John Adams on Slavery: On This Day, January 24, 1801

On January 24, 1801, President John Adams responded to two abolitionists who had sent him an anti-slavery pamphlet by Quaker reformer Warner Mifflin (1745–1798). Adams writes that he is personally against slavery, noting that "never in my Life did I own a Slave"—but that abolition should be "gradual and accomplished with much caution and Circumspection." In this his vision aligned with that of George Washington, who wrote privately to a fellow Virginia planter in 1786 that it was "among my first wishes to see some plan adopted by which slavery in the Country may be abolished by slow, sure, & imperceptable degrees."