This is the draft of a letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote in the last year of his life to a favorite grandchild, Ellen Wayles Randolph, who had recently married a young man from Massachusetts, Joseph Coolidge, Jr., and moved with her husband to their new home in Boston.

Eleanora (Ellen) Wayles Randolph (1796-1876) was the third daughter of Jefferson's eldest daughter, Martha and Thomas Randolph. Ellen was closely attached to her grandfather (she grew up at Monticello) and her marriage and subsequent move north was significant to Thomas Jefferson. In this letter dated 27 August 1825, Jefferson acknowledges her departure left a "void" but expects her to feel comfortable in Massachusetts. Within the letter he goes on, unexpectedly, to address one of the central dilemmas in American history--slavery:

I have no doubt you will find also the state of society there [in Massachusetts] more congenial with your mind, than the rustic scenes you have left. Altho' these do not want their points of endearment. nay, one single circumstance changed [that is, slavery, which had ended in Massachusetts during the 1780s], and their scale would hardly be the lightest. one fatal blotch [crossed out and replaced by "stain"] deforms what nature had bestowed on us of her fairest gifts.