3 Answers

Not true, and to the contrary.    Most of the founder were Christians and wanted to ban Slavery in the new country, but slavery was the way of the world at the time.

Southern Cotton Growers need a lot of cheap labor to run their farms.  They would not sign a document that simply freed the slaves. 

The very document itself provided for taking of property for the common good, but it required payment by the government if took property.

Since slaves were chattel, like cows and chickens and thus property, they wanted to be paid to free their slaves.

Good luck finding a bunch of white guys to pick cotton or backer. No way in hell. We would still be wearing the fur off a bears back. The abolishing of slavery was the beginning of the industrial revolution. Wonder where we would be had it ended a hundred years earlier.

Tom also had a slave mistress that produced several children.

According to some reports, Thomas Jefferson fathered several children with one of his slaves, a woman named Sally Hemings who served as chambermaid, seamstress, and nursemaid to Jefferson's children. Although Jefferson's family strongly denied the accuracy of such rumors, several of Jefferson's close friends believed them to be true. After years of conjecture, a DNA test was finally conducted in 1998, comparing DNA samples from male-line descendents of Field Jefferson (Thomas Jefferson's uncle) and Eston Hemings (one of Sally Hemings' children). The results proved that an individual carrying the male Jefferson Y chromosome had indeed fathered Eston Hemings. Although there were approximately 25 individuals living in Virginia at the time of Eston's birth who carried this chromosome, the study's authors concluded that the "simplest and most probable" conclusion was that Thomas Jefferson was in fact the father of Eston Hemings. Jefferson eventually freed all of Sally Hemings' children, a kindness which he did not extend to any of the other slave families living on his estate. In 1852, Eston Hemings changed his name to Eston Hemings Jefferson.