Founding Fathers Of The United States Of America

"Thomas Jefferson, Political Writings ed by Joyce Appleby and Terence Ball. Cambridge University Press. 1999"

"Jefferson hosted the United States' first iftar at the White House. It was an unintentional event, one that occurred as a result of Jefferson's scheduled meeting with an invited envoy from the Tunisian government. It was the end of the first Barbary War, and Jefferson was anxious to establish better diplomatic relations with the North African states while ensuring the security of American interests in the Mediterranean. Upon being informed of the envoy's fasting to observe the Islamic month of Ramadan, Jefferson had the mealtime at the White House changed from 3:30 in the afternoon to "precisely at sunset" in an effort to accommodate his guest. This gesture on behalf of the president was not simply a diplomatic one, but one that demonstrated Jefferson's familiarity and comfort with Islam, a faith that interested him since his time as a student at the College of William & Mary. Indeed, Jefferson's interest in the Qur'an and his own study of Arabic led to his active promotion and eventual creation of an Oriental Languages department at his alma mater. As a scholar and a diplomat, Jefferson was keenly aware and interested in the world outside of America and the importance of cultural and intellectual capital to the success of the United States."

"I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

"All honor to Jefferson to the man, who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a mere revolutionary an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all time, and so to embalm it there to-day and in all coming days it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling block to the very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression."

"Directly or indirectly American classicism traces its ancestry to Jefferson, who may truly be called the father of our national architecture."

"Then there's the odd, of course, fact that he had a very long love affair with a woman who he owned, who he inherited from his father-in-law, who was his wife's half-sister, and produced several children by her, whose descendants have mainly been brought up on the white side of the color line. So in a strange way, his own patrimony disproves his own belief that there couldn't be coexistence between black and white Americans."

"Consider this simple syllogism: Slavery is bad; Thomas Jefferson owned slaves; so, Thomas Jefferson was bad. Consider this simplistic precept: Racism is bad. Both are anything but profound and certainly not illuminating, but they typify, with due consideration for hyperbole, the quality and blinkered approach to Jeffersonian scholarship in the past several decades. The focal issue has been Jefferson’s racism, and the issue within the issue has been his assumed relationship with Sally Hemings. Jeffersonian scholarship has become an exercise in battology — a useless, fatuous repetition of the same claims but with a slightly different twist. "Jefferson was a racist but he really loved Sally Hemings" versus "Jefferson was a racist and he raped Sally Hemings," and so on. Those twists are what merit publication. The collision of radically different, but historically reasonable, ideas, needed for advances in historical scholarship, has become anathema. ... The situation at Monticello is toxic. They are unwilling to aim to settle the issues of Jefferson’s paternity and of his avowed racism by rational debate concerning the evidence, or even concerning what ought to count as evidence. Members of TJF — and many of them are, I suspect, sufficiently unfamiliar with Jefferson to be judges of the issue of paternity — have elected themselves to be the sole arbiters of Thomas Jefferson’s legacy, which is no longer open to debate. ... TJF’s depiction of Jefferson, jaded as it is, has won the day. It is now no longer necessary to recognize others who disagree with TJF, to read their arguments, to assess critically those arguments, and to engage in debate with them. ... While it is laudable that members of the TJF wish to be viewed historically as paladins of human rights, they are doing so by constructing an image of Jefferson that is warped by political ideals. Their Jefferson is an opportunist, hypocrite, racist, and perhaps even rapist, and they do not give voice to scholars who disagree. The climate is authoritarian — certainly not in keeping with Jefferson’s republican thinking."

"The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society. And yet they are denied and evaded, with no small show of success. One dashingly calls them ”glittering generalities.” Another bluntly calls them “self-evident lies.” And others insidiously argue that they apply to “superior races.” These expressions, different in form, are identical in object and effect – the supplanting the principles of free government, and restoring those of classification, caste and legitimacy. They would delight a convocation of crowned heads plotting against the people. They are the vanguard, the miner and sappers, of returning despotism. We must repulse them, or they will subjugate us."

