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Observations on the writings of Thomas Jefferson (1839)
Observations on the writings of Thomas Jefferson - 1839 Author:Henry Lee Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LETTER III. If, as Mr. Jefferson seems to have required, Gen. Washington, after Congress had passed a law empowering him to employ the military force of the c... more »ountry, prescribing the condition and defining the emergency which were to render its employment proper— if after this condition and this emergency had been legally ascertained to have arisen, he had declined resorting to the means of restoring the suspended action of the laws, and turning round upon Congress had said he could not think of thus delaring war when they alone had the power of doing it, it is not easy to determine .whether he would have been more liable to ridicule or punishment, more likely to provoke contempt or impeachment: either of which would have rendered less expedient the course of duplicity and injustice that with respect to him, Mr. Jefferson had then entered upon,'and which, as you will perceive, with various windings and shiftings he pursued to the end of his life. The broad insinuation which succeeds—that in his speech just delivered to Congress, he had uttered falsehoods—"the fables in the speech," though more indecent is not more unjust than the observations which have been already noticed. Taken in connexion with them, it fully substantiates the complaint of Gen. Washington, "that every act of his adminstration had been tortured, and the grossest and most invidious misrepresentations of them made in such exaggerated and indecent terms, as could scarcely be applied to a Nero." To this complaint, the effusion of a strong and heroic mind, tortured by the unseen stings of calumny and ingratitude, Mr. Jefferson saw fit to make no reply. Gen. Washington, he discovered, though aware of the injuries aimed at him, was far from suspecting the hand by which they were dealt, and though warned by his...« less