Thomas Jefferson one week after attending the inauguration of his
successor James Madison on March 4 went home to Monticello, and
he never left the Blue Ridge Mountains in the last seventeen years of his life.
On 19 May 1809 Jefferson wrote to John Wyche about circulating libraries.
Your favor of March 19th came to hand but a few days
ago and informs me of the establishment of the Westward
Mill Library Society of its general views and progress.
I always hear with pleasure of institutions for the
promotion of knowledge among my countrymen.
The people of every country are the only safe
guardians of their own rights, and are the only
instruments which can be used for their destruction.
And certainly they would never consent
to be so used were they not deceived.
To avoid this, they should be instructed to a certain degree.
I have often thought that nothing would do more
extensive good at small expense than the establishment
of a small circulating library in every county,
to consist of a few well-chosen books, to be lent
to the people of the county, under such regulations
as would secure their safe return in due time.
These should be such as would give them a general view
of other history and particular view of that of their own
country, a tolerable knowledge of Geography, the elements
of Natural Philosophy, of Agriculture and Mechanics.
Should your example lead to this, it will do great good.
Having had more favorable opportunities than fall to every
man’s lot of becoming acquainted with the best books on
such subjects as might be selected, I do not know that I can
be otherwise useful to your society than by offering them
any information respecting these which they might wish.
My services in this way are freely at their command,
and I beg leave to tender to yourself my salutations
and assurances of respect.1
On 28 June 1809 Jefferson wrote to P. S. Dupont de Nemours
about manufacturing during the embargo.The interruption of our commerce with England, produced
by our embargo and non-intercourse law, and the general
indignation excited by her barefaced attempts to make us
accessories and tributaries to her usurpations on the high
seas, have generated in this country an universal spirit for
manufacturing for ourselves, and of reducing to a minimum
the number of articles for which we are dependent on her.
The advantages, too, of lessening the occasions of
risking our peace on the ocean, and of planting the
consumer in our own soil by the side of the grower of
produce, are so palpable, that no temporary suspension
of injuries on her part, or agreements founded on that,
will now prevent our continuing in what we have begun.
The spirit of manufacture has taken deep root among us,
and its foundations are laid in
too great expense to be abandoned.
The bearer of this, Mr. Ronaldson, will be able to inform you
of the extent and perfection of the works produced here
by the late state of things; and to his information, which
is greatest as to what is doing in the cities, I can add my
own as to the country, where the principal articles wanted
in every family are now fabricated within itself.
This mass of household manufacture unseen by the public
eye and so much greater than what is seen is such at
present that let our intercourse with England be opened
when it may, not one half the amount of what we have
heretofore taken from her will ever again be demanded.
The great call from the country has
hitherto been of coarse goods.
These are now made in our families, and
the advantage is too sensible ever to be relinquished.
It is one of those obvious improvements in our
condition which needed only to be once forced
on our attention, never again to be abandoned.
Among the arts which have made great progress
among us is that of printing.
Heretofore we imported our books, and
with them much political principle from England.
We now print a great deal and shall soon supply ourselves
with most of the books of considerable demand.
But the foundation of printing, you know, is the
type-foundry, and a material essential to that is antimony.
Unfortunately that mineral is not among those as yet found
in the United States, and the difficulty and dearness of
getting it from England, will force us to discontinue our
type-founderies and resort to her again for our books,
unless some new source of supply can be found.
The bearer, Mr. Ronaldson, is of the concern of
Binney & Ronaldson, type-founders of Philadelphia.
He goes to France for the purpose of opening
some new source of supply, where we learn that
this article is abundant; the enhancement of the price
in England has taught us the fact, that its exportation
thither from France must be interrupted, either
by the war or express prohibition.
Our relations, however, with France are too unlike hers
with England to place us under the same interdiction.
Regulations for preventing the transportation of the
article to England, under the cover of supplies to America,
may be thought requisite.
The bearer, I am persuaded, will readily give any
assurances which may be required for this object,
and the wants of his own type-foundry here are a sufficient
pledge that what he gets is bona fide to supply them.
I do not know that there will be any obstacle to his bringing
from France any quantity of antimony he may have
occasion for; but lest there should be, I have taken
the liberty of recommending him to your patronage.
I know your enlightened and liberal views on
subjects of this kind, and the friendly interest
you take in whatever concerns our welfare.
I place Mr. Ronaldson, therefore, in your hands,
pray you to advise him and patronize the object
which carries him to Europe, and is so interesting
to him and to our country.
His knowledge of what is passing among us will be
a rich source of information for you, and especially
as to the state and progress of our manufactures.2On 26 May 1810 Jefferson wrote to John Tyler about schools.
You wish to see me again in the legislature,
but this is impossible; my mind is now so dissolved
in tranquility, that it can never again encounter a
contentious assembly; the habits of thinking and
speaking off-hand, after a disuse of five and twenty years,
have given place to the slower process of the pen.
I have indeed two great measures at heart,
without which no republic can maintain itself in strength.
1. That of general education, to enable every man to
judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom.
2. To divide every county into hundreds,
of such size that all the children of each
will be within reach of a central school in it.
But this division looks to many
other fundamental provisions.
Every hundred, besides a school, should have a justice
of the peace, a constable and a captain of militia.
These officers or some others within the hundred
should be a corporation to manage all its concerns,
to take care of its roads, its poor, and its police by patrols,
&c., (as the select men of the Eastern townships.)
Every hundred should elect one or two jurors
to serve where requisite, and all other elections
should be made in the hundreds separately,
and the votes of all the hundreds be brought together.
Our present Captaincies might be declared
hundreds for the present with a power
to the courts to alter them occasionally.
These little republics would be
the main strength of the great one.
We owe to them the vigor given to our revolution
in its commencement in the Eastern States,
and by them the Eastern States were enabled to repeal
the embargo in opposition to the Middle, Southern
and Western States, and their large and lubberly
division into counties which can never be assembled.
General orders are given out from a center to the
foreman of every hundred, as to the sergeants of an army,
and the whole nation is thrown into energetic action,
in the same direction in one instant and as one man,
and becomes absolutely irresistible.
Could I once see this I should consider it as the
dawn of the salvation of the republic, and say
with old Simeon, “nunc dimittas Domine.”
But our children will be as wise as we are,
and will establish in the fulness of time
those things not yet ripe for establishment.
So be it, and to yourself health, happiness and long life.3
In 1811 Jefferson supervised the translation and publishing of
A Commentary and Review of Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws.
Jefferson on September 16 in a letter to Clement Caine on wrote,
Your favor of April 2nd was not received until the
23rd of June last, with the volume accompanying it.
For which be please to accept my thanks.
I have read it with great satisfaction, & received from it
information, the more acceptable as coming from a source
which could be relied on the retort, on European Censors,
of their own practices on the liberties of man,
the inculcation on the master of the moral duties which
he owes to the slave in return for the benefits of his service,
that is to say, of food, clothing, care in sickness, &
maintenance under age & disability, so as to make him
in fact as comfortable & more secure than the laboring man
in most parts of the world, and the idea suggested
of substituting free whites in all household occupations,
& manual arts, thus lessening the call for the other kind
of labor, while it would increase the public security,
give great merit to the work, and will,
I have no doubt, produce wholesome impressions.
