In college, when I should have been studying my textbooks, I read some of Thomas Jefferson’s letters. I was trying to get a sense of the cast of his mind, the shape of it, the way it worked.
If Jefferson could watch the news today and listen to the rhetoric of the presidential campaign, I don’t think his first remark would be about policy. I think he’d notice the heat of the campaign, the emotion.
In 1818, a friend sent Jefferson a stack of religious pamphlets. Jefferson was interested in public opinion and mass movements, including the movement we call the Great Awakening. Jefferson read the pamphlets and returned them, with a note saying:
… as usual, those whose dogmas are the most unintelligible are the most angry.
I live in the swing state of Georgia, and I’ve been bombarded with campaign fliers. We are still arguing about the candidates. But there’s no question about which one is the angriest.
• Source: Thomas Jefferson’s letter to Salma Hale, July 26, 1818, is at the National Archives and is available here:
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-13-02-0173
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