"True," replied M. de —, "he considers a free press as the paladium of liberty. I went today an hour before his time of dining, and was received in his cabinet while he was finishing a letter; I took up one of your public journals which lay upon his table, and was astonished and shocked to find its columns filled with the lowest abuse, and vilest of calumnies of the President. I threw it down with indignation, exclaiming, why do you not have the fellow hung who dares to write these abominable lies! He smiled at my warmth, and replied, 'hang the guardian of public morals? no, sir; rather would I protect the spirit of freedom which dictates even that abuse. Put that paper into your pocket, my good friend, and when you hear any one doubt the reality of American liberty, show them that paper, and tell them where you found it; you cannot have a better proof of its existence. Sir, the country where public men are amenable to public opinion; where not only their official measures, but their private morals, are open to the scrutiny and animadversion of every citizen, is more secure from despotism and corruption, than it could be rendered by the wisest code of laws, or best formed constitution. Party spirit may sometimes blacken, and its erroneous opinions may sometimes injure; but, in general, it will prove the best guardian of a pure and wise administration; it will detect and expose vice and corruption, check the encroachments of power, and resist oppression; sir, it is an abler protector of the people's rights, than arms or laws.' 'But is it not shocking that virtuous characters should be defamed?' 'Let their actions refute such libels. Believe me, virtue is not long darkened by the clouds of calumny. In its course, it will shine forth like the sun at noon-day, and with its brightness disperse the fogs and vapours which obscured its rising light. When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property, and justly liable to the inspection and vigilance of public opinion; and the more sensibly he is made to feel his dependence, the less danger will there be of his abuse of power — The abuse of power, that rock on which good governments, and the people's rights, have been so often wrecked.' 'Such doctrines would never be recognised in the old world,' I observed. 'Our example,' he replied, 'may enforce these doctrines, which your philosophers have so long preached in vain; example, you know, far outweighs precept.'"

"Upstanding citizens openly used drugs to feel nice, to alter their consciousness. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, was a long-term, avid drug user. He particularly appreciated the opium-based drugs for their mind-altering as well as medicinal effects."

"I have long believed, that it was only by preserving the identity of the Republican party as embodied and characterized by the principles introduced by Mr. Jefferson that the original rights of the states and the people could be maintained as contemplated by the Constitution."

"Jefferson himself considered the people he enslaved in the coldest economic terms, saying he calculated that 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 capital, while his labors disappear in mere consumption.""

"Jefferson died on the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. This was on July 4, 1826. He had lived a full life of eighty-three years. He appealed to and expressed America's better self, and as a statesman believed in America and the people of America. He kept his fine ideals, his simplicity, his youthful mind, and his hopeful outlook to the very last."

"{{Cite Q | Q68824013"

"At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all liability to account."

"Jefferson's invention of the Wheel Cypher represents a contribution to cryptographic science so far in advance of his time that at least a century had to elapse before a similar invention was independently made by a second inventor in the field."

"His anti-slavery sentiments, so forcibly given in his Notes on Virginia, will be quoted with impressive effect as long as slavery exists in our land. It is true, he was a slaveholder; and hence his theory was better than his practice. It is apparent, moreover, that he had clearer views of the impolicy of the slave-system, than of its guilt. But he never dishonored his judgement, or perverted his good sense, by attempting to prove the lawfulness of holding the colored race in bondage."

"Our different States have differently modified their several judiciaries as to the tenure of office. Some appoint their judges for a given term of time; some continue them during good behavior, and that to be determined on by the concurring vote of two-thirds of each legislative House. In England they are removable by a majority only of each House. The last is a practicable remedy; the second is not. The combination of the friends and associates of the accused, the action of personal and party passions, and the sympathies of the human heart, will forever find means of influencing one-third of either the one or the other House, will thus secure their impunity, and establish them in fact for life. The first remedy is the best, that of appointing for a term of years only, with a capacity of reappointment if their conduct has been approved."

"The small and imperfect mixture of representative government in England, impeded as it is by other branches, aristocratical and hereditary, shows yet the power of the representative principle towards improving the condition of man. With us, all the branches of the government are elective by the people themselves, except the judiciary, of whose science and qualifications they are not competent judges. Yet, even in that department, we call in a jury of the people to decide all controverted matters of fact, because to that investigation they are entirely competent, leaving thus as little as possible, merely the law of the case, to the decision of the judges. And true it is that the people, especially when moderately instructed, are the only safe, because the only honest, depositories of the public rights, and should therefore be introduced into the administration of them in every function to which they are sufficient; they will err sometimes and accidentally, but never designedly, and with a systematic and persevering purpose of overthrowing the free principles of the government. Hereditary bodies, on the contrary, always existing, always on the watch for their own aggrandizement, profit of every opportunity of advancing the privileges of their order, and encroaching on the rights of the people."

"The extent of our country was so great, and its former division into distinct States so established, that we thought it better to confederate as to foreign affairs only. Every State retained its self-government in domestic matters, as better qualified to direct them to the good and satisfaction of their citizens, than a general government so distant from its remoter citizens, and so little familiar with the local peculiarities of the different parts. [...] There are now twenty-four of these distinct States, none smaller perhaps than your Morea, several larger than all Greece. Each of these has a constitution framed by itself and for itself, but militating in nothing with the powers of the General Government in its appropriate department of war and foreign affairs. These constitutions being in print and in every hand, I shall only make brief observations on them, and on those provisions particularly which have not fulfilled expectations, or which, being varied in different States, leave a choice to be made of that which is best. You will find much good in all of them, and no one which would be approved in all its parts. Such indeed are the different circumstances, prejudices, and habits of different nations, that the constitution of no one would be reconcilable to any other in every point. A judicious selection of the parts of each suitable to any other, is all which prudence should attempt [...]."

