Autograph Note Signed, headed: “A Card”, no date, or place, but docketed on verso “G. Watkins, April 27, 1829”

Quarto, 1 page, in very good, clean, legible condition. 1829 Bitter Political Sarcasm from an Anti-Jacksonian. “The Subscriber, a friend of the late Administration, being about to leave the city on an excursion of pleasure, presents his compliments to His Excellency the President, Duff Green, the Cabinet, the Central Committee and the Kentucky Sarpent, and begs if they have any accusations to bring against him of murder, burglary, rape, forgery, or sodomy, that they will prefer their charges on or before the 35th instant, in order to save time and trouble.” This cryptic paragraph of political sarcasm is a curiosity that invites speculation. It appears to be intended for publication – possibly in the “National Journal” a Washington, D.C. newspaper owned in part by Tobias Watkins, a former Treasury Department appointee in the defeated Adams Administration, arrested a month before on orders of the newly inaugurated President Andrew Jackson, on charges of embezzlement and fraud. These and other allegations against Watkins, were thought by anti-Jacksonians to be fabricated by Duff Green, editor of the “United States Telegraph”, principal mouthpiece of the Jackson Administration, and unofficial presidential advisor in Jackson’s “Kitchen Cabinet”, and Watkins’ Jacksonian successor in office, Amos Kendall, another journalist who dominated the Kitchen Cabinet and later became Jackson’s Postmaster General. Smith, the writer – possibly a pseudonym – an Adams supporter, implies that the Jacksonian’s would stop at nothing to wildly libel their opponents.…