Tag: thomas jefferson

Daily Jefferson: June 20, 1803 Letter to Meriwether Lewis

Thomas Jefferson had a vision for American expansion. He also had a keen interest in scientific exploration as displayed by his notes to Meriwether Lewis on the assignment to scout out the Missouri River.  In a nutshell, the mission was framed as a precursor to trade and relations with the native people in the region.

The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri river, & such principal stream of it, as, by it’s course & communication with the waters of the Pacific ocean, may offer the most direct & practicable water communication across this continent, for the purposes of commerce.

Jefferson admonished Lewis and Clark to respect the native population:

In all your intercourse with the natives, treat them in the most friendly & conciliatory manner which their own conduct will admit; allay all jealousies as to the object of your journey, satisfy them of it’s innocence, make them acquainted with the position, extent character, peaceable & commercial dispositions of the US. of our wish to be neighborly, friendly, & useful to them, & of our dispositions to a commercial intercourse with them; confer with them on the points most convenient as mutual emporiums, and the articles of most desireable interchange for them & us. If a few of their influential chiefs within practicable distance, wish to visit us, arrange such a visit with them, and furnish them with authority to call on our officers, on their entering the US. to have them conveyed to this place at the public expence. If any of them should wish to have some of their young people brought up with us, & taught such arts as may be useful to them, we will recieve, instruct & take care of them. Such a mission whether of influential chiefs or of young people would give some security to your own party.Carry with you some matter of the kinepox; inform those of them with whom you may be, of it’s efficacy as a preservative from the smallpox; & instruct & encourage them in the use of it. This may be especially done wherever you winter.
As it is impossible for us to foresee in what manner you will be recieved by those people, whether with hospitality or hostility, so is it impossible to prescribe th exact degree of preserverance with which you are to pursue your journey. We value too much the lives of citizens to offer them to probable destruction. Your numbers will be sufficient to secure you against the unauthorised opposition of individuals or of small parties: but if a superior force authorised, or not authorised by a nation, should be arrayed against your further passage, and inflexibly determined to arrest it, you must decline it’s farther pursuit, and return.In the loss of yourselves, we should lose also the information you will have acquired. By returning safely with that, you may enable us to renew the essay with better calculated means. To your own discretion therefore must be left the degree of danger you risk, and the point at which you should decline, only saying we wish you to err on the side of your safety, and to bring back your party safe even if it be with less information.

Jefferson’s considerable intellect and scientific interest is on display in this letter. He had a command of so many areas of science and culture that exceeded most American presidents.
Prior posts on Jefferson and Native Americans: (link, link, link).
 

Daily Jefferson: June 19, 1802 Letter to Joseph Priestley on Jefferson's Role in the Constitution

In this June 19, 1802 letter, Jefferson wrote to Joseph Priestley to correct his understand of Jefferson’s role in shaping the Constitution.  Jefferson wrote:

one passage, in the paper you inclosed me, must be corrected. it is the following. ‘and all say that it was yourself more than any other individual, that planned & established it.’ i.e. the constitution. I was in Europe when the constitution was planned & established, and never saw it till after it was established. on receiving it I wrote strongly to mr Madison urging the want of provision for the freedom of religion, freedom of the press, trial by jury, habeas corpus, the substitution of militia for a standing army, and an express reservation to the states of all rights not specifically granted to the union. he accordingly moved in the first session of Congress for these Amendments which were agreed to & ratified by the states as they now stand. this is all the hand I had in what related to the Constitution.

Of course, Jefferson was not the only one who wanted a Bill of Rights in the new Constitution, but he was influential with Madison.
Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen and Unitarian pioneer, was one of Jefferson’s favorite religious figures. Jefferson praised Priestley’s work and wrote that his own religion owed much to Priestley’s views. Although he thought Jesus was on a divine mission from God, Priestley did not believe in the deity of Jesus. Jefferson wrote a flurry of letters to Priestley on religion while president. In his book The Jefferson Lies, David Barton suggests that Jefferson did not question orthodoxy until 1813. Jefferson’s correspondence with Priestley contradicts Barton’s assessment.
For more on Jefferson’s religion, see Getting Jefferson Right.

