Lost Letter of Thomas Jefferson Laments Illusive Nature of Happiness

Life, Liberty and Property Were Protective Role of Governments, but Happiness?

by Winsip Custer CPW News Service

Thomas Jefferson and the trunk where letter was found.

It was the philosopher John Locke who building upon the imagination of Greek and Roman philosophers described the role of government as providing the protection of life, liberty and property.  Thomas Jefferson provided an alteration of Locke's famous assessment and in writing the Declaration of Independence included the duty of the new American government to help citizens secure the "pursuit of happiness" as a substitute for "property".  "My Soul, are we to create a nation whose chief end is the pursuit of property?" asked Jefferson in this never before seen letter, unearthed in the bowels of the nation's chief archive.  "If this is the case I envision that one day people will see the new nation as nothing more than a marketplace of commerce, perhaps laying aside cherished traditions like church attendance, social discourse and healthy balanced living for gluttonous forms of self-indulgence.  Property?  Happiness is a broader goal and if people choose even an ethereal goal like perfect meditation and silence,  the abolition of some wasting disease, writing the most beautiful song, or sonnet or novel, the accumulation of land from sea to shining sea or the collection of little dust collecting nic nacks, gadgets, gizmos, do-dads and what nots, who am I to say, but clearly 'life, liberty and property' sounds much less deserving as 'life liberty and the pursuit of happiness,'" wrote Mr. Jefferson from his porch at Monticello.


Thomas Jefferson's parents were Peter and Jane Randolph Jefferson who lived in the Goochland Shire, Tuckahoe Creek and Fort Germanna region of the Shenandoah Valley where Joseph Rutherford Walker, the scout for John C. Fremont, builder of the first Transcontinental Railroad, was born.  Joseph Walker was son of Joseph Walker Sr. and Susan Willis Walker whose plantation was near William Randolph II, the cousin of Thomas Jefferson's mother.

We now know that this "pursuit of happiness" did not include all Americans and that some were stomped beneath the onslaught as if in a stampede in a department store wedding dress sale as the maniacal hopefuls storm the opening doors. "Pursuit of happiness" may have been partially an inspiring public relationship gimmick used to sanatize the tactics needed to pursue happiness across prairie thistles, copperheads, water moccasins and to separate new land from hostile folks trying to hold on to their own neck of the woods that was more like the neck, shoulders, torso, hips, thighs, calves, feet and toenails.  Native Americans were not considered to be under the protection of the government. Slaves were denied basic human rights, women could not vote and minority groups like Italian, Irish, Jews, Poles and others often found the privilege of full citizenship afforded to some, but not afforded to others.  Germans faired better because many had immigrated from their British and French mercenary jobs following European wars to the bloody American frontier.  "Men had it good," said Beaman C. Rimfire of the Society for Rejuvenation of Masculine Imaging, a Washington D.C. masculine imaging, brandy sniffing and cigar boutique firm, though the name "boutique" does not appear anywhere in the firm's literature.  "The pursuit of happiness wed as it was to territorial expansion made many men happy.  After the Mrs. had filled the cabin with what Jefferson called  'little dust collecting nic nacks, gadgets, gizmos, do-dads and what nots', she'd have to sell them or risk losing them in a river forging.  As for Thomas Jefferson, 'Tommy' to those of us feel we know him, except for France, he liked staying put in Virginia near buildings inspired by Miss Sally's dome shaped swollen breasts," said Rimfire.

Monticello, the domed home designed and built
by Thomas Jefferson

"Tommy Jefferson was responsible for one of the great 'go get 'em boys' moments like a Knute Rockne or Vince Lombardi or General George Patton speech," said Rimfire whose organization raises millions each year for men's causes through the It's Still Got Hair On It Barbecue and Beer Fest in Huntsville, Alabama.  "Tommy set the tone of the long touchdown run and cheerleaders like Horace Greeley and Thomas Hart Benton stoked the thundering engine that rode the rails of Jefferson's inspiring rhetoric," said Rimfire.  "The further he could expand the wilderness frontier, the safer were Tommy's architectural creations," Rimfire concluded.

Thomas Jefferson at times lamented this fact according to the letter found in the lining of his favorite trunk which was discovered last Thursday at the Smithsonian Institute.  Curator John Smith said "this is a remarkable find," which was originally housed in the National Archive.

