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This list of Jefferson's writings on race and slavery is arranged in chronological order by year [Note: the writings are not always chronological within a given year], with selections of pertinent passages appended and links to online versions of the full document where available. The selected passages are designed to be read as a kind of Cliffs Notes/SparkNotes overview of the subject, providing quick and easy access to Jefferson's own voice on this crucial issue of such controversy in assessing his achievement and legacy.

Suggestions gratefully accepted for additional entries, for links to documents without links, for links to better versions of documents that are linked, and for errors to correct. Email Edward J. Gallagher at ejg1@lehigh.edu.

Listen to "Jefferson as Slavemaster" (20 minutes):

1) Advertisement for a Runaway Slave (September 7, 1769)
http://classroom.monticello.org/teachers/gallery/image/226/Runaway-Ad/
Run away from the subscriber in Albemarle, a Mulatto slave called Sandy, about 35 years of age, his stature is rather low, inclining to corpulence, and his complexion light; he is a shoemaker by trade, in which he uses his left hand principally, can do coarse carpenters work, and is something of a horse jockey; he is greatly addicted to drink, and when drunk he is insolent and disorderly, in his conversation he swears much, and his behavior is artful and knavish. He took with him a white horse, much scarred with traces, of which it is expected he will endeavour to dispose; he also carried his shoemaker tools, and he will probably endeavour to get employment that way. Whoever conveys the said slave to me in Albemarle, shall have 40 s. reward, if taken up within the county, 4 l. if elsewhere within the colony, and 10 l. if in any other colony, from Thomas Jefferson.

2) Argument in case of Howell v. Netherland (1770)
http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=800&chapter=85803&layout=html&Itemid=27
Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the author of nature, because necessary for his own sustenance.

3) A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)
http://www.wdl.org/en/item/117/
By the constitution of Great Britain, as well as of the several American states, his majesty possesses the power of refusing to pass into a law any bill which has already passed the other two branches of legislature. . . . It is now . . . the great office of his majesty . . . to prevent the passage of laws by any one legislature of the empire, which might bear injuriously on the rights and interests of another. Yet this will not excuse the wanton exercise of this power which we have seen his majesty practise on the laws of the American legislatures. For the most trifling reasons, and sometimes for no conceivable reason at all, his majesty has rejected laws of the most salutary tendency. 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.

4) Draft of Virginia Constitution (1776)
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/jeffcons.asp
No person hereafter coming into this country shall be held within the same in slavery under any pretext whatever.

5) Declaration of Independence, with editorial changes marked (1776)
http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefAuto.xml&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=3&division=div2
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with inherent and [certain] inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness: that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, & to institute new government, laying it's foundation on such principles, & organizing it's powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety & happiness.

Deleted in final version: [He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobium of INFIDEL powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the LIBERTIES of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the LIVES of another.]

6) A Bill Declaring Who Shall Be Deemed Citizens of this Commonwealth (1776?)
http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefPapr.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=6&division=div1
SECTION I. Be it enacted by the General Assembly, that all white persons born within the territory of this commonwealth and all who have resided therein two years next before the passing of this act, and all who shall hereafter migrate into the same; and shall before any court of record give satisfactory proof by their own oath or affirmation, that they intend to reside therein, and moreover shall give assurance of fidelity to the commonwealth; and all infants wheresoever born, whose father, if living, or otherwise, whose mother was, a citizen at the time of their birth, or who migrate hither, their father, if living, or otherwise their mother becoming a citizen, or who migrate hither without father or mother, shall be deemed citizens of this commonwealth, until they relinquish that character in manner as herein after expressed: And all others not being citizens of any the United States of America, shall be deemed aliens.

The free white inhabitants of every of the states, parties to the American confederation, paupers, vagabonds and fugitives from justice excepted, shall be intitled to all rights, privileges, and immunities of free citizens in this commonwealth, and shall have free egress, and regress, to and from the same, and shall enjoy therein, all the privileges of trade, and commerce, subject to the same duties, impositions and restrictions as the citizens of this commonwealth.

7) Bill to Prevent the Importation of Slaves (1777)
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_9_1s1.html
To prevent more effectually the practice of holding persons in Slavery and importing them into this State Be it enacted by the General Assembly that all persons who shall be hereafter imported into this Commonwealth by Sea of by Land . . . shall from thenceforth become free and absolutely exempted from all Slavery or Bondage . . . . That it shall and may be lawful for any person . . . to manumit and set at Liberty any Slave or Slaves to which they are entitled.

8) A Bill Concerning Slaves (1779)
http://www.founding.com/founders_library/pageID.2360/default.asp
Section I. Be it enacted by the General Assembly, that no persons shall, henceforth, be slaves within this commonwealth, except such as were so on the first day of this present session of Assembly, and the descendants of the females of them.

Sect. II. Negroes and mulattoes which shall hereafter be brought into this commonwealth and kept therein one whole year, together, or so long at different times as shall amount to one year, shall be free. But if they shall not depart the commonwealth within one year thereafter they shall be out of the protection of the laws.

Sect. V. If any white woman shall have a child by a negro or mulatto, she and her child shall depart the commonwealth within one year thereafter. If they shall fail so to do, the woman shall be out of the protection of the laws, and the child shall be bound out by the Aldermen of the county, in like manner as poor orphans are by law directed to be, and within one year after its term of service expired shall depart the commonwealth, or on failure so to do, shall be out of the protection of the laws.

Sect. VII. No negro or mulatto shall be a witness except in pleas of the commonwealth against negroes or mulattoes, or in civil pleas wherein negroes or mulattoes alone shall be parties.

Sect. VIII. No slave shall go from the tenements of his master, or other person with whom he lives, without a pass, or some letter or token whereby it may appear that he is proceeding by authority from his master, employer, or overseer: If he does, it shall be lawful for any person to apprehend and carry him before a Justice of the Peace, to be by his order punished with stripes, or not, in his discretion.

Sect. X. Riots, routs, unlawful assemblies, trespasses and seditious speeches by a negro or mulatto shall be punished with stripes at the discretion of a Justice of the Peace; and he who will may apprehend and carry him before such Justice.

9) "Laws," from Notes on the State of Virginia -- Query XIV (1781-1785)
http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefVirg.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=14&division=div1
Conveyances of land must be registered in the court of the county wherein they lie, or in the general court, or they are void, as to creditors, and subsequent purchasers. Slaves pass by descent and dower as lands do. Where the descent is from a parent, the heir is bound to pay an equal share of their value in money to each of his brothers and sisters. Slaves, as well as lands, were entailable during the monarchy, but, by an act of the first republican assembly, all donees in tail, present and future, were vested with the absolute dominion of the entailed subject.

The following are the most remarkable alterations [to the law] proposed: To change the rules of descent, so as that the lands of any person dying intestate shall be divisible equally among all his children, or other representatives, in equal degree. To make slaves distributable among the next of kin, as other moveables.

To emancipate all slaves born after passing the act. The bill reported by the revisors does not itself contain this proposition; but an amendment containing it was prepared, to be offered to the legislature whenever the bill should be taken up, and further directing, that they should continue with their parents to a certain age, then be brought up, at the public expence, to tillage, arts or sciences, according to their geniusses, till the females should be eighteen, and the males twenty-one years of age, when they should be colonized to such place as the circumstances of the time should render most proper, sending them out with arms, implements of houshold and of the handicraft arts, feeds, pairs of the useful domestic animals, &c. to declare them a free and independant people, and extend to them our alliance and protection, till they shall have acquired strength; and to send vessels at the same time to other parts of the world for an equal number of white inhabitants; to induce whom to migrate hither, proper encouragements were to be proposed.

It will probably be asked, Why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the state, and thus save the expence of supplying, by importation of white settlers, the vacancies they will leave? Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race. -- To these objections, which are political, may be added others, which are physical and moral.

The first difference which strikes us is that of colour. Whether the black of the negro resides in the reticular membrane between the skin and scarf-skin, or in the scarf-skin itself; whether it proceeds from the colour of the blood, the colour of the bile, or from that of some other secretion, the difference is fixed in nature, and is as real as if its seat and cause were better known to us. And is this difference of no importance? Is it not the foundation of a greater or less share of beauty in the two races? Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expressions of every passion by greater or less suffusions of colour in the one, preferable to that eternal monotony, which reigns in the countenances, that immoveable veil of black which covers all the emotions of the other race?

Add to these, flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form, their own judgment in favour of the whites, declared by their preference of them, as uniformly as is the preference of the Oranootan for the black women over those of his own species. The circumstance of superior beauty, is thought worthy attention in the propagation of our horses, dogs, and other domestic animals; why not in that of man?

Besides those of colour, figure, and hair, there are other physical distinctions proving a difference of race. They have less hair on the face and body. They secrete less by the kidnies, and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odour.

This greater degree of transpiration renders them more tolerant of heat, and less so of cold, than the whites. Perhaps too a difference of structure in the pulmonary apparatus, which a late ingenious experimentalist has discovered to be the principal regulator of animal heat, may have disabled them from extricating, in the act of inspiration, so much of that fluid from the outer air, or obliged them in expiration, to part with more of it.

They seem to require less sleep. A black, after hard labour through the day, will be induced by the slightest amusements to sit up till midnight, or later, though knowing he must be out with the first dawn of the morning. They are at least as brave, and more adventuresome.

But this may perhaps proceed from a want of forethought, which prevents their seeing a danger till it be present. When present, they do not go through it with more coolness or steadiness than the whites. They are more ardent after their female: but love seems with them to be more an eager desire, than a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation.

Their griefs are transient. Those numberless afflictions, which render it doubtful whether heaven has given life to us in mercy or in wrath, are less felt, and sooner forgotten with them. In general, their existence appears to participate more of sensation than reflection.
To this must be ascribed their disposition to sleep when abstracted from their diversions, and unemployed in labour. An animal whose body is at rest, and who does not reflect, must be disposed to sleep of course.

Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me, that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous.

It would be unfair to follow them to Africa for this investigation. We will consider them here, on the same stage with the whites, and where the facts are not apocryphal on which a judgment is to be formed. It will be right to make great allowances for the difference of condition, of education, of conversation, of the sphere in which they move.

Many millions of them have been brought to, and born in America. Most of them indeed have been confined to tillage, to their own homes, and their own society: yet many have been so situated, that they might have availed themselves of the conversation of their masters; many have been brought up to the handicraft arts, and from that circumstance have always been associated with the whites.

Some have been liberally educated, and all have lived in countries where the arts and sciences are cultivated to a considerable degree, and have had before their eyes samples of the best works from abroad. The Indians, with no advantages of this kind, will often carve figures on their pipes not destitute of design and merit. They will crayon out an animal, a plant, or a country, so as to prove the existence of a germ in their minds which only wants cultivation.

They astonish you with strokes of the most sublime oratory; such as prove their reason and sentiment strong, their imagination glowing and elevated. But never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never see even an elementary trait of painting or sculpture.

In music they are more generally gifted than the whites with accurate ears for tune and time, and they have been found capable of imagining a small catch. Whether they will be equal to the composition of a more extensive run of melody, or of complicated harmony, is yet to be proved.

Misery is often the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry. -- Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry. Love is the peculiar oestrum of the poet. Their love is ardent, but it kindles the senses only, not the imagination.

