To Thomas Jefferson from Andrew Ellicott, 19 December 1803
From Andrew Ellicott
Lancaster December 19th. 1803.
Dear Sir
A few days ago I received a letter from Mr. Livingston our Minister at Paris, which contains some ideas that are new to me. If he has not written to you on the same subject, I presume the extract which is enclosed will afford you some amusement.—The fall of stones from the sky, as Mr. Livingston expresses it, is at war with my theory of the falling stars, as they are termed, to which subject I have lately been paying some attention.
In my journal which is published, I have given a new theory of the gulf stream, the principles of which I should be glad to see discussed.—This part of the work cannot be considered as political, the public has nevertheless been informed by the republican printer of this borough, that the whole is an attack upon you! If this is the case, it certainly was not intended.—Truth has ever been my object, and I trust no circumstance will ever make me change it for a less valuable one.
I have the honour to be with great esteem your friend and Hbl. Serv.
Andw. Ellicott
RC (DLC); at foot of text: “T. Jefferson President of the U.S.”; endorsed by TJ as received 22 Dec. and so recorded in SJL. PrC (DLC: Ellicott Papers).
stones from the sky: regarding meteorites that fell around L’Aigle, France, in April 1803, see John Wheatcroft, Sr., to TJ, at 29 Sep. at war with my theory: on a vessel near Key Largo in 1799, Ellicott witnessed a spectacular meteor shower. He favored a hypothesis by Antoine Lavoisier that meteors were bursts of burning gas ignited by friction between layers of the atmosphere (Ellicott, The Journal of Andrew Ellicott, Late Commissioner on Behalf of the United States … for Determining the Boundary between the United States and the Possessions of His Catholic Majesty in America [Philadelphia, 1803], 248-9; , Transactions, 6 [1809], 28-9).
In his recently published journal from the survey of the southern boundary of the United States, Ellicott discussed the gulf stream and theories advanced to explain it. He made no direct reference to TJ, but did cautiously contradict statements of Benjamin Franklin about the Gulf Stream (Journal of Andrew Ellicott, 260-6).
republican printer of this borough: William Dickson, the publisher of the Intelligencer of Lancaster, like William Duane of the Aurora, attacked Ellicott in his newspaper. Ellicott responded with a libel suit. Dickson, along with Duane, became one of Thomas McKean’s leading opponents in the press (Aurora, 20 Oct., 10 Nov.; G. S. Rowe, Thomas McKean, The Shaping of an American Republicanism [Boulder, Colo., 1978], 363, 367; James Hedley Peeling, “Governor McKean and the Pennsylvania Jacobins, [1799-1808],” , 54 [1930], 343-4).