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| Peace & War |
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Unlike those nations whose rulers
use their country's resources to seek conquests, to carry on warring contests with one
another, and consequently plunge their people into debt and devastation, free societies
are organized for the happiness and prosperity of their people, and this is best pursued
in a state of peace.
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"By nature's law, man is at
peace with man till some aggression is committed, which, by the same law, authorizes one
to destroy another as his enemy." --Thomas Jefferson to Edmond C. Genet, 1793. ME
9:136
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"Peace... has been our
principle, peace is our interest, and peace has saved to the world this only plant of free
and rational government now existing in it... However, therefore, we may have been
reproached for pursuing our Quaker system, time will affix the stamp of wisdom on it, and
the happiness and prosperity of our citizens will attest its merit. And this, I believe,
is the only legitimate object of government and the first duty of governors, and not the
slaughter of men and devastation of the countries placed under their care in pursuit of a
fantastic honor unallied to virtue or happiness; or in gratification of the angry passions
or the pride of administrators excited by personal incidents in which their citizens have
no concern." --Thomas Jefferson to Thaddeus Kosciusko, 1811. ME 13:41
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"The state of peace is that
which most improves the manners and morals, the prosperity and happiness of mankind."
--Thomas Jefferson to Noah Worcester, 1817. ME 18:299
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"Peace with all nations, and
the right which that gives us with respect to all nations, are our object." --Thomas
Jefferson to C. W. F. Dumas, 1793. ME 9:56
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"Peace and abstinence from
European interferences are our objects, and so will continue while the present order of
things in America remain uninterrupted." --Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont
de Nemours, 1802. ME 10:318
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"[Montesquieu wrote in his
Spirit
of Laws,
IX,c.2:] 'The spirit of monarchy is war and enlargement of domain: peace and
moderation are the spirit of a republic." --Thomas Jefferson: copied into his
Commonplace Book.
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"Believing that the
happiness of mankind is best promoted by the useful pursuits of peace, that on these alone
a stable prosperity can be founded, that the evils of war are great in their endurance,
and have a long reckoning for ages to come, I have used my best endeavors to keep our
country uncommitted in the troubles which afflict Europe, and which assail us on every
side." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to Pittsburgh Republicans, 1808. ME 16:324
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"Determined as we are to
avoid, if possible, wasting the energies of our people in war and destruction, we shall
avoid implicating ourselves with the powers of Europe, even in support of principles which
we mean to pursue. They have so many other interests different from ours, that we must
avoid being entangled in them. We believe we can enforce these principles as to ourselves
by peaceable means, now that we are likely to have our public councils detached from
foreign views." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Paine, 1801. ME 10:223
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"Nothing but the failure of
every peaceable mode of redress, nothing but dire necessity, should force us from the path
of peace which would be our wisest pursuit, to embark in the broils and contentions of
Europe and become a satellite to any power there." --Thomas Jefferson to William
Dunbar, 1803. ME 19:132
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"War has been avoided from a
due sense of the miseries, and the demoralization it produces, and of the superior
blessings of a state of peace and friendship with all mankind." --Thomas Jefferson:
Reply to Queen Anne's Country Republicans, 1809. ME 16:363
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"A sincere affection
between... two peoples is the broadest basis on which their peace can be built."
--Thomas Jefferson to Comte de Vergennes, 1785. Papers 8:656
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Peace and Domestic Tranquility |
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"Peace and the prosperity so
visibly flowing from it have but strengthened our attachment to it and the blessings it
brings, and we do not despair of being always a peaceable nation." --Thomas Jefferson
to Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis, 1803.
