In Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson acknowledges that slavery is a moral wrong and at odds with the principles he so eloquently laid down in the Declaration and with respect to which the American Revolution was motivated. He proposed legislation to abolish the slave trade and the extension of slavery into the Western territories, legislation that failed by a single vote. Throughout his entire adult life, Jefferson owned hundreds of slaves on his two plantations, and he freed only a very few. There appears to be little doubt that Jefferson was a racist, as a sampling of comments he wrote in the Notes on the State of Virginia attests. He nonetheless identified the enslavement of Blacks as immoral, although he regarded Blacks as unfit by nature to participate in the American social experiment.

It is tempting to think that Jefferson is the epitome of hypocrisy, and we would think that because we likely hold the view that from a slave owner's assenting to the judgment that “the institution of slavery is immoral and should be abolished,” some course or courses of action follow on the part of that slave owner with respect to his/her slaves, namely, that he/she should free them.