This is an issue that was mistakenly started in an unintended hi-jack of another thread in General Discussions asking Who can be credited with actually ending
slavery.
I don’t know about the rest of the world, but here in the USA I don’t personally think that it can be credited to just one person. I believe that slaverys end can be credited to the long term efforts of several people (both whites and slaves) that eventually bought it to an end. Many people have been taught that Abraham Lincoln was the sole person who single handedly stopped the slave movement in the U.S. by signing the Emancipation Proclamation officially making slavery Illegal in the USA. Even though this was a great boost in bringing the savage horrors of slavery to an end, there were many others before Abraham Lincolns time that were just as effective (some even more than he was) at putting it to an end. One of these men was indeed Thomas Jefferson. For whatever reason you may either agree or disagree with me on this, please feel free to post ** any** information you have here for all of us to benefit from. Meanwhile I will look up a speech that Thomas Jefferson made reflecting his views on Slavery during his time and will add it to my next posting. 
Here, for those that need help, look through all the postings on this webpage and tell us what conclusions you draw from it
Heres a speech that Thomas Jefferson gave reflecting his view on slavery . Please comment on what you draw from his views
That’s not a speech. That’s from his “Notes on Virginia”. And what he’s saying there is, “Slavery is bad because it makes us lazy, but we can’t just set the slaves free, because blacks are mostly too stupid to take care of themselves…stupider even than Indians, although they are musical.”
And even though Jefferson did work to pass some anti-slavery legislation in the House of Burgesses (a failed bill to allow Virginians to free their slaves, as well as a bill barring free blacks from living in Virginia), that’s pretty much all he did against slavery, with the exception of a clause cut out of the Declaration of Independence, and the comment in his Notes. Even on a personal level, he didn’t even set his slaves free in his will, as Washington did. Jefferson talked a good game, but that’s all he did.
I’d give credit to the Radical Republican Congress who introduced the Thirteenth amendment to the Constitution.
Considering that he didn’t even end slavery on his own plantation, I don’t see how he can be credited with ending slavery in the US. He was too stuck in his time to understand the contradictions he held-- that slavery was somehow bad, but that the economy couldn’t live without it.
Notes on Virginia was an influential work. In The American Counter Revolution: A Retreat From Liberty, 1783-1800 Professor Larry Tise introduces the topic in this way:
“But as Jefferson introduced new and more powerful declarations of the rights of man, he began in 1785 to publish a different set of declarations that had an equally decisive effect on modifying who in America could enjoy those inalienable rights.”
And later:
“Thus when Jefferson arrived in New York in March 1790 to take up his post as the first secretary of state of the United States, his views on slavery and race as articulated in Notes on Virginia were being hailed from every corner. As he walked into the halls of Congress, James Jackson of Georgia and William Loughton Smith from South Carolina were holding forth, citing letter and verse from the Notes on Virginia to uphold slavery.”
Jefferson wasn’t an emancipator. He was an apologist for slavery. If you are interested another good book covering race relations during the revolutionary period is Jefferson’s Pillow: The Founding Fathers and the Dilemma of Black Patriotism by Roger Wilkins.
Well, except he wasn’t and didn’t. The Emancipation Proclamation was a war measure that only applied to the states in rebellion. It didn’t have any effect elsewhere in the U.S.
There’s no doubt that Mr. Lincoln’s decision to issue the Proclamation lead the way towards total abolition, but he did not have the power to do that. As Blaron notes, abolition only occurred once the U.S. Congress proposed the Thirteenth Amendment, and a sufficient number of states ratified it. That’s what’s ended slavery in the U.S.
So, to respond to the OP:
Jefferson: wrote various bits and pieces lamenting the practice of keeping slaves; trembled for his country if God is just; kept slaves; may have had sexual relations with one of them; did not follow the lead of President Washington and liberate his slaves in his will.
Lincoln: fought a Civil War in which the slavery issue was front and centre; issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves in the states in rebellion; threw his political support behind the Thirteenth Amendment.
Various U.S. Congressmen, Senators: proposed the Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery throught the U.S.
Numerous state representatives & senators: voted to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, upon which event slavery was abolished.
Yeah, old Thomas’ track record on this point is sure impressive.
I doubt that Jefferson was a big factor in the elimination of slavery. The book Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History by UCLA professor Fawn Brodie makes it pretty clear that Jefferson was all over the map on the subject. He knew that slavery was an abomination but couldn’t get past the history of his surroundings.
You can probably dig up a Jefferson quote on both sides of any facet of the subject you care to explore.
I agree with this statement totally
The same could be said for a lot of subjects.
Jefferson’s voluminous writings are more creative than consistant.
Yes, and changing your mind back and forth about difficult matters ain’t all bad.
To paraphrase the adage about spelling (It’s a mighty pore mind that cain’t think of mor’n one way to spell a word.) “It’s a mighty poor mind that can only see one side of a complex subject.”
Which is kind of like saying that a law making murder illegal doesn’t actually stop people from being killed. True in a narrow sense, but it ignores the big picture.
Lincoln declared he was going to emancipate all the slaves in territory that was currently in rebellion. He had already declared that he was going to restore all rebellious territory to American control. Put the two together and the result is a lot of slaves getting freed. Maybe not that day, but the results were inevitable from the moment the proclamation was made.
Not quite, because there were slaveholding states which were not in rebellion and which were never going to be affected by the Emancipation Proclamation. It was always going to take a constititutional amendment (or separate action by every slaveholding states) to eliminate slavery.
Well, Lincoln either actutally didn’t have or thought that he didn’t have the power to affect slavery except in those areas of the country in rebellion. And based upon the law at the time he was probably right.
I agree that the 13th Amendment was necessary to finally end all slavery. But the fact is that by the time the amendment was passed, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had already freed probably 95% of the slaves in the country. In my opinion someone who accomplishes 95% of a job deserves at least as much credit as the people who finish the last part.
In the OP, Starguard wrote that other people were more effective than Lincoln in ending slavery. Discounting his personal opinion that Jefferson had anything to do with it, can anyone plausibly name a single individual who had more to do with ending slavery in this country than Lincoln?
Here’s an entire list of them
Benjamin Lindy
Lyman Beecher
Nathaniel Taylor
Charles G. Finney
Theodore D. Weld
Author and Lewis Tappan
William Lloyd Garrisonhttp
and there are Many more…They were called Abolitionalist
Many of these people (and others that are not listed) risked their lives and sometimes lost them, to put an end to slavery at its bare roots. If it were not for people like these, there most likely would not have even been an emancipation proclamation for Lincoln to sign in the first place.
Here is another reference about many unsung heroes that risked being imprisoned or even killed for acting out against slavery by supporting something known as the underground railroad. Check it out!
Actually they were called abolitionists, but let’s not quibble.
Your list was hardly an entire one: you left out Wendell Phillips, James Birney, Edmund Quincy, Elizur Wright, Lucy Stone, Gerrit Smith, Thaddeus Stevens, Thomas Garret, the Grimkes, the Lowells, the Howes. And of course John Brown and Harriet Beecher Stowe. And Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Solomon Northrup, Bet Freeman, and William Still. I suppose you could add Wilberforce and Clarkson. And Saint Patrick.
But all of these people combined freed fewer slaves than Lincoln did. They created the support which allowed him to take the action and they deserve full credit for that. But Lincoln deserves full credit for taking the action.
Except arguably for Thaddeus Stevens, who was the major sponsor of the 13th Amendment, but that’s being excessively nitpicky, maybe.