Thomas Jefferson and the Fight against Slavery (Guest: Cara Rogers Stevens)
Download MP3Hello, everybody. And welcome to the Illiteracy podcast. I'm your host, Tim Benson, a senior policy analyst at the Heartland Institute International Food Market Think Tank. We're in episode 165, 166, something like that, somewhere around there. So we've been around for quite a bit now.
Tim Benson:But for those of you just tuning in for the first time to the podcast, basically, what we do here on the show is I invite an author on to discuss a book of theirs that's been newly published or recently published on something or someone, some ideas, some event, etcetera, etcetera, that we think you guys would like to hear a conversation about. And then hopefully, at the end of the podcast, you go ahead and give the book a purchase and give it a read. So if you like this podcast, please consider giving your literacy a 5 star review at Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to the show and also by sharing with friends as that's the best way to support programming like this. And my guest today is doctor Kara Roger Stevens, and doctor Stevens is associate professor of history at Ashland University in Ohio. You might have seen some of her stuff at Law and Liberty, which is a great website, the Journal of the Early Republic, American Political Thought, and the Journal of Southern History.
Tim Benson:And she is here today to discuss with us her new book, her first book. I think it's her first book. Pretty sure it's her first book. Yep. So that book is Thomas Jefferson and the Fight Against Slavery, which was published back in January by the University Press of Kansas, which is a great publisher.
Tim Benson:And so that's the book we will be talking about today. So, doctor Stevens, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. I, do appreciate
Cara Rogers Stevens:it. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. My pleasure. Happy to be here.
Tim Benson:Oh, thanks. Alright. So, general normal entry question for everybody that comes on here, and that's, you know, what made you wanna write this book? What was what was the genesis of, of this project?
Cara Rogers Stevens:Well, the long version is, originally, I'm from South Africa. I was born there. I lived my first few years there.
Tim Benson:Oh, really?
Cara Rogers Stevens:And when I was living there, they still had this system of government called apartheid, which was basically like America's Jim Crow system, except on steroids. So, South Africans studied Jim Crow except on steroids. So, South Africans studied Jim Crow and decided they could be more racist and do it better. So I grew up in a in a country that restricted free speech, freedom of thought, banned books, banned people, and you were segregated according to your racial category, had to live in a specific neighborhood, have specific friends, go to a specific school. And, my parents left, partly because they they hated that system and they wanted freedom, freedom for us to freed and think and befriend whoever we wanted.
Cara Rogers Stevens:So, I grew up in America with a real interest in American ideas, especially the ideas in the Declaration of Independence, like liberty, equality. And I was, always fascinated by the people who contributed to those ideas, people like Thomas Jefferson. So when I got to graduate school, one of the big questions that I wanted to answer as a student of history was how is it that the guy who wrote the Declaration of Independence, who said, we hold these truths to be self evident, all men are created equal, how could he say those things and also have held slaves? Was he a hypocrite or was there more to the story?
Tim Benson:Yeah. So, the book itself, you know, obviously it's a book on Jefferson, but it's really also a book on Jefferson's book, Jefferson's own book, the notes on the state of Virginia, which was published 17/85. I think the first version came out. And, but you've written a book that, that that the notes ultimately became one of Jefferson's biggest contributions to the cause of antislavery. Could you explain a little bit how you or why you think that, this book was so important?
Cara Rogers Stevens:Yeah, absolutely. So Jefferson wrote obviously a lot of things in his life, but he has one full length book called Notes in the State of Virginia that he spent years working on. Started out as a an answer to a questionnaire the French sent out during the revolutionary war wanting to collect information on their allies, the Americans. And, so Jefferson answered this questionnaire about his home state and described its rivers and mountains and soil and people and laws. But over time, Jefferson began to view this book as his great contribution to enlightenment science and enlightenment knowledge.
Cara Rogers Stevens:And so he revised it extensively and he wrote, extensively about both, the problems that Virginia had in dealing with slavery and also his plans for how slavery could potentially end in his state. So he wrote an emancipation plan and he said, that this was a plan that he'd actually hoped to present to Virginia's legislature but, they weren't very open minded. And his plan entailed freeing all children of slaves born after a certain date. So, like, January 1, 1800. Pick that date, free all of the infants born on that day.
Cara Rogers Stevens:And in choosing to free infants, he was following in the footsteps of northern states who had also enacted gradual emancipation plans. This is a way of kind of trying to preserve the economy of a slave holding state. So rather than bankrupting slave holders by immediately freeing their entire workforce, free babies, technically they're not worth freeing me for saying it this way, it sounds heartless. But according to a slave holder, a baby is not worth as much as a full grown working adult. So free all of these babies.
Cara Rogers Stevens:He then he said they needed to be educated at taxpayer expense in their own skills, and then they needed to, when they were grown up, be colonized to some other location, so that they could have their own country, their own self governing republic. And so Jefferson details these plans for how he thinks slavery can end. He details the ways in which he believes slavery is corrupting his state, and he publishes this book privately, knowing it will be controversial, but he also spends, quite a lot of time and effort sending copies to students at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. He hopes if he reaches young people with his antislavery plan, his antislavery thoughts, young people in Virginia will be the ones to change the laws and actually turn the tide against slavery. And he had some success with this.
Tim Benson:Right, yeah. There's, I have to say, I think, I don't know. Jefferson I'm a I'm a Hamilton guy, personally, but that's Oh, it's okay.
Cara Rogers Stevens:We can still be friends.
Tim Benson:Pre pre the musical. I mean, I grew up in the the north I even grew up in New Jersey, and my dad used to work in North Manhattan, and he was going like
Cara Rogers Stevens:Oh, okay.
Tim Benson:And he walked past. And so, like, it's you know, he's he's more of my guy. Anyway, but there's something about Jefferson that is I don't know. He's just so much I mean, there's just so much more thinking you can do about Jefferson. You know what I mean?
Tim Benson:Like, he's so much Yeah. There's so much to with the man and with the ideas that there's just so much to ponder. Maybe more so than any American other than maybe, like, Lincoln would be, like, the only the only guy where where where or maybe put it this way. It seems like you can get a handle on a lot of, like, people throughout history. Like, I've got that guy figured out or okay.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Yeah. But Jefferson's very,
Cara Rogers Stevens:Complicated?
Tim Benson:Complicated. Yeah. I was gonna use, like, slippery, but, like but it's it's hard to get a grasp of wasn't there the, a biography of Jefferson called an American Sphinx or something?
Cara Rogers Stevens:Yes. Yes. Joseph Ellis.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Joseph Ellis. That's right.
