To James Madison from James P. Morris, 19 July 1823
From James P. Morris
Bolton Farm, near Bristol Penna. July 19. 1823.
Sir
The respect in which I have been Educated, and which I entertain for yr. patriotism, & principles, induces me to take the liberty of troubling you with the enclos’d address;1 the sentiments of which, being of general application, will, so far as they may merit your approval, encourace [sic] me to beleive, that they would, (if generally adopted) be conducive to the improvemt. of the Agricultural class of the Community throughout the Union. I have the honor to be, with the greatest respect Your Mo. Ob. Servt.
James. P. Morris.2
RC (DLC). Docketed by JM.
1. James P. Morris, An Address, Delivered Before the Agricultural Society of Bucks County, on the 28th of April, 1823 by James Pemberton Morris, at the Request of the Society (Philadelphia, 1823; 13402). JM’s copy is in the Madison Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress.
2. James Pemberton Morris (1795–1834), a Bucks County, Pennsylvania, gentleman farmer, was the son of Dolley Madison’s good friend, Anthony Morris (Thomas Allen Glenn, ed., Genealogical Notes Relating to the Families of Lloyd, Pemberton, Hutchinson, Hudson and Parke … [Philadelphia, 1898], 55, 60). For the younger Morris’s experiments in scientific farming, see Steven Stoll, Larding the Lean Earth: Soil and Society in Nineteenth-Century America (New York, 2002), 80–81.