Letters of Thomas Jefferson

1812

“Reconciliation”

DEAR SIR -- I thank you before hand (for they are not yet arrived) for the specimens of homespun you have been so kind as to forward me by post.  I doubt not their excellence, knowing how far you are advanced in these things in your quarter.  Here we do little in the fine way, but in coarse and midling goods a great deal.  Every family in the country is a manufactory within itself, and is very generally able to make within itself all the stouter and midling stuffs for it’s own cloathing and household use.  We consider a sheep for every person in the family as sufficient to clothe it, in addition to the cottom, hemp and flax which we raise ourselves.  For fine stuff we shall depend on your Northern manufactures.  Of these, that is to say, of company establishments, we have none.  We use little machinery.  The Spinning Jenny and loom with the flying shuttle can be managed in a family; but nothing more complicated. The economy and thriftiness resulting from our household manufactures are such that they will never again be laid aside; and nothing more salutary for us has ever happened than the British obstructions to our demands for their manufactures.  Restore free intercourse when they will, their commerce with us will have totally changed it’s form, and the articles we shall in future want from them will not exceed their own consumption of our produce.

A letter from you calls up recollections very dear to my mind.  It carries me back to the times when, beset with difficulties and dangers, we were fellow laborers in the same cause, struggling for what is most valuable to man, his right of self-government.  Laboring always at the same oar, with some wave ever ahead threatening to overwhelm us and yet passing harmless under our bark, we knew not how, we rode through the storm with heart and hand, and made a happy port.  Still we did not expect to be without rubs and difficulties; and we have had them.  First the detention of the Western posts: then the coalition of Pilnitz, outlawing our commerce with France, and the British enforcement of the outlawry.  In your day French depredations: in mine English, and the Berlin and Milan decrees: now the English orders of council, and the piracies they authorise: when these shall be over, it will be the impressment of our seamen, or something else: and so we have gone on, and so we shall go on, puzzled and prospering beyond example in the history of man.  And I do believe we shall continue to growl, [i.e., grow] to multiply and prosper until we exhibit an association, powerful, wise and happy, beyond what has yet been seen by men.  As for France and England, with all their pre-eminence in science, the one is a den of robbers, and the other of pirates.  And if science produces no better fruits than tyranny, murder, rapine and destitution of national morality, I would rather wish our country to be ignorant, honest and estimable as our neighboring savages are.

But whither is senile garrulity leading me? Into politics, of which I have taken final leave.  I think little of them, and say less. I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid; and I find myself much the happier.  Sometimes indeed I look back to former occurrences, in remembrance of our old friends and fellow laborers, who have fallen before us.  Of the signers of the Declaration of Independance I see now living not more than half a dozen on your side of the Potomak, and, on this side, myself alone.  You and I have been wonderfully spared, and myself with remarkable health, and a considerable activity of body and mind.  I am on horseback 3. or 4. hours of every day; visit 3. or 4. times a year a possession I have 90 miles distance, performing the winter journey on horseback.  I walk little however; a single mile being too much for me; and I live in the midst of my grandchildren, one of whom has lately promoted me to be a great grandfather.  I have heard with pleasure that you also retain good health, and a greater power of exercise in walking than I do.  But I would rather have heard this from yourself, and that, writing a letter, like mine, full of egotisms, and of details of your health, your habits, occupations and enjoyments, I should have the pleasure of knowing that, in the race of life, you do not keep, in it’s physical decline, the same distance ahead of me which you have done in political honors and atchievements.  No circumstances have lessened the interest I feel in these particulars respecting yourself; none have suspended for one moment my sincere esteem for you; and I now salute you with unchanged affections and respect.

“Concerning the Indians”

DEAR SIR -- By our post preceding that which brought your letter of May 21, I had recieved one from Mr. Malcolm on the same subject with yours, and by the return of the post had stated to the President my recollections of him.  But both of your letters were probably too late; as the appointment had been already made, if we may credit the newspapers.

You ask if there is any book that pretends to give any account of the traditions of the Indians, or how one can acquire an idea of them?  Some scanty accounts of their traditions, but fuller of their customs and characters are given us by most of the early travellers among them.  These you know were chiefly French.  Lafitau, among them, and Adair an Englishman, have written on this subject; the former two volumes, the latter one, all in 4to [quarto].  But unluckily Lafitau had in his head a preconcieved theory on the mythology, manners, institutions and government of the antient nations of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and seems to have entered on those of America only to fit them into the same frame, and to draw from them a confirmation of his general theory.  He keeps up a perpetual parallel, in all those articles, between the Indians of America, and the antients of the other quarters of the globe.  He selects therefore all the facts, and adopts all the falsehoods which favor his theory, and very gravely retails such absurdities as zeal for a theory could alone swallow.  He was a man of much classical and scriptural reading, and has rendered his book not unentertaining.  He resided five years among the Northern Indians, as a Missionary, but collects his matter much more from the writings of others, than from his own observation.