Cara Rogers Stevens:Yep. Yep.
Tim Benson:So, yes. He's kinda like the American Sphinx. Like, you can't get a
Cara Rogers Stevens:Yeah.
Tim Benson:You can't get a, like, a just a real handle.
Cara Rogers Stevens:We need a time machine to truly understand this guy. Yeah.
Tim Benson:You probably wouldn't even even if you had a time machine and spent, you know, 6 months just hanging out, eating dinner. Yeah. You know, just chilling at Monticello or, you know, what have you. You probably still wouldn't figure him out. Like, he's, you know, still somewhat of a cipher.
Cara Rogers Stevens:Yeah. He had a reputation for even his enemies would like him once they met him face to face because he was very disarming in person, and very agreeable in person. He wasn't a he wasn't a confrontational dude. No. But this means that you it was hard to tell exactly what he was thinking at all times.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Absolutely.
Cara Rogers Stevens:So, yeah, you can spend your life trying to understand this guy and still have questions. It's true.
Tim Benson:Alright. So sort of on that, what was, what was Jefferson's vision for a Republican Virginia? What ideally, what did the Virginia of his or sort of his Utopian Virginia look like?
Cara Rogers Stevens:That's a great question. So what you have to understand about Virginia and Jefferson is he was born in 17/43. At that time, slavery was normal just about everywhere in the world. It was practiced in Native American tribes here in America. It was practiced in Africa.
Cara Rogers Stevens:It was practiced in Asia. It was practiced in Russia and Eastern Europe. Only Western Europeans had stopped enslaving one another by the 1700s but they were enslaving Africans and native peoples, in the New World. So for Jefferson, slavery was unquestioned in his early years. He would only have encountered African Americans within the context of slavery and he wouldn't have been exposed very early on to any antislavery society.
Cara Rogers Stevens:Those hadn't really started forming yet. In fact, it was illegal to free individual slaves in Virginia when Jefferson was a young man. And when he was 14 years old, his dad died. He inherited 52 enslaved people. And, and that's kind of mind boggling for a modern audience to try to consider what would that be like to own other humans when you're 14.
Tim Benson:Andrew: Yeah, right.
Cara Rogers Stevens:And to be surrounded by a society that honestly thinks that slavery is just another form of hierarchy that's good for the enslaver, good for the enslaved, good for the economy. So the fact that Jefferson started questioning the system and that he was willing to work to overturn the system that had brought Virginia so much wealth is really remarkable, but it also lines up with, as you say, his Republican vision for the state. Jefferson was truly committed to the idea that all men are created equal in the sense that all people come into the world with natural rights, inherent, unalienable rights to life, to liberty, and to the pursuit of happiness. And he made it clear many times throughout his life this didn't just mean white people, it didn't just mean males. In terms of our rights, we are all equal.
Cara Rogers Stevens:And so Jefferson worked to undermine the hierarchical system of Virginia by ending primogenitor and entail, which are, English forms of kind of keeping land all in the hands of the eldest son of the eldest son of the eldest son, keeping a few families in power. He helped undo that system. He helped fight for poor men to have the right to vote in Virginia. He he was all about self government and, democracy, small d democracy, in a way that was extremely ahead of its time. And so his vision for the future of Virginia was one in which, he really wanted as many people to be farmers as possible.
Cara Rogers Stevens:So this is where he differs with from Hamilton. Jefferson thought cities corrupted people, highly developed commercial economies corrupted people, corrupted governments. He really distrusted Hamilton's view of banks and, debts and, you know, huge commercial systems. Jefferson never really could figure out the stock market. It never really made sense to him.
Cara Rogers Stevens:He liked the concrete things. Let's own land. People who are farmers are self sufficient, independent. You know, they are heartland people. They are the virtuous ones of society.
Cara Rogers Stevens:And slavery undermines that kind of self sufficient, virtuous life. In fact, Jefferson, in his book, Notes in the State of Virginia, said Virginia was destroying its Republican values because people who own slaves will inevitably, human nature, they will mistreat their slaves. Their children will see them do this, and their children will be daily nursed and educated in tyranny, is how Jefferson put it. So he was just kind of constantly throwing out warnings to Virginians. You cannot be committed to Republican self government and also own slaves.
Cara Rogers Stevens:You are undermining your own liberty by oppressing the liberty of others. So the future for him had to involve freeing slaves, ending this corrupt system, going back to small small holding farmers as the the main economic engine of Virginia. But the problem of how to convince people to vote to free their own human property, that that was something Jefferson was never quite able to solve. By empowering people to vote for change, he actually made it harder to have it like a a powerful central government or a king come in and just decree all of the slaves will be freed. Americans actually had to find a way to convince people to do it.
Cara Rogers Stevens:Yeah.
Tim Benson:And it's a hard thing to do when, you know, for so many people, their entire livelihood is based on this economic system. So it's I mean, so you're basically asking people to put themselves in a, you know, basically a very precarious financial situation
Cara Rogers Stevens:Yeah.
Tim Benson:For the, you know, purpose of this higher ideal. And, you know, I mean, that's not gonna fly. For the most part, no matter where you are in history or, you know, at any point in any time, any place, you know, that's that's just not gonna you're really not gonna make that happen.
Cara Rogers Stevens:I mean, it happened in the northern states, but that's because there weren't that many slaves there.
Tim Benson:Sure. Right. Well, I mean, like, the whole economic system of, like, the north wasn't built on
Cara Rogers Stevens:Yeah.
Tim Benson:You know, thing. And so it's not, you know, I think well, I guess we can talk about later, but the there's this shift from, like, that revolutionary era generation, Jefferson's generation, those guys, Madison, Washington, Monroe, and all that group where, you know, they could clearly see the evils of slavery and, you know, would like, you know, in their heart of hearts if they could just snap their fingers and end slavery that, you know, they would do it. Yeah. But, you know, realize that it's this sort of system we're stuck with and we're gonna have to, you know, and it's terrible, and it's corrupting, and, all that. And we're gonna have to work to a way to gradually eradicate it as a thing, and they hoped it would just die out.
Tim Benson:And Yeah. You know, a lot of wishful thinking involved there. But, I think a lot about, like, cynicism and people you know, if you cynicism has been in the growth of, like, the positive good argument for slavery. Like, if, you know, you can act immorally and, like, know that you're doing so, and, you know, it'll weigh on you. But, like, the longer you do it without changing anything, like, you can't, like, maintain that level of cynicism that, like, well, I have to do this to feed my family and all of this.
