Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889
Jefferson
By Richard Hildreth (18071865)N
Yet, whatever defects of personal character, whatever amount of human weaknesses we may ascribe to Jefferson; however low we may rate him as a practical statesman; however deficient we may think him even in manliness and truth; however we may charge him with having failed to act in accordance with his own professed principles; there remains behind, after all, this undeniable fact: he was—rarity, indeed, among men of affairs—rarity, indeed, among professed democratical leaders—a sincere and enthusiastic believer in the rights of humanity. And, as in so many other like cases, this faith on his part will ever suffice to cover, as with the mantle of charity, a multitude of sins; nor will there ever be wanting a host of worshippers—living ideas being of vastly more consequence to posterity than dead actions passed and gone—to mythicize him into a political saint, canonized by throbbing wishes for themselves, and exalted, by a passionate imagination, far above the heads of cotemporary men, who, if they labored, suffered, and accomplished more for that generation, yet loved and trusted universal humanity less.
Between Jefferson as a political theorist, palliating Shay’s rebellion by the general remark that a little insurrection now and then is necessary to keep every kind of government in order; between Jefferson as leader of the opposition, denouncing the tax on whiskey as “infernal,” and almost justifying the rebellion against it, and Jefferson as President, dissatisfied with the law of treason as laid down by Chase and Marshall, calling upon Congress for greater stringency, seeking to enforce the embargo by assumptions of power, which, if constitutional, which multitudes questioned, were vastly more arbitrary and meddlesome than anything in the Excise Act, there was, indeed, a striking contrast.