4 Mar. 1798
Original paper slip text:4 March 1798.
Paris
Original paper slip text:Paris
Unable to lookup name for paris.3 p.
- Recipient updated from [JA?] to [Charles Lee] - RB, SEG 3/28/23
- John Marshall Papers, box marked: "Various Accessions"
- Original owned (1934) by Miss Martha R. Adams. Doubt as to JA being the recipient raised in Marshall, Papers, Stinchombe and Cullen eds., 3:395 n. 5. The argument that Charles Lee, JA's attorney general, was the recipient is rather convincing. CFA, Diary I:51 n. 5 describes the letter's assigned bearer, Wm. Lee of Boston, as "an old friend of JQA's from their days in the foreign service." JQA Memoirs I:190–91 (11 June 1797) reports a trip thru the Dutch countryside with
- Lee and Marshall. See also Lee, Yankee Jeffersonian, ed. Mary Lee Mann, 49, 261 n. 58. All this suggests that Lee was a trusted Federalist, and that JA would need no introduction to one of his son's cronies. Charles Lee, on the other hand, might need such an introduction as Marshall provides in this letter. It is also clear that Charles Lee regularly discussed patronage matters with JA, including diplomatic patronage, and may have acted as JA's "manager" of patronage. See C. Lee to JA, 4 Aug. 1798. The only evidence that this letter went to JA rests with the owner, whose possession of the Adams surname renders her less than disinterested in the matter.
- KRS rev. 20 Feb. 1985
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From the collection: James McHenry Papers
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