I recieved by mr Mitchell your letter of Sep. 20. and the favor of the Benni seed,...

the total change of occupation from the house & writing table to constant emploiment in the garden & farm has added wonderfully to my happiness. it is seldom & with great reluctance I ever take up a pen. I read some, but not much.

I am constantly in my garden or farm, as exclusively employed out of doors as I was within doors when at Washington, and I find myself infinitely happier in my new mode of life.

Seven years ago indeed, I embarked in an enterprise ... I hope it will prove a blessing to my own state, and not unuseful perhaps to some others.

I learn with deep affliction that nothing is likely to be done for our University this year. so near as it is to the shore that one shove more would land it there, I had hoped that would be given, and that we should open with the next year an institution on which the fortunes of our country...

I will not despair then of the avail of your services in an establishment which I contemplate as the future bulwark of the human mind in this hemisphere.

I have recieved safely the extraordinary rattle of the rattle snake, as also the leav foliage of the Alleghaney Martagon. a plant of so much beauty & fragrance will be a valuable addition to our flower gardens.

on the question of the lawfulness of slavery, that is, of the right of one man to appropriate to himself the faculties of another without his consent, I certainly retain my early opinions. on that however of third persons to interfere between the parties, and the effect of conventional...

one fatal stain deforms what nature had bestowed on us of her fairest gifts.

I rejoice also in your advocation of the Indian rights. & concur in all your sentiments in their favor ... I wish that was the only blot in our moral history, and that no other race had higher charges to bring against us. I am not apt to despair; yet I see not how we are to disengage...