the work, however, and proclaims his desire to be convinced otherwise by the accomplishments of some person of African descent; no one had yet achieved this goal in Jefferson’s eyes by the time of Banneker’s letter. He dismissed the works of African American poet Phyllis Wheatley, for example, as being simply the result of religion rather than literary merit, despite Wheatley’s efforts to translate Roman poet Ovid and to produce poems with nationalistic and other themes. In writing to Jefferson, Banneker hoped that his work on the almanac could serve as the definitive proof that the statesman desired to at last accept black intellectual equality. Banneker’s accomplishments—scientific and rational in nature, like those pursued by Jefferson himself—were compatible with the other man’s interests and thus, Banneker presumably hoped, of the correct type to appeal to Jefferson. Time proved Banneker wrong in this regard; Jefferson apparently remained unconvinced of black intellectual equality until the time of his death and declared himself less than impressed by Banneker’s own achievements.

Nevertheless, Banneker was willing to address the potentially persuadable Jefferson rather than the conclusively convinced one, believing that Jefferson’s writings on the manner suggested that he was truly willing to be persuaded of African American equality with sufficient proof. Banneker had another personal indication of Jefferson’s willingness to challenge racial boundaries, as the statesman had been the one to approve Banneker’s appointment to the surveying crew in Washington, DC. Perhaps Banneker reasoned that a man willing to allow him a position on a project as important as the surveying of the nation’s capital would also be willing to consider him a man capable of true intellectual accomplishment. In writing to Jefferson, Banneker challenged him to be as good a man as Banneker presented him to be: open-minded, enlightened, and willing to challenge society to protect liberty.

Banneker next calls on Jefferson to rally behind the cause of liberty for all people—in other words, abolition. He presents the idea as an inevitable conclusion from what he claims are his and Jefferson’s common belief in the equality of people of all races and shared membership in the family of humanity under God; “if these are sentiments of which you are fully persuaded,” he writes, then surely Jefferson would agree that it was his “indispensable duty” to support freedom for enslaved people as fellow members of the human race. Banneker also recalls Jefferson’s avowed support for the philosophy of natural rights, a doctrine clearly at odds with the institution of slavery. If humans were guaranteed certain basic liberties that no government could strip away, then reason—what Banneker calls “a full conviction of the truth and obligation of these principles should all lead to”—dictates that governments have no right to approve the holding of a great number of people condemned to have essentially no rights. Writing with a simplicity that belies that sharp criticism of the hypocrisy of the founders’ stated support for individual liberty but practical toleration of and even engagement in the perpetuation of slavery, Banneker notes that he had “long been convinced” that the sincere efforts of Jefferson and other patriots to secure freedoms according to this philosophy naturally extended to all people, regardless of “rank or distinction,” or presumably, race. Banneker further states that he thinks that Jefferson’s beliefs would certainly make him unwilling to accept the trials of slavery and even push him to actively work for its abolition.

To support these claims, Banneker compares the effects of the “tyranny of the British” on the colonial patriots to the bonds of servitude placed on black Americans, a comparison that the colonists themselves had made during the period of British rule. Banneker exhorts Jefferson to remember the challenges and at times seeming fruitlessness of that era in an effort to encourage the statesman to empathize with the plight of those presently in the country who lack the liberty he and his fellow patriots had so dearly craved, pointing out that “this . . . was a time when you clearly saw into the injustice of a state of slavery, and in which you had just apprehensions of the horrors of its conditions.” The comparison Banneker wished to draw was clear: just as colonists dreaded being politically enslaved by the British crown, African Americans dreaded being physically enslaved by the American planter class.

Banneker bravely scolds Jefferson for the betrayal of these ideals of liberty that the former patriots set upon the nation’s black residents. To further emphasize his point, Banneker repeats some of Jefferson’s own words regarding natural rights from the Declaration of Independence, forcibly reminding Jefferson that in 1776, he had stated that it was “self-evident, that all men are created equal [and] that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” Banneker uses this phrase as a proof that when impressed upon by an outside force, Jefferson and the patriots had recognized the violations of their own natural rights by the British government. Then, Banneker scathingly turns on Jefferson, accusing him of hypocrisy, albeit in polite terms. The patriots were concerned with the “equal and impartial distribution of . . . rights” when their own liberties were at stake, he argues, but once they had received them, they allowed African Americans to continue to exist “under groaning captivity and cruel oppression.” In this brief letter, Banneker elucidates a philosophical paradox that continues to baffle historians today: How could men committed to liberty for all so clearly reject freedom for many of their countrymen? Although Banneker calls the situation “pitiable” in his letter to Jefferson, his language suggests that his feelings about the division between ideal and action was much more condemnatory.

