I believe freeing his slaves was on Jefferson's list of Things To Do, but he never quite got around to it, and of course, his estate had all those debts to pay off.
Farther down this thread Kelley takes me to task saying, "now this is really swift. it's somehow more odious to own slaves than it is to make a living owning a factory and ease the toil of household mgmt by hiring household servants that you shove up in the third floor in squalid condition and treat like dirt all the same."
Though I wasn't making this comparison, I think there is a slight difference between actual and virtual slavery. Actual slavery makes no bones about it -- it gives you complete, legally defensible ownership of another human being. IMO, real slavery is equivalent to murder; it literally means taking another person's life.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the thread, Dr. Heartfield sagely diagnoses me as launching an "oedipal revolt of the pygmy son" against that distinguished avatar of human rights, jiveass Jefferson.
Well, much as I appreciate Dr. H's attempt at clinical precision, I will plead guilty to no more than being a bore on the topic of Jefferson. I'm essentially repeating all the points I made last year about TJ, and I don't want to seem like Johnny One-Note. Jefferson is a repellant figure but not worthy of obsessive attention.
Carl
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