144
" When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.37 We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness: that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. He "
― Jon Meacham , Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power
148
" The Jefferson political style, though, remained smooth rather than rough, polite rather than confrontational. He was a warrior for the causes in which he believed, but he conducted his battles at a remove, tending to use friends and allies to write and publish and promulgate the messages he thought crucial to the public debate. Part of the reason for his largely genial mien lay in the Virginia culture of grace and hospitality; another factor was a calculated decision, based on his experience of men and of politics, that direct conflict was unproductive and ineffective. Jefferson articulated this understanding of politics and the management of conflicting interests in a long, thoughtful letter to a grandson. “A determination never to do what is wrong, prudence, and good humor, will go far towards securing to you the estimation of the world,” he wrote to Patsy’s son Thomas Jefferson Randolph.67 Good humor, Jefferson added, “is the practice of sacrificing to those whom we meet in society all the little conveniences and preferences which will gratify them, and deprive us of nothing worth a moment’s consideration; it is the giving a pleasing and flattering turn to our expressions which will conciliate others and make them pleased with us as well as themselves. How cheap a price for the good will of another!” Jefferson went on: When this is in return for a rude thing said by another, it brings him to his senses, it mortifies and corrects him in the most salutary way, and places him at the feet of your good nature in the eyes of the company.68 But in stating prudential rules for our government in society I must not omit the important one of never entering into dispute or argument with another. I never yet saw an instance of one of two disputants convincing the other by argument. I have seen many, on their getting warm, becoming rude, and shooting one another. Conviction is the effect of our own dispassionate reasoning, either in solitude, or weighing within ourselves dispassionately what we hear from others standing uncommitted in argument ourselves. It was one of the rules which above all others made Doctr. Franklin the most amiable of men in society, “never to contradict anybody. "
― Jon Meacham , Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power
158
" Napoleon was in his bath, soaking in cologne-scented water, when his brothers came in to protest the decision to sell Louisiana.24 “You will have no need to lead the opposition,” Napoleon told his brothers, “for I repeat there will be no debate, for the reason that the project … conceived by me, negotiated by me, shall be ratified and executed by me, alone.25 Do you comprehend me?” “I renounce Louisiana,” Napoleon announced to finance minister Barbé-Marbois, early on the morning of Monday, April 11, 1803.26 Within hours, foreign minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand was enquiring whether the United States would be interested in the entire territory. “It is not only New Orleans that I will cede, it is the whole colony without any reservation. I know the price of what I abandon.… I renounce it with the greatest regret. But to attempt obstinately to retain it would be folly.” Livingston knew what he had to do. “The field open to us is infinitely larger than our instructions contemplated,” Livingston told Madison, and the chance “must not be missed.”27 He and Monroe, who had arrived in Paris, negotiated a treaty giving the United States the Louisiana Territory—a landmass so vast the borders were unclear even to the buyers and the sellers—for about $15 million, or three cents an acre.28 Word "
― Jon Meacham , Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power
