preview

Thomas Jefferson And Slavery Summary

Good Essays

Thomas Jefferson viewed African Americans as inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind. He wrote that maintaining slavery resembled holding "a wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go." Jefferson cherished the federal union, which launched his fears about the preservation of republican society in regard to African Americans, he feared that the world's first democratic experiment would be destroyed by slavery. Jefferson thought that the emancipation of slaves on American soil would result in a large-scale race war that would be as brutal and deadly as the slave revolt in Haiti in 1791. But he also believed that to keep slaves in bondage, with part of America in favor of abolition and part of America in favor of perpetuating slavery, could only result in a civil war that would destroy the union.
In 1778, Jefferson drafted a Virginia law that prohibited the importation of enslaved Africans. In 1784, he proposed an ordinance that would ban slavery in the Northwest territories. He advocated the same plan of gradual emancipation. First, the transatlantic slave trade would be abolished. Second, slave owners would "improve" slavery's most violent features, by bettering living conditions and moderating physical punishment. Third, all born into slavery after a certain date would be declared free, followed by total abolition. Like others of his day, he supported the removal of newly freed slaves from the United States. The unintended

Get Access