Jefferson and Wilberforce: Leaders Who Shaped Their Times, Part II

JEFFERSON AND WILBERFORCE, PART II

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Also in this series:

> JEFFERSON AND WILBERFORCE, PART I
> JEFFERSON AND WILBERFORCE, PART III

Leadership, even godly leadership, is not the sole province of the individual, but the outcomes are often shaped as much by those who advise, support, encourage, and come alongside a leader. It is within a network of relationships or of a like-minded community that the great movements of change occur. Those with whom leaders surround themselves, their choice of companions on the journey, help to make them who they are and determine what they can achieve. These colleagues also help to further shape and to sustain a transforming vision over time and bring it to reality. We have looked at the role of early mentors in shaping the commitments of Jefferson and Wilberforce; we now turn to examine how those around them later in life helped to sustain their purposes.

Leading Societal Change

Contemporary research on leading transformative change posits three key factors if societal and cultural change is to be successfully initiated: (1) a sense of urgency or great importance; (2) a compelling vision for change that captures the hearts and the minds of a wide group of people; and, (3) a guiding coalition which has the prestige and the capacity to help bring about the change envisioned. 1 How these factors played out in the lives of Jefferson and Wilberforce is yet another telling contrast of the results of their commitments to ending slavery.

Jefferson : Leading Behind the Scenes

Jefferson 's powerful gift of written expression together with his naturally introverted and scholarly personality shaped a somewhat unique approach to his political and collegial work and indicated where he would make his impact. Even from his earliest political years, Jefferson's superior writing talents were evident, and John Adams' choosing him to draft the terms of declaring independence from England would prove to be the key to Jefferson's spectacular rise. While Jefferson preferred to avoid public roles due to a thin and high-pitched voice and a reluctance to speak publicly, his seeming shyness belied his large personal ambitions. He had a deep aversion to any conflict and had a need to be loved-to a degree quite unusual for one in his profession. Thus, Jefferson tended to work behind the scenes in his political life, becoming known as a "committeeman." He trusted only a few men to carry his central themes of republicanism over federalism and freedom from the tyranny of religion and rulers. The man he trusted most throughout his life was James Madison. Madison's role as collaborator with Jefferson on matters great and small-and even nefarious-is one that is largely unsung.

But ironically, it was also this behind-the-scenes approach to leadership that became Jefferson's undoing with many, including not only his Federalist archenemy, Alexander Hamilton, but also his father figure, George Washington, and, most painfully, his sponsor and good friend, John Adams. This made the possibility of sustaining the cause of abolishing slavery more unlikely, because he had tarnished many of the key relationships he would have needed-all in favor of his personal ambitions.

Key Relationships

John Adams, Jefferson's champion in the Continental Congress, was not only a mentor to the young and gifted Jefferson but also a close friend along with his wife Abigail when they served in France and England as ambassadors. But it was a collegial relationship that was not to last long into the Washington administration as Jefferson became more and more disenchanted with the Federalist bent of the government he joined as Secretary of State with Adams as Vice President. Resigning his post early for a return to Monticello, Jefferson would later allow his name to stand for election in 1796 and again in 1800 in a quiet campaign against Adams, to succeed Washington.

The breaking point came for the two as Jefferson chose to have Adams falsely tarred by hiring a journalistic flack to tarnish Adams' image while Jefferson was ensconced in Monticello-a standard political "dirty trick" of the early years of campaigning. The subsequent split between Jefferson and John Adams and even more so, Abigail, would last until the men were in their last years.

