Day-by-Day / March 22, 1803

March 22, 1803

Federalist folly

Monticello, VA Writing from his home, Monticello, President Thomas Jefferson comments on an editorial recommending immediate succession from the Union.

George Logan (1753–1821)

by Albert Rosenthal

Black and white drawing of Senator George Logan

National Library of Medicine, collections.nlm.nih.gov.

George Logan sat on the three-member committee that approved Jefferson’s request to fund a Western expedition (see January 20, 1803. The Logan Act was enacted in response to his unofficial peace mission to France.

Monticello Mar. 22. 1803.

Dear Sir

I see the federalists find one paper in Kentucky into which they can get what they write either here or there. Bradford’s Guardian of freedom of Mar. 4. has a piece recommending immediate separation. A cool calculation of interest however would shew that Eastern America would not be the greatest sufferer by that folly. Accept my affectionate salutations.

Th: Jefferson[1]Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, Founders Online, National Archives, founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/02-04-02-0531 accessed 15 May 2022. [Original source: The Papers of James Madison, … Continue reading

The federalist newspaper Guardian of Freedom was from Frankfort. The author writing as “A Western American” recommended that the western states succeed from the United States to better compete with eastern commercial interests. He was the first of only two people to every be indicted under the Logan Act if 1799—named after Lewis and Clark Expedition supporter George Logan. Flourney’s case was never prosecuted and the Kentucky secessionist movement lost its impetus with the purchase of Louisiana.

 

Notes

Notes
↑1 Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, Founders Online, National Archives, founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/02-04-02-0531 accessed 15 May 2022. [Original source: The Papers of James Madison, Secretary of State Series, vol. 4, 8 October 1802–15 May 1803, ed. Mary A. Hackett, J. C. A. Stagg, Jeanne Kerr Cross, Susan Holbrook Perdue, and Ellen J. Barber. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998, p. 444.]

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Unless otherwise noted, journal excerpts are from The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, edited by Gary E. Moulton, 13 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983-2001).