ia, Delaware, Virginia, and
Maryland Almanac and Ephemeris, for the year of our Lord
1792, being Bissextile or leap year, and the sixteenth year
of American Independence, which commenced July 4, 1776;
containing the motions of the Sun and Moon, the true places
and aspects of the Planets, the rising and setting of the
Sun, and the rising, setting, and southing, place and age of
the Moon, &c. The Lunations, Conjunctions, Eclipses,
Judgment of the Weather, Festivals, and remarkable days."

He had evidently read Mr. Jefferson's Notes on Virginia; and touched
by the humane sentiment there exhibited, as well as saddened by the
doubt expressed respecting the intellect of the Negro, Banneker sent
him a copy of his first almanac, accompanied by a letter which pleaded
the cause of his race, and in itself, was a refutation of the charge
that the Negro had no intellectual outcome.

"MARYLAND, BALTIMORE COUNTY, August 19, 1791.

"SIR,

"I am fully sensible of the greatness of the freedom I take
with you on the present occasion; a liberty which seemed
scarcely allowable, when I reflected on that distinguished
and dignified station in which you stand, and the almost
general prejudice which is so prevalent in the world against
those of my complexion.

"It is a truth too well attested, to need a proof here, that
we are a race of beings, who have long laboured under the
abuse and censure of the world; that we have long been
looked upon with an eye of contempt; and considered rather
as brutish than human, and scarcely capable of mental
endowments.

"I hope I may safely admit, in consequence of the report
which has reached me, that you are a man far less inflexible
in sentiments of this nature, than many others, that you are
measurably friendly and well disposed towards us; and that
you are willing to lend your aid and assistance for our
relief from those many distresses, and numerous calamities,
to which we are reduced.

"If this is founded in truth, I apprehend you will embrace
every opportunity to eradicate that train of absurd and
false ideas and opinions, which so generally prevail with
respect to us: and that your sentiments are concurrent with
mine, which are, that one universal Father hath given being
to us all; that He hath not only made us all of