Adair too had his kink.  He believed all the Indians of American to be descended from the Jews: the same laws, usages; rites and ceremonies, the same sacrifices, priests, prophets, fasts and festivals, almost the same religion, and that they all spoke Hebrew. For altho he writes particularly of the Southern Indians only, the Catawbas, Creeks, Cherokees, Chickasaws and Choctaws, with whom alone he was personally acquainted, yet he generalises whatever he found among them, and brings himself to believe that the hundred languages of America, differing fundamentally every one from every other, as much as Greek from Gothic, have yet all one common prototype.  He was a trader, a man of learning, a self-taught Hebraist, a strong religionist, and of as sound a mind as Don Quixot in whatever did not touch his religious chivalry.  His book contains a great deal of real instruction on it’s subject, only requiring the reader to be constantly on his guard against the wonderful obliquities of his theory.

The scope of your enquiry would scarcely, I suppose, take in the three folio volumes of Latin by De Bry.  In these fact and fable are mingled together, without regard to any favorite system.  They are less suspicious therefore in their complexion, more original and authentic, than those of Lafitau and Adair.  This is a work of great curiosity, extremely rare, so as never to be bought in Europe, but on the breaking up, and selling some antient library.  On one of these occasions a bookseller procured me a copy, which, unless you have one, is probably the only one in America.

You ask further, if the Indians have any order of priesthood among them, like the Druids, Bards or Minstrels of the Celtic nations?  Adair alone, determined to see what he wished to see in every object, metamorphoses their Conjurers into an order of priests, and describes their sorceries as if they were the great religious ceremonies of the nation.  Lafitau calls them by their proper names, Jongleurs, Devins, Sortileges; De Bry praestigiatores, Adair himself sometimes Magi, Archimagi, cunning men, Seers, rain makers, and the modern Indian interpreters, call them Conjurers and Witches.  They are persons pretending to have communications with the devil and other evil spirits, to foretel future events, bring down rain, find stolen goods, raise the dead, destroy some, and heal others by enchantment, lay spells etc.  And Adair, without departing from his parallel of the Jews and Indians, might have found their counterpart, much more aptly, among the Soothsayers, sorcerers and wizards of the Jews, their Jannes and Jambres, their Simon Magus, witch of Endor, and the young damsel whose sorceries disturbed Paul so much; instead of placing them in a line with their High-priest, their Chief priests, and their magnificent hierarchy generally.  In the solemn ceremonies of the Indians, the persons who direct or officiate, are their chiefs, elders and warriors, in civil ceremonies or in those of war; it is the Head of the Cabin, in their private or particular feasts or ceremonies; and sometimes the Matrons, as in their Corn feasts.  And, even here, Adair might have kept up his parallel, with ennobling his Conjurers.  For the antient Patriarchs, the Noahs, the Abrahams, Isaacs and Jacobs, and, even after the consecration of Aaron, the Samuels and Elijahs, and we may say further every one for himself, offered sacrifices on the altars.  The true line of distinction seems to be, that solemn ceremonies, whether public or private, addressed to the Great Spirit, are conducted by the worthies of the nation, Men, or Matrons, while Conjurers are resorted to only for the invocation of evil spirits.  The present state of the several Indian tribes, without any public order of priests, is proof sufficient that they never had such an order.  Their steady habits permit no innovations, not even those which the progress of science offers to increase the comforts, enlarge the understanding, and improve the morality of mankind.  Indeed so little idea have they of a regular order of priests, that they mistake ours for their Conjurers, and call them by that name.

So much in answer to your enquiries concerning Indians, a people with whom, in the very early part of my life, I was very familiar, and acquired impressions of attachment and commiseration for them which have never been obliterated.  Before the revolution they were in the habit of coming often, and in great numbers to the seat of our government, where I was very much with them.  I knew much the great Outassete [i.e., Outacity], the warrior and orator of the Cherokees.  He was always the guest of my father, on his journeys to and from Williamsburg.  I was in his camp when he made his great farewell oration to his people, the evening before his departure for England. The moon was in full splendor, and to her he seemed to address himself in his prayers for his own safety on the voyage, and that of his people during his absence.  His sounding voice, distinct articulation, animated actions, and the solemn silence of his people at their several fires, filled me with awe and veneration, altho’ I did not understand a word he uttered.  That nation, consisting now of about 2000. wariors, and the Creeks of about 3000. are far advanced in civilisation.  They have good Cabins, inclosed fields, large herds of cattle and hogs, spin and weave their own clothes of cotton, have smiths and other of the most necessary tradesmen, write and read, are on the increase in numbers, and a branch of the Cherokees is now instituting a regular representative government.  Some other tribes were advancing in the same line.  On those who have made any progress, English seductions will have no effect.  But the backward will yeild, and be thrown further back.  These will relapse into barbarism and misery, lose numbers by war and want, and we shall be obliged to drive them, with the beasts of the forest into the Stony mountains.  They will be conquered however in Canada.  The possession of that country secures our women and children for ever from the tomahawk and scalping knife, by removing those who excite them: and for this possession, orders I presume are issued by this time; taking for granted that the doors of Congress will re-open with a Declaration of war.  That this may end in indemnity for the past, security for thefuture, and compleat emancipation from Anglomany, Gallomany, and all the manias of demoralized Europe, and that you may live in health and happiness to see all this, is the sincere prayer of Yours affectionately.

