WAR
/ COMRADESHIP AND DEATH
When you and I look back on the country over
which we have passed, what a field of slaughter does it exhibit!
Where are all the friends who entered it with us, under all the
inspiring energies of health and hope? As if pursued by the havoc of
war, they are strewed by the way, some earlier, some later, and
scarce a few stragglers remain to count the numbers fallen, and to
mark yet, by their own fall, the last footsteps of their part. …Of
our college friends (and they are the dearest) how few have stood
with us in the great political questions which have agitated our
country; and these were of a nature to justify agitation. I did not
believe the Lilliputian fetters of that day strong enough to have
bound so many. |
John
Page
25 Jun 1804 |
WAR
EXPERIENCES
You ask, in your letter of April the 24th,
details of my sufferings by Colonel Tarleton. I did not suffer by
him. On the contrary, he behaved very genteelly with me. On his
approach to Charlottesville, which is within three miles of my house
at Monticello, he despatched a troop of his horse, under Captain
McLeod, with the double object of taking me prisoner, with the two
Speakers of the Senate and Delegates, who then lodged with me, and
of remaining there in vidette, my house commanding a view of
ten or twelve miles round about. He gave strict orders to Captain
MeLeod to suffer nothing to be injure4. The troop failed in one of
their objects, as we had notice of their coming, so that the two
Speakers had gone off about two hours before their arrival at
Monticello, and myself, with my family, about five minutes. But
Captain McLeod preserved everything with sacred care, during about
eighteen hours that he remained there. Colonel Tarleton was just so
long at Charlottesville, being hurried from thence by the news of
the rising of the militia, and by a sudden fall of rain, which
threatened to swell the river, and intercept his return. In general,
he did little injury to the inhabitants, on that short and hasty
excursion, which was of about sixty miles from their main army, then
in Spottsylvania; and ours in Orange. It was early in June, 1781.
Lord Cornwallis then proceeded to the Point of Fork, and encamped
his army from thence all along the main James River, to a seat of
mine called Elk-hill, opposite to Elk Island, and a little below the
mouth of the Byrd Creek. (You will see all these places exactly laid
down in the map annexed to my notes on Virginia, printed by
Stockdale.) He remained in this position ten days, his own head
quarters being in my house, at that place. I had time to remove most
of the effects out of the house. He destroyed all my growing crops
of corn and tobacco; he burned all my barns, containing the same
articles of the last year, having first taken what corn he wanted;
he used, as was to be expected, all my stock of cattle, sheep and
hogs, for the sustenance of his army, and carried off all the horses
capable of service; of those too young for service he cut the
throats; and he burned all the fences on the plantation, so as to
leave it an absolute waste. He carried off also about thirty slaves.
Had this been to give them freedom, he would have done right; but it
was to consign them to inevitable death from the small pox and
putrid fever, then raging in his camp. This I knew afterwards to be
the fate of twenty-seven of them I never had news of the remaining
three, but presume they shared the same fate. When I say that Lord
Cornwallis did all this, I do not mean that he carried about the
torch in his own hands, but that it was all done under his eye; the
situation of the house in which he was, commanding a view of every
part of the plantation, so that he must have seen every fire. I
relate these things on my own knowledge, in a great degree, as I was
on the ground soon after he left it. He treated the rest of the
neighborhood somewhat in the same style, but not with that spirit of
total extermination with which he seemed to rage over my
possessions. Wherever he went, the dwelling houses were plundered of
everything which could be carried off. Lord Cornwallis' character in
England, would forbid the belief that he shared in the plunder; but
that his table was served with the plate thus pillaged from private
houses, can be proved by many hundred eye-witnesses. From an
estimate I made at that time, on the best information I could
collect, I supposed the State of Virginia lost, under Lord
Cornwallis' hands, that year, about thirty thousand slaves; and that
of these, about twenty seven thousand died of the small pox and camp
fever, and the rest were partly sent to the West Indies, and
exchanged for rum, sugar, coffee and fruit, and partly sent to New
York, from whence they went, at the peace, either to Nova Scotia or
England. From this last place, I believe they have been lately sent
to Africa. History will never relate the horrors committed by the
British army in the southern States of America. They raged
in Virginia six months only, from the middle of April to the middle
of October, 1781, when they were all taken prisoners; and I give you
a faithful specimen of their transactions for ten days of that time,
and on one spot only. Ex pede Herculem. I suppose their
whole devastations during those six months, amounted to about three
millions sterling. |
Doctor
Gordon
16 Jul 1788 |
WASHINGTON,
GEORGE
I think I knew General Washington intimately
and thoroughly; and were I called on to delineate his character, it
should be in terms like these. His mind was great and powerful,
without being of the very first order; his penetration strong,
though not so acute as that of a Newton, Bacon, or Locke; and as far
as he saw, no judgment was ever sounder. It was slow in operation,
being little aided by invention or imagination, but sure in
conclusion. Hence the common remark of his officers, of the
advantage he derived from Councils of war, where hearing all
suggestions, he selected what-ever was best; and certainly no
general ever planned his battles more judiciously. But if deranged
during the course of the action, if any member 9f his plan was
dislocated by sudden circumstances, he was slow in re-adjustment.
