The fathers of this republic waged a seven years war for political liberty. Thomas Jefferson taught me that my bondage was, in its essence, worse than ages of that which your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose.

It was, Virginia, your own Thomas Jefferson that taught me that all men are created equal.

The intellect of the negro was then, as now, the subject of learned inquiry. Mr. Jefferson, among other statesmen and philosophers, while he considered slavery an evil, entertained a rather low estimate of the negro’s mental ability. He thought that the negro might become learned in music and in...