[Footnote 1:  Jay, Works of John Jay, vol. i., p. 136; vol. iii, p. 331.]

[Footnote 2:  Ibid., vol. iii., p. 343.]

More interesting than the views of any other man of this epoch on the subject of Negro education were those of Thomas Jefferson.  Born of pioneer parentage in the mountains of Virginia, Jefferson never lost his frontier democratic ideals which made him an advocate of simplicity, equality, and universal freedom.  Having in mind when he wrote the Declaration of Independence the rights of the blacks as well as those of whites, this disciple of John Locke, could not but feel that the slaves of his day had a natural right to education and freedom.  Jefferson said so much more on these important questions than his contemporaries that he would have been considered an abolitionist, had he lived in 1840.

Giving his views on the enlightenment of the Negroes he asserted that the minds of the masters should be “apprized by reflection and strengthened by the energies of conscience against the obstacles of self-interest to an acquiescence in the rights of others.”  The owners would then permit their slaves to be “prepared by instruction and habit” for self-government, the honest pursuit of industry, and social duty.[1] In his scheme for a modern system of public schools Jefferson included the training of the slaves in industrial and agricultural branches to equip them for a higher station in life, else he thought they should be removed from the country when liberated.[2] Capable of mental development, as he had found certain men of color to be, the Sage of Monticello doubted at times that they could be made the intellectual equals of white men,[3] and did not actually advocate their incorporation into the body politic.

[Footnote 1:  Washington, Works of Jefferson, vol. vi., p. 456.]

[Footnote 2:  Ibid., vol. viii., p. 380; and Mayo, Educational Movement in the South, p. 37.]

[Footnote 3:  As to what Jefferson thought of the Negro intellect we are still in doubt.  Writing in 1791 to Banneker, the Negro mathematician and astronomer, he said that nobody wished to see more than he such proofs as Banneker exhibited that nature has given to our black brethren talents equal to those of men of other colors, and that the appearance of a lack of such native ability was owing only to their degraded condition in Africa and America.  Jefferson expressed himself as being ardently desirous of seeing a good system commenced for raising the condition both of the body and the mind of the slaves to what it ought to be as fast as the “imbecility” of their then existence and other circumstances, which could not be neglected, would admit.  Replying to Gregoire of Paris, who wrote an interesting essay on the Literature of Negroes, showing the power of their intellect, Jefferson assured him that no person living wished more sincerely than he to see a complete refutation