Thomas Jefferson suggesting a plan of colonization. The evils of slavery
none ever saw more clearly. "The whole commerce between master and
slave," he quaintly says, "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." And again, "With what execration should the statesman be
loaded, who, permitting one-half the citizens thus to trample on the
rights of the other, transforms these into despots and those into
enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and the amor patriae of
the other.... I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is
just."[3] Yet his equally clear perception of the evils sure to result
from emancipation immediate and unqualified, makes him look to
colonization as the only remedy. "Why not retain and incorporate the
blacks into the state?" he asks, "Deep rooted prejudices entertained by
the whites, ten thousand recollections by the blacks of the injuries
they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which
nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into
parties and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the
extermination of the one or the other race." After the lapse of a
century how prophetic these words sound! Jefferson believed then that by
colonization slavery was to be abolished. All slaves born after a
certain date were to be free; these should remain with their parents
till a given age, after which they should be taught at public expense
agriculture and the useful arts. When full-grown they were to be
"colonized to such a place as the circumstances of the time should
render most proper, sending them out with arms, implements of the
household and handicraft arts, pairs of the useful domestic animals,
etc.; to declare them a free and independent people, and extend to them
our alliance and protection till they have acquired strength."