Jefferson’s last public words proclaimed human equality while he enslaved others

Evidence

Jefferson had to decline an invitation to Washington to attend the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. He sent a celebratory statement to Washington instead, saying: “The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.” His last public words—so sweet to every free person, so bitter to the enslaved. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 422

Categorization

• XREF: The saddle metaphor echoes the kind of inversion Kendi documents throughout — a slaveholder issuing the era’s most famous anti-subjection rhetoric. Contrasts sharply with the ‘saddles on their backs’ imagery running through racist justifications.