no transfer of
my allegiance or of my citizenship from America to France. There I was
a real citizen, paying Taxes; here, I was a voluntary friend, employing
myself on a temporary service. Every American in Paris knew that it was
my constant intention to return to America, as soon as a constitution
should be established, and that I anxiously waited for that event.

I know not what opinions have been circulated in America. It may have
been supposed there that I had voluntarily and intentionally abandoned
America, and that my citizenship had ceased by my own choice. I can
easily [believe] there are those in that country who would take such
a proceeding on my part somewhat in disgust. The idea of forsaking
old friendships for new acquaintances is not agreeable. I am a little
warranted in making this supposition by a letter I received some time
ago from the wife of one of the Georgia delegates in which she says
"Your friends on this side the water cannot be reconciled to the idea of
your abandoning America."

I have never abandoned her in thought, word or deed; and I feel it
incumbent upon me to give this assurance to the friends I have in that
country and with whom I have always intended and am determined, if the
possibility exists, to close the scene of my life. It is there that I
have made myself a home. It is there that I have given the services of
my best days. America never saw me flinch from her cause in the most
gloomy and perilous of her situations; and I know there are those in
that country who will not flinch from me. If I have enemies (and every
man has some) I leave them to the enjoyment of their ingratitude.*

* I subjoin in a note, for the sake of wasting the solitude
of a prison, the answer that I gave to the part of the
letter above mentioned. It is not inapplacable to the
subject of this Memorial; but it contain! somewhat of a
melancholy idea, a little predictive, that I hope is not
becoming true so soon.

It is somewhat extraordinary that the idea of my not being a citizen
of America should have arisen only at the time that I am imprisoned
in France because, or on the pretence that, I am a foreigner. The case
involves a strange contradiction of ideas. None of the Americans who
came to France whilst I was in liberty had conceived any such idea or
circulated any such opinion; and why it should arise now is a matter
yet to be explained. However discordant the late America