Beschreibung:

MADISON, JAMES, President. Autograph letter signed ("James Madison") as President, to ATTORNEY GENERAL [RICHARD] RUSH, Attorney General, Montpelier, [Virginia], 17 September 1815. 1 page, 4to, 250 x 195mm. (9 3/4 x 7 3/4 in.). Fine condition. PRESIDENT MADISON, THE ECONOMIC CRISIS AND JOSEPH BONAPARTE A cryptic letter possibly on measures being undertaken to relieve the nation's weakened financial condition in the wake of the War of 1812. "I cannot do better with the inclosed communication than to put it into your hands, with a request that you will give effect to the ideas of Mr. Dallas [Secretary of the Treasury], if you concur in them by a few lines to Mr. Dick, who appears to be well disposed to sustain the interests of the U.S. I see by the newspapers that J.B. [Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon's older brother], had passed thro' Baltimore for Washington...If you have written since his arrival, the letter owing to cross purposes of the mail, will not reach me till tomorrow. Will you be so good as to find out whether the letter referred to in the inclosed was lodged in the Treasury or State Dep[artmen]t, and if in the former to put both under cover to Mr. Dallas..." Alexander Dallas, Madison's third Secretary of Treasury, served from 1814 to 1816' enacting measures which restored the Treasury to solvency (by raising taxes) and was instrumental in the creation of the Second Bank of the United States in 1816.