Tim Benson:I know it's terrible, and but it's what I have to do and blah blah blah. Eventually, you're gonna, like, self rationalize that what I'm doing actually is a good thing. And, you know, that you know, there's nothing immoral or wrong about this. This is actually, you know, this economic system is a positive good. It's good for the not only is it good for the, you know, the whites and the and, the slave holding class, it's also a good thing for the slaves.
Tim Benson:I mean, they have people to take care of them their entire lives, and the masters love their slaves. Yeah. You know? And, you know, yeah, we take care of them in sickness and in old age when they can't even work anymore. You know, we still feed them and clothe them and give them shelter, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Tim Benson:And then the shift to, you know, that shift away from that. It's sort of I don't know where you stand on this topic. I'm just sort of it's something I've been thinking of a lot, but it sort of me seems to be like a a shift, like, in the way people who are, pro choice or pro abortion have, like, shifted their view on that topic in the last, like, 20, 30 years. I mean, we went from, you know, Bill Clinton and, you know, safe, legal, and rare. You know, abortion's a terrible thing.
Tim Benson:You know, no one's happy that abortions happen, but, like, we need to give women that choice, you know, and but we need to make it so that that choice that fewer women face that choice and that, you know, that we have fewer abortions and, you know, that, that sort of thing. And now it's sort of shifted and become radicalized on its own, whereas the point was, like, no. Actually, nothing wrong with abortion. Abortion's great. Like, shout your abortion.
Tim Benson:You know? Like Yeah. That sort of thing. And, and I think that's sort of, like, the same sort of level of cynicism where, you know, there's some conflicting moral quandary or qualms that people have about it and then but are still in favor of something and then sort of self justify it or find a way to self justify it. And, I think that's clearly true with, with what happened in the South in the antebellum period or the post the post revolutionary pre civil war period when Southerners, when slavery, you know, started getting attacked more and more from abolitionists in the North and, you know, outsiders and that sort of thing, and that there was a way to, justify to themselves what they had been, you know, the system that they've been a party to and, complicit in for Yeah.
Tim Benson:You know, for generations.
Cara Rogers Stevens:Yeah. I found it really interesting in the course of researching this book. I discovered a quote from Jefferson's son-in-law who became the governor of Virginia in 18/20. And as a lot of your audience members might be aware, 18/20 was kind of a crucial year. It was the year of the Missouri crisis, trying to decide, you know, where the line against slavery expanding would be.
Cara Rogers Stevens:And so Jefferson's son-in-law, Thomas Mann Randolph, actually noted that within his own state, there was a shift in public opinion. And the way he described it was something like there's a new morality that tolerates the perpetuation of slavery. So even as early as 18/20, you see the shift in morality. As slavery's expansion was being challenged, as people in the North were maybe starting to make more and more moral objections to slavery, Southerners have to change the way that they talked about it and defend it, and maybe even convince themselves, as you say, that it was morally good, that it was good for the slaves, it was good for the slave holders, it was good for the economy, it was good for everybody, where you would never find Thomas Jefferson making that kind of an argument. Or even many of the other slaveholders of his generation, they would have agreed that it was a dangerous system, that it was a risky system, maybe even agreed with Jefferson that it was a corrupting system, that needed to end.
Cara Rogers Stevens:But, yeah, by the 18 twenties and certainly by the 18 thirties and on, you see this positive good defensiveness about slavery and the attempt to crack down on free speech of anybody who disagreed with slavery in the south. You could get sentenced to hard labor life in prison if you were caught criticizing slavery or slaveholders.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Absolutely. And the other thing I didn't, or one thing I didn't know going into your book, because Jefferson's always taken flack for never emancipating his slaves or, you know, most of his slaves. Like, well, you know, Washington, you know, emancipated all his slaves upon his death and whatnot. How come, you know, Jefferson couldn't do it?
Tim Benson:I did not realize that he was actually he couldn't do it because he was in debt. And because of Virginia law, he couldn't manum it any of his slaves on his death because he had debt to pay. He owed all these, you know, creditors.
Cara Rogers Stevens:That's right.
Tim Benson:And so the, so he couldn't just free his, you know, quote unquote property. They had to be used in any in basically settling his accounts with all these creditors that they needed to, this property to, you know, they needed to use it to pay back his creditors. So I've Yeah. That was something I didn't actually, surprising, I don't know why I didn't know that, but I I didn't know that. So that was, Yeah.
Tim Benson:Sort of refreshing to hear that, you know, he was sort of limited, and, you know, we don't know what Jefferson could've done or would have done if he hadn't been so massively in debt for basically his entire life.
Cara Rogers Stevens:Yeah. I always I always come back to, you know, if only he hadn't have liked expensive wine, if only he hadn't bought so many books, if only he hadn't had
Tim Benson:Yeah. I know that feeling.
Cara Rogers Stevens:Yeah. Yeah. We're book lovers. We understand. Yeah.
Cara Rogers Stevens:You know, he he spent his whole life kind of tearing down and rebuilding Monticello to make it this beautiful mansion that it is. Perhaps if he had been a better financial manager, if he had paid better attention to the bottom line, line, he could have done better for those enslaved people. What if? What if? What if?
Cara Rogers Stevens:Mhmm. But you're absolutely right. At the end of his life, not only was he a poor financial manager, not not a very successful farmer, he was also constantly being forced to host all the people who would come and visit him and spending money to try to feed them. And then he also co signed family members' debts. And when they defaulted, it, it ruined him.
Cara Rogers Stevens:And the last few years of his life are rather tragic. He was deeply, deeply depressed and worried about the future of Virginia, worried about his family that he was leaving, you know, in the hole. His grandson spent a long time traveling trying to raise money through a lottery to save Monticello and to free the enslaved people at Monticello. And Jefferson died in the false belief that there would be enough money raised to prevent financial disaster for his surviving family members. But, unfortunately, the lottery attempt failed.
Tim Benson:Mhmm.
Cara Rogers Stevens:All of all of Jefferson's grandson's attempts to save those enslaved people from being sold failed. And all he could do was try to keep family members together and try to make sure that they were sold to kind, new owners in the Charlottesville, Virginia area. But it's a very tragic story.
Tim Benson:Yeah. And as you point out in the book, it seems that the family tried to do the best they could to keep their slave families as intact as possible and to sell them to where they even, I guess, consulted with the slaves themselves. Like, you know, if we were gonna have to, you know, sell you, sorry, like, where is there any place, you know, specifically any other master you would prefer us sell you if we can? And they took you know, they didn't take, you know, they didn't just send them all out and take top dollar Yeah. For, you know, all their slaves to, you know, to try to make get as much money as they could to, you know, settle their debts quicker.
