...president of the United States was a good writer. As a man who owned slaves, and also wrote that blacks are "inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind" (270), his honesty is open to question. ln the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson attacks the king...

...demonstrated, at the time, and well into ours, Jefferson's keen scientific acuities. His thesis: "I advance it, therefore, as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether...the whites in the endowments both of body and mind." His evidence for this is physiognomic: 98 Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expressions...

...dilemma: he hated slavery but thought blacks inferior to whites (Jordan 429,436-39). "I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether...the whites in the endowments both of body and mind" (qtd. in Jordan 439). There is no empirical demonstration or verification that blacks are a race separate...

...white-racist arguments, Jefferson again tries briefly to downplay his dogmatism to some degree: "I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether...inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind."38 Yet, as is his custom, after this passing qualification he reasserts strongly the likelihood...

...differences he perceived originated and whether they denoted blacks' inferiority, "advancing] it ... as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally...the whites in the endowments both of body and mind." Jefferson's substantive discussion of race is significant not only for its content, to which scholars...

...essential racial differences. "I advance it therefore as a suspicion only," he infamously concluded, "that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race,...the whites in the endowments both of body and mind" (143). True to the common sense of his time, Jefferson acknowledges that one must "make great allowances...

...musing about the inherent inequality of black people. "I advance it ... as a suspicion only," he said, "that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race,...the whites in the endowments both of body and mind — This unfortunate difference of color, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation...

...to people of African descent as he speaks of "the real distinctions which nature has made," namely, that the "blacks, whether originally a distinct race,...inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind."1 l. Robert Lawson-Peebles, Landscape and Written Expression in Revolutionary America: The World...

...assertions suggests the tenuous hold such thinking had in the late eighteenth century: "I advance it, therefore, as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether...time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in endowments both of body and mind" (Jefferson 341). For Jefferson's contemporaries, physical differences...

...never saw even an elementary trait of painting or sculpture." Jefferson also stated, "I advance it, ... that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race,...and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowment both of body and mind."20 Though Jefferson was a leading intellectual of the American Enlightenment,...