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"Our desire [is] to pursue
ourselves the path of peace as the only one leading surely to prosperity, and our wish
[is] to preserve the morals of our citizens from being vitiated by courses of lawless
plunder and murder." --Thomas Jefferson to George Hammond, 1793. ME 9:91
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"Peace is our most important
interest, and a recovery from debt." --Thomas Jefferson to William Short, 1801. ME
10:287
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"Wars and contentions indeed
fill the pages of history with more matter. But more blest is that nation whose silent
course of happiness furnishes nothing for history to say. This is what I ambition for my
own country." --Thomas Jefferson to Comte Diodati, 1807. ME 11:181
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"We love and we value peace;
we know its blessings from experience. We abhor the follies of war, and are not untried in
its distresses and calamities. Unmeddling with the affairs of other nations, we had hoped
that our distance and our dispositions would have left us free, in the example and
indulgence of peace with all the world." --Thomas Jefferson to Carmichael and Short,
1793. ME 9:159
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"How much better is it for
neighbors to help than to hurt one another; how much happier must it make them. If
[nations] will cease to make war on one another, if [they] will live in friendship with
all mankind, [they] can employ all [their] time in providing food and clothing for
[themselves] and [their people]. [Their] men will not be destroyed in war, [their] women
and children will lie down to sleep in their [homes] without fear of being surprised by
their enemies and killed or carried away. [Their] numbers will be increased instead of
diminished and [they] will live in plenty and in quiet." --Thomas Jefferson: Address
to Mandar Nation, 1806. (*) ME 16:414
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"The desire to preserve our
country from the calamities and ravages of war by cultivating a disposition and pursuing a
conduct conciliatory and friendly to all nations has been sincerely entertained and
faithfully followed [during my administration of public affairs]. It was dictated by the
principles of humanity, the precepts of the gospel and the general wish of our
country." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to Address, 1807.
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"I hope we shall prove how
much happier for man the Quaker policy is, and that the life of the feeder is better than
that of the fighter." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1822.
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"Always a friend to peace,
and believing it to promote eminently the happiness and prosperity of nations, I am ever
unwilling that it should be disturbed, until greater and more important interests call for
an appeal to force. Whenever that shall take place, I feel a perfect confidence that the
energy and enterprise displayed by my fellow citizens in the pursuits of peace will be
equally eminent in those of war." --Thomas Jefferson to John Shee, 1807. ME 11:140
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"[Many] years of peace and
the prosperity so visibly flowing from it have but strengthened our attachment to it and
the blessings it brings, and we do not despair of being always a peaceable nation. We
think that peaceable means may be devised of keeping nations in the path of justice
towards us by making justice their interest and injuries to react on themselves."
--Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis, Jul 12, 1803. (*) ME 10:405
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"I do not believe war the
most certain means of enforcing principles. Those peaceable coercions which are in the
power of every nation, if undertaken in concert and in time of peace, are more likely to
produce the desired effect." --Thomas Jefferson to Robert Livingston, 1801.
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"We have obtained by a
peaceable appeal to justice, in four months, what we should not have obtained under seven
years of war, the loss of one hundred thousand lives, an hundred millions of additional
debt, many hundred millions worth of produce and property lost for want of market, or in
seeking it, and that demoralization which war superinduces on the human mind."
--Thomas Jefferson to Hugh Williamson, 1803. ME 10:386
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"War is not the best engine
for us to resort to; nature has given us one in our commerce, which, if properly
managed will be a better instrument for obliging the interested nations of Europe to treat
us with justice... Our object should now be to... endeavor so to form our commercial
regulations as that justice from other nations shall be their mechanical result."
--Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Pinckney, 1797. ME 9:389
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"To cherish and maintain the
rights and liberties of our citizens and to ward from them the burthens, the miseries and
the crimes of war, by a just and friendly conduct towards all nations [are] among the most
obvious and important duties of those to whom the management of their public interests
have been confided." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to John Thomas, et al., 1807. ME
16:290
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"A world in arms and
trampling on all those moral principles which have heretofore been deemed sacred in the
intercourse between nations, could not suffer us to remain insensible of all agitation.
During such a course of lawless violence, it was certainly wise to withdraw ourselves from
all intercourse with the belligerent nations, to avoid its pernicious effects on manners
and morals and the dangers it threatens to free governments, and to cultivate our own
resources until our natural and progressive growth should leave us nothing to fear from
foreign enterprise." --Thomas Jefferson to Messrs. Bloodgood and Hammond, 1809. ME
12:317
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"The maxim... "slow and
sure," is not less a good one in agriculture than in politics. I sincerely wish it
may extricate us from the event of a war, if this can be done saving our faith and our
rights." --Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 1794. ME 9:287
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"My affections were first
for my own country, and then, generally, for all mankind; and nothing but minds placing
themselves above the passions, in the functionaries of this country, could have preserved
us from the war to which... provocations have been constantly urging us." --Thomas
Jefferson to Thomas Law, 1811. ME 12:439
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"If ever I was gratified
with the possession of power, and of the confidence of those who had entrusted me with it,
it was on that occasion when I was enabled to use both for the prevention of war, towards
which the torrent of passion here was directed almost irresistibly, and when not another
person in the United States, less supported by authority and favor, could have resisted
it." --Thomas Jefferson to James Maury, 1812. ME 13:148
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"We had relied with great
security on that provision, which requires two-thirds of the Legislature to declare war.
