The 627 documents in this volume cover the period between 1 December 1821 and 15 September 1822. During this time Jefferson turned seventy-nine years old, and though he wrote to John Adams that he “dreaded a doting old age,” he remained relatively healthy and attuned to current events. A wide variety of individuals and organizations continued to seek Jefferson’s advice and support. He received an anonymous letter and broadside from a Virginian advocating universal white male suffrage. When a new society “for the civilisation of the Indians” named him and the other former presidents its patrons, Jefferson declined the appointment, believing that permitting a private group to assume a federal responsibility would set a dangerous precedent. Several authors solicited his recommendations of their newly published works. Others asked for his insights on inventions of or improvements to stoves, lighthouses, telescopes, and navigable balloons. William Lambert sent two abstruse sets of astronomical calculations. Jefferson often excused himself from detailed responses, citing his advanced age and stiffened wrist. Indeed, he found the volume of unsolicited correspondence so burdensome that he allowed one of his complaints to Adams to be leaked to the press in hopes that strangers would stop deluging him with letters seeking replies.
Jefferson endured several disappointments. A joint effort by the University of Virginia and other institutions of higher learning to persuade Congress to remove a tariff on imported books failed, as did attempts to obtain enough funding from the state legislature to enable the University of Virginia to begin operations. News that a young family connection had led student protests at South Carolina College also caused concern. Nevertheless, Jefferson continued to encourage the educational aspirations of his correspondents, sending a suggested book list to students at Washington College in Lexington, Virginia, and to an older resident of Lynchburg, and recommending a course of law reading to his grandson Francis Eppes and future grandson-in-law Nicholas P. Trist.
Jefferson also remained plagued by financial debt. Though agricultural prices were slowly rising from the economic downturn of 1819–20 and production on his Poplar Forest plantation was improving, he struggled to meet the numerous demands he faced. Particularly worrisome was his involvement in the insolvency of the late Wilson Cary Nicholas, and Jefferson sought the legal assistance of both Virginia’s Spencer Roane and Kentucky’s Henry Clay in a suit that he hoped would clear this crushing obligation. The imminent departure for Kentucky of his longtime Monticello overseer, Edmund Bacon, added to Jefferson’s burdens, although his grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph proved willing and able to assist him.
In the realm of government and politics, Jefferson found himself uncomfortably in the public eye. In anticipation of the election of 1824, newspapers reported in January 1822 that he had written in support of the presidential candidacy of the South Carolinian William Lowndes, and Jefferson felt compelled to insert an anonymous note in the Richmond Enquirer refuting the claim. A few months later Jefferson again turned to the Enquirer, this time with two letters under his own name, after the pseudonymous writer, “A Native of Virginia,” accused him in a Federalist newspaper in Baltimore of having knowingly accepted a double payment from the United States Treasury related to his service as minister to France. In the wake of newspapers reprinting his letter of 28 September 1820 to William Charles Jarvis, Jefferson received several unsolicited requests for his opinion on constitutional matters and judicial review, to which he did not reply. While avoiding discussing American politics, he still corresponded with close friends on political developments in Europe.
Jefferson looked forward to the visits of friends and described meetings with his fellow University of Virginia board members as opportunities “for feasting the mind.” Though he fled Monticello to avoid an onslaught of participants at an Episcopal convention in Charlottesville, he highly esteemed Frederick W. Hatch, the local minister of that denomination, to whom he offered monetary gifts and invitations to dine. Jefferson’s efforts to keep his own religious views private were undercut when his friend Benjamin Waterhouse published extracts from one of his letters on the subject in a Boston newspaper. One skeptic about biblical authenticity presumed that Jefferson was a kindred spirit and sent him an essay on theism at the end of 1821. Jefferson himself observed approvingly the growth of Unitarianism in the nation, writing confidently to Waterhouse that “I trust that there is not a young man now living in the US. who will not die an Unitarian.”
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