To George Washington from Joseph Fenwick, 10 May 1795
From Joseph Fenwick
Bordeaux [France] 10 May 1795
Sir
I have the honor to inclose you a letter from Mr Secondat the only Son of the celebrated Montesquieu.1 he is now about 80 years old and infirm; his moral & social virtues, not less conspicuous than the Talents of his predecessor, have protected him thro’ the storm of the Revolution, notwithstanding the prejudice that prevaild against the class of men of which he was born a member.
At his special request I take the liberty to cover you the inclosed—The justly meritted reputation of this Family, at present under some affliction, by the vicissitude of events, in the seperation from their only Son, leaves no room to me to ask anything in their favor.2 With the greatest respect I have the honor to be Sir your most devoted Servant
Joseph Fenwick
ALS, DLC:GW.
1. Jean-Baptiste Secondat de Montesquieu (1716–1795) was the only son of Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, the famed author of L’Esprit des Lois. His son, also named Charles-Louis de Secondat (1749–1824), later baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, had served as an aide-de-camp to François-Jean de Beauvoir, marquis de Chastellux, during the American Revolution. When the younger Montesquieu emigrated to join the counterrevolutionary Armée des Princes, the elder Montesquieu was arrested in January 1794 by the French revolutionary government for presumed complicity, and his property and belongings were sequestered. Some property was returned upon his release later that year, but other belongings were not restored until the following spring, shortly before his death on 17 June 1795.
2. A contemporary translation of Secondat de Montesquieu’s letter of 10 Floreal Year 3 of the French Republic (29 April 1795) was incorrectly dated “29 Decr 94” by the translator. Montesquieu addressed GW as “Minister of God, all good, and all powerful,” and wrote: “My only son montesquieu has been long in your Country. If thro’ you I can obtain a legal attestation of this Fact, you will act according to your beinficent nature, you will contribute to alleviate the misfortunes of a tender Father, now eighty years of age, who during this long course of years has not strayed from the paths of honor and virtue” (copy [translation], DLC:GW).
On 20 July, Edmund Randolph forwarded Montesquieu’s letter to Secretary of War Timothy Pickering with the request that Pickering make inquiries (DNA: RG 59, Domestic Letters).
GW replied to Montesquieu on 7 Sept.: “I sincerely wish that my enquiries relative to Your Son, pursuant to your desires, had been attended with a more favorable result than the enclosed papers [not identified] Communicate. Altho the information may fall short of your wishes, they will nevertheless prove, that I was not unmindful of Your Commands” (LB, DLC:GW).
Secondat de Montesquieu’s son was, in fact, not in the United States; he had emigrated to England to escape the French Revolution and participated, in July 1795, in an unsuccessful expedition of émigrés to Quiberon. That same year, he married Mary-Anne MacGeoghegan O’Neill, a wealthy Irish heiress. Though the younger Montesquieu returned to France in the early nineteenth century, he lived most of the remainder of his life at his wife’s estate near Canterbury, where he died in July 1824 (Gentleman’s Magazine, and Historical Chronicle, 94 [1824]: 285; Jules Delpit, Le Fils de Montesquieu [Bordeaux, 1888], 155–56; Raymond Céleste, “Un Petit-Fils de Montesquieu en Amérique (1780–1783),” in Revue Philomathique de Bordeaux et du Sud-Ouest [Bordeaux, 1902], 555–56).