To Thomas Jefferson from Thomas T. Davis, 23 February 1801
From Thomas T. Davis
Washington Feby. 23rd 1801
Sir
I ask leave to lay before you the inclosed Letter from Tho. Green Senr. about ninety-one Years of age to M. Clay of Virga. It will shew to you the State of things in the Massissippi Territory, which is shortly to be under your care, other written evidences are here but the age & Respectability of the writer of this Letter entitles him to attention. Mr Claiboun of Tinnessee would be pleased with an opportunity of Residing in that Territory.
I am with Respect yr most obt Servt
Tho. T. Davis
RC (DLC); endorsed by TJ as received 24 Feb. and so recorded in SJL. Enclosure: Thomas Green, Sr., to Matthew Clay, 22 Dec. 1800, from Natchez, decrying a “Junto of Villains” attempting to block the advancement of the Mississippi Territory to a second stage of territorial organization that would include a more representative government; Green, who had settled near Natchez in the early 1780s, also declaring that Winthrop Sargent, governor of the territory and center of the faction that promoted its own private interests instead of republican principles, was more of an arbitrary tyrant than his predecessors under Spanish rule had been (same, endorsed by TJ; Dunbar Rowland, ed., Encyclopedia of Mississippi History, 2 vols. [Madison, Wis., 1907], 1:796–7; Vol. 31:337n, 549n).
Thomas Terry Davis (d. 1807), an attorney, represented Kentucky in the U.S. House of Representatives for three terms beginning in March 1797. He received a judicial appointment in Indiana Territory in February 1803 (Biog. Dir. Cong., 883).