The consequence was, that he often failed in the field, and rarely
against an enemy in station, as at Boston and York. He was incapable
of fear, meeting personal dangers with the calmest unconcern.
Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence, never
acting until every circumstance, every consideration, was maturely
weighed; refraining if he saw a doubt, but, when once decided, going
through with his purpose, whatever obstacles opposed. His integrity
was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known, no
motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being
able to bias his decision. He was, indeed, in every sense of the
words, a wise, a good, and a great man. His temper was naturally
irritable and high toned; but reflection and resolution had obtained
a firm and habitual ascendency over it. If ever, however, it broke
its bonds, he was most tremendous in his wrath. In his expenses he
was honorable, but exact; liberal in contributions to whatever
promised utility; but frowning and unyielding on all visionary
projects, and all unworthy calls on his charity. His heart was not
warm in its affections; but he exactly calculated every man's value,
and gave him a solid esteem proportioned to it. His person, you
know, was fine, his stature exactly what one would wish, his
deportment easy, erect and noble; the best horseman of his age, and
the most graceful figure that could be seen on horseback. Although
in the circle of his friends, where he might be unreserved with
safety, he took a free share in conversation, his colloquial talents
were not above mediocrity, possessing neither copiousness of ideas,
nor fluency of words. In public, when called on for a sudden
opinion, he was unready, short and embarrassed. Yet he wrote
readily, rather diffusely, in an easy and correct style. This he had
acquired by conversation with the world, for his education was
merely reading, writing and common arithmetic, to which he added
surveying at a later day. His time was employed in action chiefly,
reading little, and that only in agriculture and English history.
His correspondence became necessarily extensive, and, with
journalizing his agricultural proceedings, occupied most of his
leisure hours within doors. On the whole, his character was, in its
mass, perfect, in nothing bad, in few points indifferent; and it may
truly be said, that never did nature and fortune combine more
perfectly to make a man great, and to place him in the same
constellation with whatever worthies have merited from man an
everlasting remembrance. For his was the singular destiny and merit,
of leading the armies of his country successfully through an arduous
war, for the establishment of its independence; of conducting its
councils through the birth of a government, new in its forms and
principles, until it had settled down into a quiet and orderly
train; and of scrupulously obeying the laws through the whole of his
career, civil and military, of which the history of the world
furnishes no other example.
