Thomas Jefferson · Politics

The Wolf by the Ears: Jefferson and Slavery

The author of human equality owned hundreds of enslaved people and freed almost none. Jefferson’s tortured, contradictory relationship with slavery is the deepest fault line in the American founding.

What you'll be able to recall

You learned that Jefferson called slavery a moral evil yet held people in bondage all his life. In your own words, what did he mean by holding ‘the wolf by the ears’?

Leads to Frederick Douglass.

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