and other publications in several European languages--notably French--as well
as in classical Greek and Latin. Jefferson believed in the primary importance
of the knowledge acquired from books to meet the local, national, and
international challenges of his day. He bought for himself, for friends and
relatives, and even for public use books he thought necessary in every field
from applied science to abstract philosophy. Many of Jefferson's purchases
were published in France or written in French. While he was in Paris as
America's minister, from 1784 to 1789, he nearly doubled his already notable
library. It is the library he established during his years as governor of
Virginia, minister to France, secretary of state, and president of the United
States--years of national and international importance--that is of particular
significance to the Library of Congress.

In 1814 the Congress of the United States lost its library in the
burning of the Capitol Building by British soldiers. Jefferson, then a former
president living in retirement at Monticello, offered to replace the lost
collections by selling his own books to Congress--a library known as the
richest private collection in America. He strongly believed that Congress,
which would inevitably be involved in both national and international affairs,
would benefit substantially from the range of subjects and languages it
contained. The legislators, however, challenged the need for such a variety of
materials and questioned especially the extraordinary profusion and scope of
French books; and they objected to the French material on both political and
moral grounds:

"It might be inferred," said Cyrus King, one of the principal
antagonists, "from the character of the man who collected it,
and France, where the collection was made, that the library
contained irreligious and immoral books, works of the
French philosophers, who caused and influenced the volcano
of the French Revolution which had desolated Europe and
extended to this country." Jefferson's books, which would
help disseminate his "infidel philosophy," were "good, bad,
and indifferent, old, new, and worthless, in languages which
many can not read, and most ought not." (Cited in paper
delivered by Douglas Wilson but not included in this volume
and in William Dawson Johnston History of the Library of
Congress: Volume 1, 1800-1864, Washington, 1904, p. 86).

Jefferson, however, succeeded in persuading them that such a library was
necessary to the long-term work of the Congress, even though it contained so
wide a range of subjects and languages, some of which may have appeared
irrelevant to a legislature, or even objectionable to it. "There is, in fact,"
Jefferson wrote, "no subject to which a member of Congress may not have

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