To James Madison from Thomas Jefferson, 5 May 1793
From Thomas Jefferson
May. 5. 93.
Th: J. to J. Madison.
No letter from you since that of Apr. 12. I received one from mr. Pinckney1 yesterday informing me he expected to send me by the next ship a model of the threshing mill. He had been to see one work, which with 2. horses got out 8. bushels of wheat an hour. But he was assured that the mill from which my model was taken get outs [sic] 8 quarters (i.e 64 bushels) of oats an hour with 4. horses. I have seen Dr. Logan. Your ploughs will be done in a week & shall be attended to. Seal & forward Monroe’s letter2 after reading it. Adieu. Your’s affectly.
P. S. I inclose a Boston paper3 as a proof of what I mention to Monroe of the spirit which is rising.4 The old tories have their names now raked up again; & I believe if the author of ‘Plain truth’5 was now to be charged with that pamphlet, this put along side of his present Anglomany would decide the voice of the yeomanry of the country on his subject.
RC (DLC); FC, Tr (DLC: Jefferson Papers). RC addressed by Jefferson.
1. Thomas Pinckney to Jefferson, private letter of 13 Mar. 1793 (DNA: RG 59, Diplomatic Despatches, Great Britain).
2. Jefferson to Monroe, 5 May 1793 (, 6:238–40).
3. Jefferson may have enclosed an article written over the pseudonym “Freeman” which denounced as “tories” the American opponents of the French Revolution (Boston Columbian Centinel, 20 Apr. 1793).
4. In his letter to Monroe of 5 May 1793, Jefferson wrote: “The war between France & England seems to be producing an effect not contemplated. All the old spirit of 1776. is rekindling. The newspapers from Boston to Charleston prove this; & even the Monocrat papers are obliged to publish the most furious Philippics against England” (, 6:238).
5. [James Chalmers], Plain Truth, Addressed to the Inhabitants of America (Philadelphia, 1776; 15088). This pamphlet was written against Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. Jefferson erroneously attributed it to Hamilton (Thomas R. Adams, “The Authorship and Printing of Plain Truth by ‘Candidus,’” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 49 [1955]: 231 and n. 4).