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"There is no question that those words are incompatible with slavery and he knew it," Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph J. Ellis told Newsweek.
普利策獎獲得者、歷史學家約瑟夫J.埃利斯在接受《新聞周刊》采訪時說：“毫無疑問，這些話與奴隸制是不相容的，他知道這一點。”。
"Washington is the only one of the Virginia aristocracy during the Revolutionary era to actually free his slaves. He freed them in his will," Ellis, who has written several books on the Founding Fathers including American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson and His Excellency: George Washington, said.
埃利斯表示，“華盛頓是革命時代弗吉尼亞貴族中唯一一個真正釋放奴隸的。他在自己的遺囑中釋放了他們，”他寫了幾本關于開國元勛的書，其中包括《美國的斯芬克斯:托馬斯·杰斐遜的性格》和《華盛頓傳》。
"Jefferson is complicated because he straddles the racial divide. He was a slaveowner in Monticello, he never freed his slaves, but he was also the author of those magic words of American history.
“杰斐遜是個復雜的人，是因為他跨越了種族鴻溝。他是蒙蒂塞洛的奴隸主，他從未釋放過他的奴隸，但他也是美國歷史上那些神奇詞匯的作者。
"He straddles the racial divide in a way that nobody else does because he is spokesman for the values that are central to the liberal tradition in American history but also he believed black people are inferior and they can never become equal."
“他跨越種族鴻溝的方式無人能及，因為他是美國歷史上自由傳統核心價值觀的代言人，但他也相信（黑人）是低人一等的，他們永遠不可能平等?！?/p>
Jefferson publicly opposed slavery—referring to it as a "moral depravity" and a "hideous blot"— yet over the course of his life, he enslaved more than 600 people, according to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.
杰斐遜公開反對奴隸制，稱之為“道德敗壞”和“可怕的污點”，然而根據托馬斯·杰斐遜基金會的說法，在他的一生中，他奴役了600多人。
He also embraced eugenics, writing about how he believed black people to be inferior to white people in Notes on the State of Virginia. Jefferson told a friend, a French duke, in a letter that he believed the only way slaves could be emancipated is if it was done "all at once" and they were then all expelled to a far off land.
他還信奉人種改良學，他在《弗吉尼亞州筆記》中寫道，他認為黑人劣于白人。杰斐遜在給自己的一位法國公爵的朋友的信中寫道，他相信解放奴隸的唯一途徑是立刻完成，然后把他們驅逐到一個遙遠的地方。
That view, the duke wrote, was based on Jefferson's conviction of the "certain danger" of "seeing blood mixed without means of preventing it."
那名公爵寫道，這個觀點是基于杰斐遜對“看到混血而無法阻止的”的“某種危險的”看法。
Yet Jefferson also fathered several children with one of his slaves—a mixed-race woman named Sally Hemings—and those children were also his property.
然而杰斐遜也和自己的一個叫薩利·海明斯的混血婦女的奴隸生了幾個孩子，這些孩子也是他的財產。
Hemings became "Mr. Jefferson's concubine," according to her son Madison, when she accompanied the family on a trip to France in the 1780s. While pregnant at 16, she refused to return to America, and only did so after negotiating freedom for her future children.
據海明斯的兒子麥迪遜說，她在18世紀80年代陪同杰斐遜一家去法國旅行時，成了“杰斐遜的小妾”。她16歲懷孕時，拒絕返回美國，她這樣做只是在為未來的孩子爭取自由。
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