Beschreibung:

JEFFERSON, THOMAS, President . Autograph letter signed ("Th:Jefferson") as President, to Isaac Briggs, Surveyor General South of the Tennessee, Washington, D.C., 14 March 1805. 1 page, 8vo, integral blank with recipient's docket, clean fold separation at lower edge, browned. "IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR ME TO GOVERN [THE LOUISIANA TERRITORY] WITHOUT INFORMATION" The President writes to Briggs, a former Maryland agriculturist and entrepreneur now Surveyor General of the United States for the region south of the Tennessee River, regarding Briggs's salary and his confidential reports to him on the formation of a government and the surveying of the newly-acquired lands of the Louisiana Purchase. "Your letter of Feb.9 comes to hand in the moment of my departure on a short visit to Monticello,. I have time therefore only to thank you for the information it contains, and to pray you to continue it, as it is impossible for me to govern without information. I wish to know every thing & then do what I find is right. On your information I have reliance. Your map & report arrived 3 or 4 days only before Congress rose. I communicated them. They were entirely disposed to compensate your labor, but they had past the stage of appropriations. An effort was made to insert an appropriation in the Post office bill which was still unpassed; but it was declared to be unprecedented, & so dangerous to let appropriations be slipt into bills so much out of their due course that it was struck out, and it was too late to introduce it otherwise. It lies over therefore for next session. In the meantime Mr. [Albert] Gallatin [Secretary of the Treasury] says you need not suffer for the money, as you are authorized to draw as surveyor, & may draw the more largely, to be allowed in your future accounts. I have written to Govr. [William C. C.] Claiborne [Governor of Louisiana] about the location & survey of La Fayette's lands. Pray attend to it, as you would were it my case. It is nearer my heart than my own concerns. Accept my affectionate salutations...." Jefferson's expressions of his passionate interest in the survey of the Louisiana Territory lands intended as a gift to the Marquis by Congress is of considerable interest. "The administration surveyed the possibility of locating [the grant]...in lower Louisiana, where also he [Lafayette] might be useful as Governor. Jefferson dismissed the idea of appointing him, however, since he could not wait for his old friend to get here from France" (D. Malone, Jefferson the President , p. 357. Claiborne had been appointed Governor in October 1804, and given the difficult task of governing a vast area of diverse population. [ With ] BRIGGS, ISAAC. Three letters (apparently in two different scribal hands) to Thomas Jefferson (retained copies), all Washington, near Natchez, Mississippi Territory, 8 September and 9 December 1803, and 2 January 1804. Together 10 1/2 pages, 4to and folio, browned, one leaf separated at folds. Briggs's detailed letters to Jefferson on the new Territories: 8 Sept. 1803: "It appears to me probable that not less than thity millions of acres in the Territory of Louisiana will be hereafter claimed, under fraudulent, antedated Spanish Grants, issued since information has arrived here, of the cession of that Territory...." 2 Jan. 1804: Gov. Claiborne's "difficulties appear to be great....The people...are unreasonable in their expectations. The reputation of the American government is so high....Considerable time is necessary to change, radically, long established habits...." [Appealing for an end to slavery:] "Oh my friend, - may I not call the the friend of Man! -- is there no way of putting a stop to this crying, dangerous, national sin?....When we make, to the world, high professions of Republicanism -- hold ourselves up as the boasted guardians of the Rights of Man..." (3) (4)