Beschreibung:

MONROE, JAMES, President . Autograph letter signed ("Jas Monroe") as Secretary of State, to an unidentified recipient, Fredericksburg, Virginia, 18 May 1815. 1 full page, 4to, 250 x 192mm. (10 x 7 1/2 in.). Secretary Monroe discusses the transportation of a personal letter abroad. "Having inferred that your friend Mr. Everett would sail with Dr. Eustis [former Secretary of War and present Minister to Holland], I had postponed forwarding the letter you had requested in his favor to L[or]d Holland, in the expectation that it would be in time if receiv[e]d before the departure of the minister. It was my intention to have transmitted it from Richmond...[but] I heard yesterday by accident that Mr. Everett either had sailed or would sail in some other vessel...If he has sailed, you may perhaps forward it after him in time to reach him in England. I shall regret much if a mistake as to the time of his departure, shall have deprived me of the opportunity of doing an acceptable act to you [and] some small service to your friend..." Lord Holland (Henry Richard Vassal Fox, 1773-1840), to whom Monroe refers, was the British representative who negotiated with Monroe and Thomas Pinckney in 1806 in a futile attempt to resolve the issue of impressment, one of the formative causes of the War of 1812.