ary
of State, and was dated Paris, 11th of February, 1815. It was a letter
of seven folio sheets of paper, and amounted, said Mr. Adams, to little
less than a denunciation of a majority of the Ghent commissioners for
proposing the article recognizing the fishery, and the British right to
navigate the Mississippi,--a proposition in which Mr. Russell had
concurred. He wrote this letter at Paris, where all the commissioners
then were, without ever communicating it to Mr. Adams, or letting him
know he had any intention of writing such a letter. It was a most
elaborate, disingenuous, and sophistical argument against principles in
which Mr. Russell himself concurred, and against the joint letters of
the 14th December, 1814, to which he signed his name. His motives, Mr.
Adams considered, for writing then to a Virginian Secretary of State,
under a Virginian President, were, apparently, at once to recommend
himself to their sectional prejudices about the Mississippi, and to
injure him in their esteem and favor, for future effect; and that his
motive for now abetting Floyd, in his call for these papers as a public
document, was to diminish the popularity of Mr. Adams in the Western
States.

With these views of the purposes of Floyd and Russell, Mr. Adams
immediately endeavored to obtain the original letter, of which Mr.
Russell had now deposited in the Secretary of State's office a paper
purporting to be a copy. The original he ascertained was still in the
possession of Mr. Monroe, who had received it soon after its date; but,
as it was marked "private" by Mr. Russell, he considered it
confidential, and did not place it in the office of the Secretary of
State. On ascertaining these facts, Mr. Adams claimed the original
letter from Mr. Monroe, believing, from internal evidence, that the
duplicate, instead of being a true copy of the original, had been in
some respects adapted to present effect. Mr. Monroe declined to listen
to the repeated remonstrances of Mr. Adams, and continued to maintain
that he could not, with honor, make the original letter public. He did
not consent until he was called upon for it by a vote of the House of
Representatives, proposed by the friends of Mr. Adams, and resisted by
Floyd and his party. The original letter being thus obtained, Mr. Adams
prepared and published a severe and scrutinizing examination of its
facts and suggestions, of the motives which prompted those who had
brought it before the publ