Just a reminder to remember that as David B. Davis in _The Problem of
Slavery in the Age of Revolution_ taught us, the concept of anti-slavery
was an emerging and evolving concept that flowered during the first half
of Jefferson's life. At his birth, few anywhere in the Atlantic World,
certainly not in Virginia, opposed slavery--except for a few saintly
Quakers (who got a mixed reception even within their own community).
Riding on Enlightenment ideas and on the religious zeal of the Great
Awakening, anti-slavery burst with force into the world of the 1770s.
Though Vermont outlawed it in its 1777 Constitution, all the 13 colonies
at the time of the Declaration of Independence permitted slavery. That
Jefferson was so attuned to those Enlightenment concepts perhaps makes
his actions even more damning or, at least, helps to understand why he
turned to the scientific racialist ideas expressed in _Notes on Virginia_.

All Best,
Jim Hershman

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