Cara Rogers Stevens:That's a good point. Yeah.
Tim Benson:Yeah. They actually, you know
Cara Rogers Stevens:That's one of the tragedies of slavery that you see these Mhmm. Human beings are human beings. Doesn't matter how awful and corrupt and tyrannical the system they're living in is. And so despite everything that we know about racism and the injustices of slavery, if you study the Jefferson family, you still see these intimate human relationships developing across racial and class lines. And you're right, the Jefferson family was deeply disturbed by having to sell these enslaved people.
Cara Rogers Stevens:In fact, for years, they talked about trying to leave Virginia in order to get away from the system of slavery and find a free state in which to live. Unfortunately, that that didn't happen for most of them.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Alright. I guess let's go back, away from the end of Jefferson's life and towards the beginning, or just, basically, if you could talk about, like, the the philosophical background, the, institutional background of of Jefferson's, of Jefferson's antislavery thought. How did you know, where did he come upon these ideas and, you know, and how did they affect him in his early life?
Cara Rogers Stevens:Yeah. That's such a great question. So, the earliest potential antislavery influence on Jefferson that I was able to find was an Anglican minister named James Maury who ran a boys' school in colonial Virginia and Jefferson attended this school. And we know that Maury actually got in trouble for trying to baptize white and black people together, that Maury believed in the equality of all souls. And so Jefferson would have been around Maury and kind of been exposed to this idea of Christian equality early in his life.
Cara Rogers Stevens:And then when he was 16 years old, Jefferson went to the College of William and Mary. That was in 17/60. And at the time, Jefferson got there at the most opportune moment, something serendipitous for the future of America, he got there right at the moment where almost the only professor who was teaching classes was somebody who had just left Scotland, and the center of the Scottish enlightenment. It was a professor called William Small and Small taught math, physics, literature, rhetoric, astronomy, meteorology. He introduced the Socratic method of teaching to the school.
Cara Rogers Stevens:So Jefferson wasn't just rote memorizing. He was actually engaging in dialogue and being mentored by the Scottish guy. And the Scottish enlightenment is known for its moral dimension and for the ways that it contributed to antislavery thought.
Tim Benson:It is the best out of all the Enlightments. Right? Yes. Yeah.
Cara Rogers Stevens:And, although unfortunately Small's papers, are lost to history, we don't know too much about his own personal views. We can surmise by looking at his friendship circles that he was likely antislavery. And so Jefferson's mentor in his college years, is potentially one of the greatest sources of these antislavery philosophies he would develop. The books that he was reading, the people he was talking to, not only Small, his professor, but also at the time, a lieutenant governor of Virginia, was very strongly antislavery. And he invited teenage Jefferson to come over to the governor's mansion with his professor and a couple of other influential gentlemen of the town.
Cara Rogers Stevens:They played in a little musical quartet together and they would eat meals and discuss big ideas. And it seems entirely possible that this is the time in his life where Jefferson not only was exposed to enlightenment ideas, but was actually surrounded by people who agreed that slavery was wrong and needed to be ended. So I date his anti slavery, beliefs to this chance occurrence that he just happened to show up at the college at exactly the right moment, to get this great education.
Tim Benson:Yeah. The the quartet thing was funny to me because it it's like an like an 18th century upper class version of just, like, kids playing in a garage band and, like, hanging out and, like, drinking beers and, you know, just shooting the shit, that sort of thing. Which, you know, it's it's the same sort of thing, but just, you know, different times, different places, different characteristics.
Cara Rogers Stevens:There you go.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Anyway, so, I guess, talk a little bit about his antislavery efforts in colonial Virginia before the revolution because there's this sort of a lot of historians have this, like, knock on Jefferson that well, you know, he really just he wasn't so much anti slavery. He just sort of paid lip service to it just to, you know, assuage the consciences of, you know, French liberals and European liberals and to make himself appear more, you know, more, sophisticated and but he wasn't actually as anti slavery as he, you know, would tell people or, you know, would write, you know, letters or whatnot. But so, sort of spell that a little bit. Talk so, yeah, like I said, talk about, you know, what he tried to accomplish, for antislavery, for emancipation before the revolution even began.
Cara Rogers Stevens:Yeah. So after Jefferson, finished his studies with Small, he went on to study with America's first law professor, a guy called George Wythe. And George Wythe is another unquestioned opponent of slavery. In fact, there's a fascinating story of the end of his life. He was poisoned by a relative who was angry that George Wythe was, was freeing his enslaved people and leaving his money actually to a young gentleman of mixed race.
Cara Rogers Stevens:But that's a tale for another day. Anyway, so George Wythe, antislavery law professor. Jefferson studies with him and then begins to practice law himself. As a young lawyer, he took on 6 different, freedom suits pro bono, no charge, where he attempted to get his clients freedom either from indentured servitude contacts or slavery. And we don't know that he succeeded in any one of those cases and we don't have records for many of them.
Cara Rogers Stevens:But the one line that we do have, he argued that slavery was a violation of the laws of human nature. And so, he makes these efforts indicating that he is attempting to put feet to his early antislavery beliefs. In 17/69, he was a member of the House of Burgesses in Virginia and with an older cousin, he attempted to cosponsor a bill that would have made it possible for individual slave owners in Virginia to free their slaves. And this was shot down, huge scandal. Jefferson's cousin was disgraced as a result of having, supported this anti slavery bill.
Cara Rogers Stevens:In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote, of course, those famous words, all men are created equal, right to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. What many people don't know, if you Google original rough draft of the Declaration of Independence, you discover that in his original version of the list of the king's offenses, Jefferson included a paragraph kind of as the culminating accusation against the king in which he excoriates the king for refusing to allow Americans to ban the slave trade. He kept on vetoing their laws to ban the African slave trade. Jefferson says this is basically because the king is in the Jefferson says this is basically because the king is in the pocket of the slave merchants, which is true. The king was making a tremendous amount of revenue off of the slave trade.
Cara Rogers Stevens:And Jefferson says that slavery is, quote, a war against human nature and a, quote, violation of the most sacred rights of life and liberty. And he specifically uses the word men and kind of emphasizes that word when he describes slave markets. So very clearly, when Jefferson says all men are created equal, he is not referring to white males. He is using that as a general term for mankind, and he specifically applies it to enslaved Africans in this portion of the declaration.
Tim Benson:Right. Yeah. And that's something that, you know, half a century later or 2 thirds of a century later when the justification for, you know, secession and for slavery and, you know, the the positive good argument that, you know, a lot of the Southerners were saying, well, no. Jefferson didn't actually mean all men. You know?
