Jefferson was terribly conflicted about slavery and he treated his slaves like family. If one ran away he made little or no effort to get them back. Since they were better treated and more well off than almost all others slave and non-slave, they rarely ran away.
Correcting your use of the word “enshrinement” is hardly nit-picking. But you used it for its rhetorical value.
It is my understanding that most slave owners did so as well. Of course the abolitionists searched far and wide to find examples of sadistic bastards abusing slaves, and they made certain to create the impression that it was widespread, very much like the deliberately lying "Fake News" media of today. Liberals have to make up histrionic accusations on the basis of very little reality, as they recently did with the illegal alien children at the border who were separated from their parents who were in custody.
A good lie always contains a small part of reality in it.
Correcting your use of the word “enshrinement” is hardly nit-picking. But you used it for its rhetorical value.
I used it because it is commonly used to refer to anything which is put into the US Constitution. It is reverence for the Constitution that motivates the usage of such words as "enshrinement".
Some of them may have been.
If one ran away he made little or no effort to get them back. Since they were better treated and more well off than almost all others slave and non-slave, they rarely ran away.
I had not heard that. Jefferson freed Sally Hemmings's children when he died and even allowed some of them to leave when he was still alive, but I don't know that he was as lenient with his other slaves.