Master thoughts of Thomas Jefferson

Dedication

Believing that our political organizations have become machines which register the opinions and interests of the few, and that they have drifted far from the principles upon which our Commonwealth is founded, I have dedicated this compilation to the success of the man who stands most free from party reins and strives to do his duty as he sees it — who in his ideals follows nearer the rugged lines of Jeffersonian Democracythan many of its boasted adherents — and to the success of these principles and of Charles E. Hughes, Governor of New York, this work is respectfully dedicated.

Benjamin S. Catchings.

Contents

I. The Negro and Slavery . . . . i

Loyahy and Secession ... 7

.3-

The Principles of Thomas Jefferson . 18

••

Religious Views ..... y6 it

Educational Views ..... 81

It

Summary View of the Rights of British

" V

'"7.

Basic Principles of Government . . 106 it

General Views 115

The Constitution . . . . .124

The Judiciary . . . . . 137

II. Foreign Relations ..... 141 tt

The Tariff ...... 149 tt

Theories of Government . . , 155 it

Dangers to the Republic . . . 167

• t vi5-

Republican Principles . . . -171 tt tt

Miscellaneous Extracts .... 182

Appreciation.

>' of Thomas Jefferson . . . ix — xxii

J

* The marginal references locate the beginning of the letter from which each selection is made or the volume and page upon which it can be found in "The Writings of Thomas Jefferson," published by the Jefferson Memorial Association of Washington, D. C, which should be found in any public library.— [Ed.

INTRODUCTION

THOUGHTS which seize the heart and mind of men or Nations, which Hft them above the necessary strife and sordid struggle of Hfe and sweep them headlong into the accomplishment of some great public need ; thoughts which fill a few scattered colonies with light and life, and spread with telling force into other lands and other worlds, driving kings of a thousand years from their thrones — these and all like them are the master thoughts of our time and race.

Thomas Jefferson is known as a leader in the thought of his age. His principles command the attention of every political school, and it is necessary that all should have ready access to them. Thanks and recognition are due to The Jefferson Memorial Association and all others who have aided in gathering together his letters and papers. For it was upon these that Mr. Jefferson relied for the perpetuation of his ideals. In our days of concentrated effort, it is not possible for the average man to wade through twenty volumes of detail and routine correspondence.

To meet this need, the following selections, given in his own language, arranged and classified for ready reference, and taken impartially from some ten thousand pages of documents and letters, are respectfully submitted. It is my belief that among them will be found for each reader some stirring call to arms, some bugle blast of thought, which will lead to renewed exertion, higher ideals, and more earnest service. It is my hope that through them vu

INTRODUCTION.

there will come a deeper and better understanding of a man whose entire life was devoted to the disinterested service of his people, and who is to-day recognized as the apostle and advocate of the rights of the mass of the people as against the special interests of the few. And with this introduction I submit for your thought and consideration, this edition of the

"Master Thoughts of Thomas Jefferson."

Benj. S. Catchings.

New York, May 15, 1907.

FROM A LETTER TO WILLIAM JOHNSON, 1823

ON OUR part ... we are depending on Truth to make itself known . . . my letters (all preserved) will furnish the daily occurrences and views. . . . These will command more conviction than anything I could have written , after my retirement, no day having ever passed without a letter to somebody; written, 15. 420. too, in the moment and in the warmth and freshness of fact and feeling, they will carry internal evidence that what they breathe is genuine. . . .

Thomas Jefferson.

Master Thoughts

of

Thomas Jefferson

Chapter I. The Negro and Slavery

AS FAR as I can judge, from the experiments which have been made to give Hberty to, or rather abandon, persons whose habits have been formed in slavery is Hke abandoning children. Many Quakers in Virginia seated their slaves on their land as tenants ; they were distant from me . . . and ... I cannot 19. 41. say whether they were to pay rent in money or a share of the produce, but I remember the landlord was obliged to plan their crops for them, to direct all their operations during every season, and according to the weather ; but what is more afflicting he was bound to watch them daily and almost constantly to make them work, and even to whip them. A man's moral sense must be very strong if slavery does not make him a thief. He who is permitted by law to have no property of his own can with difficulty conceive that property is founded in anything but force. These slaves chose to steal from their neighbors, became public nuisances, and in most instances were reduced to slavery again. (Letter to Edward Bancroft, 1788.)

