aristocracy

For example, the ideas of moral and intellectual advancement that Jefferson championed in the context of a so-called natural aristocracy were reinterpreted within a framework of collective advancement for all Black Americans.

He also characterized the antebellum North as “the mere cringing vassal of the South” and a section of the country that contained “lords” and “nobles” of its own that comprised an “aristocracy of the skin.”

"Thomas Jefferson's idea of 'natural' aristocracy implicitly and necessarily excluded Black people, who he believed could not generate ideas 'beyond the level of plain narration.'"

They saw these mandates as bound up in the oppressions of feudalism and what Jefferson described as "artificial aristocracy."

Though Jefferson told George Washington, "I certainly never made a secret of my being anti-monarchical and anti-aristocratical" in a 1791 letter, Jefferson also celebrated the idea of a ruling "natural aristocracy" of virtue and talent.