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Subject Area: Political Theory
Topic: The American Revolution and Constitution

TO LIEUT. JOHN LOUIS DE UNGER 1 - Thomas Jefferson, The Works, vol. 3 (Notes on Virginia I, Correspondence 1780-1782) [1905]

Edition used:

The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Federal Edition (New York and London, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904-5). Vol. 3.

Part of: The Works of Thomas Jefferson, 12 vols.

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TO LIEUT. JOHN LOUIS DE UNGER1

j. mss.

Sir,

—The letter which covers this being of a public nature I wished separately to acknowlege the many things personally obliging to me expressed in your two letters. The very small amusements which it has been in my power to furnish in order to lighten some of your heavy hours by no means merited the acknowlegment you make. Their impression must be ascribed to your extreme sensibility rather than to their own weight. My wishes for your happiness give me participation in your joy at being exchanged sensibly however alloyed by a presentiment of the loss I shall sustain when I shall again be permitted to withdraw to that scene of quiet retirement abstracted from which I know no happiness in this world. Your line of life must have given you attachments to objects of a very different nature. When the course of events shall have removed you to distant scenes of action where laurels not tarnished with the blood of my country may be gathered, I shall urge sincere prayers for your obtaining every honor & preferment which may gladden the heart of a souldier. On the other hand should your fondness for philosophy resume it’s merited ascendancy, is it impossible to hope that this unexplored country may tempt your residence by holding out materials wherewith to build a fame founded on the happiness & not the calamities of human nature? Be this as it may whether philosopher or souldier, I wish you many felicities.

[1 ]One of the Convention prisoners, in Albemarle.