To James Madison from Albert Gallatin, [5 March] 1812
From Albert Gallatin
Thursday morning [5 March 1812]
Dear Sir
I enclose a copy of the recommendation to which I alluded. You will perceive that I was not mistaken respecting the rank stated in it. It is signed by 13 members of the N. York delegation, which includes all present Mitchill excepted. They have 17 members: the three others, Paulding, Cook, and Avery1 are absent. It is also signed by Senator Germain, which was done subsequent to my seeing it. John Smith did not think proper for him as Senator to sign it, but is decidedly in favor of it. I do not believe that the delegation has recommended unanimously any other man for the same rank except Mr Livingston.2 Respectfully Your obedt. Servt.
Albert Gallatin
RC and enclosure (DLC). RC undated; date assigned here by comparison with Gallatin to JM, 3 Mar. 1812, and n. 1. Docketed by JM, “1812.” Enclosure is a one-page copy of a note signed by fourteen members of the New York congressional delegation recommending John Chrystie as a “Gentleman of Honor, intelligence and respectability and well qualified from his military knowledge to be appointed a Lieutenant Colol. in the army of the United States lately directed by law to be raised.”
1. Gallatin referred to the Republican representatives William Paulding, Jr., Thomas B. Cooke, and Daniel Avery.
2. Robert Le Roy Livingston (1775–1843), son of Walter Livingston and son-in-law of Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, had briefly held the rank of lieutenant in the U.S. Army in 1799–1800. He was serving as a Federalist representative from New York in the Twelfth Congress when JM nominated him to be a lieutenant colonel of infantry on 10 Mar. 1812. He left Congress in May 1812 but resigned his army commission in February 1813 (Dangerfield, Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, p. 282; , 1:637; , 2:230).