Jefferson had some of the most elegant words against slavery while perpetuating it himself. Jefferson the words vs Jefferson the man. His massive hypocrisy is o

Jefferson had some of the most elegant words against slavery while perpetuating it himself. Jefferson the words vs Jefferson the man. His massive hypocrisy is one of those irreducible complexities of American history. And I don’t believe it’s pure cynicism. His words had major impact on the idea of America and were part of the reason the South (at least according to the Confederacy’s Vice President in his “Cornerstone” speech) rebelled: “The prevailing ideas entertained by him [Jefferson] and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. [...] Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it—when the "storm came and the wind blew, it fell."” —Alexander Stephen’s, VP of the Confederacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornerstone_Speech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornerstone_Speech