"
At the same time he put himself on record as determined never to add
another to the number of his slaves by purchase. A petition for
emancipation had just been introduced into the Virginia House of
Delegates and was "rejected without dissent; but not without an avowed
patronage of its principles by sundry respectable members," as Madison
informed Washington. "A motion was made to throw it under the table,
which was treated with as much indignation on one side as the petition
itself was on the other."
Jefferson had been disappointed at an earlier time because no
emancipation provision had been incorporated in the Constitution of
Virginia.
"What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man!" he wrote in
this connection, "who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment, and
death itself in vindication of his own liberty and the next moment be deaf
to all those motives whose power supported him thro' his trial and inflict
on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery
than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose."
An interesting commentary on the industrial progress of the country
is afforded by comparing these early views of Southern statesmen upon
the slavery system with those held by a later generation.
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