Letter written by Thomas Jefferson while in Annapolis sells for $90,000

Mary Carole McCauley, The Baltimore Sun on Jul 4, 2025

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BALTIMORE — A significant letter written by founding father Thomas Jefferson sold Friday for the asking price of $90,000 and will return to Maryland, the state where it was penned 242 years ago.

The letter, featuring Jefferson’s large and even right-handed slant “went to a private collector in the greater Annapolis area,” according to a text message from Nathan Raab, president of the Raab Collection, a dealer of historical documents based in Pennsylvania.

“It went on sale today and sold promptly,” he wrote, but declined to provide further details.

Jefferson’s letter is dated Dec. 31, 1783 and was sent to Benjamin Harrison V, who at the time was the governor of Virginia and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration, later became the third president of the new nation.

The letter advocated for the right to bear arms in a revolutionary cause (though in this case, it referred to citizens of the Netherlands, not the U.S.)

It also conveyed Jefferson’s anxiety about whether a sufficient number of delegates would arrive at the Maryland State House in time to ratify the Treaty of Paris, which contained two critical provisions: British recognition of U.S. independence, and the delineation of boundaries allowing the new nation to expand westward.

“We have yet but seven states, and no more certain prospects of nine than at any time heretofore,” Jefferson writes. “We hope that the letters sent to the absent states will bring them forward.”

Spoiler alert — the eighth and ninth delegates arrived in the nick of time, and the treaty was ratified.

“We are not aware of any letter having reached the market from a Signer (let alone author) of the Declaration Of Independence on the right of democratic citizens to bear arms and oppose autocracy,” the website notes. “This powerful letter was not known to have survived and the content is known only through a copy.”

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