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November 19, 2003

Media Contacts: Dolores Davies (858) 534-5994 or Jan Jennings (858) 822-1684

PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR GARRY WILLS TO DISCUSS
BOOK ON A CONTROVERSIAL THOMAS JEFFERSON DEC. 2 AT UCSD

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Garry Wills will discuss his new book, Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power, at 7 p.m. Dec. 2 in the Weaver Room of the Institute of the Americas at the University of California, San Diego.

The event, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Friends of the UCSD Libraries and BookWorks, a Del Mar bookstore. Books will be available and a book signing will follow the talk. Early reservations are recommended and may be made by calling (858) 534-1183.

In Negro President, Wills, an adjunct professor of history at Northwestern University, explores a controversial and neglected aspect of Thomas Jefferson’s presidency: the importance of his support for slavery to achieve his political and economic goals.

“An eye-opening, carefully argued exposé of … one of the big sleeper issues in American political history,” writes Kirkus Reviews.

According to Wills, slave power or the power slave states wielded over non-slave states had nothing to do with Jefferson’s approval of slavery itself, but rather with the political use of it to maintain strength in Southern states. It was a tool he learned to use strategically to further his goals.

The reasoning is simple. Like other Southerners of his time, Jefferson supported slavery because of what is called the three-fifths clause of the United States Constitution. In a bargain to secure ratification of the Constitution in the South, an agreement was made allowing that each slave held in the U.S. would count as three-fifths of a person for representation of a state in the House of Representatives and therefore, the Electoral College.

This federal ratio made the margin of difference in the election of 1800 when Jefferson defeated John Adams by eight Electoral College votes. At least 12 votes overall were not based on the voting citizenry, but on the three-fifth clause.

This ratio also played a major role in Jefferson’s supporting slavery throughout his presidency and survival in the political arena.

“Negro president” was a label tacked on Jefferson by Timothy Pickering, Secretary of State under George Washington and John Adams, and one of Jefferson’s most vocal critics.

Wills contends that while he otherwise sees Jefferson as a giant in United States history, Jefferson played a crucial role in maintaining the racial divide in the country. “My Jefferson is a giant, but a giant trammeled in a net and obliged to keep repairing and strengthening the coils of the net,” says Wills.

Wills received a Pulitzer Prize in Literature for his book, Lincoln at Gettysburg, a textual analysis of the Gettysburg Address. He has written more than 20 books on cultural and religious history on topics ranging from Aeschylus’ Oresteia to Presidents Kennedy, Nixon, and Reagan.

Wills receive a Ph.D. in classics from Yale University. He taught at various academic institutions prior to his current position at Northwestern. He is the recipient of the Presidential Medal of the Endowment for the Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Wilbur Cross Medal from the Yale Graduate School. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.