Thomas Jefferson on the inferiority of Slaves

Thomas Jefferson wrote after a century of intensive slaving:

"Comparing them [Negroes in North America] by their faculties of memory, reason and imagination it appears to me that in memory they are equal to the whites, in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless and anomalous."

Imlay White wrote in reply:

"Now I beg to know, what can be more uncertain and false than estimating and comparing the intellect and talents of two descriptions of men: one enslaved, degraded and fettered in all their acts of volition … the other free, independent and with the advantage of appropriating the reason and science which have been the result of the study and labours of the philosophers and sensible men for centuries back?"