From James Madison to James Monroe, 13 June 1816
To James Monroe
Montpelier June 13. 1816
Dear Sir
I return the Petition of Getz, which being without other proof than his own oath, might justly require a resort to the District Atty or &c &c.1 If however on consultation with the Treasy. Dept. a pardon be deemed proper, let one be made out.
The communications from Brent at Madrid were returned several days ago.2 They are not without good sense, but betray a conscious deficiency of weight of character, that makes the presence of Mr. Erving the more important. They give additional relief to the political deformity of the Spanish Ministry.
Mr. Gallatin writes me that he leaves the U.S. with a heavy heart; and purposes but a short stay in Europe.
We are suffering much from dry weather. The pastures meadows & oat fields feel it severely. The wheat even wd. be the better for rain in moderation. Where the Hessian fly has spared it, it will be very fine if the present promise be fulfilled. I lose at least half my crop by the fly. I do not know the extent of this visitation. Two gentlemen this moment arrived from Monticello,3 speak of the drowth at that quarter, but heard nothing of the fly. Yrs.
J. Madison
RC (DLC: Monroe Papers).
1. George Getz, a lieutenant in the Fourth Rifle Regiment, had petitioned Monroe on 11 Apr. 1815 for reinstatement as an officer. He was discharged from the army in June 1815 (, 1:452).
2. Thomas Ludwell Lee Brent (ca. 1784–1847) was the son of Daniel Carroll Brent and nephew of Virginia senator Richard Brent. After visiting Europe and marrying a Spaniard, Brent received a State Department clerkship in 1811. On 14 Oct. 1814 JM nominated him to serve as secretary of legation in Madrid as part of George W. Erving’s mission to Spain. Brent arrived in Madrid in February 1815, but he was not accredited because Pedro Cevallos refused to receive Erving for as long as JM declined to acknowledge Luis de Onís in Washington. Brent remained in this diplomatic limbo until March 1816, during which time he fell out with JM’s earlier diplomatic appointee to Spain, Anthony Morris. Nevertheless, Brent continued to report to the State Department on developments in that country, including the mistreatment of American citizens, notably Richard W. Meade, by the Spanish government (, glossary; , 2:534; H. L. Dufour Woolfley, A Quaker Goes to Spain: The Diplomatic Mission of Anthony Morris, 1813–1816 [Bethlehem, Pa., 2013], 100–102, 108–11, 114–16, 124–25, 130, 142).
3. The “two gentlemen” were almost certainly Joseph Delaplaine and Bass Otis, who had come to Virginia to take likenesses of JM and Dolley Madison for inclusion in Delaplaine’s Repository. The portrait of Dolley Madison is now in the New-York Historical Society; that of JM has been lost. When William Thornton saw the portraits, he regretted that Delaplaine was not “a better Judge of Paintings when he undertakes so laudable a work.” Of Otis’s work he remarked that “the draperies are very well done, but the Faces are really very bad” (Gordon Hendricks, “A Wish to Please, and a Willingness to be Pleased,” American Art Journal 2 [Spring 1970]: 23 and n. 26; Thornton to Thomas Jefferson, 20 July 1816, Looney et al., Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series, 10:258).