hundreds of slaves had come to him by
inheritance and by marriage. He was most thorough and successful in his
private affairs; through all his cares in the Revolution, scarcely ever
visiting his home, he kept in close touch with his steward and regulated
the plantation's management by constant correspondence. He had the
reputation of a just but strict master. His slaves were well fed and
clothed; they were supported in infancy and old age; they were trained
in work according to their capacity, and taught something of morals and
religion; in point of physical comfort and security, and of industrial
and moral development, they were by no means at the bottom of the scale
of humanity. The slave-holder's position, however unjust by an absolute
standard, and with great possibilities of abuse, was, in the case of the
rightly-disposed man--and such were common--a position which had its
grave duties and often onerous burdens to be conscientiously borne.

Hardly was the war ended when the country's needs summoned Washington
again to long and arduous service. Retired from the Presidency, his
successor called him, not in vain, to head the army which the threatened
French war would call into action. Who can blame him that he did not
undertake in addition a complete reorganization of the labor system of
his own farms and of Virginia? Inconsistent perhaps it was,--a very
human inconsistency,--that his slaves, who, he told Bernard, were unfit
for freedom, were given their freedom by his will, though not until his
wife's death. That we may take as an imperfect essay of conscience to
deal with a situation so complicated that no ideal solution was
apparent. But we may fairly read as his unspoken legacy to his
countrymen of the next generation: "My associates and I have won
national independence, social order, and equal rights for our own race;
deal you as courageously and strongly with the problems which remain."

Jefferson was an enthusiast for moral ideals, and a warm believer in the
merit and trustworthiness of average humanity. He ennobled the struggle
of the colonies against England by writing on the flag the universal and
undying ideas that the authority of governments rests solely on their
justice and public utility, and that every man has an inalienable right
to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And Jefferson did not
flinch, as did many of his associates, from giving that right a full and
general application to blacks a