of the 29th. I am particularly glad to find that you will be able to set out at so early a day for Washington. To the advantage of preventing an inconvenient chasm in the public business, will be added the opportunity of a provident attention to the accomodations required by your establishment here. The House occupied by Mr. Smith is the best in the place, and I believe is not yet out of reach. He means also to dispose of certain portions of his furniture which might suit your purpose. These considerations taken together recommend strongly that you should not wait for the receipt of your commission, but consider what has passed between us, as sufficient ground for a communication to the council. The actual receipt of the commission cannot be a necessary preliminary. As well as I recollect I did not receive mine, as Secretary of State till it was handed to me on the spot, by Mr. Jefferson. In case of appointments at a great distance, it might be extremely inconvenient for any other course to be observed. It is the more desireable that you should not wait for your commission, as I find that

Madison caused Richard Brent, Senator from Virginia, to write to Monroe and ask him if he would accept the Secretaryship of State. March 18th Monroe replied favorably. (Writings of Monroe, v., 178.) Madison wrote to Jefferson April 1: “You will have inferred the change which is taking place in the Dept. of State. Col. Monroe agrees to succeed Mr. Smith, who declines however the mission to Russia, at first not unfavorably looked at. I was willing, notwithstanding many trying circumstances, to have smoothed the transaction as much as possible, but it will be pretty sure to end in secret hostility, if not open warfare. On account of my great esteem & regard for common friends such a result is truly painful to me. For the rest, I feel myself on firm ground, as well in the public opinion as in my own consciousness.

it will be tuesday morning before its date will be consistent with the understanding & arrangement here, & that your arrival would of consequence be thrown forward till the beginning of the next week. I might indeed, as the law authorizes, provide an interim Functionary, for the current business requiring his signature, & not admitting delay; but there are objections to this resort where it can be avoided. I hope therefore you will find no difficulty in the mode of anticipation recommended; the more especially as your communication to the council may be delayed till tuesday morning the time proposed for your setting out, and at which time your commission will have been formally consummated, & ready to be delivered.

Accept assurances of my sincere esteem & friendship

MEMORANDUM AS TO ROBERT SMITH.1

MAD. MSS.

(April, 1811).

Having seen in the Aurora of the 5th inst. [April, 1811],

1 Endorsed by Madison: "(Quere: if necessary to become public?) Memorandum as to R. Smith." It was not made public.

A newspaper controversy arose and Smith's friends became Madison's enemies. Madison wrote to Jefferson from Washington, July 8, 1811: "You will have noticed in the Nat. Intelligencer that the wicked publication of Mr. Smith is not to escape with impunity. It is impossible however that the whole turpitude of his conduct can be understood without disclosures to be made by myself alone, and of course, as he knows, not to be made at all."-Mad. MSS.

& since copied into other Gazettes, an explanation which the Editor says he was authorized to make "of the rupture which has taken place between Mr. Madison, and Mr. R. Smith" I have thought it proper, whilst the circumstances are fresh in remembrance, to preserve them in the following memorandum: On the day of March Mr. S. called on me, as was common, on some point of official business. In the conversation, he alluded to the account in the Newspapers of the dismission of Mr. Pickering by Mr. Adams, as just published for the first time by the former. Altho' the manner of Mr. S. did not denote any purpose beyond the ordinary conversation incident to such a topic, it happened to be the very day on which I meant to have sent for him in order to communicate the necessity of making a change in the head of the Department of State. Dropping therefore the case of Mr. Pickering, and breaking its apparent relation to his own by the interposition of other subjects, I intimated that in coming over, he had anticipated my intention of sending for him, with a view to a conversation, which would be as candid & explicit on my part as it was in some respects delicate and disagreeable in itself. After remarking that I had delayed the execution of my purpose for some time after I had formed it, in order that my communication might have the character of being not the result of any sudden impulse, but of a deliberate regard to public considerations and official duty, I proceeded to state to him, that it had long been felt, and had at length become notorious, that the administration of the Executive Department laboured under a want of the harmony & unity, which were equally essential to its energy and its success; that I did not refer to the evil as infecting our Cabinet consultations, where there had always been an apparent cordiality, even a sufficient concurrence of opinion; but as shewing itself in language and conduct out of doors, counteracting what had been understood within to be the course of the administration, and the interest of the Public; that truth obliged me to add, that this practice, as brought to my view, was ex

clusively chargeable on him; and that he had not only counteracted what had been the result of consultations apparently approved by himself, but had included myself in representations calculated to diminish confidence in the administration committed to me. He expressed surprise that I should have yielded to such impressions, declared that he had given no cause for them; observing that it was not to be conceived that a motive could be felt by him, to be otherwise than friendly personally, as well as to the credit of my administration. I told him that I had long resisted such impressions, well knowing that my conduct to him had merited a very different return. But that they were the result of facts and circumstances brought to my knowledge from so many sources and with so many corroborations, that it was impossible to shut my mind against them. I assured him that I had struggled agst the belief as long as I could; that it was painful as well as difficult for me to suppose, that conscious as he must be of the friendship he had experienced in my nomination of him to the Department of State, and in the constant aids I had given him, in discharging its duties, he should privately set himself agst me in any respect; but that what had harassed my feelings in a degree equalled by no occurrence in a long political life, was the reflection that there were among those most nearly connected with him, a number of individuals whom I had always felt a gratification in classing among the best of my friends political & personal, & for whom I felt the highest esteem & sincerest affection; and that the idea of distressing them was most severely so to myself. He repeated his solemn denial of unfriendly conduct in any way towards me, or having done any thing tending to obstruct or embarrass the administration; that on the contrary, he had been always personally my friend, and had contributed, as far as he could to the credit & support of the administration: What motive could he have to be otherwise, being himself a member of it, and having neither pretensions nor expectations of any higher sort? What could

have given rise to the unfavorable sentiments I had expressed, he was at a loss even to conjecture. I told him I was aware of the awkwardness of my situation, in being obliged to refer to information and evidence which had come to me in ways not permitting me to name to him the sources; but I could assure him that the sources were such as made it my duty not to disregard them; and that unquestionably, he would himself, in my situation yield to the accumulated statements which had their effect on me. In what instances had he set himself agst me, or against measures espoused by the administration? I reminded him of a conversation with Mr. reported by

the latter, in which he had indulged himself in disparaging remarks on my official character, & that of others in the Cabinet; on the general course of my Policy, which he signified he disapproved; and in which he had communicated certain Cabinet proceedings, some of which were of so confidential a nature that the gentleman did not consider himself at liberty to repeat them. I had taken occasion before to drop him a hint that such a conversation had been given out, observing at the time, that I did it not because I lent an ear to it, but that it might suggest circumspection. He slighted then the report as proceeding from a source not likely to be listened to; and now repeated the denial of the conversation, with an allusion to a report from the same source, as to a conversation with another member of the Cabinet, where it appeared, that no interview could have taken place. I admitted that if this had been a solitary case, it would have been entirely dismissed from my recollection; but this was far from being the fact, altho' I could not equally enter into a specification of other cases. For examples in which he had counteracted what he had not himself disapproved in the Cabinet, I referred to the Bills called Macon's bills, and the non-intercourse bill, on the consultations on which he appeared to concur in their expediency; that he well knew the former, in its outline, at least, had originated in the difficulty of finding measures that would prevent what Congress had solemnly protested