To James Madison from Anthony Merry, 2 October 1804 (Abstract)
§ From Anthony Merry
2 October 1804, Philadelphia. Acknowledges receipt “yesterday” of JM’s 25 Sept. letter1 “inclosing an authenticated Copy of a Deposition to prove that James Matthews, who appears to have been pressed into the British Service, and to have been lately on board His Majesty’s Ship Driver, is a Citizen of the United States” and requesting his discharge. “I shall lose no Time, Sir, in transmitting a Copy of the abovementioned Document to the Commander in Chief of His Majesty’s Ships on the Halifax Station (the Driver not being at present … off the Port of New York) and make him acquainted with your Desire on this Occasion.”
RC (DNA: RG 59, NFL, Great Britain, vol. 3). 2 pp.; in a clerk’s hand, signed by Merry.
1. JM’s 25 Sept. 1804 letter to Merry has not been found but is calendared in the index to the State Department notes to foreign legations as “relative to the impressment J. Mathews” (DNA: RG 59, Notes to Foreign Ministers and Consuls, vol. 1).