Sent to Jefferson by Samuel Harrison Smith, with a letter dated from Washington, August 18, 1813: “I take the liberty of enclosing the following trifle delivered here on the late anniversary of our Independence which I ask you to receive entirely as a tribute of respect. I hope your contemplated improvements have kept pace with your wishes, and that the calm delights of retirement are enhanced by the finish which art, under the direction of taste, knows how to bestow on the finest natural scenery . . .”

Jefferson replied from Monticello on August 23: “ Th: Jefferson presents his compliments to m( ^~ r) Sam ^l. H. Smith, & his thanks for the oration he has been so kind as to send him. he has read it with great pleasure and sympathises with all it’s sentiments sincerely, one excepted, respecting the exhausting our resources on a navy. our strength is on the land, & weakness on the water. our enemies’ strength is on the water, at land nothing. and however capriciously fortune has hitherto disposed of events, he apprehends that to transfer the war to the scene where we are nothing and they omnipotent, is exactly what they must wish. considering however the votes of Congress as indicating the will of the majority to be in favor of the experiment, he substitutes acquiescence for conviction, and will go chearfully with the nation. if they are wrong, events will soon correct them: if right no man on earth will rejoice more sincerely than himself at being corrected in an error, and on seeing a re-establishment of that right which nature has given in common to all nations over an element purposely interposed to bring the most distant of them together . . . ”

For Samuel Harrison Smith, 1772-1845 (who in the previous month, July 1813, had been appointed commissioner of revenue, and had received the congratulations of Jefferson), and his association with Jefferson, see the Index.