To Thomas Jefferson from Lafayette, 1 December 1804
From Lafayette
La Grange 10th frimair 1st december 1804
My dear friend
I Have on the 8th October Adressed You with a long Confidential Letter and Entrusted it to Mr. Livingston—Since Which General Armstrong Has delivered Your kind favor of June the 27h With the Subsequent Information You Have Been pleased to Send for me
in Every part of those transactions I find Myself Under Such obligations to Your friendship that While I have words to Express them, I feel I Have a Heart fully possessed with the Grateful Sentiments they Have Excited.
Under those dispositions, My dear friend, Added to all the inclinations and Repugnancies Congenial to My temper Which Neither time or Exemple Can Hebetate, You Cannot Question the Sense I Have of Your weighty invitation and Advice—that Matter I Had fully discussed in the Letter previous to Gnl Armstrong’s Arrival—His Conversation Could not But Lessen one Side of the Argumentation and Reinforce the other—Yet I Have His Approbation to Refrain in these Lines from Entering Again On the Subject, as they are particularly destined to Convey By Any Opportunity My thanks to Congress.
Permit me therefore to Submit to Your Consideration the Enclosed Official Letter and to Request You, if You Approve the Contents, to Have it delivered through the proper Channel, Which, if I am not Mistaken Must be first from me to the Secretary at War.
I Also take the Liberty to inclose a Copy of My Power of Attorney to Mr Madison—I Have on the 10h October writen to Him a very Long Letter But as My Affairs Have Been Managed far Beyond Any Expectation I Could Conceive or Any idea I Could Either presume to form, it Remains only for me to Enjoy with Happy thankfulness What friendship Has Been pleased to do.
I am with Affectionate and Grateful Respect in Which my Wife and family Beg Leave to Join
Your old and for Ever friend
Lafayette
RC (DLC); endorsed by TJ as received 28 Mch. 1805 and so recorded in SJL. Enclosures: (1) Lafayette to Dearborn, responding to Dearborn’s of 30 Dec. 1803; he expresses his thanks for the Louisiana lands granted to him by Congress; he considers them a “Retrospective to the Services of the Army in which I had the honor to Rank” (Tr in same: TJ Papers, 146:25402; undated; in a clerk’s hand; at head of text: “Copy of my official letter to general Dearborn”). (2) Copy of Lafayette’s power of attorney to Madison, authorizing him to locate Lafayette’s lands in Louisiana (not found, but see , Sec. of State Ser., 8:148n; Lafayette to TJ, 8 Oct.).