* Reviewing Smith’s work, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote, “We cannot dismiss this article without expressing the pleasure the perusal has afforded us; it is certainly a very interesting subject; whatever tends to make visible the wisdom of the Supreme Being in the world we inhabit, is of the utmost importance to our happiness; the gratification of curiosity, when excited by trivial objects, is undoubtedly pleasant; but in this instance it is a fresh support to virtue.”
David Ramsay told Jefferson he admired his “generous indignation at slavery; but think you have depressed the negroes too low. I believe all mankind to be originally the same and only diversified by accidental circumstances. I flatter myself that in a few centuries the negroes will lose their black color. I think now they are less black in Jersey than in Carolina, their [lips] less thick, their noses less flat.” A graduate of Princeton from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Ramsey (1749–1815) married one of John Witherspoon’s daughters in 1783 in Philadelphia and bought a small plantation in South Carolina in 1792 before moving to Charleston in 1811.