To Thomas Jefferson from Thomas U. P. Charlton, 28 March 1801
From Thomas U. P. Charlton
Savannah March 28th. 1801
Sir,
Permit a man who has ever held in high veneration those principles which have uniformly characterised your official conduct, to express his congratulation on your appointment to the presidency of the Union:—and to indulge himself with an expectation, that the measures of your administration may ultimately prove as beneficent, as they are at present anticipated by a majority of your Countrymen—
It was time, Sir, that the rights of the freemen of America should be rescued from the grasp of domestic usurpation; and the idea is fondly cherished, that the influence of your experience,—your wisdom, combined with the energies of a regenerated Legislature, may, eer the fiat of nature snatches you from your post, bring back our institutions to their original purity—May Almighty God direct your decisions, and may you long continue to act in the Station to which the voice of your Country has elevated you, is,
Sir, the devout wish, of your fellow Citizen
Thos U P Charlton
RC (DLC); endorsed by TJ as received 24 Apr. and so recorded in SJL.
Thomas Usher Pulaski Charlton (1779–1835) of Savannah was an aide-de-camp and protégé of Governor James Jackson, the leading Republican in Georgia. Elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in October 1802, Charlton went on to enjoy a distinguished career as a politician, jurist, and writer. In 1804 Jackson wrote TJ an unsuccessful recommendation of Charlton for the post of U.S. district attorney at New Orleans, describing him as “a determined Republican, & friend of the present administration.” Charlton published a laudatory biography of Jackson in 1809, three years after his mentor’s death (Kenneth Coleman and Charles Stephen Gurr, eds., Dictionary of Georgia Biography, 2 vols. [Athens, 1983], 1:184–5; George R. Lamplugh, Politics on the Periphery: Factions and Parties in Georgia, 1783–1806 [Newark, Del., 1986], 150, 166, 176–8; Georgia Gazette, 7 Oct. 1802; Jackson to TJ, 26 Mch. 1804).