Answer: Yes and No.
Jefferson, near the end of his life, wrote: "I wish the treatment of the
native Americans 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 ear and feel the danger of either holding him or letting him
loose. I shall not live tosee 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. [Thomas Jefferson to Lydia
Sigourney, 18 July 1824.]
Jefferson had written earlier, in 1784, about the effects of slavery on both
whites and blacks in his book, Notes on Virginia. This
quote is from Quiery XVIII: 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.... The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the
lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of small slaves, gives
a loose to the worst 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. ..."
Earlier, in 1786, Jefferson wrote: "What a stupendous, what an
incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes,
imprisonment or death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next
moment be deaf to all those motives whose power supported him through his
trial, and inflict on his fellow men 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 wait 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. " [26
June 1786, Thomas Jefferson to J.N Demeunier.]
Thomas Jefferson probably expected that slavery would disappear of its own
accord, as he wrote in 1805:
"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
men who persuade themselves ether that the thing is not wrong, or that it can
not be remedied, and very many with whom interest is morality. ... But interest
is really going over to the side of morality. The value of the slave is
everyday 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 its 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 and suffering to release them in their
own way, which, without such suffering we might now model after our own
convenience.[Thomas Jefferson to Burwell, Jan 28, 1805]
"Jefferson was a man of many dimensions, and any explanation of his behavior
must contain a myriad of seeming contradictions. He was a sincere and
dedicated foe of the slave trade who bought and sold men when he found it
personally necessary. He believed that all men were entitled to life and
liberty regardless of their abilities, yet he tracked down those slaves who had
the courage to take their rights by running away. He believed that slavery was
morally and politically wrong, but still he wrote a slave code for his state
and opposed a national attempt in 1819 to limit the further expansion of the
institution. He believed that one hour of slavery was worse than the ages of
British oppression, yet he was able to discuss the matter of slave breeding in
much the same terms that one would use when speaking of the propagation of dogs
and horses." (Willam Cohen,"Thomas Jefferson and the Problem of Slavery," in
The Journal of American History, Dec 1970, pg 525.)
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