WII.SON AND CONTEMPORARY AMERICANS 87 



M. Pike. Jefferson carefully preserved every 

 scrap of his correspondence, but he declared on 

 looking over his papers that he was unable to 

 find a ''scrip of the pen" on the subject. More- 

 over, Wilson never felt the slightest bitterness 

 against Jefferson, as Ord himself states he never 

 gave expression to any hurt which the President's 

 silence caused him. 



When Ord's life of Wilson appeared in the last 

 volume of the ''American Ornithology" the sharp 

 criticism of Mr. Jefferson's neglect came to the 

 notice of Mr. Jefferson himself, who wrote the 

 following letter to General Wilkinson in regard 

 to the matter: 



"Monticello June 25, '18. 

 "Dear General 



"A life so much employed in public as yours 

 has been, must subject you often to be appealed 

 to for facts by those whom they concern — an oc- 

 casion occurs to myself of asking this kind of aid 

 from your memory and documents, the posthu- 

 mous volume of Wilson's Ornithology, altho' 

 pubHshed some time since, never happened to be 

 seen by me until a few days ago. in the account 

 of his life, prefixed to that volume his biographer 

 indulges himself in a bitter invective against me, 

 as having refused to employ Wilson on Pike's ex- 

 pedition to the Arkansas, on which particularly he 

 wished to have been employed, on turning to my 

 papers I have not a scrip of the pen on the sub- 

 ject of that expedition, which convinces me that 

 it was not one of those which emanated from 