But this is completely eluded by a majority's taking measures as will be sure to produce
war." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1798. ME 10:10
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"Reason and usage have
established that when two nations go to war, those who choose to live in peace retain
their natural right to pursue their agriculture, manufactures, and other ordinary
vocations, to carry the produce of their industry for exchange to all nations, belligerent
or neutral, as usual, to go and come freely without injury or molestation, and in short,
that the war among others shall be, for them, as if it did not exist. One restriction on
their natural rights has been submitted to by nations at peace, that is to say, that of
not furnishing to either party implements merely of war for the annoyance of the other,
nor anything whatever to a place blockaded by its enemy." --Thomas Jefferson to
Thomas Pinckney, 1793. ME 9:221
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"War between two nations
cannot diminish the rights of the rest of the world remaining at peace. The doctrine that
the rights of nations remaining quietly in the exercise of moral and social duties, are to
give way to the convenience of those who prefer plundering and murdering one another, is a
monstrous doctrine, and ought to yield to the more rational law, that "the wrong
which two nations endeavor to inflict on each other must not infringe on the rights or
conveniences of those remaining at peace." --Thomas Jefferson to Robert R.
Livingston, 1801.
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"We ask for peace and
justice from all nations; and we will remain uprightly neutral in fact." --Thomas
Jefferson to James Monroe, 1806. ME 11:111
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"A declaration of
neutrality... was opposed on these grounds: 1. That a declaration of neutrality was a
declaration there should be no war, to which the Executive was not competent. 2. That it
would be better to hold back the declaration of neutrality, as a thing worth something to
the powers at war, that they would bid for it, and we might reasonably ask a price, the
broadest
privileges
of neutral nations." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1793. ME
9:138
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"We have produced proofs,
from the most enlightened and approved writers on the subject, that a neutral nation must,
in all things relating to the war, observe an exact impartiality towards the parties; that
favors to one to the prejudice of the other, would import a fraudulent neutrality, of
which no nation would be the dupe; that no succor should be given to either, unless
stipulated by treaty, in men, arms, or anything else directly serving for war; that the
right of raising troops being one of the rights of sovereignty, and consequently
appertaining exclusively to the nation itself, no foreign power or person can levy men
within its territory without its consent; and he who does may be rightfully and severely
punished; that if the United States have a right to refuse the permission to arm vessels
and raise men within their ports and territories, they are bound by the laws of neutrality
to exercise that right, and to prohibit such armaments and enlistments." --Thomas
Jefferson to Gouverneur Morris, 1793. ME 9:185
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"No nation has strove more
than we have done to merit the peace of all by the most rigorous impartiality to
all." --Thomas Jefferson to Enoch Edwards, 1793. ME 9:277
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"If any nation whatever has
a right to shut up to our produce all the ports of the earth except her own and those of
her friends, she may shut up these also, and so confine us within our own limits. No
nation can subscribe to such pretensions; no nation can agree, at the mere will or
interest of another, to have its peaceable industry suspended and its citizens reduced to
idleness and want. The loss of our produce destined for foreign markets, or that loss
which would result from an arbitrary restraint of our markets, is a tax too serious for us
to acquiesce in. It is not enough for a nation to say, we and our friends will buy your
produce. We have a right to answer, that it suits us better to sell to their enemies as
well as their friends... We have a right to judge for ourselves what market best suits us,
and they have none to forbid to us the enjoyment of the necessaries and comforts which we
may obtain from any other independent country." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas
Pinckney, 1793. ME 9:223
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"My principle has ever been
that war should not suspend either exports or imports." --Thomas Jefferson to William
Short, 1813. ME 13:258
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"We believe the practice of
seizing what is called contraband of war, is an abusive practice, not founded in natural
right... And what is contraband, by the law of nature? Either everything which may
aid or comfort an enemy, or nothing. Either all commerce which would accommodate him is
unlawful, or none is. The difference between articles of one or another description, is a
difference in degree only. No line between them can be drawn. Either all intercourse must
cease between neutrals and belligerents, or all be permitted. Can the world hesitate to
say which shall be the rule? Shall two nations turning tigers, break up in one instant the
peaceable relations of the whole world? Reason and nature clearly pronounce that the
neutral is to go on in the enjoyment of all its rights, that its commerce remains free,
not subject to the jurisdiction of another, nor consequently its vessels to search, or to
enquiries whether their contents are the property of an enemy, or are of those which have
been called contraband of war." --Thomas Jefferson to Robert R. Livingston, 1801.
