RC (DLC); at foot of text: “His Excellency Thos Jefferson. Monticello”; endorsed by TJ as received 30 July 1818 and so recorded in SJL. Enclosures: (1) Samuel Jackson, An Oration, Delivered, at the County Court-House, Philadelphia, on the Forty-Second Anniversary of American Independence (Philadelphia, 1818; Poor, Jefferson’s Library description begins Nathaniel P. Poor, Catalogue. President Jefferson’s Library, 1829 description ends 13 [no. 826]; TJ’s copy in ViU), describing the Fourth of July as the “sabbath of our liberties” and contrasting the commemoration of the Declaration of Independence with the way that “Other nations celebrate with heartless pomp, and idle pageantry, the birth day of a despot, whom they dare not approach” (pp. 2–3); predicting that, thanks to the expansion of population and promotion of internal improvements, “Republic will rise on republic; empire stretch beyond empire, till either ocean constitute the boundaries of free and confederated America” (p. 4); declaring that the “discovery of this country, and the adoption of a free and enlightened system of government, have been designed by Providence to effectuate the perfection of the human character and the advancement of society” (p. 4); surveying the history of civilization, including the fall of Rome and development and demise of the feudal system; positing a direct connection between European settlement in the Americas “and the declaration of our freedom, as parts of the divine scheme for the gradual improvement of man; and progressive perfection of society” (p. 11); and concluding that, since “Faction and disunion, alone, threaten our safety,” the preservation of the “Union of the states” is paramount (p. 12). (2) Cutbush, “An Address, Delivered at the Shepherdess, on the Fourth of July 1818, to a company of citizens, by request” (Philadelphia Franklin Gazette, 13 July 1818), connecting the principles of liberty, equality, and the natural rights of man as expressed in the Declaration of Independence with the same ideas articulated in the United States Constitution; declaring that the nation emerged as a direct result of the “hand of Providence”; emphasizing the importance of educating children to “know their rights, their liberties, their inheritance”; praising TJ as author of the Declaration of Independence and quoting from his letter to Benjamin O. Tyler of 26 Mar. 1818; inferring that the blood spilled in the American Revolution sealed “a covenant between God and man, and of rational liberty and just equality”; lauding the contributions of Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, TJ, John Hancock, Robert Morris, Tadeusz Kosciuszko, and Lafayette, as well as American military victories; recalling TJ’s declaration in his first inaugural address that all citizens are both federalists and republicans but denying that most members of the Federalist party support a “federalism which springs from pure principles, and is identified with republicanism”; analyzing Jean Jacques Rousseau’s theory of the social contract and demonstrating its application to a republican form of government; and concluding that everyone shares responsibility for protecting the Union by preserving republican principles, supporting arts, manufactures, and internal improvements, diffusing science, and implanting in the “rising generation correct views of political jurisprudence.”