The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
WAR / COMRADESHIP AND DEATH
When you and I look back on the country over which we have passed,
what a field of slaughter does it exhibit! Where are all the friends
who entered it with us, under all the inspiring energies of health and
hope? As if pursued by the havoc of war, they are strewed by the way,
some earlier, some later, and scarce a few stragglers remain to count
the numbers fallen, and to mark yet, by their own fall, the last
footsteps of their part.
Of our college friends (and they are
the dearest) how few have stood with us in the great political
questions which have agitated our country; and these were of a nature
to justify agitation. I did not believe the Lilliputian fetters of
that day strong enough to have bound so many.
to John Page, 25 June 1804
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