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Jefferson and Wilberforce:
Leaders Who Shaped Their Times, Part III
JEFFERSON AND WILBERFORCE, PART III
Also in this series:
The Realist (continued)
Stemming from his Christian worldview was an understanding of what it means to be human that marked another contrast with Jefferson. As we have seen, Jefferson’s view of slaves included that they were to be considered property and that their capacities were limited in potential for absorption into the culture. Once slavery ended in the far off future, Jefferson saw slaves as being returned to Africa. In contrast, Wilberforce’s views of the slaves as persons can perhaps best be described in the strategy discussed in the previous part which he developed with fellow Christian Josiah Wedgewood, the famous designer and manufacturer of prestigious lines of fine china.
The conversation “starter” of a china charger plate with a kneeling black man, in chains, his hands uplifted in prayer was more than an intriguing gambit. The words on the plate, “Am I not a man and a brother?” were an expression of a central belief that animated Wilberforce and, in that day, were also a distinctively evangelical Christian worldview. It is interesting to speculate what Jefferson’s reaction would have been had he been a guest at Wilberforce’s table.
A Comparative Summary
Our task has been to try to gain an understanding of what it was that might have shaped the diverging actions of Thomas Jefferson and William Wilberforce as their lives sailed forward from their commitments as young, rising politicians. Many possible explanations have presented themselves along the way under the rubrics of their mentors, their colleagues and supporters, and their worldviews. We can at this point summarize them comparatively as a way to fill out the entire picture. In the end, there is one last explanation for their divergence that we have yet to touch upon.
JEFFERSON
- Early mentors in Enlightened rationalism, removal of tyranny of governments and religion
- Colleagues, e.g. Madison, shared common beliefs to work only within “party” and against former supporters such as Adams; pragmatic regarding slavery vs. ambitions
- Enlightenment worldview of optimistic resolution of slavery in the “next generation”; belief of triumph of right ideas over time
- View of African slaves as lesser beings whose destiny is Africa
- Societal moral reform through triumph of rational structures, education, removal of all forms of tyranny
- First Loyalty to Virginia planter class and to the southern planters
- Unwilling to come under criticism publicly or to give up lifestyle
WILBERFORCE
- Early mentors influenced Christian beliefs and faith, serving the poor, realities of slavery, and vocation of politics
- Clapham circle gave encouragement of prayer support, persistence, worked across party and belief lines, gave up personal aspirations
- Christian worldview of redressing societal ills as personal responsibility to God; faith=action, not practices
- View of African slaves as men made in the image of God and brothers
- Societal reform through changed hearts and lives and unselfish responsibility
- First loyalty to God and colleagues in faith
- Willingness to be vilified and experience economic hardship
Two Legacies
The notion of a person’s legacy in life has taken on much interest in recent decades. It is perhaps most prominently and publicly discussed when the term of a U.S. President is nearing its end and many of the penultimate acts are interpreted by journalists as enhancing the leader’s legacy. But what of the legacies of Jefferson and Wilberforce: what did they leave behind for the next generations, and what were their own views of their legacy?
Planned Yet Unanticipated
Interestingly, Jefferson was very fastidious about how he wanted history to remember him, even designing the obelisk he wanted to mark his grave and its inscription:
Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom and Father of the University of Virginia.
He then added, “because of these as testimonials that I have lived, I wish most to be remembered.”
It might also be added—with the benefit of our view from history—that he, himself, was mentor to two future leaders and Presidents, both fellow Virginians and neighbors, Madison and Monroe. Both would perpetuate Jefferson’s avoidance of the slavery issue as a matter to be resolved politically, despite the growing seriousness of its divisiveness in America north, south, and west. But yet on a personal level, both men would, unlike their patron, free their slaves upon their deaths.
Despite his unarguably superior accomplishments and visionary leadership, it may be seen that Jefferson’s legacy lies as well in what was not done with the opportunities he had and the consequences of a failure to act in accord with belief. His optimism that history and the intellectual and moral progress of man would resolve the black cloud that hung over them proved wrong. Never would he have foreseen that the lives of over six hundred thousand Americans would be given to keep intact the union his generation had forged and finally resolve the question on which they stood silent for so many years.
Humbly Transforming a Culture
Wilberforce, much like Jefferson, had leaders coming behind him whom he had influenced and who would carry on his work. By 1823, he was obviously becoming frailer and subject to attacks of inflamed lungs (pneumonia?) which laid him low for weeks or months at a time. Yet his two great objectives still animated his life. While the abolition of slavery was gaining momentum, it was by no means complete. He was reluctant to step down feeling he had not done enough.
Nevertheless, he prepared to pass the mantle on to Thomas Buxton, a Quaker
M.P., who shared Wilberforce’s views on abolition and who had been a leader in prison reform. Wilberforce saw Buxton almost as much a son as a colleague in the fight. In a letter, he warns Buxton of the difficult road ahead and then shares his own hard earned lessons of leadership:
If it be His will, may he render you an instrument of extensive influence . . . [But] above all, may He give the disposition to say at all times “Lord, what wouldest thou have me to do or suffer?” looking to Him, through Christ, for wisdom and strength.
Buxton would go on to introduce the bill, and with Wilberforce supporting and advising him, the last race began that would end literally on Wilberforce’s deathbed when the bill finally passed in 1833.
His own view of his legacy was far different than Jefferson’s. Despite over 50 years of laboring for the abolition of slavery and championing dozens of worthy causes for oppressed people, all he could say of himself was “God be merciful to me, a sinner.”
A Final Note
There is one final explanation for the divergent outcomes and legacies of the lives of the two men who made early commitments to abolish slavery that may be more telling than any historian has noted to date: the sovereignty of God.
When Wilberforce was first taking up his task, the aged John Wesley wrote to encourage him and to warn him. “Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils; but if God be for you who can be against you?” Why God raised up a Wilberforce in England, brought him together with a Newton, and surrounded him with the Clapham circle during his life, we will never know. We do know it was a sovereign act of grace.
For Jefferson, the belief in sovereignty ran equally strong: the sovereignty of man. It was the central core belief of the Enlightenment that man would ultimately triumph and secure moral progress through ideas and through education freed from religious cant. And many in America felt that way in his time. Why God did not raise up a Wilberforce in America and why so many died to end slavery and leave a legacy that haunts the United States even today is also something we will never know. We do know that the great leaders of the armies of the North and the South, Grant and Lee, acknowledged the providence of God in the outcome and it humbled both men. This, too, we know as a sovereign act of God’s grace. Not why perhaps, but Who.
Even as we have examined these two lives and sought to understand them, we remain awed by what Wilberforce and his friends were able to accomplish and the legacy they left. Perhaps John Newton draws the conclusion best in a letter he wrote to a young Wilberforce in 1796 urging him to remain in the political vocation and not withdraw from public life. He counseled that God’s grace would be sufficient and that “Happy the man who has a deep impression of the Lord’s words, ‘Without me you can do nothing.’” 4 For the next 37 years Wilberforce took that scriptural wisdom to heart. To God be the glory.
Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline (New York: Currency Doubleday, 1990)
The three-part framework for the discussion in the three papers is drawn from Dr. Steven Garber as set forth in his marvelous book, The Fabric of Faithfulness (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1996).Winter 2005
Lester J. Cappon, ed., The Adams and Jefferson Letters, pp. 570-571.
Adrienne Koch and William Peden, eds., The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (New York: Random House, 1944), p. ii.
Kevin Belmonte, Hero for Humanity, ( Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2002), p. 276
John Wesley as cited in Belmonte, p. 138.
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JEFFERSON AND WILBERFORCE, PART III
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