which freedmen gradually emancipated in the United
States might be sent to shape their own destiny.

Writing to Dr. Price concerning his anti-slavery pamphlet, Jefferson
said:

Southward of the Chesapeake, your pamphlet (against slavery) will
find but few readers concurring with it in sentiment on the
subject of slavery. From the mouth to the head of the Chesapeake,
the bulk of the people will approve it in theory, and it will
find a respectable minority ready to adopt it in practice; a
minority which for weight and worth of character preponderates
against the greater number, who have not the courage to divest
their families of a property which, however, keeps their
conscience unquiet. Northward of the Chesapeake, you may find
here and there an opponent to your doctrine, as you may find here
and there a robber and murderer; but in no greater number. In
that part of America, there being but few slaves, they can easily
disencumber themselves of them; and emancipation is put into such
a train that in a few years there will be no slaves northward of
Maryland. In Maryland, I do not find such a disposition to begin
the redress of this enormity as in Virginia. This is the next
State to which we may turn our eyes for the interesting spectacle
of justice in conflict with avarice and oppression; a conflict
wherein the sacred side is gaining daily recruits from the influx
into office of young men grown, and growing up. These have sucked
in the principles of liberty, as it were, with their mother's
milk; and it is to them I look with anxiety to turn the fate of
this question. Be not therefore discouraged. What you have
written will do a great deal of good.[94]

In his report to Congress of a conference with Count Vergennes,
Foreign Minister of France, on commerce, Jefferson wrote:

The British army, after ravaging the State of Virginia, had sent
off a very great number of slaves to New York. By the seventh
article of the treaty of peace, they stipulated not to carry away
any of these. Notwithstanding this, it was known, when they were
evacuating New York, that they were carrying away the slaves,
General Washington made an official demand of Sir Guy Carleton,
that he should cease to send them away. He answered, that these
people had come to them under promise of the King