[BroJoeK]

ProgressingAmerica: "Thomas Jefferson was an abolitionist."

DiogenesLamp: "In theory. In practice, he was not."

Certainly, by 1860 standards, Jefferson was a radical abolitionist because he:

1. Railed against slavery in the Declaration of Independence.

2. Supported abolition in the Northwest Territories.

3. Supported abolition of imports of new slaves.

4. Proposed a national plan for gradual abolition, with compensation for slaveholders.

But abolition was not Jefferson's first priority and he was known after 1801 as the first "Negro President", because his narrow defeat of John Adams resulted from the Constitution's 3/5 rule for counting slaves in representation of slave-states.

Like nearly all of our Founders, Jefferson considered slavery a necessary evil which should be eventually abolished -- gradually, peacefully and with compensation for slaveholders.

That idea was still very much alive when Jefferson died in 1825, but within just a few years after -- by the 1830s -- had been entirely abandoned by most Southerners.

[x]

There is some controversy about whether Jefferson did in fact send James Lemen Sr. to the territories.

His son, James Lemen Jr., did know Abraham Lincoln. Article here.