This is an astute analysis and I don’t take much issue with it.   

	But I do think it’s possible to see in Jefferson’s words something more than a feeble appeal to a non-existent God;  Jefferson seems to be suggesting that since the Revolution he’s seen “a change already perceptible,” a change presumably in social or political or intellectual views as the principles affirmed in the Declaration of Independence take root.  

	The change is taking place internally, apparently, in the “master” whose views of domination seem to be “abating” (and Jefferson had just written of such changes that “we must be contented to hope they will force their way into every one's mind).”  

	And the change is taking place too  in the enslaved, who apparently are gaining some hope of freedom from the values driving the Revolution  

		Jefferson is vague as to what “the order of events” will be but though he surely does fear a vast slave upraising his evocation of “the consent of the masters” seems to suggest a political or social evolution or solution through whatever that order of events might be.

		“Call” may not be the best word, but whatever it was sure made Jefferson nervous.


> On Nov 29, 2016, at 11:46 AM, Paul Finkelman <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
> 
> The Notes on the State of Virginia, like so much else TJ wrote, are internally contradictory and, I would argue, self serving.  
> I assume Professor Meyers is referring to this statement:
> “I think a changealready perceptible, since the origin of the present revolution. The spirit ofthe master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his conditionmollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a totalemancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with theconsent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation.”
> 
> 
> This comes at the very end of the famous "Query XVIII" where Jefferson talks about how harmful slavery is to white people and to the master class. But is hard to see this as a "call" for total emancipation.  It is more like a prayer for divine intervention to prevent what TJ really fears, which is a massive slave revolt that will lead to the "extirpation" of the masters.  
> This is an amazing passage, especially from someone who is a deist (at most) and does not believe in "divine intervention" in human affairs.  In other words, Jefferson is hope that a God, which he does not believe exists, will somehow end slavery peacefully.  Here is one of America's first scientists and political theorists, hoping that a problem will be solved "under the auspices of heaven.”


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Terry L. Meyers, Chancellor Professor of English Emeritus, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg Virginia 
 23187 

http://wmpeople.wm.edu/site/page/tlmeye/ <http://wmpeople.wm.edu/site/page/tlmeye/>

http://www.ecologyfund.com/ecology/_ecology.html <http://www.ecologyfund.com/ecology/_ecology.html>
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      Have we got a college?  Have we got a football team?.... Well, we can't afford both.   Tomorrow we start tearing down the college.
             --Groucho Marx, in "Horse Feathers."


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