The habitual violation of the equal rights of the colonist
by the dominant (for I will not call them the mother)
countries of Europe, the invariable sacrifice of their highest
interests to the minor advantages of any individual trade
or calling at home, are as immoral in principle,
as the continuance of them is unwise in practice,
after the lessons they have received.
What in short is the whole system of Europe
towards America but an atrocious & insulting tyranny?
One hemisphere of the earth, separated from the other
by wide seas on both sides, having a different system
of interests flowing from different climates, different soils,
different productions, different modes of existence,
& its own local relations and duties, is made subservient
to all the petty interests of the other, to their laws,
their regulations, their passions and wars, and
interdicted from social intercourse from the
interchange of mutual duties & comforts with their
neighbors, enjoined on all men by the laws of nature.
Happily these abuses of human rights are drawing to a close
on both our continents, and are not likely to survive the
present mad contest of the lions and tigers of the other.
Nor does it seem certain that the insular colonies will not
soon have to take care of themselves, and to enter
into the general system of independence &
free intercourse with their neighboring & natural friends.
The acknowledged depreciation of the paper circulation
of England with the known laws of its rapid progression
to bankruptcy will leave that nation shortly without revenue,
& without the means of supporting the naval power
necessary to maintain dominion
over the rights & interests of distant nations.
The intention too, which they now formally avow,
of taking possession of the ocean as their exclusive domain,
& of suffering no commerce on it, but through their ports,
makes it the interest of all mankind to contribute
their efforts to bring such usurpations to an end.
We have hitherto been able to avoid professed war,
& to continue to our industry a more salutary direction.
But the determination to take all our vessels bound
to any other than her ports, amounting to all the war
she can make (for we fear no invasion) it would be folly
in us to let that war be all on one side only, & to make
no effort towards indemnification & retaliation by reprisal.
That a contest thus forced on us by a nation a thousand
leagues from us both, should place your country & mine
in relations of hostility, who have not a single motive or
interest, but of mutual friendship & interchange of comforts,
shows the monstrous character
of the system under which we live.
But however, in the event of war greedy individuals
on both sides, availing themselves of its laws,
may commit depredations on each other.
I trust that our quiet inhabitants, conscious that no cause
exists but for neighborly good will, & the furtherance of
common interests, will feel only those brotherly affections
which nature has ordained to be those of our situation.4
After many years with no communication between them,
John Adams on 1 January 1812 wrote in a letter to Thomas Jefferson,
As you are a Friend to American Manufacturers under
proper restrictions especially Manufactures of the domestic
kind, I take the Liberty of Sending you by the Post a Packett
contain two Pieces of Homespun lately produced in this
quarter by one who was honored in his youth with some
of your Attention and much of your kindness.5
Jefferson responded with this letter of reconciliation to Adams on January 21,
A letter from you calls up recollections
very dear to my mind.
It carries me back to the times when, beset
with difficulties and dangers, we were fellow
laborers in the same cause, struggling for what
is most valuable to man, his right of self-government.
Laboring always at the same oar with some wave
ever ahead threatening to overwhelm us and yet
passing harmless under our bark we knew not how,
we rode through the storm with heart
and hand and made a happy port.
Still we did not expect to be without rubs and difficulties;
and we have had them.
First the detention of the Western posts:
then the coalition of Pilnitz, outlawing our commerce with
France, and the British enforcement of the outlawry.
In your day French depredations: in mine English, and the
Berlin and Milan decrees: now the English orders of council,
and the piracies they authorize: when these shall be over,
it will be the impressment of our seamen,
or something else: and so we have gone on,
and so we shall go on, puzzled and prospering
beyond example in the history of man.
And I do believe we shall continue to growl, to multiply
and prosper until we exhibit an association, powerful,
wise, and happy, beyond what has yet been seen by men.
As for France and England, with all their
preeminence in science, the one is a
den of robbers and the other of pirates.
And if science produces no better fruits than tyranny,
murder, rapine, and destitution of national morality,
I would rather wish our country to be ignorant,
honest and estimable as our neighboring savages are.
But whither is senile garrulity leading me?
into politics, of which I have taken final leave.
I think little of them, and say less.
I have given up newspapers in exchange for
Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid;
and I find myself much the happier.
Sometimes indeed I look back to former occurrences,
in remembrance of our old friends and
fellow laborers, who have fallen before us.
Of the signers of the Declaration of Independence
I see now living not more than half a dozen on your
side of the Potomac, and on this side myself alone.
You and I have been wonderfully spared,
and myself with remarkable health,
a considerable activity of body and mind.
I am on horseback 3 or 4 hours of every day; visit
3 or 4 times a year a possession I have 90 miles distant,
performing the winter journey on horseback.
I walk little however; a single mile being too much for me;
and I live in the midst of my grandchildren, one of whom
has lately promoted me to be a great grandfather.
I have heard with pleasure that you also retain good health,
and a greater power of exercise in walking than I do.
But I would rather have heard this from yourself,
and that writing a letter like mine full of egotisms
and of details of your health, your habits, occupations
and enjoyments, I should have the pleasure of knowing
that in the race of life you do not keep in its physical
decline the same distance ahead of me which you
have done in political honors and achievements.
No circumstances have lessened the interest I feel in these
particulars respecting yourself; none have suspended
for one moment my sincere esteem for you; and I now
salute you with unchanged affections and respect.6
On 17 April 1812 Jefferson wrote to President James Madison,
Although something of the kind had been apprehended,
the embargo found the farmers and planters
only getting their produce to market and
selling as fast as they could get it there.
I think it caught them in this part of the state
with one third of their flour or wheat,
and ¾ of their tobacco undisposed of.
If we may suppose the rest of the middle country
in the same situation, and that the upper & lower
country may be judged by that as a mean,
these will perhaps be the proportions of produce
remaining in the hands of the producers.
Supposing the objects of the government were
merely to keep our vessels and men out of harm’s way,
and that there is no idea that the want of our flour
will starve great Britain, the sale of the remaining
produce will be rather desirable, and what would
be desired even in war, and even to our enemies.
For I am favorable to the opinion which has been
urged by others, sometimes acted on, and now
partly so by France and Great Britain, that commerce
under certain restrictions and licenses may be
indulged between enemies, mutually advantageous
to the individuals, and not to their injury as belligerents.
The capitulation of Amelia island, if confirmed,
might favor this object, and at any rate get off
our produce now on hand.
I think a people would go through a war with much less
impatience if they could dispose of their produce,
and that unless a vent can be provided for them,
they will soon become querulous & clamor for peace.
They appear at present to receive the embargo
with perfect acquiescence and without a murmur, seeing
the necessity of taking care of our vessels and seamen.
