To James Madison from James Leander Cathcart, 22 March 1816
From James Leander Cathcart
Philada. March 22nd: 1816
Sir
I have the honor to transmit for your Excellency’s perusal the most correct information obtainable of the actual state of Spain & its government when I left Cadiz in February last,1 & have only to add that a few days prior to my departure General OReilly took passage in a merchant vessel bound to Lima in order to take the command in chief of all King Ferdinands forces in Peru & its jurisdiction.2
The Asia of 64 guns the Prueba & Esmeralda of 44 each & the Brig Volador of 18 saild in company with us on the 3rd. of Feby. bound to Carthagena to join Morilla in order to endeavour to subjugate the Patriots in that Province,3 but from their manœvres they seem’d to be so very badly man’d that little may be expected from their exertions even in a better cause, & were our nations at war I am confident that three of our large Frigates would capture or sink the whole Squadron in half an hour.
I intend to proceed to the seat of Government in a few days when I will do myself the honor to wait upon you & in the mean time subscribe myself with the most distinct respect Sir Yr. Exys. Obd. Servt.
James Leander Cathcart
RC (DNA: RG 59, ML). For enclosure, see n. 1.
1. On 4 Feb. 1816 Cathcart left Cádiz for Philadelphia to arrange for the relocation of his family in Spain. On 22 Mar. he also wrote to Monroe, enclosing “documents addressed to the President,” which conveyed information about “the actual state of Spain and its government when I left Cadiz in February last, I likewise inclose certified copies of the documents relative to the capture of the Brigantine William & Mary Captn Smith” (Richard Meade to Monroe, 18 Feb. 1816, and Cathcart to Monroe, 22 Mar. 1816 [DNA: RG 59, CD, Cádiz]). No such documents addressed to JM have been found, but Cathcart was probably referring to recent dispatches from Cádiz written by Anthony Morris and intended for the State Department. Those under the dates of 26 and 30 Jan. 1816 described the “internal affairs” of Spain proceeding in a “state of disorder and discontent and the Govt exhibits daily some new example of the extreme of debility united to the height of despotism.” Among other matters Ferdinand VII had dismissed on 24 Jan. four of his ministers, including the minister of state Pedro Cevallos, only to reinstate him two days later (DNA: RG 59, DD, Spain). For two copies of “Notes etc relative to the American Brig William & Mary,” see ibid., filed after Morris’s 1 Aug. 1815 dispatch to Monroe. These described the incident that occurred in February 1815, when the British naval vessel Reynard captured the American brig at a distance of less than one mile from Cádiz and after Capt. Smith had taken on a pilot to clear the port.
2. Cathcart referred to Diego O’Reilly, an Irish-born Spanish subject in command of a division of royalist troops during the liberation of Peru. He later committed suicide following his defeat at Cerro de Pasco in 1820 by patriot forces commanded by Gen. Juan Antonio Álvarez de Arnales (Tim Fanning, Paisanos: The Forgotten Irish Who Changed the Face of Latin America [Dublin, 2016], 4, 165; Byron Farwell, The Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Land Warfare: An Illustrated World View [New York, 2001], 25).
3. For Pablo Morillo’s expedition, see Joel R. Poinsett to Monroe, 16 Nov. 1815, and n. 3.