Actual Thomas Jefferson Newspaper Product Endorsement

1811 Unknown Newspaper

In 1809 Thomas Jefferson retired from public office, and James Madison was inaugurated president. Jefferson left Washington and returned to his home, Monticello, in Virginia where he was never to leave again. Thomas Jefferson would then begin a period of letter-writing that would total almost 20,000 letters in his lifetime, among them, scholarly musings to colleagues, and affectionate notes to his family, and civil responses to admirers. Jefferson would state that "From sun-rise to one or two o'clock," he noted, "I am drudging at the writing table." He wrote John Adams that he suffered "under the persecution of letters," calculating that he received 1,267 letters in the year 1820, "many of them requiring answers of elaborate research, and all to be answered with due attention and consideration."[1]

In this advertisement I found in a 1811 newspaper which I unfortunately did not record the title or actual date.... one of the letters that Thomas Jefferson wrote ended up being used in a advertisement for the magazine itself on the front page. I doubt Jefferson gave approval of this. All he states below is that he wanted to become a subscriber and that he was satisfied that this magazine was being published. In the actual letter which is transcribed below, he had many suggestions that were omitted from the actual advertisement. This would be the equivalent of ex-President Bill Clinton writing Helen Gurley Brown and having her post it on the front cover without his permission.... bad analogy but you get the point.

As a reference it would be a few years later in 1813 John Adams wrote to Jefferson that it would be a shame for them to depart this life without having explained themselves to each other. Adams and Jefferson exchange letters for about three years, during which they evaluate the events of the Revolution and range over a assortment of political and philosophical issues. During 1811-12, a shared friend Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia had facilitated the reunion of Adams and Jefferson, who had been not speaking for about a decade.

TO MELATIAH NASH.

Monticello, November 15, 1811.

Sir,—I duly received your letter of October 24 on the publication of an Ephemeris. I have long thought it desirable that something of that kind should be published in the United States, holding a middle station between the nautical and the common popular almanacs. It would certainly be acceptable to a numerous and respectable description of our fellow citizens, who, without undertaking the higher astronomical operations, for which the former is calculated, yet occasionally wish for information beyond the scope of the common almanacs. What you propose to insert in your Ephemeris is very well so far. But I think you might give it more of the character desired by the addition of some other articles, which would not enlarge it more than a leaf or two. For instance, the equation of time is essential to the regulation of our clocks and watches, and would only add a narrow column to your 2d page. The sun's declination is often desirable, and would add but another narrow column to the same page. This last would be the more useful as an element for obtaining the rising and setting of the sun, in every part of the United States; for your Ephemeris will, I suppose, give it only for a particular parallel, as of New York, which would in a great measure restrain its circulation to that parallel. But the sun's declination would enable every one to calculate sunrise for himself, with scarcely more trouble than taking it from an Almanac. If you would add at the end of the work a formula for that calculation, as, for example, that for Delalande, § 1026, a little altered. Thus, to the Logarithmic tangent of the latitude (a constant number) add the Log. tangent of the sun's declination ; taking 10 from the Index, the remainder is the line of an arch which, turned into time and added to 6 hours, gives sunrise for the winter half and sunset for the summer half of the year, to which may be added 3 lines only from the table of refractions, § 1028, or, to save even this trouble, and give the calculation ready made for every parallel, print a table of semi-diurnal arches, ranging the latitudes from 35° to 45° in a line at top, and the degrees of declination in a vertical line on the left, and stating, in the line of the declination, the semi-diurnal arch for each degree of latitude, so that every one knowing the latitude of his place and the declination of the day, would find his sunrise or his sunset where their horizontal and vertical lines meet. This table is to he found in many astronomical hooks, as, for instance, in Wakeley's Mariner's Compass Rectified, and more accurately in the Connoissance des tems, for 1788. It would not occupy more than two pages at the end of the work, and would render it an almanac for every part of the United States.

To give novelty, and increase the appetite for continuing to buy your Ephemcris annually, you might every year select some one or two useful tables which many would wish to. possess and preserve. These are to be found in the requisite tables, the ??????? for different years, and many in Pike's arithmetic.

I have given these hints because you requested my opinion. They may extend the plan of your Ephemeris beyond your view, which will be sufficient reason for not regarding them. In any event I shall willingly become a subscriber to it, if you should have any place of deposit for them in Virginia where the price can be paid. Accept the tender of my respects. [2]

[1] http://www.monticello.org/jefferson/dayinlife/cabinet/home.html

[2] The Writings of Thomas Jefferson : Autobiography, with appendix. Correspondence: Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private : Published by the Order of the Joint Committee of Congress on the Library, from the Original ... By Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington Published by Taylor & Maury, 1854