y as among their
better instructed masters, of benevolence, gratitude, and
unshaken fidelity.[81]

V

In later years it seems that Jefferson changed from his position of
certainty as to the inferiority of the Negro to that of doubt. At one
time he believed in the possibilities of the Negro and then again he
receded from that position to take up the argument that the blacks
lack the capacity with which the whites are endowed. Jefferson shows
that he was either ill-informed or insincere. Writing to General
Chastellux in 1785 concerning the future of the Negro Jefferson
remarked:

I have supposed the black man, in his present state might not be
in body and mind equal to the white man; but it would be
hazardous to affirm, that, equally cultivated for a few
generations, he would not become so.[82]

To Benjamin Banneker, the surveyor and astronomer, who was regarded by
some as his friend, he addressed the following in 1791:

Nobody wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit,
that nature has given to our black brethren talents equal to
those of the other colors of men, and that the appearance of a
want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their
existence, both in Africa and America.... I have taken the
liberty of sending your Almanac to Monsieur de Condorcet,
Secretary of the Academy of Sciences at Paris, and member of the
Philanthropic Society, because I considered it as a document to
which your color had a right for their justification against the
doubts which have been entertained of them[83]

Jefferson's letter to the Marquis de Condorcet presented Banneker's
attainments as evidence of the mental capacity of Negroes. He said:

We have now in the United States a Negro, the son of a black man
born in Africa and a black woman born in the United States, who
is a very respectable mathematician. I procured him to be
employed under one of our chief directors in laying out the new
Federal City on the Potomac and in the intervals of his leisure,
while on that work, he made an almanac for the next year, which
he sent me in his own handwriting, and which I enclose to you. I
have seen very elegant solutions of geometrical problems by him.
Add to this that he is a very worthy and respectable member of
society. He is a free man. I shall be delighted to see these
i