Yet they would be glad to dispose of their produce
in any way not endangering them, as by letting it
go from a neutral place in British vessels.
In this way we lose the carriage only;
but better that than both carriage and cargo.
The rising of the price of flour, since the
first panic is passed away, indicates some
prospect in the merchants of disposing of it.
Our wheat had greatly suffered by the winter
but is as remarkably recovered by the
favorable weather of the spring.7
The United States Congress declared war on Britain in June 1812,
and President Madison signed it into law on June 17.
Jefferson on June 29 wrote this letter to Madison:
I duly received your favor of the 22nd
covering the declaration of war.
It is entirely popular here, the only opinion being
that it should have been issued the moment
the season admitted the militia to enter Canada.
The federalists indeed are open-mouthed
against the declaration.
But they are poor devils here, not worthy of notice.
A barrel of tar to each state South of the Potomac
will keep all in order, and that will be freely
contributed without troubling government.
To the North they will give you more trouble.
You may there have to apply the rougher drastics
of Governor Wright, hemp and confiscation.
To continue the war popular
two things are necessary mainly.
1. to stop Indian barbarities.
The conquest of Canada will do this.
2. to furnish markets for our produce,
say indeed for our flour, for tobacco is
already given up and seemingly without reluctance.
The great profits of the wheat crop have allured
everyone to it; and never was such a crop on the
ground as that which we generally begin to cut this day.
It would be mortifying to the farmer
to see such a one rot in his barn.
It would soon sicken him of war.
Nor can this be a matter of wonder or of blame on him.
Ours is the only country on earth where
war is an instantaneous and total suspension
of all the objects of his industry and support.
For carrying our produce to foreign markets our own ships,
neutral ships, and even enemy ships under neutral flags,
which I would wink at, will probably suffice.
But the coasting trade is of double importance,
because both seller and buyer are disappointed,
and both are our own citizens.
You will remember that in this trade our greatest distress
in the last war was produced by our own pilot boats taken
by the British and kept as tenders to their larger vessels.
These being the swiftest vessels on the ocean, they took
them and selected the swiftest from the whole mass.
Filled with men, they scoured everything along shore,
and completely cut up that coasting business which
might otherwise have been carried on within
the range of vessels of force and draught.
Why should not we then line our coast with vessels
of pilot boat construction, filled with men, armed
with canonnades, and only so much larger as
to ensure the mastery of the pilot boat?
The British cannot counter work us by building similar ones,
because, the fact is, however unaccountable, that
our builders alone understand that construction.
It is on our own pilot boats the British will depend,
which our larger vessels may thus retake.
These however are the ideas of a landsman only.
Mr. Hamilton’s judgment will test their soundness.
Our militia are much afraid of being called
to Norfolk at this season.
They all declare a preference of a march to Canada.
I trust however that Governor Barbour will attend
to circumstances, and so apportion the service
among the counties, that those acclimated by birth
or residence may perform the summer tour, and
the winter service be allotted to the upper counties.8
After his presidency Jefferson had to deal with severe debts.
He worked as a farmer, and by October 1812 his 10,000 acres
worked by 200 slaves provided more than $10,000 a year.
Jefferson on 12 November 1812 wrote this letter to President Madison:
I enclose you a letter from Col. Gibson
Secretary under Governor Harrison.
I suppose he has addressed it to me
on the footing of a very old acquaintance.
He is a very honest man, very old in public service
& much esteemed by all who know him.
All this I believe however is known to yourself,
& possibly he may be personally known to you.
The seeing whether our untried Generals
will stand proof is a very dear operation.
Two of them have cost us a great many men.
We can tell by his plumage whether
a cock is dunghill or game.
But with us cowardice & courage wear the same plume.
Hull will of course be shot for cowardice & treachery.
And will not Van Renslaer be broke
for cowardice & incapacity?
To advance such a body of men across a river
without securing boats to bring them off
in case of disaster, has cost us 700 men: and
to have taken no part himself in such an action &
against such a general could be nothing but cowardice.
These are the reflections
of a solitary reader of his own letter.
Dearborne & Harrison have both courage & understanding,
& having no longer a Brock to encounter, I hope
we shall ere long hear something good from them.
If we could but get Canada to Trois rivieres in our hands
we should have a set-off against spoliations to be treated of,
& in the meantime separate the Indians from them and
set the friendly to attack the hostile part with our aid.9
Jefferson in a letter to Edward Coles on 25 August 1814
wrote about emancipation:
Dear Sir,—Your favor of July 31 was duly received,
and was read with peculiar pleasure.
The sentiments breathed through the whole do honor
to both the head and heart of the writer.
Mine on the subject of the slavery of negroes have
long since been in possession of the public,
and time has only served to give them stronger root.
The love of justice & the love of country plead equally
the cause of these people, and it is a mortal reproach
to us that they should have pleaded it so long in vain,
and should have produced not a single effort;
nay I fear not much serious willingness to relieve
them & ourselves from our present condition
of moral and political reprobation.
From those of the former generation who were
in the fulness of age when I came into public life,
which was while our controversy with England was
on paper only, I soon saw that nothing was to be hoped.
Nursed and educated in the daily habit of seeing
the degraded condition, both bodily & mental,
of those unfortunate beings, not reflecting that
that degradation was very much the work of themselves
& their fathers, few minds had yet doubted
but that they were as legitimate subjects
of property as their horses or cattle.
The quiet & monotonous course of colonial life
had been disturbed by no alarm
and little reflection on the value of liberty.
And when alarm was taken at an enterprise on their own,
it was not easy to carry them the whole length
of the principles which they invoked for themselves.
In the first or second session of the legislature
after I became a member, I drew to this subject
the attention of Col. Bland, one of the oldest,
ablest, and most respected members,
and he undertook to move for certain moderate extensions
of the protection of the laws to these people.
I seconded his motion, and as a younger member
was more spared in the debate:
but he was denounced as an enemy to his country,
& was treated with the grossest indecorum.
From an early stage of our revolution other and
more distant duties were assigned to me
so that from that time till my return from Europe in 1789,
and I may say till I returned to reside at home in 1809.
I had little opportunity of knowing the progress
of public sentiment here on this subject.
I had always hoped that the younger generation,
receiving their early impressions after the flame of liberty
had been kindled in every breast, and had become
as it were the vital spirit of every American,
that the generous temperament of youth,
analogous to the motion of their blood,
and above the suggestions of avarice, would have
sympathized with oppression wherever found and
proved their love of liberty beyond their own share of it.
But my intercourse with them, since my return,
has not been sufficient to ascertain that they
had made towards this point the progress I had hoped.
Your solitary but welcome voice is the first
which has brought this sound to my ear;
and I have considered the general silence
which prevails on this subject as indicating
an apathy unfavorable to every hope.
Yet the hour of emancipation is
advancing in the march of time.
It will come; and whether brought on by the generous
energy of our own minds or by the bloody process of
St. Domingo, excited and conducted by the power of
our present enemy, if once stationed permanently
within our Country, and offering asylum & arms to the
oppressed, is a leaf of our history not yet turned over.
