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Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes
Monticello Apr. 22. 20.
I thank you, Dear Sir, for the copy you have been so kind as
to send me of the letter to your constituents on the Missouri
question. it is a perfect justification to them. I had for a long
time ceased to read the newspapers or pay any attention to public
affairs, confident they were in good hands, and content to be
a passenger in our bark to the shore from which I am not distant.
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 and political, once concieved and
held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated;
and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper. I can
say with conscious truth that there is not a man on earth who
would sacrifice more than I would, to relieve us from this heavy
reproach, in any practicable way. the cession of that kind
of property, for so it is misnamed, is a bagatelle which would
not cost me in a second thought, if, in that way, a general emancipation
and expatriation could be effected: and, gradually, and
with due sacrifices, I think it might be. but, as it is, we have
the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let
him go. justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the
other. of one thing I am certain, that as the passage of slaves
from one state to another would not make a slave of a single human
being who would not be so without it, so their diffusion over
a greater surface would make them individually happier and proportionally
facilitate the accomplishment of their emancipation, by dividing
the burthen on a greater number of co-adjutors. an abstinence
too from this act of power would remove the jealousy excited by
the undertaking of Congress, to regulate the condition of the
different descriptions of men composing a state. this certainly
is the exclusive right of every state, which nothing in the constitution
has taken from them and given to the general government. could
congress, for example say that the Non-freemen of Connecticut,
shall be freemen, or that they shall not emigrate into any other
state?
I regret that I am now to die in the belief that the useless
sacrifice of themselves, by the generation of $76.
to acquire self government and happiness to their country, is
to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their
sons, and that my only consolation is to be that I live not to
weep over it. if they would but dispassionately weigh the blessings
they will throw away against an abstract principle more likely
to be effected by union than by scission, they would pause before
they would perpetrate this act of suicide on themselves and of
treason against the hopes of the world.
to yourself as the faithful advocate of union I tender the
offering of my high esteem and respect. Th. Jefferson
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