Note 824 — Chapter VII

So notorious was this practice that important parts of the correspondence of the more prominent politicians and statesmen of the day always were written in cipher. Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe appear to have been especially careful to take this precaution. (See Washington's complaint of this tampering with the mails in a letter to Fairfax, June 25, 1786; Writings: Sparks, ix, 175.) Habitual violation of the mails by postmasters continued into the first decades of the nineteenth century.