The manuscript of his almanac completed by August 1791, Banneker sent a handwritten copy to Secretary of State Jefferson with a cover letter making his case for the right of blacks to liberty: “We are a race of Beings who have long labored under the abuse and censure of the world,” he wrote, and “have long been considered rather as brutish than human, and Scarcely capable of mental endowments.” Having heard “that you are a man far less inflexible in Sentiments of this nature, than many others,” he addressed Jefferson with a mix of deference and assertiveness, “I apprehend you will readily embrace every opportunity to eradicate that train of absurd and false opinions which so generally prevails with respect to us.”
Banneker offered his almanac as evidence of the reasoning faculty of Black people. Such work by a member of “the African race,” he declared, “and in that color of the deepest dye,” should show “that one universal Father hath given being to us all and endued us all with the same faculties.” Noting that his father came to America as “a Slave from Africa,” Banneker wrote about Blacks and whites in the United States, “However variable we may be in Society or religion, however diversifyed in Situation or color, we are all of the Same Family.” We are all Americans, he as much as said, and I am as much an American as you are.
In his letter to Jefferson, Banneker then made his case for American liberty and against American slavery: “Sir,” he began respectfully, “Suffer me to recall to your mind that time in which the Arms and tyranny of the British Crown were exerted with every powerful effort in order to reduce you to a State of Servitude.” He continued, “This Sir, was a time in which you clearly saw into the injustice of a State of Slavery, and publickly held forth this true and invaluable doctrine, which is worthy to be recorded and remember’d in all Succeeding ages. ‘We hold these truths to be Self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happyness.'”
The naturalist and almanac writer from Maryland continued: “You were then impressed with proper ideas of the great valuation of liberty, and the free possession of those blessings to which you were entitled by nature.” Banneker went on without any pretext of deference: Yet, “at the Same time,” white people persisted “in detaining by fraud and violence so numerous a part of my brethren under groaning captivity and cruel oppression” and remained “guilty of that most criminal act, which you professedly detested in others, with respect to yourselves.”