I9I2.] VOYAGE TO THE UNITED STATES. 243 



Loliee,- have attempted to find the source from which the citations 

 were taken to see whether it contained other interesting material 

 upon the sojourn of the great diplomat in America. 



It was my good fortune, a little over a year ago, to find in the 

 manuscript catalogue of the Archives Coloniales at Paris, the title, 

 '* Le Voyage aux Etats-Unis de I'Amerique par Moreau de Saint- 

 Mery pendant les annees de 1793 a 1798." 



Although it called me far afield from the work in which I was 

 engaged, I could not resist the temptation to cast a furtive glance 

 at the manuscript to see what its interesting title meant. That 

 furtive glance grew into the absorbing task of reading from page 

 to page until I had finished the story which the volume contained — 

 a story all but forgotten and lost for three generations among the 

 dusty archives of the Colonial Office.^ It is to this story that I wish 

 to direct your attention for a few moments. 



With the author of the diary many of you are already acquainted 

 from the paper which one of your members presented before this 

 society at its last annual meeting.'* Permit me to recall, however, 

 the salient facts in his life. 



Born at Fort Royal, Martinique, on January 13, 1750, Mederic- 

 Louis-Elie Moreau de Saint-Mery^ was of a family which had emi- 

 grated from Poitou to settle at Martinique in the seventeenth cen- 

 tury and had won a place of prominence by furnishing in succeeding 



^ MacCabe, " Talleyrand, a Biographical Study," London, 1906 ; Bernard 

 de Lacombe, "La vie intime de Talleyrand," Paris, 1910; Frederic Loliee, 

 " Talleyrand et la societe frangaise," Paris, igio. 



* Victor Tantet, late archivist of the Archives Coloniales, made use of 

 the diary to write a very interesting article which appeared in La Revue 

 (1905), Vol. 52, pp. 378-396, and entitled "Les Refugies politiques frangais en 

 Amerique sous la Convention — Moreau de Saint-Mery libraire a Phila- 

 delphie." I knew nothing of the existence of this article until after I had 

 found and studied the diary. 



^Joseph G. Rosengarten, "Moreau de Saint-Mery and his French 

 Friends in the American Philosophical Society," Proceedings of this Society, 

 Vol. 50, pp. 168-182. 



° This short sketch of Moreau is based on Silvestre, " Notice Biograph- 

 ique sur M. Moreau de Saint-Mery," Paris, 1819 (a short pamphlet of 24 pp.), 

 and Fournier-Pescay's article in Biographie Universelle on Moreau de Saint- 

 Mery. 