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"Undertaking to raise,
organize and commission an army... independent of that of the government, the object of
which is to go and possess themselves of lands which have never yet been granted by any
authority which the government admits to be legal, and with an avowed design to hold them
by force against any power, foreign or domestic,... will inevitably commit our whole
nation in war with the Indian nations, and perhaps others. It cannot be permitted that all
the inhabitants of the United States shall be involved in the calamities of war and the
blood of thousands of them be poured out, merely that a few adventurers may possess
themselves of lands; nor can a well-ordered government tolerate such an assumption of its
sovereignty by unauthorized individuals." --Thomas Jefferson to the Attorney of the
District of Kentucky, 1791. ME 8:191
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"Peace is undoubtedly... the
first object of our nation. Interest and honor are also national considerations."
--Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 1797.
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"We are for a peaceable
accommodation with all... nations if it can be effected honorably." --Thomas
Jefferson to William Duane, 1806. ME 11:95
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"We wish to do what is
agreeable to [others], if we find we can do it with prudence." --Thomas Jefferson to
the Choctaw Nation, 1805. ME 19:146
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"I wish for peace if it can
be preserved salve fide et honore [saving faith and honor.]" --Thomas
Jefferson to James Monroe, 1794.
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"Peace is our passion, and
the wrongs might drive us from it. We prefer trying ever other just principles,
right and safety, before we would recur to war." --Thomas Jefferson to John Sinclair,
1803. ME 10:397
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"The war [of 1812] has done
us... this good... of assuring the world, that although attached to peace from a sense of
its blessings, we will meet war when it is made necessary." --Thomas Jefferson to
Lafayette, 1817. ME 15:116
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"We are alarmed... with the
apprehensions of war, and sincerely anxious that it may be avoided; but not at the expense
either of our faith or honor. [If] the latter has been too much wounded,... [the general
opinion is] to require reparation, and to seek it even in war if that be necessary. As to
myself, I love peace, and I am anxious that we should give the world still another useful
lesson by showing to them other modes of punishing injuries than by war, which is as much
a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer. I love, therefore, [the] proposition of
cutting off all communication with the nation which has conducted itself so atrociously.
This, [some] will say, may bring on war. If it does, we will meet it like men; but it may
not bring on war, and then the experiment will have been a happy one." --Thomas
Jefferson to Tench Coxe, May 1, 1794. (*) ME 9:285
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"To demand satisfaction beyond
what is adequate is wrong." --Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on Captured English Vessel,
1793.
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"We have already given...
one effectual check to the dog of war, by transferring the power of letting him loose from
the Executive to the Legislative body, from those who are to spend to those who are to
pay." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789. ME 7:461, Papers 15:397
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"All observations are
unnecessary on the value of peace with other nations. It would be wise however, by timely
provisions, to guard against those acts of our own citizens which might tend to disturb it
and to put ourselves in a condition to give satisfaction to foreign nations which we may
sometimes have occasion to require from them. I particularly recommend... the means of
preventing those aggressions by our citizens on the territory of other nations and other
infractions of the law of nations which, furnishing just subject of complaint, might
endanger our peace with them." --Thomas Jefferson: Draft for President Washington's
Message, 1792.
