An interview with Garry Wills on NPR conducted by Tavis Smiley (Feb. 16, 2004):

While we have recent memories of an especially tight presidential election in 2000 and, who knows, potentially a tight election this November, history tells the story of how in 1800, Thomas Jefferson won a close election on the strength of slave representation. Slaves did not vote, of course, but the original Constitution mandated that slaves be considered three-fifths of a person, giving a great deal of power to slave owners and slave states.

Gary Wills joins us now from the studios on the Northwestern University campus in Evanston, Illinois. He is an adjunct professor and cultural historian there. He's best known, of course, for his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "Lincoln at Gettysburg," but his new book is called "Negro President: Jefferson and Slave Power."

Professor Wills, nice to have you on, sir.

Professor GARY WILLS (Author, "Negro President"): Thank you for having me.

SMILEY: My delight. So what does slave power mean in reference to the election of the president in 1800?

Prof. WILLS: It meant that the South was disproportionately represented in that election and in all things that involved the House of Representatives. The Southern states had a third more votes than they deserved by their free inhabitants because there slaves were counted at a three-fifths rate. The way that came about, when the South went to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, it said, 'We're going to be a minority in this new union and we don't trust you to have our interests at heart, so the only way we can be equal to you is if you count our slaves as part of our represented population.'

And the North said, 'We can't do that. That's immoral. It would reward you for owning slaves. Pierce Butler had 1,000 slaves, so he would get 600 extra votes just from that fact. It would give you a motive to acquire more slaves. The more you got, the more power you would have.'

And the South said, 'Well, if you don't accept our offer, then we're not coming in.'

So then they had to bargain and so they haggled back and forth and that's how we came up with that odd figure that most people don't understand, three-fifths. You know, some people think that that was an insult to blacks, that they were only counted three-fifths of a person, but, of course, they weren't counted as a person at all in terms of representation and voting. That was a count given to their owners to use at their owners' discretion. And it was the abolitionists who didn't want to count the slaves and it was the slave holders who wanted to count them five-fifths, a full count. It was only by bargaining down a little bit that some of their power was restricted.

SMILEY: I think I can figure this out but tell me then why Jefferson's detractors called him Negro president.

Prof. WILLS: Because they said he was borne into the temple of liberty on the shoulders of his Negro slaves; that it was the Negro vote that made him president, of course, in ironic tone. Then they called the Negro vote in Congress, which passed a number of bills against slaves, a Negro vote--a vote using the Negroes against the Negroes. So it was not a term of denigration to the slaves but to the slave holders. After all, since they did have that extra power, bill after bill wouldn't have passed but for that. The gag rules that said Congress couldn't even discuss abolition of slavery were passed only because of that slave margin, that count of the three-fifths.

SMILEY: Do you contend then that John Adams was actually re-elected president in 1800 and not Mr. Jefferson?

Prof. WILLS: Well, obviously, he was not in terms of the Constitution because that did count the slave vote. But he did not win by a free majority, which is what Jefferson and his followers claimed.

SMILEY: Thomas Jefferson has been portrayed as a man conflicted and ultimately "fair"--I put that in quotes--to his slaves and, of course, we all know the story now, Professor, of Sally Hemings, the slave who bore a child by Jefferson. You've written two books that were largely flattering toward Jefferson but what about his relationship to these slaves?

Prof. WILLS: Well, it was not a healthy relationship. Slavery never is. After all, he sold 85 of his slaves. You know, he liked to call the slaves 'My family.' You don't sell members of your family. And that was a huge proportion of his slaves. The most he ever owned at one time was 200. So selling them, which at that time meant selling them West to you didn't know what kind of treatment, was hardly a fair action. And every time there was a chance of extending slave territory, he pushed it. He wanted slavery in the territories acquired by the Louisiana Purchase. He wanted them in Missouri. He wanted them in the Floridas. He wanted slaves in Cuba, which he was also trying to acquire at that time. There's only one time that he did anything that was against slavery and that was under the Articles of Confederation, when he said that slavery should not be extended into the new territory after 1800. That was kind of a non-proposal because that gave 14 years for slavery to become entrenched there and it wouldn't have been uprooted under that program. But he got credit for being opposed to slavery in that case.

Some also say he was opposed to slavery because he was against the slave trade, both in the Declaration of Independence and in the Louisiana Purchase. But his whole state was against the foreign slave trade, because they had a surplus of blacks and they wanted to sell them into the states that didn't have that kind of margin. So when the king vetoed Louisiana Legislature's petition that the slave trade from England be canceled, he was doing it in response to Georgia and the other states that didn't have much of a slave population yet. So that was not really a thing in favor of the slaves but in favor of the Virginia slave holders.

SMILEY: I suspect so, because ultimately if they had the surplus, they can charge a higher price for the slaves they were selling.

Prof. WILLS: That's exactly right. They didn't want competition on the market.

SMILEY: Wow. The Haitian slave revolution was occurring during this same period of history, if I'm recalling this correct.

Prof. WILLS: Right.

SMILEY: How did Jefferson view that particular conflict off the shores of this new country, as it were?

Prof. WILLS: Well, he and all of the South were terrified. President Adams' secretary of State helped the black leader in Haiti, Toussaint L'Ouverture; sent the frigates of the United States Navy to help him and extended diplomatic recognition to his rebellious government. The minute that Jefferson came into office, he withdrew that recognition and he told Napoleon, against whose regime the rebellion was taking place, that if he wanted to crush Toussaint, America would help him. So the second revolution in the New World against an imperial government, the very thing that he had defended in the Declaration of Independence, he opposed when it was a question of blacks. And the secretary of State, Adams, brought that up to him and quoted the Declaration to him and said, 'What's the difference? There's only one difference here, color. You will not recognize the independence of people of color.' And Jefferson had no answer to that.

SMILEY: This year happens to be the 200th anniversary of Haitian independence, since you mention Toussaint L'Ouverture. Let me close our conversation by asking, Professor Wills, whether or not you think that Jefferson's election ultimately did, in fact, prolong slavery in the US?

Prof. WILLS: Well, not that election alone, but the slave interest certainly did and his government, his leadership, the fact that he was so popular and that he was so good in many ways was all thrown into the protection of the slave system. But I must say that that was true of every single Southern leader, whether Washington or Madison or Monroe, Andrew Jackson. They were all bound to protect the slave system and they all did it.

SMILEY: Gary Wills is an adjunct professor of history at Northwestern University and author of "Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power." You can find out more about his book and hear him reading a passage on our Web site at npr.org.