Charles Holt to Thomas Jefferson, 25 October 1810
From Charles Holt
New York, October 25, 1810.
Sir,
As I cannot suppose you for a moment indifferent to the welfare of a country with whose prosperity your name and services are so intimately connected; and as you cannot, therefore, have ceased to feel an interest in the proper conduct of those indices of public opinion the Newspapers, your patronage to one of which I have heretofore so long experienced; I feel myself guilty of great neglect in not having before presented for your approbation The Columbian, now permanently established in this city, and destined, I hope, to become an efficient supporter of the principles and measures now so happily prevailing in the United States, and so eminently the fruit and care of your talents and labors. Yet as diffidence alone has prevented the offering, I trust in your goodness to excuse the omission, and the liberty I take in addressing in this manner so peculiar an object of my highest regard and esteem. And I send to your address a few numbers of the paper, with a hope that it may not be deemed quite unworthy of your notice and favor, but accepted at least as a mark of sincere attachment and devotion in,
Charles Holt
RC (DLC); at foot of text: “Thomas Jefferson, Esq”; endorsed by TJ as received 12 Nov. 1810 and so recorded in SJL. Enclosure: New York Daily Columbian, unidentified issues.
Charles Holt (ca. 1771–1852), newspaper editor and printer, established the New London (Conn.) Bee (1797–1802), the Hudson (N.Y.) Bee (1802–10), and the New York Daily Columbian (1809–16). Holt was an outspoken Republican who was fined and imprisoned for libel under the Sedition Act in 1800. A subscriber to the New London Bee, TJ assisted in paying the fine. Holt later held several public offices, including assistant justice, naval clerk, and commissioner of deeds. In 1844 Congress repaid his Sedition Act fine of $200, with interest from 1800. Holt died in Jersey City (, 1:52, 585, 614; no. 602; , 2:983, 1018, 1123, 1206; James Morton Smith, Freedom’s Fetters: The Alien and Sedition Laws and American Civil Liberties [1956], 373–84; , 32:117n; Charles Johnson to TJ, 26 Apr. 1802 [DNA: RG 59, LAR, 1801–09]; Milton W. Hamilton, The Country Printer: New York State, 1785–1830 [1964], 124, 184, 191; Longworth’s New-York Register, and City Directory [New York, 1818], 169; Longworth’s American Almanac, New-York Register, and City Directory [New York, 1819], 208; , 35:85, 39:504–5, 1162 [21 Dec. 1840, 28 Feb., 17 June 1844]; New-York Daily Tribune, 2 Aug. 1852).
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