As to the method by which this difficult work is to be
effected, if permitted to be done by ourselves,
I have seen no proposition so expedient on the whole,
as that of emancipation of those born after a given day
and of their education and expatriation at a proper age.
This would give time for a gradual extinction of that species
of labor and substitution of another and lessen the severity
of the shock which an operation
so fundamental cannot fail to produce.
The idea of emancipating the whole at once,
the old as well as the young, and retaining them here,
is of those only who have not the guide of either knowledge
or experience of the subject.
For men probably of any color, but of this color we know,
brought up from their infancy without necessity
for thought or forecast, are by their habits rendered
as incapable as children of taking care of themselves,
and are extinguished promptly wherever industry
is necessary for raising the young.
In the meantime they are pests in society by their idleness,
and the depredations to which this leads them.
Their amalgamation with the other color produces
a degradation to which no lover of his country,
no lover of excellence in the human character
can innocently consent.
I am sensible of the partialities with which you have
looked towards me as the person who should
undertake this salutary but arduous work.
But this, my dear Sir, is like bidding old Priam to buckle
the armor of Hector
“trementibus aevo humeris et inutile ferrum cingi.’ No.
I have over-lived the generation with which mutual labors
and perils begat mutual confidence and influence.
This enterprise is for the young;
for those who can follow it up
and bear it through to its consummation.
It shall have all my prayers,
and these are the only weapons of an old man.
But in the meantime are you right in abandoning
this property and your country with it?
I think not.
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.
The laws do not permit us to turn them loose
if that were for their good: and to commute them
for other property is to commit them to those
whose usage of them we cannot control.
I hope then, my dear Sir, you will reconcile yourself
to your country and its unfortunate condition;
that you will not lessen its stock of sound disposition
by withdrawing your portion from the mass.
That on the contrary you will come forward
in the public councils, become the Missionary of this doctrine
truly Christian; insinuate & inculcate it softly but steadily
through the medium of writing and conversation
associate others in your labors; and when the phalanx
is formed, bring on and press the proposition
perseveringly until its accomplishment.
It is an encouraging observation that no good measure
was ever proposed which, if duly pursued,
failed to prevail in the end.
We have proof of this in the history of the endeavors
in the British parliament to suppress that very trade
which brought this evil on us.
And you will be supported by the religious precept
“be not wearied in well doing.”
That your success may be as speedy and complete,
as it will be of honorable & immortal consolation to yourself,
I shall as fervently and sincerely pray
as I assure you of my great friendship and respect.10
On 7 September 1814 Jefferson wrote to Peter Carr and proposed
a detailed system of education for an academy or a college that included
language, mathematics, philosophy, literature, physics, and natural philosophy
as well as professional schools.
After the British burned the Library of Congress, Jefferson on September 21
offered to sell his extensive library to the United States
as a foundation for the Library of Congress.
Jefferson in a letter to Miles King on 26 September 1814 wrote,
I duly received your letter of August 20, and I thank you
for it because I believe it was written with kind intentions
and a personal concern for my future happiness whether
the particular revelation which you suppose to have been
made to yourself were real or imaginary,
your reason alone is the competent judge.
For dispute as long as we will on religious tenets,
our reason at last must ultimately decide, as it is
the only oracle which god has given us to determine
between what really comes from him &
the phantasms of a disordered or deluded imagination.
When he means to make a personal revelation,
he carries conviction of its authenticity to the reason
he has bestowed as the umpire of truth.
You believe you have been favored
with such a special communication.
Your reason, not mine, is to judge of this: and if it shall be
his pleasure to favor me with a like admonition,
I shall obey it with the same fidelity with which
I would obey his known will in all cases.
Hitherto I have been under the guidance of that portion
of reason which he has thought proper to deal out to me.
I have followed it faithfully in all important cases to such
a degree at least as leaves me without uneasiness;
and if on minor occasions I have erred from its dictates,
I have trust in him who made us what we are
and knows it was not his plan to make us always unerring.
He has formed us moral agents, not that in the perfection
of his state he can feel pain or pleasure from anything
we may do: he is far above our power:
but that we may promote the happiness of those with whom
he has placed us in society by acting honestly towards all,
benevolently to those who fall within our way,
respecting sacredly their rights bodily and mental,
and cherishing especially their freedom of conscience
as we value our own.
I must ever believe that religion substantially good
which produces an honest life, and we have been
authorized by one, whom you and I equally respect,
to judge of the tree by its fruit.
Our particular principles of religion are
a subject of accountability to our God alone.
I inquire after no man’s and trouble none with mine:
nor is it given to us in this life to know whether your’s
or mine, our friend’s or our foe’s, are exactly the right.
Nay, we have heard it said that there is not a Quaker or
a Baptist, a Presbyterian or an Episcopalian, a Catholic or
a Protestant in heaven: that on entering that gate
we leave those badges of schism behind
and find ourselves united in those principles
only in which God has united us all.
Let us not be uneasy then about the different roads we may
pursue as believing them the shortest to that our last abode:
but following the guidance of a good conscience,
let us be happy in the hope that
by these different paths we shall all meet in the end.
And that you and I may there meet and embrace
is my earnest prayer: and with this assurance
I salute you with brotherly esteem and respect.11
On 12 July 1816 Thomas Jefferson in a long letter to
Samuel Kercheval on reforming the Virginia constitution wrote,
I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with;
because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to
them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects.
But I know also, that laws and institutions must
go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.
As that becomes more developed, more enlightened,
as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed,
and manners and opinions change with the change
of circumstances, institutions must advance also,
and keep pace with the times.
We might as well require a man to wear still the coat
which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain
ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.
It is this preposterous idea which
has lately deluged Europe in blood.
Their monarchs, instead of wisely yielding to the gradual
change of circumstances, of favoring progressive
accommodation to progressive improvement, have clung
to old abuses, entrenched themselves behind steady habits,
and obliged their subjects to seek through blood and
violence rash and ruinous innovations, which,
had they been referred to the peaceful deliberations
and collected wisdom of the nation, would have been
put into acceptable and salutary forms.
Let us follow no such examples, nor weakly believe that
one generation is not as capable as another
of taking care of itself and of ordering its own affairs.
Let us, as our sister States have done, avail ourselves
of our reason and experience to correct the crude essays
of our first and unexperienced, although wise,
virtuous, and well-meaning councils.
And lastly let us provide in our Constitution
for its revision at stated periods.
What these periods should be, nature herself indicates.
By the European tables of mortality, of the adults living
at any one moment of time, a majority
will be dead in about nineteen years.
At the end of that period, then, a new majority is come
into place; or, in other words, a new generation.
Each generation is as independent as the one preceding,
as that was of all which had gone before.
It has then, like them, a right to choose for itself the form
of government it believes most promotive of its own
happiness; consequently, to accommodate to the
circumstances in which it finds itself, that received from its
predecessors; and it is for the peace and good of mankind,
that a solemn opportunity of doing this every nineteen
or twenty years should be provided by the constitution
so that it may be handed on with periodical repairs
from generation to generation to the end of time,
if anything human can so long endure.
