To Thomas Jefferson from John Thomson Mason, 5 August 1804
From John Thomson Mason
Geo. Town 5th Augt 1804
Dear Sir
As I have changed my residence and now consider the County of Washington in the State of Maryland my domicile, it is in my Judgment improper that I should any longer hold the Office of Attorney of the United States for the District of Columbia which you have heretofore honored me with. In resigning this appointment permit me to offer you my thanks for the Confidence manifested in confering it upon me.
It is proper that I should inform you that Williams and Ray committed upon suspicion of counterfieting Bank notes, or of passing them knowing them to be counterfiet, have obtained a postponement of their trial until the third monday in next month, upon the allegation of wanting witnesses, from Georgia. The Court will then meet to try them, and at that time I shall probably be absent from the City
Permit me Sir to mention to you as a candidate for the Office I now fill my friend Mr William Osborn Sprigg. He read law with me four years and afterwards spent a Season at William & Mary. He is a young man of great worth and merit. Independent of my personal attachment for him I feel a pleasure in recommending him to your notice, as a Young Man entirely worthy of it
Accept if you please my best wishes and beleive me to be with sincere regard and great respect Your Obedt Servt
John T. Mason
RC (DNA: RG 59, LAR); endorsed by TJ as received 11 Aug. and “Sprigg. Wm. Osborne. to be atty distr. v. J.T.M.” and so recorded in SJL, where it is connected by a brace with the letter from John Mason of 8 Aug.
Philip Williams and Jacob Ray were committed for trial after first fleeing the district (Levi Lincoln to TJ, 20 June).
On 9 Aug., James Davidson, cashier of the Washington branch of the Bank of the United States, informed David B. Mitchell, the U.S. attorney for Georgia, that the bank would pay for any costs associated with the transportation of witnesses to Washington. In orders of 31 Aug., Mitchell dispatched a deputy marshal to transport a witness, who was out on bail for receiving and passing a counterfeit bank note, from Greensboro, Georgia, to Washington. Mitchell’s orders and an extract of Davidson’s statement are in TJ’s papers (DLC: TJ Papers, 143:24821-2). At some point TJ also received an indication that Williams and Ray remained flight risks. A jailer informed Mason on or before 9 Aug. that he had overheard a conversation between the prisoners in which Ray offered to “get Williams clear & suffer the punishment himself.” It would not be a problem, Ray reportedly said, “for he never saw a door locked three times which he could not open” (in same, 142:24712). It is uncertain when TJ received these documents. He began reviewing a pardon request for Ray in 1806 (Petition of Jacob Ray, 16 May 1806; William Cranch and Nicholas Fitzhugh to TJ, 7 June 1806).