No Library of Congress (as we know it)

"The grand library of Mr. Jefferson will undoubtedly be purchased with all its finery and philosophical nonsense." --Boston Gazette, October 27, 1814

Thomas Jefferson never claimed to have founded the Library of Congress; however, Dumas Malone argues (*Jefferson and His Time, Volume Six: The Sage of Monticello*--all quotes in this post are from this book), p. 171 that "the institution that emerged from the ashes after the war [of 1812] was virtually his creation." According to Malone:

"When the government of the young Republic moved from Philadelphia to the wilderness village of Washington, a special collection of books for the use of the senators and representatives became a necessity. One was started in 1800, toward the end of John Adams' presidency, and the little library got under way during that of Jefferson with the benefit of his counsel on acquisitions. The collection consisted of perhaps three thousand volumes when the British invaders destroyed it in the summer of 1814. Learning of this action from the newspapers, Jefferson described it as the triumph of vandalism over knowledge itself. He promptly offered to sell to Congress his own library, which turned out to be more than twice the size of the one that was lost. The moment seemed opportune, not merely because he needed the money (a consideration he did not mention) but also because Congress could not easily replace its losses by shipments from Europe while the war was still going on, and probably could acquire no such a collection as his anyway." pp. 171-2

Eventually (in January 1815) Congress did accept Jefferson's offer--but (in the House) just barely. "A motion by Joseph Lewis, a Federalist Congressman from his [Jefferson's] own state that consideration of the bill be indefinitely postponed was defeated by only four votes. Another, that it be postponed to March 4, was defeated by only six. Almost as much support was given a more humiliating motion by Cyrus King of Massachusetts. This would have authorized the joint committee, on receipt of the library Jefferson had spent so many years in collecting, to select from it the books that were suitable and to sell the rest. The final vote on the bill authorizing the purchase of the collection as a whole was 81 to 71." p. 178

What were the reasons for the strong opposition? First of all, the Federalists opposed it almost to a man, arguing (among other things) that, Jefferson being Jefferson, his library was sure to be full of atheistic French philosophy. "Among those voting in the negative were Timothy Pickering, of whom partisan bigotry was to be expected, and Daniel Webster, who had not yet emerged as a champion of nationalism but was still in a provincial stage. In no section was the opposition so great as in New England, and the bitterest of all the speakers seems to have been Cyrus King. According to the unsympathetic report in the *National Intelligencer* he said he was 'opposed to a general dissemination of that infidel philosophy' and the principles of a man who had inflicted more injury on the country than anybody else except Mr. Madison. The books for which money was to be put into Mr. Jefferson's pocket were described by this well-educated spokesman of High Federalism as 'good, bad, and indifferent, old, new, and worthless, in languages which many cannot read and most ought not.' The whole transaction was in 'true Jeffersonian, Madisonian, philosophy, to bankrupt the Treasury, beggar the people, and disgrace the nation.'"

The Federalists were joined in opposition by a considerable number of Republicans, including Nathaniel Macon, leader of the "Old Republicans," a faction devoted to economy in government. In short, the vote was less a triumph of the forces of light over those of darkness than a narrow victory of the Madison administration over its political opponents. As Malone notes (pp. 178-9) there was a plausible case for opposition:

"By this time the legislators knew that the prospect of successful negotiations at Ghent had improved, but news of neither the treaty of peace nor Jackson's victory at New Orleans had yet reached Washington. The financial problems of the country were far from solution--a fact of which no one was more aware than Jefferson. It could certainly be argued sincerely that at such a time, money was needed for other things much more than for what then seemed a big library. The large vote for postponement of this question is far from inexplicable. But as viewed by posterity, the basic question was that of the character of the library.

"The legislators could not have proceeded indefinitely without books, but if this particular collection had not been offered and accepted, we may wonder if Congress would soon, or ever, have set up one of comparable scope. This was a general, not a narrowly professional, library and, by acquiring it, Congress laid the foundations of a great national institution, destined to rank with the Bibliotheque Nationale and the British Museum. Most of the legislators may have continued to think of it as their own particular possession, but it could and did serve a larger clientele and a wider purpose. Their final vote may have been determined primarily by political considerations, and we cannot ascertain the number who shared Jefferson's vision; but the legislators well deserve the gratitude of posterity for what they brought about."

(One sad footnote, though: Most of the books Jefferson sold the government would be destroyed by fire in 1851.)

In support of Malone's contention that anything but a small and narrowly technical library might have taken a long time to acquire if Jefferson's collection had been rejected (or never offered), I would suggest that it would be just like John Quincy Adams to ruin the prospects of a larger, more general library by proposing it in 1825, preferably with some comparison to the Bibliotheque Nationale and the British Museum. Immediately, the Jacksonians would subject the idea to as much scorn as they did Adams' OTL proposals for a national university and for astronomical observatories (which Adams in a much-ridiculed phrase called "lighthouses of the skies"). There would be sneering references to "Mr. Adams' American Museum," "Mr. Adams' Bibliotheque Americaine," etc. The cause of a large national library could be set back for generations...
 
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