The Tree of Liberty
Thomas Jefferson — Letter to William Stephens Smith
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
Jefferson wrote this line in an 1787 letter to William Stephens Smith, responding to news of Shays' Rebellion. Writing from Paris, he argued that occasional popular uprisings were a healthy, even necessary, feature of a free society — a striking and still-debated claim from one of the Declaration's authors.
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Related passages
- Self-Evident Truths — Declaration of Independence
- Constitutional Preamble — U.S. Constitution
- Four Score and Seven Years — Abraham Lincoln
- Foreign Entanglements — George Washington