Thomas Jefferson poked a hole in slavery.

[Union8448]

And then the bucket of slavery began to leak. Its an odd way of thinking about it, because the number of enslaved people eventually grew to about 4 million. But first Jefferson got the Virginia legislature to end the importation of slaves in 1778. The he was instrumental in enacting a ban on slavery in the northwest territory that eventually became the Great Lake states. Then he helped write the Constitution which contained a provision to end the external slave trade which was adopted in 1787. Those three acts limited the number of enslaved people in Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri. But more importantly, with the consent of Virginia and the northern states who ceded their claims, it federalized the process of forming new states, organizing their territorial governments and applying to Congress for admission. Most likely the states with claims to territory in the west wanted to pass the expense of patrolling and supervising the territories to the federal government. That went a long way to creating a federal power that dominated westward expansion. That power, along with the power to borrow money, and to build and deploy forces made the federal government real.
When slaves could no longer be imported, and there was only a very limited prospect for extension of slavery in Illinois, slaves became more valuable in the far south.
That's what started the slave of enslaved labor southward, and then non importation of slaves made the end of slavery much easier in NY, NJ and PA.
That portion of the south that permitted slavery was like a bucket, and it was filling up from the south towards the north. But while that was happening the demographic spread of slavery was leaking, and because of that the special protection needed by that labor system was weakening.
Others can speculate of Thomas Jefferson's motives in pursuing these goas.

 

[5fish]

You know Jefferson never freed his slaves except the ones he fathered with Sally Heming. She had to make a deal for that.

Here is a look at his relationship with Sally.

https://www.monticello.org/thomas-j...-jefferson-and-sally-hemings-a-brief-account/

While in Paris, where enslaved people could petition for their freedom, she negotiated with Jefferson to return to enslavement at Monticello in exchange for “extraordinary privileges” for herself and freedom for her unborn children.

 

[5fish]

Here is a thought on Jefferson going West...

The West - Thomas Jefferson | Exhibitions - Library of Congress

Thomas Jefferson acquired an interest in western exploration early in life. More than most of his contemporaries, Jefferson realized that the American West was not an empty wilderness, but a land crowded by conflicting nations and claims of sovereignty. While president, Jefferson successfully...

www.loc.gov

Thomas Jefferson acquired an interest in Western exploration early in life. His father Peter was a surveyor, map maker, and land speculator on the Virginia frontier. Jefferson spent his childhood in the Blue Ridge Mountains on the western edge of the Virginia Piedmont. Though he never physically ventured beyond the Virginia Blue Ridge, Jefferson had a life-long commitment to supporting Western exploration and asserting American claims to Western lands. More than most of his contemporaries, Jefferson realized that the American West was not an empty wilderness, but a land crowded by conflicting nations and claims of sovereignty. Even before holding national office, Jefferson tried on several occasions to organize expeditions to the West. While president, Jefferson successfully acquired the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803 and sent the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1803–1806) on a mapping and scientific exploration up the Missouri River to the Pacific. He also sent other expeditions to find the headwaters of the Red, Arkansas, and Mississippi rivers and to gather scientific data and information on Native Americans.

In seeking to establish, what he called “an empire for liberty,” Jefferson influenced the country's policies toward Native Americans and the extension of slavery into the West. Despite a life-long interest in Native American culture, President Jefferson advocated policies that would dislocate Native Americans and their way of life. In 1784, Jefferson opposed the extension of slavery into the northwest territory, but he later supported its westward extension because he feared that any restriction of slavery could lead to a civil war and an end to the nation. At the end of his presidency, Jefferson looked forward to a United States that spread across the entire continent of North America.

 

[5fish]

Look, we never learned about these other expeditions Jefferson sent West.

Jefferson and Western Exploration Before 1803

www.monticello.org

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Hunter-Dunbar Expedition - Encyclopedia of Arkansas

The Hunter-Dunbar expedition was one of only four ventures into the Louisiana Purchase commissioned by Thomas Jefferson. Between 1804 and 1807, President ...

encyclopediaofarkansas.net

Red River Expedition (1806) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[5fish]

@Union8448 ... This is a good article on Jefferson's changing position on slavery in the Western lands... In the end, he was for slavery in the Western land but why?