MR. JOHN ADAMS observed . . . that it was of no consequence by what name you called your people, whether by that of "freemen" or "slaves" ; that in some countries the laboring poor were CALLED freemen, in others they were called slaves ; but that the difference as to the state was imaginary only. What I. 41. matters it whether a landlord, employing ten laborers on his farm, gives them annually as much money as will buy them the necessaries of life, or gives them those necessaries at short hand . . . that the condition of the laboring poor in many countries, that of the fishermen particularly of the Northern States, is as abject as that of slaves. . . .

THE FIRST establishment (settlement) in Virginia which became permanent, was made in 1607. I have found no mention of negroes in the colony until about 1650. The first brought here as slaves were by a Dutch ship; after which the English commenced the trade, and continued it until the Revolutionary War. I. 58. That suspended, ipso facto, their importation for the present, and the business of the war pressing constantly on the legislature, this subject was not acted on until the year '78, when I brought in a bill to prevent their further importation. This passed without opposition, and stopped the increase of the evil by importation, leaving to further efforts its final eradication.

THE BILL on the subject of slaves was a mere digest of the existing laws respecting them, without an intimation of a plan for a future and general emancipation. It was thought better that this should be kept back, and attempted only by way of amendment, whenever the bill should be brought in. The princi- I. 73. pies of the amendment were, however, agreed on, that is to say, the freedom of all born after a certain day, and deportation at a proper age. But it was found that the public mind would not yet bear the proposition, nor will it bear it even at this day. Yet the day is not distant when it must bear it and adopt it or worse will follow. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate-^ than that these people are to be free; nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion have drawn indeliblelines of distinction between them. It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation and deportation, peaceably, and in such slow degree as that the evil will wear off insensibly, and their place be, pari passu, filled up by free white laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up. We should in vain look for example in the Spanish deportation or depletion of the Moors. This precedent would fall far short of our case. (Autobiography, 1821.)

THE WHOLE commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it ; for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in 2. 225. him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do. If a parent could find no motive either in his philanthropy or his self-love for restraining the intemperance of passion towards his slave, it should always be a sufificient one that his child is present. But generally it is not sufficient. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives aloose to the worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. And with what execration should the statesman be loaded, who, permitting one-half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms these into despots, and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and the amor patriae of the other. . . . With the morals of the people their industry is destroyed. For in a warm climate no man will labor for himself who can make another labor for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labor. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their very basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever; that considering numbers, nature, and natural means, only a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among possible events ; that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take sides with us in such a contest . . . the spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation. (Notes on Virginia, 1781.)

UNHAPPILY it is a case for which both parties require long and difficult preparation. The mind of the master is to be apprised by reflection, and strengthened by the energies of conscience, against the obstacks of self-interest to an acquiescence in the rights of others, that of the slave is to be prepared by in- 14. 296. struction and habit for self-government, and for the honest pursuits of industry and social duty. Both of these courses of preparation take time, and the former must precede the latter . . . but it will yield in time to temperate and steady pursuit, to the enlargement of the human mind and the advancement of science. We are not in a world ungoverned by the laws and the power of a superior agent. Our efforts are in His hand, and directed by it ; and He will give them their effect in His own time. Where the disease is most deeply seated there it will be slowest in eradication. In the Northern States it was merely superficial, and easily corrected. In the Southern it is incorporated with the whole system, and requires time, patience, and perseverance in the curative process. That it may finally be effected and its progress hastened will be (my) last and fondest prayer. (To David Barrow, 1815.)

