Did Rice engage in puffery by including Jefferson as a member of the Virginia society in his letter to Maxwell, or was he simply mistaken? If he was in error when he wrote Maxwell, perhaps he then corrected himself when he went to Washington and on to New York for the opening convention of the American Bible Society. We may never know for sure. However, given Jefferson’s response to Greenhow, along with the conflicting statements attributed to Rev. Rice, it is quite a stretch for Barton to refer to Jefferson as “an active member.”