Banneker also calls to Jefferson’s mind the freedoms that both of them shared. Stating his pride in his own African heritage, the author nevertheless admits that he had the “most profound gratitude” to God that he had been fortunate enough to avoid being enslaved but had instead enjoyed the fruits of “that free and unequalled liberty” that Jefferson himself had striven to attain. In contrast to this, Banneker comments that Jefferson, a slave owner, had more than sufficient knowledge of the situation of enslaved Americans to need a reminder from him, a free man who had never known slavery intimately. Instead, Banneker presents a solution to the problem of slavery plaguing the nation. White political leaders, including Jefferson, must eliminate their racist and prejudiced beliefs and, as it were, walk a mile in the slave’s shoes. The path to abolition would then be clear to them without any guidance.

With this call to liberty made, the latter section of Banneker’s letter is dedicated to the offering of the manuscript of his first almanac. The author introduces the item after a declaration of modesty, seeking forgiveness for the extent to which “my sympathy and affection for my brethren” has driven him to talk up his own ideas about racial equality and abolition. It was this great rush of feeling that has distracted him from his original purpose, he claims, of presenting Jefferson a copy of his almanac. Unspoken in the letter, but certainly implied through the connection of topics, is Banneker’s belief that his work represents the proof that Jefferson had claimed to desire of the intellectual capabilities of African Americans, for no other reason fully justifies Banneker’s decision to send a copy to the statesman. Indeed, although Banneker does not state this purpose, Jefferson certainly recognized it; in his response to Banneker, he comments specifically on the ability of such a work to provide proof of potential black intellectualism.

Banneker offers the item with no such claim, however, suggesting another, more straightforward reason for the gift. He explains to Jefferson the circumstances of the taking of the astronomical calculations while part of Ellicott’s party in the District of Columbia, a nod to Jefferson’s role in the federal government and in Banneker’s own appointment. However, the commentary around the production and sending of the manuscript points back to the idea of showing Banneker’s, and thus all African Americans’, mental fitness and vocational dedication.

The manuscript was highly desired by multiple publishers in Maryland, implying that a work of science by an African American could enjoy high demand by people of all races. Banneker notes that he accomplished the feat of completing the manuscript in a time period shortened by his work with Ellicott’s party, a subtle denial of Jefferson’s earlier supposition that African Americans were inherently lazy and not made so by the brutality of their enslavement. To that end, Banneker also refers to his “assiduous application to Astronomical Study,” a refutation of the notion that black persons were unable or uninterested in advanced scientific exploration. Further, Banneker notes that he accomplished all of these things at the age of sixty, more than a decade older than Jefferson. In a final stroke, Banneker sent a handwritten manuscript to Jefferson. By doing this, Banneker sought both to prove his authorship and to challenge ideas about black literacy at a time when some thought African Americans were unable to learn to read or write properly.

Thus, although Banneker’s presentation of the almanac was his stated purpose for daring to write to Jefferson, the bulk of his letter makes clear his true goal in the communication: to persuade the statesman to establish himself as a devout opponent of slavery willing to call for African Americans to achieve liberty, just as he had been a powerful voice for colonial freedom fifteen years earlier. Although Jefferson did not immediately set about doing just this, Banneker had reason to believe that his message had not gone unheard. Shortly after receiving Banneker’s letter, Jefferson wrote him a polite response in which he declared his own desire to see African Americans prove their intellectual equality with whites, and that he hoped to see a “good system commenced for raising the condition both of their body and mind to what it ought to be.” Jefferson also specifically praised the Banneker’s almanac manuscript, stating that he sent it on to the secretary of the French Academy of Sciences as an example of the abilities of black men. The eruption of the French Revolution prevented any correspondence between Banneker and the secretary, but the gesture nevertheless seemed a positive one. Jefferson, however, remained conflicted over race and slavery for the rest of his life, despite the arguments and proofs that Banneker sought to set forth in his 1791 letter.

Bibliography

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