RC (DLC); dateline beneath signature; at foot of text: “Thomas Jefferson Esqr”; endorsed by TJ as received 28 July 1811 and so recorded in SJL. Enclosure: “Leolin” [Austin], Resistance to Laws of the United States; considered in four letters to the Honorable Harrison Gray Otis, Esq. Late President of the Senate of Massachusetts (Boston, 1811; Sowerby, description begins E. Millicent Sowerby, comp., Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, 1952–59, 5 vols. description ends no. 3404; with presentation copy at DLC containing Austin’s inscription on title page: “Thomas Jefferson with the respects Of the Author”), denouncing resolutions made at a Federalist caucus held at Fanueil Hall in Boston on 31 Mar. 1811, including one which declared that the reimposition of commercial nonintercourse with Great Britain, its colonies, and its dependencies would lead “to the ruin or impoverishment of some of the most industrious and meritorious citizens of the United States—and that the only means short of an appeal to force to prevent such a calamity, (which heaven avert) is the election of such men to the various offices in the State Government as will oppose by peaceable but firm measures the execution of laws which if persisted in, MUST AND WILL BE RESISTED!!” (p. 4); criticizing especially caucus leader Harrison Gray Otis for condoning this implicit threat of force; arguing that most Americans would dismiss as ludicrous the idea of resisting a federal statute through violence, yet insisting that any such threat tended to undermine the Constitution and the Union; and concluding (p. 24) that Otis had brought upon himself the “DISGRACE AND RUIN OF PREMEDITATED REBELLION.”