On convicts: Jefferson sort of fudged his figures

Maybe the future president just didn't want to admit to the number of convicts populating his Great Commonwealth of Virginia.

“The Malefactors sent to America were not sufficient in number to merit enumeration as one class out of three which peopled America. It was at a late period of their history that the practice began. I have no book by me which enables me to point out the date of its commencement. But I do not think the whole number sent would amount to 2000 & being principally men eaten up with disease, they married seldom & propagated little. I do not suppose that themselves & their descendants are at present 4000, which is little more than one thousandth part of the whole inhabitants.” – Thomas Jefferson, 1786.

Reply: “Jefferson should have known better. The British were sending nearly 1,000 convicts to America each year around the time he wrote the Declaration of Independence, and about half of them ended up in his own home state of Virginia.”

http://www.earlyamericancrime.com/convict-transportation/epilogue/epilogue