To James Madison from Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt, 23 September 1810 (Abstract)
§ From
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt
23 September 1810, Paris. Recalls JM’s kindness during his visit to Washington in 1804 and makes him a gift of his geographical studies of Mexico.1 The bearer of the letter, Mr. Warden, is greatly liked in Paris, and he has comforted Humboldt with the assurance that JM has not forgotten him.
RC (DLC). 3 pp. In French. For a translation, see Helmut de Terra, “Alexander Von Humboldt’s Correspondence with Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 103 (1959): 798.
1. Since Humboldt wrote a similar letter to Jefferson at this time offering him the fourth and fifth parts of his work on Mexico, it is likely that JM received the same sections of Humboldt’s Essai sur la Royaume de la Nouvelle-Espagne. This work was published in installments in Paris between 1808 and 1813, and it formed part of Humboldt’s magnum opus, Voyage de Humboldt et Bonpland (see Sowerby, Catalogue of Jefferson’s Library, 4:290–92).