Letter to Arthur Lee. Report on the Battles of Lexington and Concord. Report to General Gage on the Retreat of the Ameri Report on the Battles of Lexington and Concord in Orders to Lieut.
Letter to Joseph Trumbull. Account of the Battles of Lexington and Concord. Letter to John Adams. Diary Entries from the Battle of Long Island. The American Crisis. Henry Knox to his Wife. The Continentals Encounter Civilians. Generals Gates and Burgoyne on the Murder of Jane Letter to Abigail Adams. Foraging for Valley Forge. Envisioning an African American Regiment.
George Washington to Henry Laurens. Letter to Cornelia Barclay De Lancey. Letter to Henry Laurens. List of Prints to Illustrate British Cruelties. Redcoats in South Carolina.
The Sentiments of an American Woman. Letter to Catherine Greene. Letter to George Washington. Letter to Joseph Reed. To the Traitor General Arnold. Account of the British Surrender at Yorktown. Letter to Lewis Nicola. Gouverneur Morris to John Jay. Letter to Major General Nathanael Greene. General Orders. Speech to the Officers of the Army at Newburgh. The Newburgh Address.
Letter to Marquis de LaFayette. Letter to Lieutenant Colonel Tench Tilghman. Letter To John Augustine Washington. Treaty of Paris Letter to James Duane. Farewell Orders to the Armies of the United States. Resignation Address. Cincinnatus Reborn. Letter to Dr. James Craik. Letter to the Inhabitants of Canada. Chapter 6: Revolutionary Considerations of Citizen Chapter 7: The Debate over Ratification. Message of the Pennsylvania Assembly. Principles of Law and Polity, Applied to the Gover Resolutions of the Stamp Act Congress.
Petition from Regulators of North Carolina. Administration of Justice Act. Massachusetts Government Act. Quartering Act. Quebec Act. Sermon 1. Sermon 2. The Farmer Refuted Give me liberty or give me death! Correspondence between John Adams, Abigail Adams a Thoughts on Government. Thomson readily agreed and later offered extensive comments on the manuscript, which Jefferson incorporated as an appendix to the printed edition.
Jefferson continued to revise Notes during the spring, summer, and early autumn of His wife, Martha, died on September 6 from complications of a difficult pregnancy, leaving Jefferson virtually paralyzed with grief for almost two months. A diplomatic appointment as a peace commissioner on November 12—although he was ultimately prevented from sailing—helped to restore his enthusiasm for life and for Notes.
On his arrival in Philadelphia, Jefferson took the manuscript of Notes , now nearly forty pages, to printer Robert Aitken. Mathew Carey published the first authorized American edition in Although Jefferson continued to collect material and often discussed a revised edition, he abandoned the idea by He also incorporated an alternative constitution as an appendix.
He regarded this discussion as among the two most controversial subjects in the book. This was the other topic over which Jefferson anticipated conflict. He never introduced this plan to a lawmaking body.
The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest. Paris, That the animals common both to the old and new world, are smaller in the latter. That those which have been domesticated in both, have degenerated in America: and 4. That on the whole it exhibits fewer species. And the reason he thinks is, that the heats of America are less; that more waters are spread over its surface by nature, and fewer of these drained off by the hand of man.
In other words, that heat is friendly, and moisture, adverse to the production and development of large quadrupeds. I will not meet this hypothesis on its first doubtful ground, whether the climate of America be comparatively more humid? Because we are not furnished with observations sufficient to decide this question. And though, till it be decided, we are as free to deny, as others are to affirm the fact, yet for a moment let it be supposed.
The hypothesis, after this supposition, proceeds to another; that moisture is unfriendly to animal growth. Nature has hidden from us her modus agendi. Our only appeal on such questions is to experience; and I think that experience is against the supposition.
It is by the assistance of heat and moisture that vegetables are elaborated from the elements of earth, air, water, and fire. We accordingly see the more humid climates produce the greater quantity of vegetables.
