From George Washington to Timothy Pickering, 27 July 1796
To Timothy Pickering
Private
Mount Vernon 27th July 1796
Dear Sir,
Your private letter of the 21st instant has been received.1
Mr Monroe, in every letter he writes, relative to the discontents of the French government at the conduct of our own, always concludes without finishing his story, leaving great scope to the imagination to divine what the ulterior measures of it will be.
There are some things in his correspondence, & your letters, which I am unable to reconcile. In one of your last to me, you acknowledge the receipt of one from him of the 8th of April (which I have not seen) and in his letter of the 2d of May, he refers to one of the 25th of March as the last he had written. This letter of the 25th of March (if I recollect dates rightly) was received before I left Phila.; and related his demand of an Audience of the French Directory and his having had it; but, that the conference which was promised him with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, had not taken place; nor had he heard any thing from him; altho’ the catalogue of complaints exhibited by that Minister, is dated the 9th of March, & his reply thereto the 15th of the same month. If these recitals are founded in fact, they form an enigma wch requires explanation.2
Has the letter, said to be dispatched by a Doctr Brokenbrough got to your hands? I hope it will, if it has not done so already.3
Mr De la Croix alludes, I perceive, in the close of his third, and last head of complaints, to our guarantee of their West India Islands:4 but whether to bring the subject to recollection only, or to touch upon it more largely thereafter, is problematical.5 I am always—& sincerely Your Affectionate
Go: Washington
ALS, Pickering Foundation, Salem, Mass.; LB, DLC:GW.
2. For Pickering’s explanation of this correspondence involving James Monroe, U.S. minister to France, see n.5 below; see also Pickering’s second letter to GW on 21 July, and n.1 to that document.
3. When Monroe wrote Pickering from Paris on 2 May, he mentioned that John Brockenbrough, Jr., carried a letter for Pickering with the initial complaints of French foreign minister Charles Delacroix and Monroe’s response (see 4:14–15, and n.5 below).
4. See Statement from the French Republic, 9 March, printed as an enclosure with Pickering’s second letter to GW on 21 July.
5. Pickering replied to GW in a first letter written on 30 July: “(private) … I have to-day been honored with your public & private letter of the 27th. The letter which Mr Monroe delivered to Dr Brockenbrough has not come to hand. The one dated the 8th of April, merely respected the cannon-founder & engineers, as I had the honor to inform you in the postscript of my letter of the 19th instant. I received no other letter from Mr Monroe than that dated May 2d, since that of the 25th of March, in which he speaks of the discussion promised by the Directory between him & Mr Delacroix as then pending: altho’ the complaint of the latter bears the date of March 9th, & Mr Monroe’s answer, of March 15th. What effect his answer had upon the mind of the Directory, he knew not, ‘because it was only sent in a few days since’; says Mr M. in his letter of May 2d.
“It was on the 8th of March he had his audience of the Directory; and in his letter of May 2d he says ‘soon after that period I received from the minister the communication promised, in a note of the same date’; that is, of March 8th; (it should be March 9th) to which Mr Monroe replied in a note dated the 15th. But these two notes were mutually returned; or rather so intended to be, if Dr Brockenbrough had not departed with them for London, on his way to America; and the discussion considered on both sides in suspense.
“Mr Delacroix then presented a new note, and Mr Monroe a new answer, the same he has now transmitted in his letter of May 2d. But M. Delacroix thought proper to give to his new note the date of the old one, altho’ more than a fortnight had intervened between the two; and in consequence, Mr Monroe gave the date of his first answer to his second; that the Directory might see the delay had not proceeded from him. From this detail (which is collected from Mr Monroe’s letter of May 2d) it appears that when he wrote on the 25th of March, the discussion had not been closed” (ALS, DLC:GW; ADfS, MHi: Pickering Papers). For GW’s acknowledgement of this letter, see his second letter to Pickering on 5 August.