Thomas Jefferson's views on slavery

Thomas Jefferson's views on slavery demonstrate the moral dilemma of an enlightened statesman of his era. Jefferson, who was himself a slave owner, believed that while slavery was immoral, gradual emancipation--with deportation of the freed slaves to some other territory--was the only possible solution. It was too impractical to free all the slaves, since there would be a shortage of laborers, and since Jefferson did not consider blacks socially or politically equal to whites, they could not be allowed to live among white people.

The problem of slavery and its material and moral flaws had bothered Thomas Jefferson's conscience for a long time. While he realized that complete abolition was impossible for the present time, he tried at least to prevent its increase. During colonial times he had turned against the British, in part, because the king vetoed Virginia's attempts to prohibit the further importation of slaves. Now that Virginia independent of Britain, Jefferson worked to promulgate laws that would prevent further importation of slaves from abroad and from other states as well (Schachner 153). He hoped that restrictions on importation would "...in some measure stop the increase of this great political and moral evil, while the minds of our citizen may be ripening for a complete emancipation of human nature." (Schachner 231).

Although Jefferson had favored the discontinuance of the slave trade before the Revolution and definitely proposed it as early as 1776,

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hat it was impractical to implement at the present time. It was deemed more important to defer the issue of slavery it reached the House in Virginia as a bill and then propose it as an amendment. Of course, nothing became of this scheme because as Jefferson explained later in his life, the people were not ready for it. Aside from the ethical reasons for being against slavery, Jefferson was against it because the rapid increase in the slave population made him apprehensive. He was afraid the blacks would soon outnumber the whites. He hoped, however, that the prohibition of any further importation would, in some measure, stop the increase of this "moral evil" until the citizens became accustomed to the idea of emancipation (Schachner 231). He never at any time considered the blacks as the possible political and social equals of the whites. Once they were free, Jefferson believed that the two races could not live side by side: . . . deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they had sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature had made; and many other circumstances will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions, which will probabl

Category: History - T