Jefferson, Thomas, as third President

Autograph letter signed ("Th: Jefferson"), one page bifolium with integral address leaf with free franking signature (9 x 7 3/8 in.; 232 x 187 mm, sight). Washington, D.C., 6 November 1807, to James Cheetham of New York, cancelling his subscription to the New York Post, postal stamp dated 7 November and docket on address leaf; age darkening to folds of address leaf, small seal tear. Matted, glazed, and framed with a portrait of Jefferson.

The Forbes Collection of American Historical Documents (sale, Christies, 15 November 2005, lot 31)

Autograph letter signed ("Th: Jefferson"). one page bifolium with integral address leaf with free franking signature (9 x 7 3/8 in.; 232 x 187 mm, sight). Washington, D.C., 6 November 1807, to James Cheetham of New York, cancelling his subscription to the New York Post, postal stamp dated 7 November and docket on address leaf; minor browning to folds of address leaf, small seal tear. Matted, glazed, and framed with a portrait of Jefferson.
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Jefferson retires from "newspaper reading"—beginning with his subscription to the New York Post, founded by his late arch rival, Alexander Hamilton. The president writes to the editor of the Post, "Your account amounting to 30.D. tho' received sometime ago had escaped my attention. Having occasion to make remittance to Mr. [David] Gelston [New York customs agent] I have included that sum with his & therefore ask the favor of you to call on him for it. The time of my retirement being now not very distant, I am beginning to retire from newspaper reading. I cannot begin better than with the New York Post, of which in truth I have scarcely opened one for two years past. I will therefore pray you to discontinue forwarding them to me. Accept my salutations & respects."

Not to single out the Post, which relentlessly attacked him during his two terms in office, Jefferson in general held a low opinion of newspapers as they were not objective organs of news and information. "Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper" he lamented to John Norvell in 1807. "Our printers raven on the agonies of their victims, as wolves do on the blood of the lamb" wrote Jefferson to James Madison in 1811; and to Monroe five years later, he commented that "From forty years' experiences of the wretched guess-work of the newspapers ... I rearely think them worth reading, and almost never worth notice."

Jefferson's wholesale condemnation of newspapers was not unsubstantiated. Mud-slinging abounded in the press at the time. A Jeffersonian writer's branding George Washington as the "harlot" of Great Britain, cost Jefferson his friendship with the  president.  When an article in the Post accused Jefferson of paying writers to attack Adams was reprinted in an upstate newspaper, Jefferson sued for libel in 1803. None other than Hamilton defended the publisher, but lost.