ely of black slaves. In the early 1800s, a British diplomat, Sir Augustus John Foster, observed that Virginia planters could "profess an unbounded love of liberty and of democracy in consequence of the mass of the people, who in other countries might become mobs, being there nearly altogether composed of their own Negro slaves." At the same time, the ideology of racial supremacy facilitated the political dominance of the planter aristocracy over the Southern white lower classes.
             To be sure, some radical elements in the American Revolution, including Thomas Paine, denounced slavery as a moral evil and called for its abolition. And Jefferson himself was well aware-and was constantly reminded by his liberal and radical English and French friends-that black chattel slavery was blatantly incompatible with the democratic principles he so eloquently proclaimed. The contrast between American freedom and American slavery comes out with startling distinctions. "How could men who were engaged in a great and inspiring struggle for liberty fail to perceive the inconsistency between their professions and endeavors in that contest and their actions with respect to their bondmen? How could they fail to see the application of their doctrines respecting the rights of man to the black men who were held among them in bondage far more reprehensible than that to which they indignantly proclaimed themselves to have been subjected by the king of Great Britain?" He sought to resolve this glaring contradiction by projecting that slavery would be abolished through the enlightened benevolence of the slaveholders themselves. But since the overwhelming majority of Southern planters (including Jefferson) were not willing to give up their valuable "property," he postponed this liberating act to a future generation.
             "I had always hoped that the younger generation,"
             Jefferson wrote in 1814, "would have sympathized with oppression wherever foun...