To James Madison from Thomas Jefferson, 2 August 1806
From Thomas Jefferson
Monticello Aug. 2. 06.
Dear Sir
I return you mr Lear’s letters; in which I am sorry to find he says not a word about the Tripoline family.1 I presume the family has chosen not to be given up. I inclose you a letter from Salvatore Bosutti at Malta, which may be filed in the office I presume without answer.2 Noble’s letter & sample should I suppose be filed in the patent-office.3 It may be a charity tho’ it is not a duty to inform him of the steps he ought to take. The letters from Rogers, after perusal, I will ask the favor of you to return to the Navy office.4 The case of the Ketch Gheretti is not a pleasant one to form the commencement of our correspondence with the Ottoman government. Shall we let it pass without an answer? or give them a solid one? She had joined our enemies in war against us. We took her. Had we considered her crew as Ottoman subjects, we must have hung them up as pirates & perhaps complained to that government. We thought it a proof of moderation to identify them, as they had done themselves with the Tripolines, to confiscate the vessel &, on the peace, to discharge them. But through whom can we answer? My journey to Bedford is still to be made; but I have not yet fixed a day. I have retained the papers now sent in expectation you would recieve them in Orange. Accept affectionate salutations & continued respect
Th: Jefferson
RC (DLC); FC (DLC: Jefferson Papers). For surviving enclosures, see nn. 1 and 4.
1. See JM to Jefferson, 28 July 1806, and n. 1. For the Tripoline family, see JM to George Davis, 24 June 1806.
2. Jefferson evidently referred to Salvatore Busuttil, Hamet Qaramanli’s agent at Malta (see Joseph Pulis to JM, 20 Jan. 1804, 6:371–72).
3. Here and in his 8 Aug. 1806 letter to JM, Jefferson may have referred to Noble Phelps, who received a patent for pumps in 1831 (United States, Patent Office, List of Patents for Inventions and Designs, Issued by the United States, from 1790 to 1847 […], comp. Edmund Burke [Washington, 1847], 225).
4. Jefferson may have enclosed navy Capt. John Rodgers’s letters to Robert Smith of 26 and 27 July 1806 (DNA: RG 45, Captains’ Letters; printed in , 6:461, 463). The first (4 pp.) reported on the largely amicable relations between the U.S. squadron and the various governments on the Mediterranean coast; the second (8 pp.) announced Rodgers’s arrival at Washington in the Essex, summarized his arrangements in the Mediterranean before his departure, and outlined the strategy he would have pursued there if his request to come home had not been granted. Neither letter, however, mentioned the ketch Gheretti, and Jefferson’s note on JM’s 28 July letter to him indicates that the letters from Rodgers enclosed here did so. Via James Leander Cathcart’s 1 Feb. and 6 Mar. 1804 letters to JM, the administration had presumably learned of Capt. Edward Preble’s 23 Dec. 1803 capture of the ketch, then known as the Mastico, and of its earlier participation in the attack on the U.S. frigate Philadelphia ( 6:419–20 and n. 3, 553–54, 554–55 n. 1). The only letters from Rodgers mentioning the Gheretti that have been found date from 1805: they state that the ketch, renamed the Intrepid in U.S. service, had been used to burn the Philadelphia and was then blown up in an abortive attempt to destroy the Tripolitan fleet (for the incidents, see 6:604 n. 1, 612 and n. 1, 8:51, 52 n. 2); that the Ottoman government had subsequently claimed it; and that Rodgers was waiting for instructions from the United States before giving a final answer to this demand (Rodgers to Alexander John Ball, 25 June and 15 July 1805, and Rodgers to Smith, 6 July and 1 Sept. 1805, DNA: RG 45, Captains’ Letters; printed in , 6:137–38, 167, 182–83, 259–63). These letters bear no indication as to when they reached Washington.