Cara Rogers Stevens:Yeah. It'd be
Tim Benson:like the I clearly, obviously, didn't mean black people, which was not the case as you can clearly see in the draft of the declaration.
Cara Rogers Stevens:Yeah. In fact, one of my favorite documents to read with students is, Alexander Stephens was the vice president of the Confederacy.
Tim Benson:Oh, the cornerstone?
Cara Rogers Stevens:The cornerstone address. What he says, Jefferson really did believe it, but he was wrong. Equality is an error, and actually science points us toward white supremacy is the real scientific truth. So I I love that Alexander Stephens maybe sees Jefferson more clearly than even a lot of modern audiences. Modern readers might say, oh, Jefferson just meant white males.
Cara Rogers Stevens:No. There were Confederate leaders who said, no. Jefferson believed all men are created equal. He was just wrong about that. And that's why we made the Confederacy.
Tim Benson:Alexander Stevens is not one of those guys. It's like it's kind of I don't know. It's hard to put a thumb on him either. I mean, you could probably cover him with your thumb. He was so small.
Tim Benson:But but, you know, there there seemed to be a lot more to Stephens than to a lot of the the Confederate, you know Yeah. Upper crust. But anyway, that's a whole different
Cara Rogers Stevens:We're good friends of Tom or of Abraham Lincoln.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Absolutely. Very good friends. Yeah.
Cara Rogers Stevens:Yeah.
Tim Benson:From their time in Congress together.
Cara Rogers Stevens:That's right.
Tim Benson:Alright. But, yeah. So I mean, his his actual actions against slavery, Jefferson's Yep. Yep. Is not something that's just, you know, that just stopped with writing the Declaration of Independence.
Tim Benson:No. This is something he's, you know, in the early days of the republic, that he's going to continue to do. I mean, he, there's an emancipation measure in the draft constitution for the state of Virginia that, you know, doesn't pass, but there's also I mean, he's the one that puts the slavery prohibition position in the bill that eventually becomes the Northwest Ordinance, which basically outlaws slavery in all those territories.
Cara Rogers Stevens:And originally, Jefferson's version would have prohibited slavery from spreading to any federal territory. And unfortunately, the guy from New Jersey got sick on the day they voted for that part, and so that part failed. And the Northwest Ordinance as we know it now, the 17/87 version, just banned slavery from spreading north of the Ohio River. So Jefferson's version would have been more expansive. Who knows how history could have turned out differently if the guy from New Jersey hadn't have gotten sick?
Tim Benson:Yeah. And then he also has his own emancipation plan, for Virginia that he puts forward to 17/89, I think, that one. And his, you know, has an interest in the or actually talk about that emancipation plan. So what was Jefferson's, what was Jefferson's plan there? What did he
Cara Rogers Stevens:Yeah. So Jefferson and his law professor, George Wythe, they co wrote an amendment, to Virginia's legal code. So those 2 men were charged with, leading a small committee to totally update Virginia's legal system after the revolution because now Virginia is a republic or not just a colony anymore. So they rewrote or, condensed at least many of Virginia's colonial laws and updated them for Republican times. And as part of this, they drafted an amendment to end slavery.
Cara Rogers Stevens:And so that was that emancipate babies, educate them and then expatriate them, colonize them to another location. And Jefferson said they they never found an opportune moment to present that amendment to the Virginia assembly. There was just too much hostility, in the Virginia assembly to that sort of a measure. But that's the one that Jefferson published in his book, Notes on the State of Virginia. And he made the argument that, Hey, this is potentially one way that we can gradually free ourselves, not only free ourselves from the sin and the stain of slavery, but also I look at it as Jefferson's reparations plan.
Cara Rogers Stevens:How do we repay a people who have been so badly mistreated and torn from their homelands? They can never be loyal, Jefferson thought, to America. Why would they want to live in America? And so Jefferson thought emancipation, education, and then creating a new country for these people, supplying them with tools and animals and seed and protection until they could become a strong and independent nation themselves. That would be the the most just way of repaying Africans for the sin of slavery.
Tim Benson:Yeah. But he definitely didn't think that, whether he felt whatever he felt about black people as a race in his heart. And it's kinda clear for the most part. For most of his life, he thinks of them as you know, not through any fault of their own, but, just inferior in faculties as a race towards white people. But he he never saw I mean, all the he never thought that basically black people would forgive white people for Yeah.
Tim Benson:What they went through with slavery, and that he also thought that the white people probably would never you know, the the white former slave owners would never treat their slaves as equal citizens.
Cara Rogers Stevens:They wouldn't get over their prejudice.
Tim Benson:Wouldn't get over their prejudice. Right. One side wouldn't get over its hatred. One side wouldn't get over its prejudice. And so there probably will never be a functioning civil society when you have these 2 groups that are gonna be at odds for each other for, you know, in perpetuity, basically is what he thought.
Tim Benson:So that, so his way out of that conundrum was just to, you know, just, alright. Well, we'll just make them leave. Basically, make the make the blacks leave. And, you know, there's a lot of clearly, there's a lot of I mean, it was a for the time, it's a sort of a far thinking problem, but, I mean, there's still plenty of I mean, from our vantage point in the future, I mean, we can see why that, you know, why that was not kosher. I mean, because blacks are just as much American as the slave owner and their families, and they're actually the ones working the land.
Tim Benson:Right. Yeah. They're more connected
Cara Rogers Stevens:Responsible for the economic success?
Tim Benson:Yeah. Right. They're more connected to the soil and the earth and all the things that Jefferson talked about, like the things about what's great about being a yeoman farmer, Yeah. All that sort of thing.
Cara Rogers Stevens:And I think this goes back to the problem of how do you convince once you've instituted democracy, how do you convince people to vote for something that they are prejudiced against?
Tim Benson:Right.
Cara Rogers Stevens:And I think that maybe what Jefferson was attempting with by including colonization as part of his emancipation plan, he was appealing to white people's prejudice and saying, just because you do the right thing and you end slavery, doesn't mean you have to then figure out how to overcome your racism and live side by side with your former slaves. We can just provide those people with a separate country of their own and import white laborers to replace them. So in a way, this, I don't know if it's entirely Jefferson's own prejudice that needed to be satisfied with racial separation or if it was his attempt to appeal to his prejudiced voting audience. But either way, it was an impractical as we now know.
Tim Benson:Impractical and not something that African Americans would
Cara Rogers Stevens:ever,
Tim Benson:but either way, it was an impractical,
Cara Rogers Stevens:as we now know. Impractical and not something that African Americans would ever assent to.
