,--begging, and showing sores.

But we have to note yet another change in Jefferson's modes of work and
warfare.

As he wrought and fought in this second period, which, for easy reference,
we call the building period, he was forced into new methods. In the former
period we saw him thinking and speaking and working against every effort
to found pro-slavery theories or practices. Eagerness was then the best
quality for work, and quickness the best quality for fight. But now the
case was different. An institution which Jefferson hated had, in spite of
his struggles, been firmly founded. The land was full of the towers of the
slave aristocracy. He saw that his mode of warfare must be changed. His
old way did well in the earlier days, for tower-builders may be driven
from their work by a sweeping charge or sudden volley; but towers, when
built, must be treated with steady battering and skilful mining.

In 1797, Jefferson, writing to St. George Tucker, speaks of the only
possible emancipation as "a compromise between the passions, prejudices,
and real difficulties, which will each have their weight in the
operation." Afterwards, in his letters to Monroe and Rufus King, he
advocates a scheme of colonization to some point not too distant. But let
no man, on this account, claim Jefferson as a supporter of the do-nothing
school of Northern demagogues, or of the mad school of Southern fanatics
who proclaim this ulcerous mass a beauty, and who howl at all who refuse
its infection. For, note, in that same letter to St. George Tucker, the
fervor of the Jeffersonian theory: bitter as Tucker's pamphlet against
slavery was, he says,--"You know my subscription to its doctrines." Note
also the vigor of the Jeffersonian practice: speaking of emancipation, he
says,--"The sooner we put some plan under way, the greater hope there is
that it may be permitted to proceed peaceably to its ultimate effect." And
now bursts forth prophecy again. "_But if something is not done, and soon
done, we shall be the murderers of our own children_." "If we had begun
sooner, we might probably have been allowed a lengthier operation to clear
ourselves; but every day's delay lessens the time we may take for
emancipation."

Here is no trace of the theory inflicting a present certain evil on a
great white population in order to do a future doubtful good to a smaller
black population. And this has been nowhere better understood than among
the slave oligarchs of