Jefferson's Wolf: A Founding Father's Troubling Answer to the Problem of Slavery

A decisive reassessment of Thomas Jefferson’s long-debated views on slavery, showing that his chief antislavery strategy was racial exclusion: the removal of emancipated Black people from the United States.

Toward the end of his life, Thomas Jefferson made his most famous statement about American slavery: “We have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go.” Presenting abolition as both necessary and perilous, the remark has long been relied upon to explain an ap...