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"In the course of [a]
conflict [elsewhere], let it be our endeavor, as it is our interest and desire, to
cultivate the friendship of the belligerent nations by every act of justice and of
incessant kindness; to receive their armed vessels with hospitality from the distresses of
the sea, but to administer the means of annoyance to none; to establish in our harbors
such a police as may maintain law and order; to restrain our citizens from embarking
individually in a war in which their country takes no part; to punish severely those
persons, citizen or alien, who shall usurp the cover of our flag for vessels not entitled
to it, infecting thereby with suspicion those of real Americans and committing us into
controversies for the redress of wrongs not our own; to exact from every nation the
observance toward our vessels and citizens of those principles and practices which all
civilized people acknowledge; to merit the character of a just nation and maintain that of
an independent one, preferring every consequence to insult and habitual wrong."
--Thomas Jefferson: 3rd Annual Message, 1803. ME 3:358
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"No citizen should be free
to commit his country to war." --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1793.
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"That individuals should
undertake to wage private war, independently of the authority of their country, cannot be
permitted in a well-ordered society. Its tendency to produce aggression on the laws and
rights of other nations, and to endanger the peace of our own is so obvious, that I doubt
not [Congress] will adopt measures for restraining it effectually in future."
--Thomas Jefferson: 4th Annual Message, 1804. ME 3:367
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"The criminal attempts of
private individuals to decide for their country the question of peace or war, by
commencing active and unauthorized hostilities, should be promptly and efficaciously
suppressed." --Thomas Jefferson: 6th Annual Message, 1806. ME 3:416
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"Whatever enables us to go
to war secures our peace." --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1790.
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"Although our prospect is
peace, our policy and purpose are to provide for defense by all those means to which our
resources are competent." --Thomas Jefferson to James Bowdoin, 1806. ME 11:121
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"The power of making war
often prevents it, and in our case would give efficacy to our desire of peace."
--Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 1788. ME 7:224
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"If we wish our commerce to
be free and uninsulted, we must let [other] nations see that we have an energy which at
present they disbelieve. The low opinion they entertain of our powers cannot fail to
involve us soon in a naval war." --Thomas Jefferson to John Page, 1785. Papers 8:419
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"[Even though there may be]
a justifiable cause of war... I should hope that war would not be [our] choice. I think it
will furnish us a happy opportunity of setting another example to the world by showing
that nations may be brought to justice by appeals to their interests as well as by appeals
to arms. I should hope that Congress, instead of a denunciation of war, would instantly
exclude from our ports all the manufacture, produce, vessels and subjects of the nations
committing aggression during the continuance of the aggression and till full satisfaction
made for it. This would work well in many ways, safely in all, and introduce between
nations another umpire than arms. It would relieve us too from the risks and the horrors
of cutting throats." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, Mar 24, 1793. (*)
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"[When] the alternative [is]
between [embargo] and war... [embargo may be] the last card we have to play short of
war." --Thomas Jefferson to Levi Lincoln, 1808. (*)
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"[There is] still one other
ground to which we can retire before we resort to war; [we can say] to the belligerents,
rather than go to war, we will retire from the brokerage of other nations, and confine
ourselves to the carriage and exchange of our own productions; but we will vindicate that
in all its rights--if you touch it, it is war." --Thomas Jefferson to William A.
Burwell, 1810. ME 12:364
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"We live in an age of
affliction, to which the history of nations presents no parallel. We have for years been
looking on Europe covered with blood and violence, and seen rapine spreading itself over
the ocean. On this element it has reached us, and at length in so serious a degree, that
the Legislature of the nation has thought it necessary to withdraw our citizens and
property from it, either to avoid or to prepare for engaging in the general contest."
--Thomas Jefferson to Capt. M'Gregor, 1808. ME 12:151
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"The measures respecting our
intercourse with foreign nations were the result... of a choice between two evils, either
to call and keep at home our seamen and property, or suffer them to be taken under the
edicts of the belligerent powers. How a difference of opinion could arise between these
alternatives is still difficult to explain on any acknowledged ground." --Thomas
Jefferson: Reply to Alleghany County Citizens, 1809. ME 16:357
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"To have submitted our
rightful commerce to prohibitions and tributary exactions from others, would have been to
surrender our independence. To resist them by arms was war, without consulting the state
of things or the choice of the nation. The alternative preferred by the legislature of
suspending a commerce placed under such unexampled difficulties, besides saving to our
citizens their property, and our mariners to their country, has the peculiar advantage of
giving time to the belligerent nations to revise a conduct as contrary to their interests
as it is to our rights." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to Inhabitants of Boston, et al.,
1808. ME 16:313
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"After exhausting the cup of
forbearance and conciliation to its dregs, we found it necessary, on behalf of...
commerce, to take time to call it home into a state of safety, to put the towns and
harbors which carry it on into a condition of defence, and to make further preparation for
enforcing the redress of its wrongs, and restoring it to its rightful freedom."
