Why Thomas Jefferson did not free his slaves

Many people wonder why Thomas Jefferson, a man who wrote that "all men are created equal," did not free his slaves. The short answer is he wanted to free them. Looking closely at his life, however, shows that doing so was legally and financially impossible for him, due mostly to his unwavering sense of duty to his family, his creditors, and his young country.

Early on, when his finances were healthy, Virginia law prohibited slaveholders from freeing their slaves, and lawmakers repeatedly rejected Jefferson’s efforts to build a legal, supportive path to freedom. Later in life, when the law finally allowed emancipation, Jefferson was trapped by a mountain of inherited debt, strict creditor laws, and the heavy personal cost of public service.

As a young man, Jefferson managed his money well and had no major debts. His balance sheet was strong, backed by 5,000 acres of land. During this financially stable period, Jefferson actively fought through the courts and the legislature to make emancipation possible. Throughout his life, he discussed freeing his slaves in letters to Thomas Cooper (1814), Thomas Humphreys (1817), and John Holmes (1820), alongside a 1789 description of a limited sharecropping plan.

At the same time, as he famously explained in his 1814 letter advising neighbor Edward Coles against freeing his own slaves unilaterally, Jefferson believed that simply turning slaves loose without legal protection, education, or state support would subject them to severe hardship under hostile Virginia laws. Instead, he argued that owners had a duty to care for and protect their slaves until the legal system itself could be reformed.

Under colonial Virginia law at the time, private slaveholders were banned from freeing their own slaves without special permission from the governor and council. In 1769, during his very first term in the Virginia House of Burgesses, the 26-year-old Jefferson helped introduce legislation to allow slaveholders to free their slaves at will, but the legislature overwhelmingly rejected it. He also took on pro bono legal cases to argue for the freedom of slaves. In the late 1770s, he drafted a plan for gradual emancipation in Virginia that included education and training so freed people could succeed, though fellow lawmakers warned him it had no chance of passing.

Imagine what would have happened if early Virginia lawmakers and the voters they represented had backed Jefferson’s 1769 bill. At that time, Jefferson’s estate was completely solvent, debt-free, and unmortgaged. Had Virginia legalized private emancipation in 1769, Jefferson still had the personal wealth and unencumbered land to provide the support he believed freed slaves needed. He could have legally freed his slaves and used his own resources to transition them into paid laborers and tenant farmers before his assets were ever locked up as bank collateral. Instead, lawmakers rejected his bill, locking his slaves under strict colonial laws just as his financial fortune was about to turn.

That financial turn began in 1773, when Jefferson’s father-in-law, John Wayles, died. Jefferson inherited land, which ballooned his holdings to roughly 16,000 acres, along with dozens of slaves. Along with that property, however, he inherited massive debts to British merchants. Driven by a sense of honor and duty to pay off what was owed, Jefferson sold thousands of acres of inherited land during the Revolutionary War.

He accepted payment in American paper money, but rampant inflation soon made those bills practically worthless. By 1782, when Virginia finally passed a law allowing slaveholders to free their slaves, Jefferson’s financial window had slammed shut. When the war ended the following year, the Treaty of Paris required Americans to pay British creditors in hard gold and silver coin, not paper currency. Because British merchants refused the worthless paper bills, Jefferson lost his land for almost nothing and still owed the entire original debt, plus years of growing interest.

What about his salaries as Minister to France, Secretary of State, Vice President, and President? Unlike today, when politicians often leave office wealthier than when they entered, Jefferson was an incorruptible public servant. He entered public life as a rich man and left it impoverished. Serving his country out of a deep sense of civic duty cost him dearly.

Being away from Virginia for years meant his farms were poorly managed and rarely turned a profit, especially since he spent more than many other plantation owners to provide better food, clothing, and living conditions for his slaves. On top of that, his government pay never covered his steep out-of-pocket expenses for entertaining diplomats and representing the nation. Even his massive collection of nearly 6,500 books, which critics often dismiss as a personal luxury, was a working library that directly served the country. When British troops burned the U.S. Capitol in 1814, Jefferson sold his beloved books to Congress to rebuild the Library of Congress, using the money to pay down his creditors.

Refusing to use his powerful public offices to enrich himself, Jefferson was forced to refinance his loans repeatedly just to stay afloat. Under the laws and banking practices of his day, land and slaves were used as collateral to secure credit. Because banks and foreign lenders held mortgages on Jefferson’s property, he did not own his slaves free and clear. You cannot legally give away or free property that is pledged to a bank.

Even more importantly, Virginia law strictly forbade slaveholders from freeing anyone if doing so left their estate unable to pay its debts. If Jefferson had tried to free everyone in his will, Virginia courts would have overturned it, and creditors would have seized the freed slaves and sold them anyway. Furthermore, an 1806 Virginia law required newly freed slaves to leave the state within a year or be returned to slavery. That meant Jefferson would have needed large sums of cash to help them relocate, which was money he simply did not have.

Jefferson also felt a deep duty to protect his surviving daughter, Martha, and her eleven children. Martha’s husband was bankrupt, leaving Monticello as the only safety net keeping Jefferson’s grandchildren from complete poverty.

Any remaining hope Jefferson had of clearing his debts was destroyed in 1818, when he co-signed a $20,000 loan, the equivalent of over $530,000 today, for his friend Wilson Cary Nicholas. When Nicholas went bankrupt and died two years later, banks came after Jefferson for the entire loan and its crushing interest. He went from struggling to completely broke. By the time Jefferson died in 1826, he owed more than $107,000, the equivalent of over $3 million today. He was only able to free five men from the Hemings family in his will, and he had to beg the Virginia legislature for special permission to let them stay in the state.

In the end, history clears up the paradox. When Jefferson had the wealth to free his slaves, the law forbade it. When the law finally allowed it, duty and debt made it impossible. Thomas Jefferson did not fail to free his slaves because he lacked the will. He failed because he was trapped by a system he spent his life trying to change.