Vegetables are mediately or immediately the food of every animal: and in proportion to the quantity of food, we see animals not only multiplied in their numbers, but improved in their bulk, as far as the laws of their nature will admit. Les boeufs de Danemarck, de la Podolie, de l'Ukraine et de la Tartarie qu'habitent les Calmouques sont les plus grands de tous. But when we appeal to experience, we are not to rest satisfied with a single fact.
Let us therefore try our question on more general ground. Let us take two portions of the earth, Europe and America for instance, sufficiently extensive to give operation to general causes; let us consider the circumstances peculiar to each, and observe their effect on animal nature.
America, running through the torrid as well as temperate zone, has more heat, collectively taken, than Europe. But Europe, according to our hypothesis, is the dryest. They are equally adapted then to animal productions; each being endowed with one of those causes which befriend animal growth, and with one which opposes it. If it be thought unequal to compare Europe with America, which is so much larger, I answer, not more so than to compare America with the whole world.
Besides, the purpose of the comparison is to try an hypothesis, which makes the size of animals depend on the heat and moisture of climate. If therefore we take a region, so extensive as to comprehend a sensible distinction of climate, and so extensive too as that local accidents, or the intercourse of animals on its borders, may not materially affect the size of those in its interior parts, we shall comply with those conditions which the hypothesis may reasonably demand.
The objection would be the weaker in the present case, because any intercourse of animals which may take place on the confines of Europe and Asia, is to the advantage of the former, Asia producing certainly larger animals than Europe.
Let us then take a comparative view of the quadrupeds of Europe and America, presenting them to the eye in three different tables, in one of which shall be enumerated those found in both countries; in a second those found in one only; in a third those which have been domesticated in both. To facilitate the comparison, let those of each table be arranged in gradation according to their sizes, from the Page 48 greatest to the smallest, so far as their sizes may be conjectured.
The weights of the large animals shall be expressed in the English avoirdupoise pound and its decimals: those of the smaller in the same ounce and its decimals. The other weights are taken from Messrs. Buffon and D'Aubenton, and are of such subjects as came casually to their hands for dissection. This circumstance must be remembered where their weights and mine stand opposed: the latter being stated, not to produce a conclusion in favour of the American species, but to justify a suspension of opinion until we are better informed, and a suspicion in the mean time that there is no uniform difference in favour of either; which is all I pretend.
Aboriginals of both. Mammoth Buffalo. Ours blanc Caribou. Renne Bear. Ours Original, palmated Red deer. Cerf Daim Loup Chevreuil Carcajou Wild cat. Loup cervier Castor Blaireau Renard Isatis Otter. Loutre 8. Marmotte 6. Fouine 2. Herisson 2. Marte 1. Rat d'eau 7. Belette 2. Flying squirrel. Polatouche 2. Musaraigne 1. Aboriginals of one only. Wild boar Tapir Wild sheep Wild goat Puma Lievre. Hare 7. Rabbit 3. Polecat 3. Genette 3. Muskrat Cougar of N.
America Squirrel Cougar of S. Ermin 8. Rat 7. Dormouse 1. Mole 1. Serval Souris. Urchin Raccoon. Sapajou Ouarini Sapajou Coaita 9. Little Coendou 6. Table continued. Tapeti Margay Crabier Agouti 4. Scunk Mouffette. Zorilla Whabus. Rabbit Aperea Akouchi Ondatra.
Sajou 1. Cochon d'Inde 1. Sagoin Saki. Sagoin Pinche Sagoin Tamarin oz. Sagoin Ouistiti 4. Ground squirrel 4.
Domesticated in both. Cow The interjacent islands between Asia and America admit his passage from one continent to the other without exceeding these bounds. And in fact, travellers tell us that these islands are places of principal resort for them, and especially in the season of bringing forth their young.
Of the animals in the Ist table Mons. English, equal to lb. French: whereas we find the European bear examined by Mons. Harris, II. There remains then the buffalo, red deer, fallow deer, wolf, roe, glutton, wild cat, monax, vison, hedgehog, marten, and water rat, of the comparative sizes of which we have not sufficient testimony.
