Original calf. The collation is in numerals and Jefferson has written T.i. on a preliminary leaf in each volume. With the Library of Congress 1815 bookplate.

These volumes were a gift to Jefferson from John Adams after his reconciliation with Jefferson had been brought about by Benjamin Rush. Adams wrote on the title-pages: John Adams to Thomas Jefferson Jan. 1. 1812. The inscription in the first volume has been torn away.

On the same day, January 1, 1812, Adams wrote to Jefferson from Quincy regarding his gift of his son’s book: “As you are a Friend to American Manufactures under proper restrictions, especially Manufactures of the domestic kind, I take the Liberty of sending you by the Post a Packett containing two Pieces of Homespun lately produced in this quarter by one who was honoured in his youth with some of your Attention and much of your kindness.

"All of my Family whom you formerly knew are well. My Daughter Smith is here and has successfully gone through a perilous and painful Operation, which detains her here this Winter, from her Husband and her Family at Chenango: where one of the most gallant and Skilful officers of our Revolution is probably destined to spend the rest of his days, not in the Field of Glory, but in the hard Labours of Husbandry.

"I wish you Sir many happy New Years and that you may enter the next and succeeding years with as animating Prospects for the Public as those at present before us. I am Sir with a long and sincere Esteem your Friend and servant.”

Before receiving the package Jefferson replied on January 21: “ I thank you before hand (for they are not yet arrived) for the specimens of homespun you have been so kind as to forward me by post. I doubt not their excellence, knowing how far you are advanced in these things in your quarter. here we do little in the fine way, but in coarse & midling goods a great deal. every family in the country is a manufactory within itself, & is very generally able to make within itself all the stouter & midling stuffs for it’s own cloathing & houshold use. we consider a sheep for every person in our family as sufficient to clothe it in addition to the cotton, hemp & flax which we raise for ourselves. for fine stuff we shall depend on your Northern manufactures. of these, that is to say, of company establishments, we have none. we use little machinery. the spinning Jenny and loom with the flying shuttle can be managed in a family, but nothing more complicated. the economy & thriftiness resulting from our houshold manufactures are such that they will never again be laid aside, & nothing more salutory for us has ever happened than the British obstructions to our demands for their manufactures. restore free intercourse when they will, their commerce with us will have totally changed it’s form, and the articles we shall in future want from them will not exceed their own consumption of our produce . . . ”

Jefferson immediately sent copies of these letters to Rush, to whom he wrote on the same day, January 21: “ as it is thro’ your kind interposition that two old friends are brought together, you have a right to know how the first approaches are made. I send you therefore a copy of m ( ^~ r) Adams’s letter to me & of my answer. to avoid the subject of his family, on which I could say nothing, I have written him a rambling, gossiping epistle which gave openings for the expression of sincere feelings & may furnish him ground of reciprocation, if he merely waited for the first declaration; for so I would construe the reserve of his letter. in the course of the spring I can ”