by Spanish subjects. It is very questionable, indeed, whether the
Indians would sell? whether Spain would be willing to receive
these people? and nearly certain that she would not alienate the
sovereignty. The same question to ourselves would recur here
also, as did in the first case: should we be willing to have such
a colony in contact with us? However our present interests may
restrain us within our own limits, it is impossible not to look
forward to distant times, when our rapid multiplication will
expand itself beyond those limits, and cover the whole northern,
if not the southern continent, with a people speaking the same
language, governed in similar forms, and by similar laws; nor can
we contemplate with satisfaction either blot or mixture on that
surface. Spain, France, and Portugal hold possessions on the
southern continent, as to which I am not well enough informed to
say how far they might meet our views. But either there or in the
northern continent, should the constituted authorities ties of
Virginia fix their attention, of preference, I will have the
dispositions of those powers sounded in the first instance.[115]

Writing to Rufus King in 1802 Jefferson discussed in detail the
feasibility of the plan.

As the expense of so distant a transportation would be very
heavy, and might weigh unfavorably in deciding between the modes
of punishment, it is very desirable that it should be lessened as
much as is practicable. If the regulations of the place would
permit these emigrants to dispose of themselves, as the Germans
and others do who come to this country poor, by giving their
labor for a certain time to some one who will pay their passage;
and if the master of the vessel could be permitted to carry
articles of commerce from this country and take back others from
that, which might yield him a mercantile profit sufficient to
cover the expenses of the voyage, a serious difficulty would be
removed.[116]

The course of things in the ... West Indies appears to have given
a considerable impulse to the minds of the slaves in ... the
United States. A great disposition to insurgency has manifested
itself among them, which, in one instance, in the State of
Virginia, broke out into actual insurrection. This was easily
suppressed; but many of