It does not appear that Messrs. It is said of some of them, by some travellers, that they are smaller than the European. But who were these travellers? Have they not been men of a very different description from those who have laid open to us the other three quarters of the world?
Was natural history the object of their travels? Did they measure or weigh the animals they speak of? Were they acquainted with the animals of their own country, with which they undertake to compare them? Have they not been so ignorant as often to mistake the species? A true answer to these questions would probably lighten their authority, so as to render it insufficient for the foundation of an hypothesis.
How unripe we yet are, for an accurate comparison of the animals of the two countries, will appear from the work of Mons. The ideas we should have formed of the sizes of some animals, from the information he had received at his first publications concerning them, are very different from what his subsequent communications give us.
And indeed his candour in this can never be too much praised. One sentence of his book must do him immortal honour. Proceeding to the second table, which arranges the animals found in one of the two countries only, Mons.
To preserve our comparison, I will add that the wild boar, the elephant of Europe, is little more than half that size. I have made an elk with round or cylindrical horns, an animal of America, and peculiar to it; because I have seen many of them myself, and more of their horns; and because I can say, from the best information, that, in Virginia, this kind of elk has abounded much, and still exists in smaller numbers; and I could never learn that the palmated kind had been seen here at all.
It has not however extended to our latitudes. On the other hand, I could never learn that the round-horned elk has been seen further North than the Hudson's river. This is the animal described by Catesby as the Cervus major Americanus, the stag of America, le cerf de l'Amerique. But it differs from the Cervus as totally, as does the palmated elk from the dama. And in fact it seems to stand in the same relation to the palmated elk, as the red deer does to the fallow.
It has abounded in Virginia, has been seen, within my knowledge, on the eastern side of the Blue ride since the year , is now common beyond those mountains, has been often brought to us and tamed, and their horns are in the hands of many. I should designate it as the 'Alces Americanus cornibus terretibus. He reduces the whole to the renne and flat-horned elk.
From all the information I have been able to collect, I strongly suspect they will be found to cover three, if not four distinct species of animals. I have seen skins of a moose, and of the caribou: they differ more from each other, and from that of the round-horned elk, than I ever saw two skins differ which belonged to different individuals of any wild species. These differences are in the colour, length, and coarseness of the hair, and in the size, texture, and marks of the skin.
Perhaps it will be found that there is, 1. The moose, black and grey, the former being said to be the male, and the latter the female. The caribou or renne. The flat-horned elk, or original. The round-horned elk. Should this last, though possessing so nearly the characters of the elk, be found to be the same with the Cerf d'Ardennes or Brandhirtz of Germany, still there will remain the three species first enumerated.
I collect his weight thus. He gives us the measures of a Zebu, ib. A bull, measuring in the same way 6 feet 9 inches and 5 feet 2 inches, weighed lb. The Zebu then, and of course the Tapir, would weigh about lb. But one individual of every species of European peculiars would probably weight less than lb. These are French measures and weights. The IIId table comprehends those quadrupeds only which are domestic in both countries. That some of these, in some parts of America, have become less than their original stock, is doubtless true; and the reason is very obvious.
In a thinly peopled country, the spontaneous productions of the forests and waste fields are sufficient to support indifferently the domestic animals of the farmer, with a very little aid from him in the severest and scarcest season.
He therefore finds it more convenient to receive them from the hand of nature in that indifferent state, than to keep up their size by a care and nourishment which would cost him much labour.
If, on this low fare, these animals dwindle, it is no more than they do in those parts of Europe where the poverty of the soil, or poverty of the owner, reduces them to the same scanty subsistance. It is the uniform effect of one and the same cause, whether acting on this or that side of the globe. It would be erring therefore against that rule of philosophy, which teaches us to ascribe like effects to like causes, should we impute this diminution of size in America to any imbecility or want of uniformity in the operations of nature.
It may be affirmed with truth that, in those countries, and with those individuals of America, Page 59 where necessity or curiosity has produced equal attention as in Europe to the nourishment of animals, the horses, cattle, sheep, and hogs of the one continent are as large as those of the other.
