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“I have examined my papers, and found the plans of Frankfort-on-the-Mayne, Carlsruhe, Amsterdam, Strasburg, Paris, Orleans, Bordeaux, Lyons, Montpelier, Marseilles, Turin, and Milan, which I send in a roll by the post. They are on large and accurate scales, having been procured by me while in those respective cities myself. … Whenever it is proposed to prepare plans for the Capitol, I should prefer the adoption of some one of the models of antiquity, which have had the approbation of thousands of years; and for the President's house, I should prefer the celebrated fronts of modern buildings, which have already received the approbation of all good judges. Such are the Galerie du Louire, the Gardes meubles, and two fronts of the Hotel de Salm.” --Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Charles L’Enfant, April 10, 1791
Thomas Jefferson to Handsome Lake, November 3, 1802 “You remind me, brother, of what I said to you, when you visited me the last winter, that the lands you then held would remain yours, and shall never go from you but when you should be disposed to sell. This I now repeat, and will ever abide by. We, indeed, are always ready to buy land; but we will never ask but when you wish to sell; and our laws, in order to protect you against imposition, have forbidden individuals to purchase lands from you; and have rendered it necessary, when you desire to sell, even to a State, that an agent from the United States should attend the sale, see that your consent is freely given, a satisfactory price paid, and report to us what has been done, for our approbation. .. Nor do I think, brother, that the sale of lands is, under all circumstances, injurious to your people. While they depended on hunting, the more extensive the forest around them, the more game they would yield. But going into a state of agriculture, it may be as advantageous to a society, as it is to an individual, who has more land than he can improve, to sell a part, and lay out the money in stocks and implements of agriculture, for the better improvement of the residue. A little land well stocked and improved, will yield more than a great deal without stock or improvement. … Go on then, brother, in the great reformation you have undertaken. Persuade our red brethren then to be sober, and to cultivate their lands; and their women to spin and weave for their families. You will soon see your women and children well fed and clothed, your men living happily in peace and plenty, and your numbers increasing from year to year. “ Source: http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/jeffind2.htm
“Substance of a TALK, held at Le Maionitinong, entrance of Lake Michigan, by the Indian Chief, LEMAIGOUIS, May 4, 1807, . . . addressed to the different tribes of Indians. … My Children! To you I have given Deer, Bears, and all wild animals; wild fowls and fish, corn and squashes; for yourselves only, and not for white men. To them I have given Oxen, Cows, Sheep, and all other domestic animals, for themselves only; therefore, you are not to keep any of their animals, nor any living thing made for them. You are not to plant more corn, than you want for your own use; you must not sell it to them unless they are starving, and then only by measure, lest they cheat you. When you plant, you must help each other, and then the Great Spirit will give you good crops. My Children! I made all the trees of the woods. The maple tree I made, that you might have sugar for your children. I love the maple tree, which you spoil and give pain to (for it has feeling like yourselves) by cutting it too much, to make sugar for the Whites. They have another sugar, which I made for them. If you make more sugar than you want for yourselves, you shall die, and the maple tree shall yield no more water. If a white man needs a little sugar, you may sell him very little; but always by weight.—But even this I dislike, because it burns your kettles, which you must not destroy. My Children! You must pay the Whites only half their credits; because they cheat you. You may sell them only peltries, canoes, gums, &c. but no wild meat. . . . You may give them a little dried meat, without any bone; because they burn the bones, so that the animals cannot come again on the earth. This is the reason why they are so few and so lean. You complain that the animals are few on the earth. How can it be otherwise, when you destroy them yourselves. You take only their skin, and leave their bodies to rot. When I pass by and see them thus, I take them back that they come no more to you again. My Children! You must not dress like the Whites; but pluck out your hair, as in former times; and wear the feather of the eagle on your head. And when it is not too cold you must go naked, (excepting your breech-cloth) with your bodies painted, &c. When I see you thus, I am well pleased.” Source: Pennsylvania Gazette, 11 March 1812. Online at http://www.wwnorton.com/college/history/archive/resources/documents/ch09_05.htm
Two perspectives on the Missouri question John Quincy Adams Journal, March 1 1820: I have favored this Missouri compromise, believing it to be all that could be effected under the present Constitution, and from extreme unwillingness to put the Union at hazard. But perhaps it would have been a wiser as well as a bolder course to have persisted in the restriction upon Missouri, till it should have terminated in a convention of the States to revise and amend the Constitution. This would have produced a new Union of thirteen or fourteen States unpolluted with slavery, with a great and glorious object to effect, namely, that of rallying to their standard the other States by the universal emancipation of their slaves. If the Union must be dissolved, slavery is precisely the question upon which it ought to break. For the present, however, this contest is laid asleep. Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes, April 22, 1820 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 conceived 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 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 ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.”
