To James Madison from Stephen Pleasonton, 18 May 1815
From Stephen Pleasonton
Department of State May 18 1815.
Sir,
I have to ask your pardon for opening your letter to Mr. Graham of the 13 inst, relating to business mostly private. Mr. Graham being absent in Kentucky, and the Secretary also absent; and supposing the letter might relate to public business of importance, were reasons which induced me to take that liberty. I shall however take great pleasure Sir, in placing the money it inclosed to the credit of Genl Taylor, as you desire, and in complying in other respects with your wishes.
I have the satisfaction to inform you of the safe arrival, at New York, of the Constitution frigate. It is not mentioned in the papers received from New York yesterday, but is communicated in a letter from Mr Shaler, written on the 15th after the papers were struck off. Nothing was known, he mentions, of the circumstances of her cruize, after the capture of the English Sloops of War, at the time he wrote.1 With great respect & Esteem, I have the honor to remain, Sir, your most ob Set.
S. Pleasonton
RC (DLC). Docketed by JM.
1. The U.S. frigate Constitution, commanded by Capt. Charles Stewart, captured the British sloops of war Cyane and Levant on 20 Feb. 1815 near Madeira. On 9 Mar., British ships attacked the Constitution and its two prizes off Santiago in the Cape Verde Islands; the Cyane, under the command of prize master Lt. Beekman V. Hoffman, eluded pursuit and made for the United States without the other two ships, knowing nothing of their fate other than that they had been subject to “heavy cannonading” by the British. Hoffman’s 10 Apr. 1815 letter to Benjamin W. Crowninshield reporting these facts from New York was published in the Daily National Intelligencer on 15 Apr. 1815.