This communication Jefferson acknowledged, within a month of his decease, in a letter of such ruling importance in this connection, as it _settles the question forever_, that I am glad of the opportunity to publish it in full.
The subject of your letter of May 20, has attracted more notice certainly than it merited. That the operé to which it refers was painful to a certain degree I admit. But it was short lived and there would have ended as to myself. My age and the state of my health at that time gave an alarm to my family which I neither felt nor expressed. What may have been said in newspapers I know not, reading only a single one and that giving little room to things of that kind. I thought no more of it until your letter brot. it again to mind, but can assure you it has left not a trace of dissatisfaction as to yourself and that with me it is placed among the things which have never happened. Accept this assurance with my friendly salutes.
Notwithstanding this “very kind and consolatory letter,” as Browere had good reason to call it, the report that the venerable Jefferson had been nearly suffocated and otherwise maltreated by the artist, was so widely circulated that Browere’s career was seriously affected by it; and so much easier is it to disseminate error than truth, that his hopes were not fulfilled that the publication of Jefferson’s letter would, as he wrote to Madison, “in some manner turn the current of popular prejudice, which at present is great against my _modus operandi_.”
In acknowledging Jefferson’s letter of the 6th, Browere writes concerning the statue: “On the very day of the receipt of yours, the 13th inst., I had completed your full length statue (nudity) and to-morrow I intend, if spared, to commence dressing it in the costume you wore at the time of your delivery of the Declaration of American Independence. Understanding that your dress corresponded with that of Mr. Laurens, President of Congress in 1778, I have commenced the suit. But if Mr. Jefferson would condescend to give a full and explicit account of the form and colour of his dress, at that very interesting period, he will be conferring a particular favor on me and on the whole American Nation. Dispatch in forwarding the same will be pleasing to the Honorable the Common Council of New York, for whom I am preparing your statue for the 4th of July, 1826.”