SOURCE: “Theory and Experience in Crèvecoeur's America,” in American Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 4, Winter, 1967, pp. 707-18.

[In the following essay, Rapping discusses Crèvecoeur's belief that the newly settled land of America offered an opportunity to test the principles of the Enlightenment.]

We often read that American literature developed late because we lacked a common cultural past, and meaningful conventions and symbols for describing our shared experience. But as early as 1782, with his Letters from an American Farmer, J. Hector St. Jean de Crèvecoeur discovered and made literary use of a very real imaginative past shared by Americans. For Crèvecoeur recognized that the new nation took its form from a complex of literary and philosophic ideas which came together and found expression in eighteenth-century Europe. He saw the significance of the fact that the Age of Enlightenment, in which men began to suspect they could discover rationally the laws of nature which governed an intelligible universe, was also the age in which a new nation was being established on a newly settled land, offering an opportunity to test these theories.

In a sense the new society was built from a neat theoretical model, for the one assumption which tied these ideas together was the assumption of order. According to eighteenth-century thought a benevolent intelligence governed the laws of physics, economics and moral philosophy. Man himself was a mixture of passion and reason. He was also a product of his environment, but once he discovered the laws of human and physical nature he could learn to govern himself and his environment rationally.

Given these basic assumptions, agrarian democracy was an ideal social structure, for it allowed man to live in a middle state between primitive savagery and overly complex civilization. The farmer, living close to the earth, received the moral and physical benefits of nature and escaped the corrupting influences of the city. He avoided the dangers of the wilderness as well, for he lived in a rationally organized community and earned his living by applying reason to his industry. The American continent, where land was fertile and abundant, was an ideal setting in which to bring the model to life; and so the establishment of a perfect society became an actual possibility for the first time in history.¹

Crèvecoeur sensed the imaginative appeal of this model. He saw it as a kind of literary heritage and he used its formal structures and clearly defined terms as conventions and symbols for describing our common experience. But he also saw that these conventions and symbols were unique, for instead of growing out of a common past, they suggested an ideal for the future. Insofar as they informed the American consciousness then, the new nation would become a sort of testing ground for the hypotheses of the model.

Crèvecoeur explores the implications of this insight in his two full-length works, the Letters from an American Farmer and Journey into Northern Pennsylvania and the State of New York. He begins both works with a hypothetical acceptance of the world as the model describes it. The narrators in both works journey through the American countryside and attempt to interpret what they see in terms of the model's assumptions. But in both cases the cumulative effect of the narrative is to convince the reader, if not the narrators themselves, that the model represents a false view of the world which will not stand the test of experience. A study of the structural developments of both books will illustrate Crèvecoeur's strategy.

In the first three chapters of the Letters he gives a detailed description of the hypothetical world the model describes. In the “Introduction” the narrator, James, identifies himself as a typical American farmer writing a series of letters to a cultivated European. James describes himself as a “tabula rasa” uneducated and inexperienced. His correspondent, he tells us, wishes him to record his impressions of the progress of the only nation in which one may observe a newly born society, developing freely.

It is clear from the start that both James and his country are being tested against a set of theories which the European has provided. “Remember,” James tells him, “you are to give me my subjects and on no others shall I write. … You have laid the foundation of this correspondence … [and you will] receive my letters as conceived, not according to scientific rules, but agreeable to the spontaneous impressions which each subject may inspire … [for this is] the line which Nature herself has traced for me. …”² James, then, has accepted a set of defined terms from his correspondent, the most important of which is “Nature.” Only if the model's assumptions about human and physical nature prove correct will the progress of the society fulfill the expectations of his correspondent.

In James' first letter we learn what these assumptions and expectations are. Here, presumably, Farmer James is describing his own situation spontaneously and naturally as he promised. But in the first paragraph we see that he has been won over by his correspondent's theories about him, for he remarks that his new acquaintance has broadened his views of himself and that he is “happier now than [he] thought [him]self before” (p. 45). In other words James' conception of himself has already lost some of its spontaneity and taken on the attributes of the model's ideal farmer.