It is now forty years since the constitution of Virginia
was formed.
The same tables inform us that within that period,
two-thirds of the adults then living are now dead.
Have then the remaining third, even if they had the wish,
the right to hold in obedience to their will,
and to laws heretofore made by them, the other two-thirds,
who with themselves compose the present mass of adults?
If they have not, who has?
The dead? But the dead have no rights.
They are nothing; and nothing cannot own something.
Where there is no substance, there can be no accident.
This corporeal globe and everything upon it, belong to
its present corporeal inhabitants during their generation.
They alone have a right to direct what is the concern of
themselves alone and to declare the law of that direction;
and this declaration can only be made by their majority.
That majority, then, has a right to depute representatives
to a convention and to make the Constitution
what they think will be the best for themselves.12
Jefferson in September 1816 read and corrected the Life of Patrick Henry
by William Wirt, and in October 1818 he directed the translating and
publishing of A Treatise on Political Economy by Antoine Destutt de Tracy.
Jefferson in 1829 completed The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth,
but it would not be published until 1902.
On 31 October 1819 Jefferson in a letter to William Short
wrote about the ethical philosophers.
I too am an Epicurean.
I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines
of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral
philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.
Epictetus indeed, has given us what was good of the stoics;
all beyond, of their dogmas, being hypocrisy and grimace.
Their great crime was in their calumnies of Epicurus
and misrepresentations of his doctrines;
in which we lament to see the candid character
of Cicero engaging as an accomplice.
Diffuse, vapid, rhetorical, but enchanting.
His prototype Plato, eloquent as himself, dealing out
mysticisms incomprehensible to the human mind, has been
deified by certain sects usurping the name of Christians;
because in his foggy conceptions, they found a basis
of impenetrable darkness whereon to rear fabrications
as delirious of their own invention.
These they fathered blasphemously on him
whom they claimed as their founder,
but who would disclaim them with the indignation
which their caricatures of his religion so justly excite.
Of Socrates we have nothing genuine but in the
Memorabilia of Xenophon; for Plato makes him
one of his Collocutors merely to cover his own
whimsies under the mantle of his name;
a liberty of which we are told Socrates himself complained.
Seneca is indeed a fine moralist, disfiguring his work
at times with some Stoicisms, and affecting too much
of antithesis and point, yet giving us on the whole
a great deal of sound and practical morality.
But the greatest of all the reformers of the depraved
religion of his own country was Jesus of Nazareth.
Abstracting what is really his from the rubbish in which it is
buried, easily distinguished by its lustre from the dross of
his biographers, and as separable from that as the diamond
from the dung hill, we have the outlines of a system of the
most sublime morality which has ever fallen from the lips of
man: outlines which it is lamentable he did not live to fill up.
Epictetus and Epicurus give us laws for governing ourselves,
Jesus a supplement of the duties and charities
we owe to others.
The establishment of the innocent and genuine character
of this benevolent moralist, and the rescuing it from
the imputation of imposture, which has resulted from
artificial systems, invented by ultra-Christian sects,
unauthorised by a single word ever uttered by him,
is a most desirable object, and one to which Priestley
has successfully devoted his labors and learning.
It would in time, it is to be hoped, effect a quiet
euthanasia of the heresies of bigotry and fanaticism
which have so long triumphed over human reason,
and so generally and deeply afflicted mankind.13
Jefferson on 22 April 1820 wrote to John Holmes about the Missouri crises.
I thank you, dear Sir, for the copy you have been
so kind as to send me of the letter to
your constituents on the Missouri question.
It is a perfect justification to them.
I had for a long time ceased to read newspapers
or pay any attention to public affairs, confident they
were in good hands, and content to be a passenger
in our bark to the shore from which I am not distant.
But this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night,
awakened and filled me with terror.
I considered it at once as the knell of the Union.
It is hushed indeed for the moment.
But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence.
A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle,
moral and political, once conceived and held up to
the angry passions of men will never be obliterated;
and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper.
I can say with conscious truth that there is not a man on
earth who would sacrifice more than I would, to relieve
us from this heavy reproach in any practicable way.
The cession of that kind of property, for so it is misnamed,
is a bagatelle which would not cost me a second thought
if in that way a general emancipation and expatriation
could be effected: and gradually and with due sacrifices
I think it might be.
But as it is, we have the wolf by the ear,
and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go.
Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.
Of one thing I am certain, that as the passage of slaves
from one state to another would not make a slave of a
single human being who would not be so without it,
so their diffusion over a greater surface would make them
individually happier and proportionally facilitate the
accomplishment of their emancipation; by dividing
the burthen on a greater number of co-adjutors.
An abstinence too from this act of power would
remove the jealousy excited by the undertaking
of Congress; to regulate the condition of the
different descriptions of men composing a state.
This certainly is the exclusive right of every state,
which nothing in the Constitution has taken from them
and given to the General Government.
Could Congress, for example, say that the non-freemen
of Connecticut, shall be freemen, or
that they shall not emigrate into any other State?
I regret that I am now to die in the belief,
that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the
generation of 1776, to acquire self-government and
happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the
unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my
only consolation is to be, that I live not to weep over it.
If they would but dispassionately weigh the blessings,
they would throw away against an abstract principle more
likely to be effected by union than by scission, they would
pause before they would perpetrate this act of suicide on
themselves and of treason against the hopes of the world.
To yourself as the faithful advocate of union
I tender the offering of my high esteem and respect.14
On 25 December 1820 Jefferson wrote
to Thomas Ritchie about the judiciary.
The Judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps
of sappers and miners constantly working under ground
to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric.
They are construing our Constitution from a
coordination of a general and special governments
to a general and supreme one alone.
This will lay all things at their feet, and
they are too well versed in English law to forget
the maxim “boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem.”
We shall see if they are bold enough to maintain
the daring stride their five lawyers have lately taken.
If they do, then with the editor of our book in his address
to the public, I will say that “against this every man should
raise his voice,” and more, should uplift his arm.
Who wrote this admirable address?
Sound, luminous, strong, not a word too much,
nor one which can be changed but for the worse.
That pen should go on, lay bare these wounds
of our Constitution, expose these decisions seriatim,
and arouse, as it is able, the attention of the nation
to these bold speculators on its patience.
Having found from experience that impeachment is an
impracticable thing, a mere scare-crow, they consider
themselves secure for life; they sculk from responsibility
to public opinion the only remaining hold on them, under
a practice, first introduced into England by Lord Mansfield.
An opinion is huddled up in conclave, perhaps by a
majority of one, delivered as if unanimous, and
with the silent acquiescence of lazy or timid associates,
by a crafty chief judge, who sophisticates the law
to his mind by the turn of his own reasoning.
A judiciary law was once reported by the Attorney General
to Congress, requiring each judge to deliver his opinion seriatim
and openly, and then to give it in writing
to the clerk to be entered on the record.
