To James Madison from Edward Caffarena, 12 July 1817
From Edward Caffarena
Genoa the 12 of July 1817
Sir
I had the honor to present my respects to You Sir the 25th: of July last Year,1 giving you notice, that I had Shipped on Board the Ship Gosport of Philadelphia, Isaiah Bunker Master, two Boxes to your address containing a Statue of Bonaparte, with a Pedestal, and finding myself deprived of your new’s accusing the reception of the same, this induces me by way of precaution to inclose herein a duplicate receipt of the same Captain, who arrived in Philadelphia towards the end of September or the begining of October last year.
I shall with pleasure hear from You Sir if the whole has been consigned in good order. I beg you to excuse the liberty, while I have the honor to remain with due respect Sir Your Most Obt: Servant
Edward Caffarena2
V: Consul
RC (DLC). Docketed by JM.
1. Caffarena to JM, 25 July 1816 (DLC). According to Caffarena, the alabaster statue was of “Napoleon when he crossed the Alps before the Battle of Marengo” and was executed by Italian sculptor Enrico Causici (d. 1833), a student of Antonio Canova. Causici sailed on board the Gosport “with the intention to establish himself in America.” He subsequently worked on the U.S. Capitol and carved the statue of George Washington for the monument in Baltimore (Daily National Intelligencer, 18 Sept. 1833; George C. Groce and David H. Wallace, The New-York Historical Society’s Dictionary of Artists in America, 1564–1860 [New Haven, Conn., 1957], 116).
2. A member of a large Genoese merchant family, Edward Caffarena was appointed U.S. vice-consul at Genoa by the U.S. consul Peter Kuhn Jr., after the latter’s appointment in December 1804. When Kuhn was banished from Genoa in 1807, Caffarena was continued in his position by the U.S. minister at Paris (Roger Knight, The Pursuit of Victory: The Life and Achievement of Horatio Nelson [London, 2005], 200; , 1:476; Caffarena to JM, 7 Nov. 1807 [DNA: RG 59, CD, Genoa]).