--Thomas Jefferson to William Eustis, 1809.
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"The French Emperor... does
not wish us to go to war with England, knowing we have no ships to carry on that war. To
submit to pay to England the tribute on our commerce which she demands by her orders of
council, would be to aid her in the war against him, and would give him just ground to
declare war with us. He concludes, therefore, as every rational man must, that the
embargo, the only remaining alternative, was a wise measure." --Thomas Jefferson to
Robert R. Livingston, 1808. ME 12:170
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"If... on leaving our
harbors we are certainly to lose them, is it not better, as to vessels, cargoes, and
seamen, to keep them at home? This is submitted to the wisdom of Congress, who alone are
competent to provide a remedy." --Thomas Jefferson to John Mason, 1807[?]. ME 11:402
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"The embargo keeping at home
our vessels, cargoes and seamen, saves us the necessity of making their capture the cause
of immediate war." --Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1808. ME 11:414
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"Could the alternative of
war or the embargo have been presented to the whole nation, as it occurred to their
representatives, there could have been but the one opinion that it was better to take the
chance of one year by the embargo, within which the orders and decrees producing it may be
repealed, or peace take place in Europe, which may secure peace to us. How long the
continuance of the embargo may be preferable to war, is a question we shall have to meet,
if the decrees and orders and war continue." --Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Smith,
1808. ME 12:61
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"An embargo had, by the
course of events, become the only peaceable card we had to play. Should neither peace, nor
a revocation of the decrees and orders in Europe take place, the day cannot be distant
when that will cease to be preferable to open hostility." --Thomas Jefferson to James
Bowdoin, 1808. ME 12:69
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"The measure of a temporary
suspension of commerce was adopted to cover us from greater evils... It has given time to
prepare for defence, and has shown to the aggressors of Europe that evil, as well as good
actions, recoil on the doers." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to Young Republicans of
Pittsburgh, 1808. ME 16:324
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"A suspension of our
navigation for a time was equally necessary to avoid contest, or enter it with advantage.
This measure will, indeed, produce some temporary inconvenience; but promises lasting good
by promoting among ourselves the establishment of manufactures hitherto sought abroad, at
the risk of collisions no longer regulated by the laws of reason or morality."
--Thomas Jefferson: Reply to Philadelphia Democratic Republicans, 1808. ME 16:304
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"The trying measure of
embargo... has saved our seamen and our property, has given us time to prepare for
vindicating our honor and preserving our national independence, and has excited the spirit
of manufacturing for ourselves those things which, though we raised the raw material, we
have hitherto sought from other countries at the risk of war and rapine." --Thomas
Jefferson: Reply to Niagara County Republicans, 1809. ME 16:344
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"To the advantages derived
from the choice which was made will be added the improvements and discoveries made and
making in the arts, and the establishments in domestic manufacture, the effects whereof
will be permanent and diffused through our wide-extended continent." --Thomas
Jefferson: Reply to Alleghany County Citizens, 1809. ME 16:357
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"In return for the
privations by the [embargo] measure, and which our fellow citizens in general have borne
with patriotism, it has had the important effects of saving our mariners and our vast
mercantile property, as well as of affording time for prosecuting the defensive and
provisional measures called for by the occasion. It has demonstrated to foreign nations
the moderation and firmness which govern our councils, and to our citizens the necessity
of uniting in support of the laws and the rights of their country, and has thus long
frustrated those usurpations and spoilations which, if resisted, involve war; if submitted
to, sacrificed a vital principle of our national independence." --Thomas Jefferson:
8th Annual Message, 1808. ME 3:477
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Mankind's Disposition Toward
War
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"This pugnacious humor of
mankind seems to be the law of his nature, one of the obstacles to too great
multiplication provided in the mechanism of the Universe. The cocks of the henyard kill
one another up; boars, bulls, rams do the same; and the horse in his wild state kills all
the young males until worn down with age and war, some vigorous youth kills him and takes
to himself the harem of females. I hope we shall prove how much happier for man the Quaker
policy is, and that the life of the feeder is better than that of the fighter; and it is
some consolation that the desolation of these maniacs of one part of the earth is the
means of improving it in other parts. Let the latter be our office, and let us milk the
cow while the [one despot] holds her by the horns and the [other] by the tail."
--Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1822. (*) ME 15:372
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"The destructive passions
seem to have been implanted in man, as one of the obstacles to his too great
multiplication." --Thomas Jefferson to William Short, 1814. ME 18:183
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"A war between [two despots]
is like the battle of the kite and snake. Whichever destroys the other leaves a destroyer
the less for the world." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1822. ME 15:372
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"The animosities of
sovereigns are temporary and may be allayed, but those which seize the whole body of a
people, and of a people, too, who dictate their own measures, produce calamities of long
duration." --Thomas Jefferson to C. W. F. Dumas, 1786.
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"For us to attempt by war to
reform all Europe, and bring them back to principles of morality and a respect for the
equal rights of nations, would show us to be only maniacs of another character."
--Thomas Jefferson to William Wirt, 1811. ME 13:56
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"I hope it is practicable,
by improving the mind and morals of society, to lessen the disposition to war; but of its
abolition I despair." --Thomas Jefferson to Noah Worcester, 1817. ME 18:298
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"There will be war enough to
ensure us great prices for wheat for years to come, and if we are wise we shall become
wealthy." --Thomas Jefferson to George Gilmer, 1790. ME 8:63
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"If there be one principle
more deeply rooted than any other in the mind of every American it is that we should have
nothing to do with conquest." --Thomas Jefferson to William Short, 1791.
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"We did not raise armies for
glory or for conquest." --Thomas Jefferson: Declaration on Taking Up Arms, 1775.
Papers 1:203
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"Conquest is not in our
principles. It is inconsistent with our government." --Thomas Jefferson: Instructions
to William Carmichael, 1790.
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"The sound principles of
national integrity... forbade us to take what was a neighbor's merely because it suited us
and especially from a neighbor under circumstances of peculiar affliction." --Thomas
Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, 1813. ME 19:197
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"Nations of eternal war
[expend] all their energies... in the destruction of the labor, property, and lives of
their people." --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1823. (*)
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"I abhor war and view it as
the greatest scourge of mankind." --Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 1797.
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"Never was so much false
arithmetic employed on any subject as that which has been employed to persuade nations
that it is their interest to go to war. Were the money which it has cost to gain, at the
close of a long war, a little town or a little territory, the right to cut wood here or to
catch fish there, expended in improving what they already possess, in making roads,
opening rivers, building ports, improving the arts and finding employment for their idle
poor, it would render them much stronger, much wealthier and happier. This I hope will be
our wisdom." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XXII, 1782. ME 2:240
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"The most successful war
seldom pays for its losses." --Thomas Jefferson to Edmund Randolph, 1785. ME 5:140,
Papers 8:538
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"One would think it not so
difficult to discover that the improvement of the country we possess is the surest means
of increasing our wealth and power. This, too, promotes the happiness of mankind, while
the others destroy it and are always uncertain of their object." --Thomas Jefferson
to James Currie, 1785. ME 19:13, Papers 8:559
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"The evils which of
necessity encompass the life of man are sufficiently numerous. Why should we add to them
by voluntarily distressing and destroying one another? Peace, brothers, is better than
war. In a long and bloody war, we lose many friends and gain nothing. Let us then live in
peace and friendship together, doing to each other all the good we can." --Thomas
Jefferson: Address to Indian Nations, 1802. ME 16:390
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"Although I dare not promise
myself that [peace] can be perpetually maintained, yet if, by the inculcations of reason
or religion, the perversities of our nature can be so far corrected as sometimes to
prevent the necessity, either supposed or real, of an appeal to the blinder scourges of
war, murder, and devastation, the benevolent endeavors of the friends of peace will not be
entirely without remuneration." --Thomas Jefferson to Noah Worcester, 1817. ME 18:299
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ME, FE = Memorial Edition, Ford Edition. |
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