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Auction archive: Lot number 32

MONROE, James. Autograph letter signed ("James Monroe"), as former President, to David McLean (unsent), 25 November 1826. 4 pages, slight mat burn on portion of signature page .

Auction 02.11.2006
2 Nov 2006
Estimate
US$3,000 - US$5,000
Price realised:
US$2,880
Auction archive: Lot number 32

MONROE, James. Autograph letter signed ("James Monroe"), as former President, to David McLean (unsent), 25 November 1826. 4 pages, slight mat burn on portion of signature page .

Auction 02.11.2006
2 Nov 2006
Estimate
US$3,000 - US$5,000
Price realised:
US$2,880
Beschreibung:

MONROE, James. Autograph letter signed ("James Monroe"), as former President, to David McLean (unsent), 25 November 1826. 4 pages, slight mat burn on portion of signature page . "THE CANDIDATES...STOOD ON EQUAL GROUND WITH ME. I WOULD AID NEITHER, NOR WOULD I INJURE EITHER" The former president fights for Congressional reimbursement for his prior diplomatic service in Europe, but finds that his claim has become entangled in the bitter feelings left over from the 1824 election debacle between Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams. He reports that Congressman Samuel Ringgold wrote to tell him that "considerable opposition was made to my claims." Monroe thinks those grievances relate to appointments he declined to make during the final Congressional session of his second term. "I decided...as a principle," he says, "...that it would be more fair & just and of course more honorable for me, to leave the appointments" to his successor. Partisans of the presidential candidates urged him to reconsider: "I was requested by a friend of one of the candidates, to fill those vacancies, for a reason that will occur to you...The candidates, most prominent [i.e., Jackson and Adams], stood on equal ground with me. I would aid neither, nor would I injure either, on principle & personally I had the same feeling for them, as I thought I had given very full proofs in the course of my public life. Mr. Calhoun was, I think, acquainted with the decision which I took in the commencement of the session...I have no objection to your conferring with him on the subject." Evidently some on Capitol Hill thought that a public appeal should be issued on the former President's behalf. He's cool to the idea: "If anything like an appeal was to be made to the nation, the effect could not be produced by the operation of public opinion on the representative body in less than a year or two. To wait for it would have been to give up the question last session, especially as the publication of the documents &c might have produced some excitement with those on the ground." If anyone should appeal to the public, Monroe says, he should be the one to do it in his own words: "I attack no one, and state facts which are true & substantially proved in every instance, the object & effort of which are simply to place my own conduct in a correct point of view, in occurrences in which it has been misrepresented & misunderstood by many." Monroe spent years trying to extract his payments from Congress and wrote many letters in support of his claim. Indeed, as he notes in a docket below his signature, he did not send this letter to McLean as "others were written essentially to the same effect."

Auction archive: Lot number 32
Auction:
Datum:
2 Nov 2006
Auction house:
Christie's
2 November 2006, New York, Rockefeller Center
Beschreibung:

MONROE, James. Autograph letter signed ("James Monroe"), as former President, to David McLean (unsent), 25 November 1826. 4 pages, slight mat burn on portion of signature page . "THE CANDIDATES...STOOD ON EQUAL GROUND WITH ME. I WOULD AID NEITHER, NOR WOULD I INJURE EITHER" The former president fights for Congressional reimbursement for his prior diplomatic service in Europe, but finds that his claim has become entangled in the bitter feelings left over from the 1824 election debacle between Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams. He reports that Congressman Samuel Ringgold wrote to tell him that "considerable opposition was made to my claims." Monroe thinks those grievances relate to appointments he declined to make during the final Congressional session of his second term. "I decided...as a principle," he says, "...that it would be more fair & just and of course more honorable for me, to leave the appointments" to his successor. Partisans of the presidential candidates urged him to reconsider: "I was requested by a friend of one of the candidates, to fill those vacancies, for a reason that will occur to you...The candidates, most prominent [i.e., Jackson and Adams], stood on equal ground with me. I would aid neither, nor would I injure either, on principle & personally I had the same feeling for them, as I thought I had given very full proofs in the course of my public life. Mr. Calhoun was, I think, acquainted with the decision which I took in the commencement of the session...I have no objection to your conferring with him on the subject." Evidently some on Capitol Hill thought that a public appeal should be issued on the former President's behalf. He's cool to the idea: "If anything like an appeal was to be made to the nation, the effect could not be produced by the operation of public opinion on the representative body in less than a year or two. To wait for it would have been to give up the question last session, especially as the publication of the documents &c might have produced some excitement with those on the ground." If anyone should appeal to the public, Monroe says, he should be the one to do it in his own words: "I attack no one, and state facts which are true & substantially proved in every instance, the object & effort of which are simply to place my own conduct in a correct point of view, in occurrences in which it has been misrepresented & misunderstood by many." Monroe spent years trying to extract his payments from Congress and wrote many letters in support of his claim. Indeed, as he notes in a docket below his signature, he did not send this letter to McLean as "others were written essentially to the same effect."

Auction archive: Lot number 32
Auction:
Datum:
2 Nov 2006
Auction house:
Christie's
2 November 2006, New York, Rockefeller Center
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