Tim Benson:Sure. Sticking close to that topic, of race. So it seems now, 200 years in the future, that the only thing people, or sort of, you know, people who aren't historians or who don't study the period or, you know, just sort of dilettantes about this sort of stuff, the one thing that they know about the notes on the state of Virginia is Jefferson's discourse on race and his scientific theorizing that black, that blacks were a inferior race or not not at the level of the white race Yeah. In terms of faculties and all sorts of other things. What was why did Jefferson include that?
Tim Benson:What's the context behind Jefferson's that whole discourse on race?
Cara Rogers Stevens:Yeah.
Tim Benson:Why did he include it? What were his intentions? Yeah. And, what do you think about this sort of charge that gets thrown at him that he's sort of responsible for creating this sort of uniquely new American form of racism?
Cara Rogers Stevens:Yeah. So Jefferson describes his plan for ending slavery in Virginia. And at the end of the plan, at the end of the section where he describes colonization, he says, well, this will obviously lead to the question, why not retain the freed peoples within American society? And he lists the things we've talked about, white prejudice, black people's recollections of the 10,000 things that have been done against them. But then he also mentions kind of what he refers to as natural differences.
Cara Rogers Stevens:So what you need to know there and the the context and the audience that's important is Jefferson was writing his book partly for American readers, but also remember it had started as his answer to a French questionnaire about his state. He knew that French scientists and politicians were going to be reading his book. And so over time as he revised, he aimed it more and more at an international scientific audience. And unfortunately, by the mid to late 1700s, enlightenment scientists were classifying human beings. They were attempting to understand human difference.
Cara Rogers Stevens:Starting in 16/18, the French had been dissecting African people's skin trying to understand where does blackness come from. There were theories about people of different races being created at different times or, people of different races perhaps having different blood that that informed the color of their skin. So these these enlightenment scientists, they're coming up with these different theories. They're trying to understand and classify races and, unfortunately, this is occurring at the same time as the French monarchy and other European nations are making a lot of money from the slave trade. And the information that the scientists are getting is not neutral, unbiased, anthropological studies of these African peoples on their home soil.
Cara Rogers Stevens:The information that these scientists are using to classify human beings is very often coming from slave traders, people who make money off of the belief that these races are inferior, or from kind of exotic, exaggerated travel accounts of people who are journeying to darkest Africa and then writing back all kinds of tall tales. So science is not very good science. And this is, unfortunately, the the state of affairs at the time that Jefferson is writing and the best knowledge that he can get about the world, we now would be able to say was biased and inaccurate and and based on faulty, beliefs about humanity and DNA and all of these things. So Jefferson writes his book. He knows that French scientists are going to read it.
Cara Rogers Stevens:He includes a section in his book where he basically summarizes all the most recent studies about racial science and and those are racist studies. And then here's where the story gets really good. Jefferson sends a copy of this book to a friend of his named Charles Thompson. Charles Thompson, some of your audience members might know he's one of the founding fathers. He was secretary of the Continental Congress and then, he continued to serve in government.
Cara Rogers Stevens:He was also a scientist. Charles Thompson reads Jefferson's book and he writes him this amazing letter kind of commenting on all of the different parts of the book that he thinks Jefferson should change or update. And he has this one line where he says, Do you know, I like what you've written about race and I agree with you, but because what you have said might seem to justify slavery to some who are proslavery, I would, for that reason, take it out. In other words, cut out everything that you said about the African race. If only Jefferson had taken that advice,
Tim Benson:who
Cara Rogers Stevens:knows how the world might view him differently? But he didn't. He left it, in place, but he did at least then go back and modify it. So where before he had included sentences that made it sound like he was definitely committed to white superiority, he changed his language to make it very clear that he had, as he put it, a suspicion only that the black race was inferior in certain ways. And then he went back and he added all of these ways in which he saw black people as superior to whites, such as morality and generosity and fidelity.
Cara Rogers Stevens:And then he also doubled his anti slavery chapter in length. So that's what was initially kind of a short condemnation of slavery became some of his most eloquent, kind of devastating lines things that are now on the walls of the Jefferson Memorial. If you go to Washington DC, you'll see this amazing sentence where Jefferson wrote, I tremble for my nation when I remember that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever. And he basically predicted the downfall of slavery through violent judgment. That is a line that Jefferson added because he got the comments from Charles Thompson warning him.
Cara Rogers Stevens:Hey, dude. Yeah. I understand what you're trying to do with the whole science thing, but proslavery people look at it.
Tim Benson:Wanna leave this one out. Yeah.
Cara Rogers Stevens:Yep. You might seem to encourage racism here. So This is this
Tim Benson:is why you should listen to your editors, folks.
Cara Rogers Stevens:Exactly.
Tim Benson:Sorta staying on that, I I just thought of something. You know, we get to basically, once Jefferson retires, or leaves the presidency after a second term in 1809, I believe. He, he basically just goes back to Monticello and, you know, like I said, just retires and works on his plantation and whatnot. And he now and then, he will get, you know, letters from people, maybe specifically, you know, most famously, the Edward Cole letter from 18/14, like, hey. Like, we really need you to engage more on, you know, with antislavery and emancipation.
Tim Benson:Your words mean so much. You know, your, your people respect you so much and
Cara Rogers Stevens:Yeah.
Tim Benson:Listen to you so much that it would be we're doing so many good things for the cause of emancipation, for the cause of antislavery if you would, you know, publicly engage on this topic more. And Jefferson sort of, you know, just pooh poohs and says, no. I'm an old I mean, granted he's an old man in 18/14. He was already in the seventies. So I get it, you know, just like I've done my time.
Tim Benson:I've, you know, I've I've done the things that I've done. I've you know, anything people wanna know about what I think about slavery as already, you know, I've I've already said it. It's readily available. You know, it's up to you guys now, the younger generation
Cara Rogers Stevens:Yeah.
Tim Benson:To, you know, it's your turn to move the ball forward. And so I don't think that my engaging in this would really do the good that you think it would do or would help. And I wonder, what do you think do you think that his relationship with Sally Hemmings or or, you know, his supposed relationship, which, you know, everyone pretty much agrees that he most likely carried out, you know, this long term relationship with this woman that produced numerous children. There was this mixed race woman who was a slave and, his wife's ass sister. You know, and rumors of this affair had already started before, you know, he'd even run for president in, you know, 1800.
Tim Benson:And, do you think his relationship with Sally Hemings and the fact that he most likely probably fathered all these mixed race, you know, out of wedlock children with his slave. Yeah. Do you think that was probably something that kept him from really engaging on this more in his post public life, because he didn't want, you know, those rumors and those things being brought up into the public. And do you do you think that was probably a hedge on his engagement on that issue?
