Thomas Jefferson
First Inaugural Address
Wednesday, March 4, 1801

Friends and Fellow-Citizens:

CALLED upon to undertake the duties of the first executive office of 
our country, I avail myself of the presence of that portion of my 
fellow-citizens which is here assembled to express my grateful thanks 
for the favor with which they have been pleased to look toward me, to 
declare a sincere consciousness that the task is above my talents, and 
that I approach it with those anxious and awful presentiments which the 
greatness of the charge and the weakness of my powers so justly 
inspire. A rising nation, spread over a wide and fruitful land, 
traversing all the seas with the rich productions of their industry, 
engaged in commerce with nations who feel power and forget right, 
advancing rapidly to destinies beyond the reach of mortal eye - when I 
contemplate these transcendent objects, and see the honor, the 
happiness, and the hopes of this beloved country committed to the 
issue, and the auspices of this day, I shrink from the contemplation, 
and humble myself before the magnitude of the undertaking. Utterly, 
indeed, should I despair did not the presence of many whom I here see 
remind me that in the other high authorities provided by our 
Constitution I shall find resources of wisdom, of virtue, and of zeal 
on which to rely under all difficulties. To you, then, gentlemen, who 
are charged with the sovereign functions of legislation, and to those 
associated with you, I look with encouragement for that guidance and 
support which may enable us to steer with safety the vessel in which we 
are all embarked amidst the conflicting elements of a troubled world.

During the contest of opinion through which we have passed the 
animation of discussions and of exertions has sometimes worn an aspect 
which might impose on strangers unused to think freely and to speak and 
to write what they think; but this being now decided by the voice of 
the nation, announced according to the rules of the Constitution, all 
will, of course, arrange themselves under the will of the law, and 
unite in common efforts for the common good. All, too, will bear in 
mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in 
all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that 
the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, 
and to violate would be oppression. Let us, then, fellow-citizens, 
unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse 
that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself 
are but dreary things. And let us reflect that, having banished from 
our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled 
and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political 
intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody 
persecutions. During the throes and convulsions of the ancient world, 
during the agonizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood 
and slaughter his long-lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the 
agitation of the billows should reach even this distant and peaceful 
shore; that this should be more felt and feared by some and less by 
others, and should divide opinions as to measures of safety. But every 
difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called 
by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all 
Republicans, we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would 
wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them 
stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of 
opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. I 
know, indeed, that some honest men fear that a republican government 
can not be strong, that this Government is not strong enough; but would 
the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon 
a government which has so far kept us free and firm on the theoretic 
and visionary fear that this Government, the world's best hope, may by 
possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust not. I believe 
this, on the contrary, the strongest Government on earth. I believe it 
the only one where every man, at the call of the law, would fly to the 
standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as 
his own personal concern. Sometimes it is said that man can not be 
trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with 
the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings 
to govern him? Let history answer this question.

Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and 
Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative 
government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the 
exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to 
endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, 
with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth 
generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of 
our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor 
and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but 
from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign 
religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of 
them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of 
man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all 
its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here 
and his greater happiness hereafter - with all these blessings, what 
more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one 
thing more, fellow-citizens - a wise and frugal Government, which shall 
restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free 
to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall 
not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the 
sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of 
our felicities.

About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which 
comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper you should 
understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and 
consequently those which ought to shape its Administration. I will 
compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the 
general principle, but not all its limitations. Equal and exact justice 
to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; 
peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling 
alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their 
rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns 
and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies; the 
preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional 
vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a 
jealous care of the right of election by the people - a mild and safe 
corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where 
peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in the 
decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which 
is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of 
despotism; a well disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and 
for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them; the 
supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in the 
public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened; the honest payment 
of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith; encouragement 
of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the diffusion of 
information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public 
reason; freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of 
person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries 
impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation 
which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of 
revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our 
heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed 
of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone 
by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander 
from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our 
steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and 
safety.

I repair, then, fellow-citizens, to the post you have assigned me. With 
experience enough in subordinate offices to have seen the difficulties 
of this the greatest of all, I have learnt to expect that it will 
rarely fall to the lot of imperfect man to retire from this station 
with the reputation and the favor which bring him into it. Without 
pretensions to that high confidence you reposed in our first and 
greatest revolutionary character, whose preeminent services had 
entitled him to the first place in his country's love and destined for 
him the fairest page in the volume of faithful history, I ask so much 
confidence only as may give firmness and effect to the legal 
administration of your affairs. I shall often go wrong through defect 
of judgment. When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose 
positions will not command a view of the whole ground. I ask your 
indulgence for my own errors, which will never be intentional, and your 
support against the errors of others, who may condemn what they would 
not if seen in all its parts. The approbation implied by your suffrage 
is a great consolation to me for the past, and my future solicitude 
will be to retain the good opinion of those who have bestowed it in 
advance, to conciliate that of others by doing them all the good in my 
power, and to be instrumental to the happiness and freedom of all.