Religion indeed has produced a Phyllis Whately; but it could not produce a poet. The compositions published under her name are below the dignity of criticism. The heroes of the Dunciad are to her, as Hercules to the author of that poem. Ignatius Sancho has approached nearer to merit in composition; yet his letters do more honour to the heart than the head.

They breathe the purest effusions of friendship and general philanthropy, and shew how great a degree of the latter may be compounded with strong religious zeal. He is often happy in the turn of his compliments, and his stile is easy and familiar, except when he affects a Shandean fabrication of words.

But his imagination is wild and extravagant, escapes incessantly from every restraint of reason and taste, and, in the course of its vagaries, leaves a tract of thought as incoherent and eccentric, as is the course of a meteor through the sky. His subjects should often have led him to a process of sober reasoning: yet we find him always substituting sentiment for demonstration.
Upon the whole, though we admit him to the first place among those of his own colour who have presented themselves to the public judgment, yet when we compare him with the writers of the race among whom he lived, and particularly with the epistolary class, in which he has taken his own stand, we are compelled to enroll him at the bottom of the column.

This criticism supposes the letters published under his name to be genuine, and to have received amendment from no other hand; points which would not be of easy investigation. The improvement of the blacks in body and mind, in the first instance of their mixture with the whites, has been observed by every one, and proves that their inferiority is not the effect merely of their condition of life.

We know that among the Romans, about the Augustan age especially, the condition of their slaves was much more deplorable than that of the blacks on the continent of America. The two sexes were confined in separate apartments, because to raise a child cost the master more than to buy one. Cato, for a very restricted indulgence to his slaves in this particular, took from them a certain price.

But in this country the slaves multiply as fast as the free inhabitants. Their situation and manners place the commerce between the two sexes almost without restraint. -- The same Cato, on a principle of economy, always sold his sick and superannuated slaves. He gives it as a standing precept to a master visiting his farm, to sell his old oxen, old waggons, old tools, old and diseased servants, and every thing else become useless.

The American slaves cannot enumerate this among the injuries and insults they receive. It was the common practice to expose in the island of Aesculapius, in the Tyber, diseased slaves, whose cure was like to become tedious. The Emperor Claudius, by an edict, gave freedom to such of them as should recover, and first declared, that if any person chose to kill rather than to expose them, it should be deemed homicide.

The exposing them is a crime of which no instance has existed with us; and were it to be followed by death, it would be punished capitally. We are told of a certain Vedius Pollio, who, in the presence of Augustus, would have given a slave as food to his fish, for having broken a glass

With the Romans, the regular method of taking the evidence of their slaves was under torture. Here it has been thought better never to resort to their evidence. When a master was murdered, all his slaves, in the same house, or within hearing, were condemned to death. Here punishment falls on the guilty only, and as precise proof is required against him as against a freeman.

Yet notwithstanding these and other discouraging circumstances among the Romans, their slaves were often their rarest artists. They excelled too in science, insomuch as to be usually employed as tutors to their master's children. Epictetus, Terence, and Phaedrus, were slaves. But they were of the race of whites.

It is not their condition then, but nature, which has produced the distinction.

Whether further observation will or will not verify the conjecture, that nature has been less bountiful to them in the endowments of the head, I believe that in those of the heart she will be found to have done them justice.

That disposition to theft with which they have been branded, must be ascribed to their situation, and not to any depravity of the moral sense. The man, in whose favour no laws of property exist, probably feels himself less bound to respect those made in favour of others.

When arguing for ourselves, we lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation of right: that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience: and it is a problem which give to the master to solve, whether the religious precepts against the violation of property were not framed for him as well as his slave?

And whether the slave may not as justifiably take a little from one, who has taken all from him, as he may slay one who would slay him? That a change in the relations in which a man is placed should change his ideas of moral right and wrong, is neither new, nor peculiar to the colour of the blacks.

Homer tells us it was so 2600 years ago. Od. 17. 323. Jove fix'd it certain, that whatever day Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away. But the slaves of which Homer speaks were whites.

Notwithstanding these considerations which must weaken their respect for the laws of property, we find among them numerous instances of the most rigid integrity, and as many as among their better instructed masters, of benevolence, gratitude, and unshaken fidelity.

The opinion, that they are inferior in the faculties of reason and imagination, must be hazarded with great diffidence. To justify a general conclusion, requires many observations, even where the subject may be submitted to the Anatomical knife, to Optical glasses, to analysis by fire, or by solvents.

How much more then where it is a faculty, not a substance, we are examining; where it eludes the research of all the senses; where the conditions of its existence are various and variously combined; where the effects of those which are present or absent bid defiance to calculation; let me add too, as a circumstance of great tenderness, where our conclusion would degrade a whole race of men from the rank in the scale of beings which their Creator may perhaps have given them.

To our reproach it must be said, that though for a century and a half we have had under our eyes the races of black and of red men, they have never yet been viewed by us as subjects of natural history. advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind.

It is not against experience to suppose, that different species of the same genus, or varieties of the same species, may possess different qualifications. Will not a lover of natural history then, one who views the gradations in all the races of animals with the eye of philosophy, excuse an effort to keep those in the department of man as distinct as nature has formed them?

This unfortunate difference of colour, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people. Many of their advocates, while they wish to vindicate the liberty of human nature, are anxious also to preserve its dignity and beauty. Some of these, embarrassed by the question `What further is to be done with them?' join themselves in opposition with those who are actuated by sordid avarice only.

Among the Romans emancipation required but one effort. The slave, when made free, might mix with, without staining the blood of his master. But with us a second is necessary, unknown to history. When freed, he is to be removed beyond the reach of mixture."

Slaves guilty of offences punishable in others by labour, to be transported to Africa, or elsewhere, as the circumstances of the time admit, there to be continued in slavery.

10) "Manners," from Notes on the State of Virginia -- Query XVIII (1781-1785)
http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefVirg.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=18&division=div1
There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do. If a parent could find no motive either in his philanthropy or his self-love, for restraining the intemperance of passion towards his slave, it should always be a sufficient one that his child is present. But generally it is not sufficient. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to his worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. And with what execration should the statesman be loaded, who permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots, and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and the amor patriae of the other. For if a slave can have a country in this world, it must be any other in preference to that in which he is born to live and labour for another: in which he must lock up the faculties of his nature, contribute as far as depends on his individual endeavours to the evanishment of the human race, or entail his own miserable condition on the endless generations proceeding from him. With the morals of the people, their industry also is destroyed. For in a warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labour. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest. -- But it is impossible to be temperate and to pursue this subject through the various considerations of policy, of morals, of history natural and civil. We must be contented to hope they will force their way into every one's mind. I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation.

11) Draft of a Constitution for Virginia (1783)
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=2188
The General Assembly shall not have power to . . . nor to permit the introduction of any more slaves to reside in this state, or the continuance of slavery beyond the generation which shall be living on the thirty first day of December, one thousand eight hundred; all persons born after that day being hereby declared free.

12) Government for the Western Territory (1784)
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/jeffrep1.asp
That after the year 1800 of the Christian Era there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said states, otherwise than in punishment of whereof the party shall have been convicted to personally.

13) Letter to Charles Thomson, June 21, 1785
http://www.familytales.org/dbDisplay.php?id=ltr_thj1405
I am desirous of preventing the reprinting this, should any book merchant think it worth it, till I hear from my friends whether the terms in which I have spoken of slavery and of the constitution of our state will not, by producing an irritation, retard that reformation which I wish instead of promoting it.

14) Letter to Marquis de Chastellux, June 7, 1785
http://www.familytales.org/dbDisplay.php?id=ltr_thj1401
The strictures on slavery and on the constitution of Virginia [he's referring here to his book Notes on the State of Virginia], are not of that kind, and they are the parts which I do not wish to have made public, at least, till I know whether their publication would do most harm or good. It is possible, that in my own country, these strictures might produce an irritation, which would indispose the people towards the two great objects I have in view; that is, the emancipation of their slaves, and the settlement of their constitution on a firmer and more permanent basis. If I learn from thence, that they will not produce that effect, I have printed and reserved just copies enough to be able to give one to every young man at the College. It is to them I look, to the rising generation, and not to the one now in power, for these great reformations.

And I am safe in affirming, that the proofs of genius given by the Indians of North America, place them on a level with whites in the same uncultivated state. The North of Europe furnishes subjects enough for comparison with them, and for a proof of their equality. I have seen some thousands myself, and conversed much with them, and have found in them a masculine, sound understanding. I have had much information from men who had lived among them, and whose veracity and good sense were so far known to me, as to establish a reliance on their information. They have all agreed in bearing witness in favor of the genius of this people. As to their bodily strength, their manners rendering it disgraceful to labor, those muscles employed in labor will be weaker with them, than with the European laborer; but those which are exerted in the chase, and those faculties which are employed in the tracing an enemy or a wild beast, in contriving ambuscades for him, and in carrying them through their execution, are much stronger than with us, because they are more exercised. I believe the Indian, then, to be, in body and mind, equal to the white man. I have supposed the black man, in his present state, might not be so; but it would be hazardous to affirm, that, equally cultivated for a few generations, he would not become so.

15) Letter to James Monroe, June 17, 1785
http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefLett.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=29&division=div1
I send you by Mr. Otto a copy of my book. Be so good as to apologize to Mr. Thomson for my not sending him one by this conveyance. I could not burten Mr. Otto with more on so long a road as that from here to l'Orient. I will send him one by a Mr. Williams who will go there long. I have taken measures to prevent its publication. My reason is that I fear the terms in which I speak of slavery and our constitution may produce an irritation which will revolt the minds of our countrymen against reformation in these two articles, and thus do more harm than good. I have asked of Mr. Madison to sound this matter as far as he can, and if he thinks it will not produce that effect, I have then copies enough to printed to give one to each of the young men at the college, and to my friends in the country.

16) Letter to Richard Price, August 7, 1785
http://www.familytales.org/dbDisplay.php?id=ltr_thj1426&year=1785
The concern you therein express as to the effect of your pamphlet in America, induces me to trouble you with some observations on that subject. . . . Southward of the Chesapeak it will find but few readers. . . . From the mouth to the head of the Chesapeak, the bulk of the people will approve it in theory, and it will find a respectable minority ready to adopt it in practice. . . . Northward of the Chesapeak you may find here and there an opponent to your doctrine as you may find here and there a robber and a murderer, but in no great number. . . . In Maryland, I do not find such a disposition to begin the redress of this enormity as in Virginia. This is the next state to which we may turn our eyes for the interesting spectacle of justice in conflict with avarice and oppression: a conflict wherein the sacred side is gaining daily recruits from the influx into office of young men grown and growing up. They have sucked in the principles of liberty as it were with their mother's milk, and it is to them I look with anxiety to turn the fate of this question. . . . I am satisfied if you could resolve to address an exhortation to those young men, with all that eloquence of which you are master, that its influence on the future decision of this important question would be great, perhaps decisive.

17) "Etats Unis de l'Amerique" [1786]
http://infomotions.com/etexts/literature/american/1700-1799/jefferson-miscellany-257.txt
Article on the United States in the Encyclopedie Methodique (1786)
Dictionnaire d'Economie politique et diplomatique, l'Encyclopedie methodique. [Scroll down.]

