RC (DLC); addressed (trimmed): “[. . .] Jefferson Esqr Monticello [A]lbemarle County Virginia”; franked; endorsed by TJ as received 8 Sept. 1822 and so recorded in SJL. Enclosure: Mills, Internal Improvement of South-Carolina, Particularly Adapted to the Low Country (Columbia, 1822), asserting that the unhealthiness of the lower portion of the state restricts population growth and agricultural advancement; proposing “a general system of embanking, draining and reclaiming our river and swamp lands, rendering them fit for cultivation and capable of becoming the permanent residence of a white population” (p. 4); arguing that doing so will increase land values substantially, reduce disease and death rates, enhance riverine navigation, and lead to the “gradual decrease of the slave population, and a rapid increase of an industrious white population” (p. 10); contending that South Carolina can, out of the profits arising from its acquisition and reclamation of such lands, purchase six thousand or more slaves annually and resettle them in Africa; mentioning TJ’s unsuccessful negotiations as president with the Sierra Leone Company and, later, Portugal, to establish a colony for free blacks on that continent; quoting a passage critical of slavery from Query XVIII of TJ’s Notes on the State of Virginia; and stating that gradual abolition will improve agriculture, increase wealth, promote morality, induce white settlers to migrate to the region, and “remove the stigma which has unjustly been attached to the Southern States on account of the existence of slavery amongst us” (p. 28).