He has often declared to me that he considered our new Constitution
as an experiment on the practicability of republican government, and
with what dose of liberty man could be trusted for his own good;
that he was determined the experiment should have a fair trial, and
would lose the. last drop of his blood in support of it. And these
declarations he repeated to me the oftener and more pointedly,
because he knew my suspicions of Colonel Hamilton's views, and
probably had heard from him the same declarations which I had, to
wit, "that the British Constitution, with its unequal
representation, Corruption and other existing abuses, was the most
perfect government which had ever been established on earth, and
that a reformation of those abuses would make it an impracticable
government." I do believe that General Washington had not a
firm confidence in the durability of our government He was naturally
distrustful of men, and inclined to gloomy apprehensions; and I was
ever persuaded that a belief that we must at length end in something
like a British Constitution, had some weight in his adoption of the
ceremonies of levees, birthdays, pompous meetings with Congress, and
other forms of the same character, calculated to prepare us
gradually for a change which he believed possible, and to let it
come on with as little shock as might be to the public mind. |
Walter
Jones
(Doctor)
2 Jan 1814 |
WASHINGTON,
GEORGE / AND CONSTITUTION
General Washington was himself sincerely a
friend to the republican principles of our Constitution. His faith,
perhaps, in its duration, might not have been as confident as mine;
but he repeatedly declared to me, that he was determined it should
have a fair chance for success, and that he would lose the last drop
of his blood in its support, against any attempt which might be made
to change it from its republican form. He made these declarations
the oftener, because he knew my suspicions that Hamilton had other
views, and he wished to quiet my jealousies on this subject. For
Hamilton frankly avowed that he considered the British Constitution,
with all the corruptions of its administration, as the most perfect
model of government which had ever been devised by the wit of man;
professing however, at the same time, that the spirit of this
country was so fundamentally republican, that it would be visionary
to think of introducing monarchy here, and that, therefore, it was
the duty of its administrators to conduct it on the principles their
constituents had elected. I had meant to have added some views on
the amalgamation of parties, to which your favor of the 8th has some
allusion; an amalgamation of name, but not of principle. Tories are
Tories still, by whatever name they may be called. |
Martin
Van Buren
29 Jun 1824 |
WASHINGTON,
GEORGE / HEALTH
The President is not well. Little lingering
fevers have been hanging about him for a week or ten days, and
affected his looks most remarkably. He is also extremely affected by
the attacks made and kept up on him in the public papers. I think he
feels those things more than any person I ever yet met with. I am
sincerely sorry to see them. I remember an observation of yours,
made when I first went to New York, that the satellites and
sycophants which surrounded him had wound up the ceremonials of the
government to a pitch of stateliness which nothing but his personal
character could have supported, and which no character after him
could ever maintain. |
James
Madison
9 Jun 1793 |
WATERWAYS
The details you are so good as to give me on
the subject of the navigation of the waters of the Potomac and Ohio,
are very pleasing to me, as I consider the union of these two
rivers, as among the strongest links of connection between the
eastern and western sides of our confederacy. It will, moreover, add
to the commerce of Virginia, in particular, all the upper parts of
the Ohio and its waters. Another vast object, and of much less
difficulty, is to add, also, all the country on the lakes and their
waters. This would enlarge our field immensely, and would certainly
be effected by a union of the upper waters of the Ohio and Lake Erie
The Big Beaver and Cuyahoga offer the most direct line, and
according to information I received from General Hand, and which I
had the honor of writing you in the year 1783, the streams in that
neighborhood head in lagoons, and the country is flat. With respect
to the doubts which you say are entertained by some, whether the
upper waters of Potomac can be rendered capable of navigation on
account of the falls and rugged banks, they are answered, by
observing, that it is reduced to a maxim, that whenever there is
water enough to float a batteau, there may be navigation for a
batteau. Canals and locks may be necessary, and they are expensive;
but I hardly know what expense would be too great, for the object in
question. Probably, negotiations with the Indians, perhaps even
settlement, must precede the execution of the Cuyahoga canal. The
States of Maryland and Virginia should make a common object of it.
The navigation, again, between Elizabeth River and the Sound, is of
vast importance, and in my opinion, it is much better that these
should be done at public than private expense. |
George
Washington
10 May 1789 |
WEALTH
/ PRODUCTION OF / COMMERCE
…Every family in the country is a
manufactory within itself, and is very generally able to make within
itself all the stouter and middling stuffs for its own clothing and
household use. We consider a sheep for every person in the family as
sufficient to clothe it, in addition to the cotton, hemp and flax
which we raise ourselves. For fine stuff we shall depend on your
northern manufactories. 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 its form, and the articles we shall in future
want from them will not exceed their own consumption of our produce.
|
John
Adams
21 Jan 1812 |
WEALTH
/ PRODUCTION OF / MANUFACTURERS
You tell me I am quoted by those who wish to
continue our dependence on England for manufactures. There was a
time when I might have been so quoted with more candor, but within
the thirty years which have since elapsed, how are circumstances
changed! …Experience has taught me that manufactures are now as
necessary to our independence as to our comfort. If it shall be
proposed to go beyond our own supply, the question of '85 will then
recur, will our surplus labor be then most beneficially
employed in the culture of the earth, or in the fabrications of art?
