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

JEFFERSON AND WILBERFORCE, PART III

Page I | Page 2

Also in this series:

> JEFFERSON AND WILBERFORCE, PART I
> JEFFERSON AND WILBERFORCE, PART II

In contemporary leadership and organizational research, Dr. Peter Senge stands among the most respected scholars in the field seeking to understand why people behave the way they do in large organizations. In a somewhat unique finding, he has framed what he calls the ladder of inference as a way of understanding how people both convey and understand meaning and how they act upon it. Central to his findings is that, at the core, an individual’s beliefs lie behind the real meaning in all that they say or do. Belief in this context is defined by Senge as what people think is true about how the world works, what their understanding is of why people behave the way that they do, and what their own sense is of what is central to their purposeful actions in all of life. Others might use the term world-view to describe this perspective.

Two Worldviews- Two Legacies

Lurking behind all of what we have been seeing so far in the comparison of what shaped the lives of Wilberforce and Jefferson is the notion of contending world-views. We have examined two factors that played key roles in both men in sustaining the commitments they made early in political life to abolishing slavery. Where we have seen this distinction most clearly is not in what they said or wrote publicly, but in the choices they made to act or not to act. In examining so far two sustaining influences-their early mentors and their choice of colleagues and supporters-we have also seen an emerging and a differing world-view that guided each of these men. We now turn to look more closely at the third sustaining factor in more detail-their two worldviews-and how they were lived out in their two visions for abolishing slavery.

We will then be in a better position through a summary comparison to understand how and why they chose the course that they did that began to vary so widely. We might also better understand how each man shaped the times they lived in long after they were dead. These then are the tasks for this final part.

Saint vs. Hypocrite?

In the starkest of terms, many would conclude that simply by limiting the inquiry to their actions alone, it would seem that Wilberforce set an unswerving course to abolish slavery to his very deathbed because of his beliefs in the equality of all men and that Jefferson, in contrast, abandoned the field because his beliefs radically changed over time. In short, some would say Jefferson was a hypocrite of the first order.

While a tempting conclusion, this is far too simplistic an answer and masks how a leader's (and politician's) worldview can help us to understand the distinction between verbal affirmations and consequent actions. More than anything, it was the divergence in their worldviews, their beliefs of how history worked, that most deeply divided the two men and determined the course of action each would follow throughout their mature lives regarding how to engage the fractious political and human issue of slavery.

The Optimist

As we have seen, William Smalls, Jefferson's first and likely most important mentor, helped to expose Jefferson to the exciting ideas of the Enlightenment that were emerging on the global scene. Space does not allow for a thorough discussion of the new thinking that was being introduced, but for our purposes there are three key beliefs that Jefferson held that illustrate the impact it had on him.

First, he believed the progress of history should be viewed with optimism owing to the power of man's reason which could only lead to inexorable progress not only materially, but far more so morally. Progress toward equality depended upon the subsequent generations' further development of the requisite knowledge and moral insight to complete the task of ending slavery.

Second, the equality of which he spoke was more of a metaphysical equality based upon the notion of individual rights and not revealed moral truths of what it means to be human. He expressed skepticism in his Notes on Virginia that black slaves possessed the requisite mental and moral raw material to ever rise to the level of most white Americans.

And, third, the Enlightenment view was that the tyranny most to be feared was not tyranny of one man over another, but rather that of the King, Executive, or the Federal Government over the rights of individual states. Thus, he would argue later in life that slaves were not men but property because that is what was decreed by many of the state laws of the south and that the Federal government could only override the states in regard to the rights of individuals, not the rights of property. Certain rights trumped others in his mind.

This sense of priority of abolishing slavery in his time can readily be seen in the remarkable correspondence that was carried on between Jefferson and John Adams for the last 14 years of their lives. As these two old revolutionary thinkers and leaders looked back on where they had come as a nation, each attempted to explain what they had done and what their hopes were for the future.

What interests us is that in all the years of their exchange of letters (they never saw each other after 1800) the subject of slavery was raised only one time. In 1821, Jefferson spoke to the Missouri question as an abridgement of the rights of states to declare slaves free, and tantamount to giving the slaves both freedom and the dagger whereby they might kill their masters. Adams voices his own misgivings, not just about the Missouri issue, but about the "black cloud" of slavery that hung over America for over 50 years. Like Jefferson, he replies, he can only leave it to posterity, but unlike Jefferson, he leaves it to God as well.

The Realist

There is perhaps no better place to contrast the worldview of Wilberforce with that of Jefferson than to return to Wilberforce's great vision and how he understood his "two great objects:" abolishing slavery and the reformation of manners.

As we have noted, by "manners" he means nothing less than the moral climate of England-the culture embedded in and shaped by the leaders and members of British society at all levels. This is a breathtaking vision that could only be the product of a completely youthful idealist or of someone who actually believed that God, Himself, had cast the vision and would shape the outcome.

Jefferson would most likely have been appalled that an educated political leader, particularly, would make such a proclamation. Jefferson would have viewed such sweeping goals of a political leader as tantamount to a declaration of tyranny of the worst sort-seeking to invoke personal religious beliefs on an entire society and he would have categorically opposed any thought that there even was such a thing as the supernatural direction of God for a human life or a government.>

Nevertheless, these two God-inspired goals would be what would animate the rest of Wilberforce's life and sustain his commitments in the face of the most furious opposition, repeated failure, public derision and even the opposition of the crown. What sustained these goals was that Wilberforce held a particular Christian worldview that contrasted sharply even with the prevailing religious beliefs and resulting practices of his day.

He believed that slavery would not be abolished without a transformation of the prevailing views of society that went well beyond a single issue. Thus, he viewed the "second great object" as critical to the accomplishment of the first. In that task, his strategy was to begin with the head, the leaders of society, in persuading them of the need for a radical change of character.

For an understanding of this perspective he held and which sustained him and his colleagues, the best source is written in his own hand. For, among many other strategies, he took what we might view as an odd turn: he wrote a best selling book. But not just any book, his was a book of practical theology, improbably (to our ears) called A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Higher and Middle Classes in this Country.

His central thesis was that God's redemptive work in each person's life was not to be that of the nominal faith so widely practiced in England and among his political colleagues, but a real belief in the historic faith. That faith was revealed best in scripture and was evidenced in daily action and humble service. His own diagnosis of "the grand malady" was not that of the threat of the tyranny of the state, as Jefferson held, but nothing less than selfishness-the tyranny of self gratification above all. In an age where faith was kept on a leash and separate from the crucible of power and choices in life, his was a voice that was unique.

And it had an immediate impact becoming a widely read best seller in both England and later in America. Lincoln was said to have been strongly influenced as a boy by Wilberforce's life story and later by his writing.

In the end, Wilberforce was to be the champion of over 70 bills that became law leading to vast changes in child labor, the exploitation of women and the poor, and even the first effort to prevent cruelty to animals. The end result was, as one commentator observed, "he made it fashionable to do good."