To Thomas Jefferson from DeWitt Clinton, 26 January 1805
From DeWitt Clinton
New York 26 January 1805
Dear Sir
James Fairlie Esqr. a Director of the Manhattan Company & a gentleman of the first respectability will open a negotiation with the Govt. on certain points of a confidential & important nature. He will explain to you & to you alone the whole object & the inducing causes of his application. It cannot be nor is it expected that you will give your sanction to any measure incompatible with the public good—but when you consider the intimate connexion between the prosperity of that institution and the support of those political opinions most congenial with the general good,—We have no doubt but that you will afford Mr Fairlie every facility at your power.
With every sentiment of respect & regard I am Your Most Obedt. servt
DeWitt Clinton
RC (DLC); at foot of text: “The President of the U.S.”; endorsed by TJ. Recorded in SJL as received 1 Feb. with notation “Manhattan bank.”
James Fairlie’s mission related to a shortage of specie, particularly among New York’s banks, including the Manhattan Company. Clinton was a director of the bank, which was associated with prominent Republicans. The risk of a drain on specie and a concomitant interruption to bank discounting intensified when the Merchants’ Bank, the directors of which were Federalists or supporters of Aaron Burr, called in its debts after failing to gain state incorporation. The administration responded immediately to the Manhattan Company’s entreaties. In a letter of 2 Feb. to Jonathan Burrall, the cashier of the New York branch of the Bank of the United States, Gallatin reported an agreement he had reached with the Manhattan Company to deposit $200,000 of public monies in the bank for a period of six months. Gallatin advised Burrall not to purchase any government bills that “would either assist an exportation of specie or encrease the means of aggression already possessed by the Directors & others interested in the Merchants’ bank.” Burrall was also to “purchase with equal liberality from the Customers of the Manhattan Company as from those of your Office.” In a subsequent letter to Thomas Willing, president of the Bank of the United States, Gallatin detailed the plan and requested the bank’s assistance in heading off the crisis (, 10:558-9; New York American Citizen, 5 Dec. 1804; New-York Herald, 30 Jan. 1805; New York Daily Advertiser, 1 Feb.; Robert E. Wright, “Thomas Willing [1731-1821]: Philadelphia Financier and Forgotten Founding Father,” Pennsylvania History, 63 [1996], 546-7, 559-60; Mary-Jo Kline, ed., Political Correspondence and Public Papers of Aaron Burr, 2 vols. [Princeton, 1983], 2:831-2; Gallatin to TJ, 20 Feb.).