"The wolf by the ear:" Thomas Jefferson and the Missouri Crisis, 1819-21

Two centuries ago, on February 13, 1819, James Tallmadge, a member of the Democratic-Republican Party formed by Thomas Jefferson, offered an amendment to a bill regarding the admission of the Territory of Missouri into the United States. The so-called Tallmadge Amendment proposed banning further...

www.monticello.org

On the face of it, Jefferson appeared to be a person who would support the Tallmadge Amendment. As Jefferson historian John Chester Miller writes: “In 1784 he had tried to exclude slavery from all the territories of the United States and he had unqualifiedly endorsed the antislavery provision of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.”[1] Jefferson had been dead-set against the westward expansion of slavery in his early career, believing that such exclusions would kill off American slavery once and for all. However, thirty-odd years and a presidential term had changed his views. By 1819, Jefferson, still claiming the goal of abolition, now favored a concept called diffusion that involved spreading slaves “over a greater surface” ensuring their “emancipation; by dividing the burthen” between white communities.[2] As a result, by the time of the Missouri Crisis, Jefferson argued loudly for the expansion of slavery into the Louisiana Purchase lands. With his prominent position and political connections, the ex-president became a vocal advocate against the Tallmadge Amendment by late 1819.

 

[Union8448]

You know Jefferson never freed his slaves except the ones he fathered with Sally Heming. She had to make a deal for that.

Here is a look at his relationship with Sally.

https://www.monticello.org/thomas-j...-jefferson-and-sally-hemings-a-brief-account/

While in Paris, where enslaved people could petition for their freedom, she negotiated with Jefferson to return to enslavement at Monticello in exchange for “extraordinary privileges” for herself and freedom for her unborn children.

That demonstrates how difficult it was for Virginians to face what they were doing. Thomas Jefferson seems to have known it was wrong. How could he not have known once he was in Paris. But he could not bring himself to free the coerced workers and came around to rationalize the spread of slavery.
Good find.

 

[Union8448]

He gave up. Despite his efforts, the problem of slavery grew as slaves were imported into the US by multiple channels. Later in life he saw that the wolf the south had grasped by the ear was likely to bite.

 

[5fish]

He gave up. Despite his efforts, the problem of slavery grew as slaves were imported into the US by multiple channels. Later in life, he saw that the wolf the south had grasped by the ear was likely to bite.

He wanted to free the slaves but he wanted to save the great experiment in democracy in the nation he founded, more. He chose the United States over the slaves having freedom. He chose his legacy... Is not saving a nation from civil war more important than the freedom of a people... He had a plan for slavery since mid-1770s...

Jefferson's Attitudes Toward Slavery

www.monticello.org

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Jefferson’s belief in the necessity of ending slavery never changed. From the mid-1770s until his death, he advocated the same plan of gradual emancipation. First, the transatlantic slave trade would be abolished.10 Second, slaveowners would “improve” slavery’s most violent features, by bettering (Jefferson used the term “ameliorating”) living conditions and moderating physical punishment.11 Third, all born into slavery after a certain date would be declared free, followed by total abolition.12 Like others of his day, he supported the removal of newly freed slaves from the United States.13 The unintended effect of Jefferson’s plan was that his goal of “improving” slavery as a step towards ending it was used as an argument for its perpetuation. Pro-slavery advocates after Jefferson’s death argued that if slavery could be “improved,” abolition was unnecessary.

Jefferson’s belief in the necessity of abolition was intertwined with his racial beliefs. He thought that white Americans and enslaved blacks constituted two “separate nations” who could not live together peacefully in the same country.14 Jefferson’s belief that blacks were racially inferior and “as incapable as children,”15 coupled with slaves’ presumed resentment of their former owners, made their removal from the United States an integral part of Jefferson’s emancipation scheme. Influenced by the Haitian Revolution and an aborted rebellion in Virginia in 1800, Jefferson believed that American slaves’ deportation—whether to Africa or the West Indies—was an essential followup to emancipation.16

 

[Union8448]

I think he gave up on returning the enslaved to Africa later in his life when the US population of the enslaved had increased. In the deep south, where so many additional slaves were imported after 1787, the two separate nations argument might have had some validity. But in the middle eight states, soon after Jefferson's life, the enslaved were more or less Americanized.