March 12

[On March 12, 1820, as a retired private citizen living at Monticello, I wrote to Virginia politician Hugh Nelson, a trusted political ally, regarding the fragile state of both our Commonwealth and the wider nation. This correspondence occurred immediately after the passage of the Missouri Compromise, a moment when the United States was also reeling from the devastating Panic of 1819, the nation's first major peacetime financial crisis. I warned that the newly drawn geographical line restricting slavery would ultimately split the Union and destroy the hope of self-government, while simultaneously lamenting how local bank failures and a sudden contraction of paper money had completely devastated Virginia's economy. The economic ruin across the state was so severe that good horses were being auctioned by sheriffs for a mere five dollars, prompting my genuine fear that desperate citizens would launch localized armed insurrections to stop the forced sacrifices of their property.]

I thank you, dear Sir, for the information in your favor of the 4th instant, of the settlement, for the present, of the Missouri question. I am so completely withdrawn from all attention to public matters, that nothing less could arouse me than the definition of a geographical line, which on an abstract principle is to become the line of separation of these States, and to render desperate the hope that man can ever enjoy the two blessings of peace and self-government. The question sleeps for the present, but is not dead. This State is in a condition of unparalleled distress. The sudden reduction of the circulating medium from a plethory to all but annihilation is producing an entire revolution of fortune. In other places I have known lands sold by the sheriff for one year's rent; beyond the mountain we hear of good slaves selling for one hundred dollars, good horses for five dollars, and the sheriffs generally the purchasers. Our produce is now selling at market for one-third of its price, before this commercial catastrophe, say flour at three and a quarter and three and a half dollars the barrel. We should have less right to expect relief from our legislators if they had been the establishers of the unwise system of banks. A remedy to a certain degree was practicable, that of reducing the quantum of circulation gradually to a level with that of the countries with which we have commerce, and an eternal abjuration of paper. But they have adjourned without doing anything. I fear local insurrections against these horrible sacrifices of property.