I CONGRATULATE you, fellow citizens, on the approach of the period at which you may interpose your authority constitutionally, to withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights which have been so long continued upon the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, 3. 421 and which the morality, the reputation, and the best interests of our country have long been eager to proscribe.

HERE (in Virginia) crime is scarcely heard of ... . Our only blot is becoming less offensive by the great improvement in the condition and civilization of that race (negro), who can now be more advantageously compared, in their situation, with that of the laborers of Europe. Still it is a hideous blot, as 15. 468. well from the . . . peculiarities of the race, as that, with them, physical compulsion to action must be substituted for the moral necessity which constrains the free laborers to work equally hard. We feel and deplore it morally and politically, and we look without entire despair to some redeeming means not yet specifically foreseen . . . their emigration to the westward lightens the difficulty by dividing it, and renders it more practicable on the whole. (To William Short, 1823.)

WHAT a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man ! who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment and death itself, in vindication of his own liberty, and, the next moment, be deaf to all those motives whose power supported him through his

trial, and inflict on his fellow-man a bondage, one 17. 103. hour of which is fraught with more misery than

ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose. But we must await, with patience, the workings of an overruling Providence, and hope that that is preparing the deliverance of these, our suflfering brethren. When the measure of their tears shall be full, when their groans shall have involved Heaven itself in darkness, doubtless, a God of justice will awaken to their distress, and by diffusing light and liberality among their oppressors, or, at length, by his exterminating thunder, manifest his attention to the things of this world, and that they are not left to the guidance of a blind fatality. (Monsieur De Meusnier, 1786.)

MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Chapter II Loyalty and Secession

THE REV. MR. COFFIN . . . soliciting donations for a college ... in Tennessee, tells me . . . he wrote a paper recommendatory of the enterprise, which he meant to get signed by . . . persons in a civil character, at the head of which he wished Mr. Adams to put his name, he being then President. I. 441. . . . Mr. Adams, after reading the paper and considering, said "he saw no possibility of continuing the Union of the States ; that their dissolution must necessarily take place; that he therefore saw no propriety in recommending to New England men to promote a literary institution in the South ; that it was in fact giving strength to those who were to be their enemies; and therefore he would have nothing to do with it." (December 13, 1803.)

I SEE, with the deepest affliction, the rapid strides with which the federal branch of our government is advancing towards the usurpation of all the rights reserved to the States and the consolidation in itself, of all powers, foreign and domestic ; and that, too, by constructions which, if legitimate leave no limits to their power. . . . 16. 146. Under the authority to build post roads, they claim that of cutting down mountains for the construction of roads, of digging canals . . . and what is our resource for the preservation of the Constitution? Reason and argument? You might as well argue with the marble columns encircling them . . . Are we then, to stand to our arms, with the hot-headed Georgian? No. That must be the last resource, not to be thought of until much longer and greater sufferings. If every infraction of a compact of so many parties is to be resisted at once, as a dissolution of it, none can ever be formed which would last one year. We must have patience and longer endurance then with our brethren when under delusion; give them time for reflection and experience of consequences; keep ourselves in a situation to profit by the chapter of accidents; and separate from our companions only when the sole alternatives left are the dissolution of our Union with them, or submission to a government without limitation of powers. Between these two evils, when we must make our choice, there can be no hesitation. But in the meantime the States should be watchful to note every material usurpation of their rights ; to denounce them as they occur in the most peremptory terms ; to protest against them as wrongs to which our present consideration shall be considered, not as acknowledgment or precedent of right, but as a temporary yielding to a lesser evil, until their accumulation shall overweigh that of separation. I would go still further, and give to the federal member, by a regular amendment of the Constitution, a right to make roads and canals of intercommunication between the States, providing sufficiently against corrupt practices in Congress (log rolling, etc.), by declaring that the federal proportion of each State of the moneys so employed shall be in works within the State, or elsewhere with its consent. . . . This is the course which I think safest and best as yet. . . . Consolidation . . . becomes . . . the next book of their history . . . they now look to a single and splendid government of an aristocracy, founded on banking institutions, and moneyed corporations under the guise and cloak of their favored branches of manufactures, commerce, and navigation, riding and ruling over the plundered plowman and beggared yeomanry. (To William Giles, 1825.)

