156 



been done, expressed his full and entire approbation of it ; and the next day he 

 brought to the office the draught from which he stated the " duplicate" was pre- 

 pared by him, bearing date Paris, llth Februar)^ I8I5, which he particularly 

 showed to me, as a corroborati\e justification to the Department of State for 

 the alteration that had been made in the date of his paper. It was then, I 

 think, that I informed him of the substitution which had been made in the office 

 copy of the year 1815 for that of I8I6, to correct our own mistake ; and he au- 

 thorized and requested me to have a like alteration made in his " duplicate," 

 which was accordingly done. Mr. Russell, upon this occasion, again expressed 

 his indifference as to the determination of the Executive with regard to this 

 *' duplicate,'' and repeated his request that it should be returned to him if not 

 used. 



In one of our conversations I asked him why he had delivered that paper to 

 me, and not to the President, to whom he had said he would deliver it ? His 

 reply was, that he had done so because he deemed that course most respectful 

 lo the Department of State, being under the impression, notwithstanding my de- 

 claration to the contrary, that I had sounded him upon the subject of the paper 

 in question by authority, (meaning, I presumed, by direction of the Secretary 

 of State,) and that it was actually required at the Department of State. 



In a conversation between Mr. Russell and myself, on the 1st May, in Mr. 

 Bailey's room, at the Department of State, in the presence and hearing of that 

 gentleman, he fully and expressly admitted and confirmed the correctness of the 

 statement given in this paper of the conversation between us of the 20th of 

 April, at his lodgings, with regard to the facts that the call of Doctor Floyd for 

 his letter had been made at his suggestion, and that I mentioned to him I had 

 no authority to make an application to him for a copy of that letter, and that t 

 made none. 



DANIEL BRENT. 



Washington, lOtk Juli/, 1822. 



Mr. Bailey^ s Statement. 



Several days after the passage of the resolution of the House of Represent- 

 atives of the United States, of 17th January, 1822, moved by Mr. Floyd, and 

 calling on the President for copies of certain papers relative to the negotiations 

 at Ghent, but before the copies had been communicated to the House, Mr. Rus- 

 sell, of the House, called at my room in the Department of State, and expressed 

 a wish to see a letter addressed by himself, separately, at Ghent, to the then Se- 

 cretary of State. He stated that tiie present Secretary of State had mentioned the 

 letter to him, and had desired to know whether it was his (Mr. Russeirs} wish 

 that this letter should be communicated to the House with other papers embraced 

 by the above call, or not. This letter, (a short one, dated "GJieut, 25th De-* 

 cember, 1814,") was accordingly shown to Mr. Russell by me, in a volume con- 

 taining the original communications from our Plenipotentiaries at Ghent, which 

 had been bound and lettered in the Department several years before. Mr. Rus- 

 sell, on reading the letter, said that he saw no objection to the communication 

 of it, and asked me if I saw any. The reply was, that none was seen. He 

 said that the concluding paragraph, as it related to his return to Sweden, and 

 not at all to the negotiations at Ghent, did not require to be communicated to 

 the House. I requested him to mark such part as he wished communicated. 

 This he did; and, conformably to this, the copy was made, by subsequent di- 

 rection of the Secretary of State, and thus it appears in the printed copy, p. 50. 



At the same time, or very soon after, (I do not remember which,) Mr. Rus- 

 sell expressed a wish that the letter might be found and communicated, which, 

 in his letter of 25th December, 1814, he intimated his intention of writing. 

 The wish was repeated at subsequent times, both at my room and elsewhere; 

 aiiid much desire was manifested by him on the subject. IMr. Russell and my- 

 self together, as well as myself separately, examined ai different times the 



