Caesar A. Rodney to Thomas Jefferson, 15 October 1805
From Caesar A. Rodney
Cool Spring near Wilmington Octob. 15th. 1805.
Honored & Dr. Sir,
I cannot avoid transmitting you the enclosed letter from my father, which was forwarded to me this day from Philada. Tho’ the Government may perhaps have received more correct & detailed information on the subject, especially if the directions given by my father have been complied with.
If the Spanish Government are concerned in the business, I suspect, their agency is concealed in the darkness of the hour at which the act was perpetrated, un less they are prepared to throw off the mask. The prudence & discretion of our own Government is equal to any emergency of the times; which seem pregnant with events, & I am confident that we cannot be taken by surprize
Permit me to congratulate you, on the happy release of our captive fellow citizens & the honorable peace made with Tripoli. With great personal regard & political esteem I am Dr. Sir Yours Most Sincerely
C. A. Rodney
RC (DLC); endorsed by TJ as received 18 Oct. and so recorded in SJL. Enclosure not identified, but see below.
the subject: the enclosed letter by Thomas Rodney likely referred to an incident that occurred on 3 Sep., in which a number of men from Spanish West Florida crossed the border into Mississippi Territory and kidnapped the Kemper brothers, Nathan, Reuben, and Samuel. The Kempers were subsequently rescued by an army detachment stationed at Pointe Coupee (William Baskerville Hamilton, Anglo-American Law on the Frontier: Thomas Rodney & His Territorial Cases [Durham, N.C., 1953], 77-8; , Foreign Relations, 2:683-9; , 10:336-7).