Falsehoods make the least impression on me

[This is from my letter to James Wilkinson, dated March 10, 1811. When I let the Sedition Act expire instead of using it to turn the table on my political opponents, my objective was to restore the bill of rights. However, I had to endure numerous falsehoods and calumnies without my bringing them to court on libel and defamation charges. As a public servant, I had been for some time used as the property of the newspapers, a fair mark for every man's dirt.]

I shall read them with pleasure. The expression respecting myself, stated in your letter to have been imputed to you by your calumniators, had either never been heard by me, or, if heard, had been unheeded & forgotten. I have been too much the butt of such falsehoods myself to do others the injustice of permitting them to make the least impression on me. My consciousness that no man on earth has me under his thumb, is evidence enough that you never used the expression. Daniel Clarke’s book I have never seen, nor should I put Tacitus or Thucydides out of my hand to take that up. I am even leaving off the Newspapers, desirous to disengage myself from the contentions of the world, and consign to entire tranquility, and to the kinder passions what remains to me of life. I look back with commiseration on those still buffeting the storm, and sincerely wish your Argosy may ride out, unhurt, that in which it is engaged.