Cara Rogers Stevens:It's a really interesting way of looking at it. I think that whether or not Jefferson was the father of Sally Hemings' children but by this point, by the way, his his wife had been dead for many years before Sally Hemings had any children. But whether or not Jefferson was the father, as you as you point out, the political gossip had already embarrassed him greatly. His political enemies had already kind of made this a real, like, tabloids, mocking cartoons and, kind of just really racy in the modern sense of the word, not not racist, but, like, vulgar vulgar attacks on Jefferson. And, for a man who was deeply concerned about his honor and his reputation and his the feelings of his daughters and his grandchildren, this was really embarrassing.
Cara Rogers Stevens:And he he probably, yeah, would have wanted to avoid saying things that might have drawn more attention or more attacks along those sorts of lines, whether or not he was Sally's, lover or or he was just aware that the the rumors were out there and that the scandal would be brought back. On the other hand, when Jefferson said to Edward Coles, I'm not gonna make any more public statements. This is up to you, He is being consistent to what he had said all along, which is
Tim Benson:Yeah.
Cara Rogers Stevens:That his own generation would not end slavery. It needed to be the the younger generation of men. That's why he sent copies of his book to students at the College of William and Mary. That was always what he said he hoped and believed would happen. And in his letter to Edward Coles, he said, Edward Coles, I know you wanna leave Virginia so that you can free your slaves.
Cara Rogers Stevens:You believe that's the moral thing to do. But don't do that, because if you do, you will leave, and your voice will be lost.
Tim Benson:You're going to stay here and fight.
Cara Rogers Stevens:We need you to stay here and fight. And he actually, Jefferson had a point. A lot of anti slavery individuals chose to leave Virginia, and that meant that the proslavery side gained political strength. So it wasn't entirely a hypocritical thing for him to do.
Tim Benson:Stephen C. Angus: No, sure, absolutely not. But I mean, and he also knew at the same time as a public figure that any, you know, any letter that he ever writes and sends to somebody, there's a very good chance that
Cara Rogers Stevens:Yeah. It's gonna be published.
Tim Benson:Somehow that that's gonna be published. So, you know, he can write in a letter to Kohl's, you know, I've always abhorred slavery, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, my my, my feelings on this have long been clear, etcetera, etcetera. Knowing that, you know, that letter could be published, and people could see that, oh, Jefferson is still, you know, as antislavery as he was in Yeah. 1776 or 17 69 or Yep.
Tim Benson:Or 1808 or, you know, what have you. So, in a way
Cara Rogers Stevens:He had, by the way, as president, signed immediately as soon as he could the law that banned American participation in the slave trade. That was the one other last thing he was able to do is end American, participation in that. Right.
Tim Benson:Yeah. So, anyway, sort of wrapping up because we already gone close to an hour, and I said I'd only keep you an hour. I'm trying to think. Was so Jefferson's strategy of getting the notes into the hands of the students at William and Mary, you know, and then sort of growing this this antislavery throughout with, you know, the next generation of Virginia leaders and, you know, Virginia gentlemen and all that sort of stuff. Was that long term, was that a successful one?
Tim Benson:It appears maybe not because, you know, Virginia gets around to emancipating its slaves and has to basically get, you know, slavery beaten out of it in the civil war. And
Cara Rogers Stevens:Yeah.
Tim Benson:You know, but in the short term, medium term, was it a successful strategy? Or is it or even overall, was it a successful strategy?
Cara Rogers Stevens:Yeah. It's a great question. One of my favorite things that I stumbled across in the research for for this book was, there was a Union General, Winfield Scott, many Civil War buffs will be familiar with him. And he was, in his old age, he published memoirs about his childhood and his, young years as a Virginian. And he said that when he went to the College of William and Mary, he and most of his classmates became convinced that slavery was wrong because they read Thomas Jefferson's book, Notes on the State of Virginia.
Cara Rogers Stevens:So I think that's an amazing piece of evidence that Jefferson's initial plan, let me send copies of my book to the school, worked. Unfortunately, Winfield Scott did not remain in Virginia. He ended up being a general for the union side. But another example of Jefferson's influence continuing after his death is his grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, was elected to the Virginian legislature. And after the Nat Turner rebellion of 18/31, Virginians panicked enough about slavery to actually debate whether they should do something to end the institution and and forestall another slave uprising.
Cara Rogers Stevens:And somebody brought up Thomas Jefferson and said, well, if Jefferson, you know, the great founding father didn't free his slaves, surely it's impossible for us to do it. And Thomas Jefferson Randolph stood up and gave an a speech. He referred to it as an abolitionist speech in which he said, My grandfather always believed we needed to end slavery. He would want us to end it now. The right thing to do is to abolish it to emancipate our slaves.
Cara Rogers Stevens:And so, that was the last time that Virginia publicly debated the issue of slavery. And Jefferson's grandson at least was able to make that argument and read into the record some of his grandfather's words and say, My grandfather believed this. As a young man. He believed it in 17/76. He believed it in 18/14.
Cara Rogers Stevens:And Edward Coles even was encouraging Thomas Jefferson Randolph to lead the charge for abolition at the time. So, he kind of had his eye on Virginia even though he had left the state himself. He was hoping that Thomas Jefferson Randolph could fulfill Jefferson's dream. But as you say, unfortunately, it was never enough to overcome the tide there.
Tim Benson:Yeah. And I think people who, you mentioned, Nat Turner's rebellion. I think people, when they're sort of studying these things, especially, like college students and history students, that, you know, the context of time and events that take place, doing things, how they can skew public opinion very dramatically. You know, so like the Haitian Revolution.
Cara Rogers Stevens:Yeah.
Tim Benson:The effect that that, you know, that that had on the slave holding class of the South, or just in Virginia, the Virginia slave holding class with, you know, Gabriel's rebellion, early in the century, it really hardened a lot of hearts, you know, for people who were, you know, maybe moderately in favor of emancipation in some way, shape, or form. I mean, obviously, like the Die Hard slaveholders are gonna be pro slavery no matter what happens. But Yeah. The effect that these events have on, you know, what you call sort of political moderates, is really something I don't think people really take into account when they're looking at how ideas develop, how ideas change, how things can shift from one generation to another, or from just from one year to the other.
Cara Rogers Stevens:Yeah. I think fear people shouldn't underestimate how much fear played a role as as you say. This this fear of slave insurrection, slave violence. And also, Jefferson couldn't have known that the cotton gin would have been invented. And that cotton Yeah.
Tim Benson:No one saw that one coming.
