Beschreibung:

JEFFERSON, THOMAS Autograph letter signed. Monticello: 30 March 1826. One page autograph letter signed Th. Jefferson on on... Monticello: 30 March 1826. One page autograph letter signed "Th. Jefferson" on one sheet watermarked "D Ames," with integral blank with address panel in Jefferson's hand and with his franking signature. The letter addressed to Reverend John McVickar of New York. 9 5/8 x 7 7/8 inches (24.5 x 20 cm). Usual folds, the ink of the recto quite fresh and dark, but with some very minor pale spotting to the paper, the verso similarly dark and with remnant of old adhesive to one corner and a small puncture where opened. A very fine Jefferson letter describing his withdrawal from public life just three months before his death. The Reverend John McVickar, the first Professor of Moral Philosophy and Political Economy at Columbia University, sent Jefferson a copy of John Ramsay McCulloch's Outlines of Political Economy on March 26th to which Jefferson has replied just days later. In the letter, Jefferson thanks McVickar for sending the treatise but reports he is "long withdrawn from the business of the world, and little attentive to its proceedings. I rarely read anything requiring a very strenuous application of the mind and none requires it more than the subject of political economy. I rejoice nonetheless to see that it is beginning to be cultivated in our schools. No country on earth requires a sound intelligence of it more than ours. The rising generation will I hope be qualified to act on it understandingly, and to correct the errors of their predecessors." Late letters such as the present example are rare, particularly with poignant content regarding his mental state in the months preceding his death on July 4th, 1826. C