RC (DLC); adjacent to closing and signature: “Thomas Jefferson Esqr”; endorsed by TJ as received 17 Jan. 1818 and so recorded in SJL. Enclosure: Report of Secretary of War James McHenry on the petition of Joseph Léonard Poirey, War Department, 5 Apr. 1796, stating that, although Poirey had apparently served as a secretary and aide-de-camp to Lafayette during the Revolutionary War, he had never been paid for his military service; noting that in “imitation of his general, and from a movement of disinterestedness, he waived his demand for pay, when it might have been obtained, and only recurred to it when misfortune and distress seem to have rendered the application a duty”; and admitting that, under a strict construction of the law, Poirey was not entitled to compensation, but wondering whether “the informality of the petitioner’s waiver” and his residence overseas might not “open the way for a decision grounded upon the original justness of his claim” (ASP, Claims, 1:133).