RC (DLC); addressed: “Thomas Jefferson Vice President of the United States Monticello Virginia”; endorsed by TJ as received 18 Sep. and so recorded in SJL.

George Smith Houston, son of William Churchill and Jane Smith Houston, was orphaned with the death of his mother in 1796. His father died of tuberculosis in 1788. His maternal grandparents were Caleb Smith, a Presbyterian clergyman, and Martha Dickinson Smith, daughter of Jonathan Dickinson, the first president of the College of New Jersey. In 1789 Houston attended Trenton Academy. Ten years later he had not yet come of age and was still dependent on his guardian, the executor of his father’s estate, for income. Thus he was quite young when he wrote this letter. He married Mary Forman, probably in the early 1820s. Their son William Churchill Houston became a prominent Philadelphia merchant (Genealogy of Early Settlers in Trenton and Ewing, “Old Hunterdon County,” New Jersey [Trenton, 1883], 124–8; George Smith Houston to Maskell Ewing, 7 Oct. 1799 and 1 June 1805 in NjP:William Churchill Houston Papers; receipts from treasurer of Trenton Academy, 7 Jan. and 1 July 1789, in same).

The Pamphlet was probably Serious Considerations on the Election of a President: Addressed to the Citizens of the United States, attributed to William Linn, the New York City clergyman who corresponded with TJ on Indian languages. On 2 Oct. William Duane noted that he had received an unsolicited copy of the pamphlet printed in Trenton, New Jersey, by Sherman, Mershon & Thomas. John Beckley, characterizing the piece as a virulent portrayal of TJ “as an Athiest and Deist,” countered it with a series of four articles signed “Senex.” These appeared in the Aurora on 27 Aug. and 2, 5, and 26 Sep., and were subsequently published as a pamphlet. DeWitt Clinton responded with essays under the signature of “Grotius,” which were published in New York in 1800 as A Vindication of Thomas Jefferson; Against the Charges Contained in a Pamphlet Entitled, “Serious Considerations,” &c. (Gawalt, Justifying Jefferson description begins Gerard W. Gawalt, Justifying Jefferson: The Political Writings of John James Beckley, Washington, D.C., 1995 description ends , 191–6; Philadelphia Aurora, 2 Oct. 1800; Cunningham, Jeffersonian Republicans description begins Noble E. Cunningham, Jr., The Jeffersonian Republicans: The Formation of Party Organization, 1789–1801, Chapel Hill, 1957 description ends , 223–7). According to SJL TJ did not answer this letter and there is no other correspondence with Houston.

William C. Houston, George’s father, served as a New Jersey delegate to congress from 1779 to 1781 and 1784 to 1785. He attended the Annapolis Convention in 1786 and the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia a year later, although he was ill at the time and did not sign the document (ANB; description begins John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, New York and Oxford, 1999, 24 vols. description ends James McLachlan, Princetonians, 1748–1768: A Biographical Dictionary [Princeton, 1976], 643–7).