Born 275 years ago today (1743), Thomas Jefferson was a staunch champion of both State sovereignty and ratification of the Constitution for the United States of America, and served as Virginia's second Governor and the new federal government's third President. Alas, favoring two such political opposites hardly seems to ever end in satisfying compromise, and in the last years of his life Jefferson seemed to come to rue what the new federal government had repugnantly become within just its first 30 years of existence.
I regret that I am now to die in the belief that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776, to acquire self-government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be, that I live not to weep over it.
Letter Nathaniel Macon, 1821:
Our government is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction. That is: by consolidation first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.
Letter to Samuel Johnson, 1823:
I have been criticized for saying that a prevalence of the doctrines of consolidation would one day call for reformation or revolution.
Letter to William B. Giles, 1825:
I see with the deepest affliction, the rapid strides with which the federal branch of our government is advancing towards the usurpation of all the rights reserved to the States, and the consolidation in itself of all powers, foreign and domestic; and that too, by constructions which, if legitimate, leave no limits to their power.
Thomas Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, exactly 50 years after the public proclamation of The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America (aka The Declaration of Independence), of which he is its most famous author.