The description of James' life, which follows, is in perfect harmony with the model's assumptions, as we would expect. He is a freeholder working on his own land for himself and his family. The land is fertile and his reason and industry make it productive. His government demands little of him and he has no reason to covet his neighbor's things. He does acknowledge the existence of evil in man and nature but he has faith in the power of human reason to understand and control these excesses, by changing the conditions that incite them, or by mediating among warring parties in the interest of the greatest good. He compares his own successful methods of governing his cattle with the “simple and just laws” of the American government. “The law is to us precisely what I am in my barnyard” (p. 51), he says. The difference between James' cattle and the American citizens, according to the model, is the potential power of human reason. Unlike the beast whom man must govern, the American farmer can understand that his own interest is ultimately served by leading a peaceful and industrious life. Therefore, he will not forfeit the benefits of his moderate existence to indulge his baser instincts.

It is this faith in human reason, and an intelligible natural world, which informs the image of the developing nation in James' next letter. “Here … are no great manufactures … no great refinements of luxury” he says. “We are a people of cultivators … united by the silken bands of mild government, all respecting the laws without dreading their power because they are equitable. … A pleasing uniformity of decent competence appears throughout our habitations” (p. 61).

Balance and harmony are not all that is visible, of course. There are areas of wilderness where backwoodsmen live in a state of war, hunting instead of planting. The new settlers themselves are lowly wretches when they arrive, some of them hopelessly corrupt. But to James these elements of the society are less real than the orderly farm communities. He speaks as though the universal agrarian society were already a reality, and the existing evils already overcome, because he has faith in his model's predictions. He foresees “a kind of resurrection,” or “metamorphosis” (p. 76) which the new settler will experience in a society whose laws are based on those of nature. This is the model's version of reality and it is fully established in James' consciousness as he moves out of his community and begins to tour the country.³

The movement from James' village to the communities of Nantucket and Charles Town is a movement from the world of theory to that of experience. The preceding chapters described James' past and present life as part of an abstract plan for an ideal future. Now James moves forward in time and space to demonstrate the model's universal applicability and its powers of prediction. His first testing ground, the fishing village of Nantucket, seems to be operating successfully according to the laws of nature. Self-interest is the natural basis for behavior here, and all citizens can gratify their needs and wants since they are temperate and industrious. These two qualities, in fact, are the keys to the Nantucketers' success. According to the model they are rational principles based on the conviction that moderation best serves one's interest. But in Nantucket these qualities happen to be necessary for survival, for the soil is hard and the climate cold. The truth of the hypothesis can only be ascertained, then, by transporting these same people to a richer environment. This Crèvecoeur does next.

Although the narrative demands that each of James' letters describe a portion of a single journey, Crèvecoeur is implicitly tracing the country's development over a period of time. In his first letter James told how his father first cultivated his farm, and of how he himself received the benefits of his father's struggles. He enjoyed greater security and some leisure time to invent machines to ease his labors. Such progress from generation to generation was implicit in the model. Crèvecoeur has placed the Nantucketers in an area which demands constant labor for subsistence because they represent the early generation of settlers clearing the paths for their descendants, as James' father did. Since their resources are limited, their offspring are forced to move to other areas. The first generation has acquired some knowledge of the countryside however, and they send their descendants to Carolina, where the land is fertile and they can enjoy greater security and leisure as James does. It is Charles Town in Carolina that James visits next, and there is little doubt that Crèvecoeur intended its inhabitants to represent the next generation of Nantucketers enjoying the benefits of their forebears' experience.

But it is in Charles Town that the model begins to fail, for when the inhabitants are no longer forced to practice temperance and industry they do not choose to do so. The laws in Charles Town are based on nature and the people act in their own self-interest as they did in Nantucket, but now this rational principle does not lead to moderation and good will. Instead, it leads to tyranny, for the interest of the master is not the interest of the slave and conflicts of interest are settled by power. In Nantucket, James told us, there was only one rather idle lawyer, but the wealth of Charles Town has attracted a whole class of lawyers who have used their superior knowledge of the law to serve their own interests and have become as wealthy and powerful as the aristocracy of Europe.

