The Domestic Life of Thomas Jefferson Compiled From Family Letters and ReminiscencesRandolph, Sarah N. (Sarah Nicholas)
History
The Domestic Life of Thomas Jefferson Compiled From Family Letters and Reminiscences
Randolph, Sarah N. (Sarah Nicholas)
Jefferson, Thomas, 1743-1826; Presidents -- United States -- Biography
I found our friend Dr. Franklin in his bed--cheerful and free
from pain, but still in his bed. He took a lively interest in
the details I gave him of your revolution. I observed his face
often flushed in the course of it. He is much emaciated. M. de
Crevecœur is well, but a little apprehensive that the spirit of
reforming and economizing may reach his office. A good man will
suffer if it does. Permit me, Madame la Comtesse, to present
here my sincere respects to Monsieur le Comte d'Houdetôt and
to Monsieur de Sainte Lambert. The philosophy of the latter
will have been greatly gratified to see a regeneration of the
condition of man in Europe so happily begun in his own country.
Repeating to you, Madame, my sincere sense of your goodness
to me, and my wishes to prove it on every occasion, adding my
sincere prayer that Heaven may bless you with many years of
life and health, I pray you to accept here the homage of those
sentiments of respect and attachment with which I have the honor
to be, Madame la Comtesse, your most obedient and humble servant,
TH. JEFFERSON.
We find the following interesting passage in a letter from Jefferson
to M. Grand, written on the 23d of April:
The good old Dr. Franklin, so long the ornament of our country,
and I may say of the world, has at length closed his eminent
career. He died on the 17th instant, of an imposthume of his
lungs, which having suppurated and burst, he had not strength to
throw off the matter, and was suffocated by it. His illness from
this imposthume was of sixteen days. Congress wear mourning for
him, by a resolve of their body.
Nearly a year later we find him writing to the President of the
National Assembly of France as follows:
I have it in charge from the President of the United States
of America, to communicate to the National Assembly of France
the peculiar sensibility of Congress to the tribute paid to
the memory of Benjamin Franklin by the enlightened and free
representatives of a great nation, in their decree of the 11th
of June, 1790.
That the loss of such a citizen should be lamented by us
among whom he lived, whom he so long and eminently served,
and who feel their country advanced and honored by his birth,
life, and labors, was to be expected. But it remained for the
National Assembly of France to set the first example of the
representatives of one nation doing homage, by a public act, to
the private citizen of another, and, by withdrawing arbitrary
lines of separation, to reduce into one fraternity the good and
the great, wherever they have lived or died.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account