James Madison Papers
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From James Madison to James Monroe, 6 September 1816

To James Monroe

Sepr. 6. 1816

Dear Sir

On perusing your letters to Mr. DeNeuville, and Mr. Gallatin, some ideas occurred which induced me to put them on paper for your consideration. Those relating to the first letter are interlined with a pencil. Those relating to the 2d. are partly so, & partly penned on a separate sheet.1 In the communication to Mr. G. I thought it might be not amiss to suggest the several topics which he may find it expedient to develope orally or in writing. Reject or use any or the whole as you judge best.

As De Neuvilles communication to his Govt. may first arrive and forestall impressions at Paris, the interlineation in pa. 2d. of the letter to him, is intended to suggest an important and very pertinent fact which may not be known there, & which he will not disclose; and to controul the effect of his magnifying comments on the subject. Whether this last part of the interlineation merits adoption is the more questionable of the two.

The little delay occasioned by this retrograde of the papers is not material as De Neuville himself will think on receiving your answer. But to avoid a protraction of it, it will be best to sign blank sheets, (if there be none signed at the office) for copies of the letters whatever the final shapes you ⟨m⟩ay give them, and to send them with your drafts directly to Mr Graham, with instructions to forward triplicates immediately to Mr. Gallatin. Perhaps one ought to be forwarded thro. G.B. I have no objection if you think it proper to your intimating to Mr. Gallatin that the recall of De Neuville is not our object, nor wish if his continuance be agreeable to his Govt. Yrs.

J. Madison

RC (NN: Monroe Papers).

1The sheet has not been found, but in his 10 Sept. 1816 reply to Jean Guillaume Hyde de Neuville’s 20 July demand for the dismissal of Baltimore postmaster John S. Skinner, Monroe expressed the administration’s regret at both the demand and the manner in which it had been made. He pointed out that it was an inadmissable restriction on the freedom of action of the United States but otherwise forbore from further comment beyond stating that the matter would be referred to Albert Gallatin in Paris. In the instructions written for Gallatin on 10 Sept. 1816, Monroe informed the American minister that de Neuville’s demand had been rejected. The secretary of state conceded that public officials should be careful about their language, but Gallatin was directed to inform the French government that Independence Day was a day of festivity for Americans in which officials were merely ordinary citizens who had the right to express their opinions freely and that no foreign government had ever complained about the exercise of that right. It would be Gallatin’s duty to explain to France that such a complaint should never be made again (Monroe to Gallatin, 10 Sept. 1816 and enclosures [Papers of Gallatin, (microfilm ed.), reel 28]).

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