So a man who had never fought in a battle and owned slaves thought other people's lives were cheap. Jefferson made significant contributions to both America and the world, but that doesn't mean he never got it wrong.
Going from having slavery as a global institution, entrenched since the beginning of man, to the abolishment of slavery, is not a trivial problem.
It’s great he said some abolitionist things, but abolitionists had existed and had even successfully abolished slavery since before the birth of Christ. There are people after Jefferson and his contemporaries that actually abolished slavery from then into the present day. I’m not sure why the US founding fathers who came up with shit like the 3/5th’s compromise deserve any special credit.
I would give more credit to the white abolitionists who lived in the 1800s and the slaves themselves.
Jefferson and others were proven right when it took a war to end slavery in the US. That's what they wanted to avoid. It's uncharitable to blame them for not fighting that war; it would have been their lives on the line. Meanwhile we're sitting in the present, benefitting from that war without the need to die in it.
The abolitionist movement predates Christ. The Qin Dynasty are the first abolitionists we have written records of. So if anything the evidence points to the abolitionist movement starting in China.
IMO this is unfair description of the US's fight for freedom from the tyranny of a country that was an ocean away and still meddled in literally every country's affairs.