I wrote you on 1st. Janry from N. Rochelle, mentioning my intention of spending part of the Winter at Washington; but the severity of the Winter and the bad condition of the roads and rivers prevented me, and I stopped at N. York. I wrote you from that place a second letter of more than nine pages on a variety of subjects accompanied with a Hamburgh Gazette and a letter from a revolutionary Sarjent at Kentucky. On the 18th. Febry., which I judge was about a fort’night after my second letter was sent, I recd a letter from you of the fifteenth Janry acknowleging the receipt of my first letter of Janry 1st. but of the second letter, enclosing the Hamburg Gazette and also proposals from a Hamburgh Merchant to bring German redemptioners to New Orleans I have heard nothing. I did not put the letter into the post-office myself but I sent it by a friend who assures me he delivered it

The enclosed half sheet marked No. 1 is part of a letter which I began the latter part of last Summer but as I then intended to make further experiments I suspended finishing it, for I do not permit the whole of my mind, nor ever did, to be engrossed, or absorbed by one object only. When I was in france and in England since the year 1787, I carried on my political productions, religious publications, and mechanical operations all at the same time; without permitting any one to disturb, or interfere, with the other.

The piece No. 2 is part of a third letter which I began after the receipt of yours of Janry. 15. This confusion and interference of dates arise from the uncertainty I am in with respect to the fate of my second letter.

I intend continuing my letters addressed to the Citizens of the United States. The last (No. 7,) published the summer before last was chiefly on the Affairs of New Orleans. I distinguish those letters from others of a less public Character, such as the remarks on Governeur Morris’s funeral Oration on Hamilton, That on the Louisiana Memorial, & the piece to Hulbert,

The reflections which Hulbert threw out with respect to your letter to me by Mr Dawson arose from some half equivocal qualifying paragraphs which appeared I believe in the National intelligencer before my arrival. Dr. Eustis said to me at Washington more than two years ago. “Those paragraphs, and which are supposed to be under Mr Jefferson’s direction, have Embarrassed to Mr Jefferson’s friends in Massachusetts. They appeared like a half denial of the letter or as if there was something in it not proper to be owned, or that needed an apology.”—I was myself offended at one which I saw while in Paris and which determined me not to come by a National Ship. It was copied from the National Intelligencer into a Baltimore federal paper and introduced into that paper with the words in Capitals “Out at last.” It owned the receipt of a letter from me in which I expressed a wish to return by a National Ship, and the paragraph concluded thus,— “permission was given”; as if the giving it, was an Act of Charity, or of great condescension; at least it had the appearance of apologising. Hulbert introduced the subject of the letter by way of convicting you of something you had appeared to disown, or given cause to your friends to disown. I have given Hulbert the dressing he deserved, and you the credit the letter merits; but had no equivocation been made about the letter Hulbert could not have made the use of it he did.

Yours in friendship