To James Madison from Isaac Cox Barnet, 12 July 1811 (Abstract)
§ From Isaac Cox Barnet
12 July 1811, Paris. “For nearly fourteen years I held the appointment of Consul for the United States in this Country.” Believes his impartiality and integrity in the discharge of his duties are beyond suspicion. Encloses a letter exhibiting the sentiments of those who can judge his conduct. Also appeals to the testimony of “Mr. Monroe and Mr. Bowdoin late Ministers plenipotentiary to France and Spain,” as well as that of Mr. Mercer, his former colleague on the American commission in Paris.1 Concludes that his removal was the result of “malevolence and the confirmation of it from misrepresentation.”2 Requests to be reinstated, “or if there exists doubts on either of these points … I ask to be heard.” Mentions that he has a wife and children dependent on him for support but addresses himself to JM’s “justice and not [his] Sympathies.”
RC and enclosures (DNA: RG 59, CD, Paris); Tr (DNA: RG 84, France, Misc. Correspondence Received). RC 2 pp. Enclosures are a petition dated 4 July 1811 (2 pp.), recommending Barnet as a man of integrity and as being capable of serving as American consul general in Paris. The petition bears sixteen signatures, including those of Peter Whiteside, Robert Crane, and Jonathan Vanderlyn. The second enclosure is a one-page letter addressed to JM by Pierre Samuel DuPont de Nemours, dated 1811 (in French). DuPont declined to sign the petition on the grounds that he was not an American citizen but stated that he shared the esteem in which the petitioners held Barnet. RC and enclosures were forwarded in the 12 July postscript to Barnet’s letter to Monroe, 8 July 1811 (DNA: RG 59, CD, Paris).
1. Under article 6 of a convention signed in Paris on 30 Apr. 1803 to pay the sums owed by France to American citizens, Robert R. Livingston and James Monroe, as U.S. ministers to France, were authorized to establish a commission of three to examine documents relating to those claims that the French government declared had already been liquidated. John Mercer and William Maclure of Virginia, along with Isaac Cox Barnet, were appointed to the commission (, 1:519–20; Dangerfield, Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, p. 381).
2. Minister John Armstrong had suspended Barnet from his functions as consul at Le Havre in June 1809 (Skeen, John Armstrong, p. 114).