From James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, 15 June 1810
To Thomas Jefferson
Washington June 15. 1810
Dear Sir
The inclosed letters1 were brought, together with the separate Packet now forwarded, by the John Adams. The official communications received by her, from F. & G. B. you will find in the Natl. Intelligencer of this date.2 The Editor I perceive passes over the obnoxious refusal of G. B. to comply with the reasonable course of putting an end to the predatory Edicts of both Nations; and it is not improbable that a like sensibility to the atrocity of the F. Govt. may divert the public attention from what would otherwise strike it with due force.3
RC (DLC). Incomplete (see n. 3). Docketed by Jefferson, “recd June 17.”
1. JM enclosed Lafayette to Jefferson, 18 Nov. 1809 and 24 Mar. 1810, and Lafayette’s “Compte rendu” (DLC: Jefferson Papers; printed in , pp. 293–96, 302–3, 303–15), which Lafayette had sent in his 24 Mar. 1810 letter to JM (see also Jefferson’s Epistolary Record [DLC: Jefferson Papers]).
2. The National Intelligencer 14 June supplement and 15 June issue contained correspondence between Pinkney and Wellesley, Armstrong and Champagny, and other letters from London and Paris dated from 25 Jan. to 15 Apr. (partially printed in , Foreign Relations, 3:349–57). Those letters, commented the editor, Samuel Harrison Smith, “add little to the information previously received” and dashed the hope that the John Adams would not return “with such unwelcome intelligence. But even that hope is now dissipated; and nothing remains but the manifestation of the naked purpose of the French government to pursue what it considers its line of interest, without regarding our interests or rights.”
3. Paragraph ends here. Lower part of page has been clipped.