Having said of himself in 1788 that “nobody will be more willing to encounter every sacrifice” to bring about emancipation, in 1814 Jefferson ruefully shook his head and said that the old generation had moved too slowly. Now, instead of finding that “the generous temperament of youth” raised the new generation “above the suggestions of avarice,” he realized that the young men of this new day dawning had digested the lessons of Georgia and were racing to create fortunes from slavery’s expansion.
