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Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Joel Yancey, 17 Jan. 1819 [Quote]

the mortality among our negroes is still more serious as involving moral as well as interested considerations. I have had n they are well fed, and well clothed, & I have had no reason to believe that any overseer, since Griffin’s time, has over worked them. accordingly the deaths among the...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 10 Dec. 1819 [Quote]

the banks, bankrupt law, manufactures, Spanish treaty are nothing. these are occurrences which like waves in a storm will pass under the ship. but the Missouri question is a breaker on which we lose the Missouri country by revolt, & what more, God only knows. from the battle of Bunker’s hill...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell, 22 Jan. 1820 [Quote]

all the states but our own are sensible that knolege is power. the Missouri question is for power. the efforts now generally making thro’ the states to advance their science is for power, while we are sinking into the barbarism of our Indian aborigines, and expect like them to oppose by ignorance...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Hugh Nelson, 7 Feb. 1820 [Quote]

I thank you for your information on the progress & prospects of the Missouri question. it is the most portentous one which ever yet threatened our Union. in the gloomiest moment of the revolutionary war I never had any apprehensions equal to what I feel from this source.

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 20 Mar. 1820 [Quote]

this Missouri question by a geographical line of division is the most portentous one I have ever contemplated. King is ready to risk the union for any chance of restoring his party to power and wriggling himself to the head of it. nor is Clinton without his hopes nor scrupulous as to the means of...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to William Short, 13 Apr. 1820 [Quote]

Altho’ I had laid down, as a law to myself, never to write, talk, or even think of politics, to know nothing of public affairs & therefore had ceased to read newspapers. yet the Missouri question arroused and filled me with alarm. the old schism of federal & republican, threatened nothing...

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 John Wayles Eppes, 30 June 1820 [Quote]

I know no error more consuming to an estate than that of stocking farms with men almost exclusively. I consider a woman who brings a child every two years as more profitable than the best man of the farm. what she produces is an addition to the capital, while his labors disappear in mere...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes, 29 July 1820 [Quote]

One of the propositions in your letter of the 8th inst. is so exactly suited to my situation and feelings on the subject of the negroes for Francis, that I cannot hesitate a moment to accede to it. it is that which proposes to loan me the stock you mean to lay out in this way, to be paid for two...

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 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 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 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...