Farmer James becomes confused and dismayed as he tries to interpret behavior in Charles Town in terms of his model, and his confusion centers on the word “nature.” While it is natural to act in one's own interest, it seems to him contrary to the “Rules of Nature” to do so tyrannically. In James' barnyard there was only one law of nature and it was easily discovered and acted upon, for Nature was in harmony with morality and with man's instincts. But here reason, self-interest and natural law lead to gross inequity and cruelty rather than peace, because human instinct is vicious instead of virtuous, and it is not controlled by reason. James' theories about man are all contradicted here for, as he now sees, “Nature has given us a fruitful soil to inhabit [but] refused us such inclinations and propensities as would afford us the full enjoyment of it. … She created man and … provided him with passions which must forever oppose his happiness; … Force, subtlety, and malice, always triumph over unguarded honesty and simplicity … and prevent their subsequent salutary effects, though ordained for the good of man by the Governor of the universe. Such is the perverseness of human nature” (pp. 168-71).

At this point James still believes that the laws of nature are the source of moral principles which man is intended to act upon. He realizes that there are temptations and dangers in the world, but these he feels, can be avoided if one conforms to nature. The people of Nantucket presumably illustrated this. They had wisely chosen a hard climate which demanded industry and temperance, and so avoided the excesses of the savage and the decadence of the wealthy planter. But there were two conditions necessary for the survival of the Nantucket way of life. First, man had to be intellectually and morally strong enough to resist temptation; and second, nature had to provide the environment necessary for establishing and maintaining such a life. James has come to doubt the possibility of the first condition for he has seen men perversely ignore the moral principles derived from the laws of nature. Now he considers the laws themselves in the light of all human experience, and he realizes that the second condition is also impossible for nature is actively hostile to man's higher aspirations. James' prose reaches a height of frenzied emotion here which echoes the breakdown of order and reason it describes:

Where do you conceive then that nature intended we should be happy? … If we attentively view this globe, will it not appear rather a place of punishment than of delight? … Famine, diseases, elementary convulsions, human feuds, dissensions, etc., are the produce of every climate … Gracious God! To what end is the introduction of so many beings into a mode of existence in which they must grope amidst as many errors, commit as many crimes, and meet with as many diseases, wants and sufferings!

(p. 171)

James' whole concept of nature has somehow been reversed in Charles Town. In the model, primitive savagery and civilized tyranny were overcome when the laws of nature were institutionalized. But now nature itself is savage and tyrannical and James must abandon his theoretical point of view and the language and tone of his model to describe it.⁴ He does regain his poise and continues to assert the principles he has come to believe in, but as the narrative progresses these statements often become ironic commentaries on his actual experience. The next letter illustrates this point. In it Farmer James redraws the picture of the animal world he observes in his barnyard. But this time the creatures interact with no human intervention. The farmer is now an impartial observer who finds beauty in the skill and instinct displayed in the natural processes of murder and destruction. Once again he sees harmony in the universe, but ironically, there is no mention of moral significance. If the state of nature is a state of war, it can still be described in terms of a neat theoretical model, but it can no longer be James' model for all human values must be discarded as meaningless.

After this point James never fully regains his unqualified faith in the model's version of reality. The next letter, which describes the old age of an ideal American farmer, is not even written by him. The writer is a European, traveling through America, who has brought with him all the theories and assumptions James had learned from his correspondent. Mr. Bertram's prosperity and cultivation reinforce his visitor's faith in these theories for he is not aware of the natural forces which threaten the apparent harmony. James, who has witnessed the dissolution of this harmony, could no longer have described it with confidence, and Crèvecoeur has therefore introduced a new narrator, for whom the reality of American experience does not yet exist, in order to bring the world of the model to life again. This entire interlude is, in fact, Crèvecoeur's device for rebuilding his model of America at that point in the narrative when James' experience contradicts it most strongly. It is also the hypothetical ending to James' story, for Mr. Bertram represents the future James, as the model would have him.

But in his final letter James reappears to give another version of the end of his story, based on experience rather than theory. The American Revolution has now begun and he is forced to abandon his farm and flee for safety. In this letter it becomes clear that Farmer James is Crèvecoeur's straw man. He has carefully built a world for himself on the basis of certain principles which have all proved false. The results of his reason, industry and moderation have been swept away by the greater forces of ambition and greed. His own reason is too weak to comprehend the political issues involved, but his experience has taught him that social systems based on assumptions of order in nature are doomed to fail, and he decides to give up such schemes entirely and live the truly natural life of the Indian in the wilderness.

