5813. NEGROES. Improvement.—[continued].
Bishop Grégoire wrote
to me on the doubts I had expressed five or
six and twenty years ago, in the Notes on Virginia,
as to the grade of understanding of the
negroes, and he sent me his book on the literature
of the negroes. His credulity has made
him gather up every story he could find of men
of color (without distinguishing whether black,
or of what degree of mixture), however slight
the mention, or light the authority on which
they are quoted. The whole do not amount, in
point of evidence, to what we know ourselves
of Banneker. We know he had spherical trigonometry
enough to make almanacs, but not
without the suspicion of aid from Ellicot, who
was his neighbor and friend, and never missed
an opportunity of puffing him. I have a long
letter from Banneker, which shows him to have
had a mind of very common stature indeed.
As to Bishop Grégoire, I wrote him a very soft
answer. It was impossible for doubt to have
been more tenderly or hesitatingly expressed
than that was in the Notes on Virginia, and
nothing was or is farther from my intentions,
than to enlist myself as the champion of a fixed
opinion, where I have only expressed a doubt.
St. Domingo will, in time, throw light on the
question.—
To Joel Barlow. Washington ed. v, 475.
Ford ed., ix, 261.
(M.
1809)