“War with England”

Nous voila donc, mon cher ami, en guerre avec l’Angleterre.  This was declared on the 18th instant, thirty years after the signature of our peace in 1782.  Within these thirty years what a vast course of growth and prosperity we have had!  It is not ten years since Great Britain began a series of insults and injuries which would have been met with war in the threshold by any European power.  This course has been unremittingly followed up by increasing wrongs, with glimmerings indeed of peaceable redress, just sufficient to keep us quiet, till she has had the impudence at length to extinguish even these glimmerings by open avowal.  This would not have been borne so long, but that France has kept pace with England in iniquity of principle, although not in the power of inflicting wrongs on us.  The difficulty of selecting a foe between them has spared us many years of war, and enabled us to enter into it with less debt, more strength and preparation.  Our present enemy will have the sea to herself, while we shall be equally predominant at land, and shall strip her of all her possessions on this continent.  She may burn New York, indeed, by her ships and congreve rockets, in which case we must burn the city of London by hired incendiaries, of which her starving manufacturers will furnish abundance.  A people in such desperation as to demand of their government autparcem, aut furcam, either bread or the gallows, will not reject the same alternative when offered by a foreign hand.  Hunger will make them brave every risk for bread.  The partisans of England here have endeavored much to goad us into the folly of choosing the ocean instead of the land, for the theatre of war.  That would be to meet their strength with our own weakness, instead of their weakness with our strength.  I hope we shall confine ourselves to the conquest of their possessions, and defence of our harbors, leaving the war on the ocean to our privateers.  These will immediately swarm in every sea, and do more injury to British commerce than the regular fleets of all Europe would do.  The government of France may discontinue their license trade.  Our privateers will furnish them much more abundantly with colonial produce, and whatever the license trade has given them.  Some have apprehended we should be overwhelmed by the new improvements of war, which have not yet reached us.  But the British possess them very imperfectly, and what are these improvements?  Chiefly in the management of artillery, of which our country admits little use.  We have nothing to fear from their armies, and shall put nothing in prize to their fleets.  Upon the whole, I have known no war entered into under more favorable auspices.

Our manufacturers are now very nearly on a footing with those of England.  She has not a single improvement which we do not possess, and many of them better adapted by ourselves to our ordinary use.  We have reduced the large and expensive machinery for most things to the compass of a private family, and every family of any size is now getting machines on a small scale for their household purposes.  Quoting myself as an example, and I am much behind many others in this business, my household manufactures are just getting into operation on the scale of a carding machine costing 60 only, which may be worked by a girl of twelve years old, a spinning machine, which may be made for $10, carrying 6 spindles for wool, to be worked by a girl also, another which can be made for $25, carrying 12 spindles for cotton, and a loom, with a flying shuttle, weaving its twenty yards a day.  I need 2,000 yards of linen, cotton and woollen yearly, to clothe my family, which this machinery, costing $150 only, and worked by two women and two girls, will more than furnish.  For fine goods there are numerous establishments at work in the large cities, and many more daily growing up; and of merinos we have some thousands, and these multiplying fast.  We consider a sheep for every person as sufficient for their woollen clothing, and this State and all to the north have fully that, and those to the south and west will soon be up to it.  In other articles we are equally advanced, so that nothing is more certain than that, come peace when it will, we shall never again go to England for a shilling where we have gone for a dollar’s worth.  Instead of applying to her manufacturers there, they must starve or come here to be employed.  I give you these details of peaceable operations, because they are within my present sphere.  Those of war are in better hands, who know how to keep their own secrets.  Because, too, although a soldier yourself, I am sure you contemplate the peaceable employment of man in the improvement of his condition, with more pleasure than his murders, rapine and devastations.

Mr. Barnes, some time ago, forwarded you a bill of exchange for 5,500 francs, of which the enclosed is a duplicate.  Apprehending that a war with England would subject the remittances to you to more casualties, I proposed to Mr. Morson, of Bordeaux, to become the intermediate for making remittances to you, which he readily acceded to on liberal ideas arising from his personal esteem for you, and his desire to be useful to you.  If you approve of this medium I am in hopes it will shield you from the effect of the accidents to which the increased dangers of the seas may give birth.  It would give me great pleasure to hear from you oftener.  I feel great interest in your health and happiness.  I know your feelings on the present state of the world, and hope they will be cheered by the successful course of our war, and the addition of Canada to our confederacy.  The infamous intrigues of Great Britain to destroy our government (of which Henry’s is but one sample), and with the Indians to tomahawk our women and children, prove that the cession of Canada, their fulcrum for these Machiavelian levers, must be a sine qua non at a treaty of peace.  God bless you, and give you to see all these things, and many and long years of health and happiness.