"Jefferson, moved by anger and scorn against the planter class for its fellowship and partnership in the tyranny of the Crown, threw off its allurements, so congenial to his tastes and habits, and allied himself absolutely, unreservedly, actively, permanently with the wronged masses. In the struggle in that agricultural community between the "planters," or large landowners, and the "settlers," or small landowners, Jefferson's heart was always with the latter."

"For if experience has ever taught a truth, it is that a plurality in the supreme Executive will forever split into discordant factions, distract the nation, annihilate its energies, and force the nation to rally under a single head, generally an usurper. We have, I think, fallen on the happiest of all modes of constituting the Executive, that of easing and aiding our President, by permitting him to choose Secretaries of State, of Finance, of War, and of the Navy, with whom he may advise, either separately or all together, and remedy their divisions by adopting or controlling their opinions at his discretion; this saves the nation from the evils of a divided will, and secures to it a steady march in the systematic course which the President may have adopted for that of his administration."

"All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them."

"Life's visions are vanished, it's dreams are no more. Dear friends of my bosom, why bathed in tears? I go to my fathers; I welcome the shore, which crowns all my hopes, or which buries my cares. Then farewell my dear, my lov'd daughter, Adieu! The last pang in life is in parting from you. Two Seraphs await me, long shrouded in death; I will bear them your love on my last parting breath."

"This is the Fourth?"

"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 and security of self-government."

"Truly, I believe we need a new Declaration of Independence. Is there no modern Jefferson or Adams?"

"You will recollect that before the Revolution, Coke Littleton was the universal elementary book of law students, and a sounder Whig never wrote, nor of profounder learning in the orthodox doctrines of the British constitution, or in what were called English liberties. You remember also that our lawyers were then all Whigs. But when his black-letter text, and uncouth, but cunning learning got out of fashion, and the honeyed Mansfieldism of Blackstone became the students' hornbook, from that moment, that profession (the nursery of our Congress) began to slide into toryism, and nearly all the young brood of lawyers now are of that hue. They suppose themselves, indeed, to be Whigs, because they no longer know what Whigism or republicanism means."

"There is not a truth existing which I fear or would wish unknown to the whole world."

"The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government. Modern times have the signal advantage, too, of having discovered the only device by which these rights can be secured, to wit: government by the people, acting not in person, but by representatives chosen by themselves, that is to say; by every man of ripe years and sane mind, who either contributes by his purse or person to the support of his country."

"Jefferson's objects have not fallen out of date. They are our own objects, if we be faithful to any ideals whatever; and the question we ask ourselves is not, How would Jefferson have pursued them in his day? but How shall we pursue them in ours? It is the spirit, not the tenets of the man by which he rules us from his urn."

"It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it, and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams. ... what has no meaning admits no explanation."

"A Decalogue of Canons for Observation in Practical Life"

"Some are whigs, liberals, democrats, call them what you please. Others are tories, serviles, aristocrats, &c. The latter fear the people, and wish to transfer all power to the higher classes of society; the former consider the people as the safest depository of power in the last resort; they cherish them therefore, and wish to leave in them all the powers to the exercise of which they are competent."

"I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious."

"This very verse, brethren, having emanated from Mr. Jefferson, a much greater philosopher the world never afforded, has in truth injured us more, and has been as great a barrier to our emancipation as any thing that has ever been advanced against us. ... I pledge you my sacred word of honour, that Mr. Jefferson's remarks respecting us, have sunk deep into the hearts of millions of the whites, and never will be removed this side of eternity."

"An hereditary chief, strictly limited, the right of war vested in the legislative body, a rigid economy of the public contributions, and absolute interdiction of all useless expenses, will go far towards keeping the government honest and unoppressive. But the only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted, when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure."

"I thank you, Sir, for the copy you were so kind as to send me of the revd. Mr. Bancroft's Unitarian sermons. I have read them with great satisfaction, and always rejoice in efforts to restore us to primitive Christianity, in all the simplicity in which it came from the lips of Jesus. Had it never been sophisticated by the subtleties of Commentators, nor paraphrased into meanings totally foreign to its character, it would at this day have been the religion of the whole civilized world. But the metaphysical abstractions of Athanasius, and the maniac ravings of Calvin, tinctured plentifully with the foggy dreams of Plato, have so loaded it with absurdities and incomprehensibilities, as to drive into infidelity men who had not time, patience, or opportunity to strip it of its meretricious trappings[.]"

