To Thomas Jefferson from Benjamin Galloway, [October 1797]
From Benjamin Galloway
[Oct. 1797]
Benjamin Galloway of Washington County and State of Maryland presentest his republican respects to Citizen Jefferson and begs leave to offer his perfect approbation of his Conduct and principles—if opportunity should suffer him, he will be happy to shake Mr. Jefferson by the Hand—he is an American, but at the same time, he would wish to be considered as a Sans, Culotte—
B G
RC (MHi); undated; addressed: “Thomas Jefferson Esquire Monticello Albemarle County Virginia To the Care of Mr. Archd. Stewart Staunton”; endorsed by TJ as a letter of October 1797 received 6 Nov. 1797 and recorded in SJL under that date.
Around 1796, Benjamin Galloway (1752–1831), a native of Anne Arundel County, Maryland, had moved to Elizabeth Town (present Hagerstown) in Washington County. An attorney, planter, and landholder, he had previously served as a county justice, as a member of the Maryland assembly, and in 1778 as attorney general of the state. Considered an ardent Jeffersonian Republican, as late as 1823 he ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the Maryland House of Delegates (Edward C. Papenfuse and others, A Biographical Dictionary of the Maryland Legislature, 1635–1789, 2 vols. [Baltimore, 1979–85], I, 338–9; Carl N. Everstine, The General Assembly of Maryland 1776–1850 [Charlottesville, Va., 1982], 357n).