The separation of infants from their mothers would produce some
scruples of humanity. But this would be straining at a gnat, and
swallowing a camel.[136]

Jefferson became interested in the schemes of Miss Fanny Wright, who
was endeavoring to promote gradual emancipation through an
Emancipating Labor Society. He wrote her in 1825:

The abolition of the evil is not impossible; it ought never,
therefore, to be despaired of. Every plan should be adopted,
every experiment tried, which may do something towards the
ultimate object. That which you propose is well worthy of trial.
It has succeeded with certain portions of our white brethren,
under the care of a Rapp and an Owen; and why may it not succeed
with the man of color?

At the age of eighty-two, with one foot in the grave and the
other uplifted to follow it, I do not permit myself to take part
in any new enterprises, even for bettering the condition of man,
not even in the great one which is the subject of your letter,
and which has been through life that of my greatest
anxieties.[137] The march of events has not been such as to
render its completion practicable within the limits of time
allotted to me; and I leave its accomplishment as the work of
another generation.[138]

Although Jefferson lost hope of seeing his plans carried out, this
letter to Edward Everett, written near the close of his career, shows
that he had not changed his attitude.

On the question of the lawfulness of slavery, that is of the
right of one man to appropriate to himself the faculties of
another without his consent, I certainly retain my early
opinions. On that, however, of third persons to interfere between
the parties, and the effect of conventional modifications of that
pretension, we are probably nearer together.[139]

FOOTNOTES:

[48] Ford edition of _Jefferson's Writings_, III, p. 102.

[49] "_Rights of British America_," Ford edition of _Jefferson's
Writings_, I, p. 440.

[50] "This clause," says Jefferson, in his Autobiography (I, p. 19),
"was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had
never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the
contrary, still wished to continue it. Our northern brethren, also, I
believe, felt a little tender under those censures; for though their
people had very few slaves themsel