JBT, since you claim to know that Jefferson was pro slavery, please provide some evidence. I haven't seen any, but I hear that contemporary college professors like to throw that phrase around. If so, they must get their evidence somewhere....

-- KoFE (your@town.USSA), September 07, 2001

Answers

Massa Tom done sock it to me goooood!

-- (Sally Hemings@Monticello.quarters), September 07, 2001.

KoFE, Jefferson didn't free his slaves until after his death. If he was anti-slavery, he sure didn't walk the walk while he alive.

-- helen (love@you.KoFE), September 07, 2001.

Helen, it is my understanding that Jefferson worked to end the institution of slavery, and didn't want to turn his slaves out to be kidnapped by slavers.

A type of dilemna that people face who are convinced global warming is a problem, but continue to drive. You're damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

If somebody can provide a quote that shows him promoting slavery, I'd lke to see it.

-- KoFE (your@town.USSA), September 07, 2001.

Hey KoFE -- you really should be a lawyer. What can I say about your comment that "Helen, it is my understanding that Jefferson worked to end the institution of slavery, and didn't want to turn his slaves out to be kidnapped by slavers." God Damn, but while I think I'm a pretty creative lawyer, I don't think I could have come up with something quite that creative.

Now, I suppose, Jefferson could have freed his slaves and then let them stay and continue to work for room and board if he wished. I suppose he could have even freed them and then paid them to stay on. But, we all know how tricky those "slavers" were.

-- E.H.Porter (just.wondering@about.it), September 07, 2001.

It is conceivable that he freed them, but knowing they could not just walk off and get a blue collar job with all of the benefits, so out of consideration for them he allowed them to continue to work for him, doing what they had experience in doing with pay and the respect given another human being, (as opposed to being forced to-do without without a choice) insuring they were not thrown to the wolfs without the social abilities they would need to survive on their own. Similar to the way we do when we raise a wild animal and decide it is too big to be a toy and set it free to fend for itself.

-- Cherri (jessam6@home.com), September 08, 2001.

To Edward Bancroft, 1788- "As far as I can judge from the experiments wich have been made to give liberty to, or rather to abandon persons whose habits hae been formed in slavery is like abandoning children."

-- KoFE (your@town.USSA), September 08, 2001.

According to The Forerunner, 1993, Jefferson had originally drafted an anti-slavery clause for the Declaration of Independence as follows:

"He has waged cruel wars against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce."

This clause was rejected. The "He" refers to the King of England.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), September 08, 2001.