Madison , on the other hand, was not only a neighbor in Virginia, but one who was the more public expression of the private Jefferson's ideas. An early example came in the bill for Religious Freedom that Jefferson authored in the Virginia legislature. After an inability to see it through on its first offering, Jefferson was about to give it up, much like his bill on abolishing slavery earlier in his career. It was Madison who shared Jefferson's passion to curb the role of the church in the affairs of government (and conscience) that would persist and carry it to completion while Jefferson was off in France as ambassador. It was also Madison who took a key part in the drafting of the Constitution and in writing much of the apologia for a Federal form of government (which we know today as The Federalist Papers). He also wrote regularly to Jefferson in France, keeping him apprised of the proceedings and ensuring that Jefferson's advice played a role in the shaping of the Constitution in curbing the powers of the central government in favor of a balance toward the role of the states-a Jefferson tenet.

Over a lifetime, it becomes clear that Jefferson chose his colleagues for their agreement with him, their personal devotion, and their capacity to help him carry out his political ends. Madison was brilliant at it, and the two rarely differed, so much so that one commentator has said that without Madison there would have been no Jefferson. James Monroe was another colleague, and both would later benefit from Jefferson's sponsoring of their careers.

Unfortunately for those colleagues and sponsors that he turned against, Jefferson was unable to bridge the gap. He never reconciled with the proud Washington who could not bear to bring up his "son's" perfidy in making public a comment denouncing Washington's meek captivity to the Federalists. And as for John and Abigail Adams, it was only by the tireless efforts of Dr. Benjamin Rush through a benign subterfuge, that Jefferson and John Adams were able to patch up the wounds of Jefferson's smear campaign and initiate a remarkable end-of- life correspondence.

Right up to the end of his life, Jefferson was a potential rallying point for those interested in seeing the full realization of the vision for equality of all. But not prior to his election as President in 1800 or during his presidency or even when he became more and more an icon in his latter years-all times when his influence might have been most effective-did he provide influence and agree to take up cause with those who would abolish slavery, including the lone "founding father" who did, Benjamin Franklin, and the long time groups campaigning against the ownership of human beings, particularly the Quakers. While he realized that "we have the wolf by the ears" in the dilemma of when and how slavery would end, he voiced a reluctance to publicly act, even while giving those who sought his leadership verbal encouragement.

A good example of this reluctance-as well as the fullest explanation of his reasons for not offering to lead emancipation efforts-came in a letter he sent in reply to Edward Coles. Coles had solicited the former President's support in the cause of abolition, appealing to him as an Albemarle County neighbor and also as private secretary to James Madison. Coles was no dreamy young idealist but was to become Governor of the new state of Illinois where he moved with his freed slaves and pursued the course of abolition for the remainder of his life.

Jefferson 's reply is essentially a long apologia for his early championing of the cause as a young legislator but doing little thereafter. Astonishingly, he maintained that from the time he was in France as ambassador in 1787 until he returned to Monticello for good in 1809 when his two terms as President ended, he had "little opportunity of knowing the progress of public sentiment here on this subject." 2 His hopes, he concluded, had been placed in the younger generation who would see the importance of extending liberty in emancipating the slaves as of first import. Such was not the case, he lamented. Jefferson also failed to note to Coles the debates he took part in from afar in his latter years, favoring the extension of slavery to the western states as balancing the interests of northern manufacturing and southern plantation economies.

He ends his letter with an apt expression of his Enlightenment worldview-"Yet the hour of emancipation is advancing, in the march of time ...." 3 There is no reply to the call to help rally the younger generation to the cause and take league with Coles and others of that generation. Ironically however, he does extol the example of Wilberforce to Coles as one to follow in his quest.

And what might have been the real cause for such reluctance to lead the abolition effort? One explanation may well be that the colleagues and supporters that mattered most to Jefferson in his rise to power and in his latter years, were those of his own planter class in Virginia and the south. Roger Kennedy perhaps best sums up this view:

Jefferson was driven by an insatiable hunger for approval of his fellow planters. Such a need for the affirmation of peers is common among political persons. In Jefferson's case, it was so intense as to overwhelm his commitment to concepts distasteful either to his contemporaries among the planter class or thereafter to their sons. He sought brothers while attacking the authority of fathers. 4