It is possible as Robert says. Sometimes freed slaves technically owned family members to get them away from the plantation. I don’t know the circumstances of Armistead’s ownership.

Even in our book we simply let Jefferson speak for himself which at times was ill informed and racially insensitive. He could have freed slaves but didn’t even while he spoke generally in favor of emancipation if it meant that blacks would be moved from the state of VA.

If you read our book, you would know that we do not ignore Jefferson but cite him repeatedly.

I’m simply baffled at your position that Thomas Jefferson was some raging racist slave owner based on a very loose and liberal interpretation of some obscure situation. Your position is that Jefferson was an evil, racist slave owner because someone else (person A) had their slave (person B) released under a rare and extreme situation.
I’m curious – why do you insist in rewriting history to fit your agenda? Rather than trying to make a very weak and outrageous cause about Jefferson based on two other people who had nothing to do with him, why don’t you just listen to Jefferson himself? I’m quite certain Jefferson didn’t have the faintest idea that someday, you and some radicals with an agenda would attempt to paint him as a fierce racist. Therefore, there is no reason to believe his private letters were some sort of P.R. propaganda for a campaign to benefit him 200+ years AFTER a his death.

“My opinion has ever been that, until more can be done for them, we should endeavor, with those whom fortune has thrown on our hands, to feed and clothe them well, protect them from ill usage, require such reasonable labor only as is performed voluntarily by freemen, and be led by no repugnancies to abdicate them, and our duties to them.” – Thomas Jefferson (in a letter to Edward Cole dated August 25th, 1814)

http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/thomas-jefferson/letters-of-thomas-jefferson/jefl232.php

So Jefferson believes that “UNTIL MORE CAN BE DONE FOR THEM”, slaves should be “protected”, “well fed”, “well clothed”, and “perform such reasonable labor only as performed voluntarily by freemen”. He believed a slave should not be forced to do anything a free man would not voluntarily do AND he felt that slave owners had a “duty to THEM (the slaves)”. That’s right – Jefferson viewed slave owners as having a duty to provide for the slaves until such time as slavery could be abolished.

Sorry Mr. Throckmorton, but your entire case (not to mention your position) is outrageous and nonsensical. Thomas Jefferson was abundantly clear in private letter after private letter that he believed slavery was an abomination that needed to be outlawed. Ignoring Jefferson’s own words in favor of some rare court case as proof of Jefferson’s position on slavery defies basic logic and reason.