1. Cathcart’s 21 Aug. 1806 letter to Robert Smith (7 pp.) described Soliman Melimeni’s erratic behavior and insulting comments at length, including the minister’s accusation that JM and Thomas Jefferson had orchestrated the various circumstances delaying his departure in order to gain a naval advantage in the Mediterranean, his refusal to pay for twenty thousand pounds of coffee that Cathcart had purchased at his request, and his precipitous decision to depart for Washington that morning to discuss his complaints with the administration. If Melimeni persisted in withholding payment for the coffee, Cathcart wrote, he would sell it and sue the minister for any loss. Declaring himself unable to “conceive that a man capable of such baseness can be entitled to a public audience after he has settled his national concerns & is in possession of his passports,” Cathcart advised that Melimeni be stopped en route to Washington, informed that he would not have to pay the debentures on his cargo, and ordered to return to Boston, whereupon his ship should sail for Tunis “as soon as he thought proper.” For the debentures, see Jacob Wagner to JM, 19 Aug. 1806, and n. 1, and Cathcart to JM, 20 Aug. 1806, n. 1.