1. Murray wrote to John Quincy Adams in Berlin on 15 Aug.: “I go to Leyden tomorrow morning to meet M. La Fayette who has requested to meet me somewhere. We have lately written about his voyage to the United States—I to dissuade him. General W[ashington] wrote to him in December [1798] dissuading him neatly; but he writes me he will go, and be quiet at Mount Vernon” (Ford, “Murray-Adams Letters,” description begins Worthington Chauncey Ford, ed. Letters of William Vans Murray to John Quincy Adams, 1797–1803. Washington, D.C., 1914. In Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1912, pages 343-715. description ends 583–84). Murray also drafted a letter to GW on 15 Aug. (NNPM), a copy of which he may or may not have sent to him. On 26 Oct. 1799 GW acknowledged the receipt of a number of letters dating back to April 1799, including one dated 17 Aug. but not one dated 15 August. The letters of 15 and 17 Aug. are both about Lafayette and include much the same information. In both letters Murray says he is enclosing the “press copy” of his letter to Lafayette. Murray went to see Lafayette after drafting the letter of 15 Aug. and before composing the letter of 17 August. It may well be that he wrote and sent the letter of 17 Aug. in the place of the one drafted on 15 Aug., which GW had not received by 26 Oct. perhaps because it was never sent. In any case, the copy of Murray’s letter of 15 Aug. reads: “The Gentleman to whom you wrote last december & who is actually in this Country, is I believe resolved to go to America & especially to Mount Vernon. He thinks of setting off this autumn. I have Said all I could to put him off from this ill timed visit. I have no rights over his letters to me, but I can without a breach of delicacy inclose Sir to you the press copy of my last letter to him on this subject. In answer however he says that ‘any consequences of my preferring Mount Vernon to every other place on earth I would meet with pleasure & pride.’ I have most Seriously & at different times combatted his intentions by every way I thought most successful. I confess Sir that his unconquered restlessness—the tough attachment to his first opinions, notwithstanding these are bury’d under those bloody ruins that demonstrate at least their prematurity & want of sound application to his own Country, his facilities in regenerating his half killed body & mind—So lately from a Dungeon—His fond hopes of Liberty!! European liberty—that strumpet that no Sermons—no examples can reform. These things both astonish me & execite some uneasiness when I consider him as the Citizen of the United States, possessed of a certain desire of popularity—& having had indeed great merit in our Glorious Revolution. Of course it would be best that he should be kept out of the Critical Scene, where it may be feared his Self love & ambition might be playd on—As you have long honoured him with your friendly offices it may be not unpleasing to hear more particularly of him—I had never seen him & went [in March 1799], at his request, to meet him—Thirty miles off. Instead of the grave & thoughtful countenance which his Misfortunes of all sorts justified the expectation of—I found him cheerful, & even pleasant in Anecdotes & old American war Stories, in which he delig⟨hted.⟩ With an air perfectly disengaged—in good health & of sound Consti⟨tution⟩ & of the same set of abstract & political principles which he carry’d from the U.S. to his Country & which he still adhered to—Condemning Jacobinism, but still talking about liberty (that of his own nation) and of the progress of the human mind & the yet hopeful amelioration of Europe upon the principles of liberty—He always spoke of you Sir, with great attachment—& we talked much of parties—One trait alone will give you a clue to his way of thinking & what must be expected of him. He asked if it would not be in his power to Unite parties in U.S.! if he were there. I took the occasion which a long walk offered to shew him the uneasy Situation in which a residence there at present would place him—He told me Col. H——had written to the same effect—I left him with the persuasion that his mind is impenetrable ⟨to⟩ perfectly defeated & scouted experiments—that he seems as if he considered his fame as bottomed on the alliance between American forms & theories & the Revolution of his own country—& I believe he knows that the American Revolution is the basis on which his statue rests. His unconquered mind excited somewhat ⟨of⟩ melancholy rather than of Admiration—& the fecundity of his resources to explain why this principle had not been fairly try⟨’d⟩ & that experiment not fairly made, accompany’d by so much Sang froid—left the same impression that the Chapter of Gil Blas always does—Sangrado had hot watered & blooded half ⟨the⟩ nobility & burghers of Valadolid to death—Twenty years constant mortality had testified to his Theory & practice—He did doubt—but he said he had when young written a book to support his Theory—his fame was at Stake—he could not recede! with a thousand excellent qualities he would I fear be sported with by events & by a certain party of impenetrables in the U.S.—I must add however that he seems most cordially to condemn the great injuries perpetrated by his Country against us. The French Republic has not been able, nor will she be, I think Sir, to oppose a dam against that torrent of Victories that has lately poured against her—We have it as certain that at last Mantua has surrendered—In the actual state of Europe this is a very important thing. Suwarrow has detached 20,000 men towards Swisserland—he may thus probably turn Massena’s right along the Aar; though Championet has some troops, army of the alps, in Savoy. The interior of France is becoming as it was in the year 1793 So. of the Vendee. The exterior force of the enemy Stronger & Successful & opinion outside & inside different. In Holland all is in preparation against expected invasion—But the moment of actual attack—if it come, will be attended by great desertion, it is believed to the Prince hereditary of Orange, who with a Russian General & a corps of cidevant Dutch Officers is now at Lingen on the Ems, near the borders” (NNPM). For Murray’s visit to Lafayette in March 1799, see also Lafayette to GW, 9 May 1799, n.4.

2. In addition to the copy in McHenry’s hand of Murray’s letter to GW of 15 Aug., there is at the New York State Library at Albany a copy of a letter, also in McHenry’s hand, without heading or date, from Murray to Lafayette. This undoubtedly is a copy of the letter, a press copy of which Murray told GW in his letters of 15 and 17 Aug. that he was enclosing. After writing about Lafayette’s passport and, at length, about the different meanings of the word liberty, Murray had this to say to Lafayette in conclusion: “My Dear Sir, as to your pleasing idea of being still & tranquil at Mount Vernon! It is true that you would be tranquil there—all men hold it in veneration—but that is to be ⟨with⟩ our free & glorious Govrnt & Constitution. You would there be a Monarchy man, Royalist, British, and a thousand & one wretched things against you. On the contrary if you are not there—though you cannot be a jacobin—yet the jacobins would count upon you! Neutrality is impossible! A middle man would be suspected as a spy! If our internal struggles had no relation to the interests of France & her revolutionaries & worst of principles, there you would be more quiet, as things are you would be either in a situation such as you never were in—or be obliged to be on one side or the other. The one side, the side you would take, is that which would be decisive against you in France. The other side—so like the Tory side against which you broke your first spear—you could not take.”

3. Gen. Aleksandr Vasilievich Suvorov (1729–1800), a noted Russian military commander, was conducting a campaign against the French in Italy. On 13 June 1799 Murray had written Pickering of the possibility that Louis XVIII would be “on the throne in a few months” (manuscript quoted in Hill, William Vans Murray, description begins Peter P. Hill. William Vans Murray, Federalist Diplomat: The Shaping of Peace with France, 1797–1801. Syracuse, N.Y., 1971. description ends 155).

4. GW remained fearful that Lafayette was coming to the United States; as late as 24 Oct. 1799 Secretary of State Timothy Pickering wrote GW that he suspected that “la Fayette is coming to America.”