18) Letter to J. N. Demeunier, June 26, 1786
http://infomotions.com/etexts/literature/american/1700-1799/jefferson-miscellany-257.txt
I conjecture there are 650,000 negroes in the five southern states and not 50,000 in the rest. In most of these latter, effectual measures have been taken for their future emancipation. In the former nothing is being done towards that. The disposition to emancipate them is strongest in Virginia. Those who desire it, form as yet the minority of the whole state, but it bears a respectable proportion to the whole in numbers and weight of character, and it is continually recruiting by the addition of nearly the whole of young men as fast as they come into public life. I flatter myself it will take place there at some period of time not very distant. [Scroll down.]

19) Letter to Paul Bentalou, August 25, 1786
The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series. Vol. 10. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. 296.
I have made enquiries on the subject of the negro boy you have brought, and find that the laws of France [Jefferson was in France at this time as American Ambassador] give him freedom if he claims it, and that it will be difficult, if not impossible, to interrupt the course of the law. Nevertheless I have known an instance where a person bringing in a slave, and saying nothing about it, has not been disturbed in his possession. I think it will be easier in your case to pursue the same plan, as the boy is so young that it is not probable he will think of claiming freedom. This plan is the more adviseable, as an unsuccessful attempt to procure a dispensation from the law might produce orders which otherwise would not be thought of. Nevertheless should you find that you shall lose the possession of the boy unless protected in it, if you will be so good as to inform me of the facts, I will try whether a dispensation can be obtained. I would rather avoid asking this if you can, by any means, keep the boy without it.

20) Additional Questions of M. De Meusnier, and Answers [1786]
http://books.google.com/books?id=pv52AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA148&dq=Additional+Questions+of+M.+De+Meusnier,+and+Answers&hl=en&ei=CiJlTeD_J9DqgQeV5a20Bw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CEcQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=Additional%20Questions%20of%20M.%20De%20Meusni
But they saw, that the moment of doing it with success was not yet arrived [passing a legislative bill], and that an unsuccessful effort, as too often happens, would only rivet still closer the chains of bondage, and retard the moment of delivery to this oppressed description of men. What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man, who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment, and death itself, in vindication of his own liberty, and, at the next moment be deaf to all those motives whose power supported him through his trial, and inflict on his fellow man a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery, than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose. But we must await, with patience, the workings of an overruling Providence, and hope that that is preparing the deliverance of these, our suffering brethren. When the measure of their tears shall be full, when their groans shall have involved heaven itself in darkness, doubtless, a God of justice will awaken to their distress, and by diffusing light and liberality among their oppressors, or, at length, by his exterminating thunder, manifest his attention to the things of this world, and that they are not left to the guidance of blind fatality.

21) Letter to Edward Rutledge, July 14, 1787
http://books.google.com/books?id=7zNDX52G9sYC&pg=PR23&lpg=PR23&dq=Letter+to+Edward+Rutledge,+July+14,+1787&source=bl&ots=PJzUshxnWH&sig=w93FF0dm64OWY6TPowgfa9ErzFw&hl=en&ei=N7BeTZ-xEoKC8gbywuiTDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&sqi=2&ved=0CCgQ6AEwA
I congratulate you, my dear friend, on the law of your state for suspending the importation of slaves, and for the glory you have justly acquired by endeavoring to prevent it for ever. This abomination must have an end, and there is a superior bench reserved in heaven for those who hasten it.

22) Letter to Francis Eppes, July 30, 1787
http://archive.org/stream/papersofthomasje015726mbp/papersofthomasje015726mbp_djvu.txt
I am decided against selling my lands. They are the only sure provision for my children, and I have sold too much of them already. I am also unwilling to sell negroes, if the debts can be paid without. This unwillingness is for their sake, not my own; because my debts once cleared off, I shall try some plan of making their situation happier, determined to content myself with a small portion of their labour. I think it better for them therefore to be submitted to harder conditions for a while in order that they may afterwards be put into a better situation.
I hired my estate in Albemarle once for 11.₤ sterl. for every titheable hand. Tobacco is since risen, and the lands of Goochland, Cumberland, and Bedford are more profitable. I may hope therefore a good rent may be obtained for the whole estate, letting it out in small parcels to different tenants known to be kind and careful in their natures. I propose my former lease to Garth and Mousley as the model, reserving all the advantages and privileges reserved in that, as also the lands reserved in that to my own use; inserting a clause for distraining on the lands for the whole hire, which I believe was not in that, and which, so far as concerned the hire of the slaves, would not result from the general provisions of the law, unless expressly provided for; guarding also against paper money by stating the rent in ounces of silver, restraining the leases to three years, or at any rate not more than five; retaining rigorously the clauses which had for their object the good treatment of my slaves, particularly that which denied a diminution of rent on the death of a slave; otherwise it would be their interest to kill all the old and infirm by hard usage. Supposing there are about 90 titheable slaves, a reasonable rent on them, my lands and stocks, the tenants paying every tax and charge of every kind, will make a nett annual sum which may clear off the debts within such a term of years as I should be willing to wait for. It will substitute certain calculation for incertainty, and relieve my friends from the perplexity of my affairs added to their own. The only objection is the difficulty of guarding my negroes against ill usage. I put it in all its force, and I shall go through the operation, as a man does that of being cut for the stone, with a view to relief. I have therefore written to Mr. Lewis to pray him to put my affairs on this footing immediately, in which I know your goodness will aid him. It is taking one great trouble in the lump, to be relieved from it in the detail. It may be lessened too by each undertaking the part to which he is convenient. When this arrangement shall be taken, I shall feel like a person on shore, escaped from shipwreck.

23) Letter to Brissot de Warville, February 11, 1788 (scroll down)
http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=802&chapter=86695&layout=html&Itemid=27
I am very sensible of the honour you propose to me of becoming a member of the society for the abolition of the slave trade. You know that nobody wishes more ardently to see an abolition not only of the trade but of the condition of slavery: and certainly nobody will be more willing to encounter every sacrifice for that object. But the influence and information of the friends to this proposition in France will be far above the need of my association. I am here as a public servant; and those whom I serve having never yet been able to give their voice against this practice, it is decent for me to avoid too public a demonstration of my wishes to see it abolished. Without serving the cause here, it might render me less able to serve it beyond the water. I trust you will be sensible of the prudence of those motives therefore which govern my conduct on this occasion, and be assured of my wishes for the success of your undertaking.

24) Letter to Nicholas Lewis, July 11, 1788
http://books.google.com/books?id=swR3AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA29&dq=Letter+to+Nicholas+Lewis,+July+11,+1788&hl=en&ei=ZCFlTcG2K4PqgQfngdmHBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Letter%20to%20Nicholas%20Lewis%2C%20July%2011%2C%201788&f=f
One word more on my leases. I think the term should not exceed three years. The negroes too old to be hired, could they not make a good profit by cultivating cotton? Much enquiry is made of me here about the cultivation of cotton; and I would thank you to give me your opinion how much a hand would make cultivating that as his principal crop instead of tobacco. Great George, Ursula, Betty Hemings not to be hired at all, nor Martin nor Bob otherwise than as they are now. I am sensible, my dear Sir, how much trouble and perplexity I am giving you with my affairs. The plan of leasing will in a great measure relieve you.

25) Letter to William Gordon, July 16, 1788
http://books.google.com/books?id=swR3AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA36&lpg=PA36&dq=Letter+to+William+Gordon,+July+16,+1788&source=bl&ots=SVs004aNxB&sig=oIk3TEUP-1NOxXBUVYbhlPfdHaQ&hl=en&ei=jrheTfHPOIG78gaAraSwDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&sqi=2&ved=0CBgQ6AEwAA
He remained in this position ten days, his own head quarters being in my house at the house. I had had time to remove most of the effects out of the house. He destroyed all my growing crops of corn and tobacco, he burned all my barns containing the same articles of the last year, having first taken what corn he wanted, he used, as was to be expected, all my stocks of cattle, sheep, and hogs for the sustenance of his army, and carried off all the horses capable of service: of those too young for service he cut the throats, and he burnt all the fences on the plantation, so as to leave it an absolute waste. He carried off also about 30 slaves: had this been to give them freedom he would have done right, but it was to consign them to inevitable death from the small pox and putrid fever then raging in his camp. This I knew afterwards to have been the fate of 27 of them. I never had news of the remaining three, but presume they shared the same fate.

26) Letter to James Madison, September 6, 1789
http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/P/tj3/writings/brf/jefl81.htm
The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water. Yet it is a question of such consequences as not only to merit decision, but place also, among the fundamental principles of every government. The course of reflection in which we are immersed here on the elementary principles of society has presented this question to my mind; and that no such obligation can be so transmitted I think very capable of proof. I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self evident, ‘that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living': that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it.

This principle that the earth belongs to the living, and not to the dead, is of very extensive application and consequences, in every country, and most especially in France.

27) Letter to Edward Bancroft, January 26, 1789
http://books.google.com/books?id=GVE8AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA66&dq=Letter+to+Edward+Bancroft,+January+26,+1789&hl=en&ei=kCFlTdruHMrTgQfk34HbBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDoQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false
I have deferred answering you letter on the subject of slaves, because you permitted me to do it till a moment of leisure, and that moment rarely comes, and because too, I could not answer you with such a degree of certainty as to merit any notice. I do not recollect the conversation at Vincennes to which you allude, but can repeat still on the same ground, on which I must have done then, that as far as I can judge from the experiments which have been made, to give liberty to, or rather, to abandon persons whose habits have been formed in slavery is like abandoning children. Many quakers in Virginia seated their slaves on their lands as tenants. They were distant from me, and therefore I cannot be particular in the details, because I never had very particular information. I cannot say whether they were to pay a rent in money, or a share of the produce: but I remember that the landlord was obliged to plan their crops for them, to direct all their operations during every season and according to the weather, but, what is more afflicting, he was obliged to watch them daily and almost constantly to make them work, and even to whip them. A man's moral sense must be unusually strong, if slavery does not make him a thief. He who is permitted by law to have no property of his own, can with difficulty conceive that property is founded in any thing but force. These slaves chose to steal from their neighbors rather than work. They became public nuisances, and in most instances were reduced to slavery again. But I will beg of you to make no use of this imperfect information (unless in common conversation). I shall go to America in the Spring and return in the fall. During my stay in Virginia I shall be in the neighborhood where many of these trials were made. I will inform myself very particularly of them, and communicate the information to you. Besides these, there is an instance since I came away of a young man (Mr. Mayo) who died and gave freedom to all his slaves, about 200. This is about 4. years ago. I shall know how they have turned out. Notwithstanding the discouraging result of these experiments, I am decided on my final return to America to try this one. I shall endeavor to import as many Germans as I have grown slaves. I will settle them and my slaves, on farms of 50. acres each, intermingled, and place all on the footing of the Metayers [Medietarii] of Europe. Their children shall be brought up, as others are, in habits of property and foresight, and I have no doubt but that they will be good citizens. Some of their fathers will be so: others I suppose will need government. With these, all that can be done is to oblige them to labour as the labouring poor of Europe do, and to apply to their comfortable subsistence the produce of their labour, retaining such a moderate portion of it as may be a just equivalent for the use of the lands they labour and the stocks and other necessary advances.