IT HAS often been said that the decisions of Congress are impotent because the Confederation provides no compulsory power. But when two or more nations enter into a compact, it is not usual for them to say what shall be done to the party who infringes it. Decency forbids this, and it is as unnecessary as indecent, be- 17. 121. cause the right of compulsion naturally results to the party injured by the breach. When any one State in the American Union refuses obedience to the Confederation by which they have bound themselves, the rest have a natural right to compel them to obedience. Congress would probably exercise long patience before they would recur to force ; but if the case ultimately required it, they would use that recurrence. Should this case ever arise, they will probably coerce by a naval force, as being more easy, less dangerous to liberty, and less likely to produce much bloodshed. It has been said that our governments, both federal and particular, want energy; that it is difficult to restrain both individuals and States from committing wrongs. This is • true, and is an inconvenience. On the other hand, that energy which absolute governments derive from an armed force, which is the effect of the bayonet constantly held at the breast of every citizen, and which resembles very much the stillness of the grave, must be admitted also to have its inconveniences. We weigh the two together, and like best to submit to the former. (1786.)

DANGERS . . . might be apprehended more reasonably from this perfect and distinct organization, civil and military, of the States; to wit, that certain States from local and occasional discontents

MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON.

might attempt to secede from the Union. This is certainlypossible ; and would be befriended by this regular 13. 21. organization. But it is not probable that local discontents can spread to such an extent as to be able to face the sound parts of so extensive a Union ; and if they should reach a majority, they would then become the regular government, acquire the ascendency in Congress, and be able to redress their own grievances by laws peaceably and constitutionally passed.

FORTY years of almost constant absence from the State (Virginia) have made me a stranger in it, have left me a solitary tree, from around which the axe of time has felled all the companions of its youth and growth. . . . The last hope of human liberty in this

world rests on us. We ought for so dear a State 13. 27. to sacrifice every attachment and every enmity.

Leave the President free to choose his own coadjutors, to pursue his own measures, and support him and them, even if we think we are wiser than they, honester than they are, or possessing more enlarged information of the state of things. If we move in mass, be it ever so circuitously, we shall attain our object; but if we break into squads, every one pursuing the path he thinks most direct, we become an easy conquest to those who can now barely hold us in check. I repeat again that we ought not to schismatize on either men or measures. Principles alone can justify that. If we find our government in all its branches rushing headlong, like our predecessors, into the arms of monarchy, if we find them violating our dearest rights, the trial by jury, the freedom of the press, the freedom of opinion, civil, or religious, or opening on our peace of mind or personal safety the sluices of terrorism, if we see them raising standing armies, when the absence of all other

MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON.

danger points to these as the sole objects on which they are to be employed, then indeed let us withdraw and call the nation to its tents. . . . But while our functionaries are wise and honest and vigilant, let us move compactly under their guidance, and we have nothing to fear. Things may here and there go a little wrong. It is not in their power to prevent it. But all will be right in the end, though not perhaps by the shortest means. (Col. Duane, 1811.)

WHAT does this English faction with you (in Massachusetts) mean? Their newspapers say, rebellion, and that they will not remain united with us unless we will permit them to govern the majority. If this be their purpose, their anti-republican spirit, it ought to be met at once. But a government like ours 13. 162. should be slow in believing this, should put forth its whole might when necessary to suppress it, and promptly return to the paths of reconciliation. (1812.)

THE CEMENT of this Union is in the heart blood of every American. I do not believe there is on earth a government established on so immovable a basis. Let them, in any State, even in Massachusetts itself, raise the standard of separation, and its citizens will rise in mass, and do justice themselves on their own in- 14. 252. cendiaries.

