Second Inaugural Address

Summary

Thomas Jefferson's second inaugural, delivered in the Senate chamber on 4 March 1805, reads as an account rendered to the voters who had just re-elected him by a wide margin. He recalls the principles he declared in 1801 and says his conscience tells him he has kept them. Abroad, the administration has cultivated friendship with all nations on equal terms, convinced that "with nations as with individuals our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties." At home, cutting "unnecessary offices" allowed the repeal of internal taxes, whose collectors had begun a "process of domiciliary vexation." The remaining revenue falls on imports, paid mostly by buyers of foreign luxuries, so that Jefferson can ask, "What farmer, what mechanic, what laborer ever sees a taxgatherer of the United States?" Once the debt is paid, he proposes that surplus revenue, by constitutional amendment, go to roads, canals, education, and manufactures within the States. He defends the Louisiana Purchase against those who feared a larger territory would break the Union: "The larger our association the less will it be shaken by local passions." He explains why he has proclaimed no religious exercises, leaving them to churches and State authorities. A long passage on the Native peoples voices pity for nations "overwhelmed by the current" of settlement, describes federal efforts to teach agriculture and household arts, and blames resistance on leaders who revere ancestral custom; Jefferson draws an open parallel to the "antiphilosophists" among his own countrymen. The second half turns to the press. Federalist papers had attacked the administration relentlessly; Jefferson calls the episode an experiment proving that truth, unaided by power, can defend itself, and that "the press, confined to truth, needs no other legal restraint." He closes hoping doubting Federalists will join the union of opinion, admitting his own fallibility, and asking the favor of the Being who led the fathers "as Israel of old."

Top Lessons

• An inaugural as an account rendered

  Jefferson turns the second inaugural into a report: "At home, fellow-citizens, you best know whether we have done well or ill." He treats the first inaugural as a promise and the first term as its test, making the voters judges of the record.

• Can a free press be left to public judgment?

  After four years of attack in the papers, Jefferson argues that a government acting openly cannot "be written down by falsehood and defamation," because citizens will weigh the charges. He still allows State libel laws, but holds that "the press, confined to truth, needs no other legal restraint."

• The passage on the Native peoples

  Jefferson pities nations "overwhelmed by the current" of settlement and proposes agriculture and the domestic arts as their path to survival. He frames resistance as custom against reason and compares it to the "antiphilosophists" among white Americans. Students should identify the assumptions about improvement at work before judging the policy.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Presidential inaugurals concern constitutional politics and national crisis; they have no medical content for this library's lens.