Good day citizens and welcome to this podcast edition of the Thomas Jefferson Hour this week

We talk about Margaret Baird Smith and her recollections of Mr Jefferson. She wrote a great book of her reminiscences on the first 40 years in Washington Society.

She was a friend of Jefferson.

She met him under unusual circumstances, which we talk about in this week's program.

And she sort of fell in love with him in a way.

It certainly had a crush on him, and they became lifelong friends.

And she took down some memories of Jefferson's life in Washington, D.C. and they are one of the best

windows, David, on the character and the style of Thomas Jefferson, and his enormous capacity to make other people feel good about themselves.

We draw heavily on her book, which is available online for free at Internet Archive in Gutenberg,

the first 40 years of Washington Society which is

primarily from a collection of her letters and notebooks written between

1800 and 1841.

And remember why this program came about, that in a previous issue of the Jefferson Hour,

peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next.

We quote this fabulous letter that she wrote saying,

that I have witnessed one of the most extraordinary scenes

that you can ever witness the peaceful transfer of power

and usually in every society this is

attended by convulsions and riots and death and so on but then she uses this

great phrase David that I repeat quite often but in this our happy republic.

And so she had been at the inauguration.

She saw Jefferson become the third president of the United States.

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