Well may Jefferson say, immediately after this, that it is impossible to be temperate and to pursue this subject through the various considerations of policy, of morals, of history natural and civil. For no Abolitionist ever branded the slave-system with words more fiery.
In 1784 Jefferson drew up the ordinance for the government of the Western Territory. One famous clause runs thus:
After the year 1800 of the Christian era there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said States, otherwise than in punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been convicted to be personally guilty.
In Randalls Life of Jefferson, a work in many respects admirable, this clause is glossed with the declaration that Jefferson intended merely to prevent an immense new importation of slaves from Africa to fill the Territory; but Mr. Randall would have shown far greater insight, had he added to this half-truth, that the idea of legally grasping and strangling this curse flows from the ideas of the Notes as hot metal flows from fiery furnace,that the Ordinance of 1784 was but a minting of that true metal drawn from those old glowing thoughts and words.