"I have many worldly goods which I have pursued with the protection of the new American government, but I confess before God Almighty, that in pursuing more and more land for the United States, with some for myself, I equated the pursuit of happiness with the Westward expansion which I argued that God Almighty had manifestly destined us to acquire regardless of the cost. If we do not move to suckle and nurture the new land we will find it orphaned and apprehended by Spain or France.  If it costs people their lives, either the poor unfortunate native peoples who had not yet figured out how to subdivide its vast expanses to suckle and subdue it, or the poor immigrants who will arrive from Europe to help claim it from the natives, then it is clear that the 'pursuit of life, liberty and happiness' as I had express it, was tarnished like silver from the beginning and not fit to be used in the serving of  a single crumpet much less as a rationale for the ever rolling tide of our Westward ambitions, but circumstance dictate that crumpets be served on a tarnished tray. Happiness is not found in a particular place or object...shinny or tarnished.  Happiness is a condition of the mind and spirit and can be the natural state of those who live without the benefit of a reasoned government.  My greatest desire is for the government we have created to in no way hinder the happiness of its citizens with a system of tax collectors and tax collection processes that befuddles and confounds our people as we have experienced under the damnable monarch, King George.  The earth is round like a ball and balls rebound and bounce in multiple directions making the anticipation of their course unpredictable.  Our new nation's tax collection processes should not mimic this phenomenon, but should be as flat as a slab of granite and entirely predictable, equitable and not impede the free flow of commerce," wrote Jefferson who seems to tie his love of architecture together with his rejection of Christian faith, but sees Christian churches as assisting the Westward expansion.  "The unpredictable nature of the tax collector, among whose ranks was Jesus' follower Matthew, cannot be counted on to push onward.  For that it takes real religious zeal which is why I promote the building of the towering church spires wherever resources and inclinations permit and that these edifices go untaxed by the confining bureaucrats of the governmental order.  While they remind me of a man's finest asset, I much prefer in architecture as in life the domed creations like that of Monticello, which I find most often replicated in the  Unitarian structures and other places of worship."  Mr. Smith admitted that he wasn't sure what Jefferson meant by "other places of worship," but that the letter itself may provide a clue.

The twin domes of Monticello
and the Jefferson
Monument

"I am never happier than when I am in the arms of Miss Sally, but in as much as she is not afforded the benefits of government which I described for some, my happiness quickly fades when I leave her company and consider the hypocritical nature of my past articulations.  Congress has saddled me with the responsibility of writing out of America's law the British primogeniture biases.  This I have done, but I fear that within a generation or two a new monarchy will replace the old.  A monarchy not of royal blood which dies to defend first-born sons, but of business corporations as rigidly controlled as the British monopoly, the East India Company,  is by the Crown and through which a new caste of dominant families will arise.  They will not call the chief investor King nor his first-born, Prince, but they will sit over their own small Kingdoms just the same and will seek plunder without true achievement....and hide their frivolity frolicking under the banner of  'life, liberty and pursuit of happiness' as naked nymphs tiptoeing through daisies and tulips while others fertilize their gardens.  I invoked "happiness" in replacing Locke's words....'life, liberty and property' because it provided an inclusion that Locke's words did not.  They will hide behind the veil of progressive appearances, but through subterfuge and denial they will control the nation's wealth through interlocking directorates and unexpressed, but ironclad and highly exclusive business alliances.  Because our nation's liberty from the Old World tyranny was acquired with the help of lead, steel and gunpowder, these families will be increasingly invested in the arsenal of our freedom.  They will equate patriotism with support of their corporations.  Soon they will forget the purpose of the weapons we used to resist King George and the profits provided through the Revolution will become an end in itself and 'Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness' will become 'the pursuit of life, liberty and property' once again.  Happiness is happiness.  Things are things, but I would certainly be happy right now with a glass of wine, a fine Cuban cigar and the lovely Miss Sally at my side to savor before this growing nation discovers more than lead and sulphur with which to fuel the Westward thrust and the new complex web of a spider-like military establishment which extracts from the people the freedom, liberty and happiness for which they initially fought."

Leading scholars from around the world are expressing their excitement that this final reference prophetically described what Dwight D. Eisenhower said in his departing speech in which he articulated his fear of a reliance upon a new "military industrialist complex".  "It's quite possible that Jefferson's message was transferred to Ike by means of a paranormal conduit or medium," said Dr. Starr B. Bellweather, the curator at the Museum of Paranormal Prophecies in Quincy, Massachusetts.