Jefferson Revisited III - Independence, Abolition, Projection

This is just a note resulting from this book, which only relates to the topic of this site in a sideways manner, but it is very important to remember... in the period 1790-1804 with the slave revolts in Haiti and finally its independence from France going on, the fear in the US was understandably of such a slave revolt happening here, for inevitably there was guilt about the system of slavery, so therefore there must be fear that the system should be challenged.

It seems relevant to notice however that the fear was founded in two ways, number one perhaps being the example of it happening in Haiti, which was the proximate cause for the concern, the second one however maybe equally or almost more important to remember, is that there was also the fresh memory of throwing off British rule which was felt to be illegitimate and oppressive, in a manner not dissimilar in which blacks might find slavery oppressive in the US. In short, the innate fears that aside from justifications the young republic had any subliminal doubts, these would as a result of projection, immediately translate into the suspicion that the blacks would do to them what they did to the British. For the same reason on subliminal level the independence itself was no doubt the biggest motivation for justifying abolition, entirely in line with the extremes of cognitive dissonance that TJ in particular must have felt about it in Paris and after, amid all the rhetoric of the rights of man etc.