PrC (DLC); at foot of text: “The Minister P. of France.” FC (DNA: RG 360, DL).

Ternant promptly followed TJ’s advice and on the following day wrote a letter to Hamilton in which he enclosed a copy of the above letter and reiterated his request for an advance of $400,000 on the American debt to France. During a conference with Ternant on that day Hamilton was initially reluctant to comply with this request, pointing out that the United States had already made its regularly scheduled debt payments to France. But Hamilton relented after Ternant convinced him of Saint-Domingue’s desperate need for these funds and agreed to make the advance in four installments of $100,000 each, the first to be paid immediately and the rest at three month intervals beginning on 1 June and ending on 1 Dec. 1792. In accordance with an act of Congress which required that advance payments on the French debt be made on terms advantageous to the United States, however, Hamilton also insisted that France pay an indemnity to cover the cost of transferring these funds from the American bankers in Amsterdam. In the end Hamilton and Ternant mutually agreed to make the precise terms of the indemnity the subject of negotiation between the French government and the American minister in Paris, and TJ instructed Gouverneur Morris accordingly (Ternant to Hamilton, 8, 10 Mch. 1792; Hamilton to Ternant, 8, 11, 12 Mch. 1792; Hamilton to Washington, 8 Mch. 1792, all in Syrett, Hamilton description begins The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, ed. Harold C. Syrett and others, New York, 1961-1979, 27 vols. description ends , xi, 113–17, 122–3, 125, 128; Ternant to Lessart, 13 Mch. 1792, Turner, CFM, p. 89–93; TJ to Gouverneur Morris, 28 Apr. 1792).