Paragraph on Disaffected Citizens, 1804[?]
Paragraph on Disaffected Citizens
[1804?]
some citizens whose disaffection to our form of govmt have lost them the public confidence, preferring every thing to insignificance have in their despern talked of a dissoln1 of the Union these however are so few that our mad houses will hold them should2 acts follow their words of insanity
MS (DLC: Madison Papers, Miscellaneous Manuscripts); entirely in TJ’s hand; undated; precedes Notes on Shipment, [before 23 July 1804], on verso of same sheet as Notes on Washington Highways, [ca. 2 July 1804] (Vol. 44:29-30, 136-7), interleaved in a bound volume of Madison’s notes (see , 14:168n).
This passage has no evident association to anything drafted by TJ, nor is it known how the manuscript came into Madison’s papers. It was apparently seen there later in the nineteenth century by George Ellis Baker, a confidant and biographer of William H. Seward and his secretary when Seward was secretary of state. In a volume of Seward’s Works, Baker appended this text to comments about Seward’s actions toward “influential but disloyal citizens” during the Civil War. Baker attributed the paragraph to TJ but did not cite its source. He correctly read TJ’s abbreviation for “dissolution” but misinterpreted “despern” as “despair” (George E. Baker, ed., The Works of William H. Seward, new ed., 5 vols. [Boston, 1884], 5:33; Patricia C. Johnson, ed., “Stumping for Lincoln in 1860: Excerpts from the Diary of Fanny Seward,” University of Rochester Library Bulletin, 16 [1960], 9n).
1. That is, “in their desperation talked of a dissolution.”
2. MS: “should should”