John / Billybob
I still don’t have the book with me. It’s on page 187 of Malone’s first book about Jefferson, “Jefferson The Virginian.” (I remember the page but not the quote.) He mentioned it in something he wrote, but his suggestion about the colonies wanting to stop the practice of slavery went nowhere at the time. It was not a letter to a friend. I’ll make a note to myself to bring the book the next time. (The book is at my mother’s old house.)
I finally have my book, “Jefferson the Virginian” by Dumas Malone. You could probably find these books in your local library.
There are a number of pages that deal with his early efforts against slavery, but the one from page 187 reads as follows: “Jefferson erred on the side of optimism when he asserted in his “Summary View” that the abolition of domestic slavery was the greatest object of desire in the colonies. Speaking for Virginia, he was correct in saying that previous attempts to prevent importations of slaves from Africa had been defeated by the royal negative...”
The “Summary View” is available on the Internet. It is fairly long, but the portion about slavery is about half way through it and reads as follows: “The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state. But previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves we have, it is necessary to exclude all further importations from Africa; yet our repeated attempts to effect this by prohibitions, and by imposing duties which might amount to a prohibition, have been hitherto defeated by his majesty’s negative: Thus preferring the immediate advantages of a few African corsairs to the lasting interests of the American states, and to the rights of human nature, deeply wounded by this infamous practice. Nay, the single interposition of an interested individual against a law was scarcely ever known to fail of success, though in the opposite scale were placed the interests of a whole country. That this is so shameful an abuse of a power trusted with his majesty for other purposes, as if not reformed, would call for some legal restrictions. “