The Library of Congress was founded in 1800 with a modest mission, a reference resource for Congress. But that changed after the British burned Washington during the War of 1812 and the original collection was lost. In response, Thomas Jefferson offered to sell his own library to the U.S. government. His collection of books was considered one of the finest in the New World, containing thousands of volumes on almost every topic imaginable—not just law, statecraft, and history, but also the sciences, philosophy, and the arts. To those who argued that such a disparate set of works was unnecessary
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