Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice can not sleep forever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference!

Removing or preventing corrupting dependence would enable men to be equal in practice. At age 16 Jefferson entered the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg and first met the law professor George Wythe who became his influential mentor. I contemplate it as a blot left in all our constitutions which if not covered will end in their destruction which is already hit by the gamblers in corruption and is sweeping away in its progress the fortunes and morals of our citizens.

Thomas Jefferson (April 13 1743 (April 2 1743 O. Elected Vice President in 1796 when he came in second to John Adams of the Federalists Jefferson opposed Adams and with Madison secretly wrote the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions which attempted to nullify the Alien and Sedition Acts. In 1803 President Jefferson initiated a process of Indian tribal removal and relocation to the Louisiana Territory west of the Mississippi River in order to open lands for eventual American settlers.