December 1

[On December 1, 1808, while serving as the President of the United States, I wrote this letter to Doctor Benjamin Waterhouse, a prominent physician and pioneer in medical science with whom I maintained an intellectually respectful relationship centered on scientific and agricultural progress. This response reflects my late-presidential administration in Washington, where national duties often intersected with my philosophical conviction that introducing a new, useful plant to a culture is the greatest service one can render. My efforts to source this dry-ground grain involved an international pursuit that began with an unfulfilled promise from a traveling Prince of Cochin-China in Paris (Prince Nguyễn Phúc Cảnh. He was the eldest son and heir of Nguyễn Ánh, the ruler who would later unite Vietnam and establish the Nguyễn dynasty as Emperor Gia Long.) and culminated when I finally secured a thirty-gallon cask from an American sea captain harvesting along the African coast. I chose to coordinate the distribution of this seed directly with early members of Congress during their annual attendance in the nation's capital as a strategic network to track the exact agricultural progress, migration, and family-use adoption of the crop across the expanding borders of Georgia and Kentucky.]

In answer to the inquiries of the benevolent Dr. De Carro on the subject of the upland or mountain rice, Oryza Mutica, I will state to you what I know of it. I first became informed of the existence of a rice which would grow in uplands without any more water than the common rains, by reading a book of Mr. De Porpre, who had been Governor of the Isle of France, who mentions it as growing there and all along the coast of Africa successfully, and as having been introduced from Cochin-China. I was at that time (1784-89) in France, and there happening to be there a Prince of Cochin-China, on his travels, and then returning home, I obtained his promise to send me some. I never received it however, and mention it only as it may have been sent, and furnished the ground for the inquiries of Dr. De Carro, respecting my receiving it from China.

When at Havre on my return from France, I found there Captain Nathaniel Cutting, who was the ensuing spring to go on a voyage along the coast of Africa. I engaged him to inquire for this; he was there just after the harvest, procured and sent me a thirty-gallon cask of it. It arrived in time the ensuing spring to be sown. I divided it between the Agricultural Society of Charleston and some private gentlemen of Georgia, recommending it to their care, in the hope which had induced me to endeavor to obtain it, that if it answered as well as the swamp rice, it might rid them of that source of their summer diseases. Nothing came of the trials in South Carolina, but being carried into the upper hilly parts of Georgia, it succeeded there perfectly, has spread over the country, and is now commonly cultivated; still, however, for family use chiefly, as they cannot make it for sale in competition with the rice of the swamps. The former part of these details is written from memory, the papers being at Monticello which would enable me to particularize exactly the dates of times and places. The latter part is from the late Mr. Baldwin, one of those whom I engaged in the distribution of the seed in Georgia, and who in his annual attendance on Congress, gave me from time to time the history of its progress. It has got from Georgia into Kentucky, where it is cultivated by many individuals for family use.

I cultivated it two or three years at Monticello, and had good crops, as did my neighbors, but not having conveniences for husking it, we declined it. I tried some of it in a pot, while I lived in Philadelphia, and gave seed to Mr. Bartram. It produced luxuriant plants with us both, but no seed; nor do I believe it will ripen in the United States as far north as Philadelphia. Business and an indisposition of some days must apologize for this delay in answering your letter of October 24th, which I did not receive till the 6th of November. And permit me here to add my salutations and assurances of esteem and respect.