Mmm you sometimes see that rhetoric (alongside the more common rhetoric about inferior races born to serve whites, or comparisons to Ancient Rome and the “historical inevitability” of slavery which were far more prevalent) but when you see these gradualist approaches they were very self serving.

For example, a lot of hay gets made from the fact that Jefferson championed a law to ban the importation of slaves. The fact he led US branch of the fight against the Atlantic slave trade is given as a reason for why, despite owning hundreds of slaves himself, he wasn’t some hypocrite when declaring all men are equal.

But the fact that gets left out is that Jefferson was a slave breeder. The primary economic activity of his slave plantation was slaves. He ran a rape farm and sold the children sired by his “stud males”. So when he banned the international slave trade it was simply a self-serving protectionist policy to benefit Virginia (the major center of rape farms for breeding slaves) and directly himself as the owner of one of the larger rape farms.

I wouldn’t put much stock in them saying stuff like “oh it’s awful I can’t wait until it just disappears one day.” That’s obviously bullshit.