The great moose debate

When I first arrived in Paris as the American minister, I expected to debate politics and trade agreements. Instead, I found myself fighting a ridiculous scientific insult aimed at our entire country.

The most famous scientist in Europe, the Count de Buffon, had published a massive encyclopedia claiming that the New World was a cold, swampy wasteland. He argued that America’s climate caused all living things to shrink and weaken, a theory he called American Degeneracy. According to him, our animals were tiny, our plants were stunted, and even the people living there were biologically inferior to Europeans. This was not just a blow to our pride. It was a threat to our future. If Europeans believed America was a decaying swamp, no one would want to trade with us, invest in our economy, or move to our shores.

I knew I could not just argue with him using words. I needed hard evidence. In my book, Notes on the State of Virginia, I printed long charts comparing the weights of European and American animals to prove him wrong. During a dinner in Paris, I decided to make it personal. I told Buffon to his face that a European reindeer could walk right under the belly of an American moose without its antlers even grazing the skin. He did not believe me, so I decided to bring the wilderness of New England straight to his doorstep.

I wrote to John Sullivan, the governor of New Hampshire, begging him to find me a massive moose. He came through, sending an expedition into the freezing winter woods to hunt one down. It took twenty men weeks just to drag the giant carcass through the snow. By the time the skeleton, skin, and bones made the long journey across the Atlantic to Paris, the specimen was a total mess. It had rotted, lost most of its fur, and the original antlers were missing.

I refused to let a little rot ruin my point. I scrambled to find some substitute elk and deer antlers, pinned them onto the frame, and had the whole patched up monster delivered directly to Buffon’s house. I included a note politely telling him to use his imagination to picture how majestic it looked when it was alive.

When Buffon actually saw the sheer scale of the bones, he could not deny the truth. He admitted to me that he had underestimated American wildlife and promised to correct his errors in his next book volume. He passed away shortly after before he could print the rewrite, but the point had been made. We proved that America was not a place of weakness, but a land of immense size, strength, and potential.

Here is my letter to Buffon: https://www.thomasjefferson.com/jefferson-letters/october-1