Cara Rogers Stevens:No one saw that one coming. That that really changed the calculus for a lot of people, especially in the deep south. And Virginians may not have been as involved in cotton, but they made a lot of money selling off their surplus enslaved population to the deep south. So the the whole system became more economically profitable, and people, at the same time, became more and more afraid of the inherent violence of the system. And those two things combined made it this this intractable issue that eventually took a civil war to solve.
Tim Benson:Yeah. And, again, just getting close to wrapping up, you made a really good point, you know, in the end of the book that, while, you know, Jefferson's antislavery principles, you know, didn't end up having much effect in Virginia. They became much more important outside of Virginia.
Cara Rogers Stevens:That's right. Yeah.
Tim Benson:And, you know, so where he failed in his, you know, his home state in the Old Dominion, home Commonwealth, I should say. Sorry. You know, it it really succeeded outside of the borders of Virginia.
Cara Rogers Stevens:Yeah. There's a reason why Abraham Lincoln kept on referring to Thomas Jefferson and saying all honor to Jefferson, you know, the man who included in this merely revolutionary document the Declaration of Independence, this eternal truth that all men are created equal, that that this would forever live as a stumbling block to tyrants that Jefferson insisted on, you know, Yeah. We're we're different, but we have natural rights, and those include liberty. And, it's it's that powerful kind of language that gave real teeth to the abolitionist cause later on. And they were able to keep pointing back to Jefferson and say, even though he owned slaves, he kept on insisting we had to end slavery for the sake of liberty in America.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Alright. So, I guess just wrapping up, normal exit question for everybody that comes on the show.
Cara Rogers Stevens:Alrighty.
Tim Benson:And that is, it's it's not that hard. Oh, I don't know. It might be. But, basically, you know, what would what would you like the audience to get out of this book, or, you know, what's what's the one thing you'd want a reader to take away from having read it?
Cara Rogers Stevens:So the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence did own slaves, but he spent his life working to overcome the prejudice and the kind of structural inequalities that he was born into. And although I do not agree with everything that Jefferson did and in many ways I'm disappointed by him as a leader and as a man, I also hope that I would have the courage to pursue what I know to be right and just even when it's against my own economic interest and even when it's unpopular with people around me. And in that way, I think we can still find inspiration from his life and his leadership.
Tim Benson:Alright. Very well said. Yeah. I think I don't know. There's something about Jefferson.
Tim Benson:He's just the most American American. You know what I mean? Like, there's I don't I I don't really know how to extrapolate on that, but it's just, like, he, he seems to embody more of this country in totality, the good
Cara Rogers Stevens:Yeah. And
Tim Benson:the ill, you know, in, within his multitudes. And Yeah. You know, there's just a so I think that's why we're, we remain so fascinated with him. Like I said, you know, earlier, like, you can, you know, you can sort of, you know, you can put your finger on George Washington and and Adams and Hamilton and Madison. Like, you can read those guys and and, you know, pretty much have them figured out, you know, as human beings, but with it's very hard to do whichever is done, you know.
Tim Benson:Yeah. But, anyway
Cara Rogers Stevens:That's okay. It gives us something to keep writing and talking about even now. Yeah.
Tim Benson:Right? So it's good it's good for, it's good for, publishers, good for good for sales and There you go. All that sort of stuff. But, anyway, yeah. So once again, the name of the book is Thomas Jefferson and the Fight Against Slavery.
Tim Benson:And it's a fantastic, fantastic, book. Really, is one of the best books on Jefferson I've read in years. Really fantastic look on how, you know, just his evolution as a thinker and as a doer. And not only his evolution, but his sort of, or his, what's the word I'm looking for? His, name is straightforwardness.
Tim Benson:But, he had a a well, let me put it this way. He knew that he abhorred slavery, he knew it was a system of ill, and, throughout his life he tried, maybe not to the best of his ability, but to what he thought were the best of his abilities, to, do something to try to stamp out the practice and make the country, live up to the ideals that, you know, basically he invented, you know, that he authored.
Cara Rogers Stevens:Yeah. Yeah.
Tim Benson:So, it's a really fascinating look at Jefferson, and his thought and practice on slavery. And I think it's a very good corrective as well to the, you know, sort of very anti stridently anti Jefferson that there is no good. You know? He's just a, you know, dead white, old, you know, slave holding rapist or anything like that, which, you know, well, that's another story for another day. But, yeah.
Tim Benson:Anyway, so again, the book is Thomas Jefferson and the Fight Against Slavery. Highly, highly, highly recommend it for everybody out there. And the author of the book, doctor Kara Roger Stevens. So, doctor Stevens, thank you so, so much for coming on the podcast and chatting about the book with me. And, thank you, you know, for actually, you know, taking the time out of your life to write the sucker and get it all down on paper so that we can all enjoy the, the fruits of your labor.
Tim Benson:So we appreciate it.
Cara Rogers Stevens:Thank you so much. That's very kind of you. I've really enjoyed our conversation today.
Tim Benson:Alright. Thanks. Great. And again, if you like this podcast, please consider leaving us a 5 star review and sharing with your friends. And if you have any questions or comments, or if you have any suggestions for books you'd like to see on the podcast, you can always reach out to me at tbensonheartland.org.
Tim Benson:That's tbens0nheartland.org. And for more information about the Heartland Institute, you can always just go to heartland.org. And then we do have our, Twitter x you know, Twitter. I'm always gonna call it Twitter. Our Twitter account for the podcast, you can reach out to us there at, at illbooks, at illbooks.
Tim Benson:So, yeah, if any questions, comments, anything like that, feel free to reach out to us. Oh, I'm sorry, doctor Stevens. Is there anything, you wanna plug before we go? Any appearances, social media, any anything like that? Or It's okay.
Tim Benson:You don't have to
Cara Rogers Stevens:That's a great question. Yeah. I don't remember my Instagram handle. I wish you knew that, shouldn't I? Yeah.
Cara Rogers Stevens:You can find me on Instagram and on Facebook, if you just look under Cara Rogers, dot crogers. You ought to find me there. Yep.
Tim Benson:Alright. I said Cara. I'm sorry.
Cara Rogers Stevens:No. That's okay. It's that South African pronunciation. It's coming from
Tim Benson:Oh, yeah. Yeah. There you go. Anyway. Yeah.
Tim Benson:So alright. So you can reach her there, and you can, like I said, reach us there. So, I guess that's pretty much it. Yeah. So thanks for listening, everybody.
Tim Benson:We'll see you guys next time. Take care. Love you, Robbie. Love you, mom. Bye bye.
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