To John Jay from Gouverneur Morris, 16 August 1778
From Gouverneur Morris
Philadelphia 16th. Augt 1778
Dear Jay.
We are at Length fairly setting about our Finances and our foreign Affairs. For the latter particularly I much wish you were here. Many Persons whom you know are very liberal of Illiberality— Your Friend Deane who hath rendered the most essential Services stands as one accused. The Storm increases and I think some one of the tall Trees must be torn up by the Roots.
I have not heard from you in a long Time. I did expect a letter by your Brother James but was disappointed. I am informed that he brought Letters from you to Nobody here. How happened that? A propos I will give you a little History.
Just before his Arrival, I saw a Letter from Arthur Lee speaking of him most disrespectfully. I was informed and induced to beleive that he was come to Congress charged with Lee’s Information & to promote his Designs. The Length of my Acquaintance with him required Nothing. But it was my Duty to take Care that your Brother did not render himself ridiculous. I felt more than I can tell at the Idea of a Connection between him and some Persons who I am confident you do from your Soul despise and abhor. In Consequence I waited of him. I told him candidly that I suspected him to be charged with Matter which was to militate much in favor of Mr. Lee, that Mr. Lee had in a Letter which would then shortly become public tradused him.— I had forgot to tell you that the Letter was to Mr. Carmichael who (being accused before Congress by Mr. Lee) shewed it in his own Defense to a Committee of which I was a Member.— And I stated the Ridicule which falls from being instrumental in forwarding the Views of a Man who had said of him that he was a Vilain.1
He was as you may well suppose much obliged by this Instance of my Friendship and so far all was Right. So far I had saved him out of bad Hands. As the Devil would have it I was appointed one Member of a Committee to superintend an Entertainment given by the Congress to Monsieur Gerard.2 Unfortunately the Line which by the general Sense of the Members of Congress ^had been drawn^ for Invitations excluded him. He was offended. He made Inquiries into the Reasons. You may readily imagine what some Folks would say on the Occasion. He inquired of me in a Stile which really put it out of my Power to give him satisfactory Answers. It is a Pity for his own Sake that he appeared to feel the Omission. To you the Reasons need not be assigned. I fear he is now in the Possession of those Gentlemen. I would dilate upon the Consequences but the Idea is painful to me and cannot be pleasant to you. I have only to add on this Chapter that I will save him if I can even from himself. The Mischeif is he is now in such Dudgeon that any Advances from me would produce the direct contrary Effect from what they ought.3 Adieu my Friend. Remember me to our Friends. To your Wife particularly. Write to me oftener. In all Cases beleive me most sincerely yours
Gouv. Morris
ALS, NNC (EJ: 6966). Addressed: “Honle. John Jay Esqr. Chief Justice of New York / Fish Kills.” Franked: “Free Gouv Morris”. Endorsed. E, MH: Sparks (EJ: 5318).
1. No letter from Lee to William Carmichael, secretary to the American commissioners in Paris, vilifying Sir James Jay has been found. However, Lee in a letter to Deane of 28 [or 20?] July 1776 had warned against “any communication whatever with english, Scots or Americans, here or with you, until you are very well assured of their characters, & with the middle of the three never.” He recommended warning Congress against Joseph Reed of Philadelphia; Sir James Jay; Dennis DeBerdt; John Langdon, a former delegate from New Hampshire; Paul Wentworth; Col. George Mercer; and William Molleson, a Maryland merchant with whom Matthew Tilghman, a Maryland delegate, corresponded “without knowing that his intelligence goes directly to Administration.” Deane doubted and refused to forward the allegations, begging to be excused from becoming a “second hand accuser of men of Character.” , no. 467; Deane’s refusal is printed in , 1: 226. In January 1778 Lee wrote Carmichael complaining about his examination and retention of some of his dispatches for the Committee of Secret Correspondence, demanded they be turned over, and forbade Carmichael to give copies of his letters to Deane (Lee to Carmichael, 27 Jan., and Carmichael to Deane, 1 Feb. 1778, , 1: 343–44, 346–47). Lee included complaints regarding the interception of the dispatches in his letter of 14 Apr. 1778 to the Committee for Foreign Affairs, prompting the committee investigations during which Gouverneur Morris was apparently shown Lee’s letter implicating Sir James (see , 10: 456–57). For Carmichael’s response, see his letter to a committee of Congress, 6 Aug. 1778, Papers in Relation to the Case of Silas Deane (Philadelphia, 1855–57), 138–39.
In his narrative before Congress in December 1778, Deane referred to his refusal to forward Lee’s accusations against prominent Americans without evidence, but he mentioned only John Langdon and Joseph Reed by name. He noted that Lee had given similiar information to William Carmichael on the leaf of a pocket dictionary for transmission to Congress (Lee to the Committee of Secret Correspondence, 3 June 1776). He added that when he expressed astonishment at the charges, Carmichael acquainted him with Lee’s character of being “excessively jealous and suspicious, and, as is usual with such dispositions, inclined to receive and credit reports on the most light and uncertain grounds.” Finally, Deane reported that both he and Carmichael had discussed the accusations with Lee when he arrived in France and that the conversation revealed the charges against Reed were based only on his connections with Lord Dartmouth and that Lee had misidentified John Langdon. Consequently, they had informed Lee at that time that they were not relaying his allegations. Deane made no public reference to Sir James Jay’s having also been on Lee’s list of suspects (, 3: 152, 154–56). Robert Morris reportedly delivered the letter in the pocket dictionary to Charles Thomson, secretary of Congress, on 4 Sept. 1778, and it was sent to the Committee for Foreign Affairs on 7 Dec. 1778 (, 2: 95–96).
Until informed of Arthur Lee’s charges against him in 1776, Sir James Jay had apparently sided with the Lee group because of suspicion of Deane’s activities in France while Jay was there in 1777 and annoyance because Deane had not secured him passage to America at that time. See his letter to Jefferson, 14 Apr. 1806, Jefferson Papers, DLC, in which Sir James complains about Deane not providing him passage to America, saying no ships were going, when in fact the one carrying Lafayette had not yet sailed. “For this extraordinary conduct in Mr. Deane, with whom I had not the least misunderstanding, I can assign no other reason than he knew I was sensible of a fraud he was committing on the United States, and that he may have thought my arrival there would not be conducive to his honour nor interest.”
2. Conrad Alexandre Gérard (1729–90), the recently appointed French minister to the United States, arrived in Philadelphia in July 1778. Congress’s public audience for the minister was held on 6 Aug. For congressional limitations on those permitted to attend, see , 11: 751.
3. For JJ’s reply, see JJ to Morris, 29 Aug. 1778, below. This dispute contributed to Sir James Jay’s long-term hostility toward Morris, which culminated in his newspaper attacks on him in 1781. See Gouverneur Morris to JJ, 17 June 1781, ALS, NNC (EJ: 6969).