RC (DLC); Gregorian date supplied; at head of text below dateline: “DuPont (de Nemours) a Thomas Jefferson President du Senat des Etats unis”; endorsed by TJ as received 20 Jan. 1799 and so recorded in SJL; in pencil below dateline, probably in TJ’s hand: “27 August 1798.” Enclosures: (1) “Extrait du discours de Mr. Dupont de Nemours sur les droits a imposer à l’entrée des Tabacs étrangers,” extracting Du Pont’s comments before the Council of Elders, 23 Nov. 1796, arguing against an intended two hundred percent customs duty on tobacco that would catch by surprise a number of American and other vessels already at sea; Du Pont declaring that since the United States depends on selling only rice, cod, and tobacco in exchange for French wine, silk, and other products, this Carthaginian ruse (“ruse Carthaginoise”) will have bad consequences at a time when the United States is choosing a successor to Washington and its politics is increasingly defined as a contest between parties favoring Britain and France (MS in same; in French in an unidentified hand; titled as an extract from a speech published in its entirety in L’Historien [a serial published by Du Pont], 9:315–28). (2) Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours, Philosophie de L’Univers, 2d ed. (Paris, 1796), which the author inscribed in French to TJ as president of the U.S. Senate (see Sowerby, description begins E. Millicent Sowerby, comp., Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, Washington, D.C., 1952–59, 5 vols. description ends No. 1264).

Entre les deux nations: in 1786 the French government had appointed Du Pont to a committee examining trade relations between France and the United States. While TJ was minister to France he and Du Pont corresponded on commercial matters, including French importation of American products, and also on political philosophy (Vol. 9:338n; Vol. 12:211–12, 325–9, 595–6; Vol. 13:53–4n, 61; Vol. 15:446n). Regarding L’institut national of Arts and Sciences established in 1795, see Alexandre Lerebours to TJ, 17 May 1796.

Fifty-eight years of age when he penned the above letter, Du Pont embarked on his voyage in September 1799 with his sons, Victor and Éleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours, and their families, intending to remain in the United States. Buffeted by shifts in political power in France through the Revolution, Pierre Samuel and Irénée had been briefly jailed, and their Paris publishing establishment ransacked, as recently as September 1797. Originally expecting to establish an agricultural colony in America, the family determined instead to concentrate on manufacturing, especially gunpowder, and other endeavors. In 1802 Pierre Samuel went back to France to attend to business matters, returning to the United States in 1815, two years before his death (Dictionnaire, 12:472–5; Gilbert Chinard, The Correspondence of Jefferson and Du Pont de Nemours [Baltimore, 1931], xxiii–xxv, 215; ANB, description begins John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, New York and Oxford, 1999, 24 vols. description ends 7:115–17).

The elder Du Pont capitalized the article in his surname even though his sons favored the form “du Pont.” The father also often wrote the name as one word, as in the signature above. Pierre Samuel had appended “de Nemours” to his name to distinguish himself from other Du Ponts in France, and members of his family did not always use the expanded form. Victor, for example, generally omitted “de Nemours” from his own signature but included it in the name of a company he formed in the nineteenth century (John K. Winkler, The Du Pont Dynasty [New York, 1935], 34, 42; DAB description begins Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, New York, 1928–36, 20 vols. description ends , 5:533; Victor du Pont to TJ, 7 May 1803, and enclosure).