Christ on a bike, I wish people would think beyond the end of their noses.

In a country that has legal slavery, freeing them would mean, essentially, giving them up to someone else. The state he lived in, and owned them in, would not recognize them as 'freed human beings of equal worth to white Americans.' They'd see them as 'livestock running loose after their owner died'. They'd be recaptured, and working for owners who were potentially a lot less benevolent than ol' Jeff allegedly was.

Is that what he should've done? "Hey, now that I'm dying, y'all go be someone else's slaves now, instead of staying here where you're treated well."

There's a lot we don't know, there's so much we can't know, but I can see a very good reason to keep slaves despite being against the practice. The difference is in how he treated them; and it's entirely possible that he treated them so well that one or two fell in love with him. But again, read this slowly.

There's no hard evidence to confirm or deny that he raped them. It is unknowable.