50
The Constitution’s Deep Roots
tion for drafting a new constitution. Indeed, the men of the founding
generation seemed to love books as much as they loved liberty. We get
a glimpse of these American values from the last will and testament of
Josiah Quincy, a brilliant Boston lawyer who fought at the side of John
Adams against British tyranny: ‘‘I leave to my son, when he shall have
reached the age of fifteen, the works of Algernon Sidney, John Locke,
Francis Bacon, Gordon’s Tacitus and Cato’s Letters. May the spirit of liberty rest upon him.’’
A letter written by Thomas Jefferson in 1771, when he was twentyeight years old, gives us yet a better insight into the kinds of books the
educated class of Americans read and valued. Robert Skipwith, a friend
of Jefferson’s, asked Jefferson to draw up a list of the books that a Virginia gentleman should have in his personal library. Jefferson obliged
his friend with a lengthy list divided into numerous sections, including
‘‘Fine Arts’’ (including poetry, drama, art, and gardening), ‘‘Politics and
Trade,’’ ‘‘Religion’’ (which included what we would call philosophy today), ‘‘Law,’’ ‘‘History,’’ and ‘‘Natural Philosophy and Natural History’’
(what we now call the sciences). Works on poetry and fiction, such as
those of John Dryden, Alexander Pope, and Jonathan Swift, were included, he said, because ‘‘every thing is useful which contributes to fix us
in the principles and practice of virtue.’’ Most of the basic works on Greek
and Roman history—Tacitus, Livy, Sallust, and Plutarch—gave detailed
accounts of the corruption in Roman politics. Works on English politics
and political history focused on the constitutional conflicts of the seventeenth century, but included later works too—Locke, Sidney, Montesquieu, and Bolingbroke. Under religion Jefferson included the writings
of Cicero, Seneca, Xenophon, Epictetus, and Hume. Blackstone’s Commentaries, Lord Kames’s Principles of Equity, and a law dictionary were
the only entries under the heading ‘‘Law.’’ The Bible also appeared on the
list, as did Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary and some of the writings of Edmund Burke and the Scottish economists Adam Smith and Sir James
Steuart. Almost all of these works, in one degree or another, were read
widely by the educated class of Americans who directed the affairs of the
American Republic in the formative years. They provided American political leaders with a deep sense of history, an understanding of liberty
and constitutional government, and a system of values, both personal