To James Madison from William C. Somerville, 9 May 1823
From William C. Somerville
N. Calvert Street Baltimore May 9th. 1823.
Sir
I have taken the liberty to send you by the mail a volume on the past & present state of France which you will gratify me by accepting.1 My opportunities of procuring information were too limitted during the short stay which my circumstances admitted of my making in France, to justify even the hope of having avoided all errours of opinion, but I trust there will be found no sentiment in the work which is not friendly to human happiness. With the best wishes for the continued welfare of yourself, Mrs. Madison, & Mr. Todd I remain your Ob: hum: Sert.
Wm. C: Somerville2
RC (DLC). Docketed by JM.
1. William C. Somerville, Letters from an American in Paris, on the Causes and Consequences of the French Revolution (Baltimore, 1822; 10306).
2. William C. Somerville (1790–1826) of Mulberry Fields in St. Mary’s County, Maryland, purchased, sometime after 1818, Stratford in Westmoreland County, Virginia. He traveled extensively in Europe, 1818–19, and was appointed first, in March 1825, U.S. chargé d’affaires to Sweden, and then, in September of the same year, U.S. agent to Greece, by President John Quincy Adams. He accompanied Lafayette on his return to France in 1825 and died at Auxerre, France, in January 1826. He is buried at La Grange, Lafayette’s estate (Charles B. Tiernan, The Tiernan Family in Maryland … [Baltimore, 1898], 92, 95, 103–4, 107, 109–12; James D. Kornwolf, Architecture and Town Planning in Colonial North America [3 vols.; Baltimore, 2002], 2:779, 817 n. 103; Hopkins et al., Papers of Henry Clay, 4:113, 255–56, 624–25, 773).