28) Letter to Benjamin Banneker, August 30, 1791
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=458
I thank you sincerely for your letter of the 19th. instant and for the Almanac it contained. no body wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren, talents equal to those of the other colours of men, & that the appearance of a want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence both in Africa & America. I can add with truth that no body wishes more ardently to see a good system commenced for raising the condition both of their body & mind to what it ought to be, as fast as the imbecillity of their present existence, and other circumstance which cannot be neglected, will admit. I have taken the liberty of sending your almanac to Monsieur de Condorcet, Secretary of the Academy of sciences at Paris, and member of the Philanthropic society because I considered it as a document to which your whole colour had a right for their justification against the doubts which have been entertained of them. I am with great esteem, Sir, Your most obedt. humble servt. Th. Jefferson

29) Letter to Martha Jefferson Randolph, May 8, 1791
Betts, Edwin Morris, and James Adam Bear, Jr., eds. The Family Letters of Thomas Jefferson. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1966. 81.
[Jefferson references Sally Hemings in a letter about packages he is sending.]

30) Letter to Mrs. Church, November 27, 1793
http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefLett.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=106&division=div1
In the meantime I am going to Virginia. I have at length become able to fix that to the beginning of the new year. I am then to be liberated from the hated occupations of politics, and to remain in the bosom of my family, my farm, and my books. I have my house to build, my fields to farm, and to watch for the happiness of those who labor for mine.

31) Letter to St. George Tucker, August 28, 1797
http://books.google.com/books?id=41nUAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA196&dq=Letter+to+St.+George+Tucker,+August+28,+1797&hl=en&ei=0SFlTf68H4zqgQfS_aXeBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false
I have to acknowledge the receipt of your two favors of the 2d &22d inst. and to thank you for the pamphlet covered by the former. You know my subscription to it's doctrines; and to the mode of compromise between the passions, the prejudices, & the real difficulties which will each have their weight in that operation. Perhaps the first chapter of this history, which has begun in St. Domingo, & the next succeeding ones, which will recount how all the whites were driven from all the other islands, may prepare our minds for a peaceable & accommodation between justice, policy &necessity; & furnish an answer to the difficult question, whither shall the colored emigrants go? and the sooner we put some plan underway, the greater hope there is that it may be permitted to proceed peaceably to it's ultimate effect. But if something is not done, & soon done, we shall be the murderers of our own children. The ‘murmura venturos nautis prodentia ventos' has already reached us; the revolutionary storm, now sweeping the globe, will be upon us, and happy if we make timely provision to give it an easy passage over our land. From the present state of things in Europe & America, the day which begins our combustion must be near at hand; and only a single spark is wanting to make that day to-morrow. If we had begun sooner, we might probably have been allowed a lengthier operation to clear ourselves, but every day's delay lessens the time we may take for emancipation. Some people derive hope from the aid of confederated States. But this is a delusion. There is but one state in the Union which will aid us sincerely, if an insurrection begins, and that one may, perhaps, have it's own fire to quench at the same time.

32) Jefferson's Memorandum of Services to my country, September 1800
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=mtj1&fileName=mtj1page022.db&recNum=448
I have sometimes asked myself, whether my country is the better for my having lived at all? . . . . The act prohibiting the importation of slaves.

33) Letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, September 23, 1800
http://books.google.com/books?id=4icWAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA173&lpg=PA173&dq=jefferson+Benjamin+Rush,+September+23,+1800&source=bl&ots=p1ysXrWIM3&sig=XXfE55wkPKj2GNCuo9nz9jK9Z-s&hl=en&ei=MiBMTaC_B8qs8Abw78jFDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CE0Q6AEwCA
I have not seen the work of Sonnoni which you mention, but I have seen another work on Africa, (Parke's,) which I fear will throw cold water on the hopes of the friends of freedom. You will hear an account of an attempt at insurrection in this state. I am looking with anxiety to see what will be its effect on our state.

34) Letter to James Monroe, May 29, 1801 (about Callender and Hemings) (scroll to bottom)
http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=757&chapter=87308&layout=html&Itemid=27
Since mine of the 26th Callender is arrived here. He did not call on me; but understanding he was in distress I sent Captain Lewis to him with 50. D. to inform him we were making some inquiries as to his fine which would take a little time, and lest he should suffer in the meantime I had sent him &c. His language to Captain Lewis was very high-toned. He intimated that he was in possession of things which he could and would make use of in a certain case: that he received the 50. D. not as a charity but a due, in fact as hush money; that I knew what he expected, viz. a certain office, and more to this effect. Such a misconstruction of my charities puts an end to them forever. You will therefore be so good as to make no use of the order I enclosed you. He knows nothing of me which I am not willing to declare to the world myself. I knew him first as the author of the Political Progress of Britain, a work I had read with great satisfaction, and as a fugitive from persecution for this very work. I gave to him from time to time such aids as I could afford, merely as a man of genius suffering under persecution, and not as a writer in our politics. It is long since I wished he would cease writing on them, as doing more harm than good.

35) Letter to James Monroe, November 24, 1801
http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefLett.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=141&division=div1
Could we procure lands beyond the limits of the U S to form a receptacle for these people?" Canada is perhaps too cold; as for Spanish territory, it poses similar question to that of Ohio: "Should we be willing to have such a colony in contact with us? However our present interests may restrain us within our own limits, it is impossible not to look forward to distant times, when our rapid multiplication will expand itself beyond those limits, & cover the whole Northern, if not the Southern continent with a people speaking the same language, governed in similar forms, & by similar laws: nor can we contemplate, with satisfaction, either blot or mixture on that surface. . . . The West Indies offers a more probable & practicable retreat for them. Inhabited already by a people of their own race & color; climates congenial with their natural constitution; insulated from the other descriptions of men; nature seems to have formed these islands to become the receptacle of the blacks transplanted into this hemisphere. Whether we could obtain from the European sovereigns of those islands leave to send thither the persons under consideration, I cannot say; but I think its more probable than the former propositions, because of their being already inhabited more or less by the same race. The most promising portion of them is the islands of St. Domingo, where the blacks are established into sovereignty de facto, & have organized themselves under regular laws & government. I should conjecture that their present ruler might be willing, on many considerations, to receive even that description which would be exiled for acts deemed criminal by us, but meritorious by him. The possibility that these exiles might stimulate & conduct vindictive or predatory descents on our coasts, & facilitate concert with their brethren remaining here, looks to a state of things between that island & us not probable on a contemplation of our relative strength, and of the disproportion daily growing; and it is overweighed by the humanity of measures proposed, & the advantages of disembarrassing ourselves of such dangerous characters. Africa would offer a last & undoubted resort, if all others more desirable should fail us. Whenever the Legislature of Virginia shall have brought it's mind to a point, so that I may know exactly what to propose to foreign authorities, I will execute their wishes with fidelity & zeal.

36) Letter to James Monroe, July 15, 1802 (about Callender and Hemings)
http://books.google.com/books?id=Gr6-pUJipLQC&pg=PA330
I am really mortified at the base ingratitude of Callendar. It presents human nature in a hideous form. It gives me concern, because I perceive that relief, which was afforded him on mere motives of charity, may be viewed under the aspect of employing him as a writer. When the Political Progress of Britain first appeared in this country, it was in a periodical publication called the Bee, where I saw it. I was speaking of it in terms of strong approbation to a friend in Philadelphia, when he asked me if I knew that the author was then in the city, a fugitive from prosecution on account of that work, and in want of employ for his subsistence. This was the first of my learning that Callendar was the author of the work. I considered him as a man of science fled from persecution, and assured my friend of my readiness to do whatever could serve him. It was long after this before I saw him; probably not till 1798. He had, in the meantime, written a second part of the Political Progress, much inferior to the first, and his History of the United States. In 1798, I think, I was applied to by Mr. Lieper to contribute to his relief. I did so. In 1799, I think, S.T. Mason applied for him. I contributed again. He had, by this time, paid me two or three personal visits. When he fled in a panic from Philadelphia to General Mason's, he wrote to me that he was a fugitive in want of employ, wished to know if he could get into a counting-house or a school, in my neighborhood or in that of Richmond; that he had materials for a volume, and if he could get as much money as would buy the paper, the profit of the sale would be all his own. I availed myself of this pretext to cover a mere charity, by desiring him to consider me a subscriber for as many copies of his book as the money enclosed (fifty dollars) amounted to; but to send me two copies only, as the others might lay till called for. But I discouraged his coming into my neighborhood. His first writings here had fallen far short of his original Political Progress, and the scurrilities of his subsequent ones began evidently to do mischief. As to myself, no man wished more to see his pen stopped; but I considered him still as a proper object of benevolence. The succeeding year, he again wanted money to buy paper for another volume. I made his letter, as before, the occasion of giving him another fifty dollars. He considers these as proofs of my approbation of his writings, when they were mere charities, yielded under a strong conviction that he was injuring us by his writings. It is known to many that the sums given to him were such, and even smaller than I was in the habit of giving to others in distress, of the federal as well as the republican party, without attention to political principles. Soon after I was elected to the government, Callendar came on here, wishing to be made postmaster at Richmond. I knew him to be totally unfit for it; and however ready I was to aid him with my own charities, (and I then gave him fifty dollars) I did not think the public offices confided to me to give away as charities. He took it in mortal offence, and from that moment has been hauling off to his former enemies, the federalists. Besides the letter I wrote him in answer to the one from General Mason's, I wrote him another, containing answers to two questions he addressed to me. 1. Whether Mr. Jay received salary as Chief Justice and Envoy at the same time; and 2, something relative to the expenses of an embassy to Constantinople. I think these were the only letters I ever wrote him in answer to volumes he was perpetually writing to me. This is the true state of what has passed between him and me. I do not know that it can be used without committing me in controversy, as it were, with one too little respected by the public to merit that notice. I leave to your judgment what use can be made of these facts. Perhaps it will be better judged of, when we see what use the tories will endeavor to make of their new friend.

37) Letter to Robert Livingston, October 10, 1802 (about Callender and Hemings)
http://books.google.com/books?id=qDhLAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA447
You will have seen by our newspapers, that with the aid of a lying renegado from republicanism, the federalists have opened all their sluices of calumny. They say we lied them out of power, and openly avow they will do the same by us. But it was not lies or arguments on our part which dethroned them, but their own foolish acts, sedition laws, alien laws, taxes, extravagances and heresies. Porcupine, their friend, wrote them down. Callendar, their new recruit, will do the same. Every decent man among them revolts at his filth.

38) Letter to Martha Jefferson Randolph, July 2, 1802
Betts, Edwin Morris, and James Adam Bear, Jr., eds. The Family Letters of Thomas Jefferson. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1966. 231.
Squire's house would be a good place for the nail boys, should they have it [measles], and Betty Hemings's for Bet's or Sally's [Sally Hemings] children.