Relying, then, on the patronage of your good will, I advance with 
obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become 
sensible how much better choice it is in your power to make. And may 
that Infinite Power which rules the destinies of the universe lead our 
councils to what is best, and give them a favorable issue for your 
peace and prosperity.

Thomas Jefferson
Second Inaugural Address
Monday, March 4, 1805

PROCEEDING, fellow-citizens, to that qualification which the 
Constitution requires before my entrance on the charge again conferred 
on me, it is my duty to express the deep sense I entertain of this new 
proof of confidence from my fellow-citizens at large, and the zeal with 
which it inspires me so to conduct myself as may best satisfy their 
just expectations.

On taking this station on a former occasion I declared the principles 
on which I believed it my duty to administer the affairs of our 
Commonwealth. My conscience tells me I have on every occasion acted up 
to that declaration according to its obvious import and to the 
understanding of every candid mind.

In the transaction of your foreign affairs we have endeavored to 
cultivate the friendship of all nations, and especially of those with 
which we have the most important relations. We have done them justice 
on all occasions, favored where favor was lawful, and cherished mutual 
interests and intercourse on fair and equal terms. We are firmly 
convinced, and we act on that conviction, that with nations as with 
individuals our interests soundly calculated will ever be found 
inseparable from our moral duties, and history bears witness to the 
fact that a just nation is trusted on its word when recourse is had to 
armaments and wars to bridle others.

At home, fellow-citizens, you best know whether we have done well or 
ill. The suppression of unnecessary offices, of useless establishments 
and expenses, enabled us to discontinue our internal taxes. These, 
covering our land with officers and opening our doors to their 
intrusions, had already begun that process of domiciliary vexation 
which once entered is scarcely to be restrained from reaching 
successively every article of property and produce. If among these 
taxes some minor ones fell which had not been inconvenient, it was 
because their amount would not have paid the officers who collected 
them, and because, if they had any merit, the State authorities might 
adopt them instead of others less approved.

The remaining revenue on the consumption of foreign articles is paid 
chiefly by those who can afford to add foreign luxuries to domestic 
comforts, being collected on our seaboard and frontiers only, and 
incorporated with the transactions of our mercantile citizens, it may 
be the pleasure and the pride of an American to ask, What farmer, what 
mechanic, what laborer ever sees a taxgatherer of the United States? 
These contributions enable us to support the current expenses of the 
Government, to fulfill contracts with foreign nations, to extinguish 
the native right of soil within our limits, to extend those limits, and 
to apply such a surplus to our public debts as places at a short day 
their final redemption, and that redemption once effected the revenue 
thereby liberated may, by a just repartition of it among the States and 
a corresponding amendment of the Constitution, be applied in time of 
peace to rivers, canals, roads, arts, manufactures, education, and 
other great objects within each State. In time of war, if injustice by 
ourselves or others must sometimes produce war, increased as the same 
revenue will be by increased population and consumption, and aided by 
other resources reserved for that crisis, it may meet within the year 
all the expenses of the year without encroaching on the rights of 
future generations by burthening them with the debts of the past. War 
will then be but a suspension of useful works, and a return to a state 
of peace, a return to the progress of improvement.

I have said, fellow-citizens, that the income reserved had enabled us 
to extend our limits, but that extension may possibly pay for itself 
before we are called on, and in the meantime may keep down the accruing 
interest; in all events, it will replace the advances we shall have 
made. I know that the acquisition of Louisiana had been disapproved by 
some from a candid apprehension that the enlargement of our territory 
would endanger its union. But who can limit the extent to which the 
federative principle may operate effectively? The larger our 
association the less will it be shaken by local passions; and in any 
view is it not better that the opposite bank of the Mississippi should 
be settled by our own brethren and children than by strangers of 
another family? With which should we be most likely to live in harmony 
and friendly intercourse?

In matters of religion I have considered that its free exercise is 
placed by the Constitution independent of the powers of the General 
Government. I have therefore undertaken on no occasion to prescribe the 
religious exercises suited to it, but have left them, as the 
Constitution found them, under the direction and discipline of the 
church or state authorities acknowledged by the several religious 
societies.

The aboriginal inhabitants of these countries I have regarded with the 
commiseration their history inspires. Endowed with the faculties and 
the rights of men, breathing an ardent love of liberty and 
independence, and occupying a country which left them no desire but to 
be undisturbed, the stream of overflowing population from other regions 
directed itself on these shores; without power to divert or habits to 
contend against it, they have been overwhelmed by the current or driven 
before it; now reduced within limits too narrow for the hunter's state, 
humanity enjoins us to teach them agriculture and the domestic arts; to 
encourage them to that industry which alone can enable them to maintain 
their place in existence and to prepare them in time for that state of 
society which to bodily comforts adds the improvement of the mind and 
morals. We have therefore liberally furnished them with the implements 
of husbandry and household use; we have placed among them instructors 
in the arts of first necessity, and they are covered with the aegis of 
the law against aggressors from among ourselves.

