27. Slave Cabins at Thomas Jefferson’s Plantation
Jefferson had a clock installed on an exterior Monticello wall that only had an hour hand. Jefferson, who believed that black people were racially inferior and “as incapable as children,” figured that hour increments were all that the slaves could understand or needed to know. He had cabins built for the house slaves about a hundred yards from and facing the mansion. For the enslaved black people who worked the fields, he housed them at a further distance from his abode. That way, they and the slavery in which they toiled would be out of his sight in both the literal and figurative senses.
Originally, Jefferson’s slaves lived in two-room cabins, with one family per room and a single shared doorway to the outside. From the 1790s onwards, the slaves began to be housed in single-room cabins, each with its own door. By the dismal standards of slavery in the United States at the time, the lives of Jefferson’s slaves at Monticello were less terrible than average. Their lot was still bad, but not as bad as a lot of most other slaves with most other masters. As seen further down this list, Jefferson’s relationship with his slaves was not limited solely to matters of forced labor.
