WHO ARE AMERICANS TO THINK THAT FREEDOM IS THEIRS TO SPREAD?
As Thomas Jefferson lay dying at his hilltop estate, Monticello, in late June 1826, he wrote a letter telling the citizens of the city of Washington that he was too ill to join them for the 50th-anniversary celebrations of the Declaration of Independence. Wanting his letter to inspire the gathering, he told them that one day the experiment he and the founders started would spread to the whole world. To some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all, he wrote, the American form of republican self-government would become every nations birthright. Democracys worldwide triumph was assured, he went on to say, because the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion would soon convince all men that they were born not to be ruled but to rule themselves in freedom. It was the last letter he ever wrote. The slave-owning apostle of liberty, that incomparable genius and moral scandal, died 10 days later on July 4, 1826, on the same day as his old friend and fellow founder, John Ada
