In August 1814, during the war of 1812, British soldiers set fire to the Capitol building—destroying (or at least probably destroying) the first Library of Congress, which consisted of some 3,000 volumes. A few weeks later, Thomas Jefferson, who was then the proud owner of the largest personal collection of books in the United States—between 9,000 and 10,000 volumes, he said, and the product of some 50 years of collecting—wrote a letter to his friend, the newspaper publisher Samuel H. Smith.
“I learn from the newspapers that the vandalism of our enemy has triumphed at Washington over science as well as the arts, by the destruction of the public library with the noble edifice in which it was deposited,” Jefferson wrote, before asking Smith to help him offer his library to Congress.
“It is long since I have been sensible it ought not to continue private property, and had provided that, at my death, Congress should have the refusal of it, at their own price,” he wrote. “But the loss they have now incurred makes the present, the proper moment for their accommodation, without regard to the small remnant of time, and the barren use of my enjoying it.”
Surprisingly (or not), not everyone in Congress liked the idea of buying Jefferson’s library. Federalists complained on the basis of “its extent, the cost of the purchase, the nature of the selection, embracing too many works in foreign languages, some of too philosophical a character, and some otherwise objectionable.” Or to put a finer point on it, as Cyrus King argued, the books would infect the Capitol with Jefferson’s “infidel philosophy” and at any rate were “good, bad, and indifferent ... in languages which many can not read, and most ought not.” Well, some things never change.
But the bill passed, and on January 30th, 1815, President James Madison signed it, appropriating $23,950 to buy Jefferson’s library. According to records from the time, Jefferson sent a total of 6,487 books to kickstart the new Library of Congress, more than doubling its original size. As the last of his books were carted away, Jefferson wrote again to Smith, remarking that “an interesting treasure is added to [Washington, D.C.], now become the depository of unquestionably the choicest collection of books in the US. and I hope it will not be without some general effect on the literature of our country.”