39) Letter to James Monroe, June 2, 1802
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mtj:@field%28DOCID+@lit%28tj090175%29%29
I observe that the resolution of the legislature of Virginia of Jan. 23. in desiring us to look out for some proper place to which insurgent negroes may be sent, expresses a preference of the continent of Africa, or some of the Spanish or Portuguese settlements in S. America: in which preference & especially as to the former I entirely concur. In looking towards Africa for our object, the British establishment at Sierra Leone at once presents itself. . . . The settlement is consequently composed of negroes formerly inhabitants of the Southern states of our union. Having asked a conversation on this subject with Mr. Thornton the British Chargé des affaires here, he informs me the establishment is prosperous; and he thinks there will be no objection on the part of the company to receive blacks from us, not of the character of common felons but guilty of insurgency only, provided they are sent as free persons, the principles of their institution admitting no slavery among them. I propose therefore, if it meets your approbation, to write to Mr. King our minister in London to propose this matter to the Sierra Leone company who are resident in London and if leave can be obtained to send black insurgents there, to enquire further whether the regulations of the place would permit us to carry or take there any mercantile objects which by affording some commercial profit might defray the expences of the transportation. . . . Should any mercantile operation be permitted, to be combined with the transportation of these persons, so as to lessen or to pay the expence, it might then become eligible to make that the asylum for the other description also, to wit the freed negroes and persons of colour. If not permitted, so distant a colonisation of them would perhaps be thought too expensive. But while we are ascertaining this point we may be making enquiry into what other suitable places may be found in the West Indies, or the Southern continent of America so as to have some other resource provided if the one most desireable should be unattainable. In looking out for another place we should prefer placing them with whatever power is least likely to become an enemy, and to use the knolege of these exiles in predatory expeditions against us.

40) Letter to Rufus King, July 13, 1802
http://books.google.com/books?id=lUkWAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA171&lpg=PA171&dq=Letter+to+Rufus+King,+July+13,+1802&source=bl&ots=SNTlg7YAwh&sig=loEM4m50erbhpnk0Ch6BUhUeHhY&hl=en&ei=swlQTeGSLM2RgQes78z5Dw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAA#v=onepa
The course of things in the neighboring islands of the West Indies appears to have given a considerable impulse to the minds of the slaves in different parts of the US. A great disposition to insurgency has manifested itself among them, which, in one instance, in the state of Virginia broke out into actual insurrection. This was easily suppressed: but many of those concerned,(between 20. & 30. I believe) fell victim to the law. So extensive an execution could not but excite sensibility in the public mind, and beget a regret that the laws had not provided, for such cases, some alternative, combining more mildness with equal efficacy. The legislature of the state, at a subsequent meeting, took the subject into consideration, and have communicated to me through the Governor of the state their wish that some place could be provided, out of the limits of the US. to which slaves guilty of insurgency might be transported; and they have particularly looked to Africa as offering the most desirable receptacle. We might, for this purpose, enter into negotiations with the natives, on some part of the coast, to obtain a settlement, and, by establishing an African company, combine with it commercial operations, which might not only reimburse expences but procure profit also. But there being already such an establishment on that coast by the English Sierra Leone company, made for the express purpose of colonising civilized blacks to that country, it would seem better, by incorporating our emigrants with theirs, to make one strong, rather than two weak colonies. This would be the more desireable because the blacks settled at Sierra Leone, having chiefly gone from these states would often receive, among those we should send, their acquaintances and relations. The object of this letter therefore is to ask the favor of you to enter into conference with such persons private & public as would be necessary to give us permission to send thither the persons under contemplation. It is material to observe that they are not felons, or common malefactors but persons guilty of what the safety of society, under actual circumstances, obliges us to treat as a crime, but which their feelings may represent in a far different shape. They are such as will be a valuable acquisition to the settlement already existing there, and well calculated to cooperate in the plan of civilisation.

41) Letter to James Monroe, July 17, 1802
http://books.google.com/books?id=Gr6-pUJipLQC&pg=PA333
I shall inclose you a paper, which shows the Tories mean to pervert these charities to Callender as much as they can. They will probably first represent me as the patron and support of the Prospect before Us, and other things of Callender's; and then picking out all the scurrilities of the author against General Washington, Mr. Adams, and others, impute them to me. I, as well as most other Republicans who were in the way of doing it, contributed what I could afford to the support of the Republican papers and printers, paid sums of money for the Bee, the Albany Register, etc., when they were staggering under the sedition law; contributed to the fines of Callender himself, of Holt, Brown, and others, suffering under that law. I discharged, when I came into office, such as were under the persecution of our enemies, without instituting any prosecutions in retaliation. They may, therefore, with the same justice, impute to me, or to every Republican contributor, everything which was ever published in those papers or by those persons.

42) Letter to Mary Jefferson Eppes, July 2, 1802
Betts, Edwin Morris, and James Adam Bear, Jr., eds. The Family Letters of Thomas Jefferson. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1966. 232.
I have not yet heard of the disease [measles] having got to Monticello. . . . it cannot have failed to have gone there immediately; and as there are no young children there but Bet's and Sally's [Sally Hemings], and the disease is communicable before a person knows they have it, I have no doubt those children have past through it.

43) Letter to Thomas Mann Randolph, June 8, 1803
Jefferson, Thomas, and Edwin M. Betts. Thomas Jefferson's Farm Book: With Commentary and Relevant Extracts from Other Writings. Princeton: published for the American Philosophical Society by Princeton University Press, 1953. 19.
Should Brown recover so that the law shall inflict no punishment on Cary, it will be necessary for me to make an example of him in terrorem to others, in order to maintain the police so rigorously necessary among the nail boys. There are generally negro purchasers from Georgia passing about the state, to one of whom I would rather he [slave Cary] should be sold than to any other person. I should regard price but little in comparison with so distant an exile of him as to cut him off compleatly [sic] from ever again being heard of. I have written this to Mr. Lilly and will thank you to advise and aid him in procuring a sale. In the meantime let him remain in jail at my expence, & under orders not to permit him to see or speak to any person what ever.

44) Letter to Christopher Ellery, May 19, 1803
http://books.google.com/books?id=ilE8AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA231&dq=Letter+to+Christopher+Ellery,+May+19,+1803&hl=en&ei=WCZlTbzWF4XfgQfj782NBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Letter%20to%20Christopher%20Ellery%2C%20May%2019%2C%201
I have lately received a letter from Ingraham, who is in prison under a ca. sa. On a judgment of 14,000 dollars & coats, one moiety (I presume) to the U.S. for having been the master of a vessel which brought from Africa a cargo of the natives of that country to be sold in slavery. He petitions for a pardon, as does his wife on behalf of herself, her children & her his mother. His situation, as far as respects himself, merits no commeriseration: that of his wife, children & mother, suffering for want of his aid, does: so also does the condition of the unhappy human beings whom he forcibly brought away from their native country, & whose wives, children & parents are now suffering for want of their aid & comfort. Between those two sets of suffering beings whom his crimes have placed in that condition, who we are to apportion our commiseration.

45) Letter to William A. Burwell, January 28, 1805
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015005705861;page=root;view=image;size=100;seq=372;num=340
I have long since given up the expectation of any early provision for the extinguishment of slavery among us. There are many virtuous men who would make any sacrifice to affect it, many equally virtuous who persuade themselves either that the thing is not wrong, or that it cannot be remedied, and very many with whom interest is morality. The older we grow, the larger we are disposed to believe the last party to be. But interest is really going over to the side of morality. The value of the slave is every day lessening; his burden on his master daily increasing. Interest is therefore preparing the disposition to be just; and this will be goaded from time to time by the insurrectionary spirit of the slaves. This is easily quelled in it's first efforts; but from being local it will become general, and whenever it does it will rise more formidable after every defeat, until we shall be forced , after dreadful scenes & sufferings to release them in their own way, which, without such sufferings we might now model after out own convenience.

46) Letter to George Logan, May 11, 1805
http://books.google.com/books?id=q0Fm3ZRT-tEC&pg=PA107&lpg=PA107&dq=Letter+to+George+Logan,+May+11,+1805&source=bl&ots=OEnEwU48z5&sig=rBws2ja1VoORogFgRrYEBsma7Os&hl=en&ei=6hFQTemyI9GtgQei2604&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAA#v=onepag
The cause in which he [Thomas Brannagan, author of an anti-slavery poem] embarks is so holy, the sentiments he expresses in his letter so friendly that it is highly painful to me to hesitate on a compliance which appears so small. But that is not its true character, and it would be injurious even to his views, for me to commit myself on paper by answering his letter. I have most carefully avoided every public act or manifestation on that subject. Should an occasion ever occur in which I can interpose with decisive effect, I shall certainly know and do my duty with promptitude and zeal. But in the meantime it would only be disarming myself of influence to be taking small means. The subscription to a book on this subject is one of those little irritating measures, which, without advancing its end at all, would, by lessening the confidence and good will of a description of friends composing a large body, only lessen my powers of doing them good in the other great relations in which I stand to the publick. Yet I cannot be easy in not answering Mr. Brannagan's letter, unless he can be made sensible that it is better I should not answer it; and I do not know how to effect this, unless you would have the goodness, the first time you go to Philadelphia to see him and to enter into an explanation with him.

47) Letter to Daniel Bradley, October 6, 1805
Jefferson, Thomas, and Edwin M. Betts. Thomas Jefferson's Farm Book: With Commentary and Relevant Extracts from Other Writings. Princeton: published for the American Philosophical Society by Princeton University Press, 1953. 20-21.
I was yesterday informed that you had in custody in the jail at Fairfax a negro man of mine who ran away from my estate in Albemarle county 3. or 4. weeks ago. he is about 20. years of age, very stout, is a nailer by trade &called Jame Hubbard. my informant says he confessed at once the truth of his case, that he had three passes which he said had been given him by the son of mr Lilly my manager. mr George Swink who gives me this information, & goes about the middle of this month on a visit to Albemarle, agrees to take this man with him when called for & in the meantime to keep him in jail. Your bill for fees, whenever you shall be so good as to send it to me by post, shall be remitted through the same channel. it would be important for me to receive the passes immediately because mr Lilly sets out on Thursday for Kentucky, & if he can get the passes into his hands before he goes I am sure he will probe the forgery to the bottom. it is chiefly to obtain them by remain of the bearer that I send him express, and shall thank you to send them as our post goes off tomorrow.

48) Letter to John Jordan, December 21, 1805
Jefferson, Thomas, and Edwin M. Betts. Thomas Jefferson's Farm Book: With Commentary and Relevant Extracts from Other Writings. Princeton: published for the American Philosophical Society by Princeton University Press, 1953. 21-22.
Being now endeavoring to purchase young & able negro men for my own works, it is exactly counter to these views to sell Brown to you as proposed in your letter. However always willing to indulge connections seriously formed by those people [that is, to have slave husbands and wives living together], where it can be done reasonably, I shall content, however reluctantly, to sell him to you. I should be glad to get such men equal to him in age, ability, & character, without any qualification to a trade, for 500. D. each, and think 100. D. in addition to this quite little enough for his trade. For 600. D. therefore (if he desires it, & not else) I may agree to part with him, and to yield reasonable accommodation as to the times of paiment.

49) Sixth Annual Message to Congress (1806)
http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefAddr.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=8&division=div1
I congratulate you, fellow-citizens [this is the president's annual message, now called the State of the Union Address], on the approach of the period at which you may interpose your authority constitutionally, to withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights which have been so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the morality, the reputation, and the best interests of our country, have long been eager to proscribe. Although no law you may pass can take prohibitory effect till the first day of the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, yet the intervening period is not too long to prevent, by timely notice, expeditions which cannot be completed before that day.

