Poinsett

Joel Poinsett, diplomat and amateur botanist, is chiefly known for introducing the Mexican plant, there called the Flor de Noch Buena (Christmas Eve flower) to North America and beyond, where it is called the poinsettia. Other than that, I had never heard much of Poinsett's activities, except that he held responsible diplomatic posts in Latin America.

In Journey to America, de Tocqueville's notebooks from America, edited by J.P. Mayer, the transcript of a conversation with Poinsett take up about nine pages. While looking through this, I was struck by the following passage:

The most dangerous men are the emancipated blacks. Their presence makes the slaves restless and long for freedom. I think it is indispensable to take away from the masters the right to free their slaves, and especially the right to free them by will. Washington gave a very bad example by freeing his slaves at his death.

Most people have thought that Washington gave a very good example. It is true that during the first half of the 19th Century emancipation became more difficult in a number of states, and Maryland (I believe) made it impossible to free slaves by a will.

Yet Poinsett goes on

It is an extraordinary thing how far public opinion is becoming enlightened about slavery. The idea that it is a great evil and that one could do without it is gaining ground more and more. I hope that the natural course of things will rid us of slaves. I know people still who have seen slavery in New England. In our time we have seen it abolished in the state of New York, then in Pennsylvania; it only holds on a precarious existence in Maryland; there is already talk against it in Virginia.

It is not clear from the transcript how Poinsett imagined the future of the formerly enslaved.