1To James Madison from Edmund Edrington, 1 February 1813 (Madison Papers)
You will no doubt be surprised at being addressed by an obscure individual and an utter stranger to you; and perhaps still more so when the cause which has induced him to address you is know[n]: it is to ask a favour, and a pecuniary one too, that I have presumed to trespass upon your important engagements: I am a young man of a respectable but not wealthy family, and of a somewhat better...