There are particular instances, well attested, where individuals of this country have imported good breeders from England, and have improved their size by care in the course of some years. To make a fair comparison between the two countries, it will not answer to bring together animals of what might be deemed the middle or ordinary size of their species; because an error in judging of that middle or ordinary size would vary the result of the comparison.
English, as a middle sized horse. That the last part of it is erroneous, which affirms that the species of American quadrupeds are comparatively few, is evident from the tables taken altogether.
By these it appears that there are an hundred species aboriginal of America. But the residue of the earth being double the extent of America, the exact proportion would have been but as 4 to 8. Hitherto I have considered this hypothesis as applied to brute animals only, and not in its extension to the man of America, whether aboriginal or transplanted. It is the opinion of Mons. L'homme ne fait donc point d'exception ici. Of the Indian of South America I know nothing; for I would not honor with the appellation of knowledge, what I derive from the fables published of them.
This belief is founded on what I have seen of man, white, red, and black, and what has been written of him by authors, enlightened themselves, and writing amidst an enlightened people. The Indian of North America being more within our reach, I can speak of him somewhat from my own knowledge, but more from the information of others better acquainted with him, and on whose truth and judgment I can rely.
Don Ulloa here admits, that the authors who have described the Indians of South America, before they were enslaved, had represented them as a brave people, and therefore seems to have suspected that the cowardice which he had observed in those of the present race might be the effect of subjugation.
But, supposing the Indians of North America to be cowards also, he concludes the ancestors of those of South America to have been so too, and therefore that those authors have given fictions for truth.
He was probably not acquainted himself with the Indians of North America, and had formed his opinion of them from hear-say. Great numbers of French, of English, and of Americans, are perfectly acquainted with these people.
Had he had an opportunity of enquiring of any of these, they would have told him, that there never was an instance known of an Indian begging his life when in the power of his enemies: on the contrary, that he courts death by every possible insult and provocation. His reasoning then would have been reversed thus. Byrd, who was sent to the Cherokee nation to transact some business with them. It happened that some of our disorderly people had just killed one or two of that nation.
It was therefore proposed in the council of the Cherokees that Col. Byrd should be put to death, in revenge for the loss of their countrymen. He came to him every night in his tent, and told him not to be afraid, they should not kill him. The women are submitted to unjust drudgery. This I believe is the case with every barbarous people. With such, force is law. The stronger sex therefore imposes on the weaker.
It is civilization alone which replaces women in the enjoyment of their natural equality. That first teaches us to subdue the selfish passions, and to respect those rights in others which we value in ourselves. Were we in equal barbarism, our females would be equal drudges. The man with them is less strong than with us, but their woman stronger than ours; and both for the same obvious reason; because our man and their woman is habituated to labour, and formed by it.
With both races the sex which is indulged with ease is least athletic. An Indian man is small in the hand and wrist for the same reason for which a sailor is large and strong in the arms and shoulders, and a porter in the legs and thighs.
The causes of this are to be found, not in a difference of nature, but of circumstance. The women very frequently attending the men in their parties of war and of hunting, child-bearing becomes extremely inconvenient to them. It is said, therefore, that they have learnt the practice of procuring abortion by the use of some vegetable; and that it even extends to prevent conception for a considerable time after. During these parties they are exposed to numerous hazards, to excessive exertions, to the greatest extremities of hunger.
Even at their homes the nation depends for food, through a certain part of every year, on the gleanings of the forest: that is, they experience Page 65 a famine once in every year. With all animals, if the female be badly fed, or not fed at all, her young perish: and if both male and female be reduced to like want, generation becomes less active, less productive.
To the obstacles then of want and hazard, which nature has opposed to the multiplication of wild animals, for the purpose of restraining their numbers within certain bounds, those of labour and of voluntary abortion are added with the Indian.
No wonder then if they multiply less than we do. Where food is regularly supplied, a single farm will shew more of cattle, than a whole country of forests can of buffaloes. The same Indian women, when married to white traders, who feed them and their children plentifully and regularly, who exempt them from excessive drudgery, who keep them stationary and unexposed to accident, produce and raise as many children as the white women.