This decision would seem to represent the final step in James' movement from complete faith to complete disillusionment with the ideals of agrarian democracy. But as he begins to elaborate on his new plans, he begins to contradict himself. The spark of hope which the wilderness suggests to him leads him back to the seductive goals of his model. He no sooner reconciles himself to hunting with the Indians than he begins to picture himself converting the “natural” Indians to the more truly “Natural” life of rational farming. Soon only the slightest suggestion of doubt remains in his renewed faith in his model. “Perhaps my imagination gilds too strongly this distant prospect,” he says. “Yet it appears founded on so few and simple principles that there is not the same probability of adverse incidents as in more complex schemes.” Finally he concludes his speculations with a prayer to the “Father of Nature” to look with favor on his plans (p. 219).

The narrative ends where it started, then, with a vision of an agrarian democracy. But there is irony in James' renewed faith, for his reassertion of the model's ideals take the form of prayers rather than statements, since they occur in the world of experience, where they are no longer meaningful except in terms of some ideal future. That his faith should be renewed in the world of experience, among the ruin and corruption that have just proved it absurd, is the final ironic proof of man's inability to govern himself according to reason.

In spite of the implications of this final episode, Crèvecoeur is often thought of as an uncritical spokesman for agrarian democracy.⁵ According to Leo Marx, he had no sense of progress or of history, for he expressed “unqualified affirmation” of a social ideal based on a permanent balance between nature and civilization, and never thought to ask what “would happen when the new society approached that delicate point of equilibrium beyond which further change, which is to say further departure from ‘nature,’ would be dangerous?”⁶ Crèvecoeur, however, was aware of the importance of progress in American society, although he did not see it as a threat to the “natural” aspects of life. This was because he understood that the idea of “nature” in American democratic theory involved more than a romantic belief in the healthful effects of laboring in the earth. Nature meant the “laws of nature,” and man would presumedly use his rational knowledge of these laws to pursue a moderate way of life, and to develop machines and institutions for his improvement and happiness. Cultural and material progress were implicit in his model, then, and in demonstrating that man was incapable of moderation, he implicitly denied the possibility of progress as well. For if the evils of the backwoodsman were still present in the educated lawyer, then the social conditions necessary for progress could never be maintained.

Crèvecoeur's sense of history, which is implicit throughout the Letters, is in fact a central theme in the final episode. By this time Farmer James is no longer a tabula rasa, for his experience has introduced him to a wide range of possibilities for human existence, the extremes of which are represented by the symbols of the Indian and the European statesman. In deciding upon a course of action James weighs the benefits of these two extremes, denounces the evils of civilization, and endorses the primitivism of the Indian. But before he has finished he has implicitly rejected the evils of the savage too, and once more arrived at the compromise between nature and civilization which characterized his original model. When the model's definition of human nature is restated as a synthesis of two extreme conditions, however, it becomes clear that a notion of progress informs the entire model. James assumes that the original state of nature is savage, but that as human reason develops this state will give way to the more civilized condition of the farmer. But this idea of progress in human nature is denied by James' experience, for he now realizes that the similarities he observed in the backwoodsman and the lawyer have persisted over centuries of progress, from the condition of the Indian to that of the statesman. If the natural man and the civilized man are equally warlike and irrational then there has never been any human progress. As James admits this and then denies it to reassert faith in a nobler state of nature, he reveals the self-delusion at the heart of his model, for he ignores the totality of human experience.

By the end of the Letters, then, Crèvecoeur has added the assumption of progress to his model and the sense of history to his image of America. In the Journey into Northern Pennsylvania and the State of New York, he explores the implications of these additions. He begins by stating the assumptions of his model, as he did in the Letters, but now the importance of historic development is explicitly stated. A learned gentleman explains that the condition of the American farmer is the result of centuries of progress. The first men were savages, but at some point they became rational, learned to cultivate the land, and ultimately arrived at the state of peace and prosperity exhibited in America. The gentleman concludes on a note of confidence for the future: “The Creator has assured the permanence of civilization,” he says, “by the very comparison that man would have to make some day between the rigors of his primitive state and the advantages of his later social state.”⁷ Progress and stability, then, are the main elements of the model society.

