Tobias Watkins

Tobias Watkins (December 12, 1780 – November 14, 1855) was an American physician, editor, writer, educator, and political appointee in the Baltimore-Washington, DC, area.

[4] Between May and October of that year he traveled as far north as Castine, Maine, as far south as Annapolis, Maryland, and as far west as Niagara Falls, New York.

[4] In the 1810s Watkins entered the field of literature by publishing essays on Lord Byron in a Philadelphia newspaper edited by his brother in-law, Stephen Simpson.

[9] In 1816 he co-founded The Portico: A Repository of Science & Literature, in which he published several medical works he translated from French as well as his own literary essays until its final issue in 1818.

[1] The Delphian Club brought him into association with other eccentric Baltimore professionals of law, literature, art, and medicine at a time when the city was the third largest in the US.

Part of his work on the commission involved translating from Spanish Luis de Onís's 152-page memoir on the diplomatic negotiation, which was published in English in 1821.

[21][a] Jackson assigned Attorney General John M. Berrien to prosecute Watkins, who secured a conviction for perjury and misappropriation of public funds.

[26] Watkins felt abandoned by Adams and wrote to John Neal from prison, asking him to Tell me what to do, ... but for God's sake, tell me not to engage again in politics, unless it be to hunt down both parties to destruction.

Feeling persecuted in jail, he wrote of a prison official being replaced by a "creature of the President" to deny him family visits, as well as a request from the administration "to have me removed from the more decent room which I now occupy to one of the cells!

[29] As a result he was released February 1833, but was arrested again the same day under three writs of capias ad respondendum issued by Attorney General Roger B. Taney.

[33] John Neal described Watkins as "both generous and extravagant" in that he "would sooner empty his pockets into the lap of a stranger, than pay his butcher or grocer".