Instances are known, under these circumstances, of their rearing a dozen children. An inhuman practice once prevailed in this country of making slaves of the Indians. It is a fact well known with us, that the Indian women so enslaved produced and raised as numerous families as either the whites or blacks among whom they lived. But this is a fact of which fair proof can scarcely be had. With them it is disgraceful to be hairy on the body. They say it likens them to hogs. They therefore pluck the hair as fast as it appears.
But the traders who marry their women, and prevail on them to discontinue this practice, say, that nature is the same with them as with the whites. Nor, if the fact be true, is the consequence necessary which has been drawn from it. Negroes have notoriously less hair than the whites; yet they are more ardent. Cresap, a man infamous for the many murders he had committed on those much-injured people, collected a party, and proceeded down the Kanhaway in quest of vengeance.
Unfortunately a canoe of women and children, with one man only, was seen coming from the opposite shore, unarmed, and unsuspecting an hostile attack from the whites. Cresap and his party concealed themselves on the bank of the river, and the moment the canoe reached the shore, singled out their objects, and, at one fire, killed every person in it.
This happened to be the family of Logan, who had long been distinguished as a friend of the whites. This unworthy return provoked his vengeance. He accordingly signalized himself in the war which ensued. In the autumn of the same year, a decisive battle was fought at the mouth of the Great Kanhaway, between the collected forces of the Shawanees, Mingoes, and Delawares, and a detachment of the Virginia militia. The Indians were defeated, and sued for peace.
Logan however disdained to be seen among the suppliants. But, lest the sincerity of a treaty should be distrusted, from which so distinguished a chief absented himself, he sent by a messenger the following speech to be delivered to Lord Dunmore.
During the course of the last long and bloody war, Logan remained idle in his cabin, an advocate for peace. Such was my love for the whites, that my countrymen pointed as they passed, and said, 'Logan in the friend of white men. Cresap, the last spring, in cold blood, and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan, not sparing even my women and children.
There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature. This called on me for revenge. I have Page 68 sought it: I have killed many: I have fully glutted my vengeance. For my country, I rejoice at the beams of peace. But do not harbour a thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Before we condemn the Indians of this continent as wanting genius, we must consider that letters have not yet been introduced among them.
Were we to compare them in their present state with the Europeans North of the Alps, when the Roman arms and arts first crossed those mountains, the comparison would be unequal, because, at that time, those parts of Europe were swarming with numbers; because numbers produce emulation, and multiply the chances of improvement, and one improvement begets another.
Yet I may safely ask, how many good poets, how many able mathematicians, how many great inventors in arts or sciences, had Europe North of the Alps then produced? And it was sixteen centuries after this before a Newton could be formed. I do not mean to deny, that there are varieties in the race of man, distinguished by their powers both of body and mind.
I believe there are, as I see to be the case in the races of other animals. I only mean to suggest a doubt, whether the bulk and faculties of animals depend on the side of the Atlantic on which their food happens to grow, or which furnishes the elements of which they are compounded? Whether nature has enlisted herself as a Cis or Trans-Atlantic partisan?
I am induced to suspect, there has been more eloquence than sound reasoning displayed in support of this theory; that it is one of those cases where the judgment has been seduced by a glowing pen: and whilst I render every tribute of honor and esteem to the celebrated zoologist, who has added, and is still adding, so many precious things to the treasures of science, I must doubt whether in this instance he has not cherished error also, by lending her for a moment his vivid imagination and bewitching language.
So far the Count de Buffon has carried this new theory of the tendency of nature to belittle her productions on this side the Atlantic. An Englishman, only, reads Milton with delight, an Italian Tasso, a Frenchman the Henriade, a Portuguese Camouens: but Homer and Virgil have been the repture of every age and nation: they are read with enthusiasm in their originals by those who can read the originals, and in translations by those who cannot.
Rittenhouse's model of the planetary system has the plagiary appellation of an orrery; and the quadrant invented by Godfrey, an American also, and with the aid of which the European nations traverse the globe, is called Hadley's quadrant.
