Jefferson on Race and Slavery: The Secondary Works

Thomas Jefferson's own writings on race and slavery are a crucial context for the specific controversy involving Sally Hemings. It's best scholarly method to thoroughly familiarize yourself with the primary sources first so that you have a base on which to develop your own views on the subject.

Having consulted the primary works, though, the second crucial context is the scholarship on Jefferson's views on race and slavery. So here is a bibliography of some of the major scholarship*** -- eventually to be annotated -- with a selection of key passages from the documents as well as a compilation of responses to it.

Here are some key questions you can bring to your reading in the scholarship:

1) What do the academic authorities have to say about Jefferson's views on race and slavery in general, without specific focus on his possible sexual/love relation with Hemings. How are the experts trying to shape our understanding of these matters? What claims do the experts make? On what are those claims based? What range of responses can be found among the ranks of the specialists? Which Jefferson works receive the most attention? Whose arguments seem most meaningful, most telling? Whose weakest? Have you detected elements of prejudice or bias?

2) Most importantly, how did your reading of the primary sources compare to that of the experts? Did your views change or remain the same as you moved from the primary works to the secondary works? Where did you find congruence with your views, where contradiction? What new did you learn? And from whom? Who has most helped shape your own interpretation? Again, have you detected elements of prejudice or bias?

As with the primary works, use these documents before beginning the miniseries. A range of representative responses to such study follow the list of secondary documents and the key passages here. These secondary sources can be additional useful "priming the mental pump" exercises such as those suggested in the miniseries prologue.

***Suggestions gratefully accepted for additional entries on the following list of documents. Email Edward J. Gallagher at ejg1@lehigh.edu.