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Extract from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 17 May 1818 [Quote]

my repugnance to the writing table becomes daily & hourly more deadly & insurmountable. in place of this has come on a canine appetite for reading. and I indulge it: because I see in it a relief against the taedium senectutis; a lamp to lighten my path thro’ the dreary wilderness of time...

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 John Adams, 10 Dec. 1819 [Quote]

it would seem as if they could not see their way clearly to do it. no government can continue good but under the controul of the people: and their people were so demoralised and depraved as to be incapable of exercising a wholsome controul. their reformation then was to be taken up ab...

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 Maria Cosway, 27 Dec. 1820 [Quote]

mine is the next turn, and I shall meet it with good will. for after one’s friends are all gone before them, and our faculties leaving us too, one by one, why wish to linger in mere vegetation? as a solitary trunk in a desolate field, from which all it’s former companions have disappeared?

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to John Mantz, 1 Feb. 1821 [Quote]

Th: Jefferson recieved yesterday Mr Mantz’s present of very handsomely dressed leather, for which he begs leave to return him his thanks, and to express the pleasure he recieves from new discoveries and advances in the ar useful arts. those who by che new processes cheapen the comforts of life...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 12 Sept. 1821 [Quote]

and even should the cloud of barbarism and despotism again obscure the science and liberties of Europe, this country remains to preserve and restore light and liberty to them. in short, the flames kindled on the 4th of July 1776. have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Frederick W. Hatch, 12 May 1822 [Quote]

but it seems to be expected that there will be a concourse of one or two thousand others attending it, from all parts of the country; and experience has proved to me that my place is considered as among the curiosities of the neighborhood, and that it will probably be visited as such by most of...

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 John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 12 July 1822 [Quote]

Your number of 1267. letters in a year, does not surprise me; I have no list of mine, and I could not make one without a weeks research. and I do not believe I ever received one quarter part of your number. And I very much doubt whether I received in the same year one twelfth part; There are...

Extract from John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 12 July 1822 [Quote]

I hope one day your letters will be all published in volumes. They will not always appear Orthodox, or liberal in politicks; but they will exhibit a mass of Taste, Sense, Literature and Science, presented in a sweet simplicity, and a neat elegance of Stile, which will be read with delight in...

Extract from the Diary of John Quincy Adams, 23 May 1824 [Quote]

23. VII. ... Mr Hay spoke as he always does with extreme bitterness of Mr Jefferson, whom he declares to be one of the most insincere men in the world ... Mr Jefferson – His enmity to Mr Monroe was inveterate though disquised, and he was at the bottom of all the opposition to Mr Monroe in Virginia.

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...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Roger C. Weightman, 24 June 1826 [Quote]

may it be to the world what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the Signal of arousing men to burst the chains, under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings & security of self...