Thomas Jefferson’s Four-Percent Solution

How To Maximize Production Of Domestic-Bred Enslaved People

Photo by Kirk Thornton on Unsplash

“I allow nothing for losses by death, but, on the contrary, shall presently take credit four percent. Per annum, for their increase over and above keeping up their numbers.” — Thomas Jefferson.

The fictional character Sherlock Holmes often injected himself with a seven-per-cent solution of cocaine to put himself in a certain frame of mind. The real-life Thomas Jefferson had a four-percent solution, four percent being the annual increase in profits he could make from breeding enslaved people.

It should be noted there was a time when Jefferson spoke and wrote of the elimination of slavery. Jefferson regarded the slave trade as “execrable commerce …this assemblage of horrors,” a “cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberties.” There were passages he intended to include in the Declaration of Independence that called for the same, but slave states South Carolina and Georgia rejected his words. Within the next dec…