Jefferson Post

In the Query XVIII entitled, Manners, Thomas Jefferson declares his concerns and apparently deep feelings toward slaves and the African American race. He tends to sympathize with them throughout this query, in my belief to “suck-up” to the secretary to the French legation in Philadelphia, to whom he is preparing the Notes on the State of Virginia.

He obviously comes off as a hypocrite in the sense that he is NOW all of a sudden defending the blacks and fighting to abolish slavery, where he is a man that has always owned slaves. This is the same great man that wrote the Declaration of Independence and a great American, however now days people are starting to view him as a racist and hypocrite. He tends to contradict all aspects of what he has lived his life for, prior to writing the Notes on the State of Virginia, in this respect. “Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal,” says Jefferson who clearly is just using his fancy and literate style to win over his readers by stating the obvious with statements such as these. Of course every man abides by the social behavior and familiar surroundings that he is raised up in majority wise. It seems to me that this man is full of it when it comes to his real beliefs on slavery. The somewhat troubling fact coming from this one issue in slavery is that it purposes the question, what else has he been not completely honest about in his writings? Did he use the same ploys in writing the Declaration of Independence?