answer which he returned. I am informed, a very lengthy address was also sent along with a copy to Mr. Jefferson; but I have not had an opportunity of perusing the answer which they received from the President of the United States. The philosophic Barber undertook the task of forming a political tract, which he called an Essay on the Liberty of the Press. He dispatched a copy of the work immediately, when finished, to Monticello, and received a letter from Mr. Jefferson, complimenting him highly on the production, and expressing at the same time, his satisfaction, that the United States were blessed with such authors, or words to that purpose. He had another copy given to Mr. Burr, but the Vice-President did not condescend to take the same notice of the book as Mr. Jefferson did; although the author says it was delivered into his hands, in the utmost style of ceremonial politeness, by William Temple Broome, Esq. late a Notary in New-York, a gentleman who even excelled the little deputy attorney general in tiptoe scraping, courteous smiling, and fashionable grimace . . .

For Elihu Palmer’s The Principles of Nature, and his letter to Jefferson, see no. 1290. No letter from Jefferson to Palmer has been found.

The philosophic Barber was possibly John Thomson, whose Enquiry concerning the Liberty and Licentiousness of the Press was published in 1801. No letter from Jefferson to Thomson has been found.

For a note on John Wood see no. 506. This tract contains a violent attack on James Cheetham, whose pamphlet, An Antidote to John Wood’s Poison, By Warren , had recently been published.

The Society of the Columbian Illuminati was the name given to the Theistical Society of New York, founded in 1802, of which Elihu Palmer was President.

Unbound; probably Jefferson’s copy.

William Bainbridge, 1774-1833, naval officer, took command of the George Washington in 1800, and was sent on a mission to the Dey of Algiers, who then required Bainbridge to take his ship to Constantinople under the Ottoman flag, with a special embassy for the Dey to the Sultan of Turkey. John Rea was a sailor aboard the ship at this time. A few years later Jefferson did business in Philadelphia with an upholsterer of that name.

This is probably Jefferson’s copy; it has been separated from a volume of pamphlets and bound in brown buckram by the Library of Congress (in August 1917).

Contains a reference to Jefferson’s inaugural speech: . . . Republicans!

Beware of that charybdis--COALITION--The proposition that we are “ALL *REPUBLICANS, ALL FEDERALISTS,” if accredited by you, will lead to ruin . . .

*See President Jefferson’s inaugural speech.

Thomas Usher Pulaski Charlton, 1779-1835, jurist and author in Savannah, Georgia, wrote to Jefferson from that city on March 28, 1801, to congratulate him on his ascendancy to the Presidency.

This Oration is dedicated to the Republicans of Chatham County.