In this foreboding letter, former president Thomas Jefferson warned Representative John Holmes that the alarming issue of slavery could not be staved off forever. In words foreshadowing the Civil War, Jefferson predicted the issue once loosed would ignite the nation in violence and destruction.
…this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union.
Manuscript Division, Library of Congress
Letter from Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes, April 22, 1820
Preserving the Union pt 1
To achieve unity among the states, the nation’s founders did not confront the issue of slavery in the Constitution, but left it for future generations to resolve. In the 19th century, applications for statehood from western territorial legislatures threatened the balance of free and slave states in the Senate. Congress shifted the basis for determining the status of slavery in each territory from the territory’s geographical location to a vote by its inhabitants under the principle of ‘popular sovereignty.’ Slavery remained a burning issue that threatened the Union and eventually led to the Civil War.
In this foreboding letter, former president Thomas Jefferson warned Representative John Holmes that the alarming issue of slavery could not be staved off forever. In words foreshadowing the Civil War, Jefferson predicted the issue once loosed would ignite the nation in violence and destruction.
…this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union.
Manuscript Division, Library of Congress
