Jefferson absorbed antislavery Enlightenment ideas before writing on race

Evidence

In 1760, Thomas Jefferson enrolled in the College of William & Mary, where he thoroughly immersed himself in Enlightenment thought, including its antislavery ideas. He studied under the newly hired twenty-six-year-old Enlightenment intellectual William Small of Scotland, who taught that reason, not religion, should command human affairs, a lesson that would inform Jefferson’s views about government. Jefferson also read Buffon’s Natural History, and he studied Francis Bacon, John Locke, and Isaac Newton, a trio he later called “the three greatest men the world has ever produced.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 228

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s stated test case: does this show ideas preceding policy for Jefferson, complicated by his later proslavery writing?
• QUESTION: Useful for the reader’s discomfort: Jefferson’s antislavery training seemingly precedes his racist policy — a counterexample to pure policy-first inversion worth probing later.