To James Madison from Nicholas P. Trist, 30 January 1828
From Nicholas P. Trist
Monticello Jan. 30. 1828.
Dear Sir
To my great mortification, I learn this evening that Mr Randolph left Edge-hill after dinner, for Montpellier. His intention to spend the night with Dr Page,1 gives me hopes however, that a messenger setting out before day may reach there before he sets out, & retrieve the opportunity.
With a view to multiply the chances in their favor, I have made copies of two of your letters which, from their subjects & the associations connected with them, struck me as among those peculiarly deserving preservation. These shall be sent by mail. With your letters, you will find three extracts made by me with a view to asking your permission to preserve them.2 This however is done only on condition that you do not grant it, unless there be not in your mind the slightest objection to entrusting me with them. Indeed, I fear that the request is an act of indiscretion of which I should not be guilty but for the knowledge of your disposition to make every allowance for every thing not totally inexcusable. With every feeling of respect & attachment for Mrs Madison & yourself your obt Servt
N P Trist.
Your attention has no doubt been attracted by the late tornado in the H. Rep’s. Did you read Mr Burner’s speech?3 If not, I risk nothing in ensuring that you will not consider the time otherwise than well employed.
RC (ViHi: Nicholas P. Trist Album Book); draft (DLC: Nicholas P. Trist Papers). RC cover docketed by JM. The postscript does not appear on the draft.
1. Mann Page (1791–1850), originally of Cumberland County, Virginia, was a graduate of Hampden-Sydney College and the University of Pennsylvania medical school. He married Jane Frances Walker in 1815 and settled at Turkey Hill (later Keswick), where he practiced medicine (Richard Channing Moore Page, Genealogy of the Page Family in Virginia […], 2nd ed. [New York, 1893], 119–25).
2. In the draft, the rest of the letter reads: “This I now do, on condn. that it is not to be granted unless you have not a single objectn. to entrustg them; and praying that, if there be any indelicacy in the request, that it may be excused.”
3. Rudolph Bunner (1779–1837), a graduate of Columbia College, practiced law in New-burgh, New York, before moving to Oswego and becoming director of the Oswego Cloth & Carpet Manufacturing Company. Bunner served in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1827–29. The “late tornado in the H. Rep’s” involved Louisiana slaveholder Marigny D’Auterive’s claim for compensation for the impressment, wounding, and lost value of an enslaved person, Warwick, at the Battle of New Orleans. The claim was rejected on the grounds that enslaved persons were not considered property in that context, spurring an acrimonious debate in the full House between northern and southern representatives over the nature and legal status of slavery. For a full discussion of the controversy, see Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government’s Relations to Slavery (New York, 2001), 3–8. Bunner’s 11 January 1828 speech took southerners to task: “It is impossible for any individual, coming from my part of the country, to hear, dispassionately and coolly, the language which has been used by the gentlemen of the South. […] When our Southern brethren, therefore, giving utterance to the unbiassed dictates of their own judgment, on this irritating question, forbid us to touch or approach it—when, in their language of strong and indignant feeling, they warn us against the hazard of incurring the last and worst of political evils—they forget this peculiarity of our relative position. They do more, Mr. Chairman: for, arriving at the conclusion, that this House has no power to decide whether a slave be property by virtue of their own natural reason, and inhibiting us from even an approach to that question, they claim the uncontrolled exercise of reason, and the expression of opinion, which they refuse us’ (Register of Debates in Congress, 4:976).