To James Madison from Alexander J. Dallas, 20 May 1815
From Alexander J. Dallas
Treasury Department, May 20, 1815.
The Secretary of the Treasury has the honor to submit to the consideration of the President of the United States, the petition of B. & J. Bohlen, praying a pardon for the offence of importing, unlawfully, a quantity of coffee, which was afterwards purchased by the petitioners in Baltimore, without any participation or notice of the illicit transaction.
The letter of the late Attorney General, Mr. Pinkney, places the case in a very favorable light for the petitioners; whose characters are highly esteemed in Philadelphia.1
The Secretary, therefore, respectfully recommends, that a pardon be granted for the offence, with a remission of the forfeiture.
A. J. Dallas.
RC and enclosures (DNA: RG 59, Petitions for Pardon, no. 298). In a clerk’s hand, signed by Dallas. Verso bears JM’s initialed note: “Let a pardon issue.” The first enclosure was Bohl and John Bohlen to JM, 13 Mar. 1815; for the remaining enclosures, see n. 1.
1. Dallas enclosed William Pinkney’s 17 Mar. 1815 letter to James P. Boyd (4 pp.), supporting the Bohlens’ petition even though Pinkney had prosecuted the case for the United States before the Supreme Court. At that time, Pinkney wrote, he had believed the prosecution to be “extremely rigourous” with respect to the Bohlens, but “was nevertheless anxious to establish the Rule upon which it turned, as furnishing a wholesome check in the Hands of Government, to be enforced or relaxed, as occasion might require, with a just View to the Facts of each particular Case.” Pinkney added in a postscript: “If Mr Boyd thinks that this Letter to him can be of any assistance in explaining the Petition of his Clients to The President, Mr. Pinkney has no Objection to his sending it on with the Petition.” Filed with the RC and probably also enclosed by Dallas were an 8 May 1815 letter from Boyd to Dallas (1 p.), forwarding Pinkney’s letter together with a 16 Mar. 1815 signed statement by Baltimore collector James H. McCulloch (1 p.), certifying that the coffee had been imported in the brig Madeira, and that on 15 Jan. 1810, Caspar Otto Muller had reported it at the customhouse as being from Baracoa and given security for payment of the duties; a 16 Mar. 1815 statement by notary Samuel Sterett (2 pp.) that Muller had “failed in Business some time subsequent to the 15th. of January 1810” and moved to Pennsylvania, “leaving his Property in Trust for the Benefit of his Creditors”; an undated statement signed by district court clerk Philip Moore (1 p.) certifying that the coffee had been seized on 15 Feb. 1810; and a 4 May 1815 letter to Dallas from the Bohlens (2 pp.), reminding him of his promise to read the petition that they had given to him, and to attend to their case when he returned to Washington.