We have time yet for consideration, before that question will press
upon us; and the maxim to be applied will depend on the
circumstances which shall then exist; for in so complicated a
science as political economy, no one axiom can be laid down as wise
and expedient for all times and circumstances, and for their
contraries. Inattention to this is what has called for this
explanation, which reflection would have rendered unnecessary with
the candid. |
Benjamin
Austin, Esq.
9 Jan 1816 |
WEALTH
/ PRODUCTION OF / PATENTS
It has been pretended by some, (and in England
especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to
their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but
inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether
the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it
would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to
inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the
subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate
property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law,
indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men
equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who
occupies it, but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property
goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is
given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if
an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of
natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If
nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of
exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an
idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he
keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself
into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess
himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses
the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who
receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without
lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light
without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to
another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man,
and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and
benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire,
expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any
point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our
physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.
Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society
may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an
encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but
this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience
of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody.
Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England
was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a
general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In
some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a
special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations
have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than
advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which
refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new
and useful devices. |
Isaac
McPherson
13 Aug 1813 |
WEALTH
/ PRODUCTION OF / PROTECTING THE NATION'S MERCHANT SHIPS
And have our commercial citizens merited from
their country its encountering another war to protect their gambling
enterprises? That the persons of our citizens shall be safe in
freely traversing the ocean, that the transportation of our own
produce, in our own vessels, to the markets of our choice, and the
return to us of the articles we want for our own use, shall be
unmolested, I hold to be fundamental, and the gauntlet that must be
for ever hurled at him who questions it. But whether we shall engage
in every war of Europe, to protect the mere agency of our merchants
and ship owners in carrying on the commerce of other nations, even
were these merchants and ship-owners to take the side of their
country in the contest, instead of that of the enemy, is a question
of deep and serious consideration, with which, however, you and I
shall have nothing to do; so we will leave it to those whom it will
concern. |
John
Adams
10 Jun 1815 |
WESTWARD
EXPANSION / KNOXVILLE TO NATCHEZ
We have an idea of running a path in a direct
line from Knoxville to Natchez, believing it would save 200 miles in
the carriage of our mail. The consent of the Indians will be
necessary, and it will be very important to get individuals among
them to take each a white man into partnership, and to establish at
every nineteen miles; a house of entertainment, and a farm for its
support. The profits of this would soon reconcile the Indians to the
practice, and extend it, and render the public use of the road as
much an object of desire as it is now of fear; and such a horse-path
would soon, with their consent, become a wagon-road. Your country is
so abundant in everything which is good, that one does not know what
there is here of that description which you have not, and which
could be offered in exchange for a barrel of fresh peccans every
autumn. Yet I will venture to propose such an exchange.... |
W.
C. C. Claiborne
(Governor)
24 May 1803 |
WESTWARD
MIGRATION
It is so long since I have had the pleasure of
writing to you, that it would be vain to look hack to dates to
connect the old and the new. Yet I ought not to pass over my
acknowledgments to you for various publications received from time
to time, and with great satisfaction and thankfulness. I send you a
small one in return, the work of a very unlettered farmer, yet
valuable, as it relates plain facts of importance to farmers. You
will discover that Mr. Binns is an enthusiast for the use of gypsum.
But there are two facts which prove he has a right to be so: I. He
began poor, and has made himself tolerably rich by his farming
alone. 2. The county of Loudon, in which he lives, had been so
exhausted and wasted by bad husbandry, that it began to depopulate,
the inhabitants going southwardly in quest of better lands. Binns'
success has stopped that emigration. It is now becoming one of the
most productive counties of the State of Virginia, and the price
given for the lands is multiplied manifold. |
John
Sinclair
30 Jun 1803 |
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