Monticello, August 13, 1800.
Sir,
Your favor of July the 19th has been received, and received with the
tribute of respect due to a person, who, unurged by motives of personal
friendship or acquaintance, and unaided by particular information, will
so far exercise his justice as to advert to the proofs of approbation
given a public character by his own State and by the United States,
and weigh them in the scale against the fatherless calumnies he hears
uttered against him. These public acts are known even to those who know
nothing of my private life, and surely are better evidence to a mind
disposed to truth, than slanders which no man will affirm on his own
knowledge, or ever saw one who would. From the moment that a portion of
my fellow-citizens looked towards me with a view to one of their highest
offices, the floodgates of calumny have been opened upon me; not where I
am personally known, where their slanders would be instantly judged and
suppressed, from a general sense of their falsehood; but in the remote
parts of the Union, where the means of detection are not at hand, and
the trouble of an inquiry is greater than would suit the hearers to
undertake. I know that I might have filled the courts of the United
States with actions for these slanders, and have ruined perhaps many
persons who are not innocent.
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