...time ceased to read newspapers, or pay any attention to public affairs, confident they were in good hands, and content to be a passenger in our bark to...am not distant. But this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of...

...1819, the battle over slavery reared its ugly head. As Jefferson wrote at the time, the Missouri issue "like a fire-bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror." Slavery was well entrenched in the territory, existing in the region long before the Louisiana Purchase...

...held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated," he wrote. The dispute over Missouri, "like a fire-bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once the knell of the Union." Compromise of 1850 Thirty years after the Missouri Compromise, the issue of...

...their country, is to be thrown away by unwise and unworthy passions of their sons." He claimed that "this momentous question, like a fire-bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror" and portended that the Missouri issue or, more broadly, slavery in the West, would be "the knell of...

...momentous question" — would the new, slaveholding state of Missouri be permitted to join the union? — "like a fire-bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror," he exclaimed in his April 1820 letter to Holmes. "I considered it at once as the knell of the Union."...

...held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated," he wrote. The dispute over Missouri, "like a fire-bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. 1 considered it at once the knell of the Union." Compromise of 1850 Thirty years after the Missouri...

...Before he died, Jefferson had a preview of this awful outcome: The Missouri "question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union."7 Jefferson's conception of republican empire grew out of his experiences as a leader of Virginia's...

...time ceased to read newspapers, or pay any attention to public affairs, confident they were in good hands, and content to be a passenger in our bark to the shore from which 1 am not distant. But this momentous question, like a firebell in the night, awakened and filled me...

...expressing his grave concern This "momentous question, like a fire bell in the night," he said, "awak ened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of th Union." Later in the same letter, he observed that "we have the wolf b the ears, and we can neither...

...1820, Thomas Jefferson labeled the division of America over slavery as a "momentous question, [that] like a firebell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror." Today, I echo Jefferson's warning about racial divisions and tensions within the United States and...