A judiciary independent of a king or executive alone,
is a good thing; but independence on the will of the nation
is a solecism, at least in a republican government.15
On 22 January 1821 Jefferson wrote to John Adams,
I was quite rejoiced, dear Sir, to see that you
had health and spirits enough to take part in the
late convention of your State for revising its constitution,
and to bear your share in its debates and labors.
The amendments of which we have as yet heard prove
the advance of liberalism in the intervening period;
and encourage a hope that the human mind will
some day get back to the freedom it enjoyed
two thousand years ago.
This country, which has given to the world the example of
physical liberty, owes to it that of moral emancipation also,
for as yet it is but nominal with us.
The inquisition of public opinion overwhelms in practice
the freedom asserted by the laws in theory.
Our anxieties in this quarter are all concentrated in the
question, what does the Holy alliance, in and out of
Congress mean to do with us on the Missouri question?
And this, by the bye, is but the name of the case;
it is only the John Doe or Richard Roe of the ejectment.
The real question, as seen in the States afflicted
with this unfortunate population is: are our slaves
to be presented with freedom and a dagger?
For if Congress has a power to regulate the
conditions of the inhabitants of the states,
within the states, it will be but another exercise
of that power to declare that all shall be free.
Are we then to see again Athenian
and Lacedemonian confederacies?
To wage another Peloponnesian war
to settle the ascendancy between them?
or is this the tocsin of merely a servile war?16
In the first seven months of 1821 Jefferson wrote his Autobiography.
On 22 June 1822 he wrote to Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse and
compared a Unitarian creed to a Calvinistic one.
The doctrines of Jesus are simple
and tend all to the happiness of man.
1. That there is one only God, and he all perfect.
2. That there is a future state of rewards and punishments.
3. That to love God with all thy heart
and thy neighbor as thyself is the sum of religion.
These are the great points on which
he endeavored to reform the religion of the Jews.
But compare with these the demoralizing dogmas of Calvin.
1. That there are three Gods.
2. That good works, or
the love of our neighbor, are nothing.
3. That faith is everything, and the more incomprehensible
the proposition, the more merit in its faith.
4. That reason in religion is of unlawful use.
5. That God from the beginning elected certain individuals
to be saved and certain others to be damned;
and that no crimes of the former can damn them;
no virtues of the latter save.
Now which of these is the true and charitable Christian?
He who believes and acts on the simple doctrines of Jesus?
Or the impious dogmatists, as Athanasius and Calvin?17
On 24 October 1823 Jefferson wrote this letter to
President James Monroe:
Dear Sir,—The question presented by the letters you have
sent me is the most momentous which has ever been
offered to my contemplation since that of independence
that made us a nation; this sets our compass and
points the course which we are to steer through
the ocean of time opening on our view.
And never could we embark on it
under circumstances more auspicious.
Our first and fundamental maxim should be,
never to entangle ourselves in the broils of Europe; our 2nd
never to suffer Europe to intermeddle in Cis-Atlantic affairs.
America, North & South, has a set of interests
distinct from those of Europe, and peculiarly her own.
She should therefore have a system of her own,
separate and apart from that of Europe.
While the last is laboring to become the domicile
of despotism, our endeavor should surely be
to make our hemisphere that of freedom.
One nation, most of all, could disturb us in this pursuit,
she now offers to lead, aid, and accompany us in it.
By acceding to her proposition, we detach her
from the band of despots, bring her mighty weight
into the scale of free government, and emancipate
at one stroke a whole continent, which
might otherwise linger long in doubt and difficulty.
Great Britain is the nation which can do us the most harm
of any one or all on earth; and with her on our side
we need not fear the whole world.
With her then we should the most sedulously
nourish a cordial friendship; and nothing would tend
more to knit our affections than to be fighting
once more side by side in the same cause.
Not that I would purchase even her amity
at the price of taking part in her wars.
But the war in which the present proposition
might engage us.
Should that be its consequence, is not her war, but ours.
Its object is to introduce and to establish the American
system, of ousting from our land all foreign nations,
of never permitting the powers of Europe to intermeddle
with the affairs of our nations.
It is to maintain our own principle, not to depart from it.
And if, to facilitate this, we can effect a division in the body
of the European powers and draw over to our side
it’s most powerful member, surely we should do it.
But I am clearly of Mr. Canning’s opinion,
that it will prevent war, instead of provoking it.
With Great Britain withdrawn from their scale
and shifted into that of our two continents,
all Europe combined would not dare to risk war.
Nor is the occasion to be slighted, which this proposition
offers of declaring our Protest against the atrocious
violations of the rights of nations by the interference
of anyone in the internal affairs of another,
so flagitiously begun by Bonaparte and now continued
by the equally lawless alliance, calling itself Holy.
But we have first to ask ourselves a question.
Do we wish to acquire to our own Confederacy
anyone or more of the Spanish provinces?
I candidly confess that I have ever looked on Cuba
as the most interesting addition which
could ever be made to our system of states.
The control which, with Florida point this island
would give us over the Gulf of Mexico,
and the countries and the Isthmus bordering on it,
as well as all those whose waters flow into it,
would fill up the measure of our political well-being.
Yet, as I am sensible that this can never be obtained,
even with her own consent, but by war;
and as her independence, which is our second interest,
and especially her independence of England,
can be secured without it, I have no hesitation
in abandoning my first wish to future chances,
and accepting its independence with peace,
and the friendship of England, rather than
it’s association, at the expense of war, and her enmity.
I could honestly therefore join in the declaration
proposed that we aim not at the acquisition of any
of those possessions, that we will not stand in the way
of any amicable arrangement between them and the
mother country: but that we will oppose, with all our means,
the forcible interposition of any other power, either as
auxiliary, stipendiary, or under any other form or pretext,
and most especially their transfer to any power,
by conquest, cession, or acquisition in any other way.
I should think it therefore advisable that the Executive
should encourage the British government to a continuance
in the dispositions expressed in these letters
by an assurance of his concurrence with them,
as far as his authority goes, and that as it may lead to war,
the Declaration of which is vested in Congress,
the case shall be laid before them for consideration
at their first meeting under the reasonable aspect
in which it is seen by himself.
I have been so long weaned from political subjects,
and have so long ceased to take any interest in them,
that I am sensible that I am not qualified to offer opinions
on them worthy of any attention.
But the question now proposed involves consequences
so lasting and effects so decisive of our future destinies,
as to rekindle all the interest I have heretofore felt
on these occasions, and to induce me to the hazard
of opinions, which will prove my wish only to contribute
still my mite in what may be useful to our country,
and praying you to accept them at only what
they are worth, I add the assurance of my constant
and affectionate friendship and respect.18
On 4 February 1824 Jefferson wrote to Jared Sparks
about plans to emancipate slaves.
I duly received your favor of the 13th and with it the last
number of the North American Review.
This has anticipated the one I should receive in course,
but have not yet received under my subscription
to the new series.