50) Letter to Joseph Daugherty, July 31, 1806
http://books.google.com/books?id=NlRgvqWHc8oC&pg=RA1-PA22&lpg=RA1-PA22&dq=Letter+to+Joseph+Daugherty,+July+31,+1806&source=bl&ots=FotbshqEt3&sig=0rXYHAZa_NVz7ba_27edIO2mvjY&hl=en&ei=kRJQTbXFIpOcgQeA_4DXDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBkQ6A
In the first place say not a word on the subject of this letter but not to mr Perry, the person who delivers it to you. he comes in pursuit of a young mulatto man, called Joe, 26. years of age, who ran away from here the night of the 29th. Inst. Without the least word of difference with any body, & indeed having never in his life received a blow from anyone. he has been about 12. years working at the blacksmith's trade. we know he has taken the road toward Washington, & probably will be there before the bearer, he may possibly trump up some story to be taken care of at the President's house till he can make up his mind which way to go, or perhaps he may make himself known to Edy only, as he was formerly connected with her. I must beg of you to use all possible diligence in searching for him in Washington or Georgetown, and if you can find him, have aid with you to take him as he is strong & resolute ; & have him delivered to mr Perry. as the latter is a stranger, & would not know how to seek for him, I have advised him to take quarters where you can see him often, but to keep within doors himself, lest he should be seen by the runaway.

51) Letter to Randolph Lewis, April 23, 1807
Jefferson, Thomas, and Edwin M. Betts. Thomas Jefferson's Farm Book: With Commentary and Relevant Extracts from Other Writings. Princeton: published for the American Philosophical Society by Princeton University Press, 1953. 26.
Nobody feels more strongly than I do the desire to make all practicable sacrifices to keep man & wife together who have imprudently married out of their respective families, & I had accordingly told Moses that if it should be your pleasure to sell his wife personally, I would buy her when I could with convince: for I assure you that nobody is less able to make purchases than myself, or more pressed for money, or time for its payment. The epoch of your departure will find me illy able meet any considerable new engagement. But if you will be so good as to say to me in one word, what is the lowest sum you will take for the women & her children, I will in like manner say in one word, yea or nay.

52) To Messrs. Thomas, Ellicot, and Others (1807)
http://books.google.com/books?id=QzRLAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA118&lpg=PA118&dq=To+Messrs.+Thomas,+Ellicot,+and+Others+%281807%29&source=bl&ots=uabUr84oUN&sig=kV1PXmsn3Md0IbkuQx4L0Uewh9Y&hl=en&ei=ABNQTcDrPNPdgQe_zYk3&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBYQ6A
Whatever may have been the circumstances which influenced our forefathers to permit the introduction of personal bondage into any part of these states, and to participate in the wrongs committed on an unoffending quarter of the globe, we may rejoice that such circumstances, and such a sense of them, exist no longer. It is honorable to the nation at large that their legislature availed themselves of the first practicable moment for arresting the progress of this great moral evil and political error; and I sincerely pray with you, my friends, that all the members of the human family may, in the time prescribed by the Father of us all, find themselves securely established in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and happiness.

53) Letter to Henri Gregoire, February 25, 1809
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=460
Be assured that no person living wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a complete refutation of the doubts I have myself entertained and expressed on the grade of understanding allotted to them by nature, and to find that in this respect they are on a par with ourselves. My doubts were the result of personal observation on the limited sphere of my own State, where the opportunities for the development of their genius were not favorable, and those of exercising it still less so. I expressed them therefore with great hesitation; but whatever be their degree of talent it is no measure of their rights. . . . On this subject they are gaining daily in the opinions of nations, and hopeful advances are making towards their re-establishment on an equal footing with the other colors of the human family.

54) Letter to Clement Caine, September 16, 1811
http://books.google.com/books?id=marTAAAAMAAJ&pg=PR64&lpg=PR64&dq=Letter+to+Clement+Caine,+September+16,+1811&source=bl&ots=koMlCzMf_Z&sig=p4UH_Zd1fHEphbWr-EuArBllFPo&hl=en&ei=UhNQTeyRJYaCgAf1vfnaDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAA#v
The retort on European censors, of their own practices on the liberties of man, the inculcation on the master of the moral duties which he owes to the slave, in return for the benefit of his service, that is to say, of food clothing, care in sickness, and maintenance under age and disability, so as to make him in fact as comfortable and more secure than the laboring man in most parts of the world; and the idea suggested of substituting free whites in all household occupations and manual arts, thus lessening the call for the other kind of labor, while it would increase the public security, give great merit to the work, and will, I have no doubt, produce wholesome impressions.

55) Letter to Reuben Perry, April 16, 1812
Jefferson, Thomas, and Edwin M. Betts. Thomas Jefferson's Farm Book: With Commentary and Relevant Extracts from Other Writings. Princeton: published for the American Philosophical Society by Princeton University Press, 1953. 35.
In reference to a recaptured runaway slave by the name of James Hubbard: "I had him severely flogged in the presence of his old companions, and committed to jail where he now awaits your arrival. the course he has been in, and all circumstances convince me he will never again serve any man as a slave, the moment he is out of jail and his irons off he will be off himself. It will therefore unquestionably be best for you to sell him."

56) Letter to Abbe Rochon, December 14, 1813
http://books.google.com/books?id=eX_A2Fk3-GwC&pg=PA54&dq=Letter+to+Abbe+Rochon,+December+14,+1813&hl=en&sa=X&ei=S-iiT534L-PV0QHG39TEBg&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Letter%20to%20Abbe%20Rochon%2C%20December%2014%2C%201813&f=false
I am glad to learn that you are shewing us the way to supply ourselves with some of the most necessary tropical productions, and that the bette-rave, which we can all raise, promises to supplant the cane particularly, and to silence the demand for the inhuman species of labour employed in its culture and manipulation.

57) Letter to Jeremiah Goodman, July 26, 1813
Jefferson, Thomas, and Edwin M. Betts. Thomas Jefferson's Farm Book: With Commentary and Relevant Extracts from Other Writings. Princeton: published for the American Philosophical Society by Princeton University Press, 1953. 36.
Hercules arrived here on the 22d. having been discharged from Buckingham jail on the 20th where he had been confined as a runaway. The folly he has committed certainly justifies further punishment, and he goes in expectation of receiving it, for I have assured him that I leave it to yourself altogether and made him sensible that he deserves & ought to receive it. I believe however it is his first folly in this way, and considering his imprisonment as a punishment in part, I refer it to yourself whether it may not be passed over this time, only letting him receive the pardon as from yourself alone, and not by my interference, for this is what I would have none of them to suppose.

58) Letter to Thomas Cooper, September 10, 1814
http://books.google.com/books?id=jrSgJGp-B64C&pg=RA1-PR20&lpg=RA1-PR20&dq=Letter+to+Thomas+Cooper,+September+10,+1814&source=bl&ots=JLXCxTLJyE&sig=lRUoJYNNhsgPPgIYE25Jfyw53yI&hl=en&ei=cxRQTZ39FtPdgQe_zYk3&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CB8Q6A
Nor in the class of laborers do I mean to withhold from the comparison that portion whose color has condemned them, in certain parts of our Union, to a subjection to the will of others. Even these are better fed in these States, warmer clothed, and labor less than the journeymen or day-laborers of England. They have the comfort, too, of numerous families, in the midst of whom they live without want, or fear of it; a solace which few of the laborers of England possess. They are subject, it is true, to bodily coercion; but are not the hundreds of thousands of British soldiers and seamen subject to the same, without seeing, at the end of their career, when age and accident shall have rendered them unequal to labor, the certainty, which the other has, that he will never want? . . . But do not mistake me. I am not advocating slavery. I am not justifying the wrongs we have committed on a foreign people, by the example of another nation committing equal wrongs on their own subjects. On the contrary, there is nothing I would not sacrifice to a practicable plan of abolishing every vestige of this moral and political depravity.

59) Letter to Edward Coles, August 25, 1814
http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/thomas-jefferson/letters-of-thomas-jefferson/jefl232.php
Mine on the subject of slavery of negroes have long since been in possession of the public, and time has only served to give them stronger root. The love of justice and the love of country plead equally the cause of these people, and it is a moral reproach to us that they should have pleaded it so long in vain, and should have produced not a single effort, nay fear not much serious willingness to relieve them & ourselves from our present condition of moral & political reprobation. From those of the former generation who were in the fulness of age when I came into public life, which was while our controversy with England was on paper only, I soon saw that nothing was to be hoped. Nursed and educated in the daily habit of seeing the degraded condition, both bodily and mental, of those unfortunate beings, not reflecting that that degradation was very much the work of themselves & their fathers, few minds have yet doubted but that they were as legitimate subjects of property as their horses and cattle. The quiet and monotonous course of colonial life has been disturbed by no alarm, and little reflection on the value of liberty. And when alarm was taken at an enterprize on their own, it was not easy to carry them to the whole length of the principles which they invoked for themselves. In the first or second session of the Legislature after I became a member, drew to this subject the attention of Col. Bland, one of the oldest, ablest, & most respected members, and he undertook to move for certain moderate extensions of the protection of the laws to these people. I seconded his motion, and, as a younger member, was more spared in the debate; but he was denounced as an enemy of his country, & was treated with the grossest indecorum. From an early stage of our revolution other & more distant duties were assigned to me, so that from that time till my return from Europe in 1789, and I may say till I returned to reside at home in 1809, I had little opportunity of knowing the progress of public sentiment here on this subject. I had always hoped that the younger generation receiving their early impressions after the flame of liberty had been kindled in every breast, & had become as it were the vital spirit of every American, that the generous temperament of youth, analogous to the motion of their blood, and above the suggestions of avarice, would have sympathized with oppression wherever found, and proved their love of liberty beyond their own share of it. But my intercourse with them, since my return has not been sufficient to ascertain that they had made towards this point the progress I had hoped. Your solitary but welcome voice is the first which has brought this sound to my ear; and I have considered the general silence which prevails on this subject as indicating an apathy unfavorable to every hope. Yet the hour of emancipation is advancing, in the march of time. It will come; and whether brought on by the generous energy of our own minds; or by the bloody process of St Domingo, excited and conducted by the power of our present enemy, if once stationed permanently within our Country, and offering asylum & arms to the oppressed, is a leaf of our history not yet turned over. As to the method by which this difficult work is to be effected, if permitted to be done by ourselves, I have seen no proposition so expedient on the whole, as that as emancipation of those born after a given day, and of their education and expatriation after a given age. This would give time for a gradual extinction of that species of labour & substitution of another, and lessen the severity of the shock which an operation so fundamental cannot fail to produce. For men probably of any color, but of this color we know, brought from their infancy without necessity for thought or forecast, are by their habits rendered as incapable as children of taking care of themselves, and are extinguished promptly wherever industry is necessary for raising young. In the mean time they are pests in society by their idleness, and the depredations to which this leads them. Their amalgamation with the other color produces a degradation to which no lover of his country, no lover of excellence in the human character can innocently consent. I am sensible of the partialities with which you have looked towards me as the person who should undertake this salutary but arduous work. But this, my dear sir, is like bidding old Priam to buckle the armour of Hector "trementibus aequo humeris et inutile ferruncingi." No, have overlived the generation with which mutual labors & perils begat mutual confidence and influence. This enterprise is for the young; for those who can follow it up, and bear it through to its consummation. It shall have all my prayers, & these are the only weapons of an old man. But in the mean time are you right in abandoning this property, and your country with it? I think not. My opinion has ever been that, until more can be done for them, we should endeavor, with those whom fortune has thrown on our hands, to feed and clothe them well, protect them from all ill usage, require such reasonable labor only as is performed voluntarily by freemen, & be led by no repugnancies to abdicate them, and our duties to them. The laws do not permit us to turn them loose, if that were for their good: and to commute them for other property is to commit them to those whose usage of them we cannot control. I hope then, my dear sir, you will reconcile yourself to your country and its unfortunate condition; that you will not lessen its stock of sound disposition by withdrawing your portion from the mass. That, on the contrary you will come forward in the public councils, become the missionary of this doctrine truly christian; insinuate & inculcate it softly but steadily, through the medium of writing and conversation; associate others in your labors, and when the phalanx is formed, bring on and press the proposition perseveringly until its accomplishment. It is an encouraging observation that no good measure was ever proposed, which, if duly pursued, failed to prevail in the end. We have proof of this in the history of the endeavors in the English parliament to suppress that very trade which brought this evil on us. And you will be supported by the religious precept, "be not weary in well-doing." That your success may be as speedy & complete, as it will be of honorable & immortal consolation to yourself, I shall as fervently and sincerely pray as I assure you of my great friendship and respect.

