“I cannot decide to sell my lands. I have sold too much of them already, and they are the only sure provision for my children. Nor would I willingly sell the slaves as long as there remains any prospect of paying my debts with their labour.” Jefferson hoped to put his enslaved workers “on an easier footing” once his finances were stable, but he remained in debt for the rest of his life. Nearly all of his enslaved workers—about two hundred people at the time, at Monticello and another property—were auctioned after his death in 1826 to pay his debts.
Debt haunted like all Americans
Fargo
Hawley
American epistemic