The article on the African colonization of the people of color,
to which you invite my attention,
I have read with great consideration.
It is indeed a fine one and will do much good.
I learn from it more too than I had before known
of the degree of success and promise of that colony.
In the disposition of these unfortunate people,
there are two rational objects to be distinctly kept in view.
First the establishment of a colony on the coast of Africa,
which may introduce among the Aborigines the arts of
cultivated life and the blessings of civilization and science.
By doing this we may make to them some
retribution for the long course of injuries
we have been committing on their population.
And considering that these blessings will descend to the
“nati natorum, et qui nascentur ab illis,” we shall, in the
long run have rendered them perhaps more good than evil.
To fulfil this object the colony of Sierra Leone promises well,
and that of Mesurado adds to our prospect of success.
Under this view the colonization society is to be considered
as a missionary society, having in view however objects
more humane, more justifiable, and less aggressive on the
peace of other nations than the others of that appellation.
The subject object and the most interesting to us,
as coming home to our physical and moral characters,
to our happiness and safety, is to provide an
asylum to which we can by degrees send the whole
of that population from among us and establish them
under our patronage and protection as a separate,
free and independent people in some country
and climate friendly to human life and happiness.
That any place on the coast of Africa should answer the
latter purpose, I have ever deemed entirely impossible.
And without repeating the other arguments which
have been urged by others, I will appeal to figures only,
which admit no controversy.
I shall speak in round numbers, not absolutely accurate,
yet not so wide from truth as to vary the result materially.
There are in the United States a million and a half
of people of color in slavery.
To send off the whole of these at once nobody conceives
to be practicable for us or expedient for them.
Let us take twenty-five years for its accomplishment,
within which time they will be doubled.
Their estimated value as property, in the first place
(for actual property has been lawfully vested in that form,
and who can lawfully take it from the possessors?)
at an average of two hundred dollars each,
young and old, would amount to six hundred millions
of dollars, which must be paid or lost by somebody.
To this add the cost of their transportation by land and sea
to Mesurado, a year’s provision of food and clothing,
implements of husbandry and of their trades which
will amount to three hundred millions more, making
thirty-six millions of dollars a year for twenty-five years
with insurance of peace all that time, and it is
impossible to look at the question a second time.
I am aware that at the end of about sixteen years,
a gradual detraction from this sum will commence
from the gradual diminution of breeders
and go on during the remaining nine years.
Calculate this deduction, and it is still impossible
to look at the enterprise a second time.
I do not say this to induce an inference that
the getting rid of them is forever impossible.
For that is neither my opinion nor my hope.
But only that it cannot be done in this way.
There is, I think, a way in which it can be done;
that is, by emancipating the after-born, leaving them on
due compensation with their mothers until their services
are worth their maintenance, and then putting them to
industrious occupations until a proper age for deportation.
This was the result of my reflections on the subject
five and forty years ago, and I have never yet
been able to conceive any other practicable plan.
It was sketched in the Notes on Virginia
under the Fourteenth Query.
The estimated value of the new-born infant is so low
(say twelve dollars and fifty cents) that it would probably be
yielded by the owner gratis, and would thus reduce the six
hundred millions of dollars, the first head of expense, to
thirty-seven millions and a half; leaving only the expenses
of nourishment while with the mother and of transportation.
And from what fund are these expenses to be furnished?
Why not from that of the lands which have been ceded
by the very States now needing this relief?
And ceded on no consideration for the most part
but that of the general good of the whole.
These cessions already constitute
one fourth of the States of the Union.
It may be said that these lands have been sold,
are now the property of the citizens composing those States,
and the money long ago received and expended.
But an equivalent of lands in the territories since acquired
may be appropriated to that object or so much at least as
may be sufficient; and the object, although more important
to the slave States, is highly so to the others also, if they
were serious in their arguments on the Missouri question.
The slave States too, if more interested, would also
contribute more by their gratuitous liberation, thus taking on
themselves alone the first and heaviest item of expense.
In the plan sketched in the Notes on Virginia no
particular place of asylum was specified;
because it was thought possible that, in the
revolutionary state of America then commenced, events
might open to us some one within practicable distance.
This has now happened.
St. Domingo is become independent, and with a
population of that color only; and if the public papers
are to be credited, their Chief offers to pay
their passage, to receive them as free citizens,
and to provide them employment.
This leaves then for the general confederacy
no expense but of nurture with the mother
a few years, and would call of course for
a very moderate appropriation of the vacant lands.
Suppose the whole annual increase to be of sixty thousand
effective births, fifty vessels of four hundred tons burthen
each, constantly employed in that short run, would carry off
the increase of every year, and the old stock would die off
in the ordinary course of nature, lessening from the
commencement until its final disappearance.
In this way no violation of private right is proposed.
Voluntary surrenders would probably come in
as fast as the means to be provided
for their care would be competent to it.
Looking at my own State only, and I presume
not to speak for the others, I verily believe that this
surrender of property would not amount to more annually
than half our present direct taxes, to be continued fully
about twenty or twenty-five years, and then gradually
diminishing for as many more until their final extinction;
and even this half tax would not be paid in cash,
but by the delivery of an object which they have never
yet known or counted as part of their property; and those
not possessing the object will be called on for nothing.
I do not go into all the details of the
burthens and benefits of this operation.
And who could estimate its blessed effects?
I leave this to those who will live to see
their accomplishment and to enjoy a
beatitude forbidden to my age.
But I leave it with this admonition to rise and be doing.
A million and a half are within their control;
but six millions (which a majority of those now
living will see them attain) and one million
of these fighting men will say “we will not go.”
I am aware that this subject involves
some constitutional scruples.
But a liberal construction justified by the object
may go far, and an amendment of the Constitution,
the whole length necessary.
The separation of infants from their mothers
too would produce some scruples of humanity.
But this would be straining at a gnat
and swallowing a camel.
I am much pleased to see that you have taken up
the subject of the duty on imported books.
I hope a crusade will be kept up against it until
those in power shall become sensible of this stain
on our legislation, and shall wipe it from their code
and from the remembrance of man, if possible.19
Jefferson in a letter to Major John Cartwright wrote on 5 June, 1824:
Having driven out the former inhabitants of that part
of the island called England, they became Aborigines
as to you and your lineal Ancestors.
They doubtless had a constitution; and
although they have not left it in a written formula,
to the precise text of which you may always appeal,
yet they have left fragments of their history and laws
from which it may be inferred with considerable certainty.
Whatever their history and laws show to have been
practiced with approbation, we may presume
was permitted by their constitution
whatever was not so practiced was not permitted.
And although this constitution was violated and set at naught
by Norman force; yet force cannot change right.
A perpetual claim was kept up by the nation by their
perpetual demand of a restoration of their Saxon laws;
which shows they were never relinquished
by the will of the nation.
In the pulling and hauling for these ancient rights
between the nation and its kings of the races of
Plantagenets, Tudors & Stuarts, there was sometimes gain,
and sometimes loss, until the final reconquest
of their rights from the Stuarts.