60) Letter to Francis C. Gray , March 4, 1815
http://books.google.com/books?id=TPbrmB5nTGEC&pg=PA17&lpg=PA17&dq=What+Constitutes+a+Mulatto?+%281815%29&source=bl&ots=yAbaLO4qmh&sig=mCEquh2Lb6hRfqwd08j8IKUDMkU&hl=en&ei=Wb5eTcvQIYPGlQe9u9i0DA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAA#v=onep
You asked me in conversation, what constituted a mulatto by our law? And I believe I told you four crossings with the whites. I looked afterwards into our law, and found it to be in these words: "Every person other than a Negro, of whose grandfathers or grandmothers anyone shall have been a Negro, shall be deemed a mulatto, and so every such person who shall have one-fourth part or more of Negro blood, shall in like manner be deemed a mulatto". . . . The latter contains the true canon, which is that one-fourth of Negro blood mixed with any portion of white, constitutes a mulatto.

61) Letter to David Barrow, May 1, 1815
http://www.libraries.uc.edu/libraries/arb/exhibits/archivesmonth2009/jefferson_to_barrow.html
The particular subject of the pamphlet you enclosed me was one of early and tender consideration with me, and had I continued in the councils of my own State, it should never have been out of sight. The only practicable plan I could ever devise is stated under the 14th quaere of the Notes on Virginia, and it is still the one most sound in my judgment. Unhappily it is a case for which both parties require long and difficult preparation. The mind of the master is to be apprized by reflection, and strengthened by the energies of conscience, against the obstacles of self interest to an acquiescence in the rights of others; that of the slave is to be prepared by instruction and habit for self government, and for the honest pursuits of industry and social duty. Both of these courses of preparation require time, and the former must precede the latter. Some progress is sensibly made in it; yet not so much as I had hoped and expected. But it will yield in time to temperate and steady pursuit, to the enlargement of the human mind, and its advancement in science. We are not in a world ungoverned by the laws and the power of a superior agent. Our efforts are in his hand, and directed by it; and he will give them their effect in his own time. Where the disease is most deeply seated, there it will be slowest in eradication. In the northern States it was merely superficial, and easily corrected. In the southern it is incorporated with the whole system, and requires time, patience, and perseverance in the curative process. That it may finally be effected, and its progress hastened, will be the last and fondest prayer of him who now salutes you with respect and consideration.

62) Letter to Thomas Humphreys, February 8, 1817
http://books.google.com/books?id=EqvTAAAAMAAJ&pg=PR14&lpg=PR14&dq=Letter+to+Thomas+Humphreys,+February+8,+1817&source=bl&ots=BoQLmRDaaa&sig=AxggKF8fUguDHd8gEmxrKmzL56Q&hl=en&ei=4hVQTa_UIInEgAeBnYAx&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBcQ6AEwAA#v=
I concur entirely in your leading principals of gradual emancipation, of establishment on the coast of Africa, and the patronage of our nation until the emigrants shall be able to protect themselves. The subordinate details might be easily arranged. But the bare proposition of purchase by the United States generally, would excite indignation in all the States north of Maryland. The sacrifice must fall on the States alone which hold them; and the difficult question will be how to lessen this so as to reconcile our fellow citizens to it. Personally I am ready and desirous to make any sacrifice which shall ensure their gradual but complete retirement from the State, and effectually, at the same time, establish them elsewhere in freedom and safety. But I have not perceived the growth of this disposition in the rising generation, of which I once had sanguine hopes. No symptoms inform me that it will take place in my day. I leave it, therefore, to time, and not at all without hope that the day will come, equally desirable and welcome to us as to them. Perhaps the proposition now on the carpet at Washington to provide an establishment on the coast of Africa for voluntary emigrants of people of color, may be the corner stone of this future edifice. Praying for its completion as early as may promote the good of all, I salute you with great esteem and respect.

63) Letter to Joel Yancey, January 17, 1819
Jefferson, Thomas, and Edwin M. Betts. Thomas Jefferson's Farm Book: With Commentary and Relevant Extracts from Other Writings. Princeton: published for the American Philosophical Society by Princeton University Press, 1953. 42-44.
The mortality among our negroes is till more serious as involving more as well as interested considerations. They are well fed, and well clothed, & I have had no reason to believe that any overseer, since Griffin's time, has over worked them. Accordingly the death's among the grown ones seems ascribable to natural causes. But the loss of 5. Little ones in 4 years induces me to fear that the overseers do not permit the women to devote as much time as is necessary to the care of their children; that they view their labor as the 1st object and the raising their child but as secondary. I consider the labor of a breeding woman as no object, and that a child raised every 2. Years is of more profit than the crop of the best laboring man. In this, as in all other cases, providence has made our interests & our duties coincide perfectly. women too are destroyed by exposure to wet at certain periodical indispositions to which nature has subjected them. With respect therefore to our women & their children I must pray you to inculate upon the overseers that it is not their labor, but their increase which is the first consideration with us."

Yancey to Jefferson: they charge Hercules with Poisoning, and the cause of all deaths here for the last 12 months, he certainly has been intermate with a negro Doct. And have got physic from him. The People conceal it from me, till the other day as soon as I was inform of it I had them both taken before Mr. Clay. The evidence in his opinion was not strong enough to send them to jail but I am satisfied he has done a great deal of mischief, and ought to be hung, more of this when you come up, which I hope will be as soon as possible for I am in daily expectation of mischief among them.

64) Letter to John W. Eppes, August 25, 1820
I know no error more consuming to an estate than that of stocking farms with men almost exclusively. I consider a woman who brings a child every two years as more profitable than the best man of the farm what she produces is an addition to the capital, while his labors disappear in mere consumption.

65) Letter to John Holmes, April 22, 1820
http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefLett.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=258&division=div1
I thank you, dear Sir, for the copy you have been so kind as to send me of the letter to your constituents on the Missouri question. It is a perfect justification to them. I had for a long time ceased to read newspapers, or pay any attention to public affairs, confident they were in good hands, and content to be a passenger in our bark to the shore from which I am not distant. But this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed, indeed, for the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper. I can say, with conscious truth, that there is not a man on earth who would sacrifice more than I would to relieve us from this heavy reproach, in any practicable way. The cession of that kind of property, for so it is misnamed, is a bagatelle which would not cost me a second thought, if, in that way, a general emancipation and expatriation could be effected; and gradually, and with due sacrifices, I think it might be. But as it is, we have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other. Of one thing I am certain, that as the passage of slaves from one State to another, would not make a slave of a single human being who would not be so without it, so their diffusion over a greater surface would make them individually happier, and proportionally facilitate the accomplishment of their emancipation, by dividing the burthen on a greater number of coadjutors. An abstinence too, from this act of power, would remove the jealousy excited by the undertaking of Congress to regulate the condition of the different descriptions of men composing a State. This certainly is the exclusive right of every State, which nothing in the constitution has taken from them and given to the General Government. Could Congress, for example, say, that the non-freemen of Connecticut shall be freemen, or that they shall not emigrate into any other State?

I regret that I am now to die in the belief, that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776, to acquire self-government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be, that I live not to weep over it. If they would but dispassionately weigh the blessings they will throw away, against an abstract principle more likely to be effected by union than by scission, they would pause before they would perpetrate this act of suicide on themselves, and of treason against the hopes of the world. To yourself, as the faithful advocate of the Union, I tender the offering of my high esteem and respect.

66) Letter to Albert Gallatin, December 26, 1820
http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefLett.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=262&division=div1
But nothing has ever presented so threatening an aspect as what is called the Missouri question. The Federalists compleatly put down, and despairing of ever rising again under the old division of whig and tory, devised a new one, of slave-holding, & non-slave-holding states, which, while it had a semblance of being Moral, was at the same time Geographical, and calculated to give them ascendancy by debauching their old opponents to a coalition with them. Moral the question certainly is not, because the removal of slaves from one state to another, no more than their removal from one country to another, would never make a slave of one human being who would not be so without it. Indeed if there were any morality in the question it is on the other side; because by spreading them over a larger surface, their happiness would be increased, & the burthen of their future liberation lightened by bringing a greater number of shoulders under it.

Should this scission take place, one of it's most deplorable consequences would be it's discouragement of the efforts of the European nations in the regeneration of their oppressive and Cannibal governments.

Amidst this prospect of evil, I am glad to see one good effect. It has brought the necessity of some plan of general emancipation & deportation more home to the minds of our people than it has ever been before.

67) Letter to Marquis de Lafayette, December 26, 1820
http://books.google.com/books?id=rlc8AAAAIAAJ&pg=PR12&lpg=PR12&dq=Letter+to+Marquis+de+Lafayette,+December+26,+1820&source=bl&ots=0cjVjpcDOW&sig=koZKx3F5fJbo69FQUCERuv828KY&hl=en&ei=BRdQTcDGFIfKgQfq-vgH&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CB4Q6AEw
All know that permitting the slaves of the south to spread into the west will not add one being to that unfortunate condition, that it will increase the happiness of those existing, and by spreading them over a larger surface, will dilute the evil everywhere, and facilitate the means of getting finally rid of it, an event more anxiously wished by those on whom it presses than by the noisy pretenders to exclusive humanity. In the mean time it is a ladder for rivals climbing to power.

68) Letter to John Adams, January 22, 1821
http://books.google.com/books?id=jlI8AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA185&lpg=PA185&dq=Letter+to+John+Adams,+January+22,+1821&source=bl&ots=wcqv0HWT6q&sig=3Bc4XJ-moqAcqIpGn8pltaLHzyQ&hl=en&ei=aRdQTey2PInPgAeruIBJ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAA#v=onep
The real question, as seen in the states afflicted with this unfortunate population, is Are our slaves to be presented with freedom and a dagger? For if Congress has a power to regulate the conditions of the inhabitants of the states, within the states, it will be but another exercise of that power to declare that all shall be free. Are we then to see again Athenian and Lacedemonian confederacies? To wage another Peloponnesian war to settle the ascendancy between them? Or is this the tocsin of merely a servile war? That remains to be seen: but not I hope by you or me. Surely they will parley awhile, and give us time to get out of the way. What a Bedlamite is man!

