At different moments in his legislative and public life, Jefferson said things or proposed courses of action that could conceivably have led to the end of a slave society. The Howell brief suggests a Jeffersonian openness to such an eventuality, but for him abolition was always to be an eventuality for future generations, not a reality that he would ever see. The reaction to the Bland bill and of the court in Howell could not have failed to leave an impression, too, on the young lawyer-legislator so anxious for popularity. Wounded by the defeats of his progressive efforts on slavery, Jefferson
...more
