Thomas Jefferson Papers
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From Thomas Jefferson to John Barnes, 8 October 1797

To John Barnes

Monticello Oct 8. 97.

Dear Sir

Colo. James Monroe having immediate occasion for a sum of money in Philadelphia, I have concluded it better to let him have Mr. Short’s quarter’s dividends payable the 1st. instant, than to leave them lying in an unproductive state, on the expectation now beginning to be weak, of Mr. Short’s arrival this autumn. I therefore inclose you a power of attorney to receive them, and as I do not know the exact amount I have not given a draught on you, but by this present, desire you to pay the amount whatever it is to Colo. Monroe’s order. I have informed him it will be a few dollars over 300. He will accordingly authorize some person to call on you for the amount be it what it may, as soon as you shall have received it. I am with esteem Dear Sir Your most obedt. servt

Th: Jefferson

PrC (Thomas Jefferson Foundation, on deposit ViU); endorsed in ink on verso by TJ.

Monroe’s immediate occasion for a sum of money in Philadelphia was a loan of $600 he made to Benjamin Franklin Bache to subsidize the publication of Monroe’s vindication of his actions as minister to France (see Monroe to TJ, [22] Oct. 1797). The book did not sell well, Bache was unable to repay the loan in its entirety, and in June 1798 TJ found means to help cover Monroe’s obligation for the money drawn from William Short’s income from public securities (Tagg, Bache, description begins James Tagg, Benjamin Franklin Bache and the Philadelphia Aurora, Philadelphia, 1991 description ends 327–8, 361; MB description begins James A. Bear, Jr., and Lucia C. Stanton, eds., Jefferson’s Memorandum Books: Accounts, with Legal Records and Miscellany, 1767–1826, Princeton, 1997, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Second Series description ends , ii, 986).

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