In the Voyage, Crèvecoeur's test of this model stresses long-term results rather than basic assumptions. His narrator-travelers follow a direct line of progress from the first generation of settlers on the western frontier to the wealthy urban centers of the East. Both the narrators and the first Americans they meet assume that the model's theories are already proved by the very existence of this march of progress. But Crèvecoeur sets this forward movement against the background of historical development he introduced in the Letters, for the nation is bordered by the Indian wilderness on the one hand and European civilization on the other. The test of American progress takes the form of a series of comparisons between the Americans and these other groups, both of whom have forfeited the benefits of progress by proving themselves too irrational either to achieve or to maintain them. At first the evidence supports the model; as the narrative progresses, however, the comparisons reveal similarities among all three groups. The Europeans are no more civilized in their behavior than the Indians, and as the Americans move closer to the positive benefits of civilized life, their behavior begins to resemble that of the warlike Europeans. Finally the overwhelming parallels between the two white societies convince the reader that disaster and regression are inevitable and the straight line of progress is a myth.

In the first volume the narrators meet many citizens who compare the progress in their country to the lack of progress among the Indians. According to them, the Indian is destined to relive his tragedies because he has learned to control neither his warlike instincts nor his environment. The white man, on the other hand, has already established a rational and permanent social system, and his reason is about to take him even further beyond the condition of the Indian, for his scientific advances are great. The ultimate goal of American progress is to approach the divine intelligence of the Creator and establish a society in which human and physical nature are rationally understood and controlled. To the citizens in this volume such an achievement seems imminent; Crèvecoeur makes this clear by introducing countless images of industrial and agricultural progress, culminating in an image of a machine which reproduces the movements of the heavens, and whose creator is compared to God himself.

In the first volume, then, Crèvecoeur has traced the American myth of progress from man's theoretically bestial origins to his equally theoretical future. The second volume is set in an area of second-generation farmers in which many enterprises begun in the earlier settlements are already thriving; they no longer seem as secure as they did at their inception, however. Natural and political forces now threaten these Americans, who begin to seem naive in their hopefulness. The narrators visit farmers who attribute their success to the benevolence of nature, as reflected in their fields; and, then, within a few miles, they encounter chaos and destruction in nature beyond man's power to control it. They also meet other Americans fleeing the civilized eastern cities to live in the wilderness as James did, because they fear political fermentations similar to those they had fled in Europe. The hints of political disaster are reinforced by the increasing number of military structures observed by the narrators. These images begin to suggest a march toward destruction running parallel to the march of progress, and the Americans' clichés begin to sound ironic in the light of this counter-evidence they choose to ignore.

These hints of war present the most serious threat to American progress, for they indicate that its goal will never be reached. But Crèvecoeur recognized that the same human defects which led to war presented a more basic threat to the perfect society. He illustrates this in the third volume in which the narrators travel to the east coast. Mr. G., the last citizen they visit, symbolizes the way of life which the model assumes all Americans will one day share. He is wealthy and cultivated, living amid the natural abundance of his estate. Like the other Americans he ignores the political problems around him and continues to view his way of life as permanent. But within the context of this hypothetical security, he reveals the contradictions in the American dream, for as he describes his situation it becomes clear that its balance is about to be destroyed, although it has just been achieved. The reason for this is that human nature, outside of his estate, is no more rational or noble than before. Mr. G.'s descendants do not choose to live in the moderate fashion he has chosen for them. His son plans to desert the family estate and return to the frontier where hardship and coarse habits will corrupt him. His nephew plans to attend college in a large city where the evils of commerce and the dissipations of the idle will tempt him. Mr. G. himself no sooner expresses regret at the slowness of American progress compared to that of Europe than he regrets the passing of the “golden age” of colonial America, when life was simple and men happy.

By the final volume of the Voyage, then, the two components of a successful society, progress and balance, have proved impossible, if not meaningless. In fact, what the Americans thought of as progress has turned into a movement backward to the very aspects of European civilization they had originally fled. In the first volume the hypothetically rational American was set in opposition to the Indian and the European, who shared a common irrationality. But as Crèvecoeur begins to merge the images of the two white men, he calls attention to certain qualities which distinguish the Indian from both. Throughout the book the rhythm of the white man's progress has been played against the measured prose describing the Indians' culture. At first the Indian was an anomaly to the white man. His nature seemed contradictory, for his warlike behavior could not be reconciled with his domestic virtues. But by the final volume it is the white man who is an anomaly, for his behavior is not only as vicious and contradictory as the Indians'; his rational schemes are equally contradictory and his faith in them, in view of his experience, appears to approach madness.

