January 21

[Writing from my retirement at Monticello on January 21, 1826, I address Archibald Thweat, a trusted Virginia planter and political ally. During this final year of my life, the political landscape remained fiercely partisan, and my historical recollections were heavily scrutinized as younger factions frequently sought to weaponize my memories for contemporary ambitions. My shared republican bond with Thweat allows me to acknowledge his protective warning while firmly standing by my choice to provide William B. Giles with true testimony defending John Quincy Adams. During the height of the 1807 trade embargo, the younger Adams rose completely above federalist party passions to secretly warn me of a treacherous New England plot to sever the Union, a patriotic intervention so profound that I privately broke my rule of political neutrality to quote it as a direct corrective to detractors during his recent presidential canvas. When writing this letter to Thweat, I referred to the sitting President merely as Mr. Adams, as his father was no longer in public life, leaving it to future readers to deduce which generation of the Adams family had delivered that vital national security warning.]

Your favor of January 15th is received, and I am entirely sensible of the kindness of the motives which suggested the caution it recommended. But I believe what I have done is the only thing I could have done with honor or conscience. Mr. Giles requested me to state a fact which he knew himself, and of which he knew me to be possessed. What use he intended to make of it I knew not, nor had I a right to inquire, or to indicate any suspicion that he would make an unfair one. That was his concern, not mine, and his character was sufficient to sustain the responsibility for it. I knew, too, that if an uncandid use should be made of it, there would be found those who would so prove it. Independent of the terms of intimate friendship in which Mr. Giles and myself have ever lived together, the world's respect entitled him to the justice of my testimony to any truth he might call for; and how that testimony should connect me with whatever he may do or write hereafter, and with his whole career, as you apprehend, is not understood by me. With his personal controversies I have nothing to do. I never took any part in them, or in those of any other person. Add to this, that the statement I have given him on the subject of Mr. Adams, is entirely honorable to him in every sentiment and fact it contains. There is not a word in it which I would wish to recall. It is one which Mr. Adams himself might willingly quote, did he need to quote anything.

It was simply that during the continuance of the embargo, Mr. Adams informed me of a combination (without naming any one concerned in it,) which had for its object a severance of the Union, for a time at least. That Mr. Adams and myself not being then in the habit of mutual consultation and confidence, I considered it as the stronger proof of the purity of his patriotism, which was able to lift him above all party passions when the safety of his country was endangered. Nor have I kept this honorable fact to myself. During the late canvas, particularly, I had more than one occasion to quote it to persons who were expressing opinions respecting him, of which this was a direct corrective. I have never entertained for Mr. Adams any but sentiments of esteem and respect; and if we have not thought alike on political subjects, I yet never doubted the honesty of his opinions, of which the letter in question, if published, will be an additional proof. Still, I recognize your friendship in suggesting a review of it, and am glad of this, as of every other occasion of repeating to you the assurance of my constant attachment and respect.