According to this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson_and_slavery#Revolutionary_period_.281775.E2.80.931783.29
It wasn’t quite like that. He released TWO slaves in his lifetime, older brothers of his concubine Sally Hemmings, and when he died, 130 of his slaves were sold to pay off debts. Suggests to me that he could have sold his slaves, but didn’t because it would have been inconvenient for him and would have undermined his social standing back in the day. He also opposed manumission laws, apparently.
And whilst I can’t seem to find any sources based on a quick check that confirm or debunk Jefferson’s claim that George III vetoed Virginian anti-slavery legislation, he was a constitutional monarch, and could not veto anything without the advice of his Government, so ultimately it would have been the cabinet or the British parliament that was responsible for that veto, not GIII personally.
It would have been pretty inconvenient for the slaves too. When you grow up on a slave plantation you know all the slaves personally. Selling them all off merely to assuage a philosophical qualm isn't something Jefferson would have been likely to do. Freeing them I could understand, but not selling them.
He also opposed manumission laws, apparently.
What manumission laws did he oppose? I know there were some laws preventing the freeing of slaves who couldn't support themselves.
Virginia law at the time he inherited slaves from both his father and father in law made it virtually impossible to free slaves. For a very brief period ( during which Washington died ) the laws were relaxed but then the law allowing death bed manumission was repealed.
He also opposed manumission laws, apparently.
One of his first acts as a member of the House of Burgesses of Virginia in 1769 was to write a Bill that his kinsman Richard Bland introduced to allow Slave owners to release their slaves at their own discretion. At the time a slave owner needed a courts permission to free a slave for "meritorious services" (The Wikipedia entry on this is absolute b*llshit) .
In 1784, Jefferson introduced a law in the national Continental Congress to abolish slavery in every State in America.
his concubine Sally Hemmings,
The DNA tests eliminated two of the three claimant lines of descent from Jefferson ( The Woodson line had the strongest oral tradition that "Tom" was fathered by Jefferson. The Woodson claim was disproved by the DNA evidence.) Eston Hemmings was conceived at the time Jefferson was over sixty four, a far more likely candidate as the biological father was Jeffersons younger brother Randolph Jefferson who was a widower at the time of Estons conception and was a "known frequenter" of the Slave quarters.