The destitution and expulsion of this race broke the thread
of pretended inheritance, extinguished all regal usurpations,
and the nation re-entered into all its rights;
and although in their bill of rights they specifically reclaimed
some only, yet the omission of the others was no
renunciation of the right to assume their exercise also;
whenever occasions should occur, the new king received
no rights or powers but those expressly granted to him.
It has ever appeared to me that the difference
between the Whig and Tory of England is that
the Whig deduces his rights from the Anglo-Saxon source,
and the Tory from the Norman….
But can they be made unchangeable?
Can one generation bind another and
all others in succession forever?
I think not.
The Creator has made the earth for the living, not the dead.
Rights and powers can only belong to persons, not to things,
not to mere matter unendowed with will.
The dead are not even things.
The particles of matter which composed their bodies,
make part now of the bodies of other animals, vegetables,
or minerals of a thousand forms.
To what then are attached the rights and power
they held while in the form of men?
A generation may bind itself as long as its majority
continues in life; when that has disappeared,
another majority is in place, holds all the rights and powers
their predecessors once held and may change their laws
and institutions to suit themselves.
Nothing then is unchangeable but the inherent and
unalienable rights of man.20
Jefferson on 15 February 1825 wrote to John Adams congratulating him
on the election of his son John Quincy Adams as the President of the United States.
On February 21 Jefferson in a letter to Thomas Jefferson Smith wrote,
This letter will, to you be as one from the dead, the writer
will be in the grave before you can weigh its counsels.
Your affectionate and excellent father has requested that
I would address to you something which might
possibly have a favorable influence on the course
of life you have to run, and I too, as a namesake,
feel an interest in that course.
Few words will be necessary
with good dispositions on your part.
Adore God.
Reverence and cherish your parents.
Love your neighbor as yourself,
and your country more than yourself.
Be just.
Be true.
Murmur not at the ways of Providence.
So shall the life into which you have entered be the Portal
to one of eternal and ineffable bliss.
And if to the dead it is permitted to care for the things of
this world, every action of your life will be under my regard.
Farewell.The portrait of a good man by the most
sublime of poets, for your imitation.
Lord, who’s the happy man that may
to thy blest courts repair,
Not stranger-like to visit them but to inhabit there?
‘Tis he whose every thought and deed
by rules of virtue moves;
Whose generous tongue disdains to speak
the thing his heart disproves.
Who never did a slander forge,
his neighbor’s fame to wound;
Nor hearken to a false report by malice whispered round.
Who vice in all its pomp and power,
can treat with just neglect;
And piety, though clothed in rags, religiously respect.
Who to his plighted vows and trust has ever firmly stood;
And, though he promise to his loss,
he makes his promise good.
Whose soul in usury disdains his treasure to employ;
Whom no rewards can ever bribe the guiltless to destroy.
The man who by this steady course has happiness insured.
When earth’s foundations shake,
shall stand, by Providence secured.
A Decalogue of Canons for observation in practical life.
1. Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.
2. Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.
3. Never spend your money before you have it.
4. Never buy what you do not want because it is cheap;
it will be dear to you.
5. Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst and cold.
6. We never repent of having eaten too little.
7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.
8. How much pain have cost us the evils
which have never happened.
9. Take things always by their smooth handle.
10. When angry, count ten, before you speak;
if very angry, a hundred.21
Jefferson on 30 March 1826 wrote this letter to President John Quincy Adams:
I am thankful for the very interesting message and
documents of which you have been so kind as to send me
a copy, and will state my recollections as to the particular
passage of the message to which you ask my attention.
On the conclusion of peace Congress, sensible of their
right to assume independence, would not condescend to ask
its acknowledgement from other nations, yet were willing,
by some of the ordinary international transactions to
receive what would imply that acknowledgement.
They appointed Commissioners therefore to propose
treaties of commerce with the principal nations of Europe.
I was then a member of Congress, was of the committee
appointed to prepare instructions for the commissioners,
was, as you suppose, the draughtsman of those
actually agreed to, and was joined with your father
and Dr. Franklin to carry them into execution.
But the stipulations making part of those injunctions, which
respected privateering, blockades, contraband, and freedom
of the fisheries, were not original conceptions of mine.
They had before been suggested by Dr. Franklin in some
paper of his in possession of the public, and had, I think,
been recommended in some letter of his to Congress.
I happen only to have been the inserter
of them in the first public act which gave
the formal sanction of a public authority.
We accordingly proposed our treaties, containing these
stipulations to the principal governments of Europe.
But we were then just emerged from a subordinate
Condition; the nations had as yet known nothing of us,
and had not yet reflected on the relations which
it might be their interest to establish with us.
Most of them, therefore, listened to our propositions
with coyness and reserve; old Frederic only
closing with us without hesitation.
The negotiator of Portugal indeed signed a treaty with us,
which his government did not ratify,
and Tuscany was near a final agreement.
Becoming sensible, however, ourselves that we should
do nothing with the greater powers, we thought it better
not to hamper our country with engagements to those
of less significance and suffered our powers to expire
without closing any other negotiations.
Austria soon after became desirous of a treaty with us, and
her ambassador pressed it often on me; but our commerce
with her being no object, I evaded his repeated invitations.
Had these governments been then apprised of the station
we should so soon occupy among nations, all, I believe
would have met us promptly and with frankness.
These principles would then have been established with all,
and from being the Conventional law with us alone,
would have slid into their engagements
with one another and become general.
These are the facts within my recollection.
They have not yet got into written history;
but their adoption by our Southern brethren will bring them
into observance, and make them, what they should be,
a part of the law of the world, and of the reformation
of principles for which they will be indebted to us.
I pray you to accept the homage
of my friendly and high consideration.22
Thomas Jefferson died on 4 July 1826 without knowing
that John Adams died on the same day.
Notes
1. Thomas Jefferson Writings, p. 1207-1208.
2. Ibid., p. 1208-1210.
3. Ibid., p. 1226-1227.
4. Thomas Jefferson to Clement Caines, 16 September 1811 (Online)
5. Thomas Jefferson: A Biography by Nathan Schachner, p. 914.
6. Thomas Jefferson Writings, p. 1259-1260.
7. The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Volume XII ed. Paul Leicester Ford,
p. 233-236.
8. To James Madison from Thomas Jefferson, 29 June 1812 (Online)
9. The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Volume XI, p. 270-271.
10. Ibid., p. 1343-1346.
11. Thomas Jefferson to Miles King, 26 September 1814 (Online)
12. Thomas Jefferson Writings, p. 1401-1402.
13. Ibid., p. 1430-1431.
14. Ibid., p. 1433-1435.
15. Ibid., p. 1446.
16. The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Volume XII, p. 198.
17. Ibid., p. 1458.
18. Ibid., p. 1481-1483.
19. Ibid., p. 1484-1487.
20. Ibid., p. 1490-1491, 1493-1494.
21. Ibid., p. 1499-1500.
22. The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Volume XII, p. 467-468.
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