To James Madison from Joseph Lakanal, 1 June 1816
From Joseph Lakanal
Gallatin-Contry par Vevay, indian-Contry,
le 1er. Juin 1816
Excellence:
J’ai l’honneur de Vous adresser une Lettre que J’esperois avoir l’inappréciable avantage de Vous présenter; des évenemens que Je n’ai pu maîtriser ont Changé ma direction me Voici sur les bords de l’ohio Dans des propriétés que Je viens d’acquerir, Gallatin-Contry, dans le Voisinage de la Colonie française de Vevay: Je vais, dans Cette douce retraite partager nmon tems entre la Culture de mes terres et Celle des Lettres. Je me propose d’écrire l’histoire des États-unis pour laquelle Je ramasse des matériaux depuis dix ans: le Spectacle d’un peuple libre supportant, avec docilité, le Joug salutaire des lois, temperera l’amertume que J’eprouve en m’éloignant de ma patrie; elle Seroit heureuse si vôtre génie pacifique avoit dirigé ses destinées. L’ambition d’un seul homme a précipité, sur nous, les nations Courrocées; ma patrie abattue, mais frappée de la sagesse de vôtre administration, et se rappelant son antique gloire, Vous envie au nouveau monde pour se relever de ses ruines. J’éspère qu’en écrivant vôtre histoire, et celle de ⟨vos⟩ Dévanciers plus ou moins Célèbres, le tableau se ressentira du charme qu’éprouvera le peintre, et que soutenu par la beauté de mon sujet, bien plus que par mes propres forces, Je pourrai, avec un poête de l’antiquité, m’écrier, à la fin de mon ouvrage: “exegi monumentum ære perennius”1 daignez, excellence, accueillir le tendre et respectueux hommage de Vôtre très humble et très obéissant serviteur
CONDENSED TRANSLATION
Sends JM a letter which he had hoped to present himself, but events out of his control have changed his direction. Finds himself on the banks of the Ohio on property he has just acquired, in Gallatin County, in the neighborhood of the French colony of Vevay. In this delightful retreat, he will divide his time between the cultivation of his lands and literature. He proposes to write the history of the United States, for which he has been collecting materials for ten years. The sight of a free people calmly bearing the salutary yoke of law will temper the bitterness he feels in leaving his own country. [France] would be fortunate if JM’s pacific genius had guided her destiny. The ambition of a single man has thrown the enraged nations upon his country; now beaten down but struck by the wisdom of JM’s administration, and recalling her ancient glory, she looks to the new world to raise herself from the ruins. He hopes that in writing about JM and his more or less famous predecessors, he can convey a picture of the charm of which the painter is sensible, sustained by the beauty of the subject, much more than by his own strength, and will be able to cry, as with a poet of antiquity, at the end of his work: “exegi monumentum ære perennius.”
RC (DLC). Docketed by JM.
1. “I have finished a monument more lasting than bronze,” Horace, Odes 3.30.1 (Horace: Odes and Epodes, Loeb Classical Library [repr. 1978], 278–79).
2. Joseph Lakanal (1762–1845) entered a teaching order of the Roman Catholic Church and for much of his early adult life worked to advance the cause of republican education in France. He was elected to the National Convention, voting in 1793 for the execution of Louis XVI. With a regicide past, he was driven into exile after the Bourbon Restoration and in March 1816 settled on the banks of the Ohio River, opposite the Swiss colony of Vevay. After 1817 he was involved in the activities of the Society for the Cultivation of the Vine and the Olive in Alabama as well as playing some part in the abortive schemes to invade Texas and establish Joseph Bonaparte as king in Mexico. He never produced his promised history of the United States (Scott and Rothaus, Historical Dictionary of the French Revolution, 2:537–38; Rafe Blaufarb, Bonapartists in the Borderlands: French Exiles and Refugees on the Gulf Coast, 1815–1835 [Tuscaloosa, Ala., 2005], 6, 11, 37, 42, 48–49, 81–86, 160–61).