James Wilkinson to Thomas Jefferson, 27 September 1822
From James Wilkinson
City of Mexico Sepr 27th 1822
Respected & dear friend
Should this letter reach your hands, it will be through the medium of his Excellency Don José Sosaya, Minister Plenipotenciary from this Empire to the United States.
This gentleman, a native Mexican of Castilian descent, is highly respected by his countrymen for his intelligence & amiable dispositions, & he enjoys the entire confidence & esteem of his majesty the Emperor; I know your Philantropy will incline you to receive with cordiality, the Representative of the youngest nation of the Earth, our near neighbour, adjunct in limits, united by nature & connected by obvious political interests
It is with lively satisfaction I am able to assure you, that Mr Sosaya visits the United States, with prepossessions the most favourable to our Country & dispositions the most amicable1 to our Government; I hope he may be met at Washington with correspondent Sympathies, & that a Sincere alliance may be formed by the two great North-American nations, as firm & durable as the high Hill on which you have fixed your abode, or the stupendous mountains, which encircle this Capital,
Several important events have succeeded my arrival here on the 6th of May last, which will probably reach you through the Mists of prejudice or ignorance; for our Countrymen, generally, who pressed forward to this region under the sordid impulse2 of Commercial cupidity, have been disappointed in their Golden prospects, view every thing of course with jaundiced eyes, and cannot consent that an independent People should regulate their “own affairs in their own way.”
But I, whom you know &, who came to this Salubrious place, solely in quest of health & to indulge an irresistible curiosity, have been an impartial & attentive observer of incidents as they passed, and can declare it as my opinion, that to Iturbide the Generalissimo on the 18th & 19th of May, & to the Emperor Augustin 1st on the 26th of the past month, the people of this Empire are indebted for their safety from Civil War, anarchy & blood-shed, transending the most frightfull scenes in revolutionary France, during the reign of Robespierre, & before Bonaparte stifled the conflicting factions & stopt the effusion of blood.
To go into detail would exceed the compass of a letter, I shall therefore postpone a narrative of facts to some future occasion, when a respect for truth & Justice may induce me, to expose the misrepresentations which I anticipate in our licentious Gazettes, many of whose editors feed on slander & fatten on defamation
I thank God I have recovered my health, & in a few weeks shall return to the bosom of my family in New Orleans, there & every where I beg you to be assured of my high respect & Sincere attachment
J.W.
FC (TxU: Edward Alexander Parsons Collection); in a clerk’s hand, with emendations, signature, and internal address in Wilkinson’s hand; at foot of text: “Thomas Jefferson the distinguished Patriot of this Country & the Friend of Mankind Monticello Virginia”; endorsed by Wilkinson. Not recorded in SJL and probably never received by TJ.
José Manuel Zozaya (Sosaya) y Bermúdez (1775–1853), attorney and public official, was born in Guanajuato, studied at Mexico City’s Colegio de San Pedro, San Pablo y San Ildefonso, and entered the legal profession. Early in 1822 he was named the first envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary from Mexico to the United States. President James Monroe duly received him that December. Despite recognition by the United States of imperial Mexico and of Zozaya’s diplomatic status, he struggled to gain acceptance among other diplomats and to place the newly established Mexican government on an equal footing in Washington. He returned to Mexico in 1823 after learning that the imperial government had been overthrown. Zozaya later represented Guanajuato in the national legislature and established the first paper factory in Mexico (Patricia Galeana and Gloria Villegas, Dos Siglos de México [2010], 57; Felix Osores, Noticias Bio-Bibliograficas de Alumnos Distinguidos del Colegio de San Pedro, San Pablo y San Ildefonso de Mexico [1908], 317–8; Alberto Leduc, Luis Lara y Pardo and Carlos Roumagnac, Diccionario de Geografía, Historia y Biografía Mexicanas [1910], 1096; Joseph Carl McElhannon, “Relations between Imperial Mexico and the United States, 1821–1823,” in Thomas E. Cotner, ed., Essays in Mexican History [1958], 134–9; Washington Daily National Intelligencer, 13 Dec. 1822, 9 May 1823).
TJ used the phrase own affairs in their own way in his annual message to Congress of 15 Dec. 1802 ( , 39:163). Agustín de iturbide began his short-lived reign when he was declared emperor by members of the Mexican military on 18 May 1822 and took his oath of office three days later. After learning of a conspiracy within the national assembly to overthrow him, on the 26th Aug. 1822 Emperor Agustín had several members of that body arrested, and he dissolved the assembly on 30 Oct. but abdicated the following year (Brantz Mayer, Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican [1853], 1:303–4; Washington Daily National Intelligencer, 8 July, 17 Oct. 1822).
1. Reworked by Wilkinson from “amiable.”
2. Reworked by Wilkinson from “impetus.”
Index Entries
- French Revolution; Reign of Terror search
- Iturbide, Agustín de (later Agustín I, emperor of Mexico) search
- Jefferson, Thomas; Correspondence; letters of introduction to search
- Jefferson, Thomas; Writings; messages to Congress search
- Mexico; Empire of search
- Napoleon I, emperor of France; campaigns of search
- newspapers; criticized search
- Robespierre, Maximilien François Marie Isidore de; as leader of French Revolution search
- Wilkinson, James; and Mexican political affairs search
- Wilkinson, James; health of search
- Wilkinson, James; introduces J. M. Zozaya search
- Wilkinson, James; letters from search
- Zozaya (Sosaya) y Bermúdez, José Manuel; as Mexican minister plenipotentiary search
- Zozaya (Sosaya) y Bermúdez, José Manuel; identified search
- Zozaya (Sosaya) y Bermúdez, José Manuel; introduced to TJ search