at we should be free to expatriate this description
of people also to the colony of Sierra Leone, if considerations
respecting either themselves or us should render it more
expedient. I pray you, therefore, to get the same permission
extended to the reception of these as well as the (insurgents).
Nor will there be a selection of bad subjects; the emancipations,
for the most part, being either of the whole slaves of the
master, or of such individuals as have particularly deserved
well. The latter are most frequent.[117]

IX

He was firm to the end in his effort to abolish the slave trade.

Whatever may have been the circumstances which influenced our
forefathers to permit the introduction of personal bondage into
any part of these States, and to participate in the wrongs
committed on an unoffending quarter of the globe, we may rejoice
that such circumstances, and such a sense of them, exist no
longer. It is honorable to the nation at large that their
Legislature availed themselves of the first practicable moment
for arresting the progress of this great moral and political
error.[118]

I congratulate you (Congress) on the approach of the period at
which you may interpose your authority constitutionally, to
withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further
participation in those violations of human rights which have been
so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and
which the morality, the reputation, and the best interests of our
country, have long been eager to proscribe. Although no law you
may pass can take prohibitory effect till the first day of the
year one thousand eight hundred and eight, yet the intervening
period is not too long to prevent, by timely notice, expeditions
which cannot be completed before that day.[119]--Sixth Annual
Message.

X

In his old age Jefferson became decidedly less radical in his advocacy
of abolition, contenting himself with the utterances of the nature of
an academic deprecation of the evil, expressing the hope that in some
way it might be eradicated, but at the same time despairing of it.
Writing to Edward Coles, he said:

My sentiment on the subject of slavery of negroes have long since
been in possession of the public, and time has only served to
give them stronger root. The love of j