Daily Jefferson: June 18, 1799 Letter to a Student on the Study of Math, Science and Human Nature

Jefferson believed science and education would take mankind to a new level of progress. In this June 18, 1799 letter to student William Munford, Jefferson answers a question about the usefulness of studying math and science. He then expands on his view that human nature is generally good. The entire letter follows:

I have to acknolege the reciept of your favor of May 14. in which you mention that you have finished the 6. first books of Euclid, plane trigonometry, surveying & algebra and ask whether I think a further pursuit of that branch of science would be useful to you. there are some propositions in the latter books of Euclid, & some of Archimedes, which are useful, & I have no doubt you have been made acquainted with them. trigonometry, so far as this, is most valuable to every man, there is scarcely a day in which he will not resort to it for some of the purposes of common life. the science of calculation also is indispensible as far as the extraction of the square & cube roots; Algebra as far as the quadratic equation & the use of logarithms are often of value in ordinary cases: but all beyond these is but a luxury; a delicious luxury indeed; but not to be indulged in by one who is to have a profession to follow for his subsistence. in this light I view the conic sections, curves of the higher orders, perhaps even spherical trigonometry, Algebraical operations beyond the 2d dimension, and fluxions. there are other branches of science however worth the attention of every man. astronomy, botany, chemistry natural philosophy, natural history, anatomy. not indeed to be a proficient in them; but to possess their general principles & outlines, so as that we may be able to amuse and inform ourselves further in any of them as we proceed through life & have occasion for them. some knowlege of them is necessary for our character as well as comfort. the general elements of astronomy & of natural philosophy are best acquired at an academy where we can have the benefit of the instruments & apparatus usually provided there: but the others may well be acquired from books alone as far as our purposes require. I have indulged myself in these observations to you, because the evidence cannot be unuseful to you of a person who has often had occasion to consider which of his acquisitions in science have been really useful to him in life, and which of them have been merely a matter of luxury.
I am among those who think well of the human character generally. I consider man as formed for society, and endowed by nature with those dispositions which fit him for society. I believe also, with Condorcet, as mentioned in your letter, that his mind is perfectible to a degree of which we cannot as yet form any conception. it is impossible for a man who takes a survey of what is already known, not to see what an immensity in every branch of science yet remains to be discovered, & that too of articles to which our faculties seem adequate. in geometry & calculation we know a great deal. yet there are some desiderata. in anatomy great progress has been made; but much is still to be acquired. in natural history we possess knowlege; but we want a great deal. in chemistry we are not yet sure of the first elements. our natural philosophy is in a very infantine state; perhaps for great advances in it, a further progress in chemistry is necessary. surgery is well-advanced; but prodigiously short of what may be. the state of medecine is worse than that of total ignorance. could we divest ourselves of every thing we suppose we know in it, we should start from a higher ground & with fairer prospects. from Hippocrates to Brown we have had nothing but a succession of hypothetical systems each having it’s day of vogue, like the fashions & fancies of caps & gowns, & yielding in turn to the next caprice. yet the human frame, which is to be the subject of suffering & torture under these learned modes, does not change. we have a few medecines, as the bark, opium, mercury, which in a few well defined diseases are of unquestionable virtue: but the residuary list of the materia medica, long as it is, contains but the charlataneries of the art; and of the diseases of doubtful form, physicians have ever had a false knowlege, worse than ignorance. yet surely the list of unequivocal diseases & remedies is capable of enlargement; and it is still more certain that in the other branches of science, great fields are yet to be explored to which our faculties are equal, & that to an extent of which we cannot fix the limits. I join you therefore in branding as cowardly the idea that the human mind is incapable of further advances. this is precisely the doctrine which the present despots of the earth are inculcating, & their friends here re-echoing; & applying especially to religion & politics; ‘that it is not probable that any thing better will be discovered than what was known to our fathers.’ we are to look backwards then & not forwards for the improvement of science, & to find kit amidst feudal barbarisms and the fires of Spital-fields. but thank heaven the American mind is already too much opened, to listen to these impostures; and while the art of printing is left to us science can never be retrograde; what is once acquired of real knowlege can never be lost. to preserve the freedom of the human mind then & freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom; for as long as we may think as we will, & speak as we think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement. the generation which is going off the stage has deserved well of mankind for the struggles it has made,[3] & for having arrested that course of despotism which had overwhelmed the world for thousands & thousands of years. if there seems to be danger that the ground they have gained will be lost again, that danger comes from the generation your cotemporary. but that the enthusiasm which characterises youth should lift it’s parracide hands against freedom & science, would be such a monstrous phaenomenon as I cannot place among possible things in this age & this country. your college at least has shewn itself incapable of it; and if the youth of any other place have seemed to rally under other banners it has been from delusions which they will soon dissipate. I shall be happy to hear from you from time to time, & of your progress in study, and to be useful to you in whatever is in my power; being with sincere esteem.

