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Extract from Thomas Jefferson’s Memorandum Books [Quote]

four good fellows, a lad & two girls of abt 16. each in 8 ½ hours dug in my cellar of mountain clay a place 3.f. deep, 8 f. wide & 16 ½ f. long = 142/3 cubical yds. ... in digging my dry well, at the depth of 14 f. I observed one digger, one filler, one drawer … it was a yellow rotten...

Extract from the Diary of John Quincy Adams, 4 May 1785 [Quote]

Mr Jefferson, spoke concerning Virginia, a State, which he knows very particularly as it is his native Country. The blacks, he tells me, are very well treated there; and increase in population, more in proportion, than the whites. before the War, he says the negroes, were to the whites, in the...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Richard Price, 7 Aug. 1785 [Quote]

Southward of the Chesapeak it will find but few readers concurring with it in sentiment on the subject of slavery. from the mouth to the head of the Chesapeak, the bulk of the people will approve it in theory, and it will find a respectable minority ready to adopt it in practice, a minority which...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Edward Rutledge, 14 July 1787 [Quote]

I congratulate you, my dear friend, on the law of your state for suspending the importation of slaves, and for the glory you have justly acquired by endeavoring to prevent it for ever. this abomination must have an end, and there is a superior bench reserved in heaven for those who hasten it.

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Banneker, 30 Aug. 1791 [Quote]

no body wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren, talents equal to those of the other colours of men, & that the appearance of a want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence both in Africa & America....

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Condorcet, 30 Aug. 1791 [Quote]

I am happy to be able to inform you that we have now in the United States a negro, the son of a black man born in Africa, and of a black woman born in the United States, who is a very respectable Mathematician. I procured him to be employed under one of our chief directors in laying out the new...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Joel Barlow, 8 Oct. 1809 [Quote]

Bishop Grégoire ... wrote to me also on the doubts I had expressed five or six & twenty years ago, in the Notes on Virginia, as to the grade of understanding of the negroes, & he sent me his book on the literature of the negroes. his credulity has made him gather up every story he could...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph, 19 Apr. 1792 [Quote]

your account of Clarkson’s conduct gives me great pleasure. my first wish is that the labourers may be well treated, the second that they may enable me to have that treatment continued by making as much as will admit it. the man who can effect both objects is rarely to be found. I wish you would...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 14 July 1793 [Quote]

I become daily more & more convinced that all the West India islands will remain in the hands of the people of colour, & a total expulsion of the whites sooner or later take place. it is high time we should foresee the bloody scenes which our children certainly, & possibly ourselves ...

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