From Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 5 May 1793
To James Madison
May. 5. 93.
Th: J. to J. Madison
No letter from you since that of Apr. 12.—I received one from Mr. Pinckney yesterday informing me he expected to send me by the next ship a model of the threshing mill. He had been to see one work, which with 2. horses got out 8. bushels of wheat an hour. But he was assured that the mill from which my model was taken gets out1 8 quarters (i.e. 64 bushels) of oats an hour with 4. horses.—I have seen Dr. Logan. Your ploughs will be done in a week and shall be attended to.—Seal and forward Monroe’s letter after reading it. Adieu your’s affectly.
P.S. I inclose a Boston paper as a proof of what I mention to Monroe of the spirit which is rising. The old tories have their names now raked up again; and I believe if the author of ‘Plain truth’ was now to be charged with that pamphlet, this put along side of his present Anglomany would decide the voice of the yeomanry of the country on his subject.
RC (DLC: Madison Papers); dateline between body of letter and postscript; addressed: “James Mad[…].” PrC (DLC). Tr (DLC); 19th-century copy. Enclosure: TJ to James Monroe, 5 May 1793.
Thomas Pinckney’s private letter to TJ concerning a model of the threshing mill was dated 13 Mch. 1793. The Boston paper has not been identified: possibly TJ sent either the Independent Chronicle’s extra issue of 19 Apr. 1793, in which an unsigned article headed “The French” compared American opponents of the French Revolution to the Massachusetts loyalist governor Thomas Hutchinson “and his coadjutors,” or the Columbian Centinel of 20 Apr. 1793, which carried a similar letter by “Freeman.” For TJ’s mistaken belief that Alexander Hamilton had written the 1776 loyalist pamphlet Plain Truth, see Notes on Alexander Hamilton, 19 Nov. 1792, and note.
1. MS: “get outs.”