Reel History 7: Jefferson in Paris and slavery on film

Jefferson in Paris seems like your typical Merchant Ivory film: a long period-piece with lavish production values, repressed sexuality due to social norms, etc. And it's a fine movie, I suppose- I think Nick Nolte was miscast in the leading role as Thomas Jefferson, as he kind of looks too grizzled and angry. Compare him to Ken Howard, who played T.J. in 1776.

Nick Nolte- People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive, 1992

The movie is about Jefferson's time as a diplomat to France, and his love life there- the affair with Maria Cosway (she of the 'jump a fence and break a wrist' incident), and his follow-up relationship with his slave (and half sister-in-law) Sally Hemmings. The Hemmings affair was something that was denied for a while, but reading more recent biographies of T.J., it seems historians just accept the overwhelming evidence that he had an affair with a slave and she had several of his children. Jefferson in Paris, which doesn't really have a good focus on one thing or another, includes this matter and does it tastefully and well, as you would expect from Merchant Ivory.

Jefferson in Paris has it pretty easy when it comes to telling a story of slavery- Jefferson was, like the title suggests, in Paris, and thus mostly avoids having conversations about race and the hundreds of slaves he owned over his lifetime, or the hundreds of thousands owned by many throughout the United States. It focuses on just two: James Hemmings, the slave Jefferson took with him and had trained as a French cook, and James' sister Sally who came to France taking young Polly Jefferson to her father. Once they step foot in France, the two Hemmings are free, so during the film they are technically paid workers and not slaves (though Jefferson makes it clear the situation won't stay the same when returning to America). And though the conflict comes up, it's just one of several conflicts the movie feels compelled to address.

And that's something seen in movies about this time; it's a monumental task to take on the institution of slavery, and, let's face it, futile to tackle in one or two movies. But that doesn't stop someone like Steven Spielberg from trying to jam it all in anyway. It's a complex history with debatable beginnings- slaves came with some of the first Dutch colonists to Jamestown to fill the need for labourers on tobacco plantations, but how it became a full-blown American institution, even as it was banned in Great Britain, is so complex that it's hard to get an exact answer to the question. But, by and by it became an awful way of life and early America wasn't going to let it off easy.

And the Founding Fathers had complex views on it and clashed about them all the time. In an original passage of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson condemned Britain for bringing slaves in the first place. The passage was unanimously voted out by the Continental Congress:

"he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemispere, or to incure miserable death in their transportation hither. this piratical warfare, the opprobium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain."

Unfortunately, Jefferson could never bring himself to break away from slavery; he owned thousands of acres of land and owned hundreds of slaves over his life, only freeing the children he had with Sally Hemmings when they turned 21. He did, as president in 1807, forbid the United States from participating in the international slave trade, but there were enough slaves already in the country to keep the market thriving.

Compare him with John Adams, because once you do it becomes hard to write off the great Jefferson's beliefs as of the times. Adams never owned a slave, always employing 'freemen both as Domesticks and Labourers, and never in my Life did I employ a slave' (as he put it in a letter to abolitionists in 1801). His wife, Abigail, after an epidemic of dysentery ripped through Adams' hometown of Braintree, she wondered whether it was God's punishment for the sin of slavery. But even John Adams wanted slavery to be eradicated in a slow, steady way. He believed that slavery was already on the outs, which, though Adams was a smart guy, was a stupid assumption.

I've had a tough time writing about slavery in film, so I may have to take the movies dealing with slavery one at a time. Either the movie tries to compress to much history to make the story feel more significant than it was (Amistad), or they just don't give a sh!t and just take the oppression and use it to fuel a story of vengeance (Django Unchained). I'll say this now, Django is much more entertaining than Amistad, but that doesn't mean it has something more profound to say about slavery (or does it? Maybe it's a stupid question to begin with). I can't wait to see 12 Years a Slave, Steve McQueen's newest movie about a free black man captured and sold back into slavery, which I'm sure has more to say than either movie.