PrC (DLC); at foot of text: “John Brown esq.” Enclosure: American Philosophical Society to John Brown of Boone County, Kentucky (see John Vaughan to TJ, 21 July).

Daniel Clark (CLARKE) was in New York in mid-August, expecting to travel to England on personal business (Madison, Papers, Sec. of State Ser. description begins William T. Hutchinson, Robert A. Rutland, J. C. A. Stagg, and others, eds., The Papers of James Madison, Chicago and Charlottesville, 1962–, 33 vols. Sec. of State Ser., 1986–, 9 vols.; Pres. Ser., 1984–, 6 vols.; Ret. Ser., 2009–, 1 vol. description ends , 3:487).

ATTEMPT ON BUONAPARTE’S LIFE: early in May, Joseph Fouché, the French minister of police, thwarted two plots against the first consul by officers of the army. Robert R. Livingston discussed one of the attempts in two letters to Madison of 10 May that were among the dispatches that Madison forwarded to TJ on 11 Aug. There were also a few reports in American newspapers in July and August, reprinting news from London and Paris, that mentioned one of the failed designs to kill the first consul. Because Fouché knew of the plans before they could be carried out, Bonaparte’s life was not in danger and the minister of police did not consider the schemes SERIOUS threats to the regime. Army generals implicated in the plots were demoted or exiled away from Paris. The conspiracies exhibited the discontent of a number of military officers, particularly in reaction to Bonaparte’s rapprochement with the Catholic Church and his evident abandonment of revolutionary principles. Livingston thought that ill feeling in the officer corps was “pretty extensive.” In June, Fouché and other officials suppressed a conspiracy by officers who attempted to initiate a widespread revolt of the army (Thierry Lentz, Le Grand Consulat, 1799–1804 [Paris, 1999], 347–51; Madison, Papers, Sec. of State Ser. description begins William T. Hutchinson, Robert A. Rutland, J. C. A. Stagg, and others, eds., The Papers of James Madison, Chicago and Charlottesville, 1962–, 33 vols. Sec. of State Ser., 1986–, 9 vols.; Pres. Ser., 1984–, 6 vols.; Ret. Ser., 2009–, 1 vol. description ends , 3:205, 206n, 207; Charleston Carolina Gazette, 15 July; Washington Federalist, 11 Aug.; Vol. 35:194n).

SICKLY: TJ may have referred to measles in particular. The disease had been a problem not just in Virginia, but in Washington, Philadelphia, New York, and elsewhere, and was “uncommonly mortal.” In mid-August, measles still lingered at Norfolk, where it had been present for several weeks and was responsible for the deaths of some children. Yellow fever had not yet reached Norfolk, but, as a preventive measure, in August the municipal government instituted a quarantine on ships arriving from Philadelphia, Baltimore, the West Indies, and the Bahama Islands. In a similar step, James Monroe appointed a superintendent for a quarantine at Richmond. Yellow fever did enter Virginia later in the season, causing several hundred fatalities at Norfolk by early autumn, and Fredericksburg also took quarantine measures (Philadelphia Gazette, 18 Aug.; CVSP description begins William P. Palmer and others, eds., Calendar of Virginia State Papers . . . Preserved in the Capitol at Richmond, Richmond, 1875–93, 11 vols. description ends , 9:316, 317; Preston, Catalogue description begins Daniel Preston, A Comprehensive Catalogue of the Correspondence and Papers of James Monroe, Westport, Conn., 2001, 2 vols. description ends , 1:130–1; Wyndham B. Blanton, Medicine in Virginia in the Nineteenth Century [Richmond, 1933], 225, 237).