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Extract from Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes, 22 Apr. 1820 [Quote]

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...

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 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...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to James Breckinridge, 15 Feb. 1821 [Quote]

I learn with deep affliction that nothing is likely to be done for our University this year. so near as it is to the shore that one shove more would land it there, I had hoped that would be given, and that we should open with the next year an institution on which the fortunes of our country...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to William J. Coffee, 10 July 1822 [Quote]

You are right in what you have thought and done as to the Metops of our Doric pavilion. those of the baths of Diocletian are all human faces, and so are to be those of our Doric pavilion. but in my middle room at Poplar Forest, I mean to mix the faces and ox-sculls, a fancy which I can indulge in...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Maria Hadfield Cosway, 24 Oct. 1822 [Quote]

I, am laying the foundation of an University in my native state, which I hope will repay the liberalities of it’s legislature by improving the virtue and science of their country, already blest with a soil and climate emulating those of your favorite Lodi. I have been myself the Architect of the...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell, 28 Dec. 1822 [Quote]

of all things the most important is the completion of the buildings. the remission of the debt will come of itself. it is already remitted in the mind of every man, even of the enemies of the institution. and there is nothing pressing very immediately for it’s expression. the great object of our...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell, 13 Jan. 1823 [Quote]

were it necessary to give up either the Primaries or the University, I would rather abandon the last. because it is safer to have a whole people respectably enlightened, than a few in a high state of science and the many in ignorance. this last is the most dangerous state in which a nation can be...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Jared Sparks, 4 Feb. 1824 [Quote]

In the disposition of these unfortunate people, there are two rational objects to be distinctly kept in view. 1. 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 civilisation and science. by doing this...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Frances Wright, 7 Aug. 1825 [Quote]

the march of events has not been such as to render it’s completion practicable within the limits of time allotted to me; and I leave it’s accomplishment as the work of another generation. and I am cheared when I see that on which it is devolved, taking it up with so much good will and such mind...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to J. Evelyn Denison, 9 Nov. 1825 [Quote]

it has been peculiarly fortunate too that the Professors brought from abroad were as happy a selection as could have been hoped, as well for their qualifications in science as correctness and amiableness of character. I think the example will be followed and that it cannot fail to be one of the...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Edward Everett, 8 Apr. 1826 [Quote]

on the question of the lawfulness of slavery, that is, of the right of one man to appropriate to himself the faculties of another without his consent, I certainly retain my early opinions. on that however of third persons to interfere between the parties, and the effect of conventional...