From James Madison to Joseph St. Leger D’Happart, 8 May 1806 (Abstract)
To Joseph St. Leger D’Happart, 8 May 1806 (Abstract)
§ To Joseph St. Leger D’Happart.1 8 May 1806, Department of State. “Your letter of the 10th. ult. was duly received. Mr. Clarkson was not Consul at St. Kitts, but only Agent of the Navy Department. Were it indeed otherwise, no principle occurs, which would impose upon the UStates any responsibility for the alledged breach of confidence by him.2 With respect to the capture by the British of the Ship Isis,3 it can be only observed that an appeal from the condemnation at Newfoundland is the remedy which it is incumbent on you to pursue.”
RC (PPiU: Joseph St. Leger d’Happart Papers); letterbook copy (DNA: RG 59, DL, vol. 15). RC 1 p.; in Wagner’s hand, signed by JM. Cover sheet addressed by Wagner; franked by JM.
1. Joseph St. Leger D’Happart arrived in Boston from France in 1796. He became a clerk and obtained U.S. citizenship the following year. In 1807 he was confined to debtors’ prison in Philadelphia but was released in 1808 and moved to southwestern Pennsylvania (, 4:537 n.).
2. D’Happart had given David Matthew Clarkson power to collect $8,000 belonging to D’Happart that was detained by the authorities at Saint Kitts. He claimed Clarkson collected the money and absconded to Saint-Barthélemy with it (ibid., 5:145–46).
3. Letterbook copy has “Iris.” On 14 July 1805 the British ship Isis, John A. Ommanney, seized D’Happart’s brig Betsey, James Atkinson, which was bound from Nantes to the United States in ballast and carrying “100 boxes slate, and a few articles” D’Happart had purchased for himself and his family. The British seized all of this in addition to “his papers, part of his apparel, jewels, books, &c. and his person [was] most shamefully treated during his detention” on the Isis. The Betsey was condemned at St. John’s, Newfoundland, “owing to the baseness” of Atkinson and “the villainy of a certain fellow named L. Rodrigues … to whom Mr. d’H. had given a free passage in his vessel” (New-York Commercial Advertiser, 10 Oct. 1805).