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Details
JEFFERSON, Thomas. Autograph letter signed ("Th: Jefferson"), as President, to James Cheetham, Washington, 6 November 1807. 1 page, folio, minor browning along folds, integral address leaf with autograph Free Frank signed: "Th: Jefferson Pr. US."
JEFFERSON LOOKS FORWARD TO RETIREMENT "FROM NEWSPAPER READING" AND "CANNOT BEGIN BETTER" THAN BY CANCELING HIS SUBSCRIPTION TO ALEXANDER HAMILTON'S NEW YORK EVENING POST
Jefferson is tired of the New York Post, as he tells editor James Cheetham: "Your account amounting to 30.D. tho' received sometime ago had escaped my attention. Having occasion to make remittance to Mr. [David] Gelston [New York customs agent] I have included that sum with his & must therefore ask the favor of you to call on him for it. The time of my retirement being now not very distant, I am beginning to retire from newspaper reading. I cannot begin better than with the New York Evening Post, of which in truth I have scarcely opened one for two years past. I will therefore pray you to discontinue forwarding them to me. Accept my salutations & respects."
Devotees of the Post should not feel singled out by Jefferson's slight. He was just as cool towards nearly all papers. Famed as he may be for his ringing endorsements of press freedom, there are just as many Jefferson quotes bashing the Fourth Estate: "I deplore...the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed..." (to Walter Jones, 1814); "Our printers raven on the agonies of their victims, as wolves do on the blood of the lamb" (to Madison, 1811); "From forty years' experience of the wretched guess-work of the newspapers...I rarely think them worth reading, and almost never worth notice" (to Monroe, 1816); "Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper" (to John Norvell, 1807); "Advertisements...contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper" (to Nathaniel Macon, 1819).
Newspapers in Jefferson's day were not the objective dispensers of news and information they profess to be today. They were the pit bulls of partisan factions, used to maul opponents mercilessly. Jefferson played the game as roughly as anyone. It was a Jeffersonian writer's attack on George Washington as the "harlot" of Britain that cost Jefferson his friendship with the first President. Likewise the long bitter chill between Adams and Jefferson was the direct result of attacks carried out by partisan journalists in their respective employ. The Post was right in the mix of these newspaper wars. Founded by Alexander Hamilton and other Federalist investors in 1801, the paper attacked Jefferson throughout his two terms in office. When an article in the Post accusing Jefferson of paying writers to attack John Adams was reprinted in an upstate New York paper called The Wasp, Jefferson sued for libel in 1803, and none other than Alexander Hamilton defended the publisher. Although he lost, Hamilton persuaded the New York legislature the following year to change the libel law so that truth could be used as a defense.
JEFFERSON LOOKS FORWARD TO RETIREMENT "FROM NEWSPAPER READING" AND "CANNOT BEGIN BETTER" THAN BY CANCELING HIS SUBSCRIPTION TO ALEXANDER HAMILTON'S NEW YORK EVENING POST
Jefferson is tired of the New York Post, as he tells editor James Cheetham: "Your account amounting to 30.D. tho' received sometime ago had escaped my attention. Having occasion to make remittance to Mr. [David] Gelston [New York customs agent] I have included that sum with his & must therefore ask the favor of you to call on him for it. The time of my retirement being now not very distant, I am beginning to retire from newspaper reading. I cannot begin better than with the New York Evening Post, of which in truth I have scarcely opened one for two years past. I will therefore pray you to discontinue forwarding them to me. Accept my salutations & respects."
Devotees of the Post should not feel singled out by Jefferson's slight. He was just as cool towards nearly all papers. Famed as he may be for his ringing endorsements of press freedom, there are just as many Jefferson quotes bashing the Fourth Estate: "I deplore...the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed..." (to Walter Jones, 1814); "Our printers raven on the agonies of their victims, as wolves do on the blood of the lamb" (to Madison, 1811); "From forty years' experience of the wretched guess-work of the newspapers...I rarely think them worth reading, and almost never worth notice" (to Monroe, 1816); "Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper" (to John Norvell, 1807); "Advertisements...contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper" (to Nathaniel Macon, 1819).
Newspapers in Jefferson's day were not the objective dispensers of news and information they profess to be today. They were the pit bulls of partisan factions, used to maul opponents mercilessly. Jefferson played the game as roughly as anyone. It was a Jeffersonian writer's attack on George Washington as the "harlot" of Britain that cost Jefferson his friendship with the first President. Likewise the long bitter chill between Adams and Jefferson was the direct result of attacks carried out by partisan journalists in their respective employ. The Post was right in the mix of these newspaper wars. Founded by Alexander Hamilton and other Federalist investors in 1801, the paper attacked Jefferson throughout his two terms in office. When an article in the Post accusing Jefferson of paying writers to attack John Adams was reprinted in an upstate New York paper called The Wasp, Jefferson sued for libel in 1803, and none other than Alexander Hamilton defended the publisher. Although he lost, Hamilton persuaded the New York legislature the following year to change the libel law so that truth could be used as a defense.