But the endeavors to enlighten them on the fate which awaits their 
present course of life, to induce them to exercise their reason, follow 
its dictates, and change their pursuits with the change of 
circumstances have powerful obstacles to encounter; they are combated 
by the habits of their bodies, prejudices of their minds, ignorance, 
pride, and the influence of interested and crafty individuals among 
them who feel themselves something in the present order of things and 
fear to become nothing in any other. These persons inculcate a 
sanctimonious reverence for the customs of their ancestors; that 
whatsoever they did must be done through all time; that reason is a 
false guide, and to advance under its counsel in their physical, moral, 
or political condition is perilous innovation; that their duty is to 
remain as their Creator made them, ignorance being safety and knowledge 
full of danger; in short, my friends, among them also is seen the 
action and counteraction of good sense and of bigotry; they too have 
their antiphilosophists who find an interest in keeping things in their 
present state, who dread reformation, and exert all their faculties to 
maintain the ascendancy of habit over the duty of improving our reason 
and obeying its mandates.

In giving these outlines I do not mean, fellow-citizens, to arrogate to 
myself the merit of the measures. That is due, in the first place, to 
the reflecting character of our citizens at large, who, by the weight 
of public opinion, influence and strengthen the public measures. It is 
due to the sound discretion with which they select from among 
themselves those to whom they confide the legislative duties. It is due 
to the zeal and wisdom of the characters thus selected, who lay the 
foundations of public happiness in wholesome laws, the execution of 
which alone remains for others, and it is due to the able and faithful 
auxiliaries, whose patriotism has associated them with me in the 
executive functions.

During this course of administration, and in order to disturb it, the 
artillery of the press has been leveled against us, charged with 
whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an 
institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be 
regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness and to sap 
its safety. They might, indeed, have been corrected by the wholesome 
punishments reserved to and provided by the laws of the several States 
against falsehood and defamation, but public duties more urgent press 
on the time of public servants, and the offenders have therefore been 
left to find their punishment in the public indignation.

Nor was it uninteresting to the world that an experiment should be 
fairly and fully made, whether freedom of discussion, unaided by power, 
is not sufficient for the propagation and protection of truth - whether 
a government conducting itself in the true spirit of its constitution, 
with zeal and purity, and doing no act which it would be unwilling the 
whole world should witness, can be written down by falsehood and 
defamation. The experiment has been tried; you have witnessed the 
scene; our fellow-citizens looked on, cool and collected; they saw the 
latent source from which these outrages proceeded; they gathered around 
their public functionaries, and when the Constitution called them to 
the decision by suffrage, they pronounced their verdict, honorable to 
those who had served them and consolatory to the friend of man who 
believes that he may be trusted with the control of his own affairs.

No inference is here intended that the laws provided by the States 
against false and defamatory publications should not be enforced; he 
who has time renders a service to public morals and public tranquillity 
in reforming these abuses by the salutary coercions of the law; but the 
experiment is noted to prove that, since truth and reason have 
maintained their ground against false opinions in league with false 
facts, the press, confined to truth, needs no other legal restraint; 
the public judgment will correct false reasoning and opinions on a full 
hearing of all parties; and no other definite line can be drawn between 
the inestimable liberty of the press and its demoralizing 
licentiousness. If there be still improprieties which this rule would 
not restrain, its supplement must be sought in the censorship of public 
opinion.

Contemplating the union of sentiment now manifested so generally as 
auguring harmony and happiness to our future course, I offer to our 
country sincere congratulations. With those, too, not yet rallied to 
the same point the disposition to do so is gaining strength; facts are 
piercing through the veil drawn over them, and our doubting brethren 
will at length see that the mass of their fellow-citizens with whom 
they can not yet resolve to act as to principles and measures, think as 
they think and desire what they desire; that our wish as well as theirs 
is that the public efforts may be directed honestly to the public good, 
that peace be cultivated, civil and religious liberty unassailed, law 
and order preserved, equality of rights maintained, and that state of 
property, equal or unequal, which results to every man from his own 
industry or that of his father's. When satisfied of these views it is 
not in human nature that they should not approve and support them. In 
the meantime let us cherish them with patient affection, let us do them 
justice, and more than justice, in all competitions of interest; and we 
need not doubt that truth, reason, and their own interests will at 
length prevail, will gather them into the fold of their country, and 
will complete that entire union of opinion which gives to a nation the 
blessing of harmony and the benefit of all its strength.

I shall now enter on the duties to which my fellow-citizens have again 
called me, and shall proceed in the spirit of those principles which 
they have approved. I fear not that any motives of interest may lead me 
astray; I am sensible of no passion which could seduce me knowingly 
from the path of justice, but the weaknesses of human nature and the 
limits of my own understanding will produce errors of judgment 
sometimes injurious to your interests. I shall need, therefore, all the 
indulgence which I have heretofore experienced from my constituents; 
the want of it will certainly not lessen with increasing years. I shall 
need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our 
fathers, as Israel of old, from their native land and planted them in a 
country flowing with all the necessaries and comforts of life; who has 
covered our infancy with His providence and our riper years with His 
wisdom and power, and to whose goodness I ask you to join in 
supplications with me that He will so enlighten the minds of your 
servants, guide their councils, and prosper their measures that 
whatsoever they do shall result in your good, and shall secure to you 
the peace, friendship, and approbation of all nations.

