Michael Leib (1760–1822), physician and politician, received medical training from Benjamin Rush and as a surgeon attached to the Pennsylvania militia during the Revolutionary War. Later he became associated with the College of Physicians of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia almshouse and dispensary. Leib sat in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, 1795–98, 1806–08, and 1817–18, in the United States House of Representatives, 1799–1806, in the United States Senate, 1809–14, and in the Pennsylvania Senate, 1818–21. He also served as Philadelphia’s postmaster, 1814–15. Initially an outspoken Jeffersonian, Leib remained fiercely loyal to William Duane and joined him in strident opposition to James Madison’s administration as part of the steadily weakening Pennsylvania faction of Old School Democrats (ANB description begins John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, 1999, 24 vols. description ends ; DAB description begins Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, 1928–36, 20 vols. description ends ; Leib to TJ, 6 Apr. 1801 [DNA: RG 59, LAR, 1801–09; PTJ description begins Julian P. Boyd, Charles T. Cullen, John Catanzariti, Barbara B. Oberg, and others, eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 1950– , 31 vols. description ends , 33:543]; Philadelphia Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser, 30 Dec. 1822).

Duane had been convicted of libel seven years after publishing a paragraph that accused James E. Smith of corrupt practices as “steward of the Lazaretto” quarantine hospital near Philadelphia. James Reynolds served on the board of health that ousted Smith. Jasper Yeates (yates) was a justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court (Relfs Philadelphia Gazette. And Daily Advertiser, 19 July 1804; Philadelphia Aurora General Advertiser, 20 July 1804; New York Commercial Advertiser, 3 Aug. 1811; John Hill Martin, Martin’s Bench and Bar of Philadelphia [1883], 23, 326).

On a former occasion TJ advised Leib that he “would do any thing in my power to assuage & reconcile” the warring branches of Pennsylvania Republicans (TJ to Leib, 12 Aug. 1805 [DLC]).

William Blount, a former governor of the Southwest Territory, briefly represented the new state of Tennessee in the United States Senate before that body expelled him in 1797 for involvement in a conspiracy to transfer possession of Florida and Louisiana from Spain to Great Britain (DAB description begins Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, 1928–36, 20 vols. description ends ). In 1797 Duane charged that the New York physician Nicholas romayne was a British agent promoting the plot. When Romayne departed for England three years later, Duane commented that “where such characters are on the move there cannot be much good brewing” (New York Diary and Mercantile Advertiser, 14 July 1797; Alexandria Times: and District of Columbia Daily Advertiser, 7 July 1800).