{"id":225654,"date":"2026-09-26T23:16:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T23:16:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/thomas-jefferson-letter-goes-on-the-market-containing-a-prescient-warning-for-trump-today-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T23:16:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T23:16:15","slug":"thomas-jefferson-letter-goes-on-the-market-containing-a-prescient-warning-for-trump-today-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/thomas-jefferson-letter-goes-on-the-market-containing-a-prescient-warning-for-trump-today-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Thomas Jefferson letter goes on the market \u2013 containing a prescient warning for Trump today – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Third US president wrote in 1787 about importance of peace, paying off debt and supporting agriculture
A<\/span> remarkably prescient letter written by Thomas Jefferson, the third US president, advising how the newly created country could prosper, has been put up for sale<\/a> by a private collector. The handwritten document from 1787 warns specifically against many of the missteps Donald Trump<\/a> has taken to drag down his own second term of office.
Written in Paris, where Jefferson was the fledgling government\u2019s minister to France<\/a>, the note to David Rittenhouse<\/a>, a friend and fellow member of the American Philosophical Society, muses on the priorities and principles he believed future presidents should follow.
Previously on display at Texas A&M University, the letter and a book described as \u201ca major European scientific work\u201d, an accompanying gift from Jefferson to Rittenhouse, have a guide price of $285,000 through the Raab Collection, a Pennsylvania<\/a>-based dealer in historical artifacts and documents.
\u201cPeace should be our plan, and the payment of our debts, improvement of our constitutions and extension of agriculture our principal objects,\u201d Jefferson wrote, sharing his thoughts about that year\u2019s landmark federal convention in Philadelphia, later known as the constitutional convention<\/a>, which debated and signed the US constitution.
Almost 240 years later, Trump, who has frequently hailed Jefferson as one of his political heroes, and installed a lifesize bronze statue<\/a> of him in the White House Rose Garden in July to mark the US semiquincentennial, appears to have eschewed every element of his predecessor\u2019s advice.
His hugely unpopular war<\/a> in Iran endures; the national debt has surpassed $40tn<\/a> for the first time; Trump\u2019s \u201cblitzkrieg<\/a>\u201d on the constitution continues; and he is at odds with American farmers<\/a> over his administration\u2019s treatment of the agricultural sector.
Nathan Raab, president of the Raab Collection, said it was difficult not to draw parallels between Jefferson\u2019s caution contained in a highly personal document drafted barely a decade after the dawn of the new nation, and the volatility of politics in 2026.
\u201cLeaving out the various partisan positions, the prescience here is that the same issues that the founding fathers were dealing with during the constitutional convention of the founding of our country are issues that still make headlines today,\u201d he said.
\u201cThings change, yet things stay the same, and here we are confronting many of the same issues that were on the lips of our founding fathers, or the tip of their quills, back in 1787.
\u201cThese are fundamental issues that, really, have faced our country for a long time. Of all the issues that have come and gone \u2013 isolation, war, peace \u2013 on the other end spending and debt have remained.\u201d
Jefferson\u2019s letter covers more ground than only his thoughts on the nation\u2019s future direction. He shares with Rittenhouse, a fellow scientist and avid astronomer who built precision telescopes<\/a> and early models of the solar system, his love of \u201cthe west\u201d, and fear of another conflict with England four years after the end of the revolutionary war.
\u201cDigging out of a hole of debt, funding not only the war debts but also the creation of this new country, was something that was very much an issue,\u201d Raab said.
\u201cWhat I love about this letter is it\u2019s kind of a general warning. He\u2019s not saying, \u2018So and so said this, and therefore we must counter with this message.\u2019 He\u2019s giving in one broad stroke what he feels should be the priorities of the convention and the country.
\u201cHe kept in contact with people who were involved in the convention and was in the loop as much as you could be when a letter took three weeks or so to reach England. But he certainly didn\u2019t have updated information, which is illustrated by the fact that the day he wrote this letter, the convention finished.
\u201cHe had no way of knowing. He wouldn\u2019t know for weeks.\u201d
Raab\u2019s company has handled numerous Jefferson documents previously, including the sale in 2024 of a letter written in 1802 revealing his precarious financial situation<\/a>, and last year\u2019s uncovering of a note<\/a> he wrote to Virginia\u2019s then governor Benjamin Harrison in 1783 expounding the rights of citizens to bear arms in revolutionary causes.
But Raab said he has never seen anything as impressive as the letter and book given to Rittenhouse.
\u201cThis is at the very top,\u201d he said. \u201cThe breadth of knowledge that [Jefferson] brought to this letter, the many subjects in which he is completely conversant. He\u2019s talking to a prominent scientist as well.
\u201cThe important warning that he offers at the end is just so relevant today, it\u2019s impossible to miss. I think it\u2019s intentional that he saved that to the end of the letter. And the idea that Jefferson, a very famous book buyer and collector, is sending books to another founding father, David Rittenhouse, and the book is still together with the letter, that\u2019s just incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Third US president wrote in 1787 about importance of peace, paying off debt and supporting agricultureA remarkably prescient letter written by Thomas Jefferson, the third US president, advising how the newly created country could prosper, has been put up for sale by a private collector. The handwritten document from 1787 warns specifically against many of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":225655,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-225654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}