"An opinion prevails that there is no longer any distinction, that the republicans & Federalists are completely amalgamated but it is not so. The amalgamation is of name only, not of principle. All indeed call themselves by the name of Republicans, because that of Federalists was extinguished in the battle of New Orleans. But the truth is that finding that monarchy is a desperate wish in this country, they rally to the point which they think next best, a consolidated government. Their aim is now therefore to break down the rights reserved by the constitution to the states as a bulwark against that consolidation, the fear of which produced the whole of the opposition to the constitution at its birth. Hence new Republicans in Congress, preaching the doctrines of the old Federalists, and the new nick-names of Ultras and Radicals. But I trust they will fail under the new, as the old name, and that the friends of the real constitution and union will prevail against consolidation, as they have done against monarchism. I scarcely know myself which is most to be deprecated, a consolidation, or dissolution of the states. The horrors of both are beyond the reach of human foresight."

"Jefferson expressed the American idea: political and social pluralism; government of limited, delegated and enumerated powers; the fecundity of freedom. He expressed it not only in stirring cadences, but also in the way he lived, as statesman, scientist, architect, educator. Jeffersonianism is what free men believe. Jefferson is what a free person looks like—confident, serene, rational, disciplined, temperate, tolerant, curious. In fine, Jefferson is the Person of the Millennium."

"Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: 1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depositary of the public interests. In every country these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves. Call them, therefore, liberals and serviles, Jacobins and Ultras, whigs and tories, republicans and federalists, aristocrats and democrats, or by whatever name you please, they are the same parties still and pursue the same object. The last appellation of aristocrats and democrats is the true one expressing the essence of all."

"Lipscomb, Andrew A. and Albert Ellery Bergh, eds. The Writings Of Thomas Jefferson 19 vol. (1907) not as complete nor as accurate as Boyd edition, but covers TJ from 1801 to his death. It is out of copyright, and so is online free."

"I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors. It is this preposterous idea which has lately deluged Europe in blood. Their monarchs, instead of wisely yielding to the gradual change of circumstances, of favoring progressive accommodation to progressive improvement, have clung to old abuses, entrenched themselves behind steady habits, and obliged their subjects to seek through blood and violence rash and ruinous innovations, which, had they been referred to the peaceful deliberations and collected wisdom of the nation, would have been put into acceptable and salutary forms. Let us follow no such examples, nor weakly believe that one generation is not as capable as another of taking care of itself, and of ordering its own affairs."

"The Constitution of the United States asserts that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty."

"Jefferson saw in the widespread ownership of land, in families made self-sufficient and independent by their farming, the best defence that could be erected against the arrogation of additional powers by the State, or by any who might wish to construct an economic or political oligarchy. Men, he frequently said, had not sought freedom in order to acquire property, but, rather, had acquired property in order to ensure freedom... Jefferson's analysis of democracy is one that still possesses a certain relevance. In so far as he believed that even the democratic State could become an elective tyranny, he spoke prophetically. In so far as he believed that property provided the best defence against that tyranny, he reminds us all of the importance of property, and of the dangers to democracy that result from its abolition."

"To constrain the brute force of the people, the European governments deem it necessary to keep them down by hard labor, poverty and ignorance, and to take from them, as from bees, so much of their earnings, as that unremitting labor shall be necessary to obtain a sufficient surplus to sustain a scanty and miserable life."

"They talk about Thomas Jefferson. ... A coward! A man who dared confess a disbelief in the divinity of Christ and be a candidate for the Presidency in the eighteenth century? A coward! The man who dared drag up by the roots primogeniture and entail against the opposition of all the old Virginia aristocracy in the Virginia House of Burgesses, against the protests of the Pendletons and the Randolphs and the Lees and the Washingtons and the Harrisons and I believe the Careys and nearly all the balance of them. A coward! The American President who threw down the gauntlet to Napoleon the Great and informed him of the fact that if the Mississippi River fell into the hands of France it would be a cause of unending conflict between the two nations. ... Oh, this hatred, this old federalistic relic of hatred of Thomas Jefferson would be pathetic if it was not amusing."

"I agree with you that it is the duty of every good citizen to use all the opportunities, which occur to him, for preserving documents relating to the history of our country."

"When I read Jefferson's disparagement of Wheatley, it felt like he had been disparaging the entire lineage of Black poets who would follow her, myself included, and I saw a man who had not had a clear understanding of what love is...Jefferson's conceptions of love seem to have been so distorted by his own prejudices that he was unable to recognize the endless examples of love that pervaded plantations across the country: mothers who huddled over their children and took the lash so their little ones wouldn't have to; surrogate mothers, fathers, and grandparents who took in children and raised them as their own when their biological parents were disappeared in the middle of the night; the people who loved and married and committed to one another despite the omnipresent threat that they might be separated at any moment. What is love if not this?"

"The good old Dominion, the blessed mother of us all."