Read this excerpt of Thomas Jefferson’s thoughts on slavery:
“The bill on the subject of slaves was a mere digest of the existing laws respecting them, without any intimation of a plan for a future & general emancipation. It was thought better that this should be kept back, and attempted only by way of amendment whenever the bill should be brought on. The principles of the amendment however were agreed on, that is to say, the freedom of all born after a certain day, and deportation at a proper age. But it was found that the public mind would not yet bear the proposition, nor will it bear it even to this day. Yet the day is not distant when it must bear and adopt it, or worse will follow. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate that these people are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government....It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation and deportation peaceably and in such slow degree as that the evil will wear off insensibly, and their place be pari passu filled up by free white laborers. If on the contrary it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up.
page 51
Thomas Jefferson Redivivus
I will book mark it.
Interestingly enough, Lincoln felt the same way. He wanted Black people to leave the country, and he contemplated various schemes to make it happen.
“Fair minded” whites like Jefferson understood slavery could not stay lawful in the long run.
But his attitude about blacks was misguided, and prejudiced by the limitations on what sorts of blacks he had common association with, which were vastly uneducated blacks who of course had even less “civil” education than poor free whites. (Thus his call that part of the resolution of slavery include the deportation of freed slaves).
There were learned and accomplished blacks in America and the U.K. by the late 1700s, but, to Jefferson’s misfortune to his knowledge, they were few in number and even when published what they wrote was not widely circulated; limiting the awareness of them even among very learned men like Jeffferson.
Just a few examples, there was:
Venture Smith - 1729-1805
Ukawsaw Gronniosaw - 1705 - 1775
Olaudah Equiano - 1745 - 1797
Phillis wheatley - 1753 - 1784
Jupiter Hammon - 1711 - 1806
There were surely others who were never published or noted widely at the time, and that lack of awareness spread the myth in the 1700s that black slaves could never attain a western education on par with whtes of the 1700s. In truth most of what was missing was most were never provided any opportunites for an education, leaving plantation slaves as 99% from which most whites drew any impression; Jefferson included.
Fortunately, Jeffersons ideals were above his understanding of their universal adpatability, if the right circumstances were provided.