I

CAN scarcely contemplate a more incalculable evil than the breaking of the Union into two or more parts. ... 8. 346.

II

THE PURSE of the people is the real seat of sensibiHty. Let it be drawn upon largely, and they will then listen to truths which could not excite them through any other organ, lo. 59.

ALTHOUGH I had laid down as a law to myself, never to write, talk, or even think of politics, to know nothing of public affairs, and therefore had ceased to read the newspapers, yet the Missouri question aroused and filled me with alarm. The old schism of federal and republican threatened nothing, because it 15. 247. existed in every State, and united them together by the fraternism of party. But the coincidence of a marked principle, moral and political, with a geographical line, once conceived, I feared would never more be obliterated from the mind; that it would be recurring on every occasion and renewing irritations, until it would kindle such mutual and mortal hatred, as to render separation preferable to discord. I have been among the most sanguine in believing that our Union would be of long duration. I now doubt it much, and see the event at no great distance, and the direct consequence of this question; . . . My only comfort and confidence is, that I shall not live to see this; and I envy not the present generation the glory of throwing away the fruits of their Fathers' sacrifices of life and fortune, and of rendering desperate the experiment which was to decide ultimately the question whether man is capable of self-government. This treason against human hope will signalize their epoch in future history, as the counterpart of the medal of their predecessors. ♦Letter to William Short, 1820.

THIS momentous question (Missouri Compromise), 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 15. 249. 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 of this heavy reproach, in any practical way. The cession of that kind of property (slaves), 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 efifected; and gradually and with due sacrifices I think it might be. But as it is, we have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other. ... 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 of 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 will throw away, against an abstract principle more likely to be effected by Union than without, 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 the Union I tender the offering of my esteem and respect.

*Letter to John Holmes, 1820.

MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON.

NOR IS our side of the water entirely untroubled, the boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave. A hideous evil, the magnitude of which is seen, and at a distance only, by the one party, and more sorely felt and sincerely deplored by the other, from the difficulty of the cure, divides us at this moment 15. 283. too angrily. The attempt by one party to prohibit willing States from sharing the evil, is thought by the other to render desperate by accumulation the hope of its final eradication. If a little time, however, is given to both parties to cool, and to dispel their visionary fears, they will see that concurring in sentiment as to the evil, moral and political, the duty and interest of both is to concur also in divining a practical process of cure. Should time not be given, and the schism be pushed to separation, it will be for a short time only ; two or three years' trial will bring them back, like quarrelling lovers, to renewed embraces and increased affections. The experiment of separation would soon prove to both that they had mutually miscalculated their best interests. And even were the parties in Congress to secede in a passion, the soberer people would call a convention and cement again the severance attempted by the insanity of their functionaries. With this consoling view my greatest grief would be for the fatal effect of such an event on the hopes and happiness of the world. We exist and are quoted as standing proofs that a government so modelled as to rest continually upon the will of the whole society is a practicable government. Were we to break to pieces, it would dampen the hopes and the efforts of the good, and give triumph to those of the bad through the whole enslaved world. As members therefore of the universal society of mankind, and standing in high and responsible relation with them, it is our sacred duty to suppress passion among ourselves, and not to blast the con-

MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON.

fidence we have inspired of proof that a government of reason is better than one of force. (William Rush, 1820.)

IT IS not a moral question, but one merely of power. Its object is to raise a geographical principle for the choice of President, and the noise will be kept up till that is effected.

All know that permitting the slaves of the South to spread into the West will not add one being to that unfortunate condition, that it will increase the happi- 15. 301. ness of those existing, and by spreading them over a larger surface will dilute the evil everywhere, and facilitate the means of finally getting rid of it, an event more anxiously wished by those on whom it presses than by the noisy pretenders to exclusive humanity. In the meantime it is a ladder for rivals climbing to power.