Your favor of the 30th ulto found me at this place where I have been detained by the situation of Mrs Rodney who lost her father a few weeks ago, & who has just been confined with her tenth child.

All my papers on the subject of the Batture are at Washington. In the course of eight or ten days I shall be there, & will send you the paper you mention, or any others you may desire.

I should like to have a copy of the declaration filed in the cause which Mr Livingston has commenced. It can not be an action of Trespass quare clausum fregit for that is local. It is perhaps for false imprisonment, or assault & battery, committed by those who removed him, agreeably to your order, from the Batture. These suits are transitory, and the venue may be laid where the defendant is found. The object and design of this extraordinary course of proceeding, is to obtain if possible, by this circuitous mode the opinion of the Supreme Court 1. On the title of the United States to the batture. 2. On the power of the President under the act of congress to remove intruders.Mr Livingston expects that a special justification of the act will be pleaded setting forth the title of the United States to the batture, the law of congress and the order of the President. I can scarcely think he is serious in laying his damages at $100,000 tho’ these may be a secondary object. Your conduct has been so fair throughout the whole business that you can have nothing to apprehend. You acted under an imperious sense of public duty & immediately laid the entire case before Congress with a recommendation to provide for its decision[.] This novel suit will in its progress give birth to a variety of new important & interesting questions upon which I forbear at present to intimate any opinion. They will require & shall receive mature consideration. The precedent, if it may be deemed one, which the plaintiff has pursued, is I suspect the case of Mosetyn vs Fabrigas, in error, reported in Cowp. Reports 161. It will be found more at large in the eleventh volume of the State trials edited by Mr Hargrave page 162. In this work the proceedings in all the stages of the cause are reported at great length.1 I recollect another similar case, tho I do not remember the names of the parties, and my modern reporters being at Washington I cannot turn to it. Nor am I certain whether they contain it. I am pretty sure I have seen it in one of the late “New Annual Registers” & I believe also, either in Easts’ or Bosanquet & Pullers reports. My common place book at Washington will furnish me with a ready reference to it.2 These are the cases most analagous, to which may be added perhaps that of Withes.

In any event congress will unquestionably indemnify you for any costs charges or expences to which you may be put.

C. A. R.