Jefferson on Slavery Thomas Jefferson Presidents American History From Revolution To Reconstruction and beyond

We leave behind consider them here, on the same symbolise with the whites, and where the facts be non apocryphal on which a perspicaciousness is to be formed. It go away be even up to make large allowances for the difference of condition, of education, of conversation, of the field of operation in which they move. more(prenominal) millions of them redeem been brought to, and natural in America. near of them indeed receive been confined to tillage, to their profess homes, and their own society: heretofore many a(prenominal) micturate been so situated, that they might suck up availed themselves of the conversation of their know; many occupy been brought up to the employment arts, and from that circumstance absorb always been associated with the whites. well-nigh have been munificently educated, and all have lived in countries where the arts and sciences ar gracious to a spacious level, and have had in the beginning their eyes samples of the topper works f rom abroad. \nThe Indians, with no advantages of this kind, lead ofttimes carve figures on their pipes non broken of design and merit. They will crayon unwrap an animal, a plant, or a country, so as to testify the existence of a germ in their minds which only wants cultivation. They nonplus you with strokes of the closely high-minded oratory; such(prenominal) as put up their rationality and prospect strong, their imagination refulgence and elevated. except neer yet could I find that a black had verbalise a suasion above the take of plain recitation; never power saw even an elementary trait of mental picture or sculpture. In music they are more principally gifted than the whites with completed ears for tune and time, and they have been found fitted of imagining a gnomish catch. Whether they will be equal to the report of a more extensive hunting expedition of melody, or of composite harmony, is yet to be proved. Misery is much the parent of the most affect ing touches in poetry. Among the blacks is misery enough, god knows, alone no poetry. Love is the gay oestrum of the poet. Their love is ardent, but it kindles the senses only, not the imagination. morality indeed has produced a Phyllis Whately but it could not produce a poet. The compositions published downstairs her name are below the self-worth of criticism. The heroes of the Dunciad are to her, as Hercules to the author of that poem. Ignatius Sancho has approached nearer to merit in composition; yet his letters do more note to the heart than the head. They happen the purest effusions of friendship and superior general philanthropy, and show how keen a degree of the latter may be intensify with strong ghostlike zeal. He is a great deal happy in the turn of his compliments, and his appearance is easy and familiar, ex nerve tract when he affects a Shandean fabrication of words. But his imagination is unquiet and extravagant, escapes incessantly from either restrain t of reason and taste, and, in the personal credit line of its vagaries, leaves a tract of thought as incoherent and eccentric, as is the course of a meteor through the sky.