THOMAS JEFFERSON, Monticello, to JOHN HOLMES., 1820

Scope and content:

T. J. thanks Holmes for a copy of his pamphlet "Mr. Holmes' letter to the people of Maine" in which Holmes argued that any restriction on the admission of Missouri would be unconstitutional. T. J. responds that the issue of the extension of slavery to the territories which was temporarily solved by the Missouri Compromise has "like a fire-bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union." He writes of the difficulty of a practical solution to the issue of slavery and emancipation for "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." T. J. believes that a diffusion of slavery over a broader territory would make emancipation easier and cautions against Congress interfering in state issues. He concludes that he will now die believing "that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776 ... 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." [2974-a]

Physical description:

ALS. 2 pp. Paul Mellon Bequest. Printed: L and B XV, 248-50.

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