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Nothing is proved by the expectation of some Northerners that the clause would eventually put an end to slavery, for there was widespread confusion of "slavery" with the "slave trade." Both American and British abolitionists assumed that an end to slave imports would lead automatically to the amelioration and gradual abolition of slavery.

— David Brion Davis

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One cannot question the genuineness of Jefferson’s liberal dreams. He was one of the first statesmen in any part of the world to advocate concrete measures for restricting and eradicating Negro slavery.

Writing home in 1946, he told his parents that he wanted to study history because he hoped that a knowledge of the past might “make people stop and think before blindly following some bigoted group to make the world safe for Aryans, Democrats or Mississippians.”

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: David Brion Davis (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.