James Madison Papers

To James Madison from Robert Smith, [14 October] 1810

From Robert Smith

Sunday Morning [14 October 1810]

Sir,

Would it not be well to annex to the despatch to Mr Pinkney that part of the first letter of Mr King which relates to Blockades marked with a pencil //   // ?1

R Smith

P. S. Owing to a very severe cold I will not be able to accompany to your house Mr Jarvis. But I will send him.

RS

RC (DLC: Rives Collection, Madison Papers); enclosure (DNA: RG 59, DD, Great Britain). Date of RC assigned on the basis of internal evidence (see n. 1). Enclosure (18 pp.) is Rufus King to Timothy Pickering, 15 July 1799 (see n. 1).

1Robert Smith’s 19 Oct. 1810 letter to William Pinkney (DNA: RG 59, IM) instructed the American minister to press for the repeal of the orders in council and any other “system of paper blockades” devised by Great Britain as a substitute. To underline the point that both Federalist and Republican administrations had rejected such “paper blockades,” the letter included extracts from the first (no. 43) of Rufus King’s two 15 July 1799 dispatches to Secretary of State Pickering, in which the former had tried to persuade the British government to accept the view that there could be “no effective blockade” without “a competent force stationed and present at or near the entrance of the blockaded port.” The section marked in pencil by Robert Smith is on pages 2–3 of the triplicate of the dispatch; it was later published in ASP description begins American State Papers: Documents, Legislative and Executive, of the Congress of the United States ... (38 vols.; Washington, 1832-61). description ends , Foreign Relations, 3:370.

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