To James Madison from Albert Gallatin, 6 February 1806
From Albert Gallatin
Treasury Department Feby. 6th. 1806
Sir
I have the honor to enclose the copy of an abstract of a letter from James Brown Esqre.1 agent of the United States at New Orleans for land claims dated 11th. Decr. last and received by last mail; by which it appears that the most important land records of the late Province of Louisiana have, contrary to the tenor of the second Article of the treaty of 30th April 1803,2 been sent to Pensacola by Mr Morales the late intendant under the Spanish Government. It is evident that those records were relative to the domain of Louisiana; and that so far from the Spanish officers having a right to carry them away, under pretence of their being blended with the documents which related to West Florida, and to offer merely notes or abstracts; it was expressly agreed by the abovementioned article, that all those archives papers & documents should be left (laissés, left behind) in the possession of the commissaries of the United States, and copies afterwards given (by the proper officers of the sd. States) to the magistrate & other officers of such of the said papers as might be necessary to them. Why the commissaries of the United States did not insist on the delivery of the papers & permitted such an injurious infraction of the treaty appears extraordinary: and I will only observe that their speedy recovery is of great importance, as those records will afford the only efficient check against antedated, forged or otherwise fraudulent deeds, as well as against every other description of unfounded claims for lands.
Those records which were then in possession of the Intendant, who alone had of late the authority of issuing grants, are distinct from those in possession of the Surveyor general (Trudeau) which are also of great importance & had not yet been taken away at the date of the last letters from New Orleans. It was on the subject of these last that I addressed you a former letter,3 at which time it was not known that the Intendant’s records had been already carried away. I have the honor to be with the highest respect Sir Your obedient Servant
Albert Gallatin
RC and enclosure (DLC: Gallatin Papers). Docketed by Wagner, with his note: “Land Records sent away by Morales.” For enclosure, see n. 1.
1. The enclosed extract (3 pp.; docketed by Wagner; full letter printed in , Orleans, 9:545–48, where the extract is contained within square brackets) states that Brown’s own experience had taught him that there were many records, signed by Spanish authorities, that were not in the abstracts that had been copied by Ferdinand Ibañez and were probably not in any register delivered to the American commissioners for the transfer of Louisiana. He said that Governor Claiborne had long known that “many very important records” were in the possession of Juan Ventura Morales, Andrés López Armesto, and Carlos Ximenes, but no steps had been taken to obtain either the originals or copies. For the records that Morales and Ximenes had sent to Pensacola in the summer of 1805, copies would have to be obtained and paid for by the government. Brown quoted a letter from Morales to the marqués de Casa Calvo and Manuel de Salcedo, which said that Morales believed that the responsibility for separating out the Louisiana records belonged to the United States, not the Spanish government, and that he was ever ready to produce notes that would satisfy American and Spanish titles. Brown expressed his concerns about the price and accuracy of such copies and added that he had prevailed on Claiborne to halt the plan to take such records as remained with surveyor Carlos Laveau Trudeau to Pensacola.
2. See , 2:500.
3. See Gallatin to JM, 12 Dec. 1805, 10:657 and nn.