“I regret that I am now to die in the belief that the useless sacrifice of themselves, by the generation of ’76. to acquire self government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be that I live not to weep over it.”12
“I” is Thomas Jefferson lamenting the Missouri Compromise and it’s Tennessee cut-off between slave (south) and free (north). Most interesting here is that he identifies himself as, “the generation of ‘76”; and not when the Constitution was ratified.
