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CHALLENGING JEFFERSON: Banneker in a drawing from 1791

Benjamin Banneker
	A black man who challenged Jefferson's views on slavery
	By CHARLES CERAMI

Posted Sunday, June 27, 2004
One of the most startling letters Thomas Jefferson ever received came in 1791 from a self-taught black genius named Benjamin Banneker. While running a tobacco farm, Banneker had predicted that planets circled stars other than our own sun, more than 150 years before their existence was proven by observation. He was best known as the Assistant Surveyor who helped lay out Washington, D.C. But none of that compared to the eloquent refutation of slavery, and criticism of Jefferson's own shifting stance on the issue, contained in the five-page letter Banneker sent to the then-U.S. Secretary of State. It was certainly the first such direct attack the white leaders had ever received from a black man.

Banneker had long refused to be a poster boy for abolitionists, fearing it might endanger his shaky status as a free black or even bring on a fatal attack while he slept in his lonely cabin. But now, at age 60, he thought it was worth the risk to speak out. Jefferson already knew his name and might pay attention if Banneker sent him a copy of the 48-page almanac he was about to publish—a blend of wisdom, wit and intricate celestial computations.

In his letter accompanying the almanac Banneker asked Jefferson to agree that "one universal Father hath given being to us all...and that he also afforded us all with the Same Sensations, and endowed us all with the same faculties...and that we all stand in the same relation to Him." He went on to say: "But, Sir, how pitiable it is to reflect, that although you were so fully convinced of the benevolence of the Father of mankind ... that you should at the same time counteract his mercies, in detaining by fraud and violence so numerous a part of my brethren under groaning captivity and cruel oppression."

It was a bold move. Could any person, white or black, accuse the Secretary of State of "fraud" and escape retribution? Within just four days, on August 26, Jefferson wrote an apparently appreciative reply. It was respectfully written as if to an equal, but it was one of Jefferson's most slippery efforts. Between the opening and close are five long sentences, four of which have an apparent double meaning. He laments "the imbecility" of the blacks' existence, which could reflect on the persons, rather than their captivity. He wants to see this change as soon as "this imbecility and other circumstances" will permit (meaning the financial loss for slave owners.) And Jefferson says he is sending Banneker's almanac to the Marquis de Condorcet, in Paris. He loved showing the Marquis what a great friend of the downtrodden he was. Sounding like a Banneker admirer, he told Condorcet that he had arranged for Banneker's Washington, D.C. surveying assignment, which was not entirely true.

Jefferson compounded his duplicity by writing in a different tone to an American friend, Joel Barlow, "I have a long letter from Banneker, which shows him to have had a mind of very common stature, indeed." This about a man who deserves a prominent place in the history of astronomy for being the first to say, "Every star is the center of a magnificent system, has a retinue of worlds, irradiated by its beams, and revolving round its attractive influence, all of which are lost to our sight in unmeasurable wilds of ether." Jefferson's poorly-chosen assessment of his adversary showed how badly Banneker's words had stung.

Charles Cerami has authored a dozen books, including early accounts of moves that led to the European Community and last year's best-selling story of the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson's Great Gamble

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