Jefferson’s Famous Warning of the Dangers of Slavery

“we have the wolf by the ears and feel the danger of either holding or letting him loose… those who come after us will be wiser than we are, for light is spreading and man improving”

At the age of 81, writes an important and oft-quoted letter which encapsulates his ambivalent attitude toward slavery and suggests how his conviction that blacks and whites could not coexist equally paralyzed him from taking effective steps against slavery.

“I was one only of many, very many indeed who exerted their best endeavors in the greatest event in human history, and although rivers of blood are yet to flow for the general establishment of its principles and its consequences toward the amelioration of the condition of man throughout the universe, they will be finally established.”

“I rejoice also in your avocation of the Indian rights and concur in all your sentiments in their favor. I once had hopes that the Southern tribes were nearly ripe for incorporation with us.”

Jefferson viewed slavery as dangerous, immoral and wasteful, but he feared that emancipation would result in race war. In his 1783 draft of a new Virginia constitution, he called for freedom for all slave children born after 1800. In 1784 and again in 1800 he argued to exclude slavery from the western territories - but he didn’t defend the Northwest Ordinance prohibition on slavery and didn’t oppose the taking of slaves into Louisiana or Indiana.