Jefferson Quotes & Family Letters

If any man say I have abated one jot of my love for Winchester and all that therein is, call him “a liar & a son of darkness.” The recollection of the pleasant days we had there is still fresh in my memory—no fortune can extinguish it—and I shall give you the proof some day yet.

I felt for the disgrace of Albemarle in the son of Scipio. That beats any thing in Flu. He has forfeited his recognisance by not appearing at the examining court. In addition to the strong claim he has to my regard on the score you mention he derives a subordinate title to my esteem by having threatened to kill me—which I dare say I never told you for I deemed him such a consummate paltroon that I had almost forgotten the threat & the threatener 'till the essay on Jeffersons life revived it. I [. . .] have always determined not to quarrel with him—but should he attempt an assassination the hardest must fend off. Another service which he shewed me very early in life was a rancorous, vindictive & malignant persecution in the excellent family of Monticello—to whom be all honor & praise. If there be any thing in my life on which I have reason to reflect with sentiments of consoling approbation it is the romantic, & inextinguishable admiration which for so many years I gloried in cherishing for that family & more especially for one of it—who nevertheless from what motives (but prejudice imbibed from Scipio the humane,) god knows—has studiously & unremittingly sought every possible occasion, of saying & doing precisely the very thing which could not fail to be the most mortifying & injurious to me. I should think that she would since Scipios final & irretrievable disgrace have sought an opportunity to repair any injustice she had done from his slandorous imputations. But here she is now in Richmond—& tho’ I have endeavoured by every possible means to conciliate her esteem or at least to subdue her animosity—& add what I could to her pleasure, she persists more pertinaciously than ever in a cold—repulsive, & somewhat disdainful manner. This is the more provoking because even after she had done it—I once volunteered my service to resent even ad mortem what I conceived an offence against her majesty—& but last winter when in Baltimore I incurred some displeasure from two ladies who spoke of her as a coquette, by an animated & perhaps indignant exclamation against so unmerited a charge. I call upon any man to say what I have done to her unbecoming a man of honor & a cavalier. Nor will I do any thing—I have long ago abandoned all claim to every other sentiment from her than respect: [. . .] this I have shewn her, & surely she need not pretend to repress faul failings in me which might be dangerous to my peace. You know my reverence for the old sachem your Uncle—my almost [. . .] singular affection for Col. R. & my idolatrous admiration & esteem for Mrs. R. so I charge you as I see Miss E. will endeavour to put me in odium of them all. on all fit occasions to maintain not only the propiety but the loftiness of my course. So long as your Brother P. was there he did me the justice to praise the liberality of the sentiments which governed me—[. . .] Good god—to think that Scipio Jr was actually hailed by them all as a sort of Messiah—and that I was treated “as an outlaw [. . .] & a bandit “& a pirate”—& if Miss E had commanded in chief I should have been hung. I am resolutely determined so you may save yourself the caution never to express or intimate a feeling of dislike to her—never to resent by my conduct her unmerited severity—for whatever she may do she is hallowed in my estimation by her sex—& the incidents of our early acquaintance—for which I never shall arraign her—yours 'till death