The enclosed letter from Secretary of the Navy Smith thompson was possibly his letter to Monroe from Washington, 15 Sept. 1821, which included a promise to send the proceedings of the court against Barron and stated that “Gentlemen who undertake to represent him as a persecuted and ill treated man, are either much prejudiced or are ignorant of the circumstances attending his case” (RC in DLC: Monroe Papers). An alternative is that Monroe actually meant a letter to rather than from Thompson and enclosed a 4 Mar. 1819 letter from Thomas P. Goodwin in Baltimore to Thompson confirming that in 1811 the British consul at Pernambuco, Mr. Lyon, repeated Barron’s claim that he had known British deserters were on board the USS Chesapeake and had notified the government of this; that before going to sea he also advised his superiors that the British would attempt to search his ship and that he would be unable to prevent them; and that Barron had convinced Lyon “that Mr. Jefferson caused him to go out in a defenceless state, for the express purpose of having his ship attacked and disgraced; and thus attain his favourite object of involving the United States in a war with Great Britain” (Proceedings of a Court of Enquiry, 6–8, 15–6).

During the same visit late in September 1821 to his Albemarle County estate of Highland, Monroe also discussed the University of Virginia with TJ. In a 9 Oct. 1821 letter updating John H. Cocke on the affairs of the university, its bursar, Alexander Garrett, reported that “Mr Jefferson finding (from the settlements made of part of the work done) that the funds will be inadequite to the entire accomplishment of his wishes, yet does not dispare, to you I may say (without impropriety), that him and the President have been puting their heads together on the subject, and have projected new schemes, say an application to the V. Legislature to grant the University the claim they set up agt the Genl Government for interest on the debt due from it to the State” (RC in ViU: JHC).