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XIphos12 t1_jadl5ea wrote

Reply to comment by GenXer3383 in TIL Thomas Jefferson regularly attended many different churches and declared "I am of a sect by myself" unlike many of the other devoted founding fathers. by skylightyourlife

Oh, for heaven's sake, he wasn't restricted from freeing his own slaves. Robert Carter did it! George Washington did it! Nobody said anything about a magic hand wave. He could have just made the decision to let his own captives go. He seemed to have thought the event of complete emancipation would trigger great civil unrest at the time. His refusal to create an amendment for the gradual emancipation of slavery combined with his condemning/outlawing the international slave trade leads me to believe he was wishy-washy and selfish in his anti-slavery efforts, at best.

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GenXer3383 t1_jado8l6 wrote

You want to believe the worst of the man while refusing to acknowledge the conflicts he had to contend with to do so.

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XIphos12 t1_jadq5d4 wrote

Nope. He had many redeeming qualities and he did indeed make some legislative effort to remove the institution. I just think his own internal biases and uncertainties were his undoing in regards to slavery. He believed blacks were inferior to whites, and he thought they should be emancipated in Africa and that freedmen should colonize there, because doing it on American soil would lead to great social turmoil and violence. From an observational standpoint, he was correct in the latter thought, to his credit. Civil unrest and war broke out after the abolition of slavery.

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