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Rightful Liberty: Slavery, Morality, and Thomas Jefferson's World. By Arthur Scherr. Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 2021. Pp 422. $39.00.
When a contemporary layperson thinks of Thomas Jefferson, they might reflect on his authorship of the Declaration of Independence, his presidency, and his status as a slaveowner. What might surprise a layperson is Jefferson's abolitionist stance, first espoused in the Declaration of Independence but edited out and then again in his book Notes on the State of Virginia (1785). Arthur Scherr's Rightful Liberty: Slavery, Morality, and Thomas Jefferson's World reconsiders Jefferson's legacy by focusing on his antislavery writings. Scherr contends his book "tells the story of Jefferson's merger of his universalist, natural rights ethos and his cultural relativism," which informs Jefferson's changing concept of a "moral sense" or an individual's innate conscience on how to treat others (xv). This unique approach to Jefferson's intellectual journey allows Scherr to demonstrate Jefferson's disappointment that the issue of slavery had not yet been resolved by the time of his death. In an academic environment that is increasingly hostile towards the founding fathers, especially slaveholders, Scherr's book is an important reminder of the intellectual contributions of Thomas Jefferson. At times, however, Scherr overemphasizes Jefferson's own "moral sense" due to his sympathy and admiration for the man.
The central focus of Rightful Liberty is Jefferson's struggle to resolve the paradox of slavery and his ideals of liberty. Scherr maintains that Jefferson, in comparison to most of his peers, had a progressive view of abolition and African Americans. In the 1780s, Jeffersonbelieved, "(1) slavery violated natural and divine laws and was a travesty of human relationships of reciprocity and equality; and (2) slaves were morally justified in killing their masters because their action accorded with both human and "godly" justice." Scherr wonders why these ideas did not "arouse more shock and outrage among Jefferson's planter neighbors," but the answer is simple-as a slaveholder, no one took Jefferson's ideas seriously (39). Jefferson himself could not escape the fact that he owned and exploited slaves, but instead of...