The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
UNITY / MISSOURI QUESTION
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
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 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.
I regret that I am now to die in the belief, that the useless
sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776, 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 the Union, I tender the
offering of my high esteem and respect.
to John Holmes, 22 April 1820
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