No wonder that this letter of Jefferson to Coles seems to have been carefully suppressed by Southern editors of the Jeffersonian writings.

Take also the letters to Mr. Barrows and to Dr. Humphreys of 1815-17.  Disappointment is expressed at the want of a more general anti-slavery feeling among the young men; hope is expressed that “time will soften down the master and educate the slave”; faith is expressed that slavery will yield, “because we are not in a world ungoverned by the laws and power of a Supreme Agent.”

Entering now the stormy period of the Missouri Debate, we have one declaration from Jefferson which, at first, surprises and pains us,—­the opinion given in a letter to Lafayette, that spreading slavery will “dilute the evil everywhere, and facilitate the means of getting rid of it.”  The mistake is gross indeed.  To all of us, with the political knowledge forced upon us by events since Jefferson’s death, it seems atrocious.  But unpardonable as such a theory is now, was it so then?

Jefferson had not before him the experience of these last forty years of weakness and poverty and barbarism in our new Slave States,—­and of that tenacity of life which slavery shares with so many other noxious growths.  Hastily, then, he broached this opinion.  Let it stand; and let the remark on “geographical lines,” and the two or three severe criticisms of Northern men, wrested from him in the excitement of the Missouri struggle, be tied to it and given to the Oligarchs.  These expressions were drawn from him in his old age,—­in his vexation at unfair attacks,—­in his depression at the approach of poverty,—­in his suffering under the encroachments of disease.  Any one of those bold declarations in the vigor of his manhood will forever efface all memory of them.

The opinion expressed by Jefferson, at the same period, that “the General Government cannot interfere with slavery in the States,” all our parties now accept—­as a peace policy; but if we are forced into an opposite war policy, let our generals remember Jefferson’s declaration as to the taking of his slaves by Cornwallis:  “Had this been to give them their freedom, he would have done right.”

But there is one letter which all Northern statesmen should ponder.  It warns them solemnly, for it was written a very short time before Jefferson’s death;—­it warns them sharply, for it struck one whom the North has especially honored.  This son of the North had made a well-known unfortunate speech in Congress, and had sent it to Jefferson.  In his answer the old statesman declares,—­