“ tributor, every thing which was ever published in those papers or by those persons.--I must correct a fact in mine of the 15 ^th. [ .] I find I did not inclose the 50.D. to Callender himself while at Gen ^l. Mason’s, but authorized the Gen ^l. to draw on my correspond ^t. at Richmond and to give the money to Callender. so the other 50.D. of which he speaks were by order on my correspond ^t. at Richmond . . . ”

Copies of the letters mentioned are now in the Jefferson Papers in the Library of Congress.

On July 22, 1804, Jefferson wrote the letter to Mr. John Adams which has been quoted in no. 3184 above. This letter continues after the quoted passage: “ with respect to the calumnies and falsehoods which writers and printers at large published against m( ^~ r) Adams, I was as far from stooping to any concern or approbation of them as m( ^~ r) Adams was respecting those of Porcupine, Fenno, or Russell, who published volumes against me for every sentence vended by their opponents against m ( ^~ r) Adams. but I never supposed m( ^~ r) Adams had any participation in the atrocities of these editors or their writers. I knew myself incapable of that base warfare, & believed him to be so. on the contrary, whatever I may have thought of the acts of the administration of that day, I have ever borne testimony to m ( ^~ r) Adams’s personal worth, nor was it ever impeached in my presence without a just vindication of it on my part. I never supposed that any person who knew either of us could believe that either meddled in that dirty work. but another fact is that I ‘liberated a wretch who was suffering for a libel against m ( ^~ r) Adams.’ I do not know who was the particular wretch alluded to: but I discharged every person under punishment or prosecution under the Sedition law, because I considered & now consider that law to be a nullity as absolute and as palpable as if Congress had ordered us to fall down and worship a golden image; and that it was as much my duty to arrest it’s execution in every stage, as it would have been to have rescued from the fiery furnace those who should have been cast into it for refusing to worship their image. it was accordingly done in every instance, without asking what the offenders had done, or against whom they had offended, but whether the pains they were suffering were inflicted under the pretended Sedition law. it was certainly possible that my motives for contributing to the relief of Callender and liberating sufferers under the Sedition law, might have been to protect, encourage and reward slander: but they may also have been those which inspire ordinary charities to objects of distress, meritorious or not, or the obligations of an oath to protect the constitution, violated by an unauthorized act of Congress. which of these were my motives must be decided by a regard to the general tenor of my life. on that I am not afraid to appeal to the nation at large; to posterity, and still less to that being who sees himself our motives; who will judge us from his own knolege of them, and not on the testimony of Porcupine or Fenno . . . ”

Many years later, on March 31, 1824, Robert Richardson, a Shaker living in Union Village, Ohio, wrote from there to Jefferson: “. . . It has indeed been a matter of serious regret to me, that during a residence of more than forty years in Virginia, my native state, I had never once the pleasure of a personal interview with you. And yet it is probable, that you now have articles in my hand writing, among your papers. I am entirely acquainted with the contents of the second volume of the Prospect before us: and as to the Defence , under the signature of a Scots correspondent, the whole of the manuscript, with the exception of fifteen or twenty lines, was in my hand writing. It comprised nineteen columns, when printed in the Examiner. The extent however, of my agency in these matters was not known to any individual, either in Richmond, or elsewhere, except to James Thomson Callender, and of course to myself. But as soon as he began, in his paroxisms of inebriety, to commit unwarrantable indiscretions, and to assail in the foulest terms his best friends, I told him plainly to his face, that I would not in future write any thing with him, or any thing for him. And to this declaration, I adhered strictly. It is well known to John Beal, an Italian merchant, who lived immediately adjoining the office of the Recorder , that I told Callender my mind, one evening, very freely in his presence . . .”