Daily Jefferson: Jefferson on Blackstone and British Common Law

According to David Barton, Thomas Jefferson thought Sir William Blackstone was foundational to legal practice. However, Jefferson felt a reliance on Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England  by American law students had led to what he called the “degeneracy of legal science.” In fact, Jefferson told  Judge John Tyler in this June 17, 1812 letter that he preferred to rely on no British authorities for legal interpretations after the time of the Declaration of Independence. Following his recommendations would “uncanonize” Blackstone. Jefferson said:

But the state of the English law at the date of our emigration, constituted the system adopted here.  We may doubt, therefore, the propriety of quoting in our courts English authorities subsequent to that adoption;  still more, the admission of authorities posterior to the Declaration of Independence, or rather to the accession of that King, whose reign, ab initio, was the very tissue of wrongs which rendered the Declaration at length necessary.  The reason or it had inception at least as far back as the commencement of his reign.  This relation to the beginning of his reign, would add the advantage of getting us rid of all Mansfield’s innovations, or civilizations of the common law.  For however I admit the superiority of the civil over the common law code, as a system of perfect justice, yet an incorporation of the two would be like Nebuchadnezzar’s image of metals and clay, a thing without cohesion of parts.  The only natural improvement of the common law, is through its homogeneous ally, the chancery, in which new principles are to be examined, concocted and digested.  But when, by repeated decisions and modifications, they are rendered pure and certain, they should be transferred by statute to the courts of common law, and placed within the pale of juries.  The exclusion from the courts of the malign influence of all authorities after the Georgium sidus became ascendant, would uncanonize Blackstone, whose book, although the most elegant and best digested of our law catalogue, has been perverted more than all others, to the degeneracy of legal science.  A student finds there a smattering of everything, and his indolence easily persuades him that if he understands that book, he is master of the whole body of the law.  The distinction between these, and those who have drawn their stores from the deep and rich mines of Coke and Littleton, seems well understood even by the unlettered common people, who apply the appellation of Blackstone lawyers to these ephemeral insects of the law.

Although his Commentaries were popular, Blackstone opposed American independence. Jefferson, instead of seeing Blackstone as an influence, saw him as a barrier to a distinctly American law profession.
For more on Getting Jefferson Right, click the link.

Daily Jefferson: Letter to James Maury, June 16, 1815 on Health Benefits of Cold Baths

In a letter to James Maury on June 16, 1815, Jefferson discussed his views of relations with England and other nations. Then he reflected on Maury’s bathing habits and the relationship to his own and his generally good health:

Your practice of the cold bath thrice a week during the winter, and at the age of 70.2 is a bold one, which I should not, a priori, have pronounced salutary. but all theory must yield to experience, and every constitution has it’s own laws. I have for 50. years bathed my feet in cold water every morning (as you mention) and having been remarkably exempted from colds (not having had one in every 7. years of my life on an average) I have supposed it might be ascribed to that practice. when we see two facts accompanying one another for a long time, we are apt to suppose them related as cause and effect.

Even Jefferson was subject to illusory correlations. Maury was a former teacher of the young Jefferson and an Anglican minister.