Thomas Jefferson Papers

Notes on a Conversation with Perez Morton, 24 March 1800

Notes on a Conversation with
Perez Morton

Mar. 24. mr Perez Morton of Mass. tells me that Thatcher, on his return from the War-Congress, declared to him he had been for a decln of war against France, & many others also; but that on counting noses they found they could not carry it, & therefore did not attempt it.

MS (DLC: TJ Papers, 108:18559); entirely in TJ’s hand; on same sheet as Notes on John Marshall, 21 Mch.

Perez Morton (1751–1837), a Republican living in Boston and then Dorchester, was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1794. As a leader in state politics, he served as speaker of the House from 1806 to 1811 and then as attorney general for the next two decades (John L. Sibley and Clifford K. Shipton, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates: Biographical Sketches of Those Who Attended Harvard College, 17 vols. [Cambridge, Mass., 1873–1975], 17:555–61; Madison, Papers: Sec. of State Ser., 5:192–5). Representative George Thatcher (Thacher) lived in Biddeford, Maine. In 1801 he retired from Congress to accept an appointment as associate justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court (DAB description begins Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, New York, 1928–36, 20 vols. description ends ).

Index Entries