The Jeffersonian Democracy Thomas Jefferson (1916) (14582967408)

Identifier: jefferdemoc00amstat (find matches)
Title: The Jeffersonian Democracy Thomas Jefferson
Year: 1916 (1910s)
Authors: American Statesman
Subjects: history
Publisher: Boston & New York Houghton Mifflin Company
Contributing Library: Brigham Young University-Idaho, David O. McKay Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University-Idaho



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nging together in this matter. Yes, indeed, interrupted Franklin, * we mustall hang together, or assuredly we shall all hangseparately. When it comes to the hanging,said Harrison, the luxurious heavy gentlemanfrom Virginia, to the little meagre Gerry of Mas-sachusetts, I shall have the advantage of you ; itwill be all over with me, long before you have donekicking in the air. Amid such trifling, concealinggrave thoughts, Jefferson saw his momentous docu-ment signed at the close of that summer afternoon ;he had acted as undertaker for the royal coloniesand as midwife for the United States of America. It is a work of supererogation to criticise apaper with which seventy millions of people areto-day as familiar as with the Lords Prayer. Thefaults which it has are chiefly of style and are dueto the spirit of those times, a spirit bold, energetic,sensible, independent, in action the very best, butin talk and writing much too tolerant of broad andhigh-sounding generalization. John Adams and
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IN CONGRESS 35 Pickering long afterward, when they had cometo hate Jefferson as a sort of political arch-fiend,blamed it for lack of originality. Every idea init, they said, had become hackneyed and wasto be found in half a dozen earlier expressions ofpublic opinion. The assertion was equally true,absurd, and malicious. No intelligent man couldsuppose that the Americans had been concerned ina rebellious discussion for years, and engaged inactual war for months, without having fully com-prehended the principles, the causes, and the justi-fication on which their conduct was based. It waspreposterous to demand new discoveries in theseparticulars. Had such been possible, they wouldhave been undesirable ; it would have been extremefolly for Jefferson to open new and unsettling dis-cussions at this late date. Of this charge againsthis production Jefferson said, with perfect wisdomand fairness, I did not consider it as any part ofmy charge to invent new ideas altogether and tooffer no sentim