Richard Folwell to Thomas Jefferson, 22 August 1805
From Richard Folwell
Phila. Aug. 22, 1805.
Sir
I enclose to you, as being at present the principal Pillar of public Will, a Prospectus for publishing a periodical Paper. I invite and ask you to become a Subscriber. The Terms will be known by the Bill. I invite a Reply; and, if it Should be approbatory to my Plan, it would obviously facilitate Patronage, which my Study on Man, Interest to my Country, in Consequence, will possibly render a proper Reward.
I am, A Friend,
Richd Folwell
RC (DLC); at foot of text: “Tho’s Jefferson, Esqr.”; endorsed by TJ as received 29 Aug. and so recorded in SJL. Enclosure: “Proposals, for Publishing a Weekly Paper, to be Called, The Spirit of the Press, Free to all Parties, and Adulterated by None,” announcing three-dollar annual subscriptions for a weekly publication “having a smaller proportion of advertisements” and serving “all the purposes of a political register”; printed with Folwell’s “Sketch of Political Parties,” Philadelphia, 4 July 1805, on verso (MWA).
Richard Folwell (1768?-1814) was a well-known Philadelphia printer. Highlights of his publishing career included a three-volume edition of The Laws of the United States of America (1796-97), Short History of the Yellow Fever, That Broke Out in the City of Philadelphia, in July, 1797 (1797), and an edition of the journals of the Continental and Confederation Congresses (1800-1801). In the complicated fallout from 1792 to 1797 over the Alexander Hamilton-Maria Reynolds affair, he provided testimony against Hamilton’s reputed mistress, who had boarded with Folwell’s mother, and offered to authenticate Reynolds’s handwriting. In September 1805 he established the Spirit of the Press, a weekly newspaper that continued infrequently until 1813. At various times from 1802 until his death, Folwell aspired to public office (, 21:188-92; , 2:951-2; Clarence E. Carter, “Zephaniah Swift and the Folwell Edition of the Laws of the United States,” American Historical Review, 39 [1934], 695; Philadelphia Gazette of the United States, 23 June 1802; Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser, 19 Aug. 1806; Spirit of the Press, 5 Oct. 1805, 1 Dec. 1806; Philadelphia Tickler, 14 Sep. 1808, 2 Oct. 1811; Providence Gazette, 21 May 1814; Vol. 18:675; Vol. 31:392n).