It is the Indian then who emerges as the more truly civilized man, for his progress has actually been greater. He too has produced complex social systems, for there are ancient ruins of mills and arsenals which testify to the similarities between the Indians' past experience and European history. But unlike the white man, the Indian has not repeated his errors. He has learned from experience to live according to the true laws of nature. He recognizes war, change and pain as natural and inevitable, and his traditions and laws are based on his adjustment to these realities. He has established a true middle state society for he understands and accepts his warlike instincts, and so can control them more successfully than the whites. His stoic resignation allows him to be realistic about his worldly fortunes and he is not prone to the extremes of hope and despair which the white man blindly accepts as the pattern of his life. Finally he is not a victim of self-delusion for he constructs no abstract theories about the essential nature of the universe.

The final movement of the book, then, like that of the Letters, describes a circle where the Americans had assumed a straight line of progress. In both books the implicit movement is backward to the truly natural Indian who offers a version of reality more secure, more rational and more consistent than the model's.

The life of the Indian does not of course represent a real opinion. It is another fictitious model of reality which Crèvecoeur uses for contrast in his treatment of America. Leo Marx, in his discussion of Crèvecoeur, also discusses a statement of Thomas Jefferson's about the absence of crime among the Indians. Said Jefferson, “were it made a question, whether no law, as among the savage Americans, or too much law, as among civilized Europeans, submits man to the greatest evil, one who has seen both conditions of existence would pronounce it to be the last. …”⁸ According to Marx, “this statement taken out of context, does sound as if Jefferson had joined a simple-minded cult of Nature … [but] what appears as a preference for the primitive actually is a rhetorical device.” Marx makes a good case for the literary quality of Jefferson's thought. He calls this device “the syntax of the middle landscape; a conditional statement which has the effect of stressing a range of social possibilities unavailable to Europeans.” But Crèvecoeur, whom Marx considers blind to “the obvious dilemma of pastoral politics,”⁹ and to progress and history as well, has actually explored and expanded the implications of Jefferson's “rhetorical device” and its entire “range of social possibilities” in two full-length works of literature.

Notes

1. For detailed discussions of the various aspects of this theoretical model see the following: Chester Eisinger, “The Freehold Concept in Eighteenth Century American Letters,” William & Mary Quarterly, IV (1947), 42-59; “Land and Loyalty: Literary Expressions of Agrarian Nationalism in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” American Literature, XXI (1949), 1960-78; Paul Johnstone, “In Praise of Husbandry,” Agricultural History, XI (1937), 80-95, and “Turnips and Romanticism,” Agricultural History, XII (1938), 224-55; Howard Mumford Jones, Strange New World (New York, 1964); Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden (New York, 1964); Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land (New York, 1950).

2. J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America (New York, 1963), pp. 43-44.

3. Compare the “History of Andrew the Hebridean” in this letter, pp. 84-99, with the “Reflections on the Manners of the Americans,” in the Sketches, pp. 250-63, for a full appreciation of Crèvecoeur's irony in the early letters. The settler in the latter episode becomes vicious and corrupt when allowed to indulge his natural instincts; and he is thoroughly successful as well.

4. For a discussion of the symbolic quality of one incident in the Charles Town episode see Marius Bewley, The Eccentric Design (New York, 1963), pp. 102-6. Bewley comments on the “Implicitly ironic interplay between [Crèvecoeur's] polite and measured prose reflecting the illusion of external order in the universe,” and the hideous nature of the facts he describes.

5. D. H. Lawrence, “Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur,” Studies in Classic American Literature (New York, 1923), pp. 20-33, is probably most responsible for the prevalence of this opinion. Even those who have recognized the conflict between theory and experience in the Letters, however, have not always attributed its effects to conscious artistry. See, for example, Albert E. Stone Jr., “Foreword,” Letters and Sketches, p. xviii.

6. Marx, pp. 115-16.

7. Crèvecoeur, Journey into Northern Pennsylvania and the State of New York, tr. Clarissa Bostelmann (Ann Arbor, 1964), p. 15.

8. Thomas Jefferson, The Life and Selected Writings of Jefferson, eds. Adrienne Koch and William Peden (New York, 1963), p. 78.

9. Marx, pp. 120-21.