is illustrated by a letter which he
wrote to secure the return of a black attendant of Mrs. Washington's who
had run away (a thing which he had boasted could never occur in his
household); the runaway was to be brought back if she could be persuaded
to return; her master's legal power to compel her was not to be used.
She was in fact free, but had foolishly left a good place; and there is
no reason to suppose that it was otherwise with Jefferson's slaves.
Jefferson's theory was vehemently against slavery. In old age he gave up
hope in the matter and was more solicitous for union than for liberty,
but this was after the disappointment of many efforts. In these efforts
he had no illusory notion of equality; he wrote in 1791, when he had been
defeated in the attempt to carry a measure of gradual emancipation in
Virginia: "Nobody wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you
exhibit, that Nature has given to our black brothers talents equal to
those of the other colours of men, and that the appearance of a want of
them is owing mainly to the degraded condition of their existence, both
in Africa and America. I can add with truth, that nobody wishes more
ardently to see a good system commenced for raising the condition both of
their body and mind to what it ought to be, as fast as the imbecility of
their present existence and other circumstances, which cannot be
neglected, will permit."

When he felt at last that freedom was not making way, his letters, by
which his influence was chiefly exercised, abounded in passionate
regrets. "I tremble for my country," he wrote, "when I think of the
negro and remember that God is just." But if he is judged not by his
sentiments, or even by his efforts, but by what he accomplished, this
rhetorical champion of freedom did accomplish one great act, the first
link as it proved in the chain of events by which slavery was ultimately
abolished. In 1784 the North-West Territory, as it was called, was ceded
by Virginia to the old Congress of the days before the Union. Jefferson
then endeavoured to pass an Ordinance by which slavery should be excluded
from all territory that might ever belong to Congress. In this indeed he
failed, for in part of the territory likely to be acquired slavery was
already established, but the result was a famous Ordinance of 1787, by
which slavery was for ever excluded from the soil of the North-West
Territory itself, and thus, when they came into being, the