The information in page 131 of the enclosed volume, part of a letter dated Montezuma, July 1820, related to Clinton’s advocacy for the Erie Canal: “When this work was first proposed to President Jefferson, in 1809, he pronounced it impracticable at the present time, and declared that it was a century too soon to make the attempt. Why this great misjudgment occurred to this great man, and to many other wise men, must be imputed to their overlooking important facilities, and to their indiscriminate application of past events to present times, without taking into consideration important dissimilarities.”

Joshua forman, a representative in the New York State Assembly, later recalled that he and New York congressman William Kirkpatrick had visited TJ in Washington in January 1809. Forman noted that during a discussion of the prospects for the Erie Canal, TJ stated that “it was a very fine project, and might be executed a century hence. ‘Why sir,’ said he, ‘here is a canal of a few miles, projected by General Washington, which, if completed, would render this a fine commercial city, which has languished for many years because the small sum of 200,000 dollars necessary to complete it, cannot be obtained from the general government, the state government, or from individuals—and you talk of making a canal of 350 miles through the wilderness—it is little short of madness to think of it at this day’” (David Hosack, Memoir of De Witt Clinton [1829]: 346–7).