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

TO JOSEPH C. CABELL - Thomas Jefferson, The Works, vol. 12 (Correspondence and Papers 1816-1826) [1905]

Edition used:

The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Federal Edition (New York and London, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904-5). Vol. 12.

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

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Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


TO JOSEPH C. CABELL

j. mss.

Monticello Feb. 7. 26

Dear Sir,

—I recd yesterday your kind letter of the 2d and am truly sensible of the interest you are so good as to take in my affairs. I had hoped the length and character of my services might have prevented the fear in the legislature of the indulgence asked being quoted as a precedent in future cases, but I find no fault with their strict adherence to a rule generally useful, altho’ relaxable in some cases under their discretion, of which they are the proper judges. If it can be yielded in my case, I can save the house of Monticello and a farm adjoining to end my days in and bury my bones. If not I must sell house and all here and carry my family to Bedford where I have not even a log hut to put my head into. In any case I wish nothing from the treasury. The pecuniary compensns I have recd for my services from time to time have been fully to my own satisfn.

I have been very much mortified by the publicn in the Enquirer of the 4th of two letters from some person called an American citizen who seems to have visited Mr. Madison & myself and has undertaken to state private conversns with us. In one of these he makes me declare that I had intentionally proceeded in a course of dupery of our legislature, teasing them as he makes me say for 6. or 7. sessions for successive aids to the Univty. and asking a part only at a time & intentionally concealing the ultimate cost; and gives an inexact statement of a story of Obrian. Now our annual reports will shew that we constantly gave full and candid accounts of the money expended, and statements of what might still be wanting founded on the Proctor’s estimates. No man ever heard me speak of the grants of the legislre but with acknolegements of their liberality, which I have always declared had gone far beyond what I could have expected in the beginning. Yet the letter writer has given to my expressions an aspect disrespectful of the legislre and calculated to give them offence, which I do absolutely disavow. The writer is called an American citizen. It is evident, if he be so, that he is an adopted one only who after calling on us in his travels thro’ the country as a stranger may have obtained naturalisation and settled in Phila. where he is enjoying the society of the Buonapartes &c. The familiar style of his letter to his friend in England and the communicn of it to the literary gazette there indicates sufficiently his foreign birth and connections. I cannot express to you the pain which this unfaithful version and betrayment of private conversn has given me. I feel that it will add to the disfavor I had incurred with a large portion of the legislature by my strenuous labours for the establmt of the University to which they were opposed insomuch as to let it overweigh whatever of satisfactn former services had given them. I have been long sensible that while I was endeavoring to render to our country the greatest of all services, that of regenerating the public education, and placing our rising genern on the level of our sister states (which they have proudly held heretofore) I was discharging the odious function of a Physician pouring medicine down the throat of a patient, insensible of needing it. I am so sure of the future approbn of posterity and of the inestimable effect we shall have produced in the educn of our country by what we have done as that I cannot repent of the part I have borne in coopern with my colleagues. I disclaim the honors which this writer (among the other errors he had interlarded with the truths of his letters) has ascribed to me of having made the liberal donations of timber & stone from my own estate and of having paid all the contracts for materials myself, and I restore them to their true source the liberal legislators of our country. My pain at these false praises and representations should merit with them an acquittal of any supposed approbn of them by myself. Ever & affectly yours.