Note 61 — DOCUMENTS
Reading edition
To General Chastellux, who had proposed to publish in a French scientific paper certain extracts from Jefferson's Notes on Virginia, he wrote the following in 1785:
The strictures on slavery (in the Notes on Virginia) ... I do not wish to have made public, at least till I know whether their publication would do most harm or good. It is possible, that in my own country, these strictures might produce an irritation, which would indispose the people towards (one of) the two great objects I have in view; that is, the emancipation of their slaves.—Ford edition of the Writings of Jefferson, III, p. 71.