The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson

By Subject

SLAVERY / JEFFERSON'S PLAN TO CONVERT TO FREE TENANT FARMERS

Notwithstanding the discouraging result of these experiments I am decided on my final return to America to try this one. I shall endeavor to import as many Germans as I have grown slaves. I will settle them and my slaves on farms of fifty acres each, intermingled, and place all on the footing of the metayers (medietani) of Europe. Their children shall be brought up as others are in habits of property and foresight, and I have no doubt but that they will be good citizens. Some of their fathers will be so, others I suppose will need government; with these all that can be done is to oblige them to labor as the laboring poor of Europe do, and to apply to their comfortable subsistence the produce of their labor, retaining such a moderate portion of it as may be a just equivalent for the use of the lands they labor and the stocks and other necessary advances.

to Edward Bancroft, 26 January 1788