a line from my good old friends is like balm to my soul.

My confidence, as you kindly observed, has been often abused by the publication of my letters for the purposes of interest or vanity; and it has been to me the source of much pain to be exhibited before the public in forms not meant for them. I recieve letters expressed in the most friendly terms...

I regret that distance separates us so widely. an hour of conversation would be worth a volume of letters. but we must take things as they come.

I might have manifested my dissatisfaction by a silent reserve of all answer: but this would have offered a blank, which might have been filled up by erroneous imputations of sentiment. I prefer candid and open expression.

you propose a more Quixotic task in the reformation of what may be deemed defective in our constitution. no, my dear friend; nothing could allure me again into the furnace of politics. while engaged in the various functions of the government, duty required me to go straight forward, regardless of...

You express a wish and a hope that I may have been writing memoirs of myself. while in public life, my whole time has been absorbed by the duties that laid me under; and now, when the world imagines I have nothing to do, I am in a state of as heavy drudgery as any office of my life ever subjected...

You say I must go to writing history. while in public life, I had not time: and now that I am retired, I am past the time. to write history requires a whole life of observation, of enquiry, of labor and correction. it’s materials are not to be found among the ruins of a decayed memory. at this...

As to what is to be said of myself, I of course am not the judge. but my sincere wish is that the faithful historian, like the able Surgeon, would consider me in his hands, while living, as a dead subject: that the same judgment may now be expressed which will be rendered hereafter, so far as my...

we are certainly indebted to those who think our revolution worthy of their pen, and who will do justice to our actions and motives.

altho’ much of a sceptic in the practice of medecine, I read with pleasure it’s ingenious theories.