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Format: 2024-03
Format: 2024-03

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Francis Eppes, 6 Oct. 1820 [Quote]

your Latin & Greek should be kept up assiduously by reading at spare hours: and, discontinuing the desultory reading of the schools. I would advise you to undertake a regular course of history & poetry in both languages. in Greek, go first thro’ the Cyropaedia, and then read Herodotus,...

Hore Browse Trist to Nicholas P. Trist, 13 Oct. 1820

You must excuse the size of the paper, for it is the only piece I have, the delay of this answer you must also excuse, for I have been suffering lately the tortures of the damned inflicted by that infernal fiend the tooth ache, created I fancy to give men an Idea of what hell is: I have likewise...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Richard Rush, 20 Oct. 1820 [Quote]

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 on the will of the whole society, is a practicable government. were we to break to pieces,...

Hore Browse Trist to Nicholas P. Trist, 23 Oct. 1820

I plead guilty to the charge of laziness which you have been pleased to prefer against me & am now about to atone for it in the manner you wished. I had partly discharged the penance imposed upon me by the decree before it arrived, on a small sheet of paper which I suppose at first excited...

Elizabeth Trist to Emma Walker Gilmer (Breckinridge), 26 Oct. 1820

I have been at length gratified with, receiving some testimony of your remembrance and also that of your Brothers—for not Receiving a line from any of you for a long time, I concluded that time and absence had erased me from your Remembrance, where there are so many that can scrible I might...

Elizabeth Trist to Nicholas P. Trist, 1 Nov. 1820

My very Dear Grand Sons letter of the 23d of Sept has been longer than usual un acknowledged but I had nothing to communicate worth the Postage, Browse had been nearly five weeks without paying me a visit there was Some excuse for his not coming, the weather was bad for Several days and Mores...

Hore Browse Trist to Nicholas P. Trist, 11 Nov. 1820

My mind is made up at last, & I have resolved on going to Columbia Philadelphia in preference to Columbia. F. Eppes wrote me immediately after his arrival there and from the tenor of his letter I formed no very high opinion of the place. one circumstance alone is enough to deter me, it is...

Mary J. Randolph to Virginia J. Randolph (Trist), 15 Nov. 1820

Mama & Cornelia both say that they are going to write to sister Ellen My dear Virginia & therefore I shall address my letter to you if you are so fortunate as to be able to desylpher a sccratch penned by candle light & in my incorrigible hand which you know of old—we all feel very...

Etienne St. Julien de Tournillon to Nicholas Philip Trist, 28 Nov. 1820

nous avons été pendant près De trois Semaines Dans une bien pénible perplexité: notre Chère marie louise En jouant Dans la chambre De sa g-maman a fait une chûte, Dont les Suites ont été bien funestes, puisqu’il y a Eu une fracture. Le Deur m. que nous avons de Suite Envoyé chercher a d’abord...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell, 28 Nov. 1820 [Quote]

what is wanting to restore us to our station among our confederates? not more money from the people. enough has been raised by them, and appropriated to this very object. it is that it should be employed understandingly, and for their greatest good. that good requires that, while they are...

Martha Jefferson Randolph to Ann C. Morris, 4 Dec. 1820

You will hardly be more surprised at the date of this letter than I am my self, so firmly resolved was I not to come, under existing circumstances. but Mr R—. thought there were reasons for it even stronger than mine . like another Themistocles he over powerd them and brought me down sorely...

Cornelia J. Randolph to Virginia J. Randolph (Trist), 15 Dec. 1820

I intended to have written you a long letter to day my Dear Virginia but I went with the girls to pay Miss Campbell a visit, & I we return’d late, & have dinner early that Mann may go to Tufton this evening, he by him I must send my letter to the post, and so I have a very short time to...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Ritchie, 25 Dec. 1820 [Quote]

if there be anything amiss therefore in the present state of our affairs, as the formidable deficit lately unfolded to us indicates, I ascribe it to the inattention of Congress to it’s duties, to their unwise dissipation & waste of the public contributions. they seemed, some little while ago...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, 26 Dec. 1820 [Quote]

nothing has ever presented so threatening an aspect as what is called the Missouri question. the Federalists compleatly put down, and despairing of ever rising again under the old division of whig and tory, devised a new one, of slave-holding, & non-slave-holding states, which, while it had a...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Destutt de Tracy, 26 Dec. 1820 [Quote]

this institution of my native state, the Hobby of my old age, will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind, to explore and to expose every subject susceptible of it’s contemplation. our right may be doubted of mortgaging posterity for the expenses of a war in which they will have a...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Destutt de Tracy, 26 Dec. 1820 [Quote]

our right may be doubted of mortgaging posterity for the expenses of a war in which they will have a right to say their interests were not concerned. it is incumbent on every generation to pay it’s own debts as it goes. a principle which, if acted on, would save one half the wars of the world.

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 26 Dec. 1820 [Quote]

the boisterous sea of liberty indeed is never without a wave, and that from Missouri is now rolling towards us: but we shall ride over it as we have over all others. it is not a moral question, but one merely of power. it’s object is to raise a geographical principle for the choice of a...