Jefferson, Thomas | A significant letter in which Jefferson promotes the image of a stable and unified America to a key French ally

Jefferson, Thomas

Autograph letter signed ("Th: Jefferson") as a Virginia delegate to the

Congress of the Confederation, to François-Jean de Beauvoir, Marquis de Chastellux, communicating the official ratification of the Treaty of Paris, the state of the new nation, and the forthcoming publication of his Notes on the State of Virginia

2 pages (226 x 189 mm) on a bifolium (watermarked posthorn gr), Annapolis, 16 January 1784. Half blue morocco slipcase, chemise.

Lord Cornwallis's surrender at Yorktown may have ended active hostilities between Great Britain and her American colonies, but it wasn't until the Treaty of Paris was signed and ratified almost three years later that the sovereignty of the United States would be acknowledged. Jefferson here shares news of the ratification with one of the new nation's most important allies, the Marquis de Chastellux, the principal liaison officer between the Comte de Rochambeau, commander-in-chief of the French Expeditionary Force, and George Washington. 

"Lt. Colo. Franks being appointed to carry to Paris one of the copies of our ratification of the Definitive treaty, and being to depart in the instant of his appointment, furnishes me a hasty opportunity of obtruding myself on your recollection. should this prove troublesome, you must take the blame, as having exposed yourself to my esteem by letting me become acquainted with your merit." (David Franks, who carried this letter to Paris, as well as a certified copy of the peace treaty to Benjamin Franklin, had excellent French and so was assigned as liaison officer to the Comte d'Estaing. Later he was an aide-de-camp to Benedict Arnold when Arnold schemed to turn West Point over to the British. Despite being exonerated by a court-martial convened at his request, Franks was dogged by rumors of disloyalty and he was eventually forced out of the diplomatic corps in 1786.)

Jefferson quickly transitions to an appraisal of the state of the nascent country, which was intended to project a sense of stability and counter "European accounts of the anarchy and opposition to government in America." While Jefferson admits to a few incidents of unrest, he attributes those to financial issues stemming from the prosecution of the war. "Our transactions on this side the water must now have become uninteresting to the rest of the world. we are busy however among ourselves endeavouring to get our new governments into regular & concerted motion. for this purpose I beleive we shall find some additions requisite to our Confederation. as yet every thing has gone smoothly since the war. we are diverted with the European accounts of the anarchy and opposition to government in America. nothing can be more untrue than these relations. there was indeed some dissatisfaction in the army at not being paid off before they were disbanded: and a very trifling mutiny of 200 souldiers in Philadelphia. on the latter occasion Congress left that place, disgusted with the pusillanimity of the government and not from any want of security to their own persons. the indignation which the other states felt at this insult to their delegates, has enlisted them more warmly in support of Congress: and the people, the legislature and the Executive themselves of Pennsylvania have made the most satisfactory atonements. some people also of warm blood undertook to resolve as committees for proscribing the refugees. but they were few, scattered here & there through the several states, were absolutely unnoticed by those both in & out of power, and never expressed an idea of not acquiescing ultimately under the decisions of their governments. the greatest difficulty we find is to get money from them. the reason is not founded in their unwillingness but in their real inability. you were a witness to the total destruction of our commerce, devastation of our country, and absence of the precious metals. it cannot be expected that these should flow in but through the channels of commerce, or that these channels can be opened in the first instant of peace. time is requisite to avail ourselves of the productions of the earth, and the first of these will be applied to renew our stock of those necessaries of which we had been totally exhausted."

Claiming to have written "enough of America, it’s politics, & poverty," Jefferson tells Chastellux that he is "in daily hopes of seeing something from your pen which may portray us to ourselves." (He would, in fact, later that year read an unofficial and incomplete version of Voyage de M. le Marquis de Chastellux dans l’Amérique Septentrionale dans les années 1780, 1781 & 1782, which would not be fully published until 1786.) This topic naturally brought Jefferson to a discussion of his own Notes on the State of Virginia, which was initially written in response to a series of questions sent, in 1781, to various members of the Continental Congress by François Barbé-Marbois, then secretary to the French legation at Philadelphia. Jefferson here reveals that he has greatly expanded his treatise and plans to have it printed:

"I must caution you to distrust information from my answers to the queries of Monsr. de Marbois. I have lately had a little leisure to revise them. I found some things should be omitted, many corrected, & more supplied & enlarged. they are swelled nearly to treble bulk. being now too much for manuscript copies I think the ensuing spring to print a dozen or twenty copies to be given to my friends, not suffering another to go out. as I have presumed to place you in that number I shall take the liberty of sending you a copy as a testimony of the sincere esteem and affection with which I have the honour to be Dr Sir Your most obediant & most humble servt." The first privately printed edition of the Notes would be issued in 200 copies from the Paris press of Philippe-Denis Pierres in early 1785, when Jefferson had joined Benjamin Franklin and John Adams as a Minister Plenipotentiary for Negotiating Treaties of Amity and Commerce. Correspondence from June 1785 confirms that Jefferson sent, and Chastellux received, a presentation copy of Notes on the State of Virginia, but the current location of the copy is not known.

A fascinating and discursive letter by Jefferson, one of a concerted series of missives from the period "in which he endeavored by private communications to influence opinion of America abroad" (Papers).

PROVENANCE

François-Jean de Beauvoir, Marquis de Chastellux, by descent (discreet blindstamp of the Archives de Chastellux) to — Comte Louis de Chastellux (Christie's New York, 14 December 2016, lot 360)

REFERENCE

Celebration of My Country 101;  The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Boyd, 6:466–467 (text from a draft in the Missouri Historical Society, with many variations from the sent letter in wording, punctuation, spelling, capitalization, and paragraphing)