To James Madison from Alexander J. Dallas, 2 February 1815
From Alexander J. Dallas
2 Feb. 1815.
Dr. Sir
I am so urged by Mr. Pinkney, as well as by my Clients, whose cause I argued in New-York last May, that I feel disposed to join the argument on the Appeal, if you do not think it wrong.1 It is, indeed, in the nature of unfinished business.
As I have not hesitated to state my design of leaving the Treasury, whenever I have put it into the order, required by the laws passed at the present session, and you can select a Successor, I do not apprehend any reproach, on the score of delicacy, from the good people of Congress. I am Dr Sir, with the most cordial attachment, Yr. faithful Hble Sert
A. J. Dallas
I have promised an answer tonight.
RC (PHi: George Mifflin Dallas Papers). Unaddressed; addressee identified as JM based on internal evidence.
1. Dallas evidently referred to the case of the Nereide, a British armed vessel chartered in London by Manuel Pinto to transport goods owned by British and Spanish subjects to Buenos Aires. The U.S. privateer Governor Tompkins captured the Nereide near Madeira on 19 Dec. 1813 and brought the prize into New York, where the ship and cargo, including that part belonging to Spanish subjects, were condemned. The New York district and circuit courts affirmed the ruling on the Spanish property, which decision Pinto appealed to the Supreme Court. Dallas and William Pinkney argued the case there for the captors, unsuccessfully, in February 1815 (9 Cranch 388–91, 396, 403, 431; Henry Wheaton, Some Account of the Life, Writings, and Speeches of William Pinkney [New York, 1826], 126–27).