Thanks to your advocacy efforts on our behalf, we're happy to report that the recently passed Omnibus Spending Bill includes a very small increase in funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities! While our work is not over with regards to the upcoming 2018 budget to be passed in the fall, the Omnibus Spending Bill represents an endorsement of the important work that the humanities do for our communities. These funds will continue to support our work of providing free access to authoritative content about Virginia's history and culture.
I must be permitted again to trouble you, my dear Sir, to return my grateful thanks
for the respectful and friendly attention shown to my letter in your answer of the
25th ulto. Your favorable reception of
sentiments not generally avowed if felt by our Countrymen, but which have ever been
so inseparably interwoven with my opinions and feelings as to become as it were the
rudder that shapes my course even against a strong tide of interest and of local
partialities, could not but be in the highest degree gratifying to me. And your
interesting and highly prized letter, conveying them to me in such flattering terms,
would have been called forth my acknowledgments before this but for its having been
forwarded to me to the Springs, and from thence it was again returned here before I
received it, which was only a few days since.
Your indulgent treatment encourages me to add—that I feel very sensibly the force of
your remarks on the impropriety of yielding to my repugnancies in abandoning my
property in Slaves and my native State. I certainly should never have been inclined
to yield to them
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if I had supposed myself capable of being
instrumental in bringing about a liberation, or that I could by my example meliorate
the condition of these oppressed people. If I could be convinced of being in the
slightest degree useful in doing either, it would afford me very great happiness, and
the more so as it would enable me to gratify many partialities by remaining in
Virginia. But never having flattered myself with the hope of being able to contribute
to either, I have long since determined, and should, but for my bad health ere this,
have removed, carrying along with me those who had been my Slaves, to the Country
North West of the river Ohio.
Your prayers I trust will not only be heard with indulgence in Heaven, but with
influence on earth. But I cannot agree with you that they are the only weapons of one
at your age, nor that the difficult work of cleansing the escutchion of Virginia of
the foul stain of slavery can best be done by the young. To effect so great and
difficult an object great and extensive powers both of mind and influence are
required, which can never be possessed in so great a degree by the young as by the
old. And among the few of the former who might unite the disposition with the re-
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quisite capacity, they are too often led by
ambitious views to go with the current of popular feeing, rather than to mark out a
course for themselves, where they might be buffetted by the waves of opposition; and
indeed it is feared these waves would in this case be too strong to be effectually
resisted, by any but those who had gained by a previous course of useful employment
the firmest footing in the confidence and attachment of their Country. It is with
them, therefore, I am persuaded, that the subject of emancipation must originate; for
they are the only persons who have it in their power effectually to arouse and
enlighten the public sentiment, which in matters of this kind ought not to be
expected to lead but to be led; nor ought it to be wondered at that there should
prevail a degree of apathy with the general mass of mankind, where a mere passive
principle of right has to contend against the weighty influence of habit and
interest. On such a question there will always exist in society a kind of vis
inertia, to arouse and overcome which require a strong impulse, which can only be
given by those who have acquired a great weight of character, and on whom there
devolves in this case a most solemn obligation. It was under these impressions
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that I looked to you, my dear sir, as the first
of our aged worthies, to awaken our fellow Citizens from their infatuation to a
proper sense of Justice and to the true interest of their country, and by proposing a
system for the gradual emancipation of our Slaves, at once to form a rallying point
for its friends, who enlightened by your wisdom and experience, and supported and
encouraged by your sanction and patronage, might look forward to a propitious and
happy result. Your time of life I had not considered as an obstacle to the
undertaking. Doctor Franklin, to whom, by the way, Pennsylvania owes her early
riddance of the evils of Slavery, was as actively and as usefully employed on as
arduous duties after he had past your age as he had ever been at any period of his
life.
With apologizing for having give you so much trouble on this subject, and again
repeating my thanks for the respectful and flattering attention you have been pleased
to pay to it, I renew the assurances of the great respect and regard which makes me
most sincerely