North America has always been more accessible to strangers than South. If he was mistaken then as to the former, he may be so as to the latter. The glimmerings which reach us from South America enable us only to see that its inhabitants are held under the accumulated pressure of slavery, superstition, and ignorance. Whenever they shall be able to rise under this weight, and to shew themselves to the rest of the world, they will probably shew they are like the rest of the world.
We have not yet sufficient evidence that there are more lakes and fogs in South America than in other parts of the earth.
As little do we know what would be their operation on the mind of man. That country has been visited by Spaniards and Portuguese chiefly, and almost exclusively. These, going from a country of the old world remarkably dry in its soil and climate, fancied there were more lakes and fogs in South America than in Europe.
An inhabitant of Ireland, Sweden, or Finland, would have formed the contrary opinion. Had South America then been discovered and seated by a people from a fenny country, it would probably have been represented as much drier than the old world. A patient pursuit of facts, and cautious combination and comparison of them, is the drudgery to which man is subjected by his Maker, if he wishes to attain sure knowledge.
Having given a sketch of our minerals, vegetables, and quadrupeds, and being led by a proud theory to make a comparison of the latter with those of Europe, and to extend it to the Man of America, both aboriginal and emigrant, I will proceed to the remaining articles comprehended under the present query. Between ninety and an hundred of our birds have been described by Catesby. His drawings are better as to form and attitude, than colouring, which is generally too high.
They are the following. Catesby's Designation. Popular Names. Is it best then that all our citizens should be employed in its improvement, or that one half should be called off from that to exercise manufactures and handicraft arts for the other? Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.
It is the focus 1 in which he keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from the face of the earth.
Corruption of morals in the mass of cultivators is a phenomenon of which no age nor nation has furnished an example. It is the mark set on those, who not looking up to heaven, to their own soil and industry, as does the husbandman, for their subsistence, depend for it on the casualties and caprice of customers.
Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.
This, the natural progress and consequence of the arts, has sometimes perhaps been retarded by accidental circumstances: but, generally speaking, the proportion which the aggregate of the other classes of citizens bears in any state to that of its husbandmen, is the proportion of its unsound to its healthy parts, and is a good-enough barometer whereby to measure its degree of corruption.
While we have land to labor then, let us never wish to see our citizens occupied at a workbench, or twirling a distaff. Carpenters, masons, smiths, are wanting in husbandry; but, for the general operations of manufacture, let our workshops remain in Europe. It is better to carry provisions and materials to workmen there, than bring them to the provisions and materials, and with them their manners and principles.
The loss by the transportation of commodities across the Atlantic will be made up in happiness and permanence of government. The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the human body.
It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution. Memorandum on Events of April 18, The Earl of Claredon to William Pym.
Philadelphia Welcomes the First Continental Congre Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Journal of Peter Van Schaak. Resolves of the Virginia Convention. Resolves for Independence. Strictures Upon the Declaration. Cornwallis to Clinton. Memoirs of Sir Nathaniel Wraxall. Letter to Joseph Jones. To the President of Congress.
Robert Morris to the President of Congress. Letter to the President of Congress. Letter to James Madison. Observations on the Importance of the American Rev Letter to David Humphreys. The History of the American Revolution. Imperial Relations. Proclamation, by The King, for Suppressing Rebelli Declarations and Resolves of the First Continental Coercive Acts. Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania: 2. Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania: 4. Plan of Union. Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Appeal to the Inhabitants of Quebec.
The Farmer Refuted. Speech on Conciliation with America. Proclamation of George III. Common Sense. Instructions from the Town of Malden, Massachusett Draft of the Declaration of Independence. Declaration of Independence. Celebrations of American Independence in Boston an Strictures upon the Declaration of the Congress at Letter to the Secretary of the Society for the Pro Samuel Adams to James Warren.
Journal of Arthur Lee. The French Alliance. Response to British Peace Proposals. Letter to Horatio Gates. Letter to Nathanael Greene.
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