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Personally, I think that makes Jefferson worse, not better. It shows he might have thought slavery wrong, but held slaves anyways. At least most slaveowners might have not personally believed themselves to be in the wrong, whereas Jefferson did something he knew wrong.
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The only reason slavery isn't abolished in the Constitution is because the colonies still needed the Southern states for their great natural resources and crops. To abolish slavery at that time would have caused the ratification of the Constitution to become only a dream. Instead, it is a prime example of compromise made by all states in order to hold the Union together.
To quote Ben Franklin, a slave owner:
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"Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature, that its very extirpation, if not performed with solicitous care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils."
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and, for you alansmithee, Thomas Jefferson's actual words (not your commentary):
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"There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him."
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