Robert Fulton (1) (1765–1815)

I have duly received your favor of Feb. 24 covering one of your pamphlets on the Torpedo. I have read it with pleasure. This was not necessary to give them favor in my eye. I am not afraid of new inventions or improvements, nor bigotted to the practices of our forefathers. It is that bigotry which keeps the Indians in a state of barbarism in the midst of the arts, would have kept us in the same state even now, and still keeps Connecticut where their ancestors were when they landed on these shores ... your torpedoes will be to cities what vaccination has been to mankind. It extinguishes their greatest danger. But there will still be navies, not for the destruction of cities, but for the plunder of commerce on the high seas ... (TJ to Fulton, 17 March 1810)

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