69) Autobiography (1821)
http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefAuto.xml&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=4&division=div2
Dr. [John] Witherspoon was of opinion that the value of lands & houses was the best estimate of the wealth of a nation, and that it was practicable to obtain such a valuation. This is the true barometer of wealth. The one now proposed is imperfect in itself, and unequal between the States. It has been objected that negroes eat the food of freemen & therefore should be taxed. Horses also eat the food of freemen; therefore they also should be taxed. It has been said too that in carrying slaves into the estimate of the taxes the state is to pay, we do no more than those states themselves do, who alwais take slaves into the estimate of the taxes the individual is to pay. But the cases are not parallel. In the Southern colonies slaves pervade the whole colony; but they do not pervade the whole continent. That as to the original resolution of Congress to proportion the quotas according to the souls, it was temporary only, & related to the monies heretofore emitted: whereas we are now entering into a new compact, and therefore stand on original ground.

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 at 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 than that these people are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them. 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. We should in vain look for an example in the Spanish deportation or deletion of the Moors. This precedent would fall far short of our case.

70) Letter to William Short, September 8, 1823
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=Jef8Gri.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=109&division=div1
but, at the age of 80, I seek quiet and abjure contention. I read but a single newspaper, Ritchie's Enquirer, the best that is published or ever has been published in America. you should read it also to keep yourself aufait of your own state; for we still claim you as belonging to us. a city life offers you indeed more means of dissipating time, but more frequent also, and more painful objects of vice and wretchedness. New York, for example, like London, seems to be a Cloacina of all the depravities of human nature. Philadelphia doubtless has it's share. here on the contrary crime is scarcely heard of, breaches of order rare, and our societies, if not refined, are rational moral and affectionate at least. our only blot is becoming less offensive by the great improvement in the condition and civilization of that race, who can now more advantageously compare their situation with that of the laborers of Europe. still it is a hideous blot, as well form the heteromorph peculiarities of the race, as that, with them, physical compulsion to action must be substituted for the moral necessity which constrains the free laborer to work equally hard. we feel & deplore it morally and politically, and we look without entire despair to some redeeming means not yet specifically foreseen. I am happy in believing that the conviction of the necessity of removing this evil gains ground with time. their emigration to the Westward lightens the difficulty by dividing it and renders it more practical on the whole. and the neighborhood of a government of their colour promises a more accessible asylum than that from whence they came. ever and affectionately yours.

71) Letter to Jared Sparks, February 4, 1824
http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefLett.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=274&division=div1
The article on the African colonization of the people of color, to which you invite my attention, I have read with great consideration. It is, indeed, a fine one, and will do much good. I learn from it more, too, than I had before known, of the degree of success and promise of that colony.

In the disposition of these unfortunate people, there are two rational objects to be distinctly kept in view. First. The establishment of a colony on the coast of Africa, which may introduce among the aborigines the arts of cultivated life, and the blessings of civilization and science. By doing this, we may make to them some retribution for the long course of injuries we have been committing on their population. And considering that these blessings will descend to the "nati natorum, et qui nascentur ab illis," we shall in the long run have rendered them perhaps more good than evil. To fulfil this object, the colony of Sierra Leone promises well, and that of Mesurado adds to our prospect of success. Under this view, the colonization society is to be considered as a missionary society, having in view, however, objects more humane, more justifiable, and less aggressive on the peace of other nations, than the others of that appellation.

The subject object, and the most interesting to us, as coming home to our physical and moral characters, to our happiness and safety, is to provide an asylum to which we can, by degrees, send the whole of that population from among us, and establish them under our patronage and protection, as a separate, free and independent people, in some country and climate friendly to human life and happiness. That any place on the coast of Africa should answer the latter purpose, I have ever deemed entirely impossible. And without repeating the other arguments which have been urged by others, I will appeal to figures only, which admit no controversy. I shall speak in round numbers, not absolutely accurate, yet not so wide from truth as to vary the result materially. There are in the United States a million and a half of people of color in slavery. To send off the whole of these at once, nobody conceives to be practicable for us, or expedient for them. Let us take twenty-five years for its accomplishment, within which time they will be doubled. Their estimated value as property, in the first place, (for actual property has been lawfully vested in that form, and who can lawfully take it from the possessors?) at an average of two hundred dollars each, young and old, would amount to six hundred millions of dollars, which must be paid or lost by somebody. To this, add the cost of their transportation by land and sea to Mesurado, a year's provision of food and clothing, implements of husbandry and of their trades, which will amount to three hundred millions more, making thirty-six millions of dollars a year for twenty-five years, with insurance of peace all that time, and it is impossible to look at the question a second time. I am aware that at the end of about sixteen years, a gradual detraction from this sum will commence, from the gradual diminution of breeders, and go on during the remaining nine years. Calculate this deduction, and it is still impossible to look at the enterprise a second time. I do not say this to induce an inference that the getting rid of them is forever impossible. For that is neither my opinion nor my hope. But only that it cannot be done in this way. There is, I think, a way in which it can be done; that is, by emancipating the after-born, leaving them, on due compensation, with their mothers, until their services are worth their maintenance, and then putting them to industrious occupations, until a proper age for deportation. This was the result of my reflections on the subject five and forty years ago, and I have never yet been able to conceive any other practicable plan. It was sketched in the Notes on Virginia, under the fourteenth query. The estimated value of the new-born infant is so low, (say twelve dollars and fifty cents,) that it would probably be yielded by the owner gratis, and would thus reduce the six hundred millions of dollars, the first head of expense, to thirty-seven millions and a half; leaving only the expense of nourishment while with the mother, and of transportation. And from what fund are these expenses to be furnished? Why not from that of the lands which have been ceded by the very States now needing this relief? And ceded on no consideration, for the most part, but that of the general good of the whole. These cessions already constitute one fourth of the States of the Union. It may be said that these lands have been sold; are now the property of the citizens composing those States; and the money long ago received and expended. But an equivalent of lands in the territories since acquired, may be appropriated to that object, or so much, at least, as may be sufficient; and the object, although more important to the slave States, is highly so to the others also, if they were serious in their arguments on the Missouri question. The slave States, too, if more interested, would also contribute more by their gratuitous liberation, thus taking on themselves alone the first and heaviest item of expense.

In the plan sketched in the Notes on Virginia, no particular place of asylum was specified; because it was thought possible, that in the revolutionary state of America, then commenced, events might open to us some one within practicable distance. This has now happened. St. Domingo has become independent, and with a population of that color only; and if the public papers are to be credited, their Chief offers to pay their passage, to receive them as free citizens, and to provide them employment. This leaves, then, for the general confederacy, no expense but of nurture with the mother a few years, and would call, of course, for a very moderate appropriation of the vacant lands. Suppose the whole annual increase to be of sixty thousand effective births, fifty vessels, of four hundred tons burthen each, constantly employed in that short run, would carry off the increase of every year, and the old stock would die off in the ordinary course of nature, lessening from the commencement until its final disappearance. In this way no violation of private right is proposed. Voluntary surrenders would probably come in as fast as the means to be provided for their care would be competent to it. Looking at my own State only, and I presume not to speak for the others, I verily believe that this surrender of property would not amount to more, annually, than half our present direct taxes, to be continued fully about twenty or twenty-five years, and then gradually diminishing for as many more until their final extinction; and even this half tax would not be paid in cash, but by the delivery of an object which they have never yet known or counted as part of their property; and those not possessing the object will be called on for nothing. I do not go into all the details of the burthens and benefits of this operation. And who could estimate its blessed effects? I leave this to those who will live to see their accomplishment, and to enjoy a beatitude forbidden to my age. But I leave it with this admonition, to rise and be doing. A million and a half are within their control; but six millions, (which a majority of those now living will see them attain,) and one million of these fighting men, will say, "we will not go."

I am aware that this subject involves some constitutional scruples. But a liberal construction, justified by the object, may go far, and an amendment of the constitution, the whole length necessary. The separation of infants from their mothers, too, would produce some scruples of humanity. But this would be straining at a gnat, and swallowing a camel.

I am much pleased to see that you have taken up the subject of the duty on imported books. I hope a crusade will be kept up against it, until those in power shall become sensible of this stain on our legislation, and shall wipe it from their code, and from the remembrance of man, if possible.

I salute you with assurances of high respect and esteem.

72) Letter to Lydia Sigourney, July 18, 1824
http://books.google.com/books?id=pwSW8znTukAC&pg=PA431&dq=Letter+to+Lydia+Sigourney,+July+18,+1824&hl=en&ei=gyxlTdqnFcXEgQfNhIGeBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false
I wish that [plight of Indians] was the only blot in our moral history, and that no other race had higher charges to bring against us. I am not apt to despair; yet I see not how we are to disengage ourselves from that deplorable entanglement, we have the wolf by the ears and feel the danger of either holding or letting him loose. I shall not live to see it but those who come after us will be wiser than we are, for light is spreading and man improving. to that advancement I look, and to the dispensations of an all-wise and all-powerful providence to devise the means of effecting what is right.

73) Letter to Ellen Wayles Randolph Coolidge, August 27, 1825
http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=Jef10Gr.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=141&division=div1
One fatal stain deforms what nature had bestowed on us of her fairest gifts.

74) Letter to William Short, January 18, 1826
Ford, Paul Leicester, ed. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson. Vol. 12. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1892-99. 434.
On the subject of emancipation I have ceased to think because not to be a work of my day. The plan of converting the blacks into Serfs would certainly be better than keeping them in their present condition, but I consider that of expatriation to the governments of the W.I. of their own colour as entirely practicable, and greatly preferable to the mixture of colour here. To this I have great aversion; but I repeat my abandonment of the subject.

75) Letter to James Heaton, May 20, 1826
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefLett.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=284&division=div1
The subject of your letter of April 20, is one on which I do not permit myself to express an opinion, but when time, place, and occasion may give it some favorable effect. A good cause is often injured more by ill-timed efforts of its friends than by the arguments of its enemies. Persuasion, perseverance, and patience are the best advocates on questions depending on the will of others. The revolution in public opinion which this cause requires, is not to be expected in a day, or perhaps in an age; but time, which outlives all things, will outlive this evil also. My sentiments have been forty years before the public. Had I repeated them forty times, they would only have become the more stale and threadbare. Although I shall not live to see them consummated, they will not die with me; but living or dying, they will ever be in my most fervent prayer. This is written for yourself and not for the public, in compliance with your request of two lines of sentiment on the subject.

76) Testament (Jefferson's Will, 1826)
http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/last-will-and-testament
I give to my good affectionate and faithful servant Burwell his freedom and the sum of Three Hundred Dollars to buy necessaries to commence his trade of painter and glasier or to use otherwise as he pleases.

I give also to my good servant John Hemings and Joe Fossett their freedom at the end of one year after my death and to each of them respectively all the tools of their respective shops or callings: and it is my will that a comfortable log house be built for each of the three servants so emancipated on some part of my lands convenient to them with respect to their wives, and Charlottesville and the University, where they be mostly employed, and reasonably convenient to the interest of the proprietor of the lands; of which houses I give the use of one with a curtilage of an acre to each, during his life or personal occupation thereof.

I give also to John Hemings the services of his two apprentices, Madison and Eston Hemings, until their respective ages of twenty-one years, at which period respectively, I give them their freedom.

I humbly and earnestly request of the legislature of Virginia a confirmation of the bequest of freedom of these servants, with permission to remain in this state where their families and connections are, as an additional instance of the favor, of which I have received so many other manifestations, in the course of my life, and for which I now give them my last, solemn, and dutiful thanks.