The date was April 5th, 1815. On
the Indonesian island of Sumbawa, the horrifying volcano, Mount Tambora erupted
with a massive volcanic explosivity index of 7, a record which had not been
seen since 180 AD. Even more devastating, though, was the eruption’s
effect on the atmosphere. Over 100 cubic km worth of volcanic material was
ejected into the atmosphere. That mixture of volcanic ash and sulfurous gasses gathered
in the atmosphere refracted enough sunlight to cause a significant temperature drop
in many portions of Canada, the Americas, and Europe.
“What does this have to do with the Library of Congress,”
you may be asking yourself.
Excellent question.
The
date was May 17th, 1816. Thomas Jefferson, a high status plantation owner and
the retired third president of the united states, wrote in his journal, “[T]he
spring has been unusually dry and cold. our average morning cold for the month
of May in other years has been 63° of Farenheit. in
the present month it has been to this day an average of 53° and one morning as
low as 43°. repeated frosts have killed the early fruits and the crops of
tobacco and wheat will be poor.”[1]
Because of the eruption of Mount
Tambora, frosts were occurring until late July, which destroyed a huge
percentage of Thomas Jefferson’s crops. This setback in production significantly increased
Jefferson’s already sky-high debt.
This is where the Library of Congress becomes relevant.
Thomas Jefferson had a massive
collection of books, of which he was very proud. He had intended for this collection of books
to be sold to Congress at his death for a reasonable price to become public
use. Although, after the burning of Washington D.C and after a considerably bad
year for crops due to the eruption of Tambora, Thomas Jefferson decided to sell
his books to help reestablish the Library of Congress. Congress bought Jefferson’s
6,487 books for $23,950. What is now the largest public library on the planet
was kick started by a Virginian man who had a big debt problem and an even
bigger passion for the universalization of information. In a letter to Samuel Smith,
who was integral in the business transaction of the books, Jefferson remarked, “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."1
I visited the Library of Congress this
semester and was in awe of the amount of knowledge that is stored in that
building. I saw the Gutenberg Bible and I learned so much about the
contributions that Thomas Jefferson added to the library. I am proud to know
that a Virginian contributed so heavily to one of America’s most prized source
of knowledge.
[1] Edgar
A. Imhoff, "The Eruption of Mount Tambora | Thomas Jefferson's
Monticello," May 2009, 1, accessed October 20, 2016,
https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/eruption-mount-tambora.
