1 AN ESTIMATE OF WASHINGTON 1 THOMAS JEFFERSON (1814) THOMAS JEFFERSON (1743-1826), statesman, was born at Shadwell, Albemarle County, Virginia. He graduated from William and Mary College, and was admitted to the Bar. He was elected a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1776, and served on a committee with Franklin, Adams, Sherman, and Livingston, to draft the Declaration of Independence. For two years he served as governor of his native state. During his term of office he reported a bill to the Virginia legislature for the establishment of a general system of education for the state. It provided for three years' free instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic, for all children in the state, rich or poor. He served in the 9th session of the Continental Congress, and in 1784 Congress appointed him as Commissioner to France, to aid Franklin and Adams in concluding treaties with the He became Minister Plenipotentiary to the king of France; served in President Washington's Cabinet as Secretary of State; was a candidate for the presidency, but was defeated by John Adams; was elected vice president, and presided over the Senate in the 5th and 6th Congresses. He was elected president in 1800, and reëlected in 1804. At the conclusion of the second term he retired to private life, and gave the remaining years of his life to the building up of the University of Virginia, which was incorporated in 1819. European powers. It 1 This is an excerpt from a letter written to a friend in 1814. is written, however, in a style suitable for declamation. Although not an oration, this extract has been inserted on account of the light it throws on the relations of two leading men of the revolutionary period. I think I knew General Washington intimately and thoroughly, and were I called on to delineate his character, it should be in terms like these: 3 His mind was great and powerful, without being of the very first order; his penetration strong, though not so acute as that of a Newton,' Bacon,2 or Locke; and as far as he saw, no judgment was ever sounder. It was slow in operation, being little aided by invention or imagination, but sure in conclusion. Hence the common remark of his officers, of the advantage he derived from councils of war, where, hearing all suggestions, he selected whatever was best; and certainly no general ever planned his battles more judiciously. But if deranged during the course of the action, if any member of his plan was dislocated by sudden circumstances, he was slow in readjustment. The consequence was, that he often failed in the field, and rarely against an enemy in station, as at Boston and New York. He was incapable of fear, meeting personal dangers with the calmest unconcern. Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence; never acting until every circumstance, every consideration, was maturely weighed; refraining if he saw a doubt, but, when once decided, going through with his purpose, whatever obstacles opposed. His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known, no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or 1 Sir Isaac Newton, the great English astronomer. He was the first to clearly enunciate the law of gravitation. 2 Lord Bacon, English jurist and philosopher. He was the first to formulate the principles of the inductive method of reasoning. 3 John Locke, English philosopher, and writer on education. AM. ORATORY- -5 hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was, indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man. His temper was naturally irritable and hightoned; but reflection and resolution had obtained a firm and habitual ascendancy over it. If ever, however, it broke its bounds, he was most tremendous in his wrath. In his expenses he was honorable but exact; liberal in contribution to whatever promised utility, but frowning and unyielding on all visionary projects and all unworthy calls on his charity. His heart was not warm in its affections; but he exactly calculated every man's value, and gave him a solid esteem proportioned to it. His person, you know, was fine, his stature exactly what one could wish, his deportment, easy, erect, and noble; the best horseman of his age, and the most graceful figure that could be seen on horseback. Although in the circle of his friends, where he might be unreserved with safety, he took a free share in conversation, his colloquial talents were not above mediocrity, possessing neither copiousness of ideas nor fluency of words. In public, when called on for a sudden opinion, he was unready, short, and embarrassed. Yet he wrote readily, rather diffusely, in an easy and correct style. This he had acquired by conversation with the world, for his education was merely reading, writing, and common arithmetic, to which he added surveying at a later day. His time was employed in action chiefly, reading little, and that only in agriculture and English history. His correspondence became necessarily extensive, and, with journalizing his agricultural proceedings, occupied most of his leisure hours within doors. On the whole, his character was, in its mass, perfect, in nothing bad, in few points indifferent; and it may truly be said that never did nature and fortune combine more perfectly to make a man great, and to place him in the same constellation with whatever worthies have merited from man an everlasting remembrance. For his was the singular destiny and merit of leading the armies of his country successfully through an arduous war for the establishment of its independence; of conducting its councils through the birth of a government, new in its forms and principles, until it had settled down into a quiet and orderly train; and of scrupulously obeying the laws through the whole of his career, civil and military, of which the history of the world furnished no other example. SUFFERING GREECE 1 HENRY CLAY AND has it come to this? Are we so humbled, so low, so debased, that we dare not express our sympathy for suffering Greece that we dare not articulate our detestation of the brutal excesses of which she has been the bleeding victim, lest we might offend some one or more of their imperial and royal majesties? If gentlemen are afraid to act rashly on such a subject, suppose, Mr. Chairman, that we unite in a humble petition, addressed to their Majesties, beseeching them, 1 Delivered in the House of Representatives in Washington, 1824. that of their gracious condescension, they would allow us to express our feelings and our sympathies. How shall it run? "We, the representatives of the FREE people of the United States of America, humbly approach the thrones of your imperial and royal Majesties, and supplicate that, of your imperial and royal clemency" - I cannot go through the disgusting recital! My lips have not yet learned to pronounce the sycophantic language of a degraded slave! Are we so mean, so base, so despicable, that we may not attempt to express our horror, utter our indignation, at the most brutal and atrocious war that ever stained earth or shocked high Heaven, at the ferocious deeds of a savage and infuriated soldiery, stimulated and urged by the clergy of a fanatical and inimical religion, and rioting in all the excesses of blood and butchery at the mere details of which the heart sickens and recoils?1 If the great body of Christendom can look calmly and coolly whilst all this is perpetrated on a Christian people, in its own immediate vicinity, in its very presence, let 1 The Eastern Roman, Byzantine, or Greek Empire fell with the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 a.d. From that date until 1718, the Morea, Negropont, Crete, and other parts of Hellas were the scenes of fierce conflicts between the Venetians and the Turks. From 1718 until 1770 Greece was entirely under the crushing despotism of Turkey. In 1770 the Greeks rebelled, but were soon crushed. In 1821 another outbreak occurred. This time the Greeks were aided by Russia, England, and France. Many foreigners enlisted in the Greek ranks, including Lord Byron, who died the next year of a fever at Missolonghi. In 1827 the allied European powers destroyed the Turkish fleet at Navarino. In 1829 Turkey acknowledged Greek independence. During this war the Turks massacred forty thousand Greeks at one time on the